Read The Silent Girl for Free Online

detective two months ago, so I’m really psyched.” Briskly ordering onlookers aside, he cleared a path for her through the crowd and opened a door to a building that smelled of garlic and incense.
    “I notice you speak Mandarin. Do you speak Cantonese, too?” she said.
    “You can hear the difference?”
    “I used to live in San Francisco. A number of my colleagues were Chinese.”
    “I wish I could speak Cantonese, but it’s like Greek to me,” he said as they climbed up the stairwell. “I’m afraid my Mandarin’s not very useful around here. Most of these old-timers speak Cantonese or the Toisan dialect. Half the time, I need an interpreter myself.”
    “So you aren’t from Boston.”
    “Born and raised in New York City. My parents came over from Fujian province.”
    They reached the rooftop door and stepped outside, into the glare of the early-morning sun. Squinting against the brightness, Maura saw crime scene unit personnel combing the rooftop and heard someone call out: “Found another bullet casing over here.”
    “What is that, five?”
    “Mark it and bag it.”
    Suddenly the voices went silent and Maura realized they’d noticed her arrival and were all looking at her. The traitor had arrived.
    “Hey, Doc,” called out Jane, crossing toward her, the wind scrambling her dark hair. “I see Tam finally found you.”
    “What’s this about bullet casings?” asked Maura. “On the phone, you said it was an amputation.”
    “It is. But we found a Heckler and Koch automatic down in the alley below. Looks like someone fired off a few rounds up here. At least five.”
    “Were there reports of gunshots? Do we have an approximate time?”
    “Gun had a suppressor, so no one heard a thing.” Jane turned. “Victim’s over here.”
    Maura pulled on shoe covers and gloves and followed Jane to the shrouded body lying near the roof’s edge. Bending down, she lifted the plastic sheet and stared, unable to speak for a moment.
    “Yeah. It kind of took our breath away, too,” said Jane.
    The woman was a Caucasian in her early thirties, slim and athletic, dressed all in black in a hoodie sweatshirt and leggings. The body was in full rigor mortis. She lay on her back, face staring up at the sky, as though she’d stretched out to admire the stars. Her hair, a rich auburn, was gathered at the nape of her neck in a simple ponytail. Her skin was pale and flawless and she had a model’s jutting cheekbones, faintly Slavic. But it was the wound that Maura focused on, a slash so deep that it divided skin and muscle and cartilage, severing the lumen of the trachea and exposing the pearly surface ofthe cervical spine. The arterial gush that had resulted was powerful enough to spray blood in a shockingly wide radius that left splatters across the curtain of sheets hanging on a nearby clothesline.
    “The amputated hand fell in the alley right below,” said Jane. “So did the Heckler and Koch. My guess is, her fingerprints are on the grip. And we’re gonna find gunshot residue on that hand.”
    Maura tore her gaze away from the neck and focused on the right wrist, which had been cleanly divided, and she tried to picture what sort of instrument could have so efficiently slashed through cartilage and bone. It had to be appallingly sharp, wielded without hesitation. She imagined the slash of the blade and the hand falling away, tumbling over the roof’s edge. Imagined that same blade slicing across that slender neck.
    Shuddering, she rose to her feet and stared down from the roof at the police officers standing at the far end of Knapp Street, holding back onlookers. The crowd looked twice as large as it had only moments before, and the day was still early. The curious, ever relentless, can always smell blood.
    “Are you sure you really want to be here, Maura?” Jane asked quietly.
    Maura turned to her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
    “I’m just wondering if it’s too soon for you to be back in rotation. I know it’s