The Silent Girl

“Yes, but microscopy can’t pinpoint the precise species. For that, I went to a different technique.” On the countertop, Erin spread out a page printed with columns in varying shades of gray. “These are keratin patterns. Hair has different protein components that you can separate by electrophoresis. What you do is wash and dry the sample, dissolve it in a soup of chemicals, and place the dissolved proteins on a thin layer of gel. Then you subject it to an electrical current. That makes the various proteins migrate across the gel at different rates.”

“And you end up with these gray columns.”

“Yes. That’s after silver staining and rinsing, to deepen the contrast.”

Frost shrugged. “Doesn’t look all that exciting.”

“But when I emailed this pattern to the Wildlife Forensics Lab in Oregon, they were able to match it against their database of keratin patterns.”

“There’s a database for that?” said Tam.

“Absolutely. Wildlife scientists around the world contribute to it. If US Customs seizes a shipment of animal skins, they need to know if those skins are from an endangered species. The database helps them identify which animal the fur comes from.” Erin opened a file folder and pulled out another sheet of keratin patterns. “Here’s what they compared our strands with. You’ll notice the protein bands line up almost perfectly with one particular specimen.”

Jane glanced back and forth between the two pages. “Column number four,” she said.

“Correct.”

“So what is number four?”

“It’s a nonhuman primate, as I guessed earlier. An Old World monkey, genus Semnopithecus. This particular species is known as the gray langur.”

“Gray?” said Jane, glancing up.

Erin nodded. “The same color as those hair strands from your Jane Doe. These monkeys are quite large, with black faces and gray or blond hair. Their range is South Asia, from China into India, both terrestrial and arboreal.” She paused. “Meaning, they live on the ground as well as in trees.” She turned to her computer and requested a Google Images search. “Here’s a photo. This is what the monkeys look like.”

What Jane saw on the screen made her hands suddenly go cold. Black face. Gray hair. She felt the ache between her shoulder blades from the bullet slamming into her Kevlar vest. Remembered hot blood splashing her face, and the silhouette looming above her in the alley, its head crowned with silver hair. “How large are these monkeys?” she asked softly.

“The males are about two and a half feet long.”

“You’re certain they don’t grow taller?”

“They’re not apes. They’re just monkeys.”

Jane looked at Frost. Saw his pale face, his stunned eyes. “It’s what you saw, isn’t it?” she asked. “On the roof.”

Erin frowned. “What did you see?”

Frost shook his head. “It was way taller than two and a half feet.”

Jane nodded. “I agree.”

Erin looked back and forth between them. “You both saw this thing?”

“It had that face,” said Frost. “And gray hair. But it couldn’t have been a monkey. And what monkey carries a sword?”

“Now, that just sent a chill up my spine,” said Erin softly. “Considering what kind of monkey this is. In India, these are also known as the Hanuman langur. Hanuman is the Hindu god known as the Monkey Warrior.”

The same chill that Erin had just felt suddenly whispered like an icy breath up the back of Jane’s neck. She thought of the creature in the alley. Remembered the gleam of its sword as it turned and slipped into the shadows.

“Is that the same character as the Monkey King?” said Tam. “Because I know that legend. There’s a Chinese version of it, too. My grandmother used to tell me the stories.”

“Who is the Monkey King?” asked Jane.

“In China, his name is Sun Wukong. He’s born from a sacred rock and he starts off as just a stone monkey. Then he transforms to flesh and blood and gets crowned king of the monkeys. He becomes a warrior and travels to heaven to learn the wisdom of the gods. But up there, he gets into all sorts of trouble.”

“So he’s a bad character?” asked Frost.

“No, not evil. Just impulsive and mischievous, like a real monkey. There’s a whole book of stories about him. How he eats all the peaches in the heavenly orchard. Drinks too much and steals a magic elixir. Gets into brawls with the Immortals, who don’t know how to deal with him. So they kick him out of heaven and temporarily lock him up inside a mountain prison.”

Frost laughed. “He sounds like a few guys I went to high school with.”

“So then what happens to him?” asked Jane.

“Sun Wukong has a whole series of adventures on earth. Sometimes he causes trouble. Sometimes, he performs good deeds. I can’t remember all the stories, but I know there was a lot of magical fighting and river monsters and talking animals. Just your typical fairy tales.”

“Fairy tales don’t spring to life,” said Jane. “They don’t shed real hair on real victims.”

“I’m just telling you what the legends say about him. He’s a complex creature, sometimes helpful, sometimes destructive. But when faced with a choice between good and evil, the Monkey King almost always chooses to do the right thing.”

Jane stared at the photo on Erin’s computer screen. At a face that, only a moment ago, had so chilled her. “So he’s not evil at all,” she said.

“No,” said Tam. “Despite his flaws, despite the chaos he sometimes causes, the Monkey King stands on the side of justice.”

TWENTY

THE SAVORY SCENT OF ROASTING CHICKEN AND ROSEMARY DRIFTED from Angela Rizzoli’s kitchen, and in the dining room silver and chinaware clattered as retired detective Vince Korsak set the table. Outside in the yard, Jane’s daughter, Regina, was laughing and squealing as Gabriel pushed her on a swing set. But Jane was oblivious to it all as she sat reading on her mother’s sofa, half a dozen borrowed library books spread out before her on the coffee table. Books about Asian primates and gray langurs. And books about Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. She discovered that Sun Wukong’s adventures showed up not only in books, but also in movies and Chinese operas, dances, and even a children’s television show.

In a collection of Chinese folktales, Jane found an introduction to the legend. Though the stories were written sometime during the 1500s by a Chinese author named Wu Cheng’en, the tales themselves were ancient and were said to date back to an era of ghosts and magic, a time when gods and monsters battled in both heaven and earth.

And one of the rocks of that earth, a rock that from the time of creation knew the sweet breath of the wind, the glow of moonlight, the favor of the divine, popped out a stone egg. That egg became a stone monkey. It could run and jump and climb, a monkey with eyes that flashed shafts of light so brilliant that even the Jade Emperor in heaven was startled.

The stone monkey, with neither father nor mother, soon became king of all monkeys. They lived in perfect harmony, until one day the Monkey King came to understand that Death awaited them all. So he set out to learn the secret of immortality, a journey that took him to heaven and temptation, to mischief and imprisonment. While marching to his own execution, to be burned in a crucible with alchemic flames, the Monkey King sprang free, and his fight to survive turned heaven upside down until the gods were forced to seal him inside the Mountain of the Five Elements.