Her attention perked up when, at 9:35, a silver sedan pulled to a stop at the curb. An elderly couple climbed out and slowly walked through the gate, holding hands.
“That’s just the Santoros,” said Haas. “Their daughter brings them here every week to visit their son. He’s buried down on Lilac Lane. Watch, the daughter’s gone to park the car, but she’ll show up any minute with the flowers.”
Moments later, as he’d predicted, a woman walked into view carrying a vase of roses, and she followed her parents through the gate.
“Those are the saddest ones,” said Haas. “I mean, every death is sad, but when you lose a child…”
“How did their son die?” asked Frost.
“They won’t ever talk about it, but I’m told it was a drug overdose. It happened years ago, when he was only thirtysomething. And here it is, all these years later, and they still come once a week, like clockwork. We always have the golf cart ready to take them to the grave.”
At 9:40 a pair of familiar figures appeared: Jamal and his mother. Then, a few minutes later, several nurses from Pilgrim Hospital all arrived together.
“We get quite a few tourists here too,” said Haas.
“Is someone famous buried here?” Frost asked.
“They come to see the plantings. This cemetery is almost a hundred years old and there are some mature specimen trees you’ll find nowhere else in Boston. Did you get a chance to see our gardens?”
“A little too up close,” said Jane, thinking about her battle with the rhododendrons. And her dirt-stained pants.
“The garden tourists usually show up in the afternoon, but with all this rain, they won’t be coming today. Garden people tend to be very respectful, so I’m happy to see them. We pride ourselves on being a welcoming place for everyone, as long as they behave.”
Onscreen, a blue Mercedes pulled up to the curb and a slender woman with short black hair gingerly emerged from the passenger side, holding a cane. Amy Antrim. As her father drove away to park the car, she waited near the entrance, her head tilted upward toward a tree.
That was when the man appeared. He swooped in on Amy so suddenly, she did not seem to notice him until he was standing right beside her.
“Our man in the raincoat,” said Frost.
Amy and the man were talking to each other now, and whatever he said to Amy didn’t seem to alarm her. He stood with his back to the camera, so the only face they could see was Amy’s, and she was smiling. It didn’t seem to alarm her that he was standing so close, leaning in like a vulture about to strike. Abruptly he turned and walked away, his head drooping as he passed through the gate and into the cemetery. All they could see on camera was the top of his head, his thinning hair an anonymous shade of brown.
Now Dr. Antrim walked into the frame, carrying an umbrella. Was it his arrival that had scared off the man? If Antrim had not arrived, what might have happened next?
“What just happened between them?” said Jane. “What the hell was that all about?”
“It’s like he was waiting for her. Expecting her to turn up,” said Frost.
Frost’s phone pinged with a text message. As he pulled it out of his pocket, Jane backed up the recording to the man’s first appearance. Had he really been waiting for Amy, or were they reading too much into an innocent interaction? And why target Amy Antrim in particular?
“Now, this is interesting,” said Frost, staring at his phone.
“What?”
“We got the data from that burner phone.”
“We know who owns it yet?”
“No. But we do have the call log. The burner phone got one incoming call from Sofia Suarez—”
“Which we know about.”
“And it made two outgoing calls. Both were in the last week, and both went to the same Brookline residence.” He held out his phone. “Look whose name is on the account.”
She stared at the name on the screen. Michael Antrim, MD.
Amy Antrim sat in her father’s study, her cane propped against the armchair, her modest black dress a stark contrast to her pale skin. Even though months had passed since the accident, she looked as delicate as a porcelain doll. Outside, windblown rain splattered the window and the watery streaks on the glass cast her face in distorted bands of gray.
“We get spam calls all the time,” she said. “Lots and lots of them, trying to sell us things. But Dad insists on keeping his phone number listed, in case a patient needs to reach him. He’s good that way, even if it means we have to put up with nuisance calls.”