Tess Gerritsen - Die Again

“So write a letter. Tell her she’s forgiven, and then forget about her.”

“She only has six months. She wants to see me.”

Jane tossed down her napkin. “Let’s not forget who she really is. You once told me you felt a chill when you looked into her eyes, because you didn’t see a human being looking back at you. You said you saw a void, a creature without a soul. You’re the one who called her a monster.”

Maura sighed. “Yes, I did.”

“Don’t walk into the monster’s cage.”

Maura’s eyes suddenly shimmered with tears. “And in six months, when she’s dead, how do I deal with the guilt? The fact I turned down her last wish? It will be too late to change my mind. That’s what I worry about most. That for the rest of my life, I’ll feel guilty. And I’ll never get the chance to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Why I am the way I am.”

Jane looked into her friend’s troubled face. “Meaning what? Brilliant? Logical? Too honest for your own damn good?”

“Haunted,” said Maura softly. “By the dark side.”

Jane’s cell phone rang. As she dug it out of her purse, she said: “It’s because of the job we do and the things we see. We both chose this work because we’re not sunshine-and-ponies kind of gals.” She hit the TALK button on her phone. “Detective Rizzoli.”

“The carrier finally released Leon Gott’s phone log,” said Frost.

“Anything interesting?”

“ Really interesting. On the day of his death he made several phone calls. One was to Jerry O’Brien, which we already knew about.”

“About picking up Kovo’s carcass.”

“Yeah. He also made a phone call to Interpol in Johannesburg, South Africa.”

“Interpol? What was he calling them about?”

“About his son’s disappearance in Botswana. The investigator wasn’t in the office, so Gott left a message saying he’d call again later. He never did.”

“His son went missing six years ago. Why’s Gott asking about it now?”

“I have no idea. But here’s the really interesting item in his phone log. At two thirty P.M., he called a cell phone registered to Jodi Underwood, in Brookline. It lasted six minutes. That same night, at nine forty-six P.M., Jodi Underwood called Gott back. That call was only seventeen seconds long, so she might have just left a message on his answering machine.”

“There was no message on his answering machine from that night.”

“Right. And at nine forty-six, there’s a good chance Gott was already dead. Since the next-door neighbor said she saw his lights get turned off between nine and ten-thirty.”

“So who deleted this phone message? Frost, this is weird.”

“It gets a lot weirder. I called Jodi Underwood’s cell phone twice and it went straight to voice mail. Then it suddenly hit me that her name sounded familiar. You remember?”

“Hint, please.”

“Last week’s news. Brookline.”

Jane’s pulse suddenly kicked into a gallop. “There was a homicide …”

“Jodi Underwood was murdered in her home Sunday night. The same night as Leon Gott.”

“I WENT ON HER FACEBOOK PAGE,” SAID FROST AS THEY DROVE TO BROOKLINE. “Check out her profile.”

For once he was the one driving as Jane played catch-up on Frost’s iPad, tapping through webpages that he had already visited. She pulled up the Facebook page and saw a photo of a pretty redhead. According to her profile she was thirty-seven years old, single, and a high school librarian. She had a sister named Sarah and she was a vegetarian whose likes included PETA, animal rights, and holistic health.

“She’s not exactly Leon Gott’s type,” said Jane. “Why would a woman who probably despised everything he stood for be talking to him on the phone?”

“I don’t know. I went back four weeks on his phone log and there are no other calls between them. Just those two, on Sunday. He called her at two thirty, she called him back at nine forty-six. When he was probably dead.”

Jane replayed the scenario as it must have unfolded that night. The killer still in Gott’s house, the dead body already hanging in the garage, perhaps in the process of being gutted. The phone rings, the answering machine picks up, and Jodi Underwood leaves her message. What’s on that message that compels the killer to delete it, leaving the bloody smear on the answering machine? What would make him drive to Brookline and commit a second murder that same night?

She looked at Frost. “We never did find a personal address book in his house.”

“No. Searched all over, too, ’cause we wanted his contacts. No address book turned up.”

She thought about the killer standing over that phone, seeing Jodi’s number on display, a number that Gott had called earlier that day. A number that Gott must have stored in his personal directory, along with Jodi’s mailing address.

Jane scrolled down through Jodi’s Facebook page, reading the entries. The woman had posted fairly regularly, at least every few days. The last entry was on Saturday, the day before she died.

Check out this recipe for veggie pad Thai. I cooked it for my sister and her husband last night, and they didn’t even miss the meat. It’s healthy, tasty, and good for the planet!

Dining on rice noodles and tofu that night, did Jodi have any inkling it would be one of her last meals? That all her efforts to eat healthy would soon be irrelevant?

Jane scrolled back through Jodi’s earlier entries, about books she’d read and movies she’d enjoyed, about friends’ weddings and birthdays, about a gloomy day in October when she’d wondered about the point of life. Back another few weeks to September, more cheerful, the start of a new school year.

How nice to see familiar faces back in the library.

Then, in early September, she posted a photo of a smiling young man with dark hair, along with a melancholy entry.

Six years ago, I lost the love of my life. I will never stop missing you, Elliot.

Elliot. “His son,” Jane said softly.

“What?”

“Jodi’s Facebook entry is about a man named Elliot. She writes: Six years ago, I lost the love of my life .”

“Six years ago?” Frost looked at her with startled eyes. “That’s when Elliot Gott vanished.”

IN THE MONTH OF November, after clocks switch to standard time, the sun sets early in New England, and at four thirty on that gloomy afternoon it already felt like dusk. The sky had been threatening to rain all day, and a fine drizzle misted the windshield by the time Jane and Frost arrived at Jodi Underwood’s residence. A gray Ford Fusion was parked in front of it, and on the driver’s side they could see the silhouette of a woman’s head. Even before Jane had her seat belt unbuckled, the Ford’s door swung open and the driver stepped out. She was statuesque, her hair stylishly streaked with gray, and dressed in smart but practical attire: gray pants and suit jacket, a tan raincoat, and sturdy, comfortable flats. It was an outfit that could have come from Jane’s closet, which wasn’t surprising, since this woman, too, was a cop.

“Detective Andrea Pearson,” the woman said. “Brookline PD.”

“Jane Rizzoli, Barry Frost,” said Jane. “Thanks for meeting us.”

They shook hands but wasted no time lingering in the thickening drizzle, and Pearson immediately led them up the steps to the front door of the house. It was a modest residence, with a small front yard dominated by paired forsythia bushes, their branches stripped of leaves by autumn. A scrap of police tape still clung to the porch railing, a bright warning flag that announced: Tragedy ahead .