I Know a Secret

  Holly turned to her father, as if for reassurance. These two seemed uncommonly close, a father–daughter bond forged by years of being alone together, the widower and his only child.

  “Go ahead, sweetheart,” said Earl. “Give them what they need. Let’s put that son of a bitch away for good.”

  “It’s just that—it’s hard to talk about what Martin—what he did to me—with my dad sitting here. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Mr. Devine, would you mind giving us some privacy?” said Jane.

  Earl pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll leave you alone to talk. You need anything, sweetheart, you just shout.” He walked away into the kitchen, and they heard water running. The clank of a pot on the stove.

  “He likes to cook me dinner when I visit,” said Holly, and added, with a wry smile, “He’s actually a terrible cook, but it’s his way of showing me he cares.”

  “We can see how much he cares,” said Maura.

  For the first time, Holly seemed to register Maura’s presence. Up till now Maura had been silent, letting Jane conduct the interview, but there were strange emotional currents flowing in this house, and Maura wondered if Jane sensed them. If she had noticed how often father and daughter looked to each other for reassurance.

  “For a few months I stopped coming here, because we were afraid my stalker was watching the house. That was really hard for Daddy, not having me visit. He’s my best friend.”

  “Yet you can’t talk about Martin Stanek in front of him,” said Jane.

  Holly glared at her. “Could you talk to your dad about how a man molested you? How he forced his penis down your throat?”

  Jane paused. “No. I couldn’t.”

  “Then you understand why he and I never talk about it.”

  “But we have to talk about it, Holly. You have to help us, so we can keep you safe.”

  “That’s what the prosecutor said: Tell us everything that happened, and we’ll keep you safe. But I was scared. I didn’t want to disappear, like Lizzie.”

  “You knew Lizzie DiPalma?”

  Holly nodded. “Every day, we rode Martin’s bus together to Apple Tree. Lizzie was so much smarter than me, and so fierce. She would have fought back. Maybe killing her was the only way he could stop her from screaming for help. Or stop her from telling anyone what he’d done to her. She was kidnapped on a Saturday, so none of the kids were there to see it. We had no idea what happened to Lizzie.” Holly drew in a deep breath and looked at Jane. “Until I found her hat.”

  “On Martin’s bus,” said Jane.

  Holly nodded. “That’s when I knew he did it. I knew I finally had to speak up. I’m just glad my mother believed me. After what happened to her when she was a little girl, she never doubted me. But some of the other parents didn’t believe what their own children were saying.”

  “Because some of the other children’s stories were pretty hard to believe,” said Jane. “Timothy talked about a tiger flying in the woods. Sarah said the daycare had a secret basement where the Staneks threw dead babies. But police searched that building, and there was no basement. Certainly there were no flying tigers.”

  “Timmy and Sarah were just little kids. It was easy to confuse them.”

  “But you can see why some of those statements didn’t pass muster.”

  “You weren’t there, Detective. You didn’t have to face the wall of martyrs every day and recite how each one died. Saint Peter of Verona, his head cracked with a cleaver. Saint Lawrence, burned on a gridiron. Saint Clement, drowned with an anchor around his neck. If your birthday fell on a martyr’s day, you got the privilege of wearing the martyr’s crown and holding the plastic palm leaf while everyone danced around you. Our parents thought it was perfectly wholesome! And that’s what made it so insidious. Evil disguised as piety.” Holly gave a shudder. “But after Lizzie vanished, I finally got up the courage to say something, because I knew that what happened to her could happen to me next. I told the truth. That’s why Martin wants his revenge.”

  “We’re going to keep you safe, Holly,” said Jane. “But you have to help us.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Until we have enough evidence to arrest Martin Stanek, it would be a good idea for you to leave town. Is there a friend you can stay with?”

  “No. No, there’s just my father.”

  “This isn’t a good place. This is where Stanek will expect to find you.”

  “I can’t leave my job. I have bills to pay.” She glanced back and forth at Jane and Maura. “He hasn’t found me yet. Shouldn’t I be safe in my own apartment? What if I got a gun?”

  “Do you have a permit to carry one?” said Jane.

  “Does that matter?”

  “You know I can’t advise you to break the law.”

  “But sometimes laws don’t make sense. What good are your stupid laws if I’m dead?”

  Maura said, “What about police protection, Jane? Assign an officer to watch her.”

  “I’ll see what I can arrange, but there’s a limit to our resources.” Jane looked at Holly. “In the meantime, the best way for you to stay safe is to be prepared. Know what to watch for. We believe Stanek is working with someone else, and his partner could be a man or a woman. You can’t let down your guard under any circumstances. We know that two of the victims were drugged with alcohol and ketamine, and this may have happened in a bar. Don’t accept drinks from people you don’t know. In fact, just stay away from anyplace where people are drinking.”

  Holly’s eyes widened. “That’s how he does it? He puts something in their drinks?”

  “But that won’t happen to you. Now that you know.”

  Jane’s cell phone rang, and she answered it with a brisk “Rizzoli.” Maura was startled when, seconds later, Jane shot to her feet and strode outside to continue the call in private. Through the closed front door, she heard Jane demand, “How did this happen? Who the hell was watching him?”

  “What’s going on?” said Holly.

  “I don’t know. I’m going to find out.” Maura followed Jane outside and closed the front door behind her. There she stood, shivering, waiting for Jane to finish the call.

  “Jesus H. Christ.” Jane hung up her phone and turned to Maura. “Martin Stanek’s taken off.”

  “What? When?”

  “We had a team watching his residence from the street. He slipped out the back door and no one’s seen him since. We have no idea where he went.”

  Maura glanced at the window and saw Holly’s face pressed up against the glass, watching them. Softly, she said, “You need to find him.”

  Jane nodded. “Before he finds her.”

  THROUGH THE LIVING-ROOM WINDOW, I watch Detective Rizzoli and Dr. Isles drive away from the house. I turn to my father and confess, “I’m scared, Daddy.”

  “You don’t have to be.”

  “But they have no idea where he is.”

  Daddy pulls me against him and wraps his arms around me. Once, hugging my father was like hugging a sturdy tree trunk. He’s lost so much weight, it’s now like hugging a bag of bones, and through that brittle chest I can feel his heart beating against mine.

  “If he comes after my little girl, he’s a dead man.” He lifts my face and looks into my eyes. “Don’t you worry. Daddy will take care of everything.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.” He reaches for my hand. “Now, come into the kitchen. There’s something I want to show you.”

  “UNTIL WE FIND MARTIN STANEK, how do we keep her safe?” asked Detective Tam.

  That was the question on the mind of everyone seated around the Boston PD conference table. The investigation had broadened to include Detectives Crowe and Tam, and this morning Dr. Zucker had again joined them. They felt certain Holly was Stanek’s next target, but they didn’t know where or when he would strike.

  “For someone whose life is in danger, she sure isn’t acting particularly worried,” said Crowe. “Yesterday morning,
when Tam and I went to her apartment to check the building’s security, she wouldn’t even take the time to talk to us. Just told us she was late for work and walked out.”

  “Here’s the good news,” said Tam. “I found out her father has a permit to carry. Plus, Mr. Devine’s a Navy veteran. Maybe we can talk her into letting him move in with her. Nothing like a daddy with a gun to keep a girl safe.”

  Jane snorted. “I’d shoot myself before I’d let my dad move in with me. No, Holly’s not someone we can order around. She’s got a mind of her own, and she’s…different. I’m still trying to figure her out.”

  “Different in what way?” asked Dr. Zucker. It was exactly the type of question a forensic psychologist would ask, and Jane paused, trying to come up with an answer. To explain just what it was about Holly Devine that perplexed her.

  “She seems weirdly cool and collected about the situation. She won’t listen to any advice we have. Won’t leave town, won’t leave her job. That gal’s in charge, and she doesn’t let us forget it.”

  “You say that with a note of admiration, Detective Rizzoli.”

  Jane met Zucker’s disturbingly reptilian gaze. Felt him studying her as he always did, a scientist probing for her deepest secrets. “Yes, I do admire her for that. I believe we should all be in control of our own lives.”

  “Sure does make it hard to protect her, though,” said Tam.

  “I’ve already warned her how the other victims were probably approached. How their drinks were spiked with ketamine. She knows what to watch out for, and that’s the best protection of all.” Jane paused. “And she might actually make our job easy. If she’s willing to stay out there, in full view.”

  “We use her as bait?” said Crowe.

  “Not use her, exactly. Just take advantage of the fact she’s so damn headstrong. Even though she knows Stanek’s after her, she won’t let it disrupt her life and she insists on sticking to her usual routine. If I were her, that’s exactly what I’d do. In fact, it’s what I did do, when I was in her situation a few years ago.”

  “What situation are you talking about?” said Tam. He had only recently joined the homicide unit, so he wasn’t part of the investigation four years earlier, when Jane’s hunt for the killer known as the Surgeon had suddenly twisted on her, turning her into the predator’s target.

  Frost said quietly, “She’s talking about Warren Hoyt.”

  “When a perp forces you to change your life, then he’s already beaten you,” said Jane. “Holly refuses to surrender. Since she’s so damn stubborn, I say we work with that. We keep her monitored, install security cameras in her building and her workplace. We wait for Stanek to make his move.”

  “You think she’d wear a bracelet monitor?” asked Tam. “It’d help us keep track of her.”

  “You try and get it on her.”

  “Why is this young woman so resistant?” asked Zucker. “Do you have any insights, Detective Rizzoli?”

  “I think it’s just her nature. Remember, Holly has a history of fighting back. She was the first child to step forward and accuse the Staneks of molesting her, and that took a lot of guts for a ten-year-old girl. Without Holly, there would have been no arrests, no trial. The abuse could have continued for years.”

  “Yes, I read her interview with the psychologist,” said Zucker. “Holly was certainly the most precise and believable, while the other children’s statements were obviously contaminated.”

  “What do you mean by that, Dr. Zucker?” asked Tam. “Contaminated?”

  Zucker said, “The stories told by the younger ones were absurd. The five-year-old boy said tigers flew in the woods. One girl claimed that cats and babies were sacrificed to the devil and thrown into a cellar.”

  Jane shrugged. “Children do embellish.”

  “Or were they coached? Prodded into making statements by the prosecution? Remember, the Staneks’ trial happened during an odd time in criminal justice, when the public was convinced there were satanic cults all over the country. I attended a forensic-psychology conference in the early nineties, and I heard a so-called expert describe vast networks of these cults abusing children and even sacrificing babies. She claimed that a quarter of her patients were survivors of ritual abuse. All around the country there were criminal trials going on, just like the Apple Tree case. Unfortunately, many of those trials weren’t based on facts but on fear and superstition.”

  “Why would kids come up with such weird stories if they weren’t at least partially true?” asked Tam.

  “Let’s consider just one of those ritual-abuse trials, the one involving the McMartin Preschool in California. The investigation started after a schizophrenic mother claimed her child was sodomized by a teacher at the school. Police sent out letters to all the other parents, alerting them that their children might be victims too, and by the time the case got to trial, the accusations had multiplied and grown outlandish. There were charges of wild sex orgies, of children being flushed down toilets into secret rooms, of attackers flying through the air like magic. The result was that an innocent man was convicted and spent five years in prison.”

  “You’re not saying Martin Stanek was innocent?” said Jane.

  “I merely question how the statements of these children at the Apple Tree were obtained. How much of it was fantasy? How much of it was coached?”

  “Holly Devine had real physical injuries,” Jane pointed out. “The doctor who examined her described bruises on her head, multiple scratches on her arms and face.”

  “The other children had no such injuries.”

  “A psychologist for the prosecution said that the children she spoke to showed emotional symptoms of abuse. Fear of the dark, bed-wetting. Night terrors. I can read you exactly what the judge said about it. He called the damage to these children profound and truly horrifying.”

  “Of course he said that. The whole country was swept up in the same moral panic.”

  “Moral panic didn’t make a child vanish into thin air,” said Jane. “Remember, a nine-year-old girl named Lizzie DiPalma did go missing. Her body’s never been found.”

  “Martin Stanek wasn’t convicted of her murder.”

  “Only because the jury refused to deliver a guilty verdict on that charge. But everyone knew he did it.”

  “Do you normally trust the wisdom of the mob?” Dr. Zucker responded, his eyebrow arched. “As a forensic psychologist, it’s my role here to offer you different perspectives, to point out what you might miss. Human behavior isn’t as black and white as you might like to believe. People have complex motives, and justice is meted out by imperfect human beings. Surely something about the children’s statements must bother you.”

  “The prosecutor believed them.”

  “Your daughter’s about three years old, isn’t she? Imagine giving her the power to put a whole family in prison.”

  “The children at Apple Tree were older than my daughter.”

  “But not necessarily more accurate or truthful.”

  Jane sighed. “Now you sound like Dr. Isles.”

  “Ah, yes. The eternal skeptic.”

  “You can be as skeptical as you want, Dr. Zucker. But the fact is, Lizzie DiPalma did go missing twenty years ago. Her hat was found on the Apple Tree school bus, which made Martin Stanek the prime suspect. Now the children who accused him of abuse are being murdered. Stanek’s looking pretty damn good as our killer.”

  “Convince me. Find the evidence to tie him to these murders. Any evidence.”

  “Every perp makes mistakes,” she said. “We’ll find his.”

  —

  BILLY SULLIVAN’S MOTHER NOW LIVED in a handsome Tudor-style home only a mile from the more modest Brookline neighborhood where Billy had grown up. This morning’s freezing rain had glazed the shrubbery with ice, and the brick walkway leading to Mrs. Sullivan’s porch looked slick enough to skate on. For a moment Frost and Jane remained in the car, watching the house and bracing themselves for the cold. And for
the terrible conversation that lay ahead of them.

  “She must already know that her son’s dead,” said Frost.

  “But she doesn’t know the worst of it yet. And I’m sure as hell not going to tell her how he probably died.” Buried alive, like Saint Vitalis. Or had the killer been merciful and made certain that his victim was no longer breathing when he tossed the first shovelful of dirt onto the corpse? Jane did not want to think of the alternative: that Billy was still alive and conscious, trapped in a box as frozen clods thumped onto his coffin. Or bound and helpless in an open grave, choking on soil as it rained down on his face. This was where nightmares came from; it was what the job could do to her, if she let it.

  “Come on. Sooner or later, we have to talk to her,” said Frost.

  At the front door, Frost rang the bell and they waited, shivering, as sleet tapped the pavement and shrubs. Inside, Billy Sullivan’s mother would be terrified, anticipating bad news while desperately keeping alive some small flame of hope. Jane could always see that hope flickering in the faces of victims’ families; too often, Jane was forced to snuff out that flame.

  The woman who opened the door did not invite them in but stood barring the entrance for a moment, as if reluctant to let tragedy step into her house. Pale and dry-eyed, her face as stiff as molded wax, Susan Sullivan was desperately trying to stay in control. Her blond hair was swept back and lacquered in place, and her cream-colored knit pants and pink sweater set would have looked right at home at a country-club luncheon. Today, which could very well be the worst day of her life, she had chosen to wear pearls.

  “Mrs. Sullivan,” said Jane. “I’m Detective Rizzoli, Boston PD. This is Detective Frost. May we come in?”

  The woman finally nodded and moved aside to let Jane and Frost step into the foyer. There was a painful silence as they removed their damp coats. Even with the threat of terrible news hanging over her, Susan did not neglect her duty as a hostess, and with brittle efficiency she hung up their coats in the closet and led them into the living room. Jane’s attention was instantly riveted by an oil painting that hung above the fieldstone fireplace. It was a portrait of a golden-haired young man, his handsome face tilted toward the light, his lips curved in a quietly amused smile.