Tess Gerritsen - John Doe

“I’m a suspect.” Maura gave an ironic laugh. “Which will please more than a few Boston PD officers. The high-and-mighty ME everyone loves to hate.”

“Not true.”

“They’ll blithely point out that murder runs in my family. Like mother, like daughter.”

“Your mother is not you.”

“My mother is a monster. Do you think we’ll be granted the privilege of adjoining prison cells?”

“Stop it, Maura. For God’s sake.”

“I’m just telling it like it is.”

“That’s the drug talking. Whatever he gave you, it’s kicked you down and out and made you give up.” Jane leaned forward and said fiercely: “I won’t allow it.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

Maura leaned back with a smile. “Everyone should have their own Jane Rizzoli.”

Jane stood up and slid the chair against the table. “Well, this Jane Rizzoli has a job to do.”

Christopher Scanlon’s residence was a rented two-bedroom town house on a leafy street in Braintree. Mr. Siegel, the rental agent who met them at the address, kept shaking his head and murmuring “Awful, just awful,” as they climbed the steps to the front door. “He was a dream tenant. Kept the property in immaculate shape.” He waved at the manicured lawn. “You can see how neat the front yard is.”

“He never gave you any problems?” Frost asked.

“Never. He moved in about nine, ten months ago. Passed the financial screen with flying colors. Excellent credit rating. Hundred thousand in his bank account. Paid me three months’ rent in advance.” Siegel unlocked the door. “The kind of tenant every rental agent hopes for.”

Until you find out that perfect tenant is a rapist.

Jane and Frost stepped into the residence and saw a black leather couch, a big-screen TV, a chrome-and-glass coffee table. A manpad, Jane thought, with no soft touches. If any woman had ever lived here, there was no trace of her in this room with its cold and polished decor.

“See how orderly everything is?” said Mr. Siegel. “Kept it in perfect shape.”

“He certainly did,” said Jane, focusing on the huge framed photo that dominated one wall. It was a leopard, staring from the grass, eyes agleam, powerful muscles tensed to leap. The consummate predator.

“I guess you folks are looking for leads, huh?” asked Mr. Siegel as Jane and Frost continued their inspection of the residence, moving from kitchen to study to master bedroom, all of it furnished in stark black and white.

“You have any info on next of kin?” asked Frost.

“Never mentioned any. And he was single.”

“Friends? Contacts?”

“I’m just the rental agent. Not my job to get chummy with the tenants.” He frowned as Jane opened dresser drawers, revealing neatly folded socks and underwear and sweaters. “What’s the story with his death, anyway? Was it a mugging or something?”

“It’s under investigation,” she said.

“Was he shot? Stabbed? What?”

She ignored his questions and focused on the laptop computer on the nightstand. Turning it on, she saw it was password-protected.

“I’m getting the feeling it wasn’t just a mugging,” Mr. Siegel said. “Is there something I should be worried about here? Like, was he into something illegal?” He frowned at Jane’s stony expression and groaned. “Oh Jesus. I thought he was too good to be true! All that rent in advance. Was he a drug dealer or what?”

“Rizzoli!” Frost called out from the bathroom.

She found him kneeling by the under-sink cabinet. He rose to his feet, holding a ziplock bag. “Look what I found. It was hidden way in the back, behind the cleaning stuff.”

Through clear plastic, she saw blister packs of white tablets stamped with the pharmaceutical company’s name: Roche. She looked at Frost. “Rohypnol.”

“What? Roofies? ” Mr. Siegel said. “Why the hell would he have something like that?”

“I can think of one reason,” said Jane, turning to the rental agent. “Tell me everything about Christopher Scanlon.”

“I did tell you. He was a good tenant.”

“Yeah, yeah. Paid his rent, kept the lawn mowed. Did he ever bring women here? Did neighbors complain of any disturbances?”

“No, never. No parties, no loud music. In fact, he was hardly here at night. I thought he was over at some girlfriend’s house, but he told me he didn’t have a girlfriend.”

Frost’s cell phone rang, and he stepped out of the bathroom to answer the call.

“What about his job? You said he was a software developer.”

“Self-employed, told me he worked from home. I figured I didn’t need to see his federal tax return, ’cause he had so much in his bank account. You think that wasn’t true? That he worked in software?”

“I can’t be sure what’s true about Mr. Scanlon.” Except that he was supplied with enough roofies to knock out a few dozen women.

Frost reappeared in the doorway. “You wanna step outside with me?” he said to her. “We gotta talk.”

Seeing the grim expression on his face, she immediately followed him out of the town house. They stood on the front walk, where Mr. Siegel couldn’t overhear their conversation.

“I just got the details on Scanlon’s two arrests,” said Frost.

“Why was he never convicted?”

“The first case, he was seen on a bar’s security camera driving away with the victim, Kitty O’Brien, age twenty-six. Unfortunately, she waited a week to report the crime. The charges were dropped because Kitty couldn’t remember what happened. She was also pretty intoxicated that night, which made it a tough case to try. A few months later, she committed suicide. Got hold of her father’s gun and shot herself in the head.”

“Scanlon fucks up that poor girl’s life, and he walks away scot-free?”

“Left her father devastated. Harry O’Brien publicly threatened to kill Scanlon. Which led to poor O’Brien getting charged.”

“So Harry O’Brien’s a definite suspect. If he did it, I’m gonna pat him on the back before I arrest him.”

“You and me both.”

“What about Scanlon’s second arrest? How did he get off that time?”

Frost sighed. “It gets complicated.”

“Don’t tell me it ends with a second suicide.”

“No, the second rape victim’s alive. Year and a half ago, Sarah Shapiro, age thirty-two, met a guy at an art gallery reception. She woke up at home the next morning and realized she’d been raped. Someone at the gallery noticed Sarah wasn’t acting right as she got into the man’s car, so she wrote down Scanlon’s license number. That’s how they ID’d him.”

“How did that case not end in a conviction?”

“Scanlon claimed he only gave Sarah a lift home and left her there.”

“If she was raped, didn’t they have his DNA?”

“Here’s the part that’s weird. There was male DNA found inside Sarah. But it wasn’t Scanlon’s. And she didn’t have a boyfriend.”

Jane stared at him. “Someone else raped her?”

Frost nodded. “We’re dealing with a second man. His DNA profile was already in CODIS, for five different attacks in Massachusetts.”

“A serial rapist.”

“It’s worse. His most recent victim, last month, was strangled. This unknown man has now escalated to murder. And it seems like our Christopher Scanlon was delivering the victims to him.”

Harry O’Brien was sixty-two years old, but the man who gazed at them from the doorway appeared far older, his eyes hollow, his shoulders drooping as though under the weight of grief. “I knew the police would want to talk to me someday,” he said. “So Scanlon did it again. Didn’t he?”

“We believe so,” said Jane.