The Silent Girl

That addendum, dated April 28, was signed by Detective Ingersoll.

Two missing girls, Laura Fang and Charlotte Dion. Both of them were daughters of victims killed in the Red Phoenix, but nothing in this report indicated that this was anything more than a sad coincidence. It was just as Dr. Zucker had said. Sometimes there is no pattern, no plan, but merely the blind cruelty of fate, which keeps no running tally of who has suffered too much.

“You know, Rizzoli, all you had to do was ask me.”

She looked up to see Johnny Tam standing beside her desk. “Ask you what?”

“About the Red Phoenix massacre. I just ran into Frost. He told me you two have been hunting down all the files. If you’d just talked to me, I could have told you all about the case.”

“How would you know about it? You were like, what, eight years old when it happened?”

“I’m assigned to Chinatown so I have to know what goes on there. The Chinese still talk about the Red Phoenix, you know. It’s like a wound that never healed. And never will, because it’s all tied up in shame.”

“Shame? Why?”

“The killer was one of our own. And by our own, I mean all Chinese.” He pointed to the folders on her desk. “I reviewed that case file two months ago. I spoke to Lou Ingersoll. I read the ME’s reports.” He tapped his head. “The info’s all right here.”

“I didn’t know you were familiar with it.”

“Did it occur to you to ask me? I thought I was part of the team.”

She didn’t like the accusatory note in his voice. “Yes, you’re part of the team,” she acknowledged. “I’ll try to remember it. But things’ll go a lot easier for all of us if you got rid of that chip on your shoulder.”

“I just want to be right in front of the hunt. Not treated like the geeky backup guy, which happens way too often around here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Boston PD’s supposed to be one big, happy melting pot, right?” He laughed. “Bullshit.”

For a moment she studied him, trying to read his stony expression. Suddenly she recognized herself at his age, hungry to prove herself and resentful that, too often, she was ignored. “Sit down, Tam,” she said.

Sighing, he pulled up the nearest chair and sat. “Yeah?”

“You think I have no idea what it’s like to be a minority?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“Look around this place. How many female homicide detectives do you see? There’s one, and you’re talking to her. I know what it’s like having guys shut me out of the loop because I’m the girl and they think there’s no way I’m good enough to do the job. You just need to learn to deal with all the jerks and the bullshit, because there’s an endless supply of both.”

“It doesn’t mean we stop calling them on it.”

“For all the difference it makes.”

“You must have made a difference. Because now they accept you.”

She thought about whether that was true. Remembered what her life used to be like when she’d first joined the unit and had to put up with the snickers and the tampon jokes and the deliberate snubs. Yes, things were better now, but the war had been hard-fought and had taken years.

“It’s not complaining that makes the difference,” she said. “It’s all about doing the job better than anyone else.” She paused. “I hear you aced the exam for detective on your first try.”

His nod was curt. “Top score, as a matter of fact.”

“And you’re what? Twenty-five?”

“Twenty-six.”

“That’s working against you, you know.”

“What, the fact I’m seen as just another Asian geek?”

“No. The fact you’re still a kid.”

“Great. Yet another reason not to be taken seriously.”

“The point is, there’s a dozen different reasons to feel like you’re at a disadvantage. Some are real, some are in your head. Just deal with it and do the job.”

“If you’ll try to remember that I’m part of the team. Let me do some of the legwork on the Red Phoenix, since I’m already up on it. I can make calls, talk to the victims’ families.”

“Frost already plans to interview Mrs. Fang again.”

“So I’ll talk to the other families.”

She nodded. “Fine. Now tell me where you’ve gone with the case already.”

“I first checked it out back in February, when I got assigned to District A-1 and I heard some of the Chinatown locals talking about it. I remembered the case from back when I was a kid in New York City.”

“You heard about it in New York?”

“If it’s big news and it involves someone Chinese anywhere in the country, trust me, the whole Chinese community gossips about it. Even in New York, we talked about the Red Phoenix. I remember my grandmother telling me how shameful it was that the killer was one of us. She said it reflected badly on everyone who was Chinese. It made us all look like criminals.”

“Geez. Talk about collective guilt.”

“Yeah, we’re really good at that. Grandma, she’d pitch a fit if I tried to leave the house wearing ripped jeans, because she didn’t want people to think all Chinese were slobs. I grew up with the burden of representing an entire race every time I stepped out the door. So, yeah. I already had an interest in the Red Phoenix. Then when that ad in The Boston Globe came out in March, I got even more interested. I read through the case file a second time.”

“What ad?”

“It came out on the thirtieth, the anniversary of the shooting. Took up about a quarter page in the local section.”

“I didn’t see it. What did the ad say?”

“It ran a photo of the cook, Wu Weimin, with the word innocent in bold letters.” He stared across the desks in the homicide unit. “When I saw that ad, I wanted it to be true. I wanted Wu Weimin to be innocent, just so we could erase that black mark against us.”

“You don’t really think he was innocent, do you?”

He looked at her. “I don’t know.”

“Staines and Ingersoll never doubted he was the shooter. Neither does Dr. Zucker.”

“But that ad got me thinking. It made me wonder if Boston PD got it wrong nineteen years ago.”

“Just because Wu was Chinese?”

“Because people in Chinatown never believed he did it.”

“Who paid for the ad? Did you ever find out?”

He nodded. “I called the Globe. It was paid for by Iris Fang.”

Jane’s cell phone rang. Even as she reached for it, she was processing that last piece of information. Wondering why, nineteen years after the event, Iris would buy an ad in defense of the man who had murdered her husband. Glancing at her phone, she saw that the incoming call was from the crime lab and she answered: “Rizzoli.”

“I’m looking at those hairs right now,” said criminalist Erin Volchko. “And I’ll be damned if I can identify what they are.”

It took a moment for Jane to shift her focus to what Erin was talking about. “You mean those hairs from the victim’s clothing?”

“Yes. The ME’s office sent over two strands yesterday. One was plucked off the dead woman’s sleeve, the other from her leggings. They have similar morphology and color, so they’re probably from the same source.”

Jane felt Tam watching her as she asked: “Are these hairs real or synthetic?”

“These aren’t manufactured. They’re definitely organic.”

“So are they human?”

“I’m not sure.”