Tess Gerritsen - Body Double

Unable to bear the image any longer, she closed the file. Turned her attention to the two large X-ray envelopes also lying on her desk. She carried them to the viewing box and inserted Theresa Wells’s head and neck films under the clips. The lights flickered on, illuminating the ghostly shadows of bone. X-rays were far easier to stomach than photographs. Stripped of recognizable flesh, corpses lose their power to horrify. One skeleton looks like any other. The skull she now saw on the light box might be any woman’s, loved one or stranger. She stared at the fractured cranial vault, at the triangle of bone that had been forced beneath the skull table. This had been no glancing blow; only a deliberate and savage swing of the arm could have driven that shard so deeply into the parietal lobe.

She took down Theresa’s films, reached into the second envelope for a new pair of X-rays, and clipped them onto the light box. Another skull-this one Nikki’s. Like her sister, Nikki had been struck in the head, but this blow had landed on the forehead, caving in the frontal bone, crushing both orbits so severely the eyes would have ruptured in their sockets. Nikki Wells must have seen the blow coming.

Maura removed the skull films and clipped up another pair of X-rays, showing Nikki’s spine and pelvis, startlingly intact beneath the fire-ravaged flesh. Overlying the pelvis were the fetal bones. Though the flames had melded mother and child to a single charred mass, on X-ray, Maura could see they were separate individuals. Two sets of bones, two victims.

She saw something else, as well: a bright speck that stood out, even in the tangle of interlocking shadows. It was just a needle-thin sliver over Nikki Wells’s pubic bone. A tiny shard of metal? Perhaps something from her overlying clothing-a zipper, a fastener-that had adhered to burned skin?

Maura reached into the envelope and found a lateral torso view. She clipped it up beside the frontal view. The metallic sliver was still there on the lateral shot, but she could now see that it was not overlying the pubis; it seemed to be wedged within the bone.

She pulled all the X-rays from Nikki’s envelope and clipped them up, two at a time. She spotted the densities that Dr. Hobart had seen on the chest X-ray, metallic loops that represented brassiere hook and eye fasteners. On the lateral films, those same loops of metal were clearly in the overlying soft tissue. She put up the pelvic films again and stared at that metallic sliver embedded in Nikki Wells’s pubic bone. Although Dr. Hobart had mentioned it in his report, he had said nothing further about it in his conclusions. Perhaps he’d thought it a trivial finding. And why wouldn’t he, in light of all the other horrors inflicted on this victim?

Yoshima had assisted Hobart at the autopsy; perhaps he would remember the case.

She left her office, headed down the stairwell, and pushed through the double doors, into the autopsy suite. The lab was deserted, the counters wiped clean for the night.

“Yoshima?” she called.

She pulled on shoe covers and walked through the lab, past the empty stainless steel tables, and pushed through yet another set of double doors, to the delivery bay. Swinging open the door to the cold locker, she glanced inside. Saw only the deceased, two white body pouches on side-by-side gurneys.

She closed the door and stood for a moment in the deserted bay, listening for voices, footsteps, anything to tell her that someone else was still in the building. But she heard only the rumble of the refrigerator and, faintly, the whine of an ambulance on the street outside.

Costas and Yoshima must have gone home for the night.

When she walked out of the building fifteen minutes later, she saw that the Saab and the Toyota were indeed gone; except for her black Lexus, the only other vehicles in the parking lot were the three morgue vans, stenciled with the words: OFFICE OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINER, COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS. Darkness had fallen, and her car sat isolated under a yellow pool of light cast by the streetlamp.

The images of Theresa and Nikki Wells still haunted her. As she walked toward the Lexus, she was alert to every shadow around her, to every stray noise, every hint of movement. A few paces from her car she came to a halt and stared at the passenger door. The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood up. The bundle of files she was carrying slid from her numb hands, papers scattering across the pavement.

Three parallel scratches marred her car’s gleaming finish. A claw mark.

Get away. Get inside.

She spun around and ran back to the building. Stood at the locked door, fumbling through her keys. Where was it, where was the right one? Finally she found it, thrust it into the lock, and pushed through, slamming the door behind her. She threw her weight against it as well, as though to reinforce the barricade.

Inside the empty building, it was so quiet she could hear her own panicked breaths.

She ran down the hall to her office and locked herself inside. Only then, surrounded by all that was familiar, did she feel her pulse stop galloping, her hands stop shaking. She went to her desk, picked up the phone, and called Jane Rizzoli.

“YOU DID EXACTLY the right thing. Backed the hell away and moved to a safe place,” said Rizzoli.

Maura sat at her desk and stared at the creased papers that Rizzoli had retrieved for her from the parking lot. A now-untidy stack from Nikki Wells’s file, smudged with dirt, trampled in panic. Even now, sitting safe in Rizzoli’s company, Maura still felt the aftershocks.

“Did you find any fingerprints on my door?” Maura asked.

“A few. What you’d expect to find on any car door.”

Rizzoli rolled a chair close to Maura’s desk and sat down. Rested her hands on the shelf of her belly. Mama Rizzoli, pregnant and armed, thought Maura. Was there any less likely savior to come to my rescue?

“How long was your car in that parking lot? You said you arrived around six.”

“But the scratches could have been made before I got here. I don’t use the passenger door every day. Only if I’m loading groceries or something. I saw it tonight because of the way the car was parked. And it was right under the lamp.”

“When was the last time you looked at that door?”

Maura pressed her hands to her temples. “I know it was fine yesterday morning. When I left Maine. I put my overnight bag in the front seat. I would have noticed the scratches then.”

“Okay. So you drove home yesterday. Then what?”

“The car stayed in my garage all night. And then, this morning, I went to see you at Schroeder Plaza.”

“Where did you park?”

“In that garage near police headquarters. The one off Columbus Ave.”

“So it was in that parking garage all afternoon. While we were visiting the prison.”

“Yes.”

“That garage is fully monitored, you know.”

“Is it? I didn’t notice…”

“And then where did you go? After we got back from Framingham?”

Maura hesitated.

“Doc?”

“I went to see Joyce O’Donnell.” She met Rizzoli’s gaze. “Don’t look at me like that. I had to see her.”

“Were you going to tell me?”

“Of course. Look, I just needed to know more about my mother.”

Rizzoli leaned back, mouth set in a straight line. She’s not happy with me, thought Maura. She told me to stay away from O’Donnell and I ignored her advice.

“How long were you at her house?” Rizzoli asked.

“About an hour. Jane, she told me something I didn’t know. Amalthea grew up in Fox Harbor. That’s why Anna went to Maine.”

“And after you left O’Donnell’s house? What happened then?”