“So we’re not gonna have dental X rays for comparison.”
“I doubt this woman has seen a dentist in decades.”
Sleeper sighed. “No fingerprints. No face. No dental X rays. We’ll never I.D. her. Which may be the whole point.”
“But it doesn’t explain why he cut off the feet,” she said, her gaze still fixed on the anonymous skull glowing on the light box. “I think he did this for other reasons. Power, maybe. Rage. When you strip off a woman’s face, you’ve taken more than just a souvenir. You’ve stolen the essence of who she is. You’ve taken her soul.”
“Yeah, well, he scraped the bottom of the barrel for this one,” said Crowe. “Who’d want a woman with no teeth and sores all over her skin? If he’s gonna start collecting faces, you’d think he’d go after one that’d look nicer on the mantelpiece.”
“Maybe he’s just starting,” Sleeper said softly. “Maybe this is his first kill.”
Maura turned to the table. “Let’s get started.”
As Sleeper and Crowe tied on their masks, she peeled back the sheet, and caught a strong whiff of decay. She’d drawn vitreous potassium levels last night, and the results told her this victim had been dead approximately thirty-six hours prior to its discovery. Rigor mortis was still present, and the limbs were not easily manipulated. Despite the meat-locker chill at the death scene, decomposition had commenced. Bacteria had begun their work, breaking down proteins, bloating air spaces. Cold temperatures had only slowed, but not stopped, the process of decay.
Though she had already seen that ruined face, the sight of it startled her anew. So too did the many skin lesions, which, under the bright lights, stood out in dark, angry nodules punctuated by rat bites. Against that background of ravaged skin, the bullet wound seemed unimpressive—just a small entry hole at the left of the sternum. Glaser bullets were designed to minimize ricochet danger, while inflicting maximum damage once they have entered the body. A clean penetration is followed by the explosion of lead pellets contained within the Glaser’s copper jacket. This small wound gave no hint of the devastation inside the thorax.
“So what’s this skin crud?” asked Crowe.
Maura focused on the areas undamaged by rodent teeth. The purplish nodules were scattered across both torso and extremities, and some had crusted over.
“I don’t know what this is,” she said. “It certainly seems to be systemic. It could be a drug reaction. It could be a manifestation of cancer.” She paused. “It could also be bacterial.”
“You mean—infectious?” said Sleeper, taking a step back from the table.
“That’s why I suggested the masks.”
She ran a gloved finger across one of the crusted lesions, and a few white scales flaked off. “Some of these remind me a little of psoriasis. But the distribution is all wrong. Psoriasis usually affects primarily the elbows and knees.”
“Hey, isn’t there treatment for that?” said Crowe. “I used to see it advertised on TV. The heartbreak of psoriasis.”
“It’s an inflammatory disorder, so it responds to steroid creams. Ultraviolet light therapy helps, too. But look at her dentition. This woman didn’t have the money to pay for expensive creams or doctors’ bills. If it’s psoriasis, she probably went untreated for years.”
What a cruel affliction such a skin condition would have been, thought Maura, especially in the summertime. Even on the hottest days, she would have wanted to wear pants and long-sleeved shirts to conceal the lesions.
“Not only does our perp choose a victim who’s got no teeth,” said Crowe, “he whacks off a face with skin like this.”
“Psoriasis does tend to spare the face.”
“You think that’s significant? Maybe he only sliced off the parts where the skin was okay.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t begin to understand why anyone would do something like this.”
She turned her attention to the right wrist stump. White bone gleamed through raw flesh. Hungry rodents’ teeth had gnawed the open wound, destroying the cut marks left by the knife, but scanning electron microscopy of the cut surface of bone might reveal the blade’s characteristics. She lifted the forearm from the table, to examine the underside of the wound, and a fleck of yellow caught her eye.
“Yoshima, can you hand me the tweezers?” she said.
“What is it?” asked Crowe.
“There’s some kind of fiber adhering to the wound edge.”
Yoshima moved so silently, the tweezers seemed to magically appear in her hand. She swung the magnifying lens over the wrist stump. With the tweezers, she plucked the fragment from its crust of blood and dried flesh and laid it on a tray.
Through the magnifying lens, she saw a thick coil of thread, dyed a startling shade of canary yellow.
“From her clothes?” asked Crowe.
“It looks awfully coarse for a clothing fiber.”
“Carpet, maybe?”
“Yellow carpet? I can’t imagine.” She slipped the strand into an evidence bag that Yoshima was already holding open, and asked: “Was there anything at the death scene that would match this?”
“Nothing yellow,” said Crowe.
“Yellow rope?” said Maura. “He may have bound her wrists.”
“And then took the cut ropes away?” Sleeper shook his head. “Weird, how this guy’s so neat.”
Maura looked down at the corpse, small as a child. “He hardly needed to bind her wrists. She would have been easy to control.”
How simple it would have been, to take her life. Arms this thin could not have struggled long against an attacker’s grip; legs this short could not have outrun him.
You have already been so violated, she thought. And now my scalpel will make its mark on your flesh as well.
She worked with quiet efficiency, her knife slicing through skin and muscle. The cause of death was as obvious as the bits of shrapnel glowing on the X-ray box, and when at last the torso gaped open, and she saw the taut pericardial sac and the pockets of hemorrhage throughout the lungs, she was not surprised.
The Glaser bullet had punctured the thorax and then exploded, sending its deadly shrapnel throughout the chest. Metal had ripped through arteries and veins, punctured heart and lungs. And blood had poured into the sac that surrounded the heart, compressing it so that it could not expand, could not pump. A pericardial tamponade.
Death had been relatively swift.
The intercom buzzed. “Dr. Isles?”
Maura turned toward the speaker. “Yes, Louise?”
“Detective Rizzoli is on line one. Can you answer?”
Maura stripped off her gloves and crossed to the phone. “Rizzoli?” she said.
“Hey, Doc. It looks like we need you here.”
“What is it?”
“We’re at the pond. It took us a while to scoop off all the ice.”
“You’ve finished dragging it?”
“Yeah. We found something.”
NINE
WIND SLICED ACROSS THE OPEN FIELD, whipping Maura’s coat and wool scarf as she walked out the rear cloister gate and started toward the somber gathering of cops who waited for her at the pond’s edge. A layer of ice had formed over the fallen snow, and it cracked beneath her boots like a sugar crust. She felt everyone’s gaze marking her progress across the field, the nuns watching from the gate behind her, and the police awaiting her approach. She was the lone figure moving across that white world, and in the stillness of that afternoon, every sound seemed magnified, from the crunch of her boots, to the rush of her own breath.
Rizzoli emerged from the knot of personnel and came forward to greet her. “Thanks for getting here so quick.”
“So Noni was right about the duck pond.”
“Yeah. Since Camille spent a lot of time out here, it’s not too surprising she thought of using the pond. The ice was still pretty thin. Probably froze over only in the last day or two.” Rizzoli looked at the water. “We snagged it on the third pass.�
��
It was a small pond, a flat black oval that in the summertime would reflect clouds and blue sky and the passage of birds. At one end, cattails protruded, like ice-encrusted stalagmites. All around the perimeter, the snow was thoroughly trampled, its whiteness churned with mud.
At the water’s edge, a small form lay covered by a disposable sheet. Maura crouched down beside it, and a grim-faced Detective Frost peeled back the sheet to reveal the swaddling, caked in wet mud.
“It felt like it was weighed down with rocks,” said Frost. “That’s why it’s been sitting on the bottom. We haven’t unwrapped it yet. Thought we’d wait for you.”
Maura pulled off her wool gloves and pulled on latex ones. They offered no protection against the cold, and her fingers quickly chilled as she peeled back the outer layer of muslin. Two fist-sized stones dropped out. The next layer was equally soaked, but not muddy. It was a woolen blanket of powder blue. A color one would swaddle an infant in, she thought. A blanket to keep him safe and warm.
By now her fingers were numb and clumsy. She peeled back a corner of the blanket, just enough to catch a glimpse of a foot. Tiny, almost doll-like, the skin a dusky and marbled blue.
That was all she needed to see.
She covered it again, with the sheet. Rising to her feet, she looked at Rizzoli. “Let’s move it directly to the morgue. We’ll finish unwrapping it there.”
Rizzoli merely nodded, and gazed down in silence at the tiny bundle. The wet wrappings were already starting to crust over in the icy wind.
It was Frost who spoke. “How could she do it? Just toss her baby in the water like that?”
Maura stripped off the latex gloves and thrust numb fingers into the woolen ones. She thought of the light blue blanket wrapped around the infant. Warm wool, like her gloves. Camille could have wrapped the baby in anything—newspapers, old sheets, rags—but she had chosen to wrap it in a blanket, as though to protect it, to insulate it from the frigid water of the pond.
“I mean, drowning her own kid,” said Frost. “She’d have to be out of her mind.”
“The infant may already have been dead.”
“Okay, so she killed it first. She’d still have to be crazy.”
“We can’t assume anything. Not until the autopsy.” Maura glanced toward the abbey. Three nuns stood like dark-robed wraiths beneath the archway, watching them. She said to Rizzoli: “Have you told Mary Clement yet?”
Rizzoli didn’t answer. Her gaze was still fixed on what the pond had yielded up to them. It took only one pair of hands to slip the bundle into the oversize body bag, to seal it with an efficient tug of the zipper. She winced at the sound.
Maura asked, “Do the sisters know?”
At last Rizzoli looked at her. “They’ve been told what we found.”
“They must have an idea who the father is.”
“They deny it’s even possible she was pregnant.”
“But the evidence is right here.”
Rizzoli gave a snort. “Faith is stronger than evidence.”
Faith in what? Maura wondered. A young woman’s virtue? Was there any house of cards more rickety than the belief in human chastity?
They fell silent as the body bag was carried away. There was no need to bring a stretcher through the snow; the attendant had scooped the bag into his arms as tenderly as though he was lifting his own child, and now he walked with grim purpose across the windy field, toward the abbey.
Maura’s cell phone rang, violating the mournful silence. She flipped it open and answered quietly: “Dr. Isles.”
“I’m sorry I had to leave without saying goodbye this morning.”
She felt her face flush and her heartbeat go into double time. “Victor.”
“I had to get to my meeting in Cambridge. I didn’t want to wake you. I hope you didn’t think I was running out on you.”
“Actually, I did.”
“Can we meet later, for dinner?”
She paused, suddenly aware that Rizzoli was watching her. Aware, too, of her own physical reaction to Victor’s voice. The quickened pulse, the happy anticipation. Already he’s worked his way back into my life, she thought. Already, I’m thinking of the possibilities.
She turned from Rizzoli’s gaze, and her voice dropped to a murmur. “I don’t know when I’ll be free. There’s so much going on right now.”
“You can tell me all about your day over dinner.”
“It’s already turning into a doozy.”
“You have to eat sometime, Maura. Can I take you out? Your favorite restaurant?”
She answered too quickly, too eagerly. “No, I’ll meet you at my house. I’ll try to be home by seven.”
“I don’t expect you to cook for me.”
“Then I’ll let you do the cooking.”
He laughed. “Brave woman.”
“If I’m late, you can get in through the side door to the garage. You probably know where the key is.”
“Don’t tell me you’re still hiding it in that old shoe.”
“No one’s found it yet. I’ll see you tonight.”
She hung up, and turned to find that now both Rizzoli and Frost were watching her.
“Hot date?” asked Rizzoli.
“At my age, I’m lucky to have any date,” she said, and slipped the phone in her purse. “I’ll see you both in the morgue.”
As she tramped back across the field, following the trail of broken snow, she felt their gazes on her back. It was a relief to finally push through the rear gate and retreat behind abbey walls. But only a few steps into the courtyard, she heard her name called.
She turned to see Father Brophy emerge from a doorway. He walked toward her, a solemn figure in black. Against the gray and dreary sky, his eyes were a startling shade of blue.
“Mother Mary Clement would like to speak to you,” he said.
“Detective Rizzoli is the person she should probably talk to.”
“She’d prefer to speak to you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re not a policeman. At least you seem willing to listen to her concerns. To understand.”
“Understand what, Father?”
He paused. The wind flapped their coats and stung their faces.
“That faith isn’t something to be ridiculed,” he said.
And that was why Mary Clement did not want to talk to Rizzoli, who could not hide her skepticism, her disdain toward the church. Something as deeply personal as faith should not be subjected to another person’s contempt.
“This is important to her,” said Father Brophy. “Please.”
She followed him into the building, down the dim and drafty hallway, to the Abbess’s office. Mary Clement was seated behind her desk. She looked up as they walked in, and the eyes staring through those thick lenses were clearly angry.
“Sit down, Dr. Isles.”
Although Holy Innocents Academy was years behind Maura, the sight of an irate nun could still rattle her, and she quietly complied, sinking into the chair like a guilty schoolgirl. Father Brophy stood off to the side, a silent observer of this coming ordeal.
“We were never told the reason for this search,” said Mary Clement. “You’ve disrupted our lives. Violated our privacy. From the beginning, we’ve cooperated in every way, yet you’ve treated us as though we’re the enemy. You owed us the courtesy of at least telling us what you were searching for.”
“I do think that Detective Rizzoli is the one you should speak to about this.”
“But you’re the one who initiated the search.”
“I only told them what I found on autopsy. That Sister Camille recently gave birth. It was Detective Rizzoli’s decision to search the abbey.”
“Without telling us why.”
“Police investigations are usually played close to the vest.”
“It’s because you didn’t trust us. Isn’t that right?”
Maura looked into Mary Clement’s accusing gaze and found she could no
t respond with anything but the truth. “We had no choice but to proceed with caution.”
Rather than make her angrier, that honest answer seemed to defuse the Abbess’s outrage. Looking suddenly drained, she leaned back in her chair, transforming into the frail and elderly woman she really was. “What a world it is, when even we cannot be trusted.”
“Like everyone else, Reverend Mother.”
“But that’s just it, Dr. Isles. We are not like everyone else.” She said this without any note of superiority. Rather, it was sadness that Maura heard in her voice, and bewilderment. “We would have helped you. We would have cooperated, if we’d known what you were looking for.”
“You really had no idea that Camille was pregnant?”
“How could we? When Detective Rizzoli told me this morning, I didn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it.”
“I’m afraid the proof was in the pond.”
The Abbess seemed to shrink even smaller into her chair. Her gaze fell on her arthritis-gnarled hands. She was silent, staring at those hands as though they did not belong to her. Softly she said: “How could we not have known?”
“Pregnancies can be concealed. Teenage girls have been known to hide their condition from their own mothers. Some women deny it even to themselves, until the moment they give birth. Camille herself may have been in denial. I have to admit, I was completely taken aback at autopsy. It wasn’t at all what I expected to find in . . .”
“A nun,” Mary Clement said. She looked straight at Maura.
“That’s not to say nuns aren’t human.”
A faint smile. “Thank for you acknowledging that.”
“And she was so young—”
“Do you think only the young struggle with temptation?”
Maura thought of her restless night. Of Victor, sleeping right down the hall.
“All our lives,” said Mary Clement, “we’re enticed by one thing or another. The temptations change, of course. When you’re young, it’s a handsome boy. Then it’s sweets or food. Or, when you get old and tired, just the chance to sleep an extra hour in the morning. So many petty desires, and we’re just as vulnerable to them as everyone else, only we’re not allowed to admit it. Our vows set us apart. Wearing the veil may be a joy, Dr. Isles. But perfection is a burden that none of us can live up to.”
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