Die Again: A Rizzoli And Isles Novel Part 18

Those are the last words he ever says to me.

I WAKE IN DARKNESS, and for a moment I'm confused about which tent I'm in. Then it all slams into me, with a pain that's physical. My breakup with Richard. The lonely days ahead. It is so black inside the tent that I can't tell if he's lying beside me. I reach out to touch him, but find only emptiness. This is the future; I will have to get used to sleeping alone.

Twigs snap as someone-or something-walks past my tent.

I strain to see through the canvas, but it's so dark that I can't make out even the faintest glow of the campfire. Who has let the fire burn down? Someone needs to add wood before it dies altogether. I pull on trousers and reach for my boots. After all this talk about staying alert and keeping watch, these useless idiots could not maintain even our most basic safeguard.

Just as I unzip the tent flap, the first gunshot explodes.

A woman is screaming. Sylvia? Vivian? I can't tell which one; all I hear is her panic.

"He's got the gun! Oh G.o.d, he's got the-"

I hunt blindly in the dark for my knapsack, where I keep my torch stashed. My hand closes around the strap just as the second shot explodes.

I scramble out of the tent, but see only shadows upon shadows. Something moves past the dying coals of the fire. Johnny. He's here to take revenge.

A third shot thunders and I dart toward the blackness of the bush, am almost to the perimeter wire when I stumble over something and go down on my knees. I feel warm flesh, long tangled hair. And blood. One of the blondes.

Instantly I'm back on my feet, fleeing blindly into the night. Hear bells clang as my boot snags the perimeter wire.

The next bullet comes so close I can hear it whistle past.

But I'm cloaked in darkness now, a target that Johnny can't see. Behind me, there are shrieks of terror and one final, thunderous gunshot.

I have no choice; I plunge alone into the night.

BOSTON.

"ALWAYS TRYING TO PROVE HE'S HOT STUFF. YOU'D THINK HE'D AT least make the effort to show up on time," said Crowe, scowling at his watch. "Should've been here twenty minutes ago."

"I'm sure Detective Tam has a good reason for being late," said Maura. As she laid Jane Doe's right femur in its correct anatomical position, the stainless-steel table gave an ominous clang. Under the coldly clinical glare of the morgue lights, the bones looked plastic and artificial. Strip away a young woman's skin and flesh, and this was all that remained: the bony latticework on which that flesh was mounted. When human skeletons arrived in the morgue they were often incomplete, missing the small bones of the hands and feet, which are so easily carried off by scavengers. But this Jane Doe had been wrapped in a tarp and buried just deep enough to protect her from claws and teeth and beaks. Instead it was insects and microbes that had feasted on flesh and viscera, scouring the bones clean. Maura positioned those bones on her table with the precision of a master strategist preparing for a game of anatomical chess.

"Everyone a.s.sumes he's some kind of egghead, just because he's Asian," Crowe said. "Well, he's not as smart as he thinks he is."

Maura had no desire to engage in this conversation-or indeed, in any conversation with Detective Crowe. When he launched into one of his many rants about the incompetence of others, it was usually lawyers and judges who caught the brunt of it. That he was ragging about his own partner, Tam, made Maura particularly uncomfortable.

"There's something sneaky about him, too. You ever noticed? He's going behind my back about something," said Crowe. "I caught sight of a doc.u.ment on his laptop yesterday and asked him about it. Just like that, he hits ESCAPE and shuts down the file. Says it's something he's digging into on his own. Huh."

Maura matched the left fibula to its paired tibia and laid them down side by side like bony railroad tracks.

"I saw it was a VICAP file on his computer. I didn't request any VICAP search. What the h.e.l.l's he trying to hide from me? What's his game?"

Maura didn't look up from the bones. "That's hardly illegal, requesting a VICAP search."

"Without telling his partner? I'm telling you, he's sneaky. And it's distracting him from our case."

"Maybe it is about your case."

"Then why's he keeping it under wraps? So he can whip it out at the right moment to impress everyone? Surprise, the genius detective Tam solves the case! Yeah, he'd love to show me up."

"That doesn't seem like something he'd do."

"You haven't figured him out yet, Doc."

But I've figured you out, thought Maura. Crowe's rant was a cla.s.sic example of projection. If anyone was hungry for attention it was Crowe himself, known to his colleagues as Cop Hollywood. Place a TV news crew anywhere in the vicinity, and there he'd be, tanned and camera-ready in his tailored suit. As Maura laid the last bone on the table, Crowe was back on his cell phone, leaving Tam another p.i.s.sed-off voice mail. How much simpler it was to deal with the silence of the dead. While Jane Doe waited so patiently on the table, Crowe was pacing the room, radiating a toxic cloud of hostility.

"Do you want to hear about Jane Doe's remains, Detective? Or would you prefer to wait for my written report?" she asked, hoping he'd opt for the latter and leave her in peace.

He shoved the cell phone in his pocket. "Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. What've we got?"

"Fortunately, we have a complete skeleton, so we shouldn't have to extrapolate. This is a female between eighteen and thirty-five years of age. I estimate her height, based on the length of her femur, to be about five foot three or four. Facial modeling will give us an idea of her appearance, but if you look at her skull ..." Maura picked up the cranium and examined the nasal bones. Turned the skull upside down to look at the upper teeth. "Narrow nasal cavity, high nasal root. Smooth maxillary incisors. These are all consistent with Caucasoid features."

"White girl."

"Yes, with good dent.i.tion. All four wisdom teeth have been extracted and she has no dental caries. Her teeth are in perfect alignment."

"Rich white girl. Not from England."

"Trust me, the English have discovered orthodontics." Trying to ignore his annoying comments, she turned her attention to the rib cage. Once again her gaze went straight to the cut mark in the xiphoid process. She tried to think of other ways the nick could have been carved into the breastbone, but only a knife blade made sense to her. Slice a line up the abdomen, and that was where your blade would strike, against the bony s.h.i.+eld that guards the heart and lungs.

"Maybe it's a stab wound," said Crowe. "Maybe he was going for the heart."

"I suppose that's possible."

"You still think she was gutted. Like Leon Gott."

"I think all theories are still on the table."

"Can you give me a better time of death?"

"There is no better time of death. Just a more accurate one."

"Whatever."

"As I told you at the burial site, complete skeletonization can take months or years, depending on burial depth. Any estimate would be imprecise, but the fact there's significant disarticulation here tells me ..." She paused, suddenly focusing on one of the thoracic ribs. At the burial site, she had missed seeing this detail, and even now, under bright morgue lights, the marks were barely visible. Three equidistant nicks, in the back of the rib. Just like the nicks in this woman's skull. The same tool did this.

The morgue door swung open and Detective Tam walked in.

"Forty-five minutes late," snapped Crowe. "Why do you even bother to show up?"

Tam gave his partner barely a glance; his attention was on Maura. "I've got your answer, Dr. Isles," he said and handed her a file folder.

"What, are you working for the ME now?" said Crowe.

"Dr. Isles asked me to do her a favor."

"Funny you didn't bother to tell me."

Maura opened the folder and stared at the first page. Flipped to the next page, and the next.

"I don't like secrets, Tam," said Crowe. "And I really don't like partners who keep things from me."

"Have you told Detective Rizzoli about this?" Maura abruptly cut in, looking at Tam.

"Not yet."

"We'd better call her now."

"Why are you bringing Rizzoli into this?" said Crowe.

She looked at the bones on the table. "Because you and Detective Rizzoli are going to be working this case together."

FOR A COP WHO'D joined the homicide unit only a month ago, Johnny Tam was already lightning-quick at navigating the FBI's online Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, otherwise known as VICAP. With a few rapid keystrokes, Tam logged onto the Law Enforcement Enterprise portal, giving him access to the FBI database of over 150,000 violent cases around the country.

"It's a pain to file these crime a.n.a.lysis reports," said Tam. "No one wants to answer two hundred questions and write an essay just to add your case to the data bank. So I'm sure this is just a partial list. But what does turn up on VICAP is fairly disturbing." He turned his laptop around so that the others seated at the conference table could see his screen. "Here's the result of my preliminary search, based on my initial set of criteria. All these cases occurred within the last decade. You'll find a summary in those folders I gave you."

Sitting at one end of the conference table, Maura watched Jane, Frost, and Crowe page through the stack of papers that Tam had distributed. Through the closed door she heard laughter in the hall and the ding of the elevator, but in this room there was only the sound of shuffling pages and skeptical grunts. Only rarely did she join the detectives at a case conference, but this morning Tam had asked her to sit in as consultant. Her place was in the morgue, where the dead didn't argue with you, and she felt uneasy in this room of cops, where disagreement was always on the tip of someone's tongue.

Crowe tossed a page down on his stack of papers. "So you think there's one perp running around the country doing all these victims? And you're going to track him down while sitting at your desk, playing VICAP bingo?"

"The first list was just a starting point," said Tam. "It gave me a preliminary database to work with."

"You've got murders in eight states! Three females, eight males. Nine whites, one Hispanic, one black. Ages all over the place, from twenty to sixty-four. What kind of a screwy pattern is that for a killer?"

"You know how much I hate to agree with Crowe," said Jane, "but he's got a point. There's too much variability in these victims. If it is a single perp, why did he choose these particular victims? They have nothing in common, as far as I can see."

"Because the common factor we started with was what Dr. Isles first focused on when she saw Jane Doe: the orange nylon cord around the ankles. Same as Gott."

"She and I have already discussed that," said Jane. "I didn't think it was enough of a link."

Maura noticed that Jane didn't look at her as she spoke. Because she's annoyed with me? she wondered. Because she thinks I shouldn't play cop when my job is in the morgue, holding a scalpel?

"That's all you have linking these dozen homicides? Tied by cord?" said Crowe.

"For both victims, orange solid-braid three-sixteenth-inch nylon was used," said Tam.

"Available at every hardware store in the country." Crowe snorted. "h.e.l.l, I might have some in my garage right now."

"Nylon cord was not my only search term," said Tam. "These dozen victims were all found suspended upside down. Some from trees, others from rafters."

"It's still not enough to make it a killer's signature," said Crowe.

"Let him finish, Detective Crowe," said Maura. Up till now she'd hardly said a word, but she could hold her tongue no longer. "Maybe you'll see what we're getting at. There really may be a connection between our two cases and others around the country."

"And you and Tam are going to pull the rabbit out of the hat." Crowe took a handful of pages from the folder and spread them across the table. "Okay, let's look at what you came up with. Victim number one, fifty-year-old white attorney in Sacramento. Six years ago, found hanging upside down in garage, hands and ankles bound, throat slashed.

"Victim number two, twenty-two-year-old Hispanic male truck driver, found hanging upside down in Phoenix, Arizona. Hands and feet bound, burn and cut marks all over his torso, genitals removed. Huh. Nice. Let me guess: drug cartel.

"Victim number three, thirty-two-year-old white male, record of petty theft, found dangling upside down from a tree in Maine, abdomen sliced open, internal organs scavenged. Oops, we already know the perp on that one. An arrest warrant's been issued for his former buddy. So scratch that one from the list." He looked up. "Need I go on, Dr. Isles?"

"There's more to this than just the bound ankles and the cord."

"Yeah, I know. There's those three cut marks, maybe made with a knife, maybe not. This is just a distraction. Maybe Tam will play fetch for you, but I've got my own case to focus on. And you still can't tell me when Jane Doe died."

"I gave you an estimated time of death."

"Yeah, somewhere between two and twenty years ago. Really specific."

"Detective Crowe, your partner has put hours of work into this a.n.a.lysis. The least you can do is hear him out."

"Okay." Crowe tossed down his pen. "Go, Tam. Tell us how the dead people on this list are all connected to our Jane Doe."

"Not all of these are," said Tam. Tempers might be rising in the room, but he appeared as unruffled as ever. "The first list you saw was just our initial set of flagged homicides, based on type of cord and the fact they were found hanging upside down. Then I did a separate search, using the term evisceration, because we know it was done to Gott. And Dr. Isles suspects it was also done to Jane Doe, based on the cut mark in her sternum. VICAP gave us a few additional names, of victims who were merely eviscerated, but not hung by a rope."

Jane looked at Frost. "There's a phrase you don't hear every day. Merely eviscerated."

"While I was reading through those cases of evisceration, there was one in particular that caught my eye, from four years ago. The victim was a thirty-five-year-old female backpacker in Nevada, camping with friends. There were two women and two men in the group, but she was the only one who was ever found. The others are still missing. Based on insect evidence, she'd been dead between three and four days. The body was still intact enough for the ME to determine that evisceration had occurred."

"Three to four days outdoors in the wild, and there was enough left of her to see that?" said Crowe.

"Yes. Because she wasn't left on the ground. The body was found up in a tree, draped over a branch. Evisceration and elevation. I wondered if that combination was the key. It's what a hunter would do with wild game. Hang it and gut it. Which brought me right back to Leon Gott and his connection to hunting and hunters. I went on the VICAP database again and started all over. This time, I looked for open cases in wilderness areas. Any victims who had sternal cut marks or anything else compatible with evisceration. And that's when I found something interesting. Not just a single victim, but another missing group, just like those four backpackers in Nevada. Three years ago, in Montana, a trio of elk hunters vanished. All three were men. One man was later found partially skeletonized, and wedged up in a tree. A second man's jawbone turned up months later-just the jawbone-near a cougar den. A bear or cougar attack was the ME's theory, but a bear wouldn't drag a body up a tree. Which led the ME to conclude it might have been a cougar attack. Although I'm not sure if cougars would drag a kill up a tree."

"You said they were hunters, so they would have been armed," said Frost. "How does a killer take down three men with guns?"

"Good question. One rifle was never found. The other two firearms were still in the men's tents. The victims must have been taken by surprise."

Up till now, Jane had looked skeptical. Now she leaned forward, her full attention on Tam. "Tell me more about that woman backpacker in Nevada. What did the ME say about manner of death?"

"In that case, a cougar attack was also considered a possibility. But we're talking about four backpackers, and two of them were men. The manner of death was left 'undetermined.' "

"Could a cougar take down four adults all by itself?"

"I don't know," said Tam. "We'd have to consult with a big-cat specialist. Even if a cougar did kill all four backpackers, there's one detail that bothered the ME. It's the reason why the female victim was added to the VICAP database."

"A sternal cut mark?"

"Yes. And three bullet casings. They were found nearby, on the ground. The backpackers weren't armed, but obviously someone else in the area was." Tam looked around the table at the three detectives. "I started off looking at nylon cord, and ended up with a completely different set of common denominators. Evisceration. Elevation. And areas where hunters might be found."

"What about that petty thief in Maine, the one found sliced open and hanging in a tree?" asked Frost. "You said they identified a suspect for that case."

Tam nodded. "The suspect's name is Nick Thibodeau, the victim's so-called buddy. White male, six foot two, two hundred pounds. He has prior convictions of breaking and entering, theft, a.s.sault and battery."

"So a history of violence."

"Definitely. And get this: Thibodeau's an avid deer hunter." Tam rotated his laptop to show them a photo of a young man with close-cropped hair and a direct gaze. He stood beside his trophy, a partially skinned buck that hung suspended by its back legs from a tree. Even in bulky hunting garb, it was obvious that Nick Thibodeau was muscular and powerful, with a thick neck and beefy hands.

"This photo was taken about six years ago, so picture him a little older now," said Tam. "He grew up in Maine, knows the wilderness, and knows his way around a gun. Based on this photo, he also knows how to take apart a deer."