Last to Die

smarts.”

As the team lead in the Ackerman investigation, Crowe was acting more abrasive than usual. Their morning team meeting had been going for almost an hour now, and they were all on edge. In the thirtysome hours since the slaughter of the Ackerman family, the media frenzy had intensified, and this morning Jane had awakened to the tabloid headline HORROR ON BEACON HILL, accompanied by a photo of their prime suspect Andres Zapata, the missing boyfriend of the Ackermans’ housekeeper. It was an old mug shot from a drug arrest in Colombia, and he had a face that looked like a killer’s. He was an illegal immigrant, he had a burglary record, and his fingerprints were found on the Ackermans’ kitchen door, as well as on their kitchen counters. They had enough for an arrest warrant, but a conviction? Jane wasn’t sure.

She said, “We can’t count on Teddy to help us build a case against Zapata.”

“You’ve got plenty of time to prepare him,” said Crowe.

“He didn’t see a face.”

“He must have seen something that will help us in court.”

“Teddy’s a lot more fragile than you realize. We can’t expect him to testify.”

“He’s fourteen, for God’s sake,” Crowe snapped. “When I was fourteen—”

“Don’t tell me. You were strangling pythons with your bare hands.”

Crowe leaned forward. “I do not want this case to fall apart. We need to get our ducks lined up.”

“Teddy is not a duck,” said Jane. “He’s a child.”

“And a psychologically scarred one at that,” said Moore. He opened the folder he’d brought into the meeting. “I spoke again to Detective Edmonds, in the US Virgin Islands. He faxed me their file on the Clock family murders, and—”

“They were killed two years ago,” interjected Crowe. “Different jurisdiction, even a different country. Where’s the connection to this case?”

“Probably none,” admitted Moore. “But this information speaks to the boy’s emotional state. To why he’s so devastated. What happened to him in Saint Thomas was every bit as horrifying as what happened to him here.”

“And that case was never solved?” said Frost.

Moore shook his head. “But it generated a lot of press. I remember reading about it at the time. American family on a dream voyage around the world, murdered aboard their seventy-five-foot yacht. Granted, the US Virgin Islands has a homicide rate about ten times ours, but even there the massacre was shocking. It actually took place in the Capella Islands, which are off Saint Thomas. The Clock family—Nicholas and Annabelle and their three children—were living aboard their yacht, Pantomime. They anchored for the night in a quiet bay, no other yachts around. While the family was sleeping, the killer—or killers—boarded the boat. There was gunfire. Shouts, screams. And then an explosion. That, at least, is what Teddy later told the police.”

“How did he manage to survive?” asked Frost.

“The explosion made him black out, so there are holes in his memory. The last thing he remembers is his father’s voice, telling him to jump. When he woke up he was in the water, strapped into a life jacket. A dive boat found him the next morning, surrounded by debris from the Pantomime.”

“And the family?”

“There was an extensive search of the waters. They later found the bodies of Annabelle and one of the girls. What was left of them anyway, after the sharks had done their damage. Autopsy revealed that both had been shot in the head. The bodies of Nicholas and the other daughter were never recovered.” Moore passed around copies of the faxed report. “Lieutenant Edmonds said it was the most disturbing crime he’d ever investigated. A seventy-five- foot yacht is a tempting target, so he assumed the motive was robbery. The killer or killers probably stripped the boat of valuables, then blew it up to destroy the evidence, leaving nothing for the police to go on. It remains unsolved.”

“And the boy couldn’t remember anything useful in that case, either,” said Crowe. “Is there something seriously wrong with this kid?”

“He was only twelve years old at the time,” said Moore. “And he’s certainly intelligent. I called their old next-door neighbor in Providence, where the Clocks were living before they left on their sailboat. She told me that Teddy was considered gifted. He was in his school’s accelerated program. Yes, he did have problems making friends and fitting in, but he had at least a dozen IQ points over his peers.”

Jane thought of the books she’d seen in Teddy’s bedroom, and the wide range of esoteric subjects they covered. Greek history. Ethnobotany. Cryptozoology. Subjects that she doubted most fourteen-year-olds were even acquainted with. “Asperger’s syndrome,” she said.

Moore nodded. “That’s what the neighbor said. The Clocks had Teddy evaluated, and the doctor told them Teddy is high functioning, but he misses certain emotional cues. Which is why it’s hard for him to make friends.”

“And now he’s left with no one,” said Jane. She thought of how he had clung to her in the neighbor’s solarium. She could still feel his silky hair against her cheek and remembered the sleepy-boy scent of his pajamas. She wondered how he was adjusting to the emergency foster family where Social Services had placed him. Last night, before going home to her own daughter, she’d driven to Teddy’s new home and brought him his glasses. He was now staying with an older couple, seasoned foster parents who had years of experience nurturing children in crisis.

But the look Teddy had given Jane as she’d walked out the door after that visit could break any mother’s heart. As if she were the only person who could save him, and she was abandoning him to strangers.

Moore reached into his folder and took out a print of a Christmas card photo with the caption: HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE CLOCKS! “This is the last correspondence the neighbor received from the Clocks. It’s an e- card, sent about a month after the family left Providence. They pulled their three kids out of school, put their house on the market, and the whole family set off to sail around the world.”

“On a seventy-five-foot yacht? They had money,” said Frost. “What did they do for a living?”

“Annabelle was a homemaker. Nicholas was a financial consultant for some company in Providence. The neighbor didn’t remember the name.”

Crowe laughed. “Yeah, a title like financial consultant does sound like money.”

“It’s kind of a radical move isn’t it?” said Frost. “To suddenly pull up roots like that? Leave everything behind and drag your family onto a sailboat?”

“The neighbor certainly thought so,” said Moore. “And it happened abruptly. Annabelle never even mentioned it until the day just before they left. It makes you wonder.”

“About what?” said Crowe.

“Was the family running from something? Scared of something? Maybe there is a link between these two attacks on Teddy.”

“Two years apart?” Crowe shook his head. “As far as we know, the Clocks and the Ackermans didn’t even know each other. All they had in common was the boy.”

“It just troubles me. That’s all.”

It troubled Jane as well. She looked at the Christmas photo, perhaps the last one that existed of the Clock family. Annabelle Clock’s chestnut hair was upswept and casually elegant, reflecting hints of gold. Her face, like sculpted ivory with delicately arching brows, could have adorned a medieval painter’s canvas.

Nicholas was blond and athletic looking, his impressive shoulders filling out a lemon-yellow polo shirt. With his square jaw, his direct gaze, he looked like a man built to protect his family from any threat. On the day this photo was taken, when he stood smiling with one muscular arm draped around his wife, he could not have imagined the horrors that lay ahead. A watery grave for himself. The slaughter of his wife and two of their children. At that instant the camera captured a family with no reason to fear the future; their optimism shone brightly in their eyes and smiles, and in the Christmas decorations they had hung on the tree behind them. Even Teddy looked ebullient as he stood beside his younger sisters, three angelic-looking children with matching light brown hair and wide blue eyes. All of them smiling and safe within the bubble of their sheltering family.

And she thought: Teddy will never feel safe again.