Tess Gerritsen - Body Double

“No pulse!”

One of the cops planted his hands on the chest and began compressions. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, palms buried in Bonnie’s Hollywood cleavage. With each thrust, only a trickle leaked from the wound. There was so little blood left in her veins to circulate, to nourish vital organs. They were pumping a dry well.

The ambulance team arrived with their tubes and monitors and bottles of IV fluid. Rizzoli moved back to give them room, and suddenly felt so dizzy she had to sit down. She sank into an armchair and lowered her head. Realized she was sitting on white fabric, probably smearing it with blood from her clothes. When she raised her head again, she saw that Bonnie had been intubated. Her blouse was torn open and her brassiere cut away. EKG wires crisscrossed her chest. Only a week ago, Rizzoli had thought of that woman as a Barbie doll, dumb and plastic in her tight pink blouse and spike-heeled sandals. Plastic was exactly what she looked like now, her flesh waxy, her eyes without a glimmer of a soul. Rizzoli spotted one of Bonnie’s sandals, lying a few feet away, and wondered if she had tried to flee in those impossible shoes. Imagined her frantic clack-clacking down the hall as she trailed sprays of red, as she struggled in those spike heels. Even after the EMTs had wheeled Bonnie away, Rizzoli was still staring at that useless sandal.

“She’s not going to make it,” said Frost.

“I know.” Rizzoli looked at him. “You’ve got blood on your mouth.”

“You should look at yourself in the mirror. I’d say we’ve both been fully exposed.”

She thought of blood and all the terrible things it might carry. HIV. Hepatitis. “She seemed pretty healthy,” was all she could say.

“Still,” said Frost. “You being pregnant and all.”

So what the hell was she doing here, steeped in a dead woman’s blood? I should be at home in front of the TV, she thought, with my swollen feet propped up. This is not the life for a mother. It’s not a life for anyone.

She tried to launch herself out of the chair. Frost held out his hand to her, and for the first time, she took it, allowing him to pull her to her feet. Sometimes, she thought, you’ve got to accept a helping hand. Sometimes you’ve got to admit you can’t do it all by yourself. Her blouse was stiff, her hands caked brown. Crime scene personnel would be arriving soon, and then the press. Always the goddamn press.

It was time to clean up and get to work.

Maura stepped out of her car, into a disorienting assault of camera lenses and thrusted microphones. Cruiser lights flashed blue and white, illuminating a crowd of bystanders gathered near the perimeter of police tape. She did not hesitate, did not give the media any chance to close in on her as she walked briskly toward the house and nodded at the cop guarding the scene.

He returned her nod with a puzzled look. “Uh-Dr. Costas is already here-”

“So am I,” she said, and ducked under the tape.

“Dr. Isles?”

“He’s inside?”

“Yeah, but-”

She kept walking, knowing that he would not challenge her. Her air of authority brought her access that few cops dared question. She paused in the front door to pull on gloves and shoe covers, necessary fashion accessories when blood is involved. Then she stepped inside, where crime scene techs gave her barely a glance. They all knew her; they had no reason to question her presence. She walked, unimpeded, from the foyer into the living room and saw bloodstained carpet and scattered medical debris from the ambulance team. Syringes, torn wrappings, and wads of soiled gauze littered the floor. No body.

She started down a hallway, where violence had left its record on the walls. On one side, bursts of arterial spray. On the other, more subtle, the cast-off droplets of the pursuer’s blade.

“Doc?” Rizzoli was standing at the other end of the hallway.

“Why didn’t you call me?” said Maura.

“Costas is taking this one.”

“So I just heard.”

“You don’t need to be here.”

“You could have told me, Jane. You could have let me know.”

“This one isn’t yours.”

“This involves my sister. It concerns me. ”

“That’s why it’s not your case.” Rizzoli moved toward her, her gaze unwavering. “I don’t have to tell you this. You already know it.”

“I’m not asking to be M.E. on this one. What I resent is not being called about it.”

“I didn’t get the chance, okay?”

“That’s the excuse?”

“But it’s true, goddamn it!” Rizzoli waved at the blood on the walls. “We’ve got two vics here. I haven’t eaten dinner. I haven’t showered the blood outta my hair. For god’s sake, I don’t even have time to pee.” She turned. “I have better things to do than explain myself to you.”

“Jane.”

“Go home, Doc. Let me do my job.”

“Jane! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all that.”

Rizzoli turned back to face her, and Maura saw what she had failed to register until that moment. The hollow eyes, the sagging shoulders. She is barely standing.

“I’m sorry, too.” Rizzoli looked at the blood-spattered wall. “We missed him by that much, ” she said, bringing thumb and forefinger together. “We had a team on the street, watching the house. I don’t know how he spotted the car, but he drove right on by, and came in the back gate instead.” She shook her head. “Somehow he knew. He knew we were looking for him. That’s why Van Gates was a problem…”

“ She warned him.”

“Who?”

“Amalthea. It had to be her. A phone call, a letter. Something passed out through one of the guards. She’s protecting her partner.”

“You think she’s rational enough to do that?”

“Yes, I do.” Maura hesitated. “I went to visit her today.”

“When were you going to tell me?”

“She knows secrets about me. She has the answers.”

“She hears voices, for god’s sake.”

“No, she doesn’t. I’m convinced she’s perfectly sane, and she knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s protecting her partner, Jane. She’ll never give him up.”

Rizzoli regarded her for a moment in silence. “Maybe you’d better come see this. You need to know what we’re up against.”

Maura followed her to the kitchen and halted in the doorway, stunned by the carnage she saw in that room. Her colleague, Dr. Costas, was crouching over the body. He glanced up at Maura with a look of puzzlement.

“I didn’t realize you were coming in on this,” he said.

“I’m not. I just needed to see…” She stared at Terence Van Gates and swallowed hard.

Costas rose to his feet. “This one was bloody efficient. No defense wounds, no indication the victim had any chance to put up a fight. A single slash, just about ear to ear. Approached from behind. Incision starts higher on the left, crosses the trachea, and trails a little lower on the right side.”

“A right-handed attacker.”

“And strong, too.” Costas bent down and gently tilted the head backward, revealing an open ring of glistening cartilage. “We’re all the way to vertebral column here.” He released the head and it rolled forward, incised edges once again kissing together.

“An execution,” she murmured.

“Pretty much.”

“The second victim-in the living room-”

“The wife. She died in the ER an hour ago.”

“But that execution wasn’t so efficient,” said Rizzoli. “We think the killer took out the man first. Maybe Van Gates was expecting the visit. Maybe he even let him into his kitchen, thinking it was business. But he didn’t expect the attack. There were no defense wounds, no signs of a struggle. He turned his back on the killer, and went down like a slaughtered lamb.”