“So he’s been to Egypt,” said Jane. Thinking about what had been engraved in that souvenir cartouche: I visited the pyramids, Cairo, Egypt.
“He loves it there,” said Kimball. “And I hope one of these days he’ll go back and find what I couldn’t.”
“What was that?”
“The lost army of Cambyses.”
Jane looked at Frost, and judging by his blank expression he had no idea what Kimball was talking about, either.
Kimball’s mouth curled into an unpleasantly superior smile. “I guess I need to explain it to you all,” he said. “Twenty-five hundred years ago, this Persian king named Cambyses sent an army into Egypt’s western desert, to take the oracle at Siwa Oasis. Fifty thousand men marched in and were never seen again. The sands just swallowed ’em up, and no knows what became of them.”
“Fifty thousand soldiers?” said Jane.
Kimball nodded. “It’s one of the big mysteries of archaeology. I spent two seasons hunting for the remains of that army. All I turned up were bits of metal and bone, but that was all. So little, in fact, that the Egyptian government didn’t even care enough to lay claim to any of it. That dig was one of my biggest disappointments. One of my few failures.” He stared at the fire. “Someday I’ll go back. I’m gonna find it.”
“In the meantime, how about helping us find your son?”
Kimball’s gaze returned to Jane, and it was not friendly. “How about we wrap up this conversation? I don’t think there’s anything more I can help you with.” He stood.
“We only want to speak to him. To ask him about Ms. Edgerton.”
“Ask him what? Did you kill her? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Trying to find someone to blame.”
“He knew the victim.”
“Lot of folks probably did.”
“Your son worked at the Crispin Museum that summer. The same place where her body has just turned up. That’s quite a coincidence.”
“I’ll ask you both to leave.” He turned toward the door, but Jane did not move from her chair. If Kimball was not going to cooperate, it was time to move to a different strategy, one that would almost certainly provoke him.
“Then there was that incident on the Stanford University campus,” she said. “An incident you know about, Mr. Rose. Since it was your attorney who arranged for your son’s release.”
He pivoted and strode toward her so quickly that Frost instinctively stood up to intervene. But Kimball halted just inches from Jane. “He was never convicted.”
“But he was arrested. Twice. After following a female student around campus. After breaking into her dorm room while she was sleeping. How many times did you have to bail him out of trouble? How many checks did you write to keep him out of jail?”
“It’s time for you all to go.”
“Where is your son now?”
Before Kimball could respond, a door opened. He froze as a soft voice called out: “Kimball? Are they here about Bradley?”
In an instant his expression transformed from rage to dismay. He turned to the woman and said, “Cynthia, you shouldn’t be out of bed. Please go back, darling.”
“Rosa told me two policemen came to the house. It’s about Bradley, isn’t it?” The woman shuffled into the room, and her sunken eyes focused on the two visitors. Though her face had been stretched taut by plastic surgery, her age still showed in the rounded back, the drooping shoulders. Most of all it showed in the wispy gray hair that feathered her nearly bald scalp. As wealthy as Kimball Rose might be, he had not traded in his wife for a younger model. All their money, all their privilege, could not change the obvious fact that Cynthia Rose was seriously ill.
Frail as she was, supported by a cane, Cynthia stood her ground and kept her gaze on the two detectives. “Do you know where my Bradley is?” she asked.
“No, ma’am,” said Jane. “We were hoping you could tell us.”
“I’m going to walk you back to your room,” said Kimball, and he took his wife’s arm.
Angrily she shook him off, her attention still fixed on Jane. “Why are you looking for him?”
“Cynthia, this has nothing to do with you,” said Kimball.
“It has everything to do with me,” she shot back. “You should have told me they were here. Why do you keep hiding things from me, Kimball? I have a right to know about my own boy!” The outburst seemed to leave her out of breath, and she tottered toward the nearest chair and sank down. There she sat so motionless, she might have been just another artifact in that dark room of funerary objects.
“They came to ask about that girl again,” said Kimball. “The one who disappeared in New Mexico. That’s all.”
“But that was such a long time ago,” murmured Cynthia.
“Her body has just been found,” said Jane. “In Boston. We need to speak to your son about it, but we don’t know where he is.”
Cynthia slumped deeper into the chair. “I don’t know, either,” she whispered.
“Doesn’t he write you?”
“Sometimes. A letter here and there, sent from strange places. An e-mail once in a while, just to say he’s thinking of me. And that he loves me. But he stays away.”
“Why is that, Mrs. Rose?”
The woman raised her head and looked at Kimball. “Maybe you should ask my husband.”
“Bradley’s never been all that close to us,” he said.
“He was until you sent him away.”
“That has nothing to do with-”
“He didn’t want to go. You forced him.”
“Forced him to go where?” asked Jane.
“It’s not relevant,” said Kimball.
“I blame myself, for not standing up to you,” said Cynthia.
“Where did you send him?” asked Jane.
“Tell her,” said Cynthia. “Tell her how you drove him away.”
Kimball released a deep sigh. “When he was sixteen, we sent him to a boarding school in Maine. He didn’t want to go, but it was for his own good.”
“A school?” Cynthia gave a bitter laugh. “It was a mental institution!”
Jane looked at Kimball. “Is that what it was, Mr. Rose?”
“No! The place was recommended to us. Best of its kind in the country, and let me tell you, the price tag reflected it. I only did what I thought was best for him. What any good parent would do. They called it a therapeutic residential community. A place where boys could go to deal with…issues.”
“We never should have done it,” said Cynthia. “ Younever should have done it.”
“We had no choice. He had to go.”
“He would have been better off here, with me. Not sent to some boot camp in the middle of the woods.”
Kimball snorted. “A camp? More like a country club.” He turned to Jane. “It had its own lake. Hiking and cross-country ski trails. Hell, if I ever go off my rocker, I’d love to be sent to a place like that.”
“Is that what happened to Bradley, Mr. Rose?” asked Frost.
“He went off his rocker?”
“Don’t make him sound like a lunatic,” said Cynthia. “He wasn’t.”
“Then why did he end up there, Mrs. Rose?”
“Because we thought-Kimball thought-”
“We thought they could teach him better self-control,” her husband finished for her. “That’s all. Lotta boys need tough love. He stayed there for two years and came out a well-behaved, hard-workin’ young man. I was proud to take him to Egypt with me.”
“He resented you, Kimball,” said his wife. “He told me that.”
“Well, parents have to make hard choices. That was my choice, to shake him up a little, set him on the right track.”
“And now he stays away. I’m the one who’s being punished, all because of that fine choice you made.” Cynthia lowered her head and began to cry. No one spoke. The only noises were the crackling fire and Cynthia’s quiet sobbing, a sound of raw and unremitting pain.