Her focus moved from the arc of fetal skull to the bright shard embedded in Nikki’s pubis. A shard as thin as . . .
A knife’s edge. A broken-off fragment from a blade.
But Nikki had been killed with a blow to the head. Why use a knife on a victim whose face you have just crushed with a crowbar? She stared at that metallic sliver, and its significance suddenly struck her—a significance that sent a chill streaking up her spine.
She crossed to the phone and hit the intercom button. “Louise?”
“Yes, Dr. Isles?”
“Can you connect me with Dr. Daljeet Singh? The medical examiner’s office in Augusta, Maine.”
“Hold on.” Then, a moment later: “I’ve got Dr. Singh on the line.”
“Daljeet?” said Maura.
“No, I haven’t forgotten about that dinner I owe you!” he answered.
“I may owe you a dinner, if you can answer this question for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Those skeletal remains we dug up in Fox Harbor. Have you identified them yet?”
“No. It may take a while. There are no missing persons reports on file in either Waldo or Hancock County that would match these remains. Either these bones are very old, or these people were not from the area.”
“Have you requested an NCIC search yet?” she asked. The National Crime Information Center, administered through the FBI, maintained a searchable database of missing persons cases from across the country.
“Yes, but since I can’t narrow it down to any particular decade, I got back pages of names. Everything on record for the New England area.”
“Maybe I can help you narrow down your search parameters.”
“How?”
“Specify just the missing persons cases from 1955 to 1965.”
“Can I ask how you came up with that particular decade?”
Because that’s when my mother was living in Fox Harbor, she thought. My mother, who has killed others.
But all she said was: “An educated guess.”
“You’re being very mysterious.”
“I’ll explain it all when I see you.”
For once, Rizzoli was letting Maura drive, but only because they were in Maura’s Lexus, heading north toward the Maine Turnpike. During the night, a storm front had blown in from the west, and Maura had awakened to the sound of rain drumming her roof. She’d made coffee, read the newspaper, all the usual things she did on a typical morning. How quickly old routines reasserted themselves, even in the face of fear. Last night she had not stayed in a motel, but had returned home. Had locked all her doors and left the porch light burning, a meager defense against the threats of the night, yet she had slept through the storm’s bluster, and had awakened feeling back in control of her own life.
I’ve had enough of being afraid, she thought. I won’t let it drive me again from my own house.
Now, as she and Rizzoli headed toward Maine, where even darker rain clouds loomed, she was ready to fight back, ready to turn the tables. Whoever you are, I’m going to track you down and find you. I can be a hunter, too.
It was two in the afternoon when they arrived at the Maine medical examiner’s building in Augusta. Dr. Daljeet Singh met them in reception and walked them downstairs to the autopsy lab, where the two boxes of bones were waiting on a countertop.
“This hasn’t been my highest priority,” he admitted as he shook out a plastic sheet. It settled with a soft whish on the steel table, like parachute silk. “They’ve probably been buried for decades; a few more days won’t make much difference.”
“Did you get back the new search results from NCIC?” asked Maura.
“This morning. I printed up the list of names. It’s on that desk there.”
“Dental X-rays?”
“I’ve downloaded the files they emailed me. Haven’t had a chance yet to review them. I thought I’d wait till you two got here.” He opened the first cardboard box and began removing bones, gently setting them on the plastic sheet. Out came a skull, its cranium caved in. A dirt-stained pelvis and long bones and chunky spine. A bundle of ribs, which clattered together like a bamboo wind chime. It was otherwise silent in Daljeet’s lab, as stark and bright as Maura’s autopsy suite in Boston. Good pathologists are by nature perfectionists, and he now revealed that aspect of his personality. He seemed to dance around the table, moving with almost feminine grace as he arranged the bones in their anatomic positions.
“Which one is this?” asked Rizzoli.
“This is the male,” he said. “Femoral length indicates he was somewhere in the range of five foot ten to six feet tall. Obvious crush fracture of the right temporal bone. Also, there’s an old Colles fracture, well healed.” He glanced at Rizzoli, who looked perplexed. “That’s a broken wrist.”
“Why do you doctors do that, anyway?”
“What?”
“Call it some fancy name. Why don’t you just call it a broken wrist?”
Daljeet smiled. “Some questions have no easy answers, Detective Rizzoli.”
Rizzoli looked at the bones. “What else do we know about him?”
“There are no apparent osteoporotic or arthritic changes of the spine. This was a young adult male, Caucasian. Some dental work here—silver amalgam fillings numbers eighteen and nineteen.”
Rizzoli pointed to the cratered temporal bone. “Is that the cause of death?”
“That would certainly qualify as a fatal blow.” He turned and looked at the second box. “Now, to the female. She was found about twenty yards away.”
On the second autopsy table, he again spread out a plastic sheet. Together, he and Maura laid out the next collection of remains in their anatomical positions, like two fussy waiters arranging a place setting for dinner. Bones clattered against the table. The dirt-encrusted pelvis. Another skull, smaller, the supraorbital ridges more delicate than the man’s. Leg bones, arm bones, sternum. A bundle of ribs, and two paper sacks containing loose carpal and tarsal bones.
“So here’s our Jane Doe,” said Daljeet, surveying the finished arrangement. “I can’t tell you the cause of death here, because there’s nothing to go on. She appears to be young, also Caucasian. Twenty to thirty-five years old. Height around five foot three, no old fractures. Dentition’s very good. A little chip here, on the canine, and a gold crown on number four.”
Maura glanced at the X-ray viewing box, where two films were mounted. “Are those their dental films?”
“Male’s on the left, female on the right.” Daljeet went to the sink to wash the dirt from his hands and yanked out a paper towel. “So there you have it, John and Jane Doe.”
Rizzoli picked up the printout of names that NCIC had emailed to Daljeet that morning. “Jesus. There are dozens of entries here. So many people missing.”
“And that’s only for the New England region. Caucasians between the ages of twenty and forty-five.”
“All these reports are from the 1950s and ’60s.”
“That’s the time frame Maura specified.” Daljeet crossed to his laptop computer. “Okay, let’s take a look at some of the X-rays they sent.” He opened the file that had been emailed to him from NCIC. A row of icons appeared, each labeled with a case number. He clicked on the first icon, and an X-ray filled the screen. A crooked line of teeth, like tumbling white dominoes.
“Well, this certainly isn’t one of ours,” he said. “Look at the teeth on this one! It’s an orthodontist’s nightmare.”
“Or an orthodontist’s gold mine,” said Rizzoli.
Daljeet closed that image, and clicked on the next icon. Another X-ray, this one with a gaping space between incisors. “I don’t think so,” he said.
Maura’s attention drifted back to the table. To the bones of the unnamed woman. She stared down at the skull with its gracile brow line and delicate zygomatic arch. A face of gentle proportions.
“Well, hello,” she heard Daljeet say. “I think I recognize these teeth.”
; She turned to look at the computer screen. Saw an X-ray of lower molars and the bright glow of dental fillings.
Daljeet rose from his chair and crossed to the table where the male skeleton was laid out. He picked up the mandible and carried it back to the computer to compare.
“Amalgam filling numbers eighteen and nineteen,” he noted. “Yes. Yes, that matches . . .”
“What’s the name on that X-ray?” Rizzoli asked.
“Robert Sadler.”
“Sadler . . . Sadler . . .” Rizzoli flipped through the pages of computer printouts. “Okay, I found the entry. Sadler, Robert. Caucasian male, age twenty-nine. Five foot eleven, brown hair, brown eyes.” She looked at Daljeet, who nodded.
“That’s compatible with our remains.”
Rizzoli continued reading. “He was a building contractor. Last seen in his hometown of Kennebunkport, Maine. Reported missing July third, 1960, along with his . . .” She paused. Turned to look at the table where the female’s bones had been laid out. “Along with his wife.”
“What was her name?” asked Maura.
“Karen. Karen Sadler. I have the case number for you.”
“Give it to me,” said Daljeet, turning back to the computer. “Let’s see if her X-rays are here.” Maura stood close behind him, staring over his shoulder as he clicked on the correct icon, and an image appeared on the screen. It was an X-ray taken when Karen Sadler was alive and sitting in her dentist’s chair. Anxious, perhaps, about the prospect of a cavity and the inevitable drilling that would result. She could not have imagined, as she’d clamped down on the cardboard wing to hold the unexposed film in place, that this same image her dentist captured that day would be glowing, years later, on a pathologist’s computer screen.
Maura saw a row of molars, and the bright metallic glow of a crown. She crossed to the X-ray light box, where Daljeet had clipped up the panograph he’d taken of the unidentified woman’s teeth. She said, softly, “It’s her. These bones are Karen Sadler’s.”
“So we have a double match,” said Daljeet. “Both husband and wife.”
Behind them, Rizzoli flipped through the printouts, looking for Karen Sadler’s missing persons report. “Okay, here she is. Caucasian female, age twenty-five. Blond hair, blue eyes . . .” She suddenly stopped. “There’s something wrong here. You’d better check those X-rays again.”
“Why?” said Maura.
“Just check them again.”
Maura studied the panograph, then turned to look at the computer screen. “They are a match, Jane. What’s the problem?”
“You’re missing another set of bones.”
“Whose bones?”
“A fetus.” Rizzoli looked at her, a stunned expression on her face. “Karen Sadler was eight months pregnant.”
There was a long silence.
“We found no other remains,” Daljeet said.
“You could have missed them,” said Rizzoli.
“We sifted the soil. Thoroughly excavated that grave site.”
“Scavengers might have dragged them away.”
“Yes, that’s always possible. But this is Karen Sadler.”
Maura went to the table and stared down at the woman’s pelvis, thinking about another woman’s bones, glowing on an X-ray light box. Nikki Wells was pregnant, too.
She swung the magnifying lens over the table and switched on the light. Focused the lens over the pubic ramus. Reddish dirt had crusted over the symphysis, where the two rami met, joined by leathery cartilage. “Daljeet, could I have a wet Q-tip or gauze? Something to wipe this dirt away.”
He filled a basin of water and tore open a packet of Q-tips. He set them on the tray beside her. “What are you looking for?”
She didn’t answer him. Her attention was focused on dabbing away that coating of dirt, on revealing what lay beneath. As the crust melted, her pulse quickened. The last fleck of dirt suddenly fell away. She stared at what was now revealed beneath the magnifier. Straightening, she looked at Daljeet.
“What is it?” he said.
“Take a look. It’s right at the edge, where the bones articulate.”
He bent to look through the lens. “You mean that little nick? Is that what you’re talking about?”
“Yes.”
“It’s pretty subtle.”
“But it’s there.” She took a deep breath. “I brought an X-ray. It’s in my car. I think you should look at it.”
Rain battered her umbrella as she walked out to the parking lot. As she pressed the UNLOCK button on her key ring, she couldn’t avoid glancing at the scratches on her passenger door. A claw mark meant to scare her. All it did is make me angry. Ready to fight back. She took the envelope out of the backseat and sheltered it under her coat as she carried it into the building.
Daljeet looked bewildered as he watched her clip Nikki Wells’s films onto the light box. “What is this case you’re showing me?”
“A five-year-old homicide in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. The victim’s skull was crushed and her body later burned.”
Daljeet frowned at the X-ray. “Pregnant female. The fetus looks close to term.”
“But this is what caught my eye.” She pointed to the bright sliver embedded in Nikki Wells’s pubic symphysis. “I think it’s the broken edge of a knife blade.”
“But Nikki Wells was killed with a tire iron,” said Rizzoli. “Her skull was smashed in.”
“That’s right,” said Maura.
“Then why use a knife as well?”
Maura pointed to the X-ray. To the fetal bones curled over Nikki Wells’s pelvis. “That’s why. That’s what the killer really wanted.”
For a moment Daljeet didn’t speak. But she knew, without his saying a word, that he understood what she was thinking. He turned back to the remains of Karen Sadler. He picked up the pelvis. “A midline incision, straight down the abdomen,” he said. “The blade would hit bone, right where this nick is . . .”
Maura thought of Amalthea’s knife, slicing down a young woman’s abdomen with a stroke so decisive the blade stops only when it collides with bone. She thought of her own profession, where knives played such a large part, and of the days she spent in the autopsy lab, slicing skin and organs. We are both cutters, my mother and I. But I cut dead flesh, and she cut the living.
“That’s why you didn’t find fetal bones in Karen Sadler’s grave,” said Maura.
“But your other case—” He gestured toward the X-ray of Nikki Wells. “That fetus wasn’t taken. It was burned with the mother. Why make an incision to extract it, and then kill it anyway?”
“Because Nikki Wells’s baby had a congenital defect. An amniotic band.”
“What’s that?” asked Rizzoli.
“It’s a membranous strand that sometimes stretches across the amniotic sac,” said Maura. “If it wraps around a fetus’s limb, it can constrict blood flow, even amputate the limb. The defect was diagnosed during Nikki’s second trimester.” She pointed to the X-ray. “You can see the fetus is missing its right leg beneath the knee.”
“That’s not a fatal defect?”
“No, it would have survived. But the killer would have seen the defect immediately. She would have seen it wasn’t a perfect baby. I think that’s why she didn’t take it.” Maura turned and looked at Rizzoli. Could not avoid confronting the fact of Rizzoli’s pregnancy. The swollen belly, the estrogenic flush of her cheeks. “She wanted a perfect baby.”
“But Karen Sadler’s wouldn’t have been perfect either,” Rizzoli pointed out. “She was only eight months pregnant. The lungs wouldn’t be mature, right? It would need an incubator to survive.”
Maura looked down at Karen Sadler’s bones. She thought of the site from which they had been recovered. Thought, too, of the husband’s bones, buried twenty yards away. But not in the same grave—a separate spot. Why dig two different holes? Why not bury husband and wife together?
Her mouth suddenly went dry. The answer left her stunned.
They were not buried at the same time.
TWENTY-ONE
THE COTTAGE HUDDLED beneath rain-heavy tree branches, as though cringing from their touch. When Maura had first seen it the week before, she had thought the house merely depressing, a dark little box slowly being strangled by encroaching woods. Now, as she gazed at it from her car, the windows seemed to stare back like malevolent eyes.
“This is the house where Amalthea grew up,” said Maura. “It wouldn’t have been hard for Anna to track down that information. All she had to do was check Amalthea’s high school records. Or search an old phone book for the name Lank.” She looked at Rizzoli. “The landlady, Miss Clausen, told me Anna asked specifically about renting this house.”
“So Anna must have known Amalthea once lived here.”
And like me, she was hungry to know more about our mother, thought Maura. To understand the woman who gave us life, and then abandoned us.
Rain pounded on the car roof and slid in silvery sheets down the windshield.
Rizzoli zipped up her slicker and pulled the hood over her head. “Well, let’s go in and take a look, then.”
They dashed through the rain and scrambled up the steps to the porch, where they shook water from their raincoats. Maura produced the key she’d just picked up at Miss Clausen’s real estate office and thrust it into the lock. At first it would not turn, as though the house was fighting back, determined not to let her enter. When at last she managed to open the door, it gave a warning creak as it swung open, resisting her to the end.
Inside it was even gloomier and more claustrophobic than she had remembered. The air was sour with the smell of mildew, as though the dampness outside had seeped through the walls into the curtains, the furniture. The light through the window cast the living room in sullen shades of gray. This house does not want us here, she thought. It does not want us to learn its secrets.
She touched Rizzoli’s arm. “Look,” she said, pointing to the two bolts and the brass chains.
“Brand-new locks.”
“Anna had them installed. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Who she was trying to lock out.”
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