The girl did not move.
He rolled off the bed and stood staring down at her for a moment. He pressed his fingers to her neck to check her pulse. Every muscle in his body seemed to go taut. Backing away from the bed, his breathing accelerated in panic.
“Oh, Jesus,” he whispered.
He glanced around, as though the solution to his dilemma lay somewhere in the room. Frantic now, he snatched up his clothes and began to dress, hands shaking as he fumbled with buckles and buttons. He dropped to his knees to retrieve his glasses, which had slid under the bed, and slipped them on. One last time, he looked at the girl and confirmed his worst fears.
Shaking his head, he backed away, out of the camera’s range. A door squealed open, swung shut, and footsteps hurried away. An eternity passed, the camera still focused on the bed with its lifeless occupant.
Different footsteps approached, and there was a knock on the door, a voice calling out in Russian. Jane recognized the woman who stepped into the room. It was the house mother, who had died while tied to a kitchen chair.
I know what happens to you. What they will do to your hands. I know you will die screaming.
The woman moved to the bed and gave the girl a shake. Barked out a command. The girl did not respond. The woman stepped back, her hand covering her mouth. Then, abruptly, she turned and stared directly at the camera.
She knows it’s there. She knows it is filming.
At once she moved straight toward it, and there was the sound of the closet door swinging open. Then the screen went blank.
Mila turned off the VCR.
Jane could not speak. She sank onto the couch and sat in numb silence. Regina was silent as well, as though aware that this was not the time to fuss. That at this moment, her mother was too shaken to attend to her. Gabriel, she thought. I need you here. She glanced at the telephone and realized that he had left his cell phone on the table, and she had no way to reach him in his car.
“He is an important man,” Mila said.
Jane turned to look at her. “What?”
“Joe says the man must be high in your government.” Mila pointed to the TV.
“Joe saw this tape?”
Mila nodded. “He gave me a copy when I left. So we would all have one, in case…” She stopped. “In case we never see each other again,” she said softly.
“Where does it come from? Where did you get this video?”
“The Mother keeps it in her room. We didn’t know. We only wanted the money.”
This is the reason for the massacre, thought Jane; this is why the women in that house were killed. Because they knew what happened in that room. And this videotape is the proof.
“Who is he?” Mila asked.
Jane stared at the blank TV. “I don’t know. But I know someone who might.” She crossed to the telephone.
Mila stared at her in alarm. “No police!”
“I’m not calling the police. I’m going to ask a friend to come here. A reporter. He knows people in Washington. He’s lived there. He’ll know who that man is.” She flipped through the phone book until she found the listing for Peter Lukas. His address was in Milton, just south of Boston. As she dialed, she could feel Mila watching her, clearly not ready to trust her. If I make one false move, Jane thought, this girl will run. I have to be careful not to scare her.
“Hello?” said Peter Lukas.
“Could you come over right now?”
“Detective Rizzoli? What’s going on?”
“I can’t talk about it on the phone.”
“This sounds serious.”
“It could be your Pulitzer Prize, Lukas.” She stopped.
Someone was ringing her apartment buzzer.
Mila shot Jane a look of sheer panic. Snatching up her tote bag, she made a dash toward the windows.
“Wait. Mila, don’t-”
“Rizzoli?” said Lukas. “What’s happening over there?”
“Hold on. I’ll call you right back,” said Jane, and hung up.
Mila was darting from window to window, desperately searching for the fire escape.
“It’s okay!” said Jane. “Calm down.”
“They know I am here!”
“We don’t even know who’s at the door. Let’s just find out.” She pressed the intercom button. “Yes?”
“Detective Rizzoli, it’s John Barsanti. Can I come up?”
Mila’s reaction was instantaneous. She went sprinting toward the bedrooms, looking for an escape route.
“Wait!” Jane called, following her up the hall. “You can trust this man!”
Already, the girl was lifting up the bedroom window.
“You can’t leave.”
Again, they heard the apartment buzzer. It sent Mila scrambling through the window, onto the fire escape. If she leaves, I’ll never see her again, thought Jane. The girl has survived this long on sheer instinct. Maybe I should listen to her.
She grabbed Mila’s wrist. “I’ll come with you, okay? We’ll go together. Just don’t leave without me!”
“Hurry,” Mila whispered.
Jane turned. “The baby.”
Mila followed her back into the living room and kept a nervous eye on the door as Jane ejected the videotape and threw it into the diaper bag. Then she unlocked the gun drawer, took out her weapon, and slipped it into the diaper bag as well. Just in case.
The buzzer sounded again.
Jane swept Regina into her arms. “Let’s go.”
Mila scrambled down the fire escape ladder, quick as a monkey. Once, Jane would have been just as quick, just as reckless. But now she was forced to take care with every step, because she was holding Regina. Poor baby, I have no choice now, she thought. I have to drag you along on this adventure. At last she dropped to the alley, and led the way to her parked Subaru. As she unlocked the car door, she could still hear, through the open apartment window, Barsanti’s persistent buzzing.
Driving west on Tremont Street, she kept her eye on the rearview mirror, but she saw no sign of pursuit, no headlights dogging them. Now to find a secure location where Mila won’t freak out, she thought. Where she won’t see police uniforms. Above all, some place I can keep Regina perfectly safe.
“Where do we go?” Mila asked.
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking.” She glanced down at her cell phone, but now she did not dare call her mother. She did not dare call anyone.
Abruptly she turned south, onto Columbus Avenue. “I know a safe place,” she said.
THIRTY-FIVE
Peter Lukas stared in silence as the brutal assault played out on his TV screen. When the tape at last ended, he did not move. Even after Jane turned off the VCR, Lukas sat frozen, his gaze fixed on the screen, as though he could still see the girl’s battered body, the bloodstained sheets. The room had gone silent. Regina dozed on the couch; Mila stood near the windows, glancing out at the road.
“Mila never learned the girl’s name,” said Jane. “There’s a good chance the body’s buried somewhere in the woods behind the house. It’s a lonely spot, with a lot of places to dispose of a corpse. God knows how many other girls might be buried back there.”
Lukas dropped his head. “I feel like throwing up.”
“You and me both.”
“Why would anyone videotape something like that?”
“This man clearly didn’t realize he was caught on film. The camera was mounted in a closet, where the clients couldn’t see it. Maybe it was just another source of revenue. Sell the girls for sex, videotape the acts, then offer the tapes on the pornography market. Every which way you turn, there’s money to be made. This brothel was just another one of their subsidiaries, after all.” She paused, and added drily: “Ballentree seems to believe in diversification.”
“But this is a snuff film! Ballentree could never get away with selling this.”
“No, this was too explosive. The house mother definitely knew it was. She hid it in the tote bag. Mila says they carried around that bag for months without knowing what was on the video. Then Joe finally played it on a motel room VCR.” Jane looked at the TV. “Now we know why those women in Ashburn were killed. Why Charles Desmond was killed. Because they knew this client; they could ID him. They all had to die.”