The Keepsake (25 page)

THIRTY-THREE

It was dusk by the time the Maine State Police divers finished their search of the bog. The water had been only chest-deep; standing on the dry bank, Jane had watched the divers’ heads frequently popping up as they surfaced to get their bearings or to bring up some new object for closer inspection. The water was too murky for a visual search, so they had been forced to rake through the slime and decaying vegetation with their hands, a repulsive task that Jane was grateful she did not have to perform.

Especially when she saw what they finally dredged up.

The woman’s body now lay exposed on a plastic tarp, her moss-flecked hair dripping black water. So stained was her skin with tannins, it was impossible to distinguish her race or an obvious cause of death. What they did know was that her death was not accidental; her torso had been weighed down with a bag full of heavy stones. Jane stared at the tormented expression preserved in the woman’s blackened face and thought: I hope you were dead when he tied that bag of stones around your waist. When he rolled you over the bank and watched you sink into dark water.

“This is clearly not your missing woman,” said Dr. Daljeet Singh.

She looked up at the Maine medical examiner who stood beside her on the bank. Dr. Singh’s white Sikh headdress stood out in the fading light, making him easy to spot among the more conventionally garbed investigators gathered at the scene. When he’d arrived, she’d been startled to see the exotic figure step out of the truck, not at all what she expected to encounter in the North Woods. But judging by his well-worn L.L. Bean boots and the hiking gear he packed in the back of his truck, Dr. Singh was well acquainted with Maine’s rough terrain. Certainly he’d come better prepared than she had, in her city pantsuit.

“The young woman you’re looking for was abducted four days ago?” asked Dr. Singh.

“This isn’t her,” said Jane.

“No, this woman has been submerged for some time. So have those other specimens.” Dr. Singh pointed to the animal remains that had also been pulled up from the bog. There were two well-preserved cats and a dog, plus the skeletal remnants of unidentifiable creatures. The stone-filled sacks tied around all the bodies left no doubt that these unfortunate victims had not simply wandered into the mire and drowned.

“This killer has been experimenting with animals,” said Dr. Singh. He turned to the woman’s corpse. “And it appears he’s perfected his preservation technique.”

Jane shuddered and looked across the bog at the fading sunset. Frost had told her that bogs were magical places, home to a wondrous variety of orchids and mosses and dragonflies. She didn’t see the magic that evening as she stared across the undulating surface of waterlogged peat. What she saw was a cold stew of corpses.

“I’ll do the autopsy tomorrow,” said Dr. Singh. “If you’d like to observe, you’re certainly welcome.”

What she really wanted to do was drive home to Boston. Take a hot shower, kiss her daughter good night, and climb into bed with Gabriel. But her work here was not yet finished.

“The autopsy will be in Augusta?” she asked.

“Yes, around eight o’clock. Can I expect you?”

“I’ll be there.” She took a deep breath and straightened. “I guess I’d better find a place to stay for the night.”

“The Hawthorn Motel’s a few miles down the road. It serves a good breakfast. Not that awful continental stuff, but lovely omelets and pancakes.”

“Thanks for the tip,” she said.
Only a pathologist could stand over a dripping corpse and talk so enthusiastically about pancakes.

She walked back up the trail by flashlight, the path now well marked by little flags of police tape. Emerging from the trees, she found that the parking lot was starting to empty out; only a few official vehicles remained. The state police had already searched the building, but all they’d found was trash and the putrefying remains of that raccoon she had spotted earlier. They had not found Josephine or Bradley Rose.

But he’s been here, she thought, gazing toward the woods. He parked near these trees. He walked the trail to the bog. There he tugged on a rope and hauled one of his keepsakes from the water, the way a fisherman hauls in his catch.

She climbed into her car and drove back along that crumbling road, her poor Subaru jouncing across potholes that seemed even more treacherous in the dark. Moments after she turned onto the main road, her cell phone rang.

“I’ve been trying to reach you for at least two hours,” said Frost.

“There was no reception at the bog. They finished searching and found only the one body. I’m wondering if he has another stash—”

“Where are you now?” Frost cut in.

“I’m staying here for the night. I want to watch the autopsy tomorrow.”

“I mean right
now,
where are you?”

“I’m going to check into a motel. Why?”

“What’s the name of the motel?”

“I think it’s called the Hawthorn. It’s around here somewhere.”

“Okay, I’ll see you there in a few hours.”

“You’re coming up to Maine?”

“I’m already on my way. And someone’s joining us.”

“Who?”

“We’ll talk about it when we get there.”

Jane stopped first at a local drugstore for new underwear and socks and then to pick up a take-out pepperoni pizza. While her hand-washed pants hung drying in the bathroom, she sat in her room at the Hawthorn Motel, eating pizza as she read Jimmy Otto’s file. There were three volumes, one for each year he had been a student at the Hilzbrich Institute. No, not a student—an inmate, she thought, remembering the ugly concrete building, the remote location. A place to securely segregate from society the sort of boys you didn’t want anywhere near your daughters.

Jimmy Otto, most of all.

She paused at the transcript of what Jimmy had said during a private therapy session. He’d been only sixteen years old.

When I was thirteen, I saw this picture in a history book. It was in a concentration camp where all these women were killed in the gas chambers. Their bodies were naked, lying in a row. I think about that picture a lot, about all those women. Dozens and dozens of them, just lying there like they’re waiting for me to do whatever I want with them. Fuck them in any hole. Poke sticks in their eyes. Slice off their nipples. I want there to be a bunch of women at one time, a whole row of them. Or it’s not a party, is it?

But how do you collect more than one at a time? Is there some way to keep a corpse from rotting, a way to keep it fresh? I’d like to find out, because it’s no fun if a woman just rots away and leaves me…

A knock on her motel room door made Jane snap straight. She dropped the half-eaten slice of pizza in the box and called out, in a none-too-steady voice: “Yes? Who is it?”

“It’s me,” Barry Frost answered.

“Just a second.” She went into the bathroom and pulled on her still-damp slacks. By the time she got to the door, her nerves were steady again, her heart no longer racing. She opened the door and found a surprise awaiting her.

Frost was not alone.

The woman standing beside him was in her forties, dark-haired and strikingly beautiful. She wore faded blue jeans and a black pullover, but on her lean, athletic frame even that casual garb looked elegant. She said not a word to Jane but slipped right past her into the room and ordered: “Lock the door.”

Even after Frost had turned the dead bolt, the woman did not relax. She crossed immediately to the window and yanked the drapes more tightly shut, as though the narrowest chink might admit the gaze of unfriendly eyes.

“Who are you?” Jane asked.

The woman turned to face her. And in that instant, even before Jane heard the answer, she saw it in the woman’s face, in the arched brows, the chiseled cheekbones. A face you’d see painted on a Greek urn, she thought. Or on the wall of an Egyptian tomb.

“My name is Medea Sommer,” the woman said. “I’m Josephine’s mother.”

THIRTY-FOUR

“But…you’re supposed to be dead,” Jane said, stunned.

The woman gave a tired laugh. “That’s the story, anyway.”

“Josephine thinks you are.”

“That’s what I told her to say. Unfortunately, not everyone believes her.” Medea crossed to the lamp and turned it off, plunging the room into darkness. Then she went to the window and peered out through the slit in the curtains.

Jane glanced at Frost, who was barely a silhouette standing beside her in the shadows. “How did you find her?” she whispered.

“I didn’t,” he said. “She found me. You were the one she really wanted to speak to. When she found out you’d left for Maine, she tracked down my phone number instead.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this on the phone?”

“I wouldn’t let him,” said Medea, her back still turned to them, her gaze still on the street. “What I’m going to tell you now has to stay in this room. It can’t be shared with your colleagues. It can’t be whispered anywhere. It’s the only way I can stay dead. The only way Tari—Josephine—has any chance of a normal life.” Even in the dark, Jane could see the taut outline of the curtain she was clutching. “My daughter is all that matters to me,” she said softly.

“Then why did you abandon her?” asked Jane.

Medea spun around to face her. “I never abandoned her! I would have been here weeks ago, if only I’d known what was happening.”

“
If only you’d known?
From what I understand, she’s been fending for herself for years. And you were nowhere around.”

“I had to stay away from her.”

“Why?”

“Because being around me could mean her death.” Once again, Medea turned toward the street. “This has nothing to do with Josephine. She’s just a pawn for them. A way to draw me out into the open. The one he really wants is
me.
”

“You care to explain that?”

With a sigh, Medea sank into a chair by the window. She was just a faceless shadow sitting there, a soft voice in the darkness.

“Let me tell you a story,” she said. “About a girl who got involved with the wrong boy. A girl so naïve that she couldn’t recognize the difference between sweet infatuation and…” She paused. “Fatal obsession.”

“You’re talking about yourself.”

“Yes.”

“And who was the boy?”

“Bradley Rose.” Medea released a shuddering breath, and her dark form seemed to shrink in the chair, as though folding in on itself for protection. “I was only twenty. What does any girl know at twenty? It was my first time out of the country, my first excavation. In the desert, everything looked different. The sky was bluer, the colors were brighter. And when a shy boy smiles at you, when he starts to leave you little gifts, you think you’re in love.”

“You were in Egypt with Kimball Rose.”

Medea nodded. “The Cambyses dig. When I was offered the chance to go, I jumped at it. So did dozens of other students. There we were in the western desert, living our dreams! Digging by day, sleeping in tents at night. I’ve never seen so many stars, so many beautiful stars.” She paused. “It was a place where anyone could have fallen in love. I was just a girl from Indio, ready to finally start living. And there was Bradley, the son of Kimball Rose himself. He was brilliant and quiet and shy. There’s something about a shy man that makes you think he’s harmless.”

“But he wasn’t.”

“I didn’t know what he really was. I didn’t know a lot of things until it was too late.”

“What was he?”

“A monster.” Medea’s head lifted in the darkness. “I didn’t see it at first. What I saw was a boy who looked at me with adoring eyes. Who talked with me about the one subject we both loved most. Who started bringing me little gifts. We worked in the trench together. We ate every meal together. Eventually we slept together.” She paused. “That’s when things began to change.”

“How?”

“It was as if he no longer considered me a separate person. I’d become part of him. As if he’d devoured me, absorbed me. If I walked to the other side of the camp, he followed me. If I spoke to anyone else, he insisted on knowing what we’d talked about. If I even looked at another man, he became upset. He was always watching, always spying.”

It was such an old story, thought Jane, the same story that had played out so many times between other lovers. A story that too often ended with homicide detectives standing at a bloody crime scene. Medea was one of the lucky ones; she had managed to stay alive.

Yet she had never really escaped.

“It was Gemma who took me aside and pointed out the obvious,” said Medea.

“Gemma Hamerton?”

Medea nodded. “She was one of the grad students at the site. A few years older than me, and a hundred years wiser. She saw what was happening, and she told me I needed to assert myself. And if he didn’t back off, then I should tell him to go to hell. Oh, Gemma was good at that, standing up for herself. But I wasn’t strong enough then. I wasn’t able to break away.”

“What happened?”

“Gemma went to Kimball. She told him to get his son under control. Bradley must have learned about the conversation, because the next thing he said to me was that I must never talk to Gemma again.”

“I hope you told him where to go.”

“I should have,” Medea said softly. “But I didn’t have the backbone. It seems impossible to believe now. When I think back to what sort of girl I was, I don’t recognize myself. I don’t know that person. That utterly pitiful victim who couldn’t even save herself.”

“How did you finally break away from him?”

“It was what he did to Gemma. One night, while she was sleeping, her tent flap was sewn shut. Then the tent was doused with gasoline and set on fire. I was the one who managed to slice the tent open and pull her out.”

“Bradley actually tried to kill her?”

“No one could prove it, but I knew. That’s when I finally understood what he was capable of. I got on a plane and came home.”

“But it wasn’t over.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Medea stood and went back to the window. “It was just the beginning.” By now, Jane’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see the woman’s pale hand clutching the curtain. Could see her shoulders momentarily tense as a car’s headlights slowly passed by on the street and then moved on.

“I was pregnant,” Medea said softly.

Jane stared at her in astonishment. “Josephine is
Bradley’s
daughter?”

“Yes.” She turned and faced Jane. “But she can’t
ever
know that.”

“She told us her father was a French archaeologist.”

“All her life I’ve lied to her. I told her that her father was a good man who died before she was born. I don’t know if she actually believes me, but it’s the story I’ve stuck to.”

“And what about the other story you told her? Why you kept moving and changing your names? She thinks you were running from the police.”

Medea shrugged. “It did explain things, didn’t it?”

“But it’s not true.”

“I had to give her
some
reason, a reason that wouldn’t terrify her. Better to be running from the police than from a monster.”

Especially when that monster is your own father.

“If you were being stalked, why run? Why not just go to the police?”

“You think I didn’t try that? A few months after I came home, Bradley turned up at my college campus. He told me we were soul mates. He told me I belonged to him. I told him I never wanted to see him again. He started following me, sending me flowers every fucking day. I threw them away and called the police and even managed to get him arrested. But then his father sent his attorneys to take care of the problem. When your father’s Kimball Rose, you’re untouchable.” She paused. “Then it got worse. Much worse.”

“How?”

“Bradley showed up one day with an old friend. Someone who scared me even more than Bradley ever did.”

“Jimmy Otto.”

Medea seemed to shudder at the mention of that name.

“Bradley could pass for normal—just another quiet man. But with Jimmy, you only had to look in his eyes to know he was different. They were black as a shark’s. When he stared at you, you just knew he was thinking about what he’d like to do to you. And he became obsessed with me, too.

“So they both followed me. I’d catch a glimpse of Jimmy staring at me in the library. Or Bradley peeking in my window. They were playing a psychological game of tag team, trying to break me down. Trying to make me look crazy.”

Jane looked at Frost. “Even then,” she said, “they were already hunting together.”

“Finally, I left the university,” said Medea. “By then I was eight months’ pregnant, and my grandmother was dying. I went back to Indio and had the baby. Within a few weeks, Bradley and Jimmy showed up in town. I filed a restraining order and got them both arrested. This time, I was going to put them away. I had a baby to protect and it had to end there.”

“But it didn’t. You chickened out and dropped the charges against Bradley.”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean, not exactly? You did drop the charges.”

“I made a deal with the Devil. Kimball Rose. He wanted his son free of prosecution. I wanted my daughter to be safe. So I dropped the charges, and Kimball wrote me a big check. Enough money to buy my daughter and me a new life, with new names.”

Jane shook her head. “You took the money and ran? It must have been a hell of a check.”

“It wasn’t the money. Kimball used my daughter against me. He threatened to take her from me if I didn’t accept his offer. He’s her grandfather, and he had an army of lawyers to fight me. I had no choice, so I took the money and dropped the charges.
She’s
the reason I did it, the reason I’ve never stopped running. To keep her away from that family, away from anyone who might hurt her. You understand that, don’t you? That a mother will do anything to protect her child?”

Jane nodded. She understood completely.

Medea returned to the chair and sank down with a sigh. “I thought if I kept my daughter safe, she’d never know what it’s like to be hunted. She’d grow up fearless and smart. A warrior woman—that’s what I wanted her to be. What I always told her to strive for. And she
was
growing up smart. And fearless. She didn’t know enough to be afraid.” Medea paused. “Until San Diego.”

“The shooting in her bedroom.”

Medea nodded. “That’s the night she learned she could never be fearless again. We packed up the next day and drove to Mexico. Ended up in Cabo San Lucas, where we lived for four years. We were fine there and we were hidden.” She sighed. “But girls grow up. They turn eighteen and insist on making their own choices. She wanted to go to college and study archaeology. Like mother, like daughter.” She gave a sad laugh.

“You let her go?”

“Gemma promised to keep an eye on her, so I thought it would be safe. She had a new name, a new identity. I didn’t think that Jimmy would ever be able to find her.”

There was a long silence as Jane took in what Medea had just said. “
Jimmy?
But Jimmy Otto’s dead.”

Medea’s head lifted. “What?”

“You should know that. You shot him in San Diego.”

“No.”

“You shot him in the back of the head. Dragged his body outside and buried him.”

“That’s not true. That wasn’t Jimmy.”

“Then who was buried in the backyard?”

“It was Bradley Rose.”