Tess Gerritsen - Body Double

Maura thought of Amalthea’s knife, slicing down a young woman’s abdomen with a stroke so decisive the blade stops only when it collides with bone. She thought of her own profession, where knives played such a large part, and of the days she spent in the autopsy lab, slicing skin and organs. We are both cutters, my mother and I. But I cut dead flesh, and she cut the living.

“That’s why you didn’t find fetal bones in Karen Sadler’s grave,” said Maura.

“But your other case-” He gestured toward the X-ray of Nikki Wells. “That fetus wasn’t taken. It was burned with the mother. Why make an incision to extract it, and then kill it anyway?”

“Because Nikki Wells’s baby had a congenital defect. An amniotic band.”

“What’s that?” asked Rizzoli.

“It’s a membranous strand that sometimes stretches across the amniotic sac,” said Maura. “If it wraps around a fetus’s limb, it can constrict blood flow, even amputate the limb. The defect was diagnosed during Nikki’s second trimester.” She pointed to the X-ray. “You can see the fetus is missing its right leg beneath the knee.”

“That’s not a fatal defect?”

“No, it would have survived. But the killer would have seen the defect immediately. She would have seen it wasn’t a perfect baby. I think that’s why she didn’t take it.” Maura turned and looked at Rizzoli. Could not avoid confronting the fact of Rizzoli’s pregnancy. The swollen belly, the estrogenic flush of her cheeks. “She wanted a perfect baby.”

“But Karen Sadler’s wouldn’t have been perfect either,” Rizzoli pointed out. “She was only eight months pregnant. The lungs wouldn’t be mature, right? It would need an incubator to survive.”

Maura looked down at Karen Sadler’s bones. She thought of the site from which they had been recovered. Thought, too, of the husband’s bones, buried twenty yards away. But not in the same grave-a separate spot. Why dig two different holes? Why not bury husband and wife together?

Her mouth suddenly went dry. The answer left her stunned.

They were not buried at the same time.

THE COTTAGE HUDDLED beneath rain-heavy tree branches, as though cringing from their touch. When Maura had first seen it the week before, she had thought the house merely depressing, a dark little box slowly being strangled by encroaching woods. Now, as she gazed at it from her car, the windows seemed to stare back like malevolent eyes.

“This is the house where Amalthea grew up,” said Maura. “It wouldn’t have been hard for Anna to track down that information. All she had to do was check Amalthea’s high school records. Or search an old phone book for the name Lank.” She looked at Rizzoli. “The landlady, Miss Clausen, told me Anna asked specifically about renting this house.”

“So Anna must have known Amalthea once lived here.”

And like me, she was hungry to know more about our mother, thought Maura. To understand the woman who gave us life, and then abandoned us.

Rain pounded on the car roof and slid in silvery sheets down the windshield.

Rizzoli zipped up her slicker and pulled the hood over her head. “Well, let’s go in and take a look, then.”

They dashed through the rain and scrambled up the steps to the porch, where they shook water from their raincoats. Maura produced the key she’d just picked up at Miss Clausen’s real estate office and thrust it into the lock. At first it would not turn, as though the house was fighting back, determined not to let her enter. When at last she managed to open the door, it gave a warning creak as it swung open, resisting her to the end.

Inside it was even gloomier and more claustrophobic than she had remembered. The air was sour with the smell of mildew, as though the dampness outside had seeped through the walls into the curtains, the furniture. The light through the window cast the living room in sullen shades of gray. This house does not want us here, she thought. It does not want us to learn its secrets.

She touched Rizzoli’s arm. “Look,” she said, pointing to the two bolts and the brass chains.

“Brand-new locks.”

“Anna had them installed. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Who she was trying to lock out.”

“If it wasn’t Charles Cassell.” Rizzoli crossed to the living room window and gazed out at a curtain of leaves dripping with rain. “Well, this place is awfully isolated. No neighbors. Nothing but trees. I’d want a few extra locks, too.” She gave an uneasy laugh. “You know, I never did like it, out in the woods. Bunch of us went camping once, in high school. Drove up to New Hampshire and laid our sleeping bags out around the campfire. I didn’t sleep a wink. I kept thinking: How do I know what’s out there, watching me? Up in the trees, hiding in the bushes.”

“Come on,” said Maura. “I want to show you the rest of the house.” She led the way to the kitchen, and flipped the wall switch. Fluorescent lights flickered on with an ominous hum. The harsh glare brought out every crack, every buckle in the ancient linoleum. She looked down at the black and white checkerboard pattern, yellowed with wear, and thought about all the spilled milk and tracked-in mud that, over the years, had surely left their microscopic traces on this floor. What else had seeped into these cracks and seams? What terrible events had left their residue?

“These are brand-new dead bolts, too,” said Rizzoli, standing at the back door.

Maura crossed to the cellar door. “This is what I wanted you to see.”

“Another bolt?”

“But see how tarnished this one is? It isn’t new. This bolt’s been here a long time. Miss Clausen said it was already on the door when she bought the property at auction twenty-eight years ago. And here’s the strange part.”

“What?”

“The only place this door leads is down to the cellar.” She looked at Rizzoli. “It’s a dead end.”

“Why would anyone need to lock this door?”

“That’s what I wondered.”

Rizzoli opened the door, and the smell of damp earth rose from the darkness. “Oh man,” she muttered. “I hate going down into cellars.”

“There’s a light chain, right over your head.”

Rizzoli reached up and gave the chain a tug. The bulb came on, its anemic glow spilling down a narrow stairway. Below were only shadows. “You sure there’s no other way into this cellar?” she asked, peering down into shadow. “A coal hatch or something?”

“I walked all around the outside of this house. I didn’t see any outside doors leading into the cellar.”

“Have you been down there?”

“I didn’t see any reason to.” Until today.

“Okay.” Rizzoli pulled a mini Maglite from her pocket and took a deep breath. “I guess we should take a look.”

The lightbulb swayed above them, tilting shadows back and forth as they descended creaky stairs. Rizzoli moved slowly, as though testing each step before she trusted her weight to it. Never before had Maura known Rizzoli to be so tentative, so cautious, and that apprehension was fueling her own. By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, the door to the kitchen seemed far above them, in another dimension.

The bulb at the bottom of the stairs had burned out. Rizzoli swept her Maglite across a floor of packed earth, damp from seeping rainwater. The beam revealed a stack of paint cans and a rolled-up carpet, moldering against one wall. In a corner sat a crate filled with bundles of kindling for the living room fireplace. Nothing here seemed out of the ordinary, nothing justified the sense of threat that Maura had felt at the top of the stairs.

“Well, you’re right,” said Rizzoli. “There doesn’t seem to be another way out of here.”