The Silent Girl

number for him?”
    “I don’t think he has a cell. I played phone tag with him all day through his office.”
    “A realtor who doesn’t have a cell phone?”
    “I just hope we understood each other. He had a pretty strong Chinese accent.”
    “We could really use Tam here. Where is he?”
    “He said he’d be here.”
    Jane backed into the street and peered up at the rusting fire escape and boarded-up windows. Only last week, she and the crime scene unit had walked this same block of rooftops searching for bullet casings. Just around the corner was the alley where Jane Doe’s severed hand had been found. This street, this building, seemed to beground zero for everything that had happened. “Looks like it’s been abandoned a long time. Center of town, you’d think it’d be prime real estate.”
    “Except for the fact it’s a crime scene. Tam says that in this neighborhood, they really believe in ghosts. And a haunted building’s bad luck.” He paused, staring up the alley. “I wonder if that’s our man coming?”
    The elderly Chinese man walked with a limp, as if he had a bad hip, but he moved with surprising alacrity in his bright white Reeboks, easily stepping over a trash bag as he negotiated his way along the uneven pavement. His jacket was several sizes too large, but he wore it with panache, like a nattily dressed professor out for a night stroll.
    “Mr. Kwan?”
    “Hello, hello. You Detective Frost?”
    “Yes, sir. And this is my partner, Detective Rizzoli.”
    The man smiled, revealing two bright gold teeth. “I tell you now, I always follow the law, okay? Okay? Everything always legal.”
    “Sir, that’s not why I called you.”
    “Very good location here, Knapp Street. Three apartment upstairs. Downstairs, very good space for business. Maybe restaurant or store.”
    “Mr. Kwan, we’d just like to look around inside.”
    “Behind, two places for tenant to park car …”
    “Is he going to show it or sell it to us?” muttered Jane.
    “… development company in Hong Kong doesn’t want to manage anymore. So they sell for very good price.”
    “Then why hasn’t it sold?” asked Jane.
    The question seemed to take him aback, abruptly cutting off his sales patter. Eyeing her in the gloom, his wrinkles deepened into a scowl. “Bad thing happen here,” he finally admitted. “No one wants to rent or buy.”
    “Sir, we’re here only to look at the place,” said Frost.
    “Why? Empty inside, nothing to see.”
    “This is police business. Please just open the door.”
    Reluctantly, Kwan pulled out an enormous set of keys that clanked like a jailer’s ring. In the dim alley, it took an excruciatingly long time for him to find and insert the correct key in the padlock. The gate swung open with a deafening screech, and they all stepped into what had once been the Red Phoenix restaurant. Mr. Kwan flipped the light switch, and a single bare bulb came on overhead.
    “Is that the only light in here?” Jane asked.
    The realtor looked up at the ceiling and shrugged. “Time to buy lightbulbs.”
    Jane moved to the center of that gloomy space and looked around the room. As Kwan had said, the place was empty, and she saw a bare linoleum floor, cracked and yellow with age. Only the built-in cashier counter offered any hint that this had once been a restaurant dining room.
    “We have it cleaned, painted,” said Mr. Kwan. “Make it just like it was before, but still no one wants to buy.” He shook his head in disgust. “Chinese people too superstitious. They don’t even like to come inside.”
    I don’t blame them, thought Jane as a cold breath seemed to whisper across her skin. Violence leaves a mark, a psychic stain that can never be scrubbed away with mere soap and bleach. In a neighborhood as insular as Chinatown, everyone would remember what had happened in this building. Everyone would shudder as they walked past on Knapp Street. Even if this building were torn down and another erected in its place, this bloodied ground would remain forever haunted in the minds of those who knew its ugly past. Jane looked down at the linoleum, the same floor where blood had flowed. Although the walls were repainted and the bullet holes plastered over, in the seams and nooks of this floor, chemical traces of that blood still lingered. A crime scene photo that she had earlier studied suddenly clicked into her head. It was an image of a crumpled body lying amid fallen take-out cartons.
    Here is