Tess Gerritsen - Body Double

She stumbled to her feet and staggered toward higher ground. Away from the water, away from the blood. She collapsed farther up on the bank, dropping onto a bed of grass. There she lay as the next contraction came and went. And the next, and the next. Through pain-dimmed eyes she watched the quarter moon wheel across the heavens. Saw the stars fade and a pink glow seep into the eastern sky.

As the sun lifted over the horizon, Mattie Purvis welcomed her daughter into the world.

TURKEY VULTURES TRACED LAZY CIRCLES in the sky, the black-winged heralds of fresh carrion. The dead do not long escape Mother Nature’s attention. The perfume of decomposition draws blowflies and beetles, crows and rodents, all converging on Death’s bounty. And how am I any different? Maura thought, as she headed down the grassy bank toward the water. She too was drawn to the dead, to poke and prod cold flesh like any scavenger. This was such a beautiful place for so grim a task. The sky was a cloudless blue, the lake like silvered glass. But at the water’s edge, a white sheet draped what the vultures, circling above, were so eager to feast on.

Jane Rizzoli, standing with Barry Frost and two Massachusetts State Police officers, stepped forward to meet Maura. “Body was lying in a couple inches of water, over in those cattails. We pulled it up onto the bank. Just wanted you to know it’s been moved.”

Maura stared down at the draped corpse, but did not touch it. She was not quite ready to confront what lay beneath the plastic sheet. “Is the woman all right?”

“I saw Mrs. Purvis in the ER. She’s a little banged up, but she’ll be fine. And the baby’s doing great.” Rizzoli pointed toward the bank, where tufts of feathery grass grew. “She had it right over there. Managed it all by herself. When the park ranger drove by around seven, he found her sitting at the side of the road, nursing the baby.”

Maura stared up the bank and thought of the woman laboring alone under the open sky, her cries of pain unheard, while twenty yards away, a corpse cooled and stiffened. “Where did he keep her?”

“In a pit, about two miles from here.”

Maura frowned at her. “She made it all this way on foot?”

“Yeah. Imagine running in the dark, through the trees. And doing it while you’re in labor. Came down that slope there, out of the woods.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“You should see the box he kept her in, like a coffin. Buried alive for a week-I don’t know how she came out of it still sane.”

Maura thought of young Alice Rose, trapped in a pit all those years ago. Just one night of despair and darkness had haunted her for the rest of her short life. In the end, it had killed her. Yet Mattie Purvis had emerged not only sane, but prepared to fight back. To survive.

“We found the white van,” said Rizzoli.

“Where?”

“It’s parked way up on one of the maintenance roads, about thirty, forty yards away from the pit where he buried her. We never would have found her there.”

“Have you found any remains yet? There must be victims buried nearby.”

“We’ve just started to look. There’s a lot of trees, a large area to search. It’ll take time for us to comb that whole hill for graves.”

“All these years, all those missing women. One of them could be my…” Maura stopped, and looked up at the trees on the slope. One of them could be my mother. Maybe I don’t have a monster’s blood in my veins at all. Maybe my real mother has been dead all these years. Another victim, buried somewhere in those woods.

“Before you make any assumptions,” said Rizzoli, “you need to see the corpse.”

Maura frowned at her. Looked down at the shrouded body lying at her feet. She knelt and reached for a corner of the sheet.

“Wait. I should warn you-”

“Yes?”

“It’s not what you’re expecting.”

Maura hesitated, her hand hovering over the sheet. Insects hummed, greedy for access to fresh meat. She took a breath and peeled back the cover.

For a moment she didn’t say a word as she stared at the face she’d just exposed. What stunned her was not the ruined left eye, or the screwdriver handle jammed deep into the orbit. That gruesome detail was merely a feature to be noted, mentally filed away as she would file a dictated report. No, it was the face that held her attention, that horrified her.

“He’s too young,” she murmured. “This man’s too young to be Elijah Lank.”

“I’d guess he’s about thirty, thirty-five.”

Maura released a shocked breath. “I don’t understand…”

“You do see it, don’t you?” Rizzoli asked quietly. “Black hair, green eyes.”

Like mine.

“I mean, sure, there could be a million guys with hair and eyes that color. But the resemblance…” She paused. “Frost saw it, too. We all saw it.”

Maura pulled the sheet over the corpse and stepped back, retreating from the truth which had stared so undeniably from the dead man’s face.

“Dr. Bristol’s on his way now,” said Frost. “We didn’t think you’d want to do this autopsy.”

“Then why did you call me?”

“Because you said you wanted to be in the loop,” said Rizzoli. “Because I promised I would. And because…” Rizzoli looked down at the draped body. “Because you’d find out sooner or later who this man was.”

“But we don’t know who he was. You think you see a resemblance. That’s not proof.”

“There’s more. Something we just learned this morning.”

Maura looked at her. “What?”

“We’ve been trying to track down Elijah Lank’s whereabouts. Searching for any place his name may have popped up. Arrests, traffic tickets, anything. This morning we got a fax from a county clerk in North Carolina. It was a death certificate. Elijah Lank died eight years ago.”

“Eight years ago? Then he wasn’t with Amalthea when she killed Theresa and Nikki Wells.”

“No. By then, Amalthea was working with a new partner. Someone who stepped in to take Elijah’s place. To continue the family business.”

Maura turned and stared at the lake, its water now blindingly bright. I don’t want to hear the rest of this, she thought. I don’t want to know.

“Eight years ago, Elijah died of a heart attack in a Greenville hospital,” said Rizzoli. “He showed up in the emergency room complaining of chest pain. According to their records, he was brought to the ER by his family.”

Family.

“His wife, Amalthea,” said Rizzoli. “And their son, Samuel.”

Maura took a deep breath and smelled both decay and the scent of summer in the air. Death and life mingled in a single perfume.

“I’m sorry,” said Rizzoli. “I’m sorry you had to find out. There’s still a chance we’re wrong about this man, you know. There’s still a chance he’s not related to them at all.”

But they weren’t wrong, and Maura knew it.

I knew it when I saw his face.

When Rizzoli and Frost walked into J.P. Doyle’s that evening, the cops standing around the bar greeted them with a loud and boisterous round of applause that made Rizzoli flush. Hell, even the guys who didn’t particularly like her were applauding in comradely acknowledgment of her success, which at that moment was being trumpeted on the five o’clock news playing on the TV above the bar. The crowd began to stomp in unison as Rizzoli and Frost approached the counter, where the grinning bartender had already set out two drinks for them. For Frost, a shot of whiskey, and for Rizzoli…

A large glass of milk.

As everyone burst out laughing, Frost leaned over and whispered in her ear: “You know, my stomach’s kind of upset. Wanna trade drinks?”