Lily stopped at another underlined passage, the words long ago marked by the man whose ghostly presence now seemed to hover at her shoulder, anxious to share his secrets, to whisper his warnings.
Daylight was fading. She had been sitting for so long, she’d lost all feeling in her limbs. Outside, rain continued to tap at the window, and on the streets of Rome, traffic rumbled and honked. But here, in her room, she sat in numb silence. A century before Christ, before the Apostles, these words were already old, written about a terror so ancient that today mankind no longer remembered it, no longer marked its presence.
She looked down, once again, at
TWENTY-SIX
Jane and Maura drove west on the Massachusetts Turnpike, Jane at the wheel as they hurtled through a stark landscape of snow and bare trees. Even on this Sunday afternoon, they shared the highway with a convoy of monster trucks that dwarfed Jane’s Subaru as she sped around them like a daredevil gnat. It was better not to watch. Maura focused instead on Jane’s notes. The handwriting was a hurried scrawl, but it was no less legible than the scrawls of physicians, which Maura had long ago learned to decipher.
“She vanished two weeks ago,” said Maura. “And they only just discovered her body?”
“She was found in a vacant house. Apparently, it’s somewhat isolated. The caretaker noticed her car parked outside. He also found that the house’s front door was unlocked, so he went in to investigate. He’s the one who discovered the body.”
“What was the victim doing in a vacant house?”
“No one knows. Sarah arrived in town on December twentieth to attend her aunt’s funeral. Everyone assumed that she’d returned home to California right after the service. But then her employer in San Diego started calling, looking for her. Even then, no one in town considered the possibility that Sarah had never left.”
“Look at the map, Jane. From upstate New York to Boston-the crime scenes are three hundred miles apart. Why would the killer transport her hand that far? Maybe it’s not hers.”
“It is her hand. I
“How can you be so sure?”
“Check out the name of the town where Sarah’s body was found.”
“Purity, New York. It’s a quaint name, but it doesn’t mean a thing to me.”
“Sarah Parmley grew up in Purity. She graduated from high school there.”
“So?”
“So guess where Lori-Ann Tucker went to high school?”
Maura looked at her in surprise. “She’s from the same town?”
“You got it. And Lori-Ann Tucker was twenty-eight years old, too. Eleven years ago, they would have graduated from the same high school class.”
“Two victims who grew up in the same town, went to the same high school. They would have known each other.”
“And maybe that’s where this perp met them. This is how he chose them. Maybe he was obsessed with them since high school. Maybe they snubbed him, and he’s spent the last eleven years thinking about ways to get back at them. Then suddenly, Sarah shows up in Purity for her aunt’s funeral, and he sees her. Gets all pissed off again. Kills her and cuts off her hand as a souvenir. Has so much fun doing it that he decides to do it again.”
“So he drives all the way to Boston to kill Lori-Ann? It’s a long way to go for a thrill.”
“But not for good old-fashioned revenge.”
Maura stared at the road, thinking. “If it was all about revenge, why did he call Joyce O’Donnell that night? Why did he turn his rage on her?”
“Only she knew the answer to that. And she refused to share the secret with us.”
“And why write on my door? What’s the message there?”
“You mean,
Maura flushed. Closing the folder, she sat with clenched hands pressing against the file. So it was back to that again. The one subject she had no wish to talk about.
“I told Frost about it,” said Jane.
Maura said nothing, just kept her gaze focused straight ahead.
“He needed to know. He’s already spoken to Father Brophy.”
“You should have let me talk to Daniel first.”
“Why?”
“So he wouldn’t be completely taken by surprise.”
“That we know about you two?”
“Don’t sound so damn judgmental.”
“I wasn’t aware that I did.”
“I can hear it in your voice. I don’t need this.”
“Then it’s a good thing you didn’t hear what Frost had to say about it.”
“You think this doesn’t happen all the time? People fall in love, Jane. They make mistakes.”
“But not
“No one’s that smart.”
“This can’t go anywhere and you know it. If you ever expect him to marry you-”
“I’ve already tried marriage, remember? That was a rousing success.”
“And what do you think you’re going to get out of this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I do. First there’ll be all the whispers. Your neighbors wondering why that priest’s car is always parked outside your house. Then you’ll have to sneak out of town just to spend time with each other. But eventually, someone’s going to see you two together. And then the gossip starts. It’ll just get more and more awkward. Embarrassing. How long are you going to be able to keep that up? How long before he’s forced to make a choice?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“You think he’ll choose
“Cut it out, Jane.”
“Well, do you?” The question was unnecessarily brutal, and for a moment Maura considered getting out at the next town, calling for a rental car, and driving home by herself.
“I’m old enough to make my own choices,” she said.
“But what’s
Maura turned her head to stare out the window at snowy fields, at toppling fence posts half-buried in drifts.
