Tess Gerritsen - Die Again

MAURA SET A VASE OF YELLOW ROSES ON THE DRESSER AND TOOK one last glance around her guest bedroom. The white duvet was freshly laundered, the Turkish rug thoroughly vacuumed, and the bathroom supplied with fluffy white towels. The last time anyone had slept in this room was in August, when seventeen-year-old Julian Perkins had visited during his summer break from school. Since his departure, she’d hardly stepped into this room. Now she gave it a critical once-over, to confirm that all was ready for her houseguest. The window had a view of her back garden, but on this late-November afternoon, what she saw was a dreary landscape of bare perennials and brown grass. At least there was a bright touch of spring in the painting of luscious pink peonies hanging over the bed, and on the dresser with that vase of yellow roses. A cheerful welcome for a guest on a grim mission.

Jane had emailed to explain the situation, and Maura had read Millie’s file, so she knew what to expect. But when the doorbell rang and she laid eyes on Millie for the first time, she was taken aback by how haggard the woman looked. It was a long journey from Cape Town and Jane looked bedraggled as well, but Millie appeared frail as ectoplasm, her eyes hollow, her thin frame almost lost in her oversized sweater.

“Welcome to Boston,” said Maura as they came into the house, Jane carrying Millie’s suitcase. “I apologize for the weather.”

Millie managed a wan smile. “I didn’t expect it to be so cold.” She looked down sheepishly at her enormous sweater. “I bought this at the airport. I think I could fit another woman in here.”

“You must be exhausted. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“That would be lovely, but first I think I need to use the toilet.”

“Your room’s down the hall, on the right, and you have your own bathroom. Please, take your time to get settled in. The tea can always wait.”

“Thank you.” Millie took her suitcase. “I’ll be a few minutes.”

Maura and Jane waited until they heard Millie’s bedroom door close. Then Jane said: “You sure this is okay? I tried to come up with another solution, but our apartment’s too small.”

“It’s perfectly fine, Jane. You said it’s only for a week, and you can’t stick that poor woman in a hotel.”

“Well, I do appreciate it. The only alternative was my mom’s house, but it’s a loony bin these days, with Dad driving her nuts.”

“How are things with your mother?”

“Besides her being psychotically depressed?” Jane shook her head. “I’m waiting for her to get up the nerve and kick him out. The trouble is, she tries so hard to make everyone else happy, she forgets all about herself.” Jane sighed. “My mom, the saint.”

Something my mother will never be, thought Maura. She thought about the last time she’d visited Amalthea in prison. Remembered the woman’s soulless eyes, her calculating gaze. Even then the tumor must have been incubating inside Amalthea, evil within evil, like poisonous nesting dolls. With cancer now consuming her, had she come to feel remorse? For such a creature, was redemption even possible? In a few months, six at the most, those eyes would go dark forever. And I will always wonder .

Jane looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go. Tell Millie I’ll pick her up around ten tomorrow, for the team meeting. I’ve asked Brookline PD to send a cruiser by your house every so often, to keep an eye on things.”

“Is that necessary? No one knows she’s here.”

“It’s all about making her feel safe. It was a struggle just to get her here, Maura. As far as she’s concerned, we’ve brought her straight to the beast’s lair.”

“It may be true.”

“But we need her. We just have to keep her comfortable, so she doesn’t jump on a plane home.”

“I don’t mind a houseguest,” said Maura. She glanced down at the cat, who chose that instant to jump onto the coffee table. “Although this particular houseguest I’d love to get rid of.” She plucked up the cat and dropped him back on the floor.

“You two still not bonding, huh?”

“Oh, he’s bonded all right. To my can opener.” In disgust, Maura clapped cat hair from her hands. “So what do you make of her?”

Jane glanced toward the hallway and said quietly: “She’s scared, and I can’t blame her. She’s the only one who walked out alive, the only one who can ID him in court. Six years later, he’s still giving her nightmares.”

“It’s not hard to understand. You and I have been in her shoes.” She didn’t need to elaborate; they both knew what it was like to be hunted, to lie sleepless in your own bed, listening for the shattering of a window, the turn of the doorknob. They were part of the same unfortunate sisterhood of women who have been stalked by killers.

“She’s going to face a lot of questions tomorrow, be asked to relive some painful memories,” said Jane. “Make sure she gets a good night’s sleep.” As she stepped out the front door to leave, her cell phone rang and she paused on the porch to answer it. “Hey, Tam, we just got in. I’m heading over to catch up on …” She halted on the porch. “What? Are you sure?”

Maura watched as Jane hung up and stood staring at the phone as if it had just betrayed her. “What is it?”

Jane turned to face her. “We have a problem. Remember Jane Doe?”

“The bones from the backyard?”

“You had me convinced she was killed by Leopard Man.”

“I still believe it. The claw marks on her skull. The evidence of evisceration. The nylon cord. It all fits the picture.”

“The problem is, she’s just been identified, and it’s confirmed by DNA. Her name was Natalie Toombs, twenty years old. She was a coed at Curry College. White female, five foot three.”

“That’s all consistent with the skeletal remains I examined. What’s the problem?”

“Natalie vanished fourteen years ago.”

Maura stared at her. “Fourteen years? Do we know where Johnny Posthumus was then?”

“Working at a bush lodge in South Africa.” Jane shook her head. “He couldn’t have killed Natalie.”

“THIS SHOOTS YOUR ALL-POWERFUL Leopard Man theory all to hell, Rizzoli,” said Darren Crowe. “Fourteen years ago, when Natalie Toombs vanished in Boston, this guy was working in Sabi Sands, South Africa. It’s all documented in the Interpol report. His employee records from the bush lodge, a log of his hours and pay stubs. Obviously, he didn’t kill Natalie. Which means you brought that witness all the way here from South Africa for nothing.”

Still groggy from a bad night’s sleep, Jane tried to focus on her laptop. She’d awakened disoriented that morning, had downed two cups of coffee to kick-start her brain before this team conference, but the deluge of new facts left her struggling to catch up. She felt the other three detectives watching her as she clicked through pages that confirmed what Tam had told her yesterday over the phone. Natalie Toombs, formerly referred to as Jane Doe, had been a twenty-year-old English major at Curry College, barely two miles from where her bones were found buried. Natalie had lived in an off-campus rental house with two other coeds, who described her as outgoing, athletic, and a nature lover. She was last seen on a Saturday afternoon, her backpack full of books, leaving for a study date with someone named Ted, whom neither housemate had ever met.

The next day, the housemates reported her missing.

For fourteen years, the case had languished in the national missing persons database, along with thousands of other unsolved disappearances. Her mother, who’d since passed away, had provided the FBI with a DNA sample, in the event her daughter’s remains ever turned up. It was this DNA that confirmed the bones dug up in the backyard construction site were indeed Natalie’s.