DESPITE ALL THAT MILLIE JACOBSON HAD ENDURED IN THE BUSH, SHE had not returned to the familiar comforts of London, but had settled in a small town in the Hex River Valley of the Western Cape. If Jane had been the one to survive two hellish weeks in the wilderness, dodging lions and crocodiles, caked in mud, and eating roots and grass, she would have headed straight home to her own bed, in her own neighborhood, with all its urban conveniences. But Millie Jacobson, London bookseller, born and raised in the city, had forsaken everything she’d known, everything she’d been, to live in the remote town of Touws River.
Looking out the car window, Jane could certainly see what might have attracted Millie to this countryside. She saw a landscape of mountains and rivers and farmland, painted in the lush colors of summer. Everything about this country seemed off-kilter to her, from the upside-down season to the northerly direction of the sun, and as they rounded a curve, she suddenly felt dizzy, as if the world had turned on its head. She closed her eyes, waiting for everything to stop spinning.
“Gorgeous countryside. Makes you not want to go home,” said Gabriel.
“It’s a long way from Boston,” she murmured.
“A long way from London, too. But I can see why she might not want to go back.”
Jane opened her eyes and squinted at rows and rows of grapevines, at fruits ripening in the sun. “Well, her husband does come from this area. People do crazy things for love.”
“Like packing up and moving to Boston?”
She looked at him. “Do you ever regret it? Leaving Washington to be with me?”
“Let me think about that.”
“Gabriel.”
He laughed. “Do I regret getting married and having the most adorable kid in the world? What do you think?”
“I think a lot of men wouldn’t have made the sacrifice.”
“Just keep telling yourself that. It never hurts to have a grateful wife.”
She looked out again at the passing vineyards. “Speaking of grateful, we’re going to owe Mom big-time for babysitting. Think we should ship her a case of South African wine? You know how much she and Vince love …” She paused. There was no Vince Korsak in Angela’s life anymore, now that her dad was back. She sighed. “I never thought I’d say it, but I miss Korsak.”
“Obviously your mom does, too.”
“Am I a bad daughter, wishing my dad would go back to his bimbo and leave us alone?”
“You are a good daughter. To your mother.”
“Who won’t listen to me. She’s trying to make everyone happy except herself.”
“It’s her choice, Jane. You need to respect it, even if you don’t understand it.”
Just as she didn’t understand Millie Jacobson’s choice to retreat to this remote corner of a country so far from everything and everyone she’d ever known. On the phone, Millie had made it clear that she would not come to Boston to aid the investigation. She had a four-year-old daughter and a husband who needed her, the standard acceptable excuses that a woman could trot out when she doesn’t want to admit her real reasons: that she’s terrified of the world. Henk Andriessen had called Millie a ghost, and had warned them that they would never coax her out of Touws River. Nor would Millie’s husband ever allow it.
That husband was the first to greet them on the porch when she and Gabriel pulled up to the farmhouse, and a glance at his florid face told Jane they had a challenge ahead. Christopher DeBruin was as burly and intimidating as Henk had described him. He was older than Millie by a decade, his blond hair already half gray, and he stood with arms crossed, an immovable wall of muscle holding off the invaders. As Jane and Gabriel stepped out of their rental car, he did not come down the steps to greet them, but waited for his unwelcome guests to approach.
“Mr. DeBruin?” said Gabriel.
A nod, nothing more.
“I’m Special Agent Gabriel Dean with the FBI. This is Detective Jane Rizzoli, Boston PD.”
“They sent two of you all this way, did they?”
“This investigation crosses both state and international borders. A number of different agencies are involved.”
“And you think it all leads to my wife.”
“We think she’s key to the case.”
“And this concerns me how?”
Two men and too much damn testosterone, thought Jane. She stepped forward and DeBruin frowned at her, as if not certain how to rebuff a woman.
“We’ve come a long way, Mr. DeBruin,” she said quietly. “Please, may we speak to Millie?”
He eyed her for a moment. “She went to pick up our daughter.”
“When will she be back?”
“A while.” Grudgingly he opened the front door. “You might as well come in. Some things need to be said first.”
They followed him into the farmhouse, and Jane saw wide-plank floors and massive ceiling beams. This home had history in its bones, from the hand-hewn banister to the antique Dutch tiles on the hearth. DeBruin offered them neither coffee nor tea, but brusquely waved them toward a sofa. He settled into the armchair facing them.
“Millie feels safe here,” he said. “We’ve made a good life together on this farm. We have a daughter. She’s only four years old. Now you want to change everything.”
“She could make all the difference in our investigation,” said Jane.
“You don’t know what you’re asking of her. She hasn’t slept through the night since your first phone call. She wakes up screaming. She won’t even leave this valley, and now you expect her to go all the way to Boston?”
“Boston PD will look after her, I promise. She’ll be perfectly safe.”
“Safe? Do you have any idea how hard it is for her to feel safe even here?” He snorted. “Of course you don’t. You don’t know what she went through in the bush.”
“We read her statement.”
“Statement? As if a few typed pages can tell the whole story? I was there, the day she walked out of the bush. I was staying at a game lodge in the Delta, spending my holiday watching elephants. Every afternoon, we were served tea on the veranda, where we could watch the animals drinking at the river. That day, I saw a creature I’d never seen before come out of the bush. So thin, it looked like a bundle of twigs caked in mud. As we watched, not believing our eyes, it crossed the lawn and came up the steps. There we were, with our fine china cups and saucers, our fussy little cakes and sandwiches. And this creature walks up to me, looks me straight in the eye, and says: ‘Are you real? Or am I in heaven?’ I told her, if this is heaven, then they’ve sent me to the wrong place. And that’s when she dropped to her knees and started weeping. Because she knew her nightmare was over. She knew she was safe.” DeBruin gave Jane a hard, penetrating look. “I swore to her that I’d keep her safe. Through thick and thin.”
“So will Boston PD, sir,” said Jane. “If we can just convince you to let her—”
“It’s not me you need to convince. It’s my wife.” He glanced out the window as a car pulled into the driveway. “She’s here.”
They waited in silence as a key grated in the lock, then footsteps pattered into the house and a little girl came running into the living room. Like her father she was blond and sturdy, with the healthy pink cheeks of a child who lives her life in sunshine. She gave the two visitors scarcely a glance and ran straight into her father’s arms.
“There you are, Violet!” DeBruin said, lifting his daughter onto his lap. “How was riding today?”
“He bit me.”
“The pony did?”
“I gave him an apple and he bit my finger.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to. That’s why I tell you to keep your hand flat.”
“I’m not giving him any more apples.”
“Yah, that will teach pony a lesson, hey?” He looked up, grinning, and suddenly went still as he saw his wife standing in the doorway.
Unlike her husband and daughter, Millie had dark hair and it was pulled back in a ponytail, making her face appear startlingly thin and angular, her cheeks hollow, her blue eyes smudged by shadows. She gave their visitors a smile, but there was no disguising the apprehension in her gaze.
“Millie, these are the people from Boston,” said DeBruin.
Both Jane and Gabriel stood to introduce themselves. Shaking Millie’s hand was like grasping icicles, so stiff and chilled were her fingers.
“Thank you for seeing us,” said Jane as they all sat down again.
“Have you been to Africa before?” Millie asked.
“First time for both of us. It’s beautiful here. So is your home.”
“This farm’s been in Chris’s family for generations. He should give you a tour later.” Millie paused, as if the effort to keep up even trivial conversation exhausted her. Her gaze dropped to the empty coffee table and she frowned. “Did you not offer them tea, Chris?”
At once DeBruin jumped to his feet. “Oh yah, sorry. Completely forgot about that.” He took his daughter’s hand. “Violet, come help your silly dad.”
In silence Millie watched her husband and daughter leave. Only when she heard the faint clang of the teakettle and water running in the kitchen did she say: “I haven’t changed my mind about going to Boston. I suppose Chris told you that.”
“In so many words,” said Jane.
“I’m afraid this is a waste of your time. Coming all this way, just to hear me repeat what I told you on the phone.”
“We needed to meet you.”
“Why? To see for yourselves that I’m not a lunatic? That everything I told the police six years ago actually happened?” Millie glanced at Gabriel, then back at Jane. The phone calls had already established a link between the women, and Gabriel stayed silent, allowing Jane to take the lead.
“We have no doubt it happened to you,” said Jane.
Millie looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, and said softly: “Six years ago, the police didn’t believe me. Not at first. When I told them my story, from my hospital bed, I could see the doubt in their eyes. A clueless city girl, surviving two weeks alone in the bush? They thought I’d wandered away from some other game lodge and gotten lost and delirious in the heat. They said the pills I took for malaria might have made me psychotic or confused. That it happens to tourists all the time. They said my story didn’t ring true because anyone else would have starved to death. Or been torn apart by lions or hyenas. Or trampled by elephants. And how did I know that I could stay alive eating papyrus reeds, the way the natives do? They couldn’t believe I survived because of pure dumb luck. But that’s exactly what it was. It was luck that I chose to head downriver and ended up at the tourist lodge. Luck that I didn’t poison myself on some wild berry or bark, but ate the most nutritious reed I could have chosen. Luck that after two weeks in the bush, I walked out alive. The police said it wasn’t possible.” She took a deep breath. “Yet I did it.”
“I think you’re wrong, Millie,” said Jane. “It wasn’t luck, it was you. We read your account of what happened. How you slept in the trees every night. How you followed the river and kept walking, even when you were beyond exhausted. Somehow you found the will to survive when almost everyone else would have given up.”
“No,” said Millie softly. “It was the bush that chose to spare me.” She gazed out the window at a majestic tree, its branches spread like protective arms embracing all who stood beneath it. “The land is a living, breathing thing. It decides if you should live or die. At night, in the dark, I could hear its heartbeat, the way a baby hears the heartbeat of its mother. And every morning, I woke up wondering if the land would let me live through the day. That’s the only way I could have walked out alive. Because it let me. It protected me.” She looked at Jane. “From him.”
“Johnny Posthumus.”
Millie nodded. “By the time they finally started searching for Johnny, it was too late. He’d had plenty of time to vanish. Weeks later, they found the truck parked in Johannesburg.”
“The same truck that wouldn’t start in the bush.”
“Yes. A mechanic explained to me later how it could be done. How to temporarily disable a car without anyone spotting the problem. Something about the fuse box and plastic relays.”
Jane looked at Gabriel, and he nodded.
“Unplug the start or fuel pump relay,” he said. “It wouldn’t be easy to detect. And it’s reversible.”
“He made us think we were stranded,” said Millie. “He trapped us there, so he could kill us one by one. First, Clarence. Then Isao. Elliot would have been next. He was taking out the men first, leaving the women for last. We thought we were on safari, but we were really on Johnny’s hunting trip. And we were the game.” Millie took a breath and it came out a shudder. “The night he killed the others, I ran. I had no idea where I was going. We were miles from the nearest road, miles from the airstrip. He knew there was no chance I’d survive, so he simply packed up camp and drove away, leaving the bodies to the animals. Everything else, he took. Our wallets, cameras, passports. The police say he used Richard’s credit card to buy petrol in Maun. And Elliot’s card to buy supplies in Gaborone. Then he crossed the border into South Africa, where he vanished. Who knows where he went next. With our passports and credit cards, he could have dyed his hair brown and passed for Richard. Could have flown to London and breezed straight through immigration.” She hugged herself. “He could have turned up on my doorstep.”
Gabriel said: “The UK has no record of Richard Renwick reentering the country.”
“What if he’s killed other people, taken other identities? He could go anywhere, be anyone.”
“Are you certain your guide was actually Johnny Posthumus?”
“The police showed me his passport photo, taken just two years earlier. It was the same man.”
“There are very few verified photos of him in existence. You saw only that one.”
“You think I made a mistake?”
“You know how people can look different, sometimes completely different, from one photo to the next.”
“If it wasn’t Johnny, who else would he be?”
“An impostor.”
She stared at Gabriel, struck dumb by the possibility.
They heard the clatter of china as DeBruin returned from the kitchen with the tea tray. Noticing the silence in the room, he quietly set the tray down on the coffee table and gave his wife a searching look.
“Can I pour the tea, Mummy?” said Violet. “I promise I won’t spill it.”
“No, darling. Mummy needs to pour it this time. Maybe you and Daddy can go watch some TV.” She gave her husband a pleading look.
DeBruin took their daughter’s hand. “Let’s go see what’s on, hey?” he said and led her out.
A moment later they heard the TV come on in the next room with a blast of jarringly cheerful music. Though the tea tray sat on the table in front of her, Millie made no move to pour, but sat with arms wrapped around herself, still chilled by this new uncertainty.
“Henk Andriessen from Interpol told us that you were still hospitalized when the police showed you the photo. You were still weak, still recovering. And it had been weeks since you’d last seen the killer.”
“You think I made a mistake,” she said softly.
“Witnesses frequently make mistakes,” said Gabriel. “They misremember details or they forget faces.”
Jane thought of all the well-meaning eyewitnesses who’d so confidently pointed to the wrong suspects, or offered descriptions that later proved wildly inaccurate. The human mind was expert at filling in missing details and confidently turning them into facts, even if those facts were merely imagined.
“You’re trying to make me doubt myself,” said Millie. “But the photo they showed me was Johnny. I remember every detail of his face.” She looked back and forth at Jane and Gabriel. “Maybe he goes by a different name now. But wherever he is, whatever he calls himself, I know he hasn’t forgotten me, either.”
They heard Violet give a squeal of laughter as the TV played its relentlessly cheerful music. But in here, a chill had settled so deeply into the room that even the afternoon sunlight streaming in the window could not dispel it.
“That’s why you didn’t return to London,” said Jane.
“Johnny knew where I lived, where I worked. He knew how to find me. I couldn’t go back.” Millie looked toward the sound of her daughter’s laughter. “And there was Christopher.”
“He told us how you met.”
“After I walked out of the bush, he was the one who stayed with me. Who sat by my hospital bed day after day. He’s the one who made me feel safe. The only one.” She looked at Jane. “Why would I go back to London?”
“Isn’t your sister there?”
“But this is my home now. It’s where I belong.” She looked out the window, at the tree with the all-embracing branches. “Africa changed me. Out there, in the bush, I lost bits and pieces of myself. It wears you away like a grinding stone, makes you shed everything that’s unnecessary. It forces you to face who you really are. When I first got there, I was just a silly girl. I fussed over shoes and purses and face creams. I wasted years, waiting for Richard to marry me. I thought all I needed was a wedding ring to make me happy. But then, just when I thought I was dying, I found myself. My real self. I left the old Millie out there, and I don’t miss her. This is my life right here, in Touws River.”
“Where you still have nightmares.”
Millie blinked. “Chris told you?”
“He told us you’ve been waking up screaming.”
“Because you called me. That’s why it all started again, because you brought it back.”
“Which means it’s still there, Millie. You haven’t really left it behind.”
“I was doing fine.”
“Were you?” Jane looked around the room at the neatly arranged books on the shelves, at the vase of flowers precisely centered on the mantelpiece. “Or is this just a place to hide from the world?”
“After what happened to me, wouldn’t you hide?”
“I’d want to feel safe again. The only way to do that is to find this man and lock him away.”
“That’s your job, Detective. Not mine. I’ll help you as much as I’m able to. I’ll look at whatever photos you’ve brought. I’ll answer all your questions. But I won’t go to Boston. I won’t leave my home.”
“And there’s no way we can change your mind?”
Millie looked straight at her. “None whatsoever.”