Cardioversion repeated, 400 joules. Still in V. Fib.
Pupils dilated, but still reactive to light.…
Not giving up yet, thought Maura. Not while the pupils react. Not while there’s still a chance.
She remembered the first Code Blue that she had directed as an intern, and how reluctant she had been to concede defeat, even when it was clear that the patient could not be saved. But the man’s family had stood waiting right outside the room—his wife and two teenage sons—and it was the boys’ faces that Maura kept thinking of as she’d slapped on the defibrillator paddles, again and again. Both boys were tall enough to be men, with enormous feet and spotty faces, but they were crying children’s tears, and she had continued resuscitation efforts long beyond the stage of futility, thinking: give him one more shock. Just one more.
She realized that Father Brophy had fallen silent. Looking up, she found him watching her, his gaze so focused that she felt personally invaded.
And, at the same time, strangely aroused.
She closed the chart, a crisply businesslike gesture to disguise her confusion. She had just come from Victor’s bed, yet here she was, drawn to this man, of all people. She knew that cats in heat could attract males with their scent. Was that the signal she gave off, the scent of a receptive female? A woman who has gone so long without sex that she cannot get enough of it?
She rose and reached for her coat.
He stepped toward her to help her put it on. Stood close behind her, holding it open as she slid her arms into the sleeves. She felt his hand brush against her hair. It was an accidental touch, nothing more, but it set off an alarming shiver. She stepped away, quickly buttoning up.
“Before you leave,” he said, “I want to show you something. Will you come with me?”
“Where?”
“Down to the fourth floor.”
Puzzled, she followed him to the elevator. They stepped in and, once again, they were sharing an enclosed space that seemed far too close. She stood with both hands thrust in her coat pockets and stoically watched the floor numbers change, wondering: Is it a sin to find a priest attractive?
If not sin, then certainly folly.
The elevator door at last opened, and she followed him down the hallway, through a set of double doors, into the coronary care unit. Like the Surgical ICU, this unit had its lights dimmed for the night, and he led her through the gloom toward the EKG monitor station.
The heavyset nurse sitting in front of the monitors glanced up from the multiple cardiac tracings and her teeth shone in a smiling arc.
“Father Brophy. Making night rounds?”
He touched the nurse’s shoulder, an easy, familiar gesture that spoke of a comfortable friendship. Maura was reminded of the first time she had glimpsed Brophy, crossing the snowy courtyard below Camille’s bedroom. How he had laid a comforting hand on the shoulder of the elderly nun who had greeted him. This was a man who was not afraid to offer the warmth of his touch.
“Evening, Kathleen,” he said, and the soft lilt of Boston Irish suddenly slipped into his voice. “Have you had a quiet night, then?”
“So far, knock on wood. Did the nurses call you in to see someone?”
“Not for one of your patients. We were upstairs, in SICU. I wanted to bring Dr. Isles down here for a visit.”
“At two A.M.?” Kathleen laughed and looked at Maura. “He’ll run you ragged. This man doesn’t rest.”
“Rest?” said Brophy. “What’s that?”
“It’s that thing we lesser mortals do.”
Brophy looked at the monitor. “And how is our Mr. DeMarco doing?”
“Oh, your special patient. He’s being transferred to an unmonitored bed tomorrow. So I’d say he’s doing great.”
Brophy pointed to bed number six’s EKG line, blipping serenely across the screen. “There,” he said, touching Maura’s arm, and his breath whispered against her hair. “That’s what I wanted to show you.”
“Why?” asked Maura.
“Mr. DeMarco is the man we saved, on the sidewalk.” He looked at her. “The man you predicted wouldn’t live. That’s our miracle. Yours and mine.”
“Not necessarily a miracle. I’ve been known to be wrong.”
“You’re not in the least bit surprised that this man is going to walk out of the hospital?”
She looked at him in the quiet intimacy of darkness. “There’s not a lot that surprises me anymore, I’m sorry to say.” She didn’t mean to sound cynical, but that’s how it came out, and she wondered if he was disappointed in her. It seemed important to him, for some reason, that she express some sense of wonderment, and all she had given him was the verbal equivalent of a shrug.
In the elevator down to the lobby, she said, “I’d like to believe in miracles, Father. I really would. But I’m afraid you can’t change the opinion of an old skeptic.”
He responded with a smile. “You were given a brilliant mind, and of course you were meant to use it. To ask your own questions and find your own answers.”
“I’m sure you ask the same questions I do.”
“Every day.”
“Yet you accept the concept of the divine. Isn’t your faith ever shaken?”
A pause. “Not my faith, no. That, I can count on.”
She heard a faint note of uncertainty in his voice and she looked at him. “Then what do you question?”
He met her gaze, a look that seemed to peer straight into her mind, to read the very thoughts she did not want him to see. “My strength,” he said quietly. “Sometimes I question my own strength.”
Outside, standing alone in the hospital parking lot, she took in punishing breaths of cold air. The sky was clear, the stars a hard glitter. She climbed into her car and sat for a moment as the engine warmed, trying to understand what had just happened between her and Father Brophy. Nothing at all, really, but she was feeling as guilty as though something had happened. Both guilty and exhilarated.
She drove home on streets polished with an icy sheen, thinking about Father Brophy and Victor. She had been tired when she’d left the house; now she was alert and edgy, nerves humming, feeling more alive than she’d felt in months.
She pulled into the garage, and was already tugging off her coat as she walked into her house. Already unbuttoning her blouse as she moved toward the bedroom. Victor slept soundly, unaware that she was standing right beside him, shedding her clothes. In the last few days, he’d been spending more time in her house than in his hotel room, and now he seemed to belong in her bed. In her life. Shivering, she slid under sheets that were deliciously warm, and the coolness of her skin against his made him stir.
A few strokes, a few kisses, and he was fully awake, fully aroused.
She welcomed him into her, urging him on, and though she lay beneath him, it was not in submission. She took her own pleasure, just as he took his, claiming her due with a soft cry of victory. But as she closed her eyes and felt him climax inside her, it was not just Victor’s face that came to mind, but also Father Brophy’s. A shifting image that would not hold steady, but flickered back and forth, until she did not know whose face it was.
Both. And neither.
SEVENTEEN
In winter, it’s the clear days that are the coldest. Maura awakened to sunshine glaring on white snow, and although she was glad to see blue sky for a change, the wind was brutal, and the rhododendron outside her house huddled like an old man, its leaves drooped and folded against the cold.
She sipped coffee as she drove to work, blinking against the sunlight, longing to turn around and go home. To climb back into bed with Victor, and spend the whole day with him there, warming each other beneath the comforter. Last night, they had sung Christmas carols—he in his rich baritone, she trying to harmonize in her badly off-key alto. They’d sounded awful together, and had ended up laughing more than singing.
And here she was singing again this morning, her voice as off-key as ever, as she drove past streetligh
ts hung with wreaths, past department store windows where holiday dresses glittered on mannequins. Suddenly, the reminders of Christmas seemed to be everywhere. The wreaths and garlands had been hanging for weeks, of course, but she hadn’t really taken notice of them. When had the city ever looked so festive? When had the sun ever glittered so brightly on snow?
God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.
She walked into the Medical Examiner’s building on Albany Street, where PEACE ON EARTH was displayed in huge foil letters in the hallway.
Louise looked up at her and smiled. “You’re looking happy today.”
“I’m just so glad to see sunshine again.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts. I hear we’re getting more snow tomorrow night.”
“Snow on Chirstmas Eve is fine with me.” She scooped up some chocolate kisses from the candy bowl on Louise’s desk. “How’s the schedule look today?”
“Nothing came in last night. I guess no one wants to die just before Christmas. Dr. Bristol has to be in court at ten, and he may go straight home after that, if you can cover his calls.”
“If it stays quiet, I think I’ll leave early myself.”
Louise’s eyebrow lifted in surprise. “For something fun, I hope.”
“You bet,” Maura said with a laugh. “I’m going shopping.”
She walked into her office, where even the tall stack of lab reports and dictations waiting to be reviewed could not dampen her mood. Sitting at her desk, she happily snacked on chocolate as she worked through the lunch hour and into the afternoon, hoping to slip out by three and head straight to Saks Fifth Avenue.
She did not count on a visit from Gabriel Dean. When he walked into her office at two thirty that afternoon, she had no inkling of how completely his visit would change her day. As always, she found him difficult to read, and once again, she was struck by the improbability of any affair between the temperamental Rizzoli and this coolly enigmatic man.
“I’m heading back to Washington this afternoon,” he said, setting down his briefcase. “I wanted your opinion on something before I left.”
“Of course.”
“First, may I view Jane Doe’s remains?”
“It’s all in my autopsy report.”
“Nevertheless, I think I should see her myself.”
Maura rose from her chair. “I have to warn you,” she said, “this will be a difficult viewing.”
Refrigeration can only slow, not halt, the process of decomposition. As Maura unzipped the white body pouch, she had to steel herself against the odors. She had already warned Dean about the corpse’s appearance, and he did not flinch when the plastic parted, revealing raw tissue where the face should have been.
“It was completely stripped off,” said Maura. “The skin sliced along the hairline, at the crown, and then peeled downward. Freed with another incision below the chin. Like ripping off a mask.”
“And he took the skin with him?”
“It’s not the only thing he took.” Maura unzipped the rest of the pouch, releasing a stench so powerful that she wished she had put on a mask and shield. But Dean had requested only a superficial viewing, not a full examination, and they had donned only gloves.
“The hands,” he said.
“They were both removed, as were parts of the feet. At first, we thought we were dealing with a collector. Body parts as trophies. The other possibility was that he was trying to obscure her identity. No fingerprints, no face. That would have been a practical reason for removal.”
“Except for the feet.”
“And that’s what didn’t make sense. That’s when I realized there might be another reason for the amputations. It wasn’t to hide her identity, but her diagnosis of leprosy.”
“And these lesions all over her skin? That’s from the Hansen’s disease as well?”
“This skin eruption is called erythema nodosum leprosum. It’s a reaction to medical treatment. She’s obviously been receiving antibiotics for the Hansen’s disease. That’s why we didn’t see any active bacteria on skin biopsy.”
“So it’s not the disease itself that’s causing these lesions?”
“No. It’s a side effect of recent antibiotic therapy. Based on her X rays, she’d had Hansen’s for some time, probably years, before she started receiving therapy.” She looked up at Dean. “Have you seen enough?”
He nodded. “Now I want to show you something.”
Back upstairs in her office, he opened his briefcase and took out a file. “Yesterday, after our meeting, I called Interpol and requested information on the Bara massacre. That’s what the Special Crimes Division of India’s Central Bureau of Investigation faxed back to me. They also e-mailed some digital images that I want you to look at.”
She opened the folder and saw the top sheet. “It’s a police file.”
“From the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where the village of Bara was located.”
“What’s the status of their investigation?”
“It remains ongoing. The case is a year old, and they haven’t made much progress. I doubt this one is ever going to be solved. I’m not even sure it’s high on their priority list.”
“Nearly a hundred people were slaughtered, Agent Dean.”
“Yes, but you have to take this event in context.”
“An earthquake is an event. A hurricane is an event. An entire village of people being massacred isn’t an event. It’s a crime against humanity.”
“Look at what else is happening in South Asia. In Kashmir, mass slaughters by both Hindus and Muslims. In India, the murders of Tamils and Sikhs. Then there are all the caste killings. Bombings by Maoist-Leninist guerillas—”
“Mother Mary Clement believes it was a religious massacre. An attack against Christians.”
“Such attacks do occur there. But the clinic where Sister Ursula worked was funded by a secular charity. The other two nurses—the ones who died in the massacre—weren’t affiliated with any church. That’s why the police in Andhra Pradesh are doubtful this was a religious attack. A political attack, perhaps. Or a hate crime, because the victims were lepers. This was a village of the despised.” He pointed to the file she was holding. “There are autopsy reports I wanted you to see, as well as crime scene photos.”
She turned the page and stared at a photograph. Stunned by the image, she could not speak. She could not turn her eyes from the horror.
It was a vision of Armageddon.
Piled atop mounds of smoking wood and ash were seared corpses. The fire’s heat had contracted flexor muscles, and the bodies were frozen in pugilistic attitudes. Mingled among the human remains were dead goats, their fur singed black.
“They killed everything,” said Dean. “People. Animals. Even the chickens were slaughtered and burned.”
She forced herself to turn to the next photo.
She saw other corpses, more thoroughly consumed by the flames, reduced to piles of charred bones.
“The attack happened sometime during the night,” said Dean. “It wasn’t until the next morning that the bodies were discovered. Day shift workers at a nearby factory noticed heavy smoke rising from the valley below. When they arrived to investigate, that’s what they found. Ninety-seven people dead, many of them women and children, as well as two nurses from the clinic—both of them Americans.”
“The same clinic where Ursula worked.”
Dean nodded. “Now here’s the really interesting detail,” he said.
She looked up, her attention suddenly sharpened by the change in his voice. “Yes?”
“That factory, near the village.”
“What about it?”
“It was owned by Octagon Chemicals.”
She stared at him. “Octagon? That’s the company Howard Redfield worked for?”
He nodded. “The one under SEC investigation. There are so many lines connecting these three victims, it’s starting to look like a giant spiderweb. We know Howard Redfield was a VP of
foreign operations for Octagon, which owned the factory near Bara village. We know Sister Ursula worked in Bara village. We know that Jane Doe suffered from Hansen’s disease, so she may have lived in Bara village as well.”
“It all goes back to that village,” she said.
“To that massacre.”
Her gaze dropped to the photographs. “What are you hoping I’ll find in these autopsy reports?”
“Tell me if there’s something the Indian pathologists missed. Something that might shed light on that attack.”
She looked at the burned corpses and shook her head. “It’s going to be difficult. Incineration destroys too much. Whenever fire’s involved, the cause of death may be impossible to determine, unless there’s other evidence. Bullets, for instance, or fractures.”
“A number of the skulls were crushed, according to those postmortem reports. They concluded the victims were most likely bludgeoned while asleep. The bodies were then dragged from the huts to form several different piles, for incineration.”
She turned to another photo. Another view of hell. “All these victims,” she murmured. “And no one was able to escape?”
“It must have happened very quickly. Many of the victims were probably crippled by disease and unable to run. It was, after all, a sanctuary for the sick. The village was cut off from society, isolated in a valley at the dead end of a road. A large group of attackers could swoop in and easily slaughter a hundred people. And no one would hear the screams.”
Maura turned to the last photograph in the folder. It showed a small whitewashed building with a tin roof, the walls scorched by fire. Lying just outside the doorway was another jumble of corpses, limbs intertwined, features burned beyond recognition.
“That clinic was the only building still standing, because it was built of cinder blocks,” said Dean. “The remains of the two American nurses were found in that pile there. A forensic anthropologist had to identify them. He said the burning was so complete, he believed the attackers must have used an accelerant. Would you agree with that, Dr. Isles?”
Maura didn’t answer. She was no longer focused on the bodies. She stared, instead, at something she found far more disturbing. Something that made her forget, for a few seconds, to breathe.
The Rizzoli & Isles Series 10-Book Bundle Page 85