The Silent Girl

finished in there?”
    “They’re bringing out the bodies now.”
    Frost frowned as Jane bent down to pull on shoe covers. “You know, you probably shouldn’t go in the house,” he said.
    “Like I haven’t already been in there?”
    “That’s the point.”
    He didn’t need to explain; she already understood. She’d been the one to take down Mark Mallory, and it was almost certainly her gun that had fired the bullet into Patrick Dion’s brain. Her weapon was now in the custody of ballistics, and she missed its weight on her belt.
    The front door opened and the first stretcher came out, bearing one of the bodies. In silence they watched it roll toward the waiting morgue van.
    “The older man had one bullet wound. Right temple, close range,” said Maura.
    “Patrick Dion,” said Jane.
    “I have a feeling we’re going to find gunshot residue on his right hand. Does that remind you of another crime scene?”
    “The Red Phoenix,” said Jane softly. “Wu Weimin.”
    “His death was called a suicide.”
    “What are you going to call this one, Maura?”
    Maura sighed. “We have no witnesses, do we?”
    Jane shook her head. “Bella said that she and Iris were upstairs when it happened. They didn’t see it.”
    “But there was another intruder in the house,” Frost pointed out. “You said you saw him.”
    “I don’t know what I saw.” Jane looked toward the garden. There, last night by moonlight, she had caught a glimpse of something slipping into the woods. “I don’t think I’ll ever know.”
    Maura turned as the second body was wheeled out of the house. “I could call Patrick Dion’s death a suicide, but it’s too similar to the Red Phoenix, Jane. It feels staged.”
    “I think it’s meant to be similar. It’s meant to be an echo from the past. Justice completing its circle.”
    “
Justice
doesn’t qualify as a manner of death.”
    Jane looked at her. “Maybe it should.”
    “Hey, Frost! Rizzoli!” Detective Tam waved to them from a grove of trees, where he stood with a team of criminalists.
    “What is it?” said Jane.
    “Cadaver dog’s just scented on something!”
    The missing girls
. Surely there were more names that had not made it onto Ingersoll’s list, other girls who’d vanished in the years since Charlotte Dion disappeared. And what more convenient place to hide the bodies than in this private sanctuary, closed off fromprying eyes? As they approached the CSU team, she saw the dog watching her with alert eyes, tail happily wagging. The dog was the only cheerful one among them. The men and women gathered in the shadow of those trees stood silent and grim-faced because they understood what most likely lay beneath their feet.
    “The soil’s been disturbed here,” Tam said, pointing to a patch of bare earth under the trees. “It was covered with loose brush to conceal it.”
    A recent burial. Jane looked around at the tree-shaded grounds and the dense shrubbery, at all the secret spots hidden by shade and brush. This was evil on a scale she could scarcely comprehend. How many bodies are lying here, she wondered. How many silent girls who will finally be able to speak? Suddenly she felt overwhelmed by the task ahead of them. She was bruised, hungry, and weary of death.
    “Frost, I think I’ll leave this to you. I’m going home,” she said and walked away, back across the lawn. Back into the sunshine.
    “Rizzoli,” said Tam. He followed her toward the driveway. “Just wanted to let you know, I spoke to the hospital a little while ago. Iris Fang is out of surgery and awake.”
    “Is she going to be okay?”
    “She took a bullet to the thigh and lost a lot of blood, but she’ll recover. She seems to be a pretty tough bird.”
    “We should all be so tough.”
    It was bright on that driveway with the morning sun in their faces. Tam pulled sunglasses from his pocket and slipped them on. “Maybe I should head over to the hospital? Get a statement from her?” he suggested.
    “Later. Right now, I need you here. Brookline asked us to assist, so we’re going to be spending a lot of time on this property.”
    “So I’m staying with the team?”
    She squinted at him, the sun’s glare piercing her tired eyes. “Yeah, until we wrap this up, I’ll ask your District A-1 supervisor to let us keep you. That is, if you want to stay with homicide.”
    “Thanks. I’d like that a lot,” he said simply. As he turned to leave,she suddenly noticed a bright streak