The Silent Girl

Chinese. It made us all look like criminals.”
    “Geez. Talk about collective guilt.”
    “Yeah, we’re really good at that. Grandma, she’d pitch a fit if I tried to leave the house wearing ripped jeans, because she didn’t want people to think all Chinese were slobs. I grew up with the burden of representing an entire race every time I stepped out the door. So, yeah. I already had an interest in the Red Phoenix. Then when that ad in
The Boston Globe
came out in March, I got even more interested. I read through the case file a second time.”
    “What ad?”
    “It came out on the thirtieth, the anniversary of the shooting. Took up about a quarter page in the local section.”
    “I didn’t see it. What did the ad say?”
    “It ran a photo of the cook, Wu Weimin, with the word
innocent
in bold letters.” He stared across the desks in the homicide unit. “When I saw that ad, I wanted it to be true. I wanted Wu Weimin to be innocent, just so we could erase that black mark against us.”
    “You don’t really think he was innocent, do you?”
    He looked at her. “I don’t know.”
    “Staines and Ingersoll never doubted he was the shooter. Neither does Dr. Zucker.”
    “But that ad got me thinking. It made me wonder if Boston PD got it wrong nineteen years ago.”
    “Just because Wu was Chinese?”
    “Because people in Chinatown never believed he did it.”
    “Who paid for the ad? Did you ever find out?”
    He nodded. “I called the
Globe
. It was paid for by Iris Fang.”
    Jane’s cell phone rang. Even as she reached for it, she was processing that last piece of information. Wondering why, nineteen years after the event, Iris would buy an ad in defense of the man who had murdered her husband. Glancing at her phone, she saw that the incoming call was from the crime lab and she answered: “Rizzoli.”
    “I’m looking at those hairs right now,” said criminalist Erin Volchko. “And I’ll be damned if I can identify what they are.”
    It took a moment for Jane to shift her focus to what Erin was talking about. “You mean those hairs from the victim’s clothing?”
    “Yes. The ME’s office sent over two strands yesterday. One was plucked off the dead woman’s sleeve, the other from her leggings. They have similar morphology and color, so they’re probably from the same source.”
    Jane felt Tam watching her as she asked: “Are these hairs real or synthetic?”
    “These aren’t manufactured. They’re definitely organic.”
    “So are they human?”
    “I’m not sure.”

J ANE SQUINTED INTO THE MICROSCOPE’S EYEPIECE, TRYING TO MAKE out some distinguishing feature, but what she saw through the lens looked scarcely different from all the other hairs that she’d seen over the years. She moved aside to let Tam have a peek.
    “What you’re seeing on that slide is a guard hair,” said Erin. “Guard hairs function as an animal’s outer coat.”
    “And that’s different from fur?” asked Tam.
    “Yes, it is. Fur is from the inner coat, and it provides insulation. Humans don’t have fur.”
    “So if this is a hair, what does it come from?”
    “It might be easier,” said Erin, “to tell you what it doesn’t come from. The pigmentation is consistent throughout the shaft length, so we know it’s an animal whose hair has the same color from root to tip. There are no coronal scales, which eliminates rodents and bats.”
    Tam looked up from the microscope. “What are coronal scales?”
    “Scales are structures that make up the cuticle—the outside of the hair, like the scales of a fish. The patterns in which the scales line up are characteristic of certain animal families.”
    “And you said that coronal scales are on rodents.”
    She nodded. “This hair lacks spinous scales as well, which tells us it didn’t come from a cat, a mink, or a seal.”
    “Are we going down the whole list of animal species?” asked Jane.
    “To some extent, this is a process of elimination.”
    “And so far you’ve eliminated rats, bats, and cats.”
    “Correct.”
    “Great,” muttered Jane. “We can cross Batman and Catwoman off our list of suspects.”
    Sighing, Erin pulled off her glasses and massaged the bridge of her nose. “Detective Rizzoli, I’m just explaining how difficult it is to identify an animal hair using only light microscopy. These morphologic clues help me eliminate some animal groups, but this specimen isn’t like anything I’ve encountered in this lab.”
    “What else