Last to Die (5 page)

Vasquez left the conservatory, closing the door behind her. For ten minutes, fifteen, Jane didn’t say a word, nor did she look at the boy. They sat side by side, companions in silence, and the only sound was the gentle splash of water in a marble fountain. Leaning back in the bower, she gazed up at the arching branches overhead. In this Garden of Eden, sheltered from the cold, even banana and orange trees thrived, and she imagined walking into this room on a winter’s day, when the snow was falling outside, and breathing in the scent of warm earth and green plants. This is what money buys you, she thought. Eternal springtime. While she kept her gaze fixed on the sunlight above, she was aware of the boy’s breathing beside her. It was slower, calmer than it had been moments ago. She heard leaves rustle as he settled against the vines, but she resisted the temptation to look at him. She thought about the earsplitting tantrums that her two-year-old daughter had thrown last week, when little Regina had screamed again and again,
Stop looking at me! Stop looking!
Jane and her husband, Gabriel, had laughed, which only enraged Regina more. Even two-year-olds did not
like
being stared at, and resented having their privacy invaded. So she tried not to invade Teddy Clock’s, but merely shared his leafy cave. Even when she heard him sigh, her attention stayed focused instead on the dappled sunshine shining through the branches above.

“Who are you?” The words were barely a whisper. She forced herself to remain still, to let a pause settle between them.

“I’m Jane,” she said, just as softly.

“But who are you?”

“I’m a friend.”

“No you’re not. I don’t even know you.”

She considered his words, and had to admit they were true. She was not his friend. She was a cop who needed something from him, and once she’d gotten it she would hand him over to a social worker.

“You’re right, Teddy,” she admitted. “I’m not really a friend. I’m a detective. But I do want to help you.”

“No one can help me.”

“I can. I will.”

“Then you’ll die, too.”

That statement, said so flatly, sent a cold whisper up Jane’s back.
You’ll die, too
. She turned to stare at the boy. He wasn’t looking at her, just stared bleakly ahead as if seeing a hopeless future. His eyes were such a pale blue, they seemed unearthly. His light brown hair looked as wispy as corn silk, one drooping forelock curled over a pale, prominent forehead. His feet were bare, and as he rocked back and forth she glimpsed smudges of dried blood under his right toes; she remembered the footprints leading away from the landing, leading away from eight-year-old Kimmie’s body. Teddy had been forced to step in her blood to flee the house.

“Will you really help me?” he said.

“Yes. I promise.”

“I can’t see anything. I lost them, and now I’m afraid to go back and find them.”

“Find what, Teddy?”

“My glasses. I think they’re in my room. I must have left them in my room, but I can’t remember …”

“I’ll find them for you.”

“That’s why I can’t tell you what he looked like. Because I couldn’t see him.”

Jane went still, afraid to interrupt him. Afraid that anything she said, any move she made, would make him pull back into his shell. She waited, but heard only the sound of the splattering water in the fountain.

“Who are you talking about?” she finally asked.

He looked at her, and his eyes seemed lit like blue fire from within. “The man who killed them.” His voice broke, his throat choking down the words to a high keen. “I wish I could help you, but I can’t. I can’t, I can’t …”

It was a mother’s instinct that made her suddenly open her arms, and he tumbled against her, face pressed to her shoulder. She held him as he quaked with shudders so powerful she felt his body might shatter apart, that she was the only force holding together this shaking basket of bones. He might not be her child but at that moment, as he clung to her, his tears soaking into her blouse, she felt every bit his mother, ready to defend him against all the world’s monsters.

“He never stops.” The boy’s words were so muffled against her blouse that she almost missed them. “Next time, he’ll find me.”

“No, he won’t.” She grasped him by the shoulders and gently pushed him away so she could look at his face. Long lashes cast shadows on his powder-white cheeks. “He won’t find you.”

“He’ll come back.” Teddy hugged himself, turning inward to some distant, safe place where no one could reach him. “He always does.”

“Teddy, the only way we can catch him, stop him, is if you help us. If you tell me what happened last night.”

She saw his thin chest expand, and the sigh that followed
sounded
far too weary and defeated for someone so young. “I was in my room,” he whispered. “I was reading one of Bernard’s books.”

“And then what happened?” Jane prompted.

Teddy focused his haunted eyes on her. “And then it started.”

By the time Jane returned to the Ackerman residence, the last of the bodies was being wheeled out—one of the children. Jane paused in the foyer as the stretcher rolled past her, wheels squeaking across the gleaming parquet floor, and she could not block out the sudden image of her own daughter, Regina, lying beneath the shroud. With a shudder she turned, and saw Moore coming down the stairs.

“Did the boy talk to you?”

“Enough to tell me he didn’t see anything that will help us.”

“Then you got a lot farther with him than I did. I had a feeling you’d be able to reach him.”

“It’s not as if I’m all that warm and fuzzy.”

“But he did talk to you. Crowe wants you to be the boy’s primary contact.”

“I’m now the official kid wrangler?”

He gave an apologetic shrug. “Crowe’s the lead.”

She looked up the stairs toward the upper floors, which now seemed strangely quiet. “What’s going on here? Where is everyone?”

“They’re following up on a tip about the housekeeper, Maria Salazar. She has the keys and the password to the security system.”

“You’d expect a housekeeper to have those.”

“It turns out she also has a boyfriend with a few issues.”

“Who is he?”

“Undocumented alien named Andres Zapata. He has a rap sheet in Colombia. Burglary. Drug smuggling.”

“History of violence?”

“Not that we’re aware of. But still.”

Jane focused on the antique clock hanging on the wall, an item
that
no self-respecting burglar would have passed up. And she remembered what she’d heard earlier, that Cecilia’s purse and Bernard’s wallet were both found in the bedroom, and the jewelry box had been untouched.

“If this was a burglary,” she said, “what did he take?”

“A house this size, with so many valuables to choose from?” Moore shook his head. “The only person who might be able to tell us what’s missing is the housekeeper.”

Who now sounded like a suspect.

“I’m going up to see Teddy’s room,” she said and started up the stairs.

Moore did not follow her. When she reached the third floor, she found herself alone; even the CSU team had already departed. Earlier she had merely glanced at the doorway; now she stepped inside and slowly surveyed Teddy’s neatly kept room. On the desk facing the window was a stack of books, many of them old and clearly well loved. She scanned the titles:
Ancient Techniques of Warfare. An Introduction to Ethnobotany. The Cryptozoology Handbook. Alexander in Egypt
. Not the sort of reading she’d expect of a fourteen-year-old, but Teddy Clock was unlike any boy she’d ever come across. She saw no TV, but a laptop computer sat open beside the books. She tapped on a key and the screen came alive, to the last website Teddy had viewed. It was a Google search page, and he had typed in:
Was Alexander the Great murdered?

Judging by the orderly desk, the squared-off stack of books, the boy was addicted to neatness. The pencils in his drawer were all sharpened like spears ready for battle, the paper clips and stapler each in their own slots. Only fourteen and already hopelessly obsessive-compulsive. Here is where he’d been sitting at midnight last night, he’d told her, when he’d heard the faint pops, then Kimmie’s screams as she’d run up the stairs. His penchant for neatness compelled him to close the book,
Alexander in Egypt
, even though he was terrified. He knew what those pops, those cries, signified.

It’s what happened before. The same sounds I heard on the boat. I knew it was gunfire
.

There was no window to crawl out of, no easy escape from this third-floor bedroom.

So he’d turned off his light. He heard the girls’ cries, heard more pops, and hid in the first place a scared child would retreat to: under the bed.

Jane turned to look at the perfectly smooth duvet, at sheets tucked in as tightly as a soldier’s bunk. Had Teddy’s obsessive-compulsive neatness resulted in these perfectly made-up linens? If so, it may well have saved his life. As Teddy cowered under the bed, the killer had turned on the lights and walked in.

Black shoes. That’s all I saw. He had black shoes, and he was standing right by my bed
.

A bed that, at midnight, had not been slept in. To an intruder, it would appear that the child who lived in this room was away that night.

The killer with the black shoes walked out. Hours passed, but Teddy stayed under that bed, cowering at every creak. He thought he heard footsteps return, quieter, stealthier, and imagined the killer was still there in the house, waiting.

He did not know what time it was when he fell asleep. He only knew that when he woke up, the sun was shining. Only then did he finally crawl from his hiding place, stiff and sore from lying half the night on the floor. Through the window, he saw Mrs. Lyman working in her garden. Next door was safety; next door was someone he could run to.

And so he did.

Jane knelt down and looked under the bed. There was so little clearance beneath the box spring that she would never be able to fit under it. But a scared boy had squeezed into that space, smaller than a coffin. She glimpsed something deep in those shadows, and had to lie facedown on the floor before she could reach under far enough to grasp the object.

It was Teddy’s missing glasses.

She rose back to her feet and took one last look around the room. Although the sun shone brightly through the window, and outside it was a summery seventy-five degrees, within these four walls she felt a chill and shivered. It was odd that she had not felt that cold sensation in the rooms where members of the Ackerman family had died. No, it was only here that the horror of what happened last night still seemed to linger.

Here, in the room of the boy who had lived.

“TEDDY CLOCK,” SAID
detective Thomas Moore, “Must be the unluckiest boy on the planet. When you consider all that’s happened to him, no wonder he’s displaying serious emotional problems.”

“Not like he was normal to begin with,” Darren Crowe said. “The kid’s just plain strange.”

“Strange in what way?”

“He’s fourteen years old and he doesn’t do sports? Doesn’t watch TV? He spends every night and weekend hunched over his computer and a bunch of dusty old books.”

“Some people wouldn’t consider that strange.”

Crowe turned to Jane. “You’ve spent the most time with him, Rizzoli. You’ve gotta admit the kid’s not right.”

“By
your
standards,” said Jane. “Teddy’s a lot smarter than that.”

A chorus of
whoa
s went around the table as the other four detectives watched for Crowe’s reaction to that not-so-subtle insult.

“There’s knowledge that’s useless,” Crowe retorted. “And then there’s street smarts.”

“He’s only fourteen and he’s survived two massacres,” she said. “Don’t tell me this boy doesn’t have street smarts.”

As the team lead in the Ackerman investigation, Crowe was acting more abrasive than usual. Their morning team meeting had been going for almost an hour now, and they were all on edge. In the thirty-some hours since the slaughter of the Ackerman family, the media frenzy had intensified, and this morning Jane had awakened to the tabloid headline
HORROR ON BEACON HILL
, accompanied by a photo of their prime suspect Andres Zapata, the missing boyfriend of the Ackermans’ housekeeper. It was an old mug shot from a drug arrest in Colombia, and he had a face that looked like a killer’s. He was an illegal immigrant, he had a burglary record, and his fingerprints were found on the Ackermans’ kitchen door, as well as on their kitchen counters. They had enough for an arrest warrant, but a conviction? Jane wasn’t sure.

She said, “We can’t count on Teddy to help us build a case against Zapata.”

“You’ve got plenty of time to prepare him,” said Crowe.

“He didn’t see a face.”

“He must have seen something that will help us in court.”

“Teddy’s a lot more fragile than you realize. We can’t expect him to testify.”

“He’s fourteen, for God’s sake,” Crowe snapped. “When I was fourteen—”

“Don’t tell me. You were strangling pythons with your bare hands.”