The Silent Girl

Charlotte.”
    “Because he said he was visiting his mother? Come on, Hank. You can’t take his word, or his mother’s. She would have lied to protect her own kid.”
    “But you can trust the medical record.”
    “What?”
    He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded paper, which he thrust at her. “I got that from Barbara Mallory’s hospital chart. It’s a photocopy of the nurses’ notes. Look at the entry for April twentieth, one PM .”
    Jane scanned down to what the nurse had written at that time.
BP 115/80, Pulse 84. Patient resting comfortably. Son here visiting and requests that his mother be moved to a quieter room, away from nurses’ station
.
    “At one PM ,” said Buckholz, “Charlotte Dion was with her school group in Faneuil Hall. The teachers first noticed her missing around one fifteen. So tell me how Mark Mallory, who’s sitting in his mom’s hospital room twenty-five miles away, manages to snatch his stepsister off a street in Boston only fifteen minutes later?”
    Jane read and reread the nurse’s entry. There was no mistaking the date and time. This is all wrong, she thought.
    Except it wasn’t. It was there in black and white.
    “Stop making it look like I screwed up,” said Buckholz. “It’s obvious that your two perps didn’t take Charlotte.”
    “Then who did?” Jane murmured.
    “We’ll probably never find out. I’m betting it was just some guy who saw her and made an opportunistic grab.”
    Some guy
. A perp they had yet to identify.
    She drove home with the photocopied page on the seat beside her and thought about the odds. Two killers in her family, and Charlotte gets snatched by an unrelated stranger? She pulled into her apartment parking space and sat brooding, not yet ready to walk into the noise and the chaos of motherhood. She thought about what they knew for certain: that Dion and Mallory had been stalking and killing girls together. That they’d buried at least six bodies on Dion’s property. Had Charlotte discovered her father’s secret? Was that the real reason they had to dispose of her? Had it been arranged through a third party, so that both Patrick and Mark had solid alibis?
    Jane massaged her scalp, overwhelmed by the questions. Once again, the mystery revolved around Charlotte. What she knew and when she learned about it. And with whom she shared it. She thought of the last photos ever taken of Charlotte, at the funeral of her mother and stepfather. She remembered how Charlotte had been flanked by her father and Mark. Surrounded by enemies and unable to escape.
    Jane sat up straight, suddenly struck by the answer that should have been obvious from the beginning.
    Maybe she did
.

 
    A T NOON, JANE CROSSED THE NEW HAMPSHIRE BORDER AND DROVE north, into Maine. It was a soft May day, the trees leafed out in their spring flush, a golden haze hanging over fields and forest. But by the time she reached Moosehead Lake in the late afternoon, the air had turned chilly. She parked her car, wrapped a wool scarf around her neck, and walked to the landing, where a motorboat was moored.
    A boy of about fifteen, his blond hair tousled in the wind, waved at her. “You Mrs. Rizzoli? I’m Will, from the Loon Point Lodge.” He took her overnight bag. “Is this all the luggage you brought?”
    “I’m only staying for one night.” She glanced around the dock. “Where’s the skipper?”
    Grinning, he waved his hand. “Right here. Been driving this boat since I was eight. In case you’re nervous, I’ve made this crossing, oh, a few thousand times.”
    Still dubious about the kid’s skills as a skipper, she climbed aboard and buckled on the offered life jacket. As she settled onto the bench she noticed the boxes filled with groceries, and the bundle ofnewspapers with
The Boston Globe
on top. Obviously this boat trip had also been a shopping run for the boy.
    As he started up the engine, she asked: “How long have you worked at the lodge?”
    “All my life. My mom and dad own it.”
    She took a closer look at the boy. Saw a strong jaw and sun-bleached hair. He was built like a lifeguard, slim but muscular, the kind of kid who’d look right at home on a California beach. He seemed utterly at ease as he guided the boat away from the pier. Before she could ask him any more questions, they were skimming across choppy water, the motor too noisy for conversation. She held on to the gunwale and stared at dense forest, at a lake so vast that it stretched