Tess Gerritsen - Body Double

Black boots were planted right on the other side of the car.

Run.

In an instant she was sprinting straight for that open pavement. No thought of evasive moves, no dodging left and right, just all-out panicked flight. The red EMERGENCY sign glowed ahead of her. I can make it, she thought. I can-

The bullet was like a slam to her shoulder. It sent her pitching forward, sprawling onto blacktop. She tried to rise to her knees, but her left arm collapsed beneath her. What’s wrong with my arm, she thought, why can’t I use my arm? Groaning, she rolled onto her back and saw the glare of the parking-lot lamp shining above her.

The face of Carmen Ballard moved into view.

“I killed you once,” Carmen said. “Now I have to do it all over again.”

“Please. Rick and I-we never-”

“He wasn’t yours to take.” Carmen raised her gun. The barrel was a dark eye, staring at Maura. “Fucking whore.” Her hand tensed, about to squeeze off the killing shot.

Another voice suddenly cut in-a man’s. “Drop the weapon!”

Carmen blinked in surprise. Glanced sideways.

Standing a few yards away was a hospital security guard, his gun trained on Carmen. “Did you hear me, lady?” he barked. “Drop it!”

Carmen’s aim wavered. She glanced down at Maura, then back at the guard, her rage, her hunger for revenge, battling with the reality of the consequences.

“We were never lovers,” said Maura, her voice so weak she wondered if Carmen could hear it through the far-off bleat of the car horn. “Neither were they.”

“Liar.” Carmen’s gaze snapped back to Maura. “You’re just like her. He left me because of her. He left me.”

“That wasn’t Anna’s fault-”

“Yes it was. And now it’s yours.” She kept her focus on Maura, even as tires screeched to a stop. Even as a new voice yelled:

“Officer Ballard! Drop the weapon!”

Rizzoli.

Carmen glanced sideways, a last calculating look as she weighed her choices. Two weapons were now trained on her. She had lost; no matter what she chose, her life was over. As Carmen stared back down at her, Maura could see, in her eyes, the decision she’d made. Maura watched as Carmen’s arms straightened, steadying her aim on Maura, the barrel poised for its final blast. She watched Carmen’s hands tighten around the grip, preparing to squeeze off the killing shot.

The blast shocked Maura. It knocked Carmen sideways; she staggered. Fell.

Maura heard pounding footsteps, a crescendo of sirens. And a familiar voice murmuring,

“Oh, Jesus. Doc!”

She saw Rizzoli’s face hovering above her. Lights pulsed on the street. All around her shadows approached. Ghosts, welcoming her to their world.

SEEING IT FROM the other side now. As a patient, not a doctor, the ceiling lights flickering past her as the gurney rolled down the hall, as the nurse in a bouffant cap glanced down, concern in her eyes. The wheels squeaked and the nurse panted a little as she pushed the gurney through double doors, into the operating room. Different lights glared overhead now, harsher, blinding. Like the lights of the autopsy room.

Maura closed her eyes against them. As the OR nurses transferred her to the table, she thought of Anna, lying naked beneath identical lamps, her body carved open, strangers peering down at her. She felt Anna’s spirit hovering above her, watching, just as Maura had once stared down at Anna. My sister, she thought as the pentobarbital slid into her veins, as the lights faded. Are you waiting for me?

But when she awakened, it wasn’t Anna she saw; it was Jane Rizzoli. Slats of daylight glowed through the partially closed blinds, casting bright horizontal bars across Rizzoli’s face as she leaned toward Maura.

“Hey, Doc.”

“Hey,” Maura whispered back.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Not so good. My arm…” Maura winced.

“Looks like it’s time for more drugs.” Rizzoli reached over and pressed the nurse’s call button.

“Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

They fell silent as the nurse came in to inject a dose of morphine into the IV. The silence lingered after the nurse had left, and the drug began to work its magic.

Maura said, softly: “Rick…”

“I’m sorry. You do know he’s…”

I know. She blinked back tears. “We never had a chance.”

“She wasn’t about to let you have a chance. That claw mark in your car door-that was all about him. About staying away from her husband. The slashed screens, the dead bird in the mailbox-all the threats Anna blamed on Cassell-I think that was Carmen, trying to scare Anna into leaving town. Into leaving her husband alone.”

“But then Anna came back to Boston.”

Rizzoli nodded. “She came back, because she learned she had a sister.”

Me.

“So Carmen finds out that the girlfriend’s back in town,” said Rizzoli. “Anna left that message on Rick’s answering machine, remember? The daughter heard it and told her mother. There goes any hope Carmen had of a reconciliation. The other woman was moving in again, on her territory. Her family.”

Maura remembered what Carmen had said: He wasn’t yours to take.

“Charles Cassell said something to me, about love,” said Rizzoli. “He said, there’s a kind of love that never lets go, no matter what. It sounds almost romantic, doesn’t it? Till death do us part. Then you think about how many people get killed because a lover won’t let go, won’t give up.”

By now, the morphine had spread through her bloodstream. Maura closed her eyes, welcoming the drug’s embrace. “How did you know?” she murmured. “Why did you think of Carmen?”

“The Black Talon. That’s the clue I should have followed all along-that bullet. But I got thrown off the track by the Lanks. By the Beast.”

“So did I,” whispered Maura. She felt the morphine dragging her toward sleep. “I think I’m ready, Jane. For the answer.”

“The answer to what?”

“Amalthea. I need to know.”

“If she’s your mother?”

“Yes.”

“Even if she is, it doesn’t mean a thing. It’s just biology. What do you gain by that knowledge?”

“The truth.” Maura sighed. “At least I’ll know the truth.”

The truth, thought Rizzoli as she walked to her car, is seldom what people really want to hear. Wouldn’t it be better to hold on to the thinnest sliver of hope that you are not the spawn of monsters? But Maura had asked for the facts, and Rizzoli knew they would be brutal. Already, searchers had found two sets of women’s remains buried on the forested slope, not far from where Mattie Purvis had been confined. How many other pregnant women had known the terrors of that same box? How many had awakened in the darkness and had clawed, shrieking, at those impenetrable walls? How many had understood, as Mattie had, that a terrible finale waited in store for them once their usefulness, as living incubators, was over?

Could I have survived that horror? I’ll never know the answer. Not until I’m the one in the box.

When she reached her car in the parking garage, she found herself checking all four tires to confirm they were intact, found herself scanning the cars around her, searching for anyone who might be watching. This is what the job does to you, she thought; you begin to feel evil all around you, even when it’s not there.

She climbed into her Subaru and started the engine. Sat for a moment as it idled, as the air blowing from the vents slowly cooled down. She reached into her purse for the cell phone, thinking: I need to hear Gabriel’s voice. I need to know that I am not Mattie Purvis, that my husband does love me. The way I love him.