“I don’t do drugs. I don’t like drugs.” He gave an ironic laugh. “Because this sort of thing happens.”
He certainly looked like a man with healthy habits. Lean, fit, and clean-cut. Last night they had run a background check on him and learned that he was a landscape architect who worked at a well-regarded Boston firm. No warrants, no criminal record, not even an unpaid parking ticket. Should there be any doubt that the shooting last night was justified, Everett Prescott would be an excellent defense witness.
“You’re being discharged today, I believe,” she said.
“Yes. The doctor said I’ll be good to go.”
“We need a detailed statement from you about what happened last night. If you can come down to Boston PD tomorrow, we’ll record it on video. Here, let me give you my card.”
“They’re both dead. Does it really matter now?”
“The truth always matters, don’t you think?”
He thought about this for a moment, and his gaze turned back to the window. “The truth,” he said softly.
“Stop in at Schroeder Plaza tomorrow, say around ten A.M.? Meanwhile, if any details come back to you, please write them down. Everything you remember.”
“There is something.” He looked at her. “Something you need to know.”
EVERETT IS COMING FOR COCKTAILS.
I haven’t seen him since we were discharged from the hospital a week ago, because we both needed time to recover. Certainly I needed time, because I’ve had so many details to attend to: The reading of my father’s will. What to do with my father’s dog, who’s still in the kennel. The cleanup of his house, with its blood-spattered bedroom. Multiple interviews with the police. I have spoken to Detective Rizzoli three times now, and sometimes I feel she wants to vacuum my brain, sucking out every detail of what happened that night. I keep telling her that there’s nothing else I remember, nothing more to share with her, and finally she seems ready to leave me at peace.
The apartment bell buzzes. A moment later, Everett stands in my doorway, holding a bottle of wine. As always, he’s right on time. That’s Everett—so predictable, but also a little boring. I suppose I can put up with boring, since in this case it comes in such an attractive and affluent package. It never hurts to have a rich boyfriend.
He seems tired and subdued as he walks into my apartment, and the kiss he gives me is only a halfhearted peck on the cheek.
“Shall I open the bottle?” I offer.
“Whatever you’d like.” What kind of response is that? I’m annoyed by his lack of enthusiasm tonight. I take the wine into the kitchen, and as I rattle around in the drawer for the corkscrew, he just stands there watching me, not offering to help. After what we’ve been through together, you’d think he’d be ready to celebrate, but he’s not smiling. Instead, he looks as if he’s in mourning.
I pop out the cork, fill two wineglasses, and hand him one. The cabernet smells rich and meaty, and it’s probably expensive. He takes only one sip and sets down his glass.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” he says.
Goddamn, I should have known. He wants to break up. How dare he break up with me? I manage to keep my cool as I eye him over the rim of my wineglass. “What is it?” I ask.
“That night, in your father’s house—when we almost died…” He releases a deep sigh. “I heard what you said to Billy. And what he said to you.”
I put down my glass and stare at him. “What, exactly, did you hear?”
“Everything. This wasn’t just a hallucination. I know ketamine can fog your mind, make you see and hear things that don’t exist, but this was real. I heard what you did to that little girl. What both of you did.”
Calmly, I pick up my glass and take another sip. “That was your imagination, Everett. You didn’t hear anything.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Ketamine clouds your memory. That’s why it’s used for date rape.”
“You used a rock. You both killed her.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Holly, tell me the truth.”
“We were only kids. Do you really think I could have—”
“For once, just tell me the fucking truth.”
I set down my glass, hard. “You have no right to talk to me that way.”
“I do have that right. I was in love with you.”
Oh, this is rich. Just because he was stupid enough to fall in love with me, he thinks he can demand honesty. No man has that right. Not from me.
“Lizzie DiPalma was only nine years old,” he says. “That was her name, wasn’t it? I read about her disappearance. Her mother last saw her on a Saturday afternoon, when Lizzie left the house wearing her favorite hat, a beaded cap from Paris. Two days later, a child found Lizzie’s hat on the Apple Tree school bus. That’s why Martin Stanek came under suspicion. That’s why he was accused of kidnapping and killing the girl.” He paused. “You were the child who found the hat. But you didn’t really find it on the bus. Did you?”
“You’ve reached a lot of conclusions based on absolutely no evidence,” I answer, coldly logical.
“Billy handed you a rock, and you hit her with it. You both killed her. And then you kept her hat.”
“Do you think this fairy tale would ever hold up in court? You were drugged with ketamine. No one would believe you.”
“That’s your answer?” He stares at me in disgust. “You have nothing else to say about a little girl who’s been missing all these years? About her mother, whose heart must have been broken? That will never hold up in court?”
“Well, it won’t.” I pick up the wineglass again and take an unconcerned sip. “Besides, I was only ten years old. Think of all the things you did when you were ten.”
“I never killed anyone.”
“That’s not how it happened.”
“How did it happen, Holly? You’re right, this will never hold up in court, so you might as well tell me the truth. I don’t plan to see you again, so you have nothing to lose.”
I study him for a moment, thinking about what he could do with the truth. Go to the police? Blab to the newspapers? No, I’m not that stupid. “Give me one good reason why I should say anything.”
“For the sake of that little girl’s mother—she’s been waiting twenty years for Lizzie to come home to her. At least give her that. Tell her where to find the body.”
“And fuck up my own life?”
“Your life? It’s all about you, isn’t it?” He shakes his head. “Why the hell didn’t I see this before?”
“Oh, come on, Everett. You’re making too much of this.” I reach up and stroke his face.
He shudders and flinches away. “Don’t.”
“We had something special together. Good times.” I smile. “And great sex. Please, let’s just put this behind us and forget it ever happened.”
“That’s the thing, Holly. It did happen. And now I know what you really are.” He turns to leave the kitchen.
I grab his arm. “You’re not going to tell anyone, right?”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“They won’t believe you. They’ll call you a bitter ex-boyfriend. And I’ll tell them how you abused me. How you threatened me.”
“You would do that, wouldn’t you?”
“If I need to.”
“Well, I don’t have to tell anyone. Because they’re listening to it right this instant. Every word you’ve said.”
It takes me a few heartbeats to process what he’s just told me. When the meaning dawns on me, I grab his shirt and wrench it open so suddenly he doesn’t have time to react. Buttons fly off and tick to the floor. He stands with his shirt hanging open, and I stare at the telltale wire taped to his skin.
Backing away, I frantically review what I’ve said, words that I now know the police have been listening to. I never actually admitted anything. Nothing I said could be considered a murder confession. While I may have sounded heartless and manipulative, those aren??
?t criminal acts. There are countless people like me in the world, successful CEOs and bankers whose heartlessness isn’t punished but rewarded. They are simply behaving like the creatures they were born to be.
Everett is different. He’s not one of us.
In silence, he closes his shirt over the exposed wire and I see pain, even grief, in his face. It’s the death of an illusion. The illusion of Holly Devine, the girl he loved. Now the real Holly stands before him, and he wants nothing to do with me.
“Goodbye,” he says, and walks out of the kitchen.
I don’t follow him. I just stand there listening as the apartment door slams shut.
I fling my goblet, and it shatters against the refrigerator in an explosion of glass shards. Red wine drips like blood onto the floor.
Two months later
FROM THE BACK PORCH OF my father’s house, I can see that something is going on deep in the woods. Parked along Daphne Road are half a dozen police and crime-lab vehicles, and somewhere in the distance a dog is barking. The ground has thawed and they’re finally able to probe the soil, but they don’t know exactly where to look and they have wasted the first two days searching the property where Billy Sullivan lived as a child. Now they’ve moved into the stretch of woods just beyond his property. Twenty years ago, investigators didn’t search those woods; instead, they devoted all their time to combing the Apple Tree Daycare, as well as the section of road a mile and a half away, where Billy abandoned Lizzie’s bike. No one thought to search the woods along Daphne Road, because Billy and I threw them off the scent by directing their suspicions to an innocent man. Everyone believed us because we were children, and children aren’t clever enough to devise such a scheme. Or so people think.
The doorbell rings.
I find Detective Rizzoli standing on the front porch. She’s wearing hiking boots and a dirt-streaked jacket, and a twig is snared in her wiry black hair. I don’t invite her inside. Coolly, we regard each other across the threshold, two women who understand each other all too well.
“We’re going to find her body anyway, Holly. You might as well tell us where to look.”
“And what will I get for that? A gold star?”
“How about Brownie points for cooperating with us? The satisfaction of knowing you did the right thing for once?”
“There’s no gold star for that.”
“That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? You. What’s in it for you.”
“I don’t have anything to say.” I start to close the door.
She slaps her hand against it, forcing it back open. “I have plenty to say to you.”
“I’m listening.”
“This happened twenty years ago. You were only ten years old when you did it, so no one will hold you accountable. You have nothing to lose by telling us where she is.”
“I also have nothing to gain. What proof do you have that I had anything to do with it? The shaky memory of a witness who was high on ketamine? A taped conversation in which I admitted absolutely nothing?” I shake my head. “I think I’ll stick with silence.”
My logic is unassailable. There’s nothing she can do to force my cooperation. Whether or not they find Lizzie’s body, I’m untouchable and she knows it. We stare at each other, two halves of the same coin, both of us tough and clever women who know how to survive. But she’s the one who cares too much, and I’m the one who cares scarcely at all.
Unless it’s about me.
“I’m going to be watching you,” she says quietly. “I know what you did, Holly. I know exactly what you are.”
I shrug. “I’m different, so what? I’ve always known I was.”
“You’re a fucking sociopath. That’s what you are.”
“But it doesn’t make me evil. It’s just the way I was born. Some people have blue eyes; some people can run marathons. Me? I know how to look out for myself. That’s my superpower.”
“And someday it’s going to bring you down.”
“But not today.”
The crackle of her walkie-talkie cuts the silence between us. She snatches it from her belt and answers: “Rizzoli.”
“The dog alerted,” a male voice says.
“What do you see?”
“Lot of leaf cover, that’s all. But the signal’s pretty definite. You want to come look at the spot before they start digging?”
At once, Rizzoli turns and strides down the porch steps. As I watch her climb into her car, I know this is not the last time I’ll be seeing her. There is a long chess game ahead of us, and this was only the opening gambit. Neither of us has the advantage yet, but we’ve both come to know our opponent well.
I return to the back porch and stare across my father’s yard to the woods beyond. The trees have not yet leafed out, and through the bare branches I can just make out Daphne Road, where more vehicles have arrived. On the other side of that road are the woods abutting the property where Billy’s old house stands. That is where the cadaver dog has caught the scent.
That is where they’ll find her.
LIZZIE DIPALMA EMERGED FROM THE soil in bits and pieces. A finger bone here, an ankle bone there. Twenty years in a shallow grave had rotted the flesh from the skeleton, but once the skull was unearthed, Maura had little doubt of the body’s identity. Cupping the cranium in one hand, she brushed away soil from the upper jaw and looked at Jane.
“This is a child’s skull. Based on the partially erupted lateral incisors, I estimate the decedent’s age to be eight or nine years old.”
“Lizzie was nine,” said Jane.
Gently, Maura set the skull on the tarp and clapped dirt from her gloved hands. “I think you’ve found her.”
For a moment they stood in silence, looking down at the excavated grave. The burial was less than a foot deep, which was why the cadaver dog was able to catch the scent, even twenty years later. Two children could certainly dig a grave this shallow, and at eleven years old, Billy Sullivan had been large enough, strong enough, to wield a shovel.
Strong enough to kill a nine-year-old girl.
Maura brushed away more dirt, revealing a depressed fracture of the left temporal bone. This had been caused by more than merely a glancing blow; this blow had been delivered with full force on the side of her head, most likely as she was lying on the ground. She imagined the sequence of events: The girl shoved to the dirt. The boy lifting the rock, slamming it down on the girl’s head. It was the oldest of weapons, as old as the dawn of murder. As old as Cain and Abel.
“Holly helped him do it. I know she did,” said Jane.
“But how do you prove it?”
“That’s what drives me crazy. I can’t prove it. If we call Everett Prescott to testify against her, the defense will call it hearsay. Worse than that, it’s hearsay while under the influence of ketamine. When we had him wired to record her, she didn’t admit to a thing. She’s too damn smart to slip up, so we have nothing to tie her to this murder.”
“She was only ten years old when it happened. Can she really be held responsible?”
“She helped kill this girl. Okay, maybe it was twenty years ago and she was just a kid herself, but you know what? I don’t think people change. Whatever she was then, she still is. A snake doesn’t grow up to be a bunny rabbit. She’s still a snake, and she’s going to keep striking. Until somebody finally stops her.”
“It won’t be this time.”
“No, this time she gets to walk away. But at least we’ve given Martin Stanek some measure of justice, even if it’s too late for him. Bonnie Sandridge is gonna make damn sure the whole world knows he was innocent.” Jane looked through the trees toward Earl Devine’s house. “Jesus, do you ever feel like we’re surrounded by them? Monsters like Holly Devine and Billy Sullivan? If they think they can get away with it, they’ll slit your throat without a second thought.”
“And that’s where you come in, Jane. You keep the rest of us safe.”
“The trouble is, there are way too many Holly Devin
es in this world and not enough of me to go around.”
“At least you accomplished this,” said Maura, looking down at the skull of Lizzie DiPalma. “You found her.”
“And now she can finally go home to her mother.”
It would be a sad reunion but a reunion nonetheless, one of several that had happened during this investigation. Arlene DiPalma would soon reclaim her lost daughter. Angela Rizzoli was now back together with Vince Korsak. Barry Frost had reunited—for better or worse—with his ex-wife, Alice.
And Daniel has come back to me.
In truth, he had never really left her. She had been the one who’d sent him away, who’d believed that true happiness could only come from rooting out the imperfect, the way one cuts off a diseased limb. But nothing in life is perfect, certainly not love.
And she had never doubted that Daniel loved her. Once, he had been ready to die for her; could she ask for any better proof?
It was after dark when Maura arrived home from the crime scene that evening. Inside her house the lights were on, the windows bright and welcoming. Daniel’s car was parked in her driveway, once again out in the open where the world could see it. This was how far they’d come together, to a place beyond caring what anyone else thought about their union. She had tried to live without him, had believed she’d moved on and that love was optional. She had thought that being resigned was the same as being happy, but in truth she’d briefly forgotten what happiness felt like.
Seeing the lights in her house, his car in her driveway, she remembered.
I’m ready to be happy again. With you.
She stepped out of her car, and with a smile on her lips she walked from the darkness, into the light.
THIS, YOU SEE, IS THE way of the world.
There are people like me, and then there are people who consider me evil because, unlike them, I don’t weep at sad movies or funerals or “Auld Lang Syne.” But deep inside every bleating sentimentalist lurks the dark embryo of who I am: a cold-blooded opportunist. This is what turns good soldiers into executioners, neighbors into informers, bankers into thieves. Oh, they will probably deny it. They all think they are more human than I am, merely because they weep and I do not.