"The pieces are falling into place," Anthony said. "It fits his MO."
"The lab already sent copies to Homicide, the BCA, and the local FBI."
They left the house. The day had turned out sunny and relatively warm for the end of October. In the front yard, two men were methodically going over the ground with metal detectors and a device that could determine whether or not the soil had recently been disturbed. So far they'd found a couple of quarters, a gum wrapper, and a cat-food lid. Gavin's car, a 1984 Oldsmobile, had been taken to the BCA lab where it had been vacuumed with high-powered equipment. Every piece of lint sucked from every crevice would be examined.
"I'm heading out tomorrow morning." Anthony shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his black, knee-length coat. "I've got a couple of cases I need to get back to, and things are getting close to being wrapped up here."
Mary experienced a pang, and realized she would miss him. "My mom's having a sort of celebratory dinner tonight because the case is solved, and she'd like you to come if you can make it," she told him as they walked to their individual cars.
"What about you?" Anthony stopped and squinted against the sunlight. "Are you part of this invitation?" he asked with a nonchalance that seemed forced.
"Of course I am. What's that supposed to mean?"
"Do you really want me to come, or are you just being polite?"
The bluntness of his question took her by surprise. "Insecurity doesn't become you," she told him. "Have you ever known me to be anything other than straightforward?''
He thought about that. "Never. And just for the record, it wasn't insecurity that made me question your involvement in the invitation. My therapist suggested I be more honest and open in my dealings with people."
"Therapist? I didn't know you were seeing a therapist. Because of your divorce?"
He looked at her with an unreadable expression, then said, "No. Not because of the divorce." He paused, as if reluctant to continue. "Because of the shooting."
His words left her momentarily breathless. "My shooting?" she finally asked, needing clarification even though she knew the answer.
"You almost died because of me." His voice tightened. "That's a hard thing for a guy to live with."
She hadn't known the shooting had bothered him so much. He'd seemed more annoyed than anything else, an annoyance she'd attributed to wounded male pride. "Why didn't you say anything before this?"
He glanced around, hands deep in the pockets of his trench coat. There were people everywhere. He finally looked at her in a way that was direct and almost intimate. "I thought you'd been through enough already."
Her throat burned; she suddenly felt close to tears. She wanted to touch him, to offer him some gesture of compassion, but such an action seemed so alien to her that she couldn't bring herself to make it.
"You should have told me," she said softly.
"I'm telling you now."
For years she'd felt so alone. Now, standing there with Anthony, she suddenly realized she hadn't been as alone as she'd thought.
"I have to go," he said, flashing her a smile that was lacking its usual touch of cynicism. "See you tonight."
"Yeah," she said, distracted by his behavior. "Tonight."
As he drove away, Mary stood on the sidewalk staring at nothing, lost in her own thoughts as she tried to decipher what had just occurred. In the years she'd known Anthony, he'd had a tendency to occasionally reveal the quirky side of his nature, but it had always been a subtle flash, so subtle that any small revelation left her wondering if she'd imagined it. Like a glimpse caught out of the corner of her eye. Turn—and it's gone. But this Anthony . . . this Anthony was front and center.
Her phone rang, redirecting her thoughts to another puzzle. The call was from the fingerprint expert at Quantico.
"You know those prints from the cellophane you sent?" he asked. "Couldn't find a match in the database."
So, the prints from the roses left in the woods weren't Gavin's. Gavin's would have been on file. They probably belonged to the florist. Or the delivery person. Mary thanked him and hung up. After slipping into her car, she made a quick U-turn in the middle of the road and headed for Gillian's apartment.
Gillian's place was in Dinkytown, an area of Minneapolis Mary remembered with fondness. Located just north of the university, Dinkytown was populated by students, and rife with pizza joints and cafes.
The house where Gillian lived turned out to be a two-story monstrosity built when wood was cheap and plentiful. White paint was chipping away, and the porch slanted toward a tiny lawn that was worn to dirt where college students had cut corners on the way to and from class. The building had been divided into two living spaces, with Gillian's on the right.
Mary wasn't sure her sister had moved back home after being at Holly's, but after the third round of knocking Gillian answered the door and let Mary in. "Hi," she said, obviously wondering what Mary was doing there.
"I just came from Gavin's house," Mary said, dropping her coat on a nearby futon.
Gillian had her mother's artistic eye. Her apartment was warm and inviting, with antique furniture, rugs, and shelves overflowing with books. Gillian had always been an obsessive reader, devouring all genres and periods. Mary recalled that in high school she'd developed a particular fondness for French authors.
"There's Birdie." Mary walked over to the massive cage in the corner to say hello. The parrot let out a soft protest, ruffled his white feathers, and then tucked his face under his wing.
"Poor guy's getting old," Gillian said. "He sleeps more than he used to."
Mary turned to her with a smile. "Remember that time he got away?"
Gillian smiled back. "You totally panicked."
"I found a white feather on the neighbor's porch and thought their awful Siamese cat had eaten him. Remember that cat? Dogs trembled in fear when he came around."
Gillian laughed. "Didn't we pry his mouth open looking for Birdie?"
"I think that was your idea. I was just trying to reassure you that he wasn't in there. Poor Birdie." Mary addressed the bird in a soft, teasing voice. "We didn't want you to end up being the cat's meow, did we?"
For the first time in weeks, Mary felt relaxed. Gillian was safe, and the source of their estrangement would soon be put behind bars, probably for good.
"Have they come up with anything else?" Gillian asked.
Mary turned from the bird. "Some fibers they're hoping to match to ones found on the earlier victims." She told her about the eight-by-tens and the photos that had been developed from Gavin's camera. "But no darkroom equipment was found at his house. Do you know where he might develop his film?"
Gillian had to think about that one. "There are places around town where you can pay a fee—something like ten bucks for the day—to use their darkrooms. There are also places where you can get yearly memberships. Then there's the university. I'm not sure how that works. I don't know if a person could just drop in and develop photos without attracting attention and suspicion. Or it could be he knows somebody who has a darkroom."
Mary put in a call to Elliot. "Have you seen the photos the crime lab sent over?"
"Yeah. We're trying to figure out where Hitchcock's getting his developing done."
"Have some people check out all the local darkrooms where you pay by the day. Also ones where you can buy a membership. They might check with the university to see if someone could just walk into a darkroom there. Call me if you find anything."
She ended the conversation and tossed the phone down on top of her coat. "Mom's having a dinner party tonight," she announced. "I know you probably don't feel like celebrating, but you know Mom. She's big on recognizing accomplishments."
"Will there be a lot of people there?" Gillian made a face. "You know how crazy her parties can be. I always end up getting dragged around, being introduced to so-and-so who used to live next door to so-and-so, who knew Uncle Jack when he lived in Phoenix but before he moved to Philly."
Mary jumped in, "It always starts like, 'You remember John Doe, don't you? His father went to church with Jane Doe, who used to be married to Fill in the Blank, but is now married to Joe Smith.' "
They both laughed.
"Don't worry," Mary said. "It'll just be the three of us, plus Anthony—and of course anybody you might feel like inviting."
Gillian's head tilted. "As in, am I dating anyone? The answer to that is no."
"What about Ben?"
"Please. He's a kid."
"About your age, I'd say." Gillian wasn't biting, and Mary dropped the idea. "Do you mind if I get a drink of water?"
"Let me find a clean glass."
Gillian was still dressed in her hip-hugging pants and short top. When she reached for a glass, Mary saw that she had a tattoo on her lower spine. It was a delicate, circular design in black.
"Is that real?" she asked. "Or part of the costume?"
Gillian glanced over her shoulder. "Another remnant of my rebellious youth. Ice?"
Mary shook her head, accepted the glass, and walked to the sink. She filled it and took a long drink. "What I could never figure out," she said, holding up the glass for inspection, "is why Minneapolis water is so good, and St. Paul water so bad. I mean, the two cities are right next to each other."
Gillian smiled and settled herself on the arm of the old green couch. "It's one of life's mysteries." Her feet were bare, her face free of makeup. She looked about seventeen. "You know, I have another tattoo here—" She pulled down the neckline of her top to reveal a small red rose on the curve of her breast. "Isn't that funny?" She laughed again, but this time the sound was broken, frightened, and confused. "A rose. Can you believe it? It feels like a brand, like I've been branded by Gavin. Branded by a rapist and murderer. He was with me when I got it."
She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling the blond locks from her forehead and then dropping them where they fell back into their perfect cut. "It's so weird to think of the threads that tie everything together, threads that connect through layers and layers of time. When I got this tattoo, I was ignorant of the future and how a rose would figure into it. But the connection was already there, even though I couldn't see it. Nothing is freestanding."
"This might be hard for you to believe, but I'm sorry the killer turned out to be Gavin," Mary said. "And I'm sorry for everything that bastard has put you through."
"He always wanted me, and now I wonder if that's what this was all about. Was he pretending those girls were me? Is that where the rose came into play? You were right about him all along. I just refused to see it. I was clinging to my youth, and the memories of that youth—the youth before he killed Fiona. I just don't think I wanted to face it, or didn't want to believe that Gavin murdered her, because if he did . . . then I was also responsible."
"Why do you think that?" Mary asked cautiously, not sure she wanted to hear Gillian's answer.
"I was jealous of Fiona. You know that. I complained about her to Gavin." She bit her lip, looked up at the ceiling, then down at the floor. "I even said I wanted to kill her. That Gavin and I should kill her."
It was what Mary had always suspected. But now that Gillian had finally come clean, her confession didn't hurt the way Mary had expected it to hurt. It no longer carried with it the weight of a horrendous betrayal. Instead, it signified the loss of childhood innocence.
"The only person responsible for Gavin is Gavin," Mary told her.
"No. He was so impressionable. And he was infatuated with me. I should have known he would do whatever it took to make me happy. Even kill somebody."
"Gillian, you were a child. A child."
She shook her head. "We talked about it just once, but I should have known."
Everybody had spiteful feelings at one time or another. How could Gillian know that those feelings, planted in the wrong mind, could be transformed so horribly? For her sister's sake, Mary moved on to another subject, one that had been bothering her ever since Gillian had brought it up. "Are you going to tell me what Gavin did to you the other day?"
"What? Oh, that." Gillian had apparently already dismissed it. "He kissed me. Not a nice kiss. A mauling kind of kiss."
"That bastard," Mary said, even though she was relieved to find it had been just a kiss. It could have been much worse.
"It doesn't matter. It seems irrelevant now. The mauling is nothing compared to everything else he's done. I feel like such a fool. You were on target when you said I wanted to be a cop because I thought I could somehow make things right."
"You have to accept the past and move on."
Gillian looked at her in disbelief. "I can't believe you're saying that. I can't believe you, of all people, are telling me that."
"I'm being a hypocrite, I know, but it's the best advice to give. I'm not saying I took it myself. I tried, but for some reason I've never been able to let it go. I'm just like Mrs. Portman, who sits in that dark tomb of a house, that shrine to a daughter who's never coming back."