The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

Josephine hugged herself, but it was not enough to still her shaking. “I don’t know what to do.”
    “We know who the killer is,” said Jane. “We know how he operates, so the advantage is all ours.”
    Josephine was silent as she considered her choices. Run or fight. There were no in-betweens, no half measures.
    “Come back to Boston,” said Jane. “Help us put an end to it.”
    “If you were me, is that
really
what you would do?” Josephine asked softly. She looked up.
    Jane stared straight back at her. “It’s exactly what I would do.”

TWENTY-TWO
     
    A row of shiny new locks now decorated her apartment door.
    Josephine fastened the chain, turned the dead bolt, and slid the latch shut. Then, just for good measure, she wedged a chair beneath the knob—not much of a barrier, but at least it would serve as a warning device.
    Clumsy in her cast, she maneuvered on crutches to the window and looked down at the street. She saw Detective Frost emerge from her building and climb into his car. Once, he might have looked up and given her a smile, a friendly wave, but not anymore. He was all business with her now, as cool and detached as his colleague Rizzoli. This is the consequence of telling lies, she thought. I wasn’t honest, and now he doesn’t trust me. He’s right not to trust me.
    I haven’t told them the biggest secret of all.
    Frost had already checked her apartment when they’d arrived, but she now felt compelled to make her own inspection through her bedroom, her bathroom, and then into the kitchen. It was such a modest little kingdom, but at least it was hers. Everything was as she’d left it a week ago; everything comfortingly familiar. Everything once again back to normal.
    But later that evening, as she stood at the stove stirring onions and tomatoes into a simmering pot of chili, she suddenly thought about Gemma, who would never again enjoy a meal, never again smell spices or taste wine or feel the heat wafting up from a stove.
    When she finally sat down to eat, she could stomach only a few spoonfuls, and then her appetite vanished. She sat staring at the wall, at the only adornment she’d hung there: a calendar. It was a sign of how uncertain she’d been that she’d actually make a home in Boston. She’d never gotten around to properly decorating her apartment. But now I will, she thought. Detective Rizzoli was right: It’s time to take control and claim this city as my own. I’m going to stop running. I owe it to Gemma, who sacrificed everything for me, who died so that I could live. So now I
will
live. I’ll have a home, and I’ll make friends, and maybe I’ll even fall in love.
    It starts now.
    Outside, the afternoon faded to a warm summer dusk.
    With her leg in a cast, she could not take her usual evening walk, could not even pace the floor. Instead she opened a bottle of wine and carried it to the couch, where she sat surfing through TV channels, more channels than she ever knew existed, and all of them the same. Pretty faces. Men with guns. More pretty faces. Men with golf clubs.
    Suddenly a new image appeared on the TV, one that made her hand freeze on the remote. It was the evening news, and on the screen was a photo of a young woman, dark-haired and pretty.
    “…the woman whose mummified body was found in the Crispin Museum has been identified. Lorraine Edgerton vanished from a remote New Mexico park twenty-five years ago…”
    It was Madam X.
She looks like my mother. She looks like me.
    She shut off the TV. The apartment seemed more like a cage than a home, and she was a bird beating itself insane against the bars.
I want my life back.
    After three glasses of wine, she finally fell asleep.
    It was barely light when she woke up. Sitting at the window, she watched the sun rise and wondered how many days she’d be trapped within these walls. This, too, was a kind of death, waiting for the next attack, the next threatening note. She had told Rizzoli and Frost about the mailings addressed to Josephine Sommer—evidence that, unfortunately, she had ripped up and flushed down the toilet. Now the police were monitoring both her apartment and her mail.
    The next move was Bradley Rose’s.
    Outside, the morning brightened. Buses rumbled past and joggers began their circuit around the block and people headed off to work. She watched as the day progressed and saw the playground fill with children and the afternoon traffic began to build.
    By evening, she could stand it no