The Silent Girl

“Maybe someone’s scattering parts all over town,” said Frost.

The cop laughed. “Or maybe one of these Chinese restaurants cooked her up and served her in a nice stew.”

Jane looked at Frost. “Good thing you ordered the clams.”

“We did a walk-around already,” the patrolman said. “Didn’t find anything.”

“Still, I think we’ll take a stroll around the block ourselves,” said Jane.

Together, she and Frost moved slowly along Knapp Street, their flashlights cutting through the shadows. They saw shards from broken bottles, scraps of paper, cigarette butts. No body parts. The buildings rising on either side had dark windows, but she wondered if eyes were watching from those unlit rooms above, tracking their progress down the silent passage. They would have to make this same inspection again by daylight, but she did not want to miss any time-sensitive clues. So she and Frost inched their way up the alley to another strand of police tape blocking off access from Harrison Avenue. Here were sidewalks and streetlights and traffic. Yet Jane and Frost continued their painstaking circle around the block, from Harrison to Beach Street, gazes sweeping the ground. By the time they’d finished their circuit and were back at the dumpster, the crime scene unit had arrived.

“Guess you didn’t find the rest of her, either,” the cop said to Jane and Frost.

Jane watched as the weapon and severed hand were bagged, wondering why a killer would dump a body part in such an exposed place where someone was sure to spot it. Was it a rush job? Was it meant to be found, a message of some kind? Then her gaze lifted to a fire escape that snaked up the four-story building facing the alley.

“We need to check the roof,” she said.

The bottom rung of the ladder was rusted, and they couldn’t pull it down; they’d have to reach the roof the conventional way, up a stairwell. They left the alley and returned to Beach Street, where they could access the front entrances to that block of buildings. Businesses occupied the first levels: a Chinese restaurant, a bakery, and an Asian grocery store-all closed at that hour. Above the businesses were apartments. Peering up, Jane saw that the windows on the upper floors were all dark.

“We’re going to have to wake someone to let us in,” said Frost.

Jane approached a group of ancient Chinese men, who’d gathered on the sidewalk to watch the excitement. “Do any of you know the tenants in this building?” she asked. “We need to get inside.”

They stared at her blankly.

“This building,” she said again, pointing. “We need to go upstairs.”

“You know, talking louder doesn’t help,” said Frost. “I don’t think they understand English.”

Jane sighed. That’s Chinatown for you. “We need an interpreter.”

“District A-1’s got a new detective. I think he’s Chinese.”

“It’ll take too long to wait for him.” She climbed to the front entrance, scanned the tenant names, and pressed a button at random. Despite repeated buzzes, no one answered. She tried another button, and this time, a voice finally crackled over the intercom.

“Wei?” a woman said.

“It’s the police,” said Jane. “Can you let us into the building, please?”

“Wei?”

“Please open the door!”

A few minutes passed, then a child’s voice answered: “My grandma wants to know who you are.”

“Detective Jane Rizzoli, Boston PD,” said Jane. “We need to go up on the roof. Can you let us in the building?”

At last the lock buzzed open.

The building was at least a hundred years old, and the wooden steps groaned as Jane and Frost climbed the stairs. When they reached the second floor, a door swung open and Jane caught a glimpse into a cramped apartment, from which two girls stared out with curious eyes. The younger was about the same age as Jane’s daughter, Regina, and Jane paused to smile and murmur hello.

Instantly the smaller girl was snatched up into a woman’s arms and the door slammed shut.

“Guess we’re the big bad strangers,” said Frost.

They kept climbing. Past the fourth-floor landing and up a narrow set of steps to the roof. The exit was unlocked, but the door gave off a piercing squeal as they swung it open.

They stepped out into the predawn gloom, lit only by the diffuse glow of city lights. Shining her flashlight, Jane saw a plastic table and chairs, flowerpots of herbs. On a sagging clothesline, a full load of laundry danced like ghosts in the wind. Through the flapping sheets, she spotted something else, something that lay near the roof’s edge, beyond that curtain of linen.

Without saying a word, both she and Frost automatically took paper shoe covers from their pockets and bent down to pull them on. Only then did they duck under the hanging sheets and cross toward what they had glimpsed, their booties crackling over the tar-paper surface.

For a moment neither spoke. They stood together, flashlights trained on a congealed lake of blood. On what was lying in that lake.

“I guess we found the rest of her,” said Frost.

FIVE

CHINATOWN SAT IN THE VERY HEART OF BOSTON, TUCKED UP against the financial district to the north and the green lawn of the Common to the west. But as Maura walked under the paifang gate, with its four carved lions, she felt as if she were entering a different city, a different world. She’d last visited Chinatown on a Saturday morning in October, when there had been groups of elderly men sitting beneath the gate, sipping tea and playing checkers as they gossiped in Chinese. On that cold day she’d met Daniel here for a dim sum breakfast. It was one of the last meals they would ever eat together, and the memory of that day now pierced like a dagger to the heart. Although this was a bright spring dawn, and the same checkers-playing men sat chattering in the morning chill, melancholy darkened everything she saw, turning sunshine to gloom.

She walked past restaurants where seafood tanks teemed with silvery fish, past dusty import shops crammed with rosewood furniture and jade bracelets and fake ivory carvings, into a thickening crowd of bystanders. She spotted a uniformed Boston PD cop towering over the mostly Asian crowd and worked her way toward him.

“Excuse me. I’m the ME,” she announced.

The cold look he gave her left no doubt that the police officer knew exactly who she was. Dr. Maura Isles, who’d betrayed the brotherhood of those tasked to serve and protect. Whose testimony might send one of their own to prison. He didn’t say a word, just stared at her, as if he had no idea what she expected of him.

She returned the stare, just as coldly. “Where is the deceased?” she asked.

“You’d have to ask Detective Rizzoli.”

He was not going to make this easy for her. “And where is she?”

Before he could answer, she heard someone call out: “Dr. Isles?” A young Asian man in a suit and tie crossed the street toward her. “They’re waiting for you up on the roof.”

“Which way up?”

“Come with me. I’ll walk you up the stairs.”

“Are you new to homicide? I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I’m Detective Johnny Tam, with District A-1. Rizzoli needed someone from the neighborhood to translate, and since I’m the generic Chinese guy, I got pulled onto her team.”

“Your first time working with homicide?”

“Yes, ma’am. Always been a dream of mine. I only made detective two months ago, so I’m really psyched.” Briskly ordering onlookers aside, he cleared a path for her through the crowd and opened a door to a building that smelled of garlic and incense.

“I notice you speak Mandarin. Do you speak Cantonese, too?” she said.