The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

for him. What any good parent would do. They called it a therapeutic residential community. A place where boys could go to deal with…issues.”
    “We never should have done it,” said Cynthia. “
You
never should have done it.”
    “We had no choice. He had to go.”
    “He would have been better off here, with
me.
Not sent to some boot camp in the middle of the woods.”
    Kimball snorted. “A camp? More like a country club.” He turned to Jane. “It had its own lake. Hiking and cross-country ski trails. Hell, if I ever go off
my
rocker, I’d love to be sent to a place like that.”
    “Is that what happened to Bradley, Mr. Rose?” asked Frost.
    “He went off his rocker?”
    “Don’t make him sound like a lunatic,” said Cynthia. “He wasn’t.”
    “Then why did he end up there, Mrs. Rose?”
    “Because we thought—Kimball thought—”
    “We thought they could teach him better self-control,” her husband finished for her. “That’s all. Lotta boys need tough love. He stayed there for two years and came out a well-behaved, hard-workin’ young man. I was proud to take him to Egypt with me.”
    “He resented you, Kimball,” said his wife. “He told me that.”
    “Well, parents have to make hard choices. That was
my
choice, to shake him up a little, set him on the right track.”
    “And now he stays away. I’m the one who’s being punished, all because of that
fine choice
you made.” Cynthia lowered her head and began to cry. No one spoke. The only noises were the crackling fire and Cynthia’s quiet sobbing, a sound of raw and unremitting pain.
    The ring of Jane’s cell phone was a cruel interruption. At once, she silenced it and moved away from the hearth to answer the call.
    It was Detective Crowe on the line. “Got a surprise for you,” he said, his cheerful voice a jarring contrast to the grief that hung over that room.
    “What is it?” she asked softly.
    “FBI has her fingerprints in their system.”
    “Josephine’s?”
    “Or whatever her real name is. We lifted the prints from her apartment and ran them through the AFIS database.”
    “We got a hit?”
    “Now we know why our girl ran. Turns out her prints match some latents that were lifted off a crime scene twelve years ago, in San Diego.”
    “What was the crime?”
    “Homicide.”

NINETEEN
     
    “The victim was a thirty-six-year-old white male named Jimmy Otto,” said Detective Crowe. “His body was discovered in San Diego, after a dog dug up a tasty little snack: a human finger. The dog’s owner saw what Fido brought home, freaked out, and called 911. Dog led the police back to the body, which was buried in a shallow grave in a neighbor’s backyard. The victim had been dead for a few days, and wildlife had gotten at the extremities so they couldn’t get any usable fingerprints. There was no wallet on the body, either, but whoever stripped his ID missed a hotel key card that was tucked in his jeans pocket. It was for a local Holiday Inn, where the guest was registered under the name James Otto.”
    “A hotel key card?” said Jane. “So this victim didn’t live in San Diego.”
    “No. His address was here, in Massachusetts, where he lived with his sister. Carrie Otto flew out to San Diego and ID’d her brother’s clothing. And what was left of him.”
    Jane tore open a packet of Advil, popped two tablets in her mouth, and washed them down with lukewarm coffee. Last night, she and Frost had not arrived home in Boston until two AM , and what little sleep she did get was repeatedly interrupted by one-year-old Regina, who demanded hugs and reassurance that Mommy really was home again. This morning, Jane had awakened with a monster headache. The twists and turns of the investigation were making that headache worse, and the glow of the fluorescent lights in the conference room made even her eyeballs hurt.
    “You both with me so far?” said Crowe, glancing up at Jane and Frost, who looked as exhausted as Jane felt.
    “Yeah,” she muttered. “So what did the autopsy show?”
    “Cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. The weapon was never recovered.”
    “And whose backyard was he buried in?”
    “It was a rental house,” said Crowe. “The tenants were a single mother and her fourteen-year-old daughter, and they’d already packed up and vanished. The police sprayed the house with luminol, and the girl’s bedroom lit up like Vegas. Traces of blood were all over the floor