Last to Die r-10 Read online

  She turned instead to the preliminary X-rays hanging on the light box. As Dr. Owen and her assistant undressed the corpse, Maura stayed focused on images that had no familiar face. Nothing in these films surprised her. Last night, just by palpation, she had detected depressed fractures of the left parietal bone, and now she saw the evidence in black and white, a subtle spider’s web of cracks. She turned next to the rib cage where, even through the vague shadows of clothing, she spotted massive fracturing of ribs two through eight on the left. The force of free fall had fractured the pelvis as well, compressing the sacral foramen and cracking apart the ramus of the pubic bone. Exactly what one would expect to see in a body dropped from a height. Even before they sliced open the chest, Maura could predict what they would find in the thoracic cavity because she had seen the results of free fall in other bodies. While a fall might crack ribs and crush a pelvis, what ultimately killed was the force of abrupt deceleration tugging on heart and lungs, ripping delicate tissues and tearing great vessels. When they sliced open Anna’s chest, they would most likely find it filled with blood.

  “How the hell did she get these?” Randy said.

  Dr. Owen called out: “Dr. Isles, you’ll want to look at this.”

  Maura crossed to the table. They had unbuttoned the top of Anna’s dress, but had not yet peeled it off the hips. The corpse was still wearing a bra, a practical white D-cup with no lace, no frills. They all stared at the exposed skin.

  “These are the weirdest scars I’ve ever come across,” said Dr. Owen.

  Maura stared, stunned by what she saw. “Let’s get the rest of her clothes off,” she said.

  With three of them working together, they quickly removed the bra, pulled the dress down. As they peeled the underwear waistband over the hips, Maura remembered the pelvic fractures that she had just seen on X-ray and grimaced at the thought of those bony fragments grinding together. Thought of the screams she’d once heard in the ER from a young man whose pelvis had been crushed in a barge accident. But Anna was beyond pain, and she surrendered her clothes without a whimper. Stripped naked, she now lay exposed, her body bruised and deformed by broken ribs and skull and pelvis.

  Yet it was the marks on her skin that they stared at. Marks that were invisible to the X-ray machine, and revealed only now. The scars were spread across the front of her torso, an ugly grid of knots on her breasts, her abdomen, even her shoulders. Maura thought about the modest Mother Hubbard gowns that Anna wore even on warm days, dresses chosen not because of her eccentric sense of style, but for concealment. She wondered how many years it had been since Anna had donned a bathing suit or sunbathed on a beach. These scars looked old, permanent souvenirs of some unspeakable ordeal.

  “Could these be some kind of skin grafts?” asked Randy.

  “These aren’t skin grafts,” said Dr. Owen.

  “Then what are they?”

  “I don’t know.” Dr. Owen looked at Maura. “Do you?”

  Maura didn’t answer. She turned her attention to the lower extremities. Reaching up for the light, she redirected it to the shins, where the skin was darker. Thicker. She looked at Randy. “We need detailed X-rays of the legs. The tibias in particular, and both ankles.”

  “I already did the skeletal survey,” said Randy. “The films are hanging there right now. You can see all the fractures.”

  “I’m not concerned about new fractures. I’m looking for old ones.”

  “How does this help us with cause of death?” said Dr. Owen.

  “It’s about understanding the victim. Her past, her state of mind. She can’t talk to us, but her body still can.”

  Maura and Dr. Owen retreated to the anteroom, where they watched through the viewing window as Randy, now garbed in a lead apron, positioned the body for a new set of X-rays. How many scars were you hiding, Anna? The marks on her skin were obvious, but what of the emotional wounds that never heal, that cannot be closed over with fibrosis and collagen? Was it old torments that finally drove her to step out onto the roof walk and surrender her body to gravity and the hard earth?

  Randy clipped a new set of films onto the light box and waved to them. As Maura and Dr. Owen reentered the lab, he said: “I don’t see any other fractures on these views.”

  “They’d be old,” said Maura.

  “No scar formation, no deformities. You know, I can recognize those.”

  There was no missing the irritation in his voice. She was the interloper, the high-and-mighty expert from the big city who’d questioned his competence. She chose not to engage him and focused instead on the X-rays. What he had said was correct: At first glance, there were no obvious old fractures of the arms or legs. She moved closer to study first the right tibia, then the left. The darker skin on Anna’s shins had raised her suspicions, and what she saw on these films confirmed her diagnosis.

  “Do you see this, Dr. Owen?” Maura pointed to the outline of the tibia. “Notice the layering and the thickness.”

  The young pathologist frowned. “It is thicker, I agree.”

  “There are endosteal changes here as well. Do you see them? These are highly suggestive.” She looked at Randy. “Can we see the ankle films now?”

  “Suggestive of what?” he asked, still unconvinced by this expert from Boston.

  “Periostitis. Inflammatory changes of the membrane covering the bone.” Maura pulled down the tibia X-rays. “Ankle films, please.”

  Tight-lipped, he shoved the new X-rays under the clips, and what Maura saw in those films swept away any doubts she’d had. Dr. Owen, standing beside her, murmured a troubled: Oh.

  “These are classic bony changes,” said Maura. “I’ve seen them only twice before. Once in an immigrant from Algeria. The second was a corpse that turned up in a freighter, a man from South America.”

  “What are you looking at?” said Randy.

  “The changes in the right calcaneus,” said Dr. Owen. She pointed to the right heel bone.

  Maura said, “You can see them in the left calcaneus, too. Those deformities are from multiple old fractures that have since healed.”

  “Both her feet were broken?” said Randy.

  “Repeatedly.” She stared at the X-rays and shuddered at their significance. “Falaka,” she said softly.

  “I’ve read about it,” said Dr. Owen. “But I never thought I’d see a case in Maine.”

  Maura looked at Randy. “It’s also known as bastinado. The feet are beaten on the sole, which breaks bones, ruptures tendons and ligaments. It’s known in many places around the world. The Middle East, Asia. South America.”

  “You mean someone did this to her?”

  Maura nodded. “And those changes in the tibias that I pointed out are also from repeated beatings. Something heavy was slammed against the shins. It may not be enough to actually fracture bone, but it leaves permanent changes in the periosteum from repeated hemorrhages.” Maura went back to the table, where Anna’s broken body lay. She understood, now, the significance of that grid of scars on the breasts, the abdomen. What she did not understand was why any of this had been done to Anna. Or when.

  “It still doesn’t explain why she killed herself,” said Dr. Owen.

  “No,” Maura admitted. “But it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? If her death is somehow connected to her past. To what caused these scars.”

  “You’re now questioning whether this was a suicide?”

  “After seeing this, I question everything. And now we have another mystery.” She looked at Dr. Owen. “Why was Anna Welliver tortured?”

  A jail cell diminishes any man, and so it was with Icarus.

  Viewed through the bars, he seemed smaller, inconsequential. Now stripped of his Italian suit and his Panerai wristwatch, he wore a lurid orange jumpsuit and rubber flip-flops. His solitary cell was furnished only with a sink, a toilet, and a concrete shelf bed with a thin mattress, on which he was now sitting.

  “You know,” he said, “that every man has his price.”
<
br />   “And what would yours be?” I asked.

  “I have already paid it. Everything I ever valued has been lost.” He looked up at me with bright blue eyes, so unlike the soft brown eyes of his dead son Carlo. “I was speaking of your price.”

  “Me? I can’t be bought.”

  “Then you are merely a simpleminded patriot? You do this for love of country?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughed. “I’ve heard that before. All it means is that the alternative offer was not high enough.”

  “There isn’t any offer high enough to make me sell out my country.”

  He gave me a look akin to pity, as if I were feebleminded. “All right, then. Go back to your country. But you do know, you’ll go home poorer than you need to be.”

  “Unlike some people,” I taunted him, “at least I can go home.”

  He smiled, and that smile made my hands suddenly go cold. As if I were looking into the face of my future. “Can you?”

  TWENTY-THREE

  JANE HAD TO ADMIT, DARREN CROWE LOOKED GOOD ON TV. SITTING at her desk in the homicide unit, she watched the interview on the department’s TV, admiring Crowe’s sharp suit, blow-dried hair, and those dazzling teeth. She wondered if he’d bleached his teeth himself with a drugstore whitening kit, or if he’d paid a professional to polish up the pearly whites.

  “Reuben with double sauerkraut,” said Frost, setting a sandwich bag on her desk. He dropped into the chair beside hers and unwrapped his usual lunch, a turkey on white, no lettuce.

  “Look how that reporter’s ogling him,” Jane said, pointing to the blond correspondent interviewing Crowe. “I swear, any second now she’s gonna rip off her blazer and scream, Take me, Officer!”

  “No one ever says that to me.” Frost sighed, resignedly biting into his sandwich.

  “He’s milking this like a pro. Oh look, here he comes with the deep thoughts expression.”

  “I saw him practicing that look in the john.”

  “Deep thoughts?” She snorted as she unwrapped her Reuben sandwich. “Like he has any. The way he’s staring at that chick, he’s thinking more along the lines of deep throat.”

  They sat eating their sandwiches as they watched Crowe on TV describing the Zapata takedown. Could have surrendered, but chose to run … We exercised restraint at all times … clearly the actions of a guilty man …

  Her appetite suddenly gone, Jane put down her Reuben.

  Illegal aliens like Zapata who bring their violence to this country will be dealt with. That’s my pledge to the good citizens of Boston.

  “This is bullshit,” she said. “Just like that, he’s got Zapata tried and convicted.”

  Frost didn’t say anything, simply kept eating his turkey sandwich as if nothing else mattered, and that annoyed her. Usually she appreciated her partner’s unflappability. No drama, no meltdowns, just a maddeningly even-keeled Boy Scout who now reminded her of a cow calmly chewing grass.

  “Hey,” she said. “Doesn’t this bother you?”

  He looked at her, his mouth full of turkey. “I know it bothers you.”

  “But you’re okay with it? Closing the book when we’ve got no murder weapon, nothing in Zapata’s possession that ties him to the Ackermans?”

  “I didn’t say I was okay with it.”

  “Now Cop Hollywood’s on TV there, wrapping it all up like a Christmas present. A present that stinks. It should piss you off.”

  “I guess.”

  “Does anything piss you off?”

  He took another bite of turkey and chewed, thinking over the question. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Alice.”

  “Ex-wives are supposed to do that.”

  “You asked.”

  “Well, this case should, too. Or bug you, at least, the way it’s bugging me and Maura.”

  At the mention of Maura’s name, he finally set down his sandwich and looked at her. “What does Dr. Isles think?”

  “Same thing I do, that these three kids are somehow connected. Their psychologist has just jumped off a roof, and Maura’s wondering, What is it about these kids that kills everyone close to them? It’s as if they’re cursed. Everywhere they go, someone dies.”

  “And now they’re all together in one place.”

  Evensong. She thought of dark woods where willow trees were hung with blood-splattered ornaments. Thought of a castle where the occupants themselves were haunted, all of them living in the shadow of violence. Both Teddy and Maura were there behind locked gates, with children who were all too well acquainted with bloodshed.

  “Rizzoli.” The voice startled her, and she snapped around in her chair to see Lieutenant Marquette standing behind her. At once she grabbed the remote and shut off the TV.

  “Not enough to do around here?” Marquette said. “You two watching soap operas now?”

  “Biggest soap opera of them all,” she said. “Detective Crowe telling the good people of Boston how he single-handedly took down the evil genius Zapata.”

  Marquette cocked his head. “I need you in my office.”

  She saw Frost’s look of uh-oh as she stood up, and she followed Marquette in a brisk march into his office. He closed the door. She waited until he’d settled into his own chair before she sat down. Tried to keep her gaze steady as he stared at her across his desk.

  “You and Crowe are never going to agree on anything, are you?” he said.

  “What’s his complaint about me now?”

  “The lack of a unified front on the Ackerman case. The fact you keep raising questions about a rush to judgment.”

  “Guilty as charged,” she conceded. “I think it is a rush to judgment.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard all your objections. But you have to see how this looks, if the press gets wind of what you’re saying. It’d be a PR nightmare. This case has already gotten everyone’s attention. Wealthy family, dead kids, everything that Nancy Grace loves. It also has a villain that half of America loves to hate, an illegal immigrant. Zapata was everyone’s dream perp. Best of all, he’s dead and the case is closed. A fairy-tale ending.”

  “If nightmares were fairy tales,” she said.

  “After all, they do call them the Brothers Grimm.”

  “The public’s satisfied, so you’re saying I should shut up and be satisfied, too?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Sometimes, Rizzoli, you really are a pain in the butt.”

  “I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.”

  “Which is why you make a good investigator. You poke and you prod. You go digging holes where no one else wants to. I read your report on the three kids. Semtex in New Hampshire? A plane bombed in Maryland? This thing is looking like one hell of a big graveyard.” He paused, fingers tapping his desk as he studied her. “So go ahead. Do your thing.”

  She wasn’t sure what he was saying. “My thing?”

  “Dig. Officially, the Ackerman case is closed. Unofficially, I’ve got doubts, too. But you’re the only one who knows it.”

  “Can I bring Frost aboard? I could use him.”

  “I cannot commit any more resources to this. I’m not even sure I should let you spend time on it.”

  “So why are you?”

  He leaned forward, his eyes on hers. “Look, I’d love to close this case right now and call it a win. I want our statistics to look good, of course I do. But just like you, I’ve got instincts. Sometimes we’re forced to ignore those gut feelings, and when it turns out we were right all along, we kick ourselves. I don’t want it someday shoved in my face that I shut this down too fast.”

  “So we’re covering our asses.”

  “Anything wrong with that?” he snapped.

  “Not a thing.”

  “Okay.” He leaned back again. “What’s your plan?”

  She had to think about this for a moment, consider which of the unanswered questions demanded priority. And she decided that her number one question was: What did the Wards, the Yablonskis, and the Clocks have in comm
on, aside from the manner of their deaths? Did they know one another?

  She said: “I need to go to Maryland.”

  “Why Maryland?”

  “Will Yablonski’s father worked at NASA-Goddard. So did Will’s uncle, Brian Temple. I want to talk to their colleagues at NASA. Maybe they know why that plane went down. And why Brian and his wife were so quick to get their nephew out of Maryland and move him to New Hampshire.”

  “Where their farmhouse blows up.”

  She nodded. “This whole thing’s starting to look very big and very bad. Which is why I want Frost along, to help me sort it out.”

  After a moment, he nodded. “Okay, you got Frost. I’ll give you three days on this.”

  “We’re on it. Thank you.” She stood up.

  “Rizzoli?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Keep it quiet. Don’t tell anyone in the unit, especially Crowe. As far as the public is concerned, the Ackerman case is closed.”

  “YOU KNOW HOW THAT old saying goes, It doesn’t take a rocket scientist?” said Frost as they drove through the Goddard Space Flight Center campus. “Well, now we’re going to be hanging out with real rocket scientists! That’s so amazing. I mean, look out the window and just think about the average IQ of these guys you see walking around here.”

  “What does that make us, birdbrains?”

  “All that math and chemistry and physics they’ve gotta know. I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to launch a rocket.”

  “You mean you never shot up one of those toy rockets with vinegar and baking soda?”

  “Yeah, right. Like that’s how we got to the moon.”

  She pulled into a parking stall in front of the Exploration Sciences Building, and they both clipped on the NASA visitor badges that they’d picked up at the entrance gate.