Last to Die: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

admitted. “They’re subtle.”
    “When the bullet was fired into her head,” said Welliver, “it resulted in what’s called diaschisis. It’s Greek for ‘shocked thought.’ At the age of eleven, her brain was still relatively plastic, so she’s been able to recover almost all function. Her language and motor skills are virtually normal, as is her memory. Except for that night in London. Prior to the attack, she was an excellent student, even gifted. But I’m afraid she’ll never be an academic star now.”
    “But she can still live a normal life?” said Jane.
    “Not entirely. Like many head-injury patients, she’s impulsive. She takes risks. She says things without much thought about the consequences.”
    “Sounds like a typical teenager.”
    Dr. Welliver gave a knowing laugh. “True.
Teenage brain
is a diagnosis in and of itself. But I don’t think Claire’s ever going to grow out of this. Impulse control will always be an issue for her. She loses her temper, blurts out what she thinks. It’s already caused problems. She has a feud going on with another girl here. It started with some name calling, nasty notes. Accelerated to tripping, shoving. Clothes vandalized, earthworms in the bed.”
    “Sounds like me and my brothers,” said Jane.
    “Except you, hopefully, grew out of it. But Claire’s always going to leap before she looks. And that’s especially dangerous, given her other neurologic issue.”
    “Which is?”
    “Her sleep–wake cycle has been completely disrupted. That happens to many head-injured patients, but most of them suffer from excessive drowsiness. They sleep more than normal. Claire, for some reason, had a paradoxical result. She’s restless, especially at night, when she seems to be hyperacute. She seems to need only four hours of sleep a day.”
    “The night I arrived,” said Maura, “I saw her down in the garden. It was well after midnight.”
    Welliver nodded. “That’s when she’s most active. She’s like a nocturnal creature. We call her our midnight rambler.”
    “And you allow her to just wander around in the dark?” said Jane.
    “When she was living in Ithaca, there was nothing her foster family could do to stop it. They tried medications, locked doors, threats of punishment. This is going to be Claire’s baseline behavior for the rest of her life, and she needs to learn to deal with it. She’s not a prisoner here, so we decided not to treat her as one.”
    “By allowing her to run wild at night?”
    “Fortunately there aren’t many things that can hurt you in the Maine woods. We have no poisonous snakes, no large predators, and our black bears are more terrified of us than we are of them. The biggest danger is that she’ll step on a porcupine, or sprain an ankle stumbling into some animal burrow. This is simply Claire’s nature, and it’s a condition she’ll have to live with. Frankly, it’s far safer for her to wander here in the woods than in any big city.”
    Jane could not argue with that statement; she knew only too well where the most dangerous predators were found. “And after she graduates from Evensong? What happens to her then?”
    “When that time comes, she’ll have to make her own choices. Meanwhile, we’re giving her the skills to survive. That’s our purpose here, Detective. It’s the reason this school exists, so these children can find their places in the world. A world that hasn’t been kind to them.” Welliver pointed toward the filing cabinet. “We have dozens of students like Claire, some so traumatized when they arrived thatthey could barely talk. Or they’d wake up every night screaming. But children are resilient. With guidance, they can bounce back.”
    Jane opened Claire’s file. Like Will’s, it included an initial psychological evaluation by Dr. Welliver. She turned to a summary of the Ithaca PD investigation. “How did Claire end up living with this particular couple, the Buckleys?”
    “Bob and Barbara Buckley were friends of Claire’s parents, and her designated guardians in their will. They had no children of their own. When they took in Claire, they certainly got a handful.”
    Jane stared at the police report summing up the Buckleys’ deaths and looked up at Maura. “Someone plowed into their car. Shot them both in the head.”
    “It certainly looked like a targeted killing,” said Dr. Welliver. “But the Buckleys had no known enemies. Which raised the possibility that
Claire
was the