Tess Gerritsen - Die Again

“Whatever our problems, Millie, we need to stick together now, or we won’t make it. We’ve got the gun and the supplies, and the numbers are on our side. But I can’t predict what Johnny will do. Whether he’ll just escape into the bush, or come back and try to finish us off.” He pauses. “We’re witnesses, after all.”

“Witnesses to what? We never saw him kill anyone. We can’t prove he did anything wrong.”

“Then let the police prove it. After we get out of here.”

We lie silent for a moment. Through the canvas, I hear Elliot and Vivian talking by the fire as they keep watch. I hear the shrill screech of insects, the far-off cackle of hyenas, and I wonder if Johnny’s still alive out there, or if his corpse is even now being ripped apart and devoured.

Richard’s hand brushes against my hand. Slowly, tentatively, his fingers link with mine. “People move on, Millie. It doesn’t mean these last three years were wasted.”

“Four years.”

“We’re not the same people we were when we met. It’s just the way life goes, and we need to be grown up about it. Figure out how to divide our things, how to tell our friends. Do it all without drama.”

These things are so much easier for him to say. I may have been the first to declare it over between us, but he’s the one who actually did the leaving. I realize now that he’s been in the act of leaving me for a long, long time. It’s Africa that finally brought it to a head, Africa that showed us how unsuited we are to each other.

I may have loved him once, but now I think I never really liked him. Certainly I don’t like him now, as he talks so matter-of-factly about the terms of our breakup. How I should find a new flat as soon as we get back to London. Would my sister take me in while I search for the right place? And then there’s all the things we’ve acquired together. The cookware can go with me, the CDs and electronics stay with him, fair enough? And what a good thing we have no pets to fight over. What a far cry from the night we huddled on the sofa, planning this trip to Botswana. I’d imagined starry skies and cocktails around the campfire, not these bloodless terms of dissolution.

I roll onto my side, turning away from him.

“All right,” he says. “We’ll talk about it later. Like civilized people.”

“Right,” I mutter. “Civilized.”

“Now I need to get some sleep. Have to be up in four hours for my watch.”

Those are the last words he ever says to me.

I WAKE IN DARKNESS, and for a moment I’m confused about which tent I’m in. Then it all slams into me, with a pain that’s physical. My breakup with Richard. The lonely days ahead. It is so black inside the tent that I can’t tell if he’s lying beside me. I reach out to touch him, but find only emptiness. This is the future; I will have to get used to sleeping alone.

Twigs snap as someone—or something—walks past my tent.

I strain to see through the canvas, but it’s so dark that I can’t make out even the faintest glow of the campfire. Who has let the fire burn down? Someone needs to add wood before it dies altogether. I pull on trousers and reach for my boots. After all this talk about staying alert and keeping watch, these useless idiots could not maintain even our most basic safeguard.

Just as I unzip the tent flap, the first gunshot explodes.

A woman is screaming. Sylvia? Vivian? I can’t tell which one; all I hear is her panic.

“He’s got the gun! Oh God, he’s got the—”

I hunt blindly in the dark for my knapsack, where I keep my torch stashed. My hand closes around the strap just as the second shot explodes.

I scramble out of the tent, but see only shadows upon shadows. Something moves past the dying coals of the fire. Johnny. He’s here to take revenge .

A third shot thunders and I dart toward the blackness of the bush, am almost to the perimeter wire when I stumble over something and go down on my knees. I feel warm flesh, long tangled hair. And blood. One of the blondes .

Instantly I’m back on my feet, fleeing blindly into the night. Hear bells clang as my boot snags the perimeter wire.

The next bullet comes so close I can hear it whistle past.

But I’m cloaked in darkness now, a target that Johnny can’t see. Behind me, there are shrieks of terror and one final, thunderous gunshot.

I have no choice; I plunge alone into the night.

BOSTON

“ALWAYS TRYING TO PROVE HE’S HOT STUFF. YOU’D THINK HE’D AT least make the effort to show up on time,” said Crowe, scowling at his watch. “Should’ve been here twenty minutes ago.”

“I’m sure Detective Tam has a good reason for being late,” said Maura. As she laid Jane Doe’s right femur in its correct anatomical position, the stainless-steel table gave an ominous clang. Under the coldly clinical glare of the morgue lights, the bones looked plastic and artificial. Strip away a young woman’s skin and flesh, and this was all that remained: the bony latticework on which that flesh was mounted. When human skeletons arrived in the morgue they were often incomplete, missing the small bones of the hands and feet, which are so easily carried off by scavengers. But this Jane Doe had been wrapped in a tarp and buried just deep enough to protect her from claws and teeth and beaks. Instead it was insects and microbes that had feasted on flesh and viscera, scouring the bones clean. Maura positioned those bones on her table with the precision of a master strategist preparing for a game of anatomical chess.

“Everyone assumes he’s some kind of egghead, just because he’s Asian,” Crowe said. “Well, he’s not as smart as he thinks he is.”

Maura had no desire to engage in this conversation—or indeed, in any conversation with Detective Crowe. When he launched into one of his many rants about the incompetence of others, it was usually lawyers and judges who caught the brunt of it. That he was ragging about his own partner, Tam, made Maura particularly uncomfortable.

“There’s something sneaky about him, too. You ever noticed? He’s going behind my back about something,” said Crowe. “I caught sight of a document on his laptop yesterday and asked him about it. Just like that, he hits ESCAPE and shuts down the file. Says it’s something he’s digging into on his own. Huh.”

Maura matched the left fibula to its paired tibia and laid them down side by side like bony railroad tracks.

“I saw it was a VICAP file on his computer. I didn’t request any VICAP search. What the hell’s he trying to hide from me? What’s his game?”

Maura didn’t look up from the bones. “That’s hardly illegal, requesting a VICAP search.”

“Without telling his partner? I’m telling you, he’s sneaky. And it’s distracting him from our case.”

“Maybe it is about your case.”

“Then why’s he keeping it under wraps? So he can whip it out at the right moment to impress everyone? Surprise, the genius detective Tam solves the case! Yeah, he’d love to show me up.”

“That doesn’t seem like something he’d do.”

“You haven’t figured him out yet, Doc.”

But I’ve figured you out, thought Maura. Crowe’s rant was a classic example of projection. If anyone was hungry for attention it was Crowe himself, known to his colleagues as Cop Hollywood. Place a TV news crew anywhere in the vicinity, and there he’d be, tanned and camera-ready in his tailored suit. As Maura laid the last bone on the table, Crowe was back on his cell phone, leaving Tam another pissed-off voice mail. How much simpler it was to deal with the silence of the dead. While Jane Doe waited so patiently on the table, Crowe was pacing the room, radiating a toxic cloud of hostility.