Vanish

until she found the listing for Peter Lukas. His address was in Milton, just south of Boston. As she dialed, she could feel Mila watching her, clearly not ready to trust her. If I make one false move, Jane thought, this girl will run. I have to be careful not to scare her.

“Hello?” said Peter Lukas.

“Could you come over right now?”

“Detective Rizzoli? What’s going on?”

“I can’t talk about it on the phone.”

“This sounds serious.”

“It could be your Pulitzer Prize, Lukas.” She stopped.

Someone was ringing her apartment buzzer.

Mila shot Jane a look of sheer panic. Snatching up her tote bag, she made a dash toward the windows.

“Wait. Mila, don’t-”

“Rizzoli?” said Lukas. “What’s happening over there?”

“Hold on. I’ll call you right back,” said Jane, and hung up.

Mila was darting from window to window, desperately searching for the fire escape.

“It’s okay!” said Jane. “Calm down.”

“They know I am here!”

“We don’t even know who’s at the door. Let’s just find out.” She pressed the intercom button. “Yes?”

“Detective Rizzoli, it’s John Barsanti. Can I come up?”

Mila’s reaction was instantaneous. She went sprinting toward the bedrooms, looking for an escape route.

“Wait!” Jane called, following her up the hall. “You can trust this man!”

Already, the girl was lifting up the bedroom window.

“You can’t leave.”

Again, they heard the apartment buzzer. It sent Mila scrambling through the window, onto the fire escape. If she leaves, I’ll never see her again, thought Jane. The girl has survived this long on sheer instinct. Maybe I should listen to her.

She grabbed Mila’s wrist. “I’ll come with you, okay? We’ll go together. Just don’t leave without me!”

“Hurry,” Mila whispered.

Jane turned. “The baby.”

Mila followed her back into the living room and kept a nervous eye on the door as Jane ejected the videotape and threw it into the diaper bag. Then she unlocked the gun drawer, took out her weapon, and slipped it into the diaper bag as well. Just in case.

The buzzer sounded again.

Jane swept Regina into her arms. “Let’s go.”

Mila scrambled down the fire escape ladder, quick as a monkey. Once, Jane would have been just as quick, just as reckless. But now she was forced to take care with every step, because she was holding Regina. Poor baby, I have no choice now, she thought. I have to drag you along on this adventure. At last she dropped to the alley, and led the way to her parked Subaru. As she unlocked the car door, she could still hear, through the open apartment window, Barsanti’s persistent buzzing.

Driving west on Tremont Street, she kept her eye on the rearview mirror, but she saw no sign of pursuit, no headlights dogging them. Now to find a secure location where Mila won’t freak out, she thought. Where she won’t see police uniforms. Above all, some place I can keep Regina perfectly safe.

“Where do we go?” Mila asked.

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking.” She glanced down at her cell phone, but now she did not dare call her mother. She did not dare call anyone.

Abruptly she turned south, onto Columbus Avenue. “I know a safe place,” she said.

THIRTY-FIVE

Peter Lukas stared in silence as the brutal assault played out on his TV screen. When the tape at last ended, he did not move. Even after Jane turned off the VCR, Lukas sat frozen, his gaze fixed on the screen, as though he could still see the girl’s battered body, the bloodstained sheets. The room had gone silent. Regina dozed on the couch; Mila stood near the windows, glancing out at the road.

“Mila never learned the girl’s name,” said Jane. “There’s a good chance the body’s buried somewhere in the woods behind the house. It’s a lonely spot, with a lot of places to dispose of a corpse. God knows how many other girls might be buried back there.”

Lukas dropped his head. “I feel like throwing up.”

“You and me both.”

“Why would anyone videotape something like that?”

“This man clearly didn’t realize he was caught on film. The camera was mounted in a closet, where the clients couldn’t see it. Maybe it was just another source of revenue. Sell the girls for sex, videotape the acts, then offer the tapes on the pornography market. Every which way you turn, there’s money to be made. This brothel was just another one of their subsidiaries, after all.” She paused, and added drily: “Ballentree seems to believe in diversification.”

“But this is a snuff film! Ballentree could never get away with selling this.”

“No, this was too explosive. The house mother definitely knew it was. She hid it in the tote bag. Mila says they carried around that bag for months without knowing what was on the video. Then Joe finally played it on a motel room VCR.” Jane looked at the TV. “Now we know why those women in Ashburn were killed. Why Charles Desmond was killed. Because they knew this client; they could ID him. They all had to die.”

“So this is all about covering up a rape and murder.”

She nodded. “Suddenly Joe realizes he’s holding dynamite. What to do with the evidence? He didn’t know who to trust. And who would listen to a guy who’s already been labeled a paranoid kook? That must be what he sent you. A copy of this tape.”

“Only I never received it.”

“And by then they’d split up, to avoid capture. But each of them took a copy. Olena was caught before she could bring hers to the Tribune. Joe’s was probably swept up after the hospital takedown.” She pointed to the TV. “This is the last copy.”

Lukas turned to Mila, who’d been hanging back in a far corner of the room, like a skittish animal afraid to come any closer. “Have you yourself seen this man in the video, Mila? He came to the house?”

“The boat,” she said, and gave a visible shudder. “I saw him at a party, on the boat.”

Lukas looked at Jane. “You think she means Charles Desmond’s yacht?”

“I think this is how Ballentree did business,” said Jane. “Desmond’s world was a boys’ club. Defense contracts, Pentagon players. Whenever there are big boys playing with a lot of money, you can bet sex comes into it. A way to close the deal.” She ejected the videocassette and turned to face Lukas. “Do you know who this man is? The one on the video?”

Lukas swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I’m just having a hard time believing that tape is real.”

“The man’s got to be a major player. Look at everything he’s managed to do, the