The Silent Girl

Frost stalked away across the roof and stood staring down at the street below. “That may not be entirely true.”

Jane followed him to the edge and saw the fire escape that they’d clambered up only moments earlier. Below them was Knapp Street, dimly lit by the glow of a streetlamp.

“Do you see it?” said Frost, and he pointed toward the corner, at what was mounted on the building.

A surveillance camera.

SEVENTEEN

EVEN AT NINE THIRTY PM, THE EMPLOYEES OF DEDHAM SECURITY were on the job, monitoring properties all over the Greater Boston area.

“Bad guys usually get to work after dark,” said Gus Gilliam as he walked the trio of detectives past a bank of surveillance monitors. “So we have to stay awake, too. If any of our alarms gets tripped, we’re talking to Boston PD like that.” He snapped his fingers. “You ever need a security system, call us.”

Tam surveyed the video feeds on the monitors. “Wow. You really do have eyes all over the city.”

“All over Suffolk County. And our cameras are actually operational. Half the security cameras you see mounted around town are just dummies that don’t record a damn thing. So if you’re a bad guy, it’s a shell game. You don’t know which cameras are really watching and which aren’t. But when they spot any camera, they tend to shy away and go for easier pickings, so just having a camera in view is a deterrent.”

“We’re lucky that camera on Knapp Street is real,” said Jane.

“Yeah. We have about forty-eight hours’ worth of video stored on that one.” He led them into a back room, where four chairs were already set up around the monitor. “Usually gives us enough postincident time to be notified so we can save relevant footage. That particular camera was installed about five years ago. Last time we were asked to pull video off it, we caught a kid breaking a window.” He sat down at the monitor. “You said you were interested in a second-floor fire escape landing?”

“I’m hoping it’s in your camera’s field of view,” said Jane. “The building in question is about twenty, twenty-five yards away.”

“I don’t know. That could be too far to see much detail, and second floor might not be visible. Plus, we’re talking low resolution. But let’s take a look.”

As the three detectives crowded in to watch the monitor, Gilliam clicked the Play icon, and a live view of Knapp Street appeared. Two pedestrians could be seen walking past, in the direction of Kneeland Street, their backs to the camera.

“Look,” said Frost. “You can just see a corner of the fire escape.”

“Unfortunately, not the window itself,” said Jane.

“It might be enough.” Frost leaned in closer to read the date and time on the recording. “Go back around two hours. Seven thirty. Let’s see if we can catch a glimpse of our intruder.”

Gilliam rewound to 7:30 PM.

At 7:35, an elderly woman walked slowly along Knapp Street, arms weighed down by grocery sacks.

At 7:50, Johnny Tam appeared outside the Red Phoenix restaurant. He peered into the window, looked at his watch, then vanished through the unlocked front door. A moment later he reemerged, glanced up toward the apartment windows above. Circling toward the back of the building, he disappeared around the corner.

At 8:06, something jerked into view on the fire escape. It was Frost, tumbling clumsily out of the window. He jumped to his feet and climbed out of view.

“What the hell?” Frost murmured. “Nothing came out ahead of me. I know I chased something up that ladder.”

“It doesn’t show up,” said Jane.

“And there’s you, Rizzoli. How come Tam doesn’t show up, either? He came out right after me.”

Tam snorted. “Maybe I’m a ghost.”

“Your problem is the field of view,” said Gilliam. “We’re catching just a corner of the fire escape, so the camera misses anyone who makes a more, er, graceful entry and exit.”

“In other words, Frost and I make lousy cat burglars,” said Jane.

Gilliam smiled. “And Detective Tam here would make a good one.”

Jane sighed. “So we caught nothing on this camera.”

“Assuming this was the only time the intruder entered.”

Jane remembered the scent of incense, the fresh oranges on the plate. Someone was regularly visiting that apartment, leaving offerings in memory of Wu Weimin. “Go back,” she said. “Two nights ago and move forward.”

Gilliam nodded. “Worth a look.”

On the monitor, time wound back to 9:38 PM, forty-eight hours earlier. As the video once again advanced to 10:00 PM, then to midnight, pedestrians walked past, their movements accelerated and shaky. By 2:00 AM, Knapp Street was deserted, and they watched an unchanging view of pavement across which only a stray bit of paper fluttered.

At 3:02 AM, Jane saw it.

It was just the twitch of a shadow on the fire escape landing, but it was enough to make her rock forward in her chair. “Stop. Go back!” she snapped.

Gilliam reversed the video and froze the image on a shadow darkening the fire escape.

“It doesn’t look like much,” said Tam. “It could be nothing but a cat casting that shadow.”

“If someone went into that building,” said Frost, “they’ve gotta come out again, right?”

“Then let’s see what happens next,” said Gilliam, and he advanced the video. They watched as the minutes progressed. Saw two clearly drunken men stagger down Knapp Street and around the corner.

Seconds later Jane gave a gasp. “There.”

Gilliam froze the image and stared at a crouching shadow on the fire escape. Softly he said: “What the hell is that?”

“I told you I saw something,” said Frost. “That’s it.”

“I don’t even know what we’re looking at,” said Tam. “You can’t see a face, you can’t even be sure it’s a man.”

“But it’s bipedal,” said Frost. “Look how it’s down on its haunches. Like it’s about to leap.”

Jane’s cell phone rang, the sound so startling that she had to take a breath and steady her voice before she answered. “Detective Rizzoli.”

“You left a message on my voice mail,” a man said. “I’m returning your call. This is Lou Ingersoll.”

She sat up straight in her chair. “Detective Ingersoll, we’ve been trying to reach you all week. We need to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“A homicide in Chinatown. Happened last Wednesday night. Victim is a Jane Doe, female in her thirties.”

“You do know that I’ve been retired from Boston PD for sixteen years? Why are you asking me about this?”

“We think this death could be connected to one of your old cases. The Red Phoenix massacre.”

There was a long silence. “I don’t think I want to talk about this on the phone,” he said.

“How about in person, sir?”

She heard his footsteps moving across the floor. Heard his labored breaths. “Okay, I think that vehicle’s gone now. Wish I’d gotten the goddamn license plate.”

“What vehicle?”

“The van that’s been parked across the street ever since I got home. Probably the same son of a bitch who broke in while I was up north.”

“What, exactly, is going on?”