Jane opened the envelope containing what were probably the last images ever recorded of Charlotte, which they’d obtained from the Boston Globe photo files. There were a dozen photos taken at the double burial service of Arthur and Dina Mallory. The horrific nature of their deaths, and the extensive publicity surrounding the Red Phoenix massacre, had drawn nearly two hundred people to the cemetery that day, according to the Globe article, and the photographer had taken several long shots of the somberly dressed gathering standing beside two open graves.
But the most arresting images were the close-ups of the family. Charlotte stood dead center, the dramatic focus of the composition, and no wonder: With her pale features, her long blond hair, she was the fragile embodiment of grief. Her hand was lifted to her mouth, as though to stifle a sob, and her face was contorted in a look of physical pain. Standing on her right was her father, Patrick, looking at her with concern. But her body was turned away from him, as though she did not want him to see her distress.
At the periphery of the photo stood Mark Mallory, his dark hair longer and more unruly. At twenty, he already had a man’s well-muscled build and broad shoulders. He towered over the gaunt and middle-aged woman seated in a wheelchair beside him, his hand resting on her shoulder. Jane assumed the woman was Mark’s mother, Barbara, Arthur’s ex-wife. Barbara sat staring at the coffins, unaware that the click of a camera shutter would forever capture her expression, not of grief but an unsettling gaze of cold detachment. As if the man in that coffin meant nothing to her. Or perhaps less than nothing; after all, Arthur had left her for Dina, and although Mark claimed there were no bitter feelings between his parents, that view of Barbara’s face told a different story. Here was the discarded wife, standing at the graves of her ex-husband and the woman who had stolen him. Did she feel some trace of satisfaction at that moment? A twinge of triumph that she had survived them both?
Jane flipped to the next photo. It was taken from the same vantage point, but Charlotte’s face was blurred as she turned even further from her father, her whole body bent forward in motion. In the next photo, Patrick was frowning at her as she continued to move, her hand still pressed to her mouth, her face grimacing. By the next shot, she was halfway off the frame, only her back still in view, her skirt a black blur. One more click of the shutter, and Charlotte was no longer visible at all; neither was Mark. Patrick Dion and Barbara Mallory remained in place, both their faces registering puzzlement that their children had slipped away from the gathering.
What was going on between Mark and Charlotte? Had he followed her to offer his support?
In the next shot, Patrick was leaning over to awkwardly embrace Barbara, the two discarded spouses comforting each other. It was an artfully composed image, with the embrace reflected in a casket’s gleaming surface.
The final shot was of the crowd as it dispersed, their backs turned from the twin grave sites. A metaphor, perhaps, of how the living always move on with their lives. In that final photo, Charlotte was once again visible, walking beside her father, Patrick’s arm firmly wrapped around her waist. But Charlotte’s head was turned in a backward glance toward her mother’s grave, and on her face was a desperate look of yearning, as if she longed to throw herself atop her mother’s coffin. That same mother who had walked out of her life five years earlier.
Jane set down the photo, overwhelmed with sadness for Charlotte. She thought of her own mother, thought of all the ways Angela annoyed her. But never once did Jane doubt that her mother loved her and would give her own life for her, just as Jane would give her own life for Regina without a second thought. When Dina divorced Patrick and left the family, Charlotte had been only twelve, that tender age at childhood’s end. Even with a devoted father, there were secrets that a girl could learn only from her mother, the secrets of womanhood. Who was there to teach you, Charlotte?
At lunchtime, Jane went downstairs to the cafeteria for coffee and a ham sandwich. She brought both up to eat at her desk, fueling up not with pleasure but out of sheer necessity. She wiped mayonnaise from her fingers and turned to her computer to review the digital file of crime scene photos from the Ingersoll residence. As she cycled through the images of his home and remembered the smell of the shrubbery along the walkway, the glow of his TV screen through the window, she felt her heart begin to thump hard. That was the night I should have died. She took a deep breath and forced herself to focus on the photos and critically view the scene with a calmer perspective. She studied the kitchen, where Ingersoll lay with blood pooled around his head. Clicked to the photo of his home office with the ransacked drawers, the bare desktop where a computer must have been. During their last phone conversation, Ingersoll told Jane that someone had broken into his house. This was the chaos that he’d found when he got home from his fishing trip: the evidence of a burglary. Finally she clicked on a photo of the bedroom, where Ingersoll’s closed suitcase still sat on the floor. He’d never had the chance to unpack.
She advanced to the photos of his Ford Taurus, which was parked on the street in front of the residence. The car was still littered with the detritus of a long road trip: empty coffee cups, a wadded Burger King sack, a Bangor Daily newspaper. That night she’d been covered in blood and shaken by what had happened in the alley, so she had not personally searched the car but had left that task to Frost and Tam. Frost reported finding a week-old receipt in the glove compartment from a Greenville, Maine, gas station. It corroborated the daughter’s statement that Ingersoll had left for a fishing trip up north.
She went back through all the photos again, clicking through image after image. Living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom. When she did not find what she was searching for, she picked up the phone and called Frost.
“Did you find a tackle box anywhere in the house?” she asked.
“Um, no. I don’t remember seeing one.”
“Who goes fishing without a tackle box?”
“Maybe he rented everything up at the camp where he was staying.”
“You talked to the manager up there?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t ask him about fishing gear.”
“I’ll give him a call.”
“Why?”
“Just strikes me as odd, that’s all.” She hung up and pulled out the page with Ingersoll’s call log. Scanning down it, she spotted a 207 area code. Ingersoll had made the call from his landline on April 14.
She dialed the number. It rang five times, and a male voice answered with a no-nonsense: “Loon Point.”
“This is Detective Jane Rizzoli, Boston PD. May I ask who I’m speaking to?”
“Joe. Did you folks have another question?”
“Excuse me?”
“Someone else called from Boston PD yesterday. Spoke to my son Will.”
“That would have been Detective Frost. Where is Loon Point located, exactly?”
“We’re on Moosehead Lake. Got a dozen nice little cabins up here.”
“You had a guest up there recently, name of Ingersoll.”
“Yeah, Will said you folks were asking about him. It was my wife who checked him into the cabin, but she’s not here today. All I can tell you is he stayed five days, pretty much kept to himself.” He paused and yelled to his son: “Will, you wanna help those folks unload the gear from their boat? They’re already tied up at the dock!” Then, back to Jane: “Sorry, ma’am. Starting to get busy around here. Really want to help you and all, but there’s not much more to say. We were sorry to hear the man died.”
“Was that the first time Mr. Ingersoll stayed at Loon Point?”
“Don’t remember seeing him before.”
“How long have you worked there?”
“Since it opened. I own the place. Look, I gotta get off and help some guests.”
“One last question. Did Mr. Ingersoll rent any fishing gear while he was there?”
“Yeah, he did. Will helped him choose a rod and reel. Don’t think he caught much, though.”
She glanced
at her ringing cell phone. “Thank you, Mr.…”
“Patten. You have any more questions, just call back.”
She hung up the desk phone, picked up her cell phone, and saw the call was from the crime lab. “Rizzoli.”
Criminalist Erin Volchko answered: “I’ve seen some pretty surprising things over the years, but this just might take the cake.”
“What are we talking about?”
“That metallic fragment that came over from the ME’s office. It was embedded in the cervical spine of Jane Doe.”
“Yeah. A fragment from the blade.”
“It’s unlike any metal I’ve ever come across.”
FROST AND TAM WERE WAITING FOR HER IN THE CRIME LAB WHEN Jane walked in. So was a man she’d never met before, a soft-spoken African American gentleman whom Erin introduced as Dr. Calvin Napoleon Cherry from Harvard’s Arthur Sackler Museum.
“When I realized what this metal might be, I asked Dr. Cherry to take a look at it,” said Erin. “If anyone has an answer, it’ll be him.”
Dr. Cherry responded with an embarrassed laugh. “You make me sound far too impressive.”
“Well, your name shows up on half the published articles on this subject. I can’t imagine there’s any better expert to consult.”
“What is your role at the Sackler Museum, Dr. Cherry?” asked Jane.
He gave a modest shrug. “I’m curator of their weapons collection. I wrote my doctoral thesis on the metallurgic analysis of blades. Specifically, the blades of China and Japan. They’re closely related, even though the methods of craftsmanship diverged centuries ago.”
“So you think this blade was made in Asia?”
“I’m almost certain it was.”
“You can tell that with just a fragment?”
“Here,” said Erin, settling down in front of her computer. “Let me show you the images I sent to Dr. Cherry earlier this week. These are micrographs of the fragment.” She tapped the keyboard, and on the monitor they saw an image of gray swirls and waves.
“What you’re looking at,” said Dr. Cherry, “is called lamellar or Damascus steel. It forms this wavy pattern when different layers of metal are folded and hammered again and again, sandwiching together both soft and hardened steel. The more layers you see beaten together, the finer the workmanship, and the stronger the sword. In China, the best steel is called bailian jinggang, or ‘hundred-times-forged steel.’ And that produces these patterns you see here, which we call the blade’s veins.”
“If this is a Chinese weapon,” said Frost, “why is it called Damascus steel?”
“To explain that, I have to tell you a little about the history of Chinese weaponry. That is, if you want to hear it.” He paused, glancing at the three detectives to gauge their interest.
“Go on,” said Jane.
Dr. Cherry’s eyes lit up, as if there was no subject he enjoyed more. “Let’s go back to the beginning of swordcraft. Thousands of years ago, the Chinese started off making blades out of stone. Then they progressed to bronze, a soft and heavy metal that has its limitations as weapons material. The next advance was iron, but we don’t find many examples of those swords because iron corrodes, leaving very little behind. Ironically enough, you’re more likely to come across a bronze sword than an iron sword, even though bronze is centuries older.”
“But we’re talking about steel here,” said Tam. “Not iron.”
“And do you know the difference between steel and iron?”
Tam hesitated. “If I remember right, it has something to do with the addition of carbon.”
“Very good!” Dr. Cherry beamed. “Not everyone knows that, not even some of my freshman students at Harvard. So now we’re into the middle Han dynasty, about two thousand years ago, when sword-makers learned to forge and fold steel, to hammer it into bands and sheets. The technique probably originated in India and later spread to China and the Middle East. And that’s how it got the name Damascus steel.”
“But it’s not from Damascus at all,” said Frost.
“No, it’s originally from India. But good ideas are bound to spread, and once the technique reached China, swordmaking truly advanced to an art. As the centuries passed, their technical quality varied, depending on the state of warfare. With every new conflict, weapons always evolve. When the Mongols invaded during the Song dynasty, they introduced sabers. The Chinese adapted that saber into their own curved sword. It’s known as the dao, and it was used by cavalry to cut and slash while on horseback. We’re talking about blades that were razor-sharp, so you can imagine the carnage on the battlefield. There would have been mass dismemberment and decapitation.”
It was a gruesome image that Jane could picture only too vividly. She remembered the alley. The whoosh of the blade, the spray of hot blood on her face. The gentleness of Dr. Cherry’s voice grotesquely underplayed the horror of what he was describing.
“Who the hell would sign up to be a soldier? Not me,” said Frost.
“You might not have a choice,” said Dr. Cherry. “For much of ancient history, armed conflict was part of life in China. Warlord pitted against warlord. Invasions by Mongols and pirates.”
“Pirates? In China?”
Dr. Cherry nodded. “During the Ming dynasty, Japanese pirates terrorized the Chinese coast. Then a hero named General Qi marched in and defeated them.”
“I remember hearing about him,” said Tam. “My grandmother told me that General Qi cut off the heads of five thousand pirates. His adventures made great bedtime stories.”
“Geez,” muttered Jane. “To think all I got was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
“General Qi’s elite soldiers were renowned for their ingenious tactics,” said Dr. Cherry. “And their weapon of choice was the dao. The Chinese saber.” He pointed to the magnified image on Erin’s computer screen and said, with a note of awe: “It’s amazing to think that’s what this fragment probably came from.”
“A Chinese saber?” said Jane.
“Yes.”
“How can you tell, from that little piece? Couldn’t it be from a Japanese samurai sword?”
“That’s possible, I suppose, since the Japanese learned their swordmaking techniques from the Chinese.”
“And samurai swords are easy to find,” said Tam. “You see them for sale in specialty knife stores.”
“Ah, but those stores don’t sell swords like this one.”
“What’s so special about it?” asked Jane.
“Its age. Based on carbon-fourteen dating.”
Jane frowned. “I thought carbon-fourteen dating was only used for organic material. This is steel.”
“Let’s go back to how ancient swords were made,” said Dr. Cherry. “The traditional technique was to melt iron sand in a forge. That iron was then combined with carbon to form steel. But where do you get the carbon? They used wood ash.”
“And wood is organic,” said Tam.
“Exactly. We extracted the carbon component of this specimen using sealed-tube combustion,” said Erin. “And that carbon was then analyzed.”
“The fragment had to be destroyed?”
“Unfortunately, yes. To date the carbon, the specimen had to be sacrificed. It was the only way we could get an accurate age.”
“And that’s where the big surprise came in,” said Dr. Cherry, a lilt of excitement in his voice.
“I take it this weapon wasn’t bought in some local knife store,” Jane said.
“Not unless that store deals in very old antiques.”
“How old are we talking about?”
Dr. Cherry pointed to the micrograph. “That steel you see there was crafted during the Ming dynasty. Carbon-fourteen dating narrows it down to sometime between the years 1540 and 1590.” He looked at Jane, his eyes aglow. “That just happens to be the era of General Qi’s legendary army. A saber with this degree of craftsmanship could have been wielded by one of his elite soldiers. Maybe it even cut off the heads of a few pirates.”
r /> Jane stared at the image on the computer. “This weapon is over five hundred years old? And it’s still usable?”
“It’s possible to preserve such a sword for a long, long time, but it takes special care, especially if this weapon actually saw use on the battlefield. Blood corrodes steel, even if it’s assiduously wiped away. Exposure to air causes rust and pitting. The blade would need repeated cleaning and polishing over the centuries, and that alone abrades the metal, making the cutting edge brittle. That may be why this particular blade chipped off in the victim’s neck. It’s simply reached the end of its useful life as a killing tool.” He gave a wistful sigh. “What I’d give to examine it! A dao from General Qi’s era would be priceless, if you could just find it.” He paused and frowned at Frost, who had suddenly paled. “Is something wrong, Detective?”
Frost said, softly: “I know where to find that sword.”
ONCE AGAIN, DETECTIVES RIZZOLI AND FROST HAVE INVADED MY studio, and this time they’ve brought along a well-dressed black gentleman whose soft-spoken diffidence indicates that he is not a policeman like them. The sudden interruption startles my class, and the dozen students stand frozen, their sparring exercises abruptly halted. Only Bella strides into action, slipping past the students to plant herself beside me. She acts as my fierce guardian, all five foot, four inches of her, including her spiky black hair. I am not surprised to see the visitors, and I cast a glance at Bella that says: Stand down. Allow me to deal with this.
She gives the subtlest of nods but stubbornly remains at my side.