Blessed Are Those Who Mourn Read online

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s your angle?”

  “I was thinking maybe I could find some local guys who were on those ships and do a spread for the Memorial Day weekend.”

  Kellogg squints at his calendar. “That’s about a month away. That’d work. Get up with C-­Lo on it. Keep me posted.”

  In the car, I shoot Donovan a text. On way home.

  My phone rings a few seconds later.

  “There was something in her pocket.” His voice is low, as if someone is nearby.

  I wonder why Mr. Goody Two-­shoes, Play-­by-­the-­Rules Cop is telling me this. But then he continues, and my mouth grows dry.

  “A Bible verse written on a piece of paper. A familiar verse.”

  “Jesus Mary and Joseph.” I’m hyperventilating, and my face grows warm. With one fluid motion I crank the wheel and pull over to the side of the road right before the entrance to the Caldecott Tunnel that connects the East Bay to Oakland. Frank Anderson, the man I’m convinced killed my sister, sent me Bible verses a few years ago.

  “Probably a coincidence,” Donovan says. “A lot of killers are religious freaks.”

  “Right.” I press my forehead to the cool glass of the driver’s side window.

  “But it might not be.”

  “Right.” I stare at the taillights of cars passing me until they become blurry red streaks.

  “I’ll meet you and Grace at the after-­party tomorrow,” Donovan says. Every Sunday after mass, my huge Italian-­American family gathers at my grandmother’s house for a giant feast we’ve dubbed the “after-­party.”

  I’m bringing those pignoli cookies I bought last week. Unless you ate them all,” I say. I hid the cookies in a tightly sealed bag in the back of the freezer so Donovan wouldn’t eat them all before Sunday.

  “Nah. Haven’t seen them. Where are they anyway? I love me a pignoli cookie with my coffee in the morning.”

  “I’m not telling you,” I say, laughing. Hiding them behind the frozen plastic container of sauce worked. I’ll have to remember that.

  “By the way,” he says, growing serious again. “I’m calling Agent West.”

  Because of the Bible verse found on the body. We haven’t spoken to the FBI agent for a while. If there is any chance Frank Anderson has surfaced—­and the Bible verse could mean that, or mean nothing at all—­West needs to know. West is an old friend of Donovan’s who took over Caterina’s case a few years ago. He figures Anderson has either stopped kidnapping girls or has taken his predilections off the grid, somewhere very far away where his crimes wouldn’t make it in the NCIC—­the National Crime Information Center—­database that tracks crime across the country.

  “One more thing,” Donovan says. “This isn’t for print, either—­the piece of paper was not soaked. It was damp, but not wet like it would’ve been if it was in her pocket when she was in the water.”

  I think about that for a second. Someone stuck it in the woman’s pocket after she washed ashore. If only the fog hadn’t concealed that man on the boat so quickly.

  IN SAN FRANCISCO, I pull into our garage and don’t get out of my car until the door closes. Once it does, I grab my bag and punch the security code for our private elevator to take me to our condo. When it opens, the lights in the kitchen and living room, which are on timers, are lit, and soft music plays through the intercom system. I hate coming home to a dark and quiet house.

  I feel a little pang when I walk past Grace’s empty room. She spends the night at my mom’s frequently—­usually when Donovan and I are working late unexpectedly—­but even so, I still miss seeing her warm little body asleep in her pink sheets.

  After changing into a pair of baggy shorts, tank top, and a hoodie, I head for the kitchen. Dusty comes out of his hiding spot and winds his gray body around my legs as I dip into the container of cat food and give him a healthy portion. I fill a small bowl with salted almonds and head toward the end of the galley kitchen to our makeshift bar on the counter—­a big silver tray with bottles of alcohol. A large silver mirror reflects the colors on the sparkling bottles, but I reach underneath to the built-­in freezer below and pull out a bottle of Absolut vodka.

  After pouring three fingers worth, I retreat to a small cubby in the living room where my laptop rests on a tiny desk. I pop almonds into my mouth as I log into my e-­mail account. It doesn’t take long to find the e-­mails I’m looking for.

  Frank Anderson last wrote to me right before I got pregnant with Grace about six years ago. He sent four e-­mails, each one containing at least one Bible verse.

  I click on the first one he sent. My heart is pounding.

  Subject line: Sins of the Father.

  Inside, the e-­mail reads, Exodus 20:5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.

  I dial Donovan.

  “Was it the first one he sent? The ones about sins of the father?”

  “Stand by.” I hear some rustling of papers. “It said, ‘I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children.’ That was it. Not the whole Bible verse, just a part of it. Listen, I gotta go.”

  He hangs up.

  Taunting police was never Frank Anderson’s style. And this killer’s MO is different. This killer likes women, not little girls.

  In any case, I’m glad Grace is with my mother, sleeping safely in a house with an alarm system in a gated community. It’s late, so when I dial my mother’s number, I’m not surprised that she doesn’t pick up. I leave a message telling her I love her and Grace. I’ll wait to tell her about the Bible verse when we know more. I don’t want to alarm or upset her for no good reason. After all, it could be nothing.

  Caterina, older than me by a year, was kidnapped from in front of our house when she was seven. Some off-­road bicyclists found her little body six days later. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized she’d been kept alive somewhere for days. The horror of imagining what she went through during that time has helped keep me in therapy as an adult.

  Several years ago, before Grace was born, I got a lead on the person who I believe killed Caterina. Frank Anderson had recently been paroled from prison as a convicted sex offender. By the time I came across his name, he was on the lam, dodging his mandatory check-­in with authorities.

  With the help of Liz, the news researcher at our paper, I tracked down a house owned by his girlfriend. He escaped out the back of the house seconds before I found him. His girlfriend was later found dead of a drug overdose. After that, he began sending me the e-­mails with the return e-­mail FA2858. It didn’t take me long to figure out that “FA” stood for Frank Anderson, whose birthday was 2-­8-­58. The e-­mails stopped shortly before I got pregnant with Grace.

  After a lazy Livermore detective dropped the ball, trying to trace the e-­mails and working my sister’s murder as a cold case, we turned to Special Agent Noah West. But now the case has grown even colder. Anderson has gone underground. I thought I was safe.

  Now I’m not so sure.

  Chapter 6

  Sunday

  IN THE MORNING, I’m unusually anxious to see Grace, so I skip mass at Joan of Arc’s and head straight to my mother’s house as soon as the sun rises.

  I drove Donovan’s car back from Roe Island last night. He was going to hitch a ride back to the police department and use his assigned detective vehicle for the rest of the weekend.

  The guards at the entrance to my mom’s neighborhood, tucked at the foot of Mt. Diablo, examine my pass and then open the gates, waving me in. The streets are deserted at this early hour except for one lady briskly walking a small white dog. I wave at her as I park.

  Stepping out of the car, the air is cool, so I pull on the parka Donovan left in
the backseat. When he got to the crime scene last night, he traded the light jacket he wore on the beach for a heavier leather one he keeps in the trunk. I pull the collar up against the chill morning air and dig my hands deep into the pockets. I’m at my mom’s front door when I feel something in one of the pockets. Something velvety and square. I pause on the front steps fingering the small box, knowing what it is before I pull it out. The tiny black velvet box fits in my palm. It’s from my favorite jeweler in North Beach. Their emblem is on the bottom. I turn the box over and over in my hand, closing my eyes. My heart is racing. No wonder Donovan was acting so nervous last night on the beach at sunset.

  I’m tempted to open the box, but I stop myself. It wouldn’t be right. It’s like cheating on a test or opening your Christmas presents early. My sister was always the one who did that and then tried to wrap them back up. I’m pretty sure my mother could always tell that she’d snuck a peek. Me, I’d rather wait and be surprised.

  No wonder Donovan pulled me aside last night and was so tongue-­tied before he was interrupted by Finn’s phone call. After that, the freaky guy approached Grace. That is so the story of our relationship and our life. Our jobs and our past always getting in the way, always a wedge between us.

  The thought that Donovan was about to propose to me fills me with an odd anxiety. We have talked about getting married. We will get married one day. So why does finding this ring make me so nervous?

  I push those thoughts aside and creep into the silence of my mother’s house. My first stop is near the door, where I punch in the code disarming her alarm. The only sound is the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner and the sound of a shower running somewhere.

  I pause at the mantel, where my mother has all the pictures of her family.

  There is only one picture that has all of us from when I was little.

  We are at a family picnic in Solvang, and my dad and brothers are in the background, roughhousing. Caterina and I have our arms looped around each other and are making goofy faces. My mother is looking behind us at my father and two brothers. Her mouth is open as if she is saying something. I don’t know if it’s a real memory or I’ve made it up from looking at the picture so many times while I was growing up, but in the picture she is scolding them in a mock serious voice for goofing around during the photo. But her harsh words are betrayed by a glint of merriment in her eyes.

  That was before. When our lives were like a dream. When we seemed invincible—­as if nothing could ever touch our charmed existence.

  Only a few months later Caterina and my dad were dead and buried.

  For a long time I worried that having a child would take away my love for my sister, but having Grace in my life has only proved what my grandmother always told me—­we have an endless and infinite capacity to love.

  Suddenly, staring at the picture, I feel a sense of urgency bordering on desperation to see Grace and scoop her up in my arms, to make sure she is safe, even though I know she is asleep in my mother’s guest bedroom no more than fifteen feet away.

  I crack Grace’s bedroom door. She thinks this bedroom is hers and hers alone, even though I keep telling her that Nana decorated it for all her girl grandchildren. The boys sleep in a bedroom full of cars and trucks, and Grace sleeps in a room filled with fairies and mermaids and a giant tree painted on the wall with pictures of our family hung on the branches in pink-­painted frames.

  The door creaks a little as I push it open, and Grace mumbles in her sleep and turns over. Standing beside the bed, I lean over her so I can feel her sweet, warm breath on my cheek. Her hair is slightly damp at her temples and I smooth it back, inhaling the scent of the baby shampoo we still use on her hair.

  “Gracie?”

  She smiles in her sleep, and I can’t help but smile back. I lean over and kiss her cheek. When I pull back, her eyes open and she throws her arms around me. “Mama!”

  “Hi, darling.”

  She clutches me. “I missed you, Mama.”

  “Didn’t you have fun with Nana?”

  “Yes.” Her face grows serious. “But you forgot bunny at home, so I couldn’t fall asleep.”

  “Let’s go make some pancakes,” I say. “You can crack the eggs.”

  She’s out of bed and out the door before I rise from the floor where I’m kneeling.

  “SHE NEEDS A little sister or brother,” says my oldest brother, Marco, as we sit back under the grape arbor, watching his six-­year-­old daughter, Maria, and Grace weave flowers into wreaths in my grandmother’s backyard later that day.

  Marco’s short, curly black hair has recently become dotted with silver. He and Caterina were the only one of us siblings born with curly hair and deep olive skin, which makes his dark blue eyes even more striking. He must have inherited his eye color from some distant relative, because he’s the only adult Giovanni I know with blue eyes. His wife, Sally, is nearly platinum blond with blue eyes, so now there is a whole generation of little Giovannis with blue eyes.

  Sundays, after mass and church ser­vices across the Bay Area, my big family convenes at my grandmother’s house for an all-­day eat fest for my favorite part of my week. Hanging out with my family grounds me and bolsters me for the ugliness I’ll have to deal with in my reporting job.

  As soon as Marco says Grace needs a playmate, I expect my mother to materialize beside me. She wouldn’t miss this conversation for the world if she could help it. But she’s deep in conversation with my aunt Lucia.

  However, my brother Dante’s bionic ear must have heard something, because he sidles up to us. Although Marco is very distinguished looking, Dante’s the looker in our family. Unlike me, he’s always been able to pull off the la bella figura attitude my mother taught us. Today, a gray silk shirt and black pressed slacks set off his dark good looks. His shirt is undone several buttons, revealing a tanned and hairless chest. He would deny it if I ever said anything, but I’m convinced he goes to a tanning salon to keep that bronze hue, and I’d bet my last cannoli that he gets waxed, as well.

  Between the silky folds of his shirt, a braided gold chain rests on his chest. The Italian horn—­a cornetto—­and the malocchio, a hand with two fingers pointing out, hang on the thick chain. My brother Marco wears an identical necklace.

  Wearing the horn and the hand is supposed to ward off the evil eye—­malocchio—­and grant you good luck.

  But it didn’t protect my father. He was wearing his cornetto when he died. My grandmother gave his to me a few years ago. I used to wear it nestled on the same chain as my miraculous medal every single day, but once I became a mother, the necklace was put aside in my jewelry box in exchange for a simple diamond necklace Donovan bought me when Grace was born. As if reading my mind, Dante absentmindedly caresses his cornetto. And then turns to me.

  “I hate to harp on you about babies, but let’s face it, Ella, you’re not getting any younger.” He wraps his arm around his wife, Nina, who has big brown doe eyes and hair shorn in a pixie cut, and who—­despite having four kids—­is as willowy as a high school girl. “You don’t want to be an old mother.”

  “Leave her alone,” Nina says, swatting Dante away with a laugh and rolling her eyes for my benefit.

  “Don’t be so sexist or I’m telling Mama,” I say. “She didn’t raise you to be a chauvinist pig.”

  “Gabriella’s right,” Nina says. “Mama Maria would chew you out if she heard you saying that.”

  “I doubt it,” Dante says, flashing a grin that has made women melt since he was five. “Mama wants a new grandbaby more than anyone.”

  Dante dated his way through every pretty girl in our high school and then every woman at Diablo Valley College before he met Nina in his philosophy class and fell hard. She was a soft-­spoken poet who hoped to get into the MFA program at Berkeley. But her dreams flew out the door when she got pregnant at nineteen. I always wonder if she r
egretted meeting my brother even though she appears to adore her life.

  Standing, I squint against the sunset to watch my daughter, pretending I didn’t hear Dante’s prodding.

  Dante starts comparing the shine on his shoes to Marco’s even more expensive Italian loafers, teasing Marco about a small scuff. Even Marco does la bella figura better than me. I give up. I ignore my brothers’ banter and focus on my daughter.

  Donovan is over by Grace now, crouched down, showing her and Maria how to tie the wreaths into a crown. As soon as the wreaths are on their heads, they take off around my grandmother’s garden with arms stretched out like they are flying. They look like little fairies in the flowered wreaths and their Sunday dresses.

  Like a specter, my mother is at my side.

  “Ella, I don’t mean to be a pest, but Dante has a point. You should have all your babies when you’re young. Trust me, it’s easier that way.”

  I was a fool to think she didn’t hear what we were talking about.

  I know better than to argue, even though the thought of having a baby right now makes me squirm. My mother misreads my expression.

  “There’s nothing wrong, is there?” she says, her forehead creasing with worry.

  My brothers stop their good-­natured bickering and look up.

  All eyes are on me, and I squirm. After Grace was born, I immediately started taking the birth control pill. I’m way too superstitious to risk giving Grace a sister fourteen months younger. That’s too much like Caterina and me. I refuse to tempt fate that way. But I can’t explain why I’m still on the pill years later.

  “Everything is fine, Mama.” I force a smile and wrap my arm around her in a sideways hug. I lean over and pick a sugared strawberry off my dish of panna cotta on the table. The remains of our regular Sunday feast—­platters of meatballs, pork chops, and Italian sausages, giant pots of pasta with marinara sauce, bowls of fresh vegetables, and loaves of fresh-­baked bread—­all have been cleared. All that remains on the large tables are pitchers of water, bottles of wine, and several types of desserts, including wine-­soaked peaches, the pignoli cookies I brought, and cannolis.