ALSO BY LISA GARDNER

NOVELS

The Perfect Husband

The Other Daughter

The Third Victim

The Next Accident

The Survivors Club

The Killing Hour

Alone

Gone

Hide

Say Goodbye

The Neighbor

Live to Tell

Love You More

Catch Me

Touch & Go

SHORT WORKS

The 7th Month

Prologue

Rockabye, baby, on the treetop . . .

The body was gone, but not the smell. As Boston homicide detective D. D. Warren knew from experience, this kind of scene could hold the stench of blood for weeks, even months to come. The crime scene techs had removed the bedding, but still, blood had a life of its own. Seeping into drywall. Slipping behind wooden trim. Pooling between floorboards. Twenty-eight-year-old Christine Ryan used to have approximately 4.7 liters of blood pumping through her veins. Now most of it saturated the bare mattress occupying center stage of this grim, gray space.

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock . . .

The call had come in shortly after 9:00 A.M. Good friend Midge Roberts had grown concerned when Christine hadn’t answered the knocks on her front door or the texts to her cell phone. Christine was the responsible kind. Didn’t oversleep, didn’t run off with a cute bartender, didn’t come down with the flu without providing a heads-up to her best bud, who picked her up promptly at seven thirty each weekday morning for their joint commute to a local accounting firm.

Midge had contacted a few more friends. All agreed no one had heard from Christine since dinner the night before. Midge gave in to instinct and summoned the landlord, who finally agreed to open the door.

Then vomited all over the upstairs hall upon making the find.

Midge hadn’t come up the stairs. Midge had stood in the foyer of the narrow duplex, and, as she’d reported to D.D.’s squad mate Phil, she’d known. Just known. Probably, even from that distance, she’d caught the first unmistakable whiff of drying blood.

Rockabye, baby . . .

Upon her arrival, the scene had immediately struck D.D. with its marked contrasts. The young female victim, sprawled spread-eagle on her own bed, staring up at the ceiling with sightless blue eyes. Pretty features appearing nearly peaceful as her shoulder-length brown hair pooled softly upon a stark white pillow.

Except then, from the neck down . . .

Skin, peeled off in thin, curling ribbons. D.D. had heard of such things. At eleven this morning, she got to see them firsthand. A young woman, flayed in her own bed. With a bottle of champagne on her nightstand and a single red rose placed across her bloody abdomen.

Next to the bottle of champagne, Phil had discovered a pair of handcuffs. The kind purchased in high-end sex shops and fur lined for comfort. Taking in the cuffs, the sparkling wine, the red rose . . .

Lovers’ tryst gone awry, Phil had theorized. Or, given the level of violence, a jilted boyfriend’s final act of vengeance. Christine had broken up with some sorry sucker, and last night, the sorry sucker had returned to prove once and for all who was in charge.

But D.D. wasn’t on board. Yes, there were handcuffs, but not on the victim’s wrists. Yes, there was uncorked champagne, but none poured into waiting flutes for drinking. Finally, sure, there was the rose, but not in a florist’s wrap for gifting.

The scene felt too . . . deliberate to her. Not a crime of passion or a falling-out between consenting adults. But a carefully staged production that involved months, years, perhaps even a lifetime of careful planning and consideration.

In D.D.’s opinion, they weren’t looking at just a crime scene. They were looking at a killer’s deepest, darkest fantasy.

And while this might be the first scene they were investigating, a homicide this heavily ritualized was probably not the last.

When the wind blows . . .

D.D.’s squad, the crime scene techs, the ME’s office, not to mention a plethora of other investigators, had spent six hours working the space. They’d documented, dusted, diagramed and discussed until the sun had set, the dinner commute was on and tempers were flaring. As lead detective, D.D. had finally sent everyone home with orders to refresh, then regroup. Tomorrow was another day, when they could search federal databases for other murders matching this description, while building the profiles of their victim and killer. Plenty to do, many angles to investigate. Now get some rest.

Everyone had listened. Except, of course, D.D.

It was nearly 10:00 P.M. She should be returning home. Kissing her husband hello. Checking in on her three-year-old son, already tucked into bed at this late hour. Working on her own good night’s sleep, versus hanging out at a darkened crime scene with her toddler’s current favorite nursery rhyme running through her head.

But she couldn’t do it. Some instinct—insight?—had driven her back to this too-quiet town house. For most of the day, she and her fellow detectives had stood here and debated what they saw. Now she stood with the lights out, in the middle of a blood-scented room, and waited for what she could feel.

Rockabye, baby . . .

Christine Ryan had already been dead before the killer had made his first cut. That much they could tell from the lack of anguish stamped into her pale face. The victim had died relatively easily. Then, most likely as her heart emitted a final few pumps, the killer had delivered his first downward slash across her right flank.

Meaning the murder hadn’t been about the victim’s pain, but about . . .

Presentation? Staging? The ritual itself? A killer with a compulsion to skin. Maybe as a kid, he’d started with small animals or family pets, then, when the fantasy had refused to abate . . .

The ME would check for hesitation marks, if determining jagged edges was even possible given the mounds of thin, curling skin, as well as test for evidence of sexual assault.

But once again, D.D. suffered a nagging sense of discomfort. Those elements were the things a criminal investigator could see. And deep inside, D.D. already suspected that was the wrong track. Indulging, in fact, in exactly what the killer wanted them to focus on.

Why stage things just so, if not to manipulate your audience into seeing exactly what you wanted them to see?

Then it came to her. The thought she’d had in the back of her head. The first and foremost question worth pursuing and the reason she now stood in the dark, her vision deliberately obscured: Why set a scene?

A sound. In the distance. The town house’s front door, easing carefully open? A creak of the stair riser as a heavy foot found the first step? The groan of a floorboard just down the hall?

A sound. Once distant, now closer, and that quickly, Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren realized something she should’ve figured out fifteen minutes ago. Jack’s favorite lullaby, the children’s song she’d been humming under her breath . . . That tune wasn’t coming from solely inside her head.

Someone else was singing it, too. Softly. Outside the bedroom. From elsewhere in the dead woman’s apartment.

Rockabye, baby, on the treetop . . .

D.D.’s hand shot to her sidearm, unsnapping the shoulder holster, drawing her Sig Sauer. She whirled, dropping into a crouch as her gaze scanned the corners for signs of an intruder. No shifts in the blackness, no shadows settling into the shape of a human form.

But then she heard it. A creaking floorboard elsewhere in the apartment.

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock . . .

Quickly, she crept from the bedroom into the darkened hall, leading with her weapon. The narrow corridor didn’t offer any overhead lights. Just more shadows from the glow of neighbors’ apartments casting through the uncovered windows. A wash of lighter and darker shades of gray dancing across the hardwood floor.

But she knew this house, D.D. reminded herself. She’d already trod this hall, judiciously avoiding the pools of vomit, while noticing every pertinent detail.

She reached the top of the stairs, still looking from side to side, then peering down into the inky pool that marked the landing below. The humming had disappeared. Worse than the singing was the total silence.

Then, from out of the darkness, low and lilting: “Rockabye, baby, on the treetop . . .”

D.D. halted. Her gaze ping-ponged reflexively, trying to determine the location of the intruder as the singing continued, slow and mocking: “When the wind blows, the cradle will rock . . .”

She got it then. Felt her own blood turn to ice as the full implication sank in. Why do you stage a scene? Because you’re looking for an audience. Or maybe one audience member in particular. Say, a hardworking detective stupid enough to be found after dark at a crime scene all alone.

She reached belatedly for her cell.

Just as a fresh noise registered directly behind her.

She spun. Eyes widening.

As a figure darted out of the shadows, heading straight for her.

“And when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall . . .”

Instinctively, D.D. stepped back. Except she’d forgotten about the top of the staircase. Her left foot, searching for traction, found only open space.

No! Her phone, clattering down. Her Sig Sauer, coming up. Trying belatedly to lean forward, regain her balance.

Then . . . the shadow reaching out. Herself falling back.

Down, down, down.

At the last second, D.D. squeezed the trigger. An instinctive act of self-preservation. Boom, boom, boom. Though she knew it was too little, too late.

Her head connected with the hardwood landing. A crack. A shooting pain. The final lyric, whispering through the dark:

“And down will come baby, cradle and all . . .”

Chapter 1

MY OLDER SISTER discovered my condition when I was three years old. Our foster mother walked in on her wielding the scissors, while I stood there, bare arms obediently held out, blood dripping from my wrists onto the olive-green shag carpet.

My six-year-old sister said, “Check it out, she doesn’t even care.” And slashed the scissors across my forearm. Fresh blood welled.

The woman screamed, then fainted.

I peered down at her, wondering what had happened.

After that, my sister went away. And I was taken to the hospital. There, doctors spent weeks running various tests that should’ve hurt more than my sister’s sharp-edged ministrations, except that turned out to be the point: Due to an extremely rare mutation of my SCN9A gene, I don’t feel pain. I can feel pressure. The scissors, pressing down against my skin. I can feel texture. The smoothness of the freshly sharpened blades.

But the actual sensation of my skin splitting, blood beading . . .

I don’t feel what you feel. I never have. And I never will.

• • •

AFTER SHANA CARVED UP MY ARMS with sewing shears, I didn’t see her for another twenty years. My sister spent most of that time in various institutions, gaining the distinction of being one of Massachusetts’s youngest kids ever placed on antipsychotic meds. She attempted her first murder at eleven, then succeeded at fourteen. Our own peculiar family legacy.

If she became another casualty of the system, however, then I became the state’s poster child for success.

Given my diagnosis, the doctors were not convinced foster care could adequately meet my needs. After all, babies born with the same genetic mutation had been known to chew off their tongues while teething. Then there were the toddlers who suffered third-degree burns by placing their hands on red-hot burners and leaving them there; not to mention the seven-, eight-, nine-year-olds who ran for days on shattered ankles or keeled over from burst appendixes they never knew were inflamed.

Pain is very useful. It warns you of danger, teaches you of hazards and provides consequences for your actions. Without it, jumping off the roof can sound like a great idea. Same with plunging your hand into a vat of boiling oil to grab the first fry. Or taking a pair of pliers and ripping out your own fingernails. Most kids with congenital insensitivity to pain report that they’re acting on impulse. It’s not a matter of why, but of why not?

Others, however, will tell you, a note of longing in their voices, that they did it to see if it would hurt. Because to not feel something known by so many can turn it into the Holy Grail of your entire life. A singular driving force. A relentless obsession. The pleasure of finally feeling pain.

Children who suffer from pain sensory disorders have a high mortality rate; few of us live to adulthood. Most require round-the-clock care. In my case, one of the geneticists, an older man with no wife and kids, pulled some strings and brought me home, where I became his beloved adopted daughter as well as his favorite case study.

My father was a good man. He hired only the best caretakers to monitor me 24/7, while dedicating his weekends to helping me manage my condition.

For example, if you cannot feel pain, then you must find other ways to register potential threats to your physical well-being. As a small child, I learned boiling water equaled danger. Same with red-hot burners on stoves. I would feel an item first for texture. Anything that registered as sharp, I was to leave alone. No scissors for me. Or hard-edged furniture. Or kittens or puppies or any life-form with sharp claws. Walking only. No jumping, no sliding, no skipping, no dancing.

If I went outside, I wore a helmet and appropriate padding at all times. Then, upon my reentry, my armor would be removed and my body inspected for signs of damage. Including the time my caretaker went to remove my shoe and my foot twisted around a full one-eighty. Apparently, I had ripped out all the tendons walking down to the gardens. Or another time when I arrived covered in bee stings. I had stumbled upon a hornet’s nest and, with a five-year-old’s naïveté, assumed they were dancing with me.

With age, I learned to conduct my own physicals. Daily temperature checks, so I can judge if I have a fever, which might indicate my body is suffering from some kind of infection. Nightly inspections, standing naked before a full-length mirror, where I study every inch of my skin for bruises and lacerations, then inspect my joints for signs of swelling or stress. Next, on to my eyes: A red eyeball is an angry eyeball. Checking my ears: Blood in the ear cavity could indicate a ruptured eardrum and/or possible head injury. Then my nasal passageways, the inside of my mouth, teeth, tongue and gums.

My body is a vessel, a useful item, to be inspected, managed and tended. I have to take extra care of it because the lack of molecular channels to direct electrical impulses from pain-sensing nerves to my brain means my body can’t take care of itself. Someone with my condition can’t afford to trust what I feel. Instead, I need to go by what I can see, hear, taste and smell.

Mind over matter, my geneticist father would tell me time and time again. Just a simple exercise of mind over matter.

When I made it to thirteen without succumbing to heatstroke, internal infection or basic carelessness, my father took his research one step further. If there were a couple hundred kids in the world born with this condition, then there were about forty still alive to contemplate adulthood. Studying these cases revealed further weaknesses of a life spent never experiencing physical discomfort. For example, many subjects reported difficulty empathizing with others, stunted emotional growth and limited social skills.

My adoptive father immediately ordered up a full psychological assessment. Could I sense pain in others? Recognize signs of distress on a stranger’s face? Respond appropriately to the suffering of my fellow human beings?

After all, if you never cry over a paper cut, will you weep when your sixteen-year-old best friend suddenly severs all ties, calling you a freak? If you can walk miles on a shattered knee, will your heart constrict when at twenty-three your birth sister finds you again, and the letter is postmarked from the Department of Corrections?

If you’ve never experienced one second of genuine agony, can you honestly comprehend your adoptive father’s last dying breath, as he clutches your hand and gasps:

“Adeline. This. Is. Pain.”

Standing alone at his funeral, I thought I understood.

But being my father’s daughter, I also realized I could never truly be certain. So I did as he trained me to do. I enrolled in a top-notch doctorate program where I studied, I tested, I researched.

I made pain my business.

A useful specialty for more reasons than one.

• • •

BY THE TIME I ARRIVED at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute, my sister was waiting. I signed in, stuffed my purse in an available locker, then waited my turn to pass through security. Chris and Bob, two of the longtime corrections officers, greeted me by name. Bob passed his wand over my medical bracelet, same test he did the first Monday of each month. Then Maria, a third corrections officer, escorted me to the enclosed privacy room, where my sister sat with her cuffed hands on her lap.

Officer Maria nodded her consent and I entered the room. The eight-by-eight space contained two orange plastic chairs and one Formica wood table. Shana already sat on the far side of the table, back protected by the cinder-block wall, front taking in the view of the corridor through the single window. The gunslinger’s seat.

I claimed the chair opposite her, my own back exposed through the window to the passing masses. I took my time, pulling out the plastic chair, positioning my body just so. A minute passed. Then two.

My sister spoke first: “Take off the jacket.” Her tone was already agitated. Something had set her off, probably well before my visit, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be the one to pay the price.

“Why?” In contrast to her edgy command, I kept my own voice deliberately calm.

“You shouldn’t wear black. How many times do I have to tell you that? Black washes you out.”

This from a woman clad in drab blue scrubs, her shoulder-length brown hair hanging down in greasy hanks. My sister might have been pretty once, but years of harsh living conditions and fluorescent lighting had taken their toll. Not to mention the hard look in her eyes.

Now I removed my fitted Ann Taylor blazer and hung it over the back of my chair. Beneath it, I wore a long-sleeved gray knit top. My sister glared at my covered arms. Brown eyes boring into mine, she took a few experimental sniffs.

“Don’t smell any blood,” she said at last.

“You don’t have to sound disappointed.”

“Please. I spend twenty-three hours a day staring at the same ass-white cinder-block walls. Least you could do is bring me a paper cut.”

My sister claimed she could smell the pain I couldn’t feel. There was no scientific basis for this, just sisterly superiority. And yet on three separate occasions, within hours of leaving her, I’d discovered injuries she’d already warned me about.

“You should wear fuchsia,” Shana continued. “You’re the one living on the outside. So live a little, Adeline. Then maybe you can bring me some real stories. No more job, patients, pain practice, blah, blah, blah. Tell me about some hard-bodied guy ripping a fuchsia bra from your bony chest. Then I might actually enjoy these monthly meetings. Can you even have sex?”

I didn’t answer. She’d asked this question many times before.

“That’s right; you can feel the good stuff, just not the bad. Guess that means no S and M for my little sister. Bummer, dude.”

Shana delivered the words tonelessly. Nothing personal. She attacked because it was what she did. And no amount of imprisonment, medication or even sisterly attention had ever been able to change that. Shana was a born predator, our father’s daughter. Murdering a young boy when she was only fourteen had landed her behind bars. Killing a fellow inmate as well as two corrections officers now kept her here.

Could you love a person such as my sister? Professionally speaking, she was a fascinating study of antisocial personality disorder. Completely narcissistic, totally devoid of empathy and highly manipulative. Personally speaking, she was the only family I had left.

“I heard you signed up for a new program,” I offered. “Superintendent McKinnon says your first few paintings show a good eye for detail.”

Shana shrugged, not one for compliments.

She sniffed the air again. “No perfume, but your outfit looks professional. Means you’re working today. Going from here to your office. Will you mist yourself in the car? Hope it’s strong enough to cover Eau d’Institution.”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about my job.”

“I know there’s nothing else to talk about.”

“The weather.”

“Ah fuck it. Just because it’s Monday shouldn’t mean I have to waste an hour serving as your pity project.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’m tired of it, Adeline. You. Me. These monthly meetings where you show off your bad taste in clothes and I have no choice but to sit here and take it. You have enough patients you should be able to leave me alone. So get out. Toodle right along. I mean it!”

A knock on the door. Officer Maria, who could see everything through the shatterproof window, checking on us. I ignored her, keeping my gaze upon my sister instead.

Her outburst didn’t bother me; I was well accustomed to such displays by now. Rage was Shana’s preferred emotion, serving for both offense and defense. Plus, my sister had reason enough to hate me. And not just because of my rare genetic condition, or because I’d found my very own Daddy Warbucks. But because after I was born, my mother chose to hide me in the closet, and there hadn’t been room enough for two.

Shana cursed me, her eyes a flat display of dull anger and deeper depression, and mostly, I wondered once again what had happened this morning to put my battle-hardened sister in such a mood.

“Why do you care?” I asked her suddenly.

“What?”

“The color fuchsia. Why do you care? About my clothes, what color I wear, whether or not it makes others find me attractive? Why do you care?”

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