Tess Gerritsen - Die Again

“The one woman who could identify him?”

“She was as good as dead. If you stranded any other tourist in the Delta, man or woman, they wouldn’t last two days, much less two weeks. She should have died out there.”

“Why didn’t she?”

“Grit? Luck?” He shrugged. “A miracle.”

“You’ve met the woman,” said Gabriel. “What did you think of her?”

“It’s been a few years since I interviewed her. Her name’s not Jacobson now, but DeBruin. She married a South African. I remember her as … utterly unremarkable. That was my impression, and to be honest I was surprised. I’d read her statement and I knew what she supposedly survived. I was expecting Superwoman.”

Jane frowned. “You don’t think her statement was true?”

“That she walked among wild elephants? That she traveled for two weeks through the bush with no food and no weapon? That she survived on nothing more than grass and papyrus stems?” He shook his head. “No wonder the police in Botswana doubted her story at first. Until they confirmed that seven foreigners hadn’t boarded their scheduled international flights home. They spoke to the pilot who’d flown the tourists into the bush, asked him why he didn’t report them missing. He said he got a call that they were all traveling back to Maun by road instead. It took a few more days before it finally dawned on the Botswana police that Millie Jacobson was telling the truth.”

“Yet you seem doubtful.”

“Because, when I met her, she struck me as a bit, well … troubled.”

“How?”

“Reclusive. Not entirely forthcoming. She lives in a small town out in the countryside, where her husband has a farm. She almost never ventures out of her district. She refused to come to Cape Town for the interview. I had to drive to Touws River to meet her.”

“We’re headed there tomorrow,” said Gabriel. “It’s the only way she’d agree to see us.”

“It’s a beautiful drive. Lovely mountains and farms and vineyards. But it is a drive. Her husband’s a big stern Afrikaner who keeps everyone at bay. Trying to be protective I suppose, but he makes it clear he doesn’t want the police upsetting his wife. Before you can talk to her, you’ll have to pass muster with him.”

“I understand that completely,” said Gabriel. “It’s what any husband would do.”

“Isolate his wife in the middle of nowhere?”

“Keep her safe, in any way he can. Assuming she cooperates.” He glanced at Jane. “Because, God knows, not every wife does.”

Henk laughed. “Obviously you two have wrestled with that issue.”

“Because Jane takes too many damn chances.”

“I’m a cop,” said Jane. “How am I supposed to take down bad guys if you’ve got me locked up for safekeeping? Which is what it sounds like this guy’s done to his wife. Hidden her away in the country.”

“And you’ll have to deal with him first,” said Henk. “Explain how vital it is that his wife assists you. Convince him that this won’t place her in any danger, because that’s all he cares about.”

“It doesn’t bother him that Johnny Posthumus might be killing other people right now?”

“He doesn’t know those victims. He’s protecting his own, and you need to earn his trust.”

“Do you think Millie will work with us?” said Gabriel.

“Only to a point, and who can blame her? Think about what it took for her to walk out of the Delta alive. When you survive an ordeal like that, you don’t come out the same.”

“Some people would come out stronger,” said Jane.

“Some are destroyed.” Henk shook his head. “Millie, I’m afraid, is now little more than a ghost.”

DESPITE ALL THAT MILLIE JACOBSON HAD ENDURED IN THE BUSH, SHE had not returned to the familiar comforts of London, but had settled in a small town in the Hex River Valley of the Western Cape. If Jane had been the one to survive two hellish weeks in the wilderness, dodging lions and crocodiles, caked in mud, and eating roots and grass, she would have headed straight home to her own bed, in her own neighborhood, with all its urban conveniences. But Millie Jacobson, London bookseller, born and raised in the city, had forsaken everything she’d known, everything she’d been, to live in the remote town of Touws River.

Looking out the car window, Jane could certainly see what might have attracted Millie to this countryside. She saw a landscape of mountains and rivers and farmland, painted in the lush colors of summer. Everything about this country seemed off-kilter to her, from the upside-down season to the northerly direction of the sun, and as they rounded a curve, she suddenly felt dizzy, as if the world had turned on its head. She closed her eyes, waiting for everything to stop spinning.

“Gorgeous countryside. Makes you not want to go home,” said Gabriel.

“It’s a long way from Boston,” she murmured.

“A long way from London, too. But I can see why she might not want to go back.”

Jane opened her eyes and squinted at rows and rows of grapevines, at fruits ripening in the sun. “Well, her husband does come from this area. People do crazy things for love.”

“Like packing up and moving to Boston?”

She looked at him. “Do you ever regret it? Leaving Washington to be with me?”

“Let me think about that.”

“Gabriel.”

He laughed. “Do I regret getting married and having the most adorable kid in the world? What do you think?”

“I think a lot of men wouldn’t have made the sacrifice.”

“Just keep telling yourself that. It never hurts to have a grateful wife.”

She looked out again at the passing vineyards. “Speaking of grateful, we’re going to owe Mom big-time for babysitting. Think we should ship her a case of South African wine? You know how much she and Vince love …” She paused. There was no Vince Korsak in Angela’s life anymore, now that her dad was back. She sighed. “I never thought I’d say it, but I miss Korsak.”

“Obviously your mom does, too.”

“Am I a bad daughter, wishing my dad would go back to his bimbo and leave us alone?”

“You are a good daughter. To your mother.”

“Who won’t listen to me. She’s trying to make everyone happy except herself.”

“It’s her choice, Jane. You need to respect it, even if you don’t understand it.”

Just as she didn’t understand Millie Jacobson’s choice to retreat to this remote corner of a country so far from everything and everyone she’d ever known. On the phone, Millie had made it clear that she would not come to Boston to aid the investigation. She had a four-year-old daughter and a husband who needed her, the standard acceptable excuses that a woman could trot out when she doesn’t want to admit her real reasons: that she’s terrified of the world. Henk Andriessen had called Millie a ghost, and had warned them that they would never coax her out of Touws River. Nor would Millie’s husband ever allow it.

That husband was the first to greet them on the porch when she and Gabriel pulled up to the farmhouse, and a glance at his florid face told Jane they had a challenge ahead. Christopher DeBruin was as burly and intimidating as Henk had described him. He was older than Millie by a decade, his blond hair already half gray, and he stood with arms crossed, an immovable wall of muscle holding off the invaders. As Jane and Gabriel stepped out of their rental car, he did not come down the steps to greet them, but waited for his unwelcome guests to approach.

“Mr. DeBruin?” said Gabriel.

A nod, nothing more.

“I’m Special Agent Gabriel Dean with the FBI. This is Detective Jane Rizzoli, Boston PD.”