The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

whispered.
    “What?”
    “These coordinates are for
my house.
”
    “Jesus. Listen to me! I’m going to get a cruiser right over there. Is your house secure? I want you to check all your doors. Go, go!”
    Maura sprang from her chair and ran to the front door. It was locked. She ran to the garage door—also locked. She turned toward the kitchen and suddenly froze.
    I left the window open.
    Slowly she moved up the hall, her palms slick, her heart hammering. Stepping into the kitchen, she saw that the window screen was intact, the room unviolated. Melted ice cubes had left a puddle of water glistening under the table. She went to the door and confirmed that it was secured. Of course it would be. Two years ago, an intruder had broken into her home, and ever since then, she’d been careful to lock her doors, to arm her security system. She closed and latched the kitchen window and took calming breaths as her pulse gradually slowed. It was just a piece of mail, she thought. A taunt delivered through the U.S. Postal Service. Turning, she looked at the envelope that the note had arrived in. Only then did she notice that it had no postmark, that the stamp was pristine.
    He delivered it himself. He came to my street and slipped it in my mailbox.
    What else did he leave for me?
    Looking through the window, she wondered what secrets the darkness concealed. Her hands were clammy again as she crossed to the switch for the outside lamps. She was almost afraid of what the light might reveal, afraid that Bradley Rose himself would be standing right outside her window, staring back at her. But when she flipped the switch, the glare revealed no monsters. She saw the gas barbecue grill and the teak patio furniture that she’d bought only last month, but had yet to enjoy. And beyond the patio, at the periphery of the light, she could just make out the shadowy edge of her garden. Nothing alarming, nothing amiss.
    Then a pale ripple caught her eye, a faint white fluttering in the darkness. She strained to make out what it was, but it refused to take shape, refused to reveal itself. She pulled the flashlight from her kitchen drawer and shone it into the night. The beam landed on the Japanese pear tree that she’d planted two summers ago at the far corner of the yard. Suspended from one of its branches was something white and pendulous, something that was now swaying languorously in the wind.
    Her doorbell rang.
    She spun around, lungs heaving in fright. Hurrying into the hallway, she saw the electric blue of a cruiser’s rack lights pulsing through her living room window. She opened the front door to see two Newton patrolmen.
    “Everything okay, Dr. Isles?” one of the officers asked. “We got a report of a possible intruder at this address.”
    “I’m fine.” She released a deep breath. “But I need you to come with me. To check something.”
    “What?”
    “It’s in my backyard.”
    The patrolmen followed her up the hall and into her kitchen. There she paused, suddenly wondering if she was about to make herself look ridiculous. The hysterical single woman, imagining ghosts dangling from pear trees. Now that she had two cops standing beside her, her fear had faded and more practical concerns came to mind. If the killer really had left something in her backyard, she had to approach the object as a professional.
    “Wait here just a minute,” she said, and ran back to the hall closet, where she kept the box of latex gloves.
    “Do you mind telling us what’s going on?” the officer called out.
    She returned to the kitchen carrying the box of gloves and handed gloves to both of them. “Just in case,” she said.
    “What are these for?”
    “Evidence.” She grabbed the flashlight and opened the kitchen door. Outside, the summer night was fragrant with the scent of pine bark mulch and damp grass. Slowly, she walked across the yard, her flashlight beam sweeping the patio, the vegetable plot, the lawn, searching for any other surprises she’d been meant to find. The only thing that did not belong was what now hung fluttering in the shadows ahead. She came to a halt in front of the pear tree and aimed her flashlight at the object dangling from the branch.
    “This thing?” said the cop. “It’s just a grocery sack.”
    With something inside it.
She thought of all the horrors that might fit inside that plastic sack, all the gruesome keepsakes that a killer might harvest from a victim, and suddenly she did not want to