The Silent Girl

country. All those bones.I can accept the fact I’m gonna die someday, as long as there’s a nice marker to tell the world it’s me buried there. But to never be found? To end up hidden under some weeds? That’s like you never even existed.” He shuddered. “Anyway, that’s the Charlotte Dion case in a nutshell. Does that help any?”
    “I don’t know. Right now, it’s just one piece of a very confusing puzzle.” Jane waved to the bartender. “Let me have the tab.”
    “No way,” said Buckholz.
    “You just did me a favor, telling me about Charlotte.”
    “I’m here all the time anyway. This seat, this bar. You know where to find me.” He looked down at her ringing cell phone. “I see you’re a girl in demand. Lucky you.”
    “Depends who’s calling.” She answered her phone. “Detective Rizzoli.”
    “I’m sorry to have to make this call.” It was a man’s voice, and he did indeed sound reluctant to be talking to her. “I believe you’re Detective Tam’s supervisor?”
    “Yes, we work together.”
    “I’m calling on behalf of all the victims’ families. We’d prefer not to deal with Detective Tam anymore. He’s managed to upset everyone, especially poor Mary Gilmore. After all these years, why are we being subjected to these questions again?”
    Jane massaged her head, dreading the talk she would need to have with her younger colleague.
You are a public servant. Which means you must not piss off the public
. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “I didn’t catch your name.”
    “Patrick Dion.”
    She straightened. Looked at Buckholz, who was following the conversation with keen interest. Once a cop, always a cop. “Dina Mallory was your ex-wife?” she said.
    “Yes. And it’s painful, being reminded of how she died.”
    “I understand it’s difficult for you, Mr. Dion. But Detective Tam needs to ask these questions.”
    “Dina died nineteen years ago. There was never any doubt about who killed her. Why is this coming up again?”
    “I can’t really discuss it. It’s—”
    “Yes, I know. It’s part of
a current investigation
. That’s what Detective Tam said.”
    “Because it’s true.”
    “Mark Mallory is livid about this, and it’s got both Mary Gilmore and her daughter upset. First we get those notes in the mail, and then Detective Tam starts calling us. We’d all like to know why this is happening now.”
    “Excuse me,” she cut in. “What’s this about getting notes?”
    “It’s been going on for six, seven years. Every March thirtieth they show up in our mailboxes, like some grim anniversary reminder.”
    “What’s in these notes?”
    “I always get a copy of Dina’s obituary. On the back, someone writes:
Don’t you want to know the truth?
”
    “Do you still have those notes?”
    “Yes, and Mary has hers. But Mark was so angry, he tossed his out.”
    “Who’s sending these things? Do you know?”
    “I have to assume they come from the same person who took out the ad in the
Globe
. That Iris Fang.”
    “Why would Mrs. Fang be doing this?”
    There was a long pause. “I hate to speak badly of Mrs. Fang. She lost her husband so I know she’s suffered, too. I feel sorry for her. But I think the issue is quite obvious.”
    “What’s obvious?”
    “The woman,” said Patrick, “is insane.”

B Y THE TIME HER DOORBELL RANG, MAURA HAD THE DINNER TABLE set and a leg of lamb roasting in the oven. Teenage boys were notorious for their appetites, so she had brought home both a blueberry and an apple pie, had baked four potatoes and shucked half a dozen ears of corn. Did the boy eat salad? She didn’t know. During those desperately hungry days they’d spent together in the Wyoming wilderness, she and Rat had survived on whatever they could forage. She had watched him devour dog biscuits and tinned beans and tree bark. Surely he wouldn’t turn up his nose at lettuce, and he could probably use the vitamins. When she’d last seen him in January, he’d been pale and thin, and it was that undernourished boy she was cooking for tonight. No matter how the week goes, she thought, he will not leave my house hungry. It was the one detail she could prepare for, the one variable she could control.
    Because everything else about his first visit to her house was fraught with unknowns.
    She owed her life to Julian “Rat” Perkins, yet she scarcely knew him, and he scarcely knew her. Together they had fought to stay alive, and there was no more intimate