Тесс Герритсен - I Know a Secret

But when Maura sliced open the stomach, all that dribbled out was purplish liquid.

“Do you smell that?” Maura asked.

“I’d rather not,” said Jane.

“I think it’s wine. Judging by how dark it is, I’m guessing something heavy like a cabernet or a zinfandel.”

“What, you’re not gonna tell us the vintage? What about the label?” Jane snorted. “You’re slipping, Maura.”

Maura probed the stomach cavity. “I don’t see any food in here, which means she hadn’t eaten anything for at least a few hours before she died.” Maura looked up. “Did you find open wine bottles in her apartment?”

“No,” said Frost. “And there were no dirty wineglasses on the counter or in the sink.”

“Maybe she had a drink somewhere else,” said Jane. “You think she met her killer at a bar?”

“It would have been just before getting home. Liquids pass pretty quickly into the jejunum, yet she still has wine in her stomach.”

Frost said, “She left her film studio around six P.M. It’s only a ten-minute walk to her residence. I’ll check the bars in the area.”

Maura emptied the scant stomach contents into a specimen jar, then moved to the corpse’s head. There she stood frowning at Cassandra Coyle’s empty eye sockets. She had already examined the enucleated globes, which were now soaking in a jar of preservative, like two grotesque olives bobbing in gin.

“So she stops somewhere to have a glass of wine,” said Jane, trying to piece together the sequence of events. “Then she brings her killer home. Or he follows her there. But what happens next? How did he kill her?”

Maura didn’t answer. Instead, she once again picked up the scalpel. Starting behind one ear, she cut into the scalp and sliced all the way across the top of the head to behind the opposite ear.

How easily the most recognizable feature of a human being can be obliterated, thought Jane, as she watched Maura peel the scalp forward in one limp flap. Cassandra Coyle’s pretty face collapsed in a fleshy mask, dyed black hair flopping forward to conceal it like a fringed curtain. The whine of the oscillating saw cut off any conversation, and Jane turned away at the smell of bone dust. The skull, at least, was impersonal. It could be anyone’s cranium being sawed open, anyone’s brain about to be exposed.

Maura pried off the cranial cap and revealed the glistening surface of gray matter. Here was what had made Cassandra a unique human being. Stored in this three-pound organ had been every memory, every experience, everything Cassandra had ever known or felt or loved. Gently, Maura lifted the lobes and sliced through nerves and arteries before easing the brain out of its cranial bed. “No obvious hemorrhages,” she noted. “No contusions. No edema.”

“So it looks normal?” asked Frost.

“Yes, it does. On the surface, at least.” Maura gingerly lowered the organ into a bucket of formalin. “This is a young woman with a healthy-looking heart and lungs and brain. She hasn’t been strangled. She hasn’t been sexually assaulted. There are no bruises, no needle marks, no apparent trauma at all, except for the eyes. And those were removed postmortem.”

“Then what happened to her? What killed her?” said Jane.

For a moment Maura didn’t answer. Her gaze remained on the brain, submerged in the bucket of formalin. A brain that had offered up no answers. She glanced at Jane and said, “I don’t know.”

The cell phone buzzed in Jane’s pocket. She stripped off her gloves, reached under the protective gown to fish it out, and saw a number she didn’t recognize.

“Detective Rizzoli,” she answered.

“Hey, sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner,” a man said. “But I just got home from Boca Raton and, man, I’m sorry I did. This weather sucks.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Benny Lima. You know, the Lima Travel Agency? You left a message on my phone last night, asking about my security camera. The one that’s pointed toward Utica Street.”

“Is your camera operational?”

“Sure is. Last year we caught a kid throwing rocks through the window.”

The word camera had caught Frost’s attention, and he was watching the conversation with sudden interest.

“We need whatever footage you have from Monday night,” Jane said. “Do you still have it?”

“It’s right here, waiting for you.”

Freezing rain was spitting from the sky, and it pricked Jane’s face like needles as she and Frost stepped out of their car and dashed across the street to the Lima Travel Agency. They ducked inside, and a bell tinkled as the door slammed shut, announcing their arrival.

“Hello?” Jane called. “Mr. Lima?”

The office appeared deserted. Judging by the dusty plastic philodendron and the faded cruise-ship posters, no one had bothered to redecorate in decades. On the desk computer, the screen saver cycled through seductive photos of tropical beaches, exactly where every Bostonian longed to be on this gray and miserable day.

Somewhere in back, a toilet flushed. A moment later a man waddled out of the rear office. Not merely a man — a mountain of flesh lumbered toward them, with one damp hand already extended in greeting.

“You’re the Boston PD folks, right?” He gave Jane a doughy and enthusiastic handshake. “Benny Lima. I would’ve returned your call earlier, but, like I told you on the phone, I just got back from—”

“Boca,” said Jane.

“Yeah. Went down for my uncle Carlo’s funeral. Big deal, real big deal. He was like a celebrity in that retirement community down there. Anyways, I didn’t hear your voicemail till I got in to the office this morning. I am delighted to help Boston PD in any way I can.”

“You said you had security video, Mr. Lima?” asked Frost.

“Yeah. Our system only holds forty-eight hours of footage, but if you need something in that time frame, it should still be there.”

“We need whatever was recorded on Monday night.”

“Should still be on there. Come on back, let me show you our setup.”

Benny led them at a maddeningly leisurely pace to the back office, which was scarcely large enough to hold all three of them. Frost squeezed past Benny’s massive bulk and sat down at the computer.

“We had the system installed three years ago, after we had three break-ins in one month. It’s not like we keep any cash in the place, but those assholes kept making off with our computers. Camera finally caught one of ’em in the act. Can you believe it — the kid lived right around the corner. What a little shit.”

Frost tapped the keyboard, and the view from the surveillance camera appeared onscreen. The camera was pointed toward the entrance to narrow Utica Street, where Cassandra Coyle’s residence was located. The view was only partial and not particularly high res, but of all the security cameras in the neighborhood, this was the only one that might have recorded anyone entering or leaving the south end of Utica Street. The video they were now looking at was taken in daylight, with three pedestrians in the frame. According to the time stamp, this was recorded on Monday at 10:00 A.M.

When Cassandra Coyle was still alive.

“That’s the very beginning of the recording,” said Benny. “As soon as I heard your message, I hit SAVE, so it wouldn’t record over what you wanted.”

Frost clicked on the FAST-FORWARD icon. “Let’s move ahead to Monday evening.”

Benny looked at Jane. “Is this about that gal who got murdered down the street? I saw the news on TV. Not the kinda thing that happens in this neighborhood.”

“This kind of thing could happen in any neighborhood,” said Jane.