Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

My car.

With a gasp of panic, she jerked around, expecting to see a monster waiting to pounce from the backseat. But all she saw were stray museum files and an empty water bottle. No monsters, no ax murderer. She sank back against her seat, and the laugh that escaped her throat had the faint note of hysteria.

Someone is trying to drive me insane. Just like they drove my mother insane.

She inserted the key in the ignition and was about to start the engine when her gaze fixed on the trunk key, clattering against the others. All last night, she thought, my car was parked on the street near my apartment building. Exposed and unguarded.

She looked out at the parking area. Through the steamed window, she saw the owners of the parked Volvo come up the road. It was a young couple with a boy and a girl of about ten. The boy was walking a black Labrador. Or rather, the Labrador seemed to be walking the boy, dragging him as the boy tried to hold on to the leash.

Reassured that she was not alone, Josephine took the keys and stepped out of the car. Raindrops pelted her bare head, but she scarcely noticed the wetness sliding down her neck and seeping into her shirt collar. She circled to the back of the car and stared at the trunk, trying to remember when she’d last opened it. It had been her weekly visit to the grocery store. She could still picture the bulging plastic bags sitting in the trunk, and remembered lifting them out and carrying them upstairs in a single trip. There should be nothing left behind in the trunk now.

The dog began to bark wildly, and the boy holding the leash yelled, “Sam, come on! What’s the matter with you?”

Josephine turned and saw the boy was trying to drag his dog toward the family Volvo, but the dog kept barking at Josephine.

“Sorry,” the boy’s mother called out. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.” Now she took the leash, and the dog yelped as he was forced toward the Volvo.

Josephine unlocked her trunk. It lifted open.

When she saw what lay inside she stumbled backward, gasping. Rain tap-tapped in a steady tattoo down her cheeks, soaking her hair, trickling like the stroke of icy fingers. The dog broke loose and came tearing toward her, barking hysterically. She heard one of the children start to scream.

Their mother cried out, “Oh my God. Oh my God!”

As the father dialed 911, Josephine staggered over to a tree and sank down in shock onto the rain-sodden moss.

Whatever the hour, whatever the weather, Maura Isles always managed to arrive looking elegant. Jane stood shivering in damp slacks, her hair dripping with rain, and she felt a twinge of envy as she saw the medical examiner step out of the black Lexus. Maura’s hair was sleek and perfect as a helmet, and she managed to make even a rain parka look fashionable. But then, she hadn’t spent the last hour as Jane had, standing in this parking lot, rain pelting her hair.

As Maura moved through the police line, cops respectfully stepped aside for her, as though making way for royalty. And like royalty, Maura moved with aloof purpose and headed straight toward the parked Honda where Jane was now waiting.

“Isn’t Milton a little out of your jurisdiction?” asked Maura.

“When you see what we’ve got, you’ll understand why they called us.”

“This is the car?”

Jane nodded. “It belongs to Josephine Pulcillo. She says that a week ago she lost track of her keys and assumed she’d just misplaced them. Now it looks like they might have been stolen, and whoever had them also had access to her car. Which explains how this thing got into the trunk.” Jane turned to the Honda. “Hope you’re ready for this. Because this one is definitely going to give me nightmares.”

“I’ve heard you say that before.”

“Yeah, well, this time I really mean it.” With gloved hands, Jane lifted the hood of the trunk, releasing what smelled like rotting leather. Jane had been subjected before to the odors of a decaying body, but this was different; it did not smell of putrefaction. It did not even smell human. Certainly, she’d never seen any human being look like what now lay curled in the trunk of that Honda.

For a moment, Maura could not seem to muster a sound. She stared in silence at a mass of tangled black hair, at a face darkened to the color of tar. Every skin fold, every fine line of the nude body was perfectly preserved, as though frozen in bronze. Just as preserved was the woman’s dying expression, her face twisted and her mouth agape in an eternal shriek.

“At first, I thought it couldn’t be real,” said Jane. “I thought it was a rubber Halloween gag that you’d hang up to scare the trick-or-treaters. Not flesh, but some kind of fake zombie. I mean, how could you turn a woman into something like that?” Jane paused and took a breath. “Then I saw her teeth.”

Maura stared into the gaping mouth and said softly: “She has a dental filling.”

Jane turned away and looked instead at a TV news van that had just pulled up beyond the police line. “So tell me how a woman gets to look that way, Doc,” she said. “Tell me how you transform a body into a Halloween monster.”

“I don’t know.”

That answer surprised Jane. She’d come to think of Maura Isles as the authority on every manner of death, no matter how obscure. “You can’t do something like this in a week, right?” asked Jane. “Maybe not even a month. It’s gotta take time to turn a woman into that thing.” Or into a mummy.

Maura looked at her. “Where is Dr. Pulcillo? What does she say about this?”

Jane pointed toward the road, where the lineup of parked cars was steadily growing larger. “She’s down there, sitting in the car with Frost. She says she has no idea how the body got into her trunk. The last time she used her car was a few days ago, when she bought groceries. If this body were in the trunk more than a day or two, it would probably smell worse. She would have noticed it inside her car.”

“Her keys went missing a week ago?”

“She has no idea how she lost them. All she remembers is getting home from work one day, and they weren’t in her purse.”

“What was she doing up here?”

“She came out for a hike.”

“On a day like this?”

Heavier raindrops began to plop onto their parkas, and Maura closed the trunk, shutting off their view of the monstrous thing lying inside. “Something is not right about this.”

Jane laughed. “You think?”

“I’m talking about the weather.”

“Well, I’m not happy about the weather, either, but what can you do?”

“Josephine Pulcillo came up here all alone, on a day like today, to take a hike?”

Jane nodded. “That bothered me, too. I asked her about it.”

“What did she say?”

“She needed to get outdoors. And she likes to hike alone.”

“And apparently during thunderstorms.” Maura turned to look at the car where Josephine was now sitting. “She’s a very attractive girl, don’t you think?”

“Attractive? More like drop-dead gorgeous. I’m going to have to put Frost on a leash, the way he’s panting after her.”

Maura was still gazing toward Josephine, her frown deepening. “There’s been a great deal of publicity about Madam X. That big article in the Globe back in March. More news reports these past few weeks, with photos.”

“You mean photos of Josephine.”

Maura nodded. “Maybe she’s picked up an admirer.”

One particular admirer, thought Jane. Someone who’d known all along what was hidden in the museum basement. The publicity about Madam X would certainly have drawn his attention. He would have read every article, perused every photo. He would have seen Josephine’s face.