Tess Gerritsen: Die Again

Jane joined her at the table and gingerly touched the blade edge. “This thing looks like it’d rip you to shreds.”

“And that’s probably what it’s for. I think it’s called a flesher. It’s used not to cut but to grind away flesh.”

“They make a machine like that?”

Maura crossed to a closet and opened the door. Inside was a row of what looked like paint cans. Maura reached for one large container and turned it around to read the contents. “Bondo.”

“An automotive product?” said Jane, glimpsing the image of a car on the label.

“The label says it’s filler, for car body work. To repair dings and scratches.” Maura set the can of Bondo back on the shelf. She couldn’t shake the gray cat, who followed her as she went to the cabinet and peered through glass doors at the knives and probes, laid out like a surgeon’s tool kit. “I think I know what this room was used for.” She turned to Jane. “You know that second set of viscera in the trash can? I don’t believe they’re human.”

“LEON GOTT WAS NOT a nice man. And I’m trying to be charitable,” said Nora Bazarian as she wiped a mustache of creamed carrots from her one-year-old son’s mouth. In her faded jeans and clinging T-shirt, with her blond hair pulled back in a girlish ponytail, she looked more like a teenager than a thirty-three-year-old mother of two. She had a mother’s skill at multitasking, efficiently feeding spoonfuls of carrots into her son’s open mouth between loading the dishwasher, checking on a cake in the oven, and answering Jane’s questions. No wonder the woman had a teenager’s waistline; she didn’t sit still for five seconds.

“You know what he yelled at my six-year-old?” said Nora. “ Get off my lawn . I used to think that was just a caricature of cranky old men, but Leon actually said that to my son. All because Timmy wandered next door to pet his dog.” Nora closed the dishwasher with a bang. “Bruno has better manners than his owner did.”

“How long did you know Mr. Gott?” asked Jane.

“We moved into this house six years ago, just after Timmy was born. We thought this was the perfect neighborhood for kids. You can see how well kept the yards are, for the most part, and there are other young families on this street, with kids Timmy’s age.” With balletic grace she pivoted to the coffeepot and refilled Jane’s cup. “A few days after we moved in, I brought Leon a plate of brownies, just to say hello. He didn’t even say thanks, just told me he didn’t eat sweets, and handed them right back. Then he complained that my new baby was crying too much, and why couldn’t I keep him quiet at night? Can you believe that?” She sat down and spooned more carrots into her son’s mouth. “To top it off, there were all those dead animals hanging on his wall.”

“So you’ve been inside his house.”

“Only once. He sounded so proud when he told me he’d shot most of them himself. What kind of a person kills animals just to decorate his walls?” She wiped a carroty dribble from the baby’s chin. “That’s when I decided we’d just stay away from him. Right, Sam?” she cooed. “Just stay away from that mean man.”

“When did you last see Mr. Gott?”

“I talked to Officer Root about all this. I last saw Leon over the weekend.”

“Which day?”

“Sunday morning. I saw him in his driveway. He was carrying groceries into his house.”

“Did you see anyone visit him that day?”

“I was gone for most of Sunday. My husband’s in California this week, so I took the kids down to my mom’s house in Falmouth. We didn’t get home till late that night.”

“What time?”

“Around nine thirty, ten.”

“And that night, did you hear anything unusual next door? Shouts, loud voices?”

Nora set down the spoon and frowned at her. The baby gave a hungry squawk, but Nora ignored him; her attention was entirely focused on Jane. “I thought—when Officer Root told me they found Leon hanging in his garage—I assumed it was a suicide.”

“I’m afraid it’s a homicide.”

“You’re certain? Absolutely?”

Oh yes. Absolutely . “Mrs. Bazarian, if you could think back to Sunday night—”

“My husband isn’t coming home until Monday, and I’m alone here with the kids. Are we safe?”

“Tell me about Sunday night.”

“Are my children safe ?”

It was the first question any mother would ask. Jane thought about her own three-year-old daughter, Regina. Thought about how she would feel in Nora Bazarian’s position, with two young children, living so close to a place of violence. Would she prefer reassurance, or the truth, which was that Jane didn’t know the answer. She couldn’t promise that anyone was ever safe.

“Until we know more,” said Jane, “it would be a good idea to take precautions.”

“What do you know?”

“We believe it happened sometime Sunday night.”

“He’s been dead all this time,” Nora murmured. “Right next door, and I had no idea.”

“You didn’t see or hear anything unusual Sunday night?”

“You can see for yourself, he has a tall fence all around his yard, so we never knew what was going on there. Except when he was making that god-awful racket in his backyard workshop.”

“What kind of noise?”

“This horrible whine, like a power saw. To think he had the nerve to complain about a crying baby!”

Jane remembered seeing Gott’s hearing aids on the bathroom counter. If he’d been working with noisy machinery Sunday night, he’d certainly leave out those hearing aids. It was yet one more reason he would not have heard an intruder.

“You said you got home late Sunday night. Were Mr. Gott’s lights on?”

Nora didn’t even need to think about it. “Yes, they were,” she said. “I remember being annoyed because the light on his backyard shed shines directly into my bedroom. But when I went to bed, around ten thirty, the light was finally off.”

“What about the dog? Was he barking?”

“Oh, Bruno. He’s always barking, that’s the problem. He probably barks at houseflies.”

Of which there were now plenty, thought Jane. Bruno was barking at that moment, in fact. Not in alarm, but with doggy excitement about the many strangers in his front yard.

Nora turned toward the sound. “What’s going to happen to him?”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to find someone to take him. And the cats as well.”

“I’m not crazy about cats, but I wouldn’t mind keeping the dog here. Bruno knows us, and he’s always been friendly with my boys. I’d feel safer, having a dog here.”

She might not feel the same way if she knew Bruno was even now digesting morsels of his dead owner’s flesh.

“Do you know if Mr. Gott had any next of kin?” asked Jane.

“He had a son, but he died some years ago, on a foreign trip. His ex-wife’s dead, too, and I’ve never seen any woman there.” Nora shook her head. “It’s an awful thing to think about. Dead for four days and no one even notices. That’s how unconnected he seemed to be.”

Through the kitchen window, Jane caught a glimpse of Maura, who’d just emerged from Gott’s house and now stood on the sidewalk, checking messages on her cell phone. Like Gott, Maura lived alone, and even now she seemed an isolated figure, standing off by herself. Left to her solitary nature, might Maura one day evolve into another Leon Gott?

The morgue van had arrived, and the first TV crews were scrambling into position outside the police tape. But tonight, after all these cops and criminalists and reporters departed, the crime scene tape would remain, marking the home where a killer had visited. And here, right next door, was a mother alone with her two children.