Jane and Frost glanced at each other. If confirmed, it gave Stanek an alibi for Tim McDougal’s murder. That would certainly present a problem.
“Why are you asking these questions?” he said.
“Remember those children you molested twenty years ago?”
“Never happened.”
“You were tried and convicted, Mr. Stanek.”
“By a jury who believed a pack of lies. By a prosecutor on a witch hunt.”
“By children who dared to speak up.”
“They were too young to know better. They said whatever they were told to say. Crazy things, impossible things. Read the transcripts; see for yourself. Martin killed a cat and made us drink the blood. Martin took us into the woods to meet the devil. Martin made a tiger fly. Do you think any of that happened?”
“The jury did.”
“They were fed a load of crap. The prosecutors said we worshiped the devil—even my mom, who went to Mass three times a week. They said I picked up the kids in my bus and drove them to the woods to molest them. They even accused me of killing that little girl.”
“Lizzie DiPalma.”
“All because her hat was on my bus. Then that nasty Mrs. Devine went to the police and suddenly I’m a monster. I kill and eat kids for breakfast.”
“Mrs. Devine? Holly’s mother?”
“That woman saw the devil everywhere. Took one look at me and declared me evil. No wonder her little girl had so many tales to tell. How I tied kids to trees and sucked their blood and molested them with sticks. Then the prosecutors got the other kids to repeat the stories, and this is the result.” Again he pointed to his face. “Twenty years in jail, a broken nose, a smashed jaw. Half my teeth gone. I survived only because I learned to fight back, unlike my dad. They said he died of a stroke. They said he popped a vessel and bled into his brain. The truth is, prison destroyed him. But it didn’t destroy me, because I didn’t let it. I’m gonna live long enough to see justice.”
“Justice?” said Jane. “Or vengeance?”
“Sometimes there’s no difference.”
“Twenty years in prison gives you a lot of time to think, to build up a big head of rage. Time to plan how you’ll get back at the people who put you there.”
“You bet I want to get back at them.”
“Even though they were just kids at the time?”
“What?”
“The kids you molested, Mr. Stanek. You’re making them pay for telling the police what you did to them.”
“I wasn’t talking about the kids. I was talking about that bitch of a prosecutor. Erica Shay knew we were innocent, and she burned us at the stake anyway. When this journalist I’ve been talking to writes her book, it’ll all come out.”
“Interesting description you just used: burned at the stake.” Jane looked at the painting of the Madonna and child hanging on his wall. “I see you’re a religious man.”
“Not anymore.”
“Then why hang that portrait of Mary and Jesus?”
“Because it was my mother’s. It’s all I have left of her. That and some photos.”
“You were raised Catholic. I bet you know all your saints and martyrs.”
“What’re you talking about?”
Was that genuine bewilderment she saw in his eyes, the baffled response of an innocent man? Or is he just a very good actor?
“Tell me how Saint Lucy died,” she said.
“Why?”
“Do you know or not?”
He shrugged. “Saint Lucy was tortured, and they cut out her eyes.”
“And Saint Sebastian?”
“The Romans shot him full of arrows. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Cassandra Coyle. Tim McDougal. Sarah Byrne. Those names mean anything to you?”
He was silent, but his face had paled.
“Surely you remember the kids you picked up every day after school? The kids who rode in your bus? The kids who told the prosecutor what you did to them when no one was looking?”
“I didn’t do anything to them.”
“They’re dead, Mr. Stanek, all three of them. All since you got out of prison. Isn’t it interesting how you served twenty years in prison, you’re finally released, and suddenly, bam bam bam, people start dying.”
He rocked back in his chair as though slammed there by a physical blow. “You think I killed them?”
“Can you blame us for reaching that conclusion?”
He gave a disbelieving laugh. “Yeah, who else’re you gonna blame? Somehow it always points to me.”
“Did you kill them?”
“No, I did not kill them. But I’m sure you’ll find a way to prove it anyway.”
“I tell you what we’re going to do, Mr. Stanek,” said Jane. “We are now going to search your residence and your vehicle. You can cooperate and give us permission. Or we can do it the hard way, with a warrant.”
“I don’t have a vehicle,” he said dully.
“Then how do you get around?”
“The kindness of strangers.” He looked at Jane. “There are a few people like that left in the world.”
“Do we have your permission to search, sir?” said Frost.
Stanek gave a defeated shrug. “It doesn’t matter what I say. You’ll search the place anyway.”
As far as Jane was concerned, that counted as a yes. She turned to Frost, who pulled out his cell phone to text the waiting CSRU team.
“Watch him,” Jane said to Frost. “I’ll start in the bedroom.”
Like the living room, the bedroom was a grim and claustrophobic space. The only source of daylight was a single window that looked out on the narrow alley between buildings. Brown stains mottled the carpet, and the air smelled like stale linens and mildew, but the bed was neatly made and not even a stray sock was in sight. She went first into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet, hunting for a vial of anything that might be ketamine. She found only aspirin and a box of Band-Aids. In the under-sink cabinet, there was toilet paper but no duct tape, no rope, nothing from a killer’s toolbox.
She returned to the bedroom and looked under the bed, felt between the mattress and box spring. She turned to the lone nightstand and opened the drawer. Inside were a flashlight, a few loose buttons, and an envelope filled with photographs. She shuffled through the pictures, most of them taken decades earlier, when the Staneks were still together as a family. Before they were wrenched apart, never again to see one another. She paused at the last photo in the envelope. It was an image of two women in their sixties, both wearing orange prison garb. The first woman was Martin’s mother, Irena, her silver hair thinned to wisps, her face wasted to a ghost of her younger self. But it was the second face that shocked Jane, because it was a face she recognized.
She flipped over the photo and stared at the words written there in ink: Your mother told me everything.
Grimly, Jane returned to the living room and thrust the photo at Stanek. “Do you know who this woman is?” she asked him.
“That’s my mother. A few months before she died in Framingham.”
“No, the woman standing beside her.”
He hesitated. “Someone she met there. A friend.”
“What do you know about this friend?”
“She looked out for my mother in prison. Kept her safe from the other inmates, that’s all.”
Jane turned over the photo and pointed to the words written on the reverse. “Your mother told me everything. What does that mean? What did your mother tell her, Mr. Stanek?”
He said nothing.
“Maybe the truth about what happened at Apple Tree? Where Lizzie DiPalma’s buried? Or maybe what you planned to do to those kids after you got out of prison?”
“I got nothing more to say.” He shot so abruptly to his feet that Jane flinched away, startled.
“Maybe someone else does,” Jane said, and she pulled out her cell phone to call Maura.
THE WOMAN STARED FROM THE p
hoto with a direct gaze that seemed to say: I see you. Her hair, half silver, half black, stood out like porcupine quills on her squarish head, but it was the eyes that gave Maura the deepest shock of recognition. It was like looking at herself in a future mirror.
“It’s her. It’s Amalthea,” said Maura. In astonishment, she glanced at Jane. “She knew Irena Stanek?”
Jane nodded. “That photo was taken four years ago, just before Irena died at MCI–Framingham. I spoke to the warden, who confirms that Irena and Amalthea were friends. They spent almost all their time together, at meals and in the common areas. Amalthea knows all about the Apple Tree and what the Staneks did to those children. No wonder she and Irena were a pair. Monsters who understood each other.”
Maura studied the face of Irena Stanek. Some might claim they could see evil shining in a person’s eyes, but the woman standing beside Amalthea in this photograph seemed neither evil nor dangerous, merely ill and exhausted. There was nothing in Irena’s eyes that would warn a victim: Stay away. Danger here.
“They look like two sweet old grannies, don’t they?” said Jane. “Seeing them, you’d have no idea who they really are or what they’ve done. After Irena died, Amalthea mailed that photo to Martin Stanek, and since his release from prison, she’s been writing him letters. Two killers communicating with each other, one on the outside, one on the inside.”
Amalthea’s words whispered from Maura’s memory, their meaning suddenly, chillingly significant: You’ll find another one soon.
“She knows what Stanek’s been doing,” said Maura.
Jane nodded. “It’s time to talk to her.”
—
ONLY A FEW WEEKS EARLIER, Maura had said her final goodbye to Amalthea Lank. Now here she was in the interview room at MCI–Framingham, waiting to confront the woman she had vowed never to see again. This time she would not have to face Amalthea alone. Jane would be watching from the other side of the one-way mirror, ready to step in if the conversation turned dangerous.
Jane spoke to her over the intercom. “Are you sure you’re okay about this?”
“We have to do it. We have to find out what she knows.”
“I hate putting you in this position, Maura. I wish there were some other way.”
“I’m the one person she’ll open up to. I’m the one with the connection.”
“Stop saying that.”
“But it’s true.” Maura took a deep breath. “Let’s see if I can use that connection.”
“All right, they’re about to bring her into the room. Ready?”
Maura gave a stiff nod. The door swung open, and the clank of steel manacles announced the entrance of Amalthea Lank. As the guard shackled the prisoner’s ankle to the table, Amalthea’s gaze stayed on Maura, her eyes as focused as lasers. Since her first round of chemotherapy, Amalthea had regained some weight, and her hair was beginning to grow back in short, wispy strands. But it was her eyes that revealed the extent of her recovery. The canny gleam was back, dark and dangerous.
The guard withdrew, leaving the two women to silently regard each other. Maura had to resist the temptation to look away, to turn to the one-way mirror for reassurance.
“You said you weren’t ever coming back to see me,” said Amalthea. “Why are you here?”
“That box of photos you sent me.”
“How do you know I’m the one who sent the box?”
“Because I recognized the faces in the photos. It’s your family.”
“Your family too. Your father. Your brother.”
“A woman delivered that box to my house. Who was she?”
“No one important. Just someone who owed me a favor because I kept her safe in here.” Amalthea leaned back in the chair and gave Maura a knowing smile. “When it suits me, I watch out for people. I make sure that nothing happens to them, both inside these walls and outside.”
Delusions of grandeur, thought Maura. She’s a pathetic old woman dying in prison and she believes she still has the power to manipulate. Why did I think she could actually tell us anything?
Amalthea glanced at the one-way mirror. “Detective Rizzoli’s behind that window, isn’t she? Watching and listening to us. I see you both on the news all the time. They call you ‘Boston’s First Ladies of Crime.’ ” She turned to the window. “If you want to know about Irena Stanek, Detective, you should come in here and ask me yourself.”
“How did you know we’re here about Irena?” asked Maura.
Amalthea snorted. “Really, Maura. Do you give me so little credit? I know what’s happening out there. I know what you’re up against.”
“You were friends with Irena Stanek.”
“She was just another lost soul I met in here. I looked out for her, kept her safe. Too bad she died before she could return any favors.”
“Is that why you’ve been writing to Martin Stanek? Because he owes you?”
“I looked out for his mother. Why wouldn’t he do me a few favors?”
“Like what?”
“Buy me magazines, newspapers. My favorite chocolate bars.”
“He also told you things. Things he was planning to do.”
“Did he?”
“When I visited you in the hospital, you said, You’ll find another one soon. You meant we’d find another one of Martin Stanek’s victims, didn’t you?”
“Did I say that?” Amalthea shrugged and pointed to her head. “You know, chemo brain. It fogs the memory.”
“Did Stanek tell you what he planned to do to the children who exposed him?”
“Why do you think he was planning anything?”
This was a chess game, Amalthea playing coy, bargaining for information. Giving away nothing for free.
“Answer me, Amalthea. There are lives at stake,” said Maura.
“And this should matter to me?”
“If there’s any trace of humanity in you, it should matter.”
“Whose lives are we talking about?”
“Twenty years ago, five children helped send the Staneks to prison. Now three of those children are dead and one has gone missing. But you already know this, don’t you?”
“What if those victims weren’t so innocent? What if you have it all turned around and the Staneks were the real victims?”
“Up is down, black is white?”
“You didn’t know Irena. I did. I took one look at her and I knew she didn’t belong in here. People like to talk about stamping out evil, but most of you can’t recognize it when you see it.”
“I assume you can?”
Amalthea smiled. “I know my own kind. Do you?”
“I judge people by their actions, and I know what Martin Stanek did to those children.”
“Then you don’t know anything.”
“What am I supposed to know?”
“That sometimes up really is down.”
“You told me we’d find another victim soon. How did you know that?”
“You didn’t seem to care at the time.”
“Did Martin Stanek tell you? Did he share his plans for revenge?”
Amalthea sighed. “You’re asking all the wrong questions.”
“What’s the right question?”
Amalthea turned to the one-way mirror and smiled at Jane, who was standing on the other side of the glass. “Which victim haven’t you found?”
—
“IT’S ALL BULLSHIT. SHE TALKS in riddles just to string you along. Make sure you come back and visit her.” Jane slapped the steering wheel. “Damn it, I should have talked to the bitch myself. I shouldn’t have put you through that. I’m sorry.”
“We both agreed it had to be me,” said Maura. “I’m the one she trusts.”
“You’re the one she can manipulate.” Jane scowled at the afternoon traffic, which had slowed their progress back to Boston. A line of cars stretched out before them, as far as they could see. “We got nothing useful out of her.”
“She mentioned a victim you haven’t fo
und yet.”
“She probably means Bill Sullivan, the young man who vanished in Brookline. If he was buried alive like Saint Vitalis, we may never find him. I just hope the poor guy was unconscious when Stanek started shoveling in the dirt.”
“What if she was talking about a different victim, Jane? You still haven’t found Holly Devine. Do you know if she’s alive?”
“I keep calling her father, and he keeps refusing to talk to me. Maybe that’s a good thing. If we can’t find her, the killer can’t find her either.”
Maura looked at Jane. “You’re so certain Martin Stanek is the killer. Why don’t you arrest him?”
Jane’s silence was revealing. For a moment she simply stared in silence at the traffic ahead. “I can’t prove it,” she finally admitted.
“You searched his apartment. You didn’t find any evidence?”
“No ketamine, no duct tape, no scalpels, nothing. He doesn’t have a car, so how did he move Tim McDougal’s body to that pier? Plus, he has an ironclad alibi for Christmas Eve. He was eating dinner at the church soup kitchen. The nuns remember him.”
“Maybe he’s not your perp.”
“Or he’s working with a partner. Someone who’s doing the killing for him. Stanek spent twenty years in prison, and who knows who he met in there? Someone has to be helping him.”
“You’re already monitoring his phone. Who does he talk to?”
“Just people you’d expect. His lawyer, the local pizza joint. Some journalist who’s writing a book. The realtor who’s selling his parents’ house.”
“Anyone with a criminal record?”
“No. They all check out squeaky clean.” Jane glared at the road ahead. “He’s got to be working with someone he met in prison.”
A minute passed. “What if Stanek is innocent?” Maura asked quietly.
“He’s the only one with a motive. Who else would it be?”
“I just worry that we’ve settled on him too soon.”
Jane looked at her. “Okay, tell me what’s bugging you.”