Тесс Герритсен - I Know a Secret

In fact, I’m superb at hiding it.

And so I sit at my desk, a smile on my face, as I explain to Victoria over the phone why none of the hoped-for interviews we pitched to radio or TV have come through. This is because it’s only a few days after Christmas, I tell her, and everyone’s still too stuffed with turkey and booze to return my calls. Yes, Victoria, it’s an outrage. Yes, Victoria, everyone knows how big a name you are. (Your tits appeared in Esquire ! You were married to a New England Patriots tight end for a grand total of eight months!) Victoria thinks it’s my fault the publicity isn’t rolling in the door for her, my fault that those stacks and stacks of her (actually Beth’s) book aren’t moving in Barnes & Noble.

I keep smiling even when she starts to yell at me. It’s important to smile even while on the phone, because people can hear the smile in your voice. It’s also important because my boss, Mark, is watching me from his desk, and I can’t let him see that our client is going ballistic and will probably fire Booksmart Media as her publicity firm. I’m smiling as she calls me a stupid little Barbie. I’m even smiling as she slams down the phone.

Mark says, “Is she upset?”

“Yes. She expected to be on the bestseller list.”

He snorts. “They all expect that. You handled her well.”

I don’t know if he’s flattering me or if he means it. We both know that Victoria Avalon is never going to be on any bestseller list. And we both know that I’ll be blamed for it.

I need to get her some press coverage for her stupid book, ASAP. I turn to my computer to see if Victoria’s name has turned up anywhere in any media. Even a gossip column will do. I wake up the screen and the Boston Globe home page lights up. That’s when I spot the latest news — not about Victoria, who I suddenly don’t give a fuck about. No, this is a front-page story about the dead young man found on the pier at Jeffries Point a few nights ago. On TV yesterday, they reported that the victim was shot with arrows. The police now know the man’s name.

“Maybe we should pitch her book to Arthur again,” says Mark. “I think he just needs a nudge. Her memoir is tangentially related to football, and I can see it showing up in his sports column.”

I look up at Mark. “What?”

“Victoria was married to that football guy. It’s an angle for a sports columnist, don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry.” I grab my purse and jump out of my chair. “I need to run out for a while.”

“Okay. Nothing seems to be happening today anyway. But if you get a chance to review that press packet we’re sending out for Alison Reeve’s book—”

I don’t hear the rest of what he says, because I am already running out the door.

They now knew the dead man’s name. Stretched out on the autopsy table was Timothy McDougal, age twenty-five, an unmarried accountant who lived in Boston’s North End. The tips of the three arrows were still embedded in his chest, but Yoshima had cut off the fletch ends with bolt cutters, leaving only metal stubs protruding from the flesh. Even so, cutting the Y incision was a challenge, and Maura’s scalpel sketched a crooked line down the chest as she avoided cutting into the puncture wounds. The angle of each arrow’s penetration had already been captured on X-ray, where it was obvious that one of the arrows had penetrated the descending aorta. It certainly would have qualified as a mortal wound.

Except for the fact this man was already dead when that arrow pierced his chest.

The morgue door opened and Jane walked in, tying on her face mask. “Frost won’t be coming. He’s visiting the victim’s sister again. She’s taking this pretty hard. Worst Christmas ever.”

Maura looked down at the corpse of Timothy McDougal, who was last seen alive on the afternoon of December 24, when he’d cheerfully waved to his neighbor as he walked out of his apartment building. The next morning, he was expected at his younger sister’s house in Brookline for Christmas brunch. He never appeared. By then the report of a young man’s body on Jeffries Point was already on the news, and, fearing the worst, the sister called the police.

“Their parents are both dead, and he was her only sibling,” said Jane. “Imagine being only twenty-two and having no family left in the world.”

Maura put down the scalpel and picked up pruning shears. “What did you learn from the sister? Any leads?”

“She insists Tim had no enemies and he’s never been in trouble. Best big brother ever. Everybody loved him.”

“Except for whoever shot him with these arrows,” Yoshima said.

Maura finished snapping apart the ribs, and she lifted the sternal shield. Frowning into the exposed cavity, she asked, “Any history of drug use?”

“Sister says absolutely not. He was a health-food nut.”

“Any drugs turn up in his residence?”

“Frost and I went through his apartment inch by inch. It’s just a studio, so there wasn’t much to search. We found no drugs, no paraphernalia, not even a baggie of weed. Just some wine in the fridge and a bottle of tequila in the cabinet. This guy was so clean he would’ve squeaked.”

“Or so everyone believes.”

“Yeah.” Jane shrugged. “You never know what the truth is.”

Every human being had secrets, and too often it was Maura who uncovered them: The upstanding citizen found dead with child porn clutched in his lifeless hand. Or the perfect society wife with the syringe of heroin and a needle still embedded in her arm. Timothy McDougal almost certainly had secrets as well, and now Maura had to uncover the most baffling secret of all.

What killed you?

Staring into the open thorax, she could not yet discern the answer, although the cause of death had seemed apparent judging by the X-rays. Now that the chest was open, she could see the arrow itself, could feel the steel tip poking through the aorta wall. The descending aorta was the major highway through which all blood bound for the lower body flowed. Rupture it and blood will pulse out like a cannon, propelled by every heartbeat. If this man had died of internal exsanguination, she should be looking at a cavity filled with blood, but there was not enough pooled in here. Which told her that by the time the arrow penetrated his aorta, his heart had already stopped beating.

“I can see by your face that there’s some kind of problem,” said Jane.

Maura’s answer was to reach for the scalpel. She did not like uncertainty, and she began to cut with new urgency. Out came a healthy young man’s heart and lungs. She saw no coronary disease, no emphysema, no evidence that he had ever abused cigarettes. The liver and spleen were disease-free, and the pancreas should have provided him with a lifetime’s worth of insulin.

She placed the stomach on the dissection tray and slit it open. Out spilled brown liquid with the strong stench of alcohol. She paused, scalpel hovering above the tray, suddenly struck by the memory of another incised stomach. Another whiff of alcohol. “Whiskey,” she said.

“So he was drinking before he died.”

Maura looked at Jane. “Does that remind you of another victim?”

“You’re thinking of Cassandra Coyle.”

“She had wine in her stomach. I couldn’t find the cause of her death either. Is alcohol a common denominator here? Something delivered in a drink?”

“We canvassed all the bars in Cassandra’s neighborhood. Every place within walking distance.”

“And no one remembered seeing her?”

“One waitress said Cassandra’s photo looked familiar, but she said the woman she thought was Cassandra was drinking with another woman. She didn’t remember any man with her.”