The Silent Girl

report, because he had a police record.Burglary, trespassing, assault and battery. That record, plus his employer’s name—Donohue Wholesale Meats—instantly caught Jane’s attention. Boston PD was all too familiar with the owner of the company, Kevin Donohue, because of his deep and enduring ties to local organized crime. Over the past four decades, Donohue had advanced through the ranks from a common street thug to one of the three most powerful names in the local Irish mafia. Law enforcement knew exactly who and what Donohue was; they just couldn’t prove it in court. Not yet.
    Jane pulled out the folder of crime scene photos and flipped to the image of Joey Gilmore’s body, lying on the floor amid scattered take-out cartons. He’d been felled with a single bullet to the back of his head. Dr. Zucker might call this a case of
amok
, but to Jane, it looked a hell of a lot like a gangland execution.
    Victim number two was James Fang, age thirty-seven, who worked as host, waiter, and cashier in the Red Phoenix restaurant. He and his wife, Iris, had immigrated from Taiwan sixteen years earlier, when he arrived in the United States as a graduate student in Asian literature. The restaurant was merely his evening job; during the day, he taught in the after-school enrichment program at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center. He and Wu Weimin were described as good friends who had worked together in the Red Phoenix for five years. There were no known conflicts between them. Jane found no mention in the report of the Fangs’ daughter, Laura, who had gone missing two years before. Perhaps Staines and Ingersoll were not even aware of the earlier tragedy that had struck the Fang family.
    Victims three and four were a married couple, Arthur and Dina Mallory of Brookline, Massachusetts. Arthur was forty-eight, president and CEO of the Wellesley Group, an investment firm. No occupation was listed for Dina, age forty; judging by her husband’s job title, she did not need to work. For both Arthur and Dina, this was a second marriage, and a blending of two families. Arthur’s first wife was the former Barbara Hart, and they had a son, Mark, age twenty.Dina’s ex-husband was Patrick Dion, and they had a daughter, seventeen. The police report specifically addressed the issue that every good homicide investigator automatically explores: any and all conflicts that resulted from the victims’ divorces and remarriages.
    According to Arthur Mallory’s son, Mark Mallory, relations between the Mallory and Dion families were extremely cordial despite the fact Dina and Arthur left their first spouses for each other five years earlier. Even after the divorce and remarriage, Dina Mallory and her ex-husband, Patrick, remained on friendly terms, and the families often shared holiday dinners
.
    How bizarrely civilized that was, thought Jane. Patrick’s wife leaves him for another man, and then they all spend Christmas together. It sounded too good to be true, but the information came straight from Arthur Mallory’s own son, Mark, who would know. It was the ideal reconstituted family, all smiles and no conflict. She supposed it was possible, but she certainly could not see it happening in her own family. She tried to imagine a Rizzoli reunion that included her father, her mother, her father’s bimbo, and her mother’s new boyfriend, Vince Korsak. Now,
there
was a massacre waiting to happen, and all bets were off as to who’d be left standing.
    But the Mallorys and Dions had somehow made it work. Perhaps it was for the sake of Charlotte, who would have been only twelve when her parents divorced. Like most children of divorce, she’d probably shuttled between two households, the poor little rich girl, bouncing between the homes of her mother, Dina, and her father, Patrick.
    Jane turned to the last page in the file and found a brief addendum to the report:
    Charlotte Dion, daughter of Dina Mallory, was reported missing April 24. Last seen in vicinity of Faneuil Hallwhile on school field trip. According to Detective Hank Buckholz, evidence points to likely abduction. Investigation continuing
.
    That addendum, dated April 28, was signed by Detective Ingersoll.
    Two missing girls, Laura Fang and Charlotte Dion. Both of them were daughters of victims killed in the Red Phoenix, but nothing in this report indicated that this was anything more than a sad coincidence. It was just as Dr. Zucker had said. Sometimes there is no pattern, no