Tess Gerritsen - Body Double

Ballard didn’t say anything. She looked at him and saw that his back was now rigid, his face grimly stoic. Since he was not a homicide detective, he probably did not make many visits to the morgue, and the procedure now going on beyond that window must surely strike him as appalling. She remembered the first visit she’d ever made here as a police cadet. She’d been part of a group from the academy, the only woman among the six brawny cadets, and the men had all towered over her. Everyone had expected the girl to be the squeamish one, that she’d be the one who’d turn away during the autopsy. But she had planted herself front and center, had watched the entire procedure without flinching. It was one of the men, the most strapping among them, who had paled and stumbled off to a nearby chair. She wondered if Ballard was about to do the same. Under fluorescent lights, his skin had taken on a sickly pallor.

In the autopsy room, Yoshima began sawing the cranium open. The whir of blade against bone seemed to be more than Ballard could deal with. He turned from the window, fixing his gaze instead on the boxes of gloves stacked up in various sizes on the shelf. Rizzoli actually felt a little sorry for him. It had to be humiliating when you were a tough-looking guy like Ballard, to let a girl cop see you going rubber-kneed.

She shoved a stool his way, then pulled one up for herself. Gave a sigh as she sat down. “Nowadays, I’m not so good at standing on my feet too long.”

He sat down too, looking relieved to be focused on anything other than that whining bone saw. “Is that your first?” he asked, pointing to her belly.

“Yep.”

“Boy or girl?”

“I don’t know. We’ll be happy either way.”

“That’s how I felt when my daughter was born. Ten fingers and toes, that’s all I was asking for…” He paused, swallowing hard, as the saw continued to whine.

“How old is your daughter now?” asked Rizzoli, trying to distract him.

“Oh, fourteen, going on thirty. Not a barrel of laughs right now.”

“Rough age for girls.”

“See all my gray hairs coming in?”

Rizzoli laughed. “My mom used to do that. Point to her head and say, ‘These gray hairs are all your fault.’ I have to admit, I wasn’t nice to be around when I was fourteen. It’s the age.”

“Well, we’ve got some problems going on, too. My wife and I separated last year. Katie’s getting pulled in different directions. Two working parents, two households.”

“That’s gotta be hard on a kid.”

The whine of the bone saw mercifully ceased. Through the window, Rizzoli saw Yoshima remove the skullcap. Saw Bristol free up the brain, cupping it gently in both hands as he extracted it from the cranium. Ballard kept his gaze averted from the window, his attention focused on Rizzoli.

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” he said.

“What is?”

“Working as a cop. Your condition and all.”

“At least no one expects me to kick down any doors these days.”

“My wife was a rookie when she got pregnant.”

“ Newton PD?”

“ Boston. They wanted to yank her right off patrol. She told them being pregnant was an advantage. Said perps are a lot more courteous.”

“Perps? They’re never courteous to me.”

In the next room, Yoshima was sewing the corpse’s incision closed with needle and suture, a macabre tailor stitching together not fabric, but flesh. Bristol stripped off his gloves, washed his hands, then lumbered out to meet his visitors.

“Sorry for the delay. Took a little longer than I expected. The guy had tumors all over his abdomen and never saw a doctor. So instead, he gets me.” He reached out with a beefy hand, still damp, to greet Ballard. “Detective. So you’re here to take a look at our gunshot.”

Rizzoli saw Ballard’s face tighten. “Detective Rizzoli asked me to.”

Bristol nodded. “Well, let’s go then. She’s in the cold room.” He led them across the autopsy lab, through another doorway to the large refrigeration unit. It looked like any walk-in meat locker, with temperature dials and a massive stainless steel door. Hanging on the wall beside it was a clipboard with the log of deliveries. The name of the elderly man on whom Bristol had just finished the postmortem was there on the list, delivered at eleven P.M. last night. This was not a roster one wanted to be on.

Bristol opened the door and wisps of condensation drifted out. They stepped inside, and the smell of chilled meat almost made Rizzoli gag. Since becoming pregnant, she had lost her tolerance for foul odors; even a whiff of decay could send her reeling for the nearest sink. This time she managed to hold back the nausea as she gazed with grim resolve at the row of gurneys in the cold room. There were five body bags, their contents shrouded in white plastic.

Bristol walked up the row of gurneys and scanned the various tags. He stopped at the fourth one. “Here’s our girl,” he said, and unzipped the bag low enough to reveal the upper half of the torso, the Y-incision stitched together with mortician’s suture. More of Yoshima’s handiwork.

As the plastic parted, Rizzoli’s gaze wasn’t on the dead woman, but on Rick Ballard. He was silent as he stared down at the corpse. The sight of Anna Jessop seemed to freeze him in place.

“Well?” said Bristol.

Ballard blinked, as though snapping out of his trance. He released a breath. “It’s her,” he whispered.

“You’re absolutely sure?”

“Yes.” Ballard swallowed. “What happened? What did you find?”

Bristol glanced at Rizzoli, a silent request for her go-ahead to release the information. She gave a nod.

“Single gunshot, left temple,” Bristol said, pointing to the entrance wound in the scalp. “Extensive damage to the left temporal as well as both parietal lobes, from intracranial ricochet. Massive intracranial bleed.”

“That was the only wound?”

“Correct. Very quick, very efficient.”

Ballard’s gaze had drifted to the torso. To the breasts. It was not a surprising male response, when confronted with a nude young woman, but Rizzoli was nonetheless disturbed by it. Alive or dead, Anna Jessop had a right to her dignity. Rizzoli was relieved when Dr. Bristol matter-of-factly zipped the bag shut, granting the corpse its privacy.

They walked out of the cold room and Bristol swung the heavy refrigerator door shut. “Do you know the names of next of kin?” he asked. “Anyone we need to notify?”

“There are none,” said Ballard.

“You’re sure of that.”

“She has no living…” His voice abruptly faded. He had gone stock-still, and was staring through the window, into the autopsy lab.

Rizzoli turned to see what he was looking at, and knew immediately what had caught his attention. Maura Isles had just walked into the lab, carrying an envelope of X-rays. She crossed to the viewing box, clipped up films, and turned on the light. As she stood gazing at images of shattered limb bones, she did not realize that she was being watched. That three pairs of eyes were staring at her through the window.

“Who is that?” Ballard murmured.

“That’s one of our M.E.’s,” said Bristol. “Dr. Maura Isles.”

“The resemblance is scary, isn’t it?” said Rizzoli.

Ballard gave a startled shake of his head. “For a moment I thought…”

“We all did, when we first saw the victim.”

In the next room, Maura slid the films back into the envelope. She walked out of the lab, never realizing she’d been observed. How easy it is, to stalk another person, thought Rizzoli. There is no such thing as a sixth sense that tells us when others are staring at us. We don’t feel the stalker’s gaze on our backs; only at the instant when he makes his move do we realize he’s there.