The Silent Girl

“Why don’t we start at the beginning, Bella,” said Jane. “With who you really are. Not the name you called yourself in California, but the name you were born with.” Jane placed a photocopy of a birth certificate on the table. “It’s signed by a Chinatown doctor. You were born right here in Boston. A home birth, at a Knapp Street address. Your father’s name was Wu Weimin.”

Bella didn’t answer, but Jane read the acknowledgment in her eyes. Not that she needed it; the document was only exhibit number one. Jane brought out other photocopied documents. Her records from the San Francisco public schools where the girl was registered under the name Bella Li. The death certificate of her mother, who went by the name of Annie Li, dead at age forty-three of stomach cancer. It was all there in black and white, the paper trail that Jane’s team had doggedly pursued over the last forty-eight hours, a trail obscured in that pre-9/11 era by different jurisdictions, and by the hidden world in which undocumented aliens moved. A world in which a lone mother and child could so easily vanish and reappear under new names.

“Why did you come back to Boston?” asked Jane.

Bella looked her in the eye. “Sifu Fang asked me to come. She’s not well, and she needed another instructor at her school.”

“Yes, that’s the story you keep telling us.”

“Is there a different story?”

“It has nothing to do with what happened in the Red phoenix? Nothing to do with your father killing four people?”

Bella’s face snapped taut. “My father was innocent.”

“Not according to the official report.”

“And official reports are never wrong.”

“If it’s wrong, then what’s the truth?”

Bella glared back. “He was murdered.”

“Is that what your mother told you?”

“My mother wasn’t there!”

Jane paused, suddenly registering the unspoken meaning of those last words, my mother wasn’t there. She remembered the glow of luminol on the cellar step, the bloody imprint of a child’s shoe. “But someone was there,” Jane said quietly. “Someone who was hiding in the cellar when it happened.”

Bella went absolutely still. “How did you…”

“The blood told us. Even if you try to wash it away, its traces remain. Decades later, with a chemical spray, we can still see it. We found your footprint on the cellar steps, and on the kitchen floor, leading toward the exit. Footprints that someone had wiped away by the time the police arrived that night.” Jane leaned in closer. “Why did your mother do it, Bella? Why did she try to erase the evidence?”

Bella didn’t answer, but Jane saw the inner debate play out on her face, a struggle between telling the truth and keeping it secret.

“She did it to protect you, didn’t she?” said Jane. “Because you saw what happened, and she was afraid for you. Afraid that someone would come after you.”

Bella shook her head. “I didn’t see it.”

“You were there.”

“But I didn’t see it!” Bella cried. For a moment her outburst seemed to hang in the air between them. Her head drooped and she whispered: “But I heard it.”

Jane didn’t ask any questions, didn’t interrupt. She simply waited for the story she knew would now be told.

Bella took another breath. “My mother was asleep in bed. She was always so tired after working all day at the grocery store. And that night she was sick with the flu.” Bella stared at the table, as though she could still picture her mother huddled in bed under blankets. “But I wasn’t tired. So I climbed out of bed. I went downstairs to see Daddy.”

“In the restaurant.”

“He was annoyed with me, of course.” A sad smile tugged at her mouth. “There he was, juggling pots and pans. And I was whining for attention and ice cream. He told me to go back upstairs to bed. He was busy, and he didn’t have time for me. Uncle Fang didn’t have time for me, either.”

“Iris’s husband?”

Bella nodded. “He was in the dining room. I looked through the door and saw him sitting at a table with a man and woman. They were drinking tea.”

Jane frowned, wondering why the waiter would be sitting with two patrons. It added to the other puzzle about the Mallorys: Why were they in a Chinese restaurant when their autopsies showed they had just dined on Italian food?

“What were they talking about?” asked Jane. “Mr. Fang and the two customers?”

Bella shook her head. “It was too noisy in the kitchen to hear anything in the dining room. My father banging his pots. The fan blowing.”

“Did you see Joey Gilmore come in to pick up his take-out order?”

“No. All I remember is my father, working at the stove. Sweating. And his old T-shirt. He always worked in his T-shirt…” Her voice faltered and she wiped a hand across her eyes. “My poor father. Working, always working. His hands scarred from all the burns and cuts from the kitchen.”

“What happened then?”

Bella’s mouth twisted in a rueful smile. “I wanted ice cream. I was whining, demanding attention, while he was trying to fill the take-out cartons. Finally he gave in. Told me to go downstairs and choose an ice cream from the freezer.”

“In the cellar?”

She nodded. “Oh, I knew that cellar very well. I’d been down there so many times. There was a big chest freezer, tucked in the corner. I had to climb onto a chair to lift the lid. I remember looking inside for just the flavor I wanted. They were in these little cardboard cups, just big enough to hold one scoop. I wanted the one with stripes of chocolate and vanilla and strawberry. But I couldn’t find any. I kept digging and digging through those little cups, but they were all vanilla. Nothing but vanilla.” She took a deep breath. “And then I heard my father shouting.”

“At whom?”

“At me.” Bella looked up and blinked away tears. “He was screaming at me to hide.”

“Everyone in the restaurant must have heard him.”

“He said it in Chinese. The killer couldn’t understand, or he would have come looking for me. He would have known I was in the cellar.”

Jane glanced toward the one-way mirror. She couldn’t see Frost and Tam, but she imagined their astonished faces. Here was the tale’s missing chapter. The clues had been there all along on the cellar step and on the kitchen floor, but footprints are silent. Only Bella gave them a voice.

“And you hid?” asked Jane.

“I didn’t understand what was happening. I climbed off the chair and started to go up the steps, but then I stopped. I heard him pleading. Begging for his life, in his broken English. That’s when I understood this wasn’t a game, wasn’t some trick he was playing on me. My father didn’t play games.” Bella swallowed and her voice dropped even lower. “So I did what he told me to do. I didn’t make a sound. I ducked underneath the stairs. I heard something fall. And then a loud bang.”

“How many gunshots in all?”

“Just the one. That single bang.”

Jane thought of the weapon found in Wu Weimin’s hand, a Glock with a threaded barrel. The killer had used a suppressor to muffle the sound of those first eight gunshots. Only after dispatching his victims did he remove the suppressor, place the grip in Wu Weimin’s lifeless hand, and fire the final bullet, ensuring that gunshot residue would be found on the victim’s skin.

A perfect crime, thought Jane. Except for the fact there was a witness. A silent girl, huddled under the cellar steps.

“He died for me,” whispered Bella. “He should have run, but he wouldn’t leave me. So he stayed. He died right in front of the cellar door. Blocking it with his body. I had to step in his blood to get past him. If I hadn’t been there