The Silent Girl

his Ford Taurus, which was parked on the street in front of the residence. The car was still littered with the detritus of a long road trip: empty coffee cups, a wadded BurgerKing sack, a
Bangor Daily
newspaper. That night she’d been covered in blood and shaken by what had happened in the alley, so she had not personally searched the car but had left that task to Frost and Tam. Frost reported finding a week-old receipt in the glove compartment from a Greenville, Maine, gas station. It corroborated the daughter’s statement that Ingersoll had left for a fishing trip up north.
    She went back through all the photos again, clicking through image after image. Living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom. When she did not find what she was searching for, she picked up the phone and called Frost.
    “Did you find a tackle box anywhere in the house?” she asked.
    “Um, no. I don’t remember seeing one.”
    “Who goes fishing without a tackle box?”
    “Maybe he rented everything up at the camp where he was staying.”
    “You talked to the manager up there?”
    “Yeah. But I didn’t ask him about fishing gear.”
    “I’ll give him a call.”
    “Why?”
    “Just strikes me as odd, that’s all.” She hung up and pulled out the page with Ingersoll’s call log. Scanning down it, she spotted a 207 area code. Ingersoll had made the call from his landline on April 14.
    She dialed the number. It rang five times, and a male voice answered with a no-nonsense: “Loon Point.”
    “This is Detective Jane Rizzoli, Boston PD. May I ask who I’m speaking to?”
    “Joe. Did you folks have another question?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Someone else called from Boston PD yesterday. Spoke to my son Will.”
    “That would have been Detective Frost. Where is Loon Point located, exactly?”
    “We’re on Moosehead Lake. Got a dozen nice little cabins up here.”
    “You had a guest up there recently, name of Ingersoll.”
    “Yeah, Will said you folks were asking about him. It was my wife who checked him into the cabin, but she’s not here today. All I can tell you is he stayed five days, pretty much kept to himself.” He paused and yelled to his son: “Will, you wanna help those folks unload the gear from their boat? They’re already tied up at the dock!” Then, back to Jane: “Sorry, ma’am. Starting to get busy around here. Really want to help you and all, but there’s not much more to say. We were sorry to hear the man died.”
    “Was that the first time Mr. Ingersoll stayed at Loon Point?”
    “Don’t remember seeing him before.”
    “How long have you worked there?”
    “Since it opened. I own the place. Look, I gotta get off and help some guests.”
    “One last question. Did Mr. Ingersoll rent any fishing gear while he was there?”
    “Yeah, he did. Will helped him choose a rod and reel. Don’t think he caught much, though.”
    She glanced at her ringing cell phone. “Thank you, Mr.…”
    “Patten. You have any more questions, just call back.”
    She hung up the desk phone, picked up her cell phone, and saw the call was from the crime lab. “Rizzoli.”
    Criminalist Erin Volchko answered: “I’ve seen some pretty surprising things over the years, but this just might take the cake.”
    “What are we talking about?”
    “That metallic fragment that came over from the ME’s office. It was embedded in the cervical spine of Jane Doe.”
    “Yeah. A fragment from the blade.”
    “It’s unlike any metal I’ve ever come across.”

F ROST AND TAM WERE WAITING FOR HER IN THE CRIME LAB WHEN Jane walked in. So was a man she’d never met before, a soft-spoken African American gentleman whom Erin introduced as Dr. Calvin Napoleon Cherry from Harvard’s Arthur Sackler Museum.
    “When I realized what this metal might be, I asked Dr. Cherry to take a look at it,” said Erin. “If anyone has an answer, it’ll be him.”
    Dr. Cherry responded with an embarrassed laugh. “You make me sound far too impressive.”
    “Well, your name shows up on half the published articles on this subject. I can’t imagine there’s any better expert to consult.”
    “What is your role at the Sackler Museum, Dr. Cherry?” asked Jane.
    He gave a modest shrug. “I’m curator of their weapons collection. I wrote my doctoral thesis on the metallurgic analysis of blades. Specifically, the blades of China and Japan. They’re closely related, even though the methods of craftsmanship diverged centuries ago.”
    “So you think