“The white van.”
Frost drove for a moment in silence. “You know,” he said, “if that van does show up at his house, it probably means …” His voice trailed off.
That Mattie Purvis is already dead, thought Rizzoli.
TWENTY-SIX
Mattie braced her back against one wall, placed her feet against the other wall, and pushed. Counted the seconds until her legs were quivering and sweat beaded her face. Come on, five more seconds. Ten. She went limp, panting, her calves and thighs tingling with a pleasant burn. She had scarcely used them in this box, had spent too many hours curled up and wallowing in self-pity as her muscles degenerated to mush. She remembered the time she’d caught the flu, a bad flu that had laid her flat on her back, feverish and shaking. A few days later she had climbed out of bed and felt so weak she had to crawl to the bathroom. That’s what lying around too long did to you: It robbed you of your strength. Soon she’d need those muscles; she had to be ready when he came back.
Because he would come back.
That’s enough rest. Feet against the wall again. Push!
She grunted, sweat blooming on her forehead. She thought of the movie GI Jane, and how sleek and toned Demi Moore had looked as she’d lifted weights. Mattie held that image in her head as she pushed against her prison walls. Visualize muscles. And fighting back. And beating the bastard.
With a gasp, she once again relaxed against the wall and rested there, breathing deep as the ache in her legs subsided. She was about to repeat the exercise when she felt the tightening in her belly.
Another contraction.
She waited, holding her breath, hoping it would pass quickly. Already it was easing off. Just the womb trying out its muscles, as she was trying out hers. It wasn’t painful, but it was a sign that her time was coming.
Wait, baby. You have to wait a little longer.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Once again, Maura was shedding all the proof of her own identity. She placed her purse in the locker, added to it her watch, her belt, and her car keys. But even with my credit card and driver’s license and Social Security number, she thought, I still don’t know who I really am. The only person who knows that answer is waiting for me on the other side of the barrier.
She entered the visitor trap, took off her shoes and placed them on the counter for inspection, then passed through the metal detector.
A female guard was waiting for her. “Dr. Isles?”
“Yes.”
“You requested an interview room?”
“I need to speak to the prisoner alone.”
“You’ll still be monitored visually. You understand that?”
“As long as our conversation is private.”
“It’s the same room where prisoners meet with their attorneys. So you’ll have privacy.” The guard led Maura through the public day room and down a corridor. There she unlocked a door and waved her through. “We’ll bring her to the room. Have a seat.”
Maura stepped into the interview room and confronted a table and two chairs. She sat down in the chair facing the door. A Plexiglas window looked into the hallway, and two surveillance cameras peered from opposite corners of the room. She waited, her hands sweating despite the air-conditioning. Glanced up, startled, to see Amalthea’s dark, flat eyes staring at her through the window.
The guard escorted Amalthea into the room and sat her in a chair. “She’s not talking much today. I don’t know that she’s going to say a thing to you, but here she is.” The guard bent down, fastened a steel cuff around Amalthea’s ankle, and attached it to the table leg.
“Is that really necessary?” asked Maura.
“It’s just regulation, for your safety.” The guard straightened. “When you’re done, press that button there, on the wall intercom. We’ll come get her.” She gave Amalthea’s shoulder a pat. “Now, you talk to the lady, okay, honey? She’s come all this way just to see you.” She gave Maura a silent glance of good luck, and left, locking the door behind her.
A moment passed.
“I was here last week to visit you,” said Maura. “Do you remember?”
Amalthea hunched in her chair, eyes cast down at the table.
“You said something to me as I was about to leave. You said, now you’re going to die, too. What did you mean by that?”
Silence.
“You were warning me off, weren’t you? Telling me to leave you alone. You didn’t want me digging into your past.”
Again, silence.
“No one is listening to us, Amalthea. It’s just you and me in this room.” Maura placed her hands on the table, to show she had no tape recorder, no notepad. “I’m not a policeman. I’m not a prosecutor. You can say whatever you want to me, and we’re the only ones who’ll hear it.” She leaned closer, said quietly: “I know you can understand every word I’m saying. So look at me, goddamn it. I’ve had enough of this game.”
Though Amalthea did not lift her head, there was no missing the sudden tension in her arms, the twitch of her muscles. She’s listening, all right. She’s waiting to hear what I have to say next.
“That was a threat, wasn’t it? When you told me I was going to die, you were telling me to stay away, or I’d end up like Anna. I thought it was just psychotic babbling, but you meant it. You’re protecting him, aren’t you? You’re protecting the Beast.”
Slowly, Amalthea’s head lifted. Dark eyes met hers in a gaze so cold, so empty, that Maura drew back, skin prickling.
“We know about him,” said Maura. “We know about you both.”
“What do you know?”
Maura had not expected her to speak. That question was whispered so softly she wondered if she’d actually heard it. She swallowed. Drew in a deep breath, shaken by the black void of those eyes. No insanity there, just emptiness.
“You’re as sane as I am,” said Maura. “But you don’t dare let anyone know that. It’s so much easier to hide behind a schizophrenic’s mask. Easier to play the psychotic, because people always leave the crazy ones alone. They don’t bother to interrogate you. They don’t dig any deeper, because they think it’s all delusion anyway. And now they don’t even medicate you, because you’re so good at faking the side effects.” Maura forced herself to stare deeper into that void. “They don’t know the Beast is real. But you do. And you know where he is.”
Amalthea sat perfectly still, but tautness had crept into her face. The muscles had tightened around her mouth, and stood out in cords down her throat.
“It was your only option, wasn’t it? Pleading insanity. You couldn’t argue away the evidence—the blood on your tire iron, the stolen wallets. But convince them you’re psychotic, and maybe you’d avoid any further scrutiny. Maybe they wouldn’t find out about all your other victims. The women you killed in Florida and Virginia. Texas and Arkansas. States with the death penalty.” Maura leaned even closer. “Why don’t you just give him up, Amalthea? After all, he let you take the blame. And he’s still out there killing. He’s going on without you, visiting all the same places, the same hunting grounds. He’s just abducted another woman, in Natick. You could stop him, Amalthea. You could put an end to it.”
Amalthea seemed to be holding her breath, waiting.
“Look at you, sitting here in prison.” Maura laughed. “What a loser you are. Why should you be in here when Elijah’s free?”
Amalthea blinked. In an instant, all rigidity seemed to melt from her muscles.
“Talk to me,” pressed Maura. “There’s no one else in this room. Just you and me.”
The other woman’s gaze lifted to one of the video cameras mounted in the corner.
“Yes, they can see us,” said Maura. “But they can’t hear us.”
“Everyone can hear us,” whispered Amalthea. She focused on Maura. The fathomless gaze had turned cold, collected. And frighteningly sane, as though some new creature had suddenly emerged, staring out through those eyes. “Why are you here?”
“I want to know. Did Elijah
kill my sister?”
A long pause. And, strangely, a gleam of amusement in those eyes. “Why would he?”
“You know why Anna was murdered. Don’t you?”
“Why don’t you ask me a question I know the answer to? The question you really came to ask me.” Amalthea’s voice was low, intimate. “This is about you, Maura, isn’t it? What is it you want to know?”
Maura stared at her, heart pounding. A single question swelled like an ache in her throat. “I want you to tell me …”
“Yes?” Just a murmur, soft as a voice in Maura’s head.
“Who was really my mother?”
A smile twitched on Amalthea’s lips. “You mean you don’t see the resemblance?”
“Just tell me the truth.”
“Look at me. And look in the mirror. There’s your truth.”
“I don’t recognize any part of you in me.”
“But I recognize myself in you.”
Maura gave a laugh, surprising herself that she could even manage it. “I don’t know why I came. This visit is a waste of my time.” She shoved back her chair and started to rise.
“Do you like working with the dead, Maura?”
Startled by the question, Maura paused, half out of her chair.
“It’s what you do, isn’t it?” said Amalthea. “You cut them open. Take out their organs. Slice their hearts. Why do you do it?”
“My job requires it.”
“Why did you choose that job?”
“I’m not here to talk about myself.”
“Yes you are. This is all about you. About who you really are.”
Slowly Maura sat back down. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
“You slit open bellies. Dip your hands in their blood. Why do you think we’re any different?” The woman had been moving forward so imperceptibly that Maura was startled to suddenly realize how close Amalthea was to her. “Look in the mirror. You’ll see me.”
“We’re not even the same species.”
“If that’s what you want to believe, who am I to change your mind?” Amalthea stared, unflinching, at Maura. “There’s always DNA.”
The breath went out of Maura. A bluff, she thought. Amalthea’s waiting to see if I’ll call her on it. If I really want to know the truth. DNA doesn’t lie. With a swab of her mouth, I could have my answer. I could have my worst fears confirmed.
“You know where to find me,” said Amalthea. “Come back when you’re ready for the truth.” She stood, her ankle cuff clanking against the table leg, and stared up at the video camera. A signal to the guard that she wanted to leave.
“If you’re my mother,” said Maura, “then tell me who my father is.”
Amalthea glanced back at her, the smile once again on her lips. “Haven’t you guessed?”
The door opened, and the guard poked her head in. “Everything okay in here?”
The transformation was stunning. Just an instant before, Amalthea had looked at Maura with cold calculation. Now that creature vanished, replaced by a dazed husk of a woman who tugged on her ankle manacle, as though bewildered why she could not free herself. “Go,” she mumbled. “Wanna—wanna go.”
“Yes, honey, of course we’ll go.” The guard looked at Maura. “I guess you’re all done with her?”
“For now,” said Maura.
Rizzoli had not expected a visit from Charles Cassell, so she was surprised when the desk sergeant called to inform her that Dr. Cassell was waiting for her in the lobby. When she stepped out of the elevator and saw him, she was shocked by the change in his appearance. In just a week, he seemed to have aged ten years. Clearly he had lost weight, and his face was now gaunt and colorless. His suit jacket, though no doubt expensively tailored, seemed to hang, shapeless, on his drooping shoulders.
“I need to talk to you,” he said. “I need to know what’s going on.”
She nodded to the desk officer. “I’ll take him upstairs.”
As she and Cassell stepped inside the elevator, he said: “No one is telling me anything.”
“You realize, of course, that that’s standard during an active investigation.”
“Are you going to charge me? Detective Ballard says it’s just a matter of time.”
She looked at him. “When did he tell you that?”
“Every goddamn time I hear from him. Is that the strategy, Detective? Scare me, bully me into cutting a deal?”
She said nothing. She had not known about Ballard’s continuing phone calls to Cassell.
They stepped off the elevator and she brought him to the interview room, where they sat at a corner of the table, facing each other.
“Did you have something new to tell me?” she asked. “Because if not, there’s really no reason for this meeting.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“I don’t think you heard me the first time.”
“Is there something else you want to tell me?”
“You checked my airline travel, didn’t you? I gave you that info.”
“Northwest Airlines confirms you were on that flight. But that still leaves you without an alibi for the night of Anna’s murder.”
“And that incident with the dead bird in her mailbox—did you even bother to confirm where I was when that happened? I know I wasn’t in town. My secretary can tell you that.”
“Still, you understand it doesn’t prove your innocence. You could have hired someone else to wring a bird’s neck and deliver it to Anna’s mailbox.”
“I’ll freely admit the things I did do. Yes, I followed her. I drove by her house maybe half a dozen times. And yes, I did hit her that night—I’m not proud of that. But I never sent any death threats. I never killed any bird.”
“Is that all you came to say? Because if that’s it—” She started to rise.
To her shock, he reached out and grasped her arm, his grip so hard she instantly reacted in self-defense. She grabbed his hand and twisted it away.
He gave a grunt of pain and sat back, looking stunned.
“You want me to break your arm?” she said. “Just try that little trick again.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, staring at her with stricken eyes. Whatever anger he’d managed to summon up during this exchange suddenly seemed to drain right out of him. “God, I’m sorry …”
She watched him huddle in his chair and she thought: This grief is real.
“I just need to know what’s going on,” he said. “I need to know you’re doing something.”
“I’m doing my job, Dr. Cassell.”
“All you’re doing is investigating me.”
“That’s not true. This is a broad-based investigation.”
“Ballard said—”
“Detective Ballard is not in charge—I am. And trust me, I’m looking at every possible angle.”
He nodded. Took a deep breath and straightened. “That’s really what I wanted to hear, that everything’s being done. That you’re not overlooking anything. No matter what you think of me, the honest-to-god truth is, I did love her.” He ran his hand through his hair. “It’s terrible, when people leave you.”
“Yes, it is.”
“When you love someone, it’s only natural to want to hold on to them. You do crazy things, desperate things—”
“Even murder?”
“I didn’t kill her.” He met Rizzoli’s gaze. “But yes. I would have killed for her.”
Her cell phone rang. She rose from the chair. “Excuse me,” she said and left the room. It was Frost on the phone. “Surveillance just spotted a white van at the Van Gates residence,” he said. “It cruised by the house about fifteen minutes ago, but didn’t stop. There’s a chance the driver spotted our boys, so they’ve moved down the street a ways.”
“Why do you think it’s the right van?”
“The plates were stolen.”
“What?”
“They got a look at the license number. Th
e plates were pulled off a Dodge Caravan three weeks ago, out in Pittsfield.”
Pittsfield, she thought, right across the state border from Albany.
Where a woman vanished just last month.
She stood with the receiver pressed to her ear, her pulse starting to hammer. “Where’s that van now?”
“Our team sat tight and didn’t follow it. By the time they heard back about the plates, it was gone. It hasn’t come back.”
“Let’s change out that car and move it to a parallel street. Bring in a second team to watch the house. If the van comes by again, we can do a leapfrog tail. Two cars, taking turns.”
“Right, I’m headed over there now.”
She hung up. Turned to look into the interview room where Charles Cassell was still sitting at the table, his head bowed. Is that love or obsession I’m looking at? she wondered.
Sometimes, you couldn’t tell the difference.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Daylight was fading when Rizzoli cruised up Dedham Parkway. She spotted Frost’s car and pulled up behind him. Climbed out of her car and slid into his passenger seat.
“And?” she said. “What’s going on?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“Shit. It’s been over an hour. Did we scare him off?”
“There’s still a chance it wasn’t Lank.”
“White van, stolen plates from Pittsfield?”
“Well, it didn’t hang around. And it hasn’t been back.”
“When’s the last time Van Gates left the house?”
“He and the wife went grocery shopping around noon. They’ve been home ever since.”
“Let’s cruise by. I want to take a look.”
Frost drove past the house, moving slowly enough for her to get a good long gander at Tara-on-Sprague-Street. They passed the surveillance team, parked at the other end of the block, then turned the corner and pulled over.
Rizzoli said: “Are you sure they’re home?”
“Team hasn’t seen either one of them leave since noon.”
“That house looked awfully dark to me.”
They sat there for a few minutes, as dusk deepened. As Rizzoli’s uneasiness grew. She’d seen no lights on. Were both husband and wife asleep? Had they slipped out without the surveillance team seeing them?
The Rizzoli & Isles Series 10-Book Bundle Page 119