“How long ago did you say Ms. Edgerton vanished?” he asked.
“It was twenty-five years ago,” said Jane.
“And does that period of time account for the current condition of her body?”
“We know this is Lorraine Edgerton, based on the dental records.”
“And we also know it doesn’t take centuries to mummify a body,” added Frost.
“Yes, but could she have been killed far more recently than twenty-five years ago?” said Zucker. “You said she was kept alive long enough for her bullet wound to begin healing. What if she was kept a prisoner for far longer? Could you turn a body into a mummy in, say, five years?”
“You think this perp could have kept her captive for decades?”
“I’m merely speculating, Detective Frost. Trying to understand what our unknown subject gets out of this. What could drive him to perform these grotesque postmortem rituals. With each of the three victims, he went to a great deal of trouble to keep her from decaying.”
“He wanted them to last,” said Lieutenant Marquette, chief of the homicide unit. “He wanted to keep them around.”
Zucker nodded. “Eternal companionship. That’s one interpretation. He didn’t want to let them go, so he turns them into keepsakes that will last forever.”
“So why kill them at all?” asked Detective Crowe. “Why not just keep them as prisoners? We know he kept two of them alive long enough for their fractures to start healing.”
“Maybe they died natural deaths from their injuries. From what I read in the autopsy reports, there are no definitive answers as to cause of death.”
Jane said, “Dr. Isles was unable to make that determination, but we do know that the Bog Lady …” She paused. Bog Lady was the new victim’s nickname, but no detective would ever say it in public. No one wanted to see it splashed across the newspapers. “We know that the victim in the trunk suffered fractures of both legs, and they may have become infected. That could have caused her death.”
“And preservation would be the only way to keep her around,” said Marquette. “Permanently.”
Zucker looked down, once again, at the photo. “Tell me about this victim, Lorraine Edgerton.”
Jane slid a folder across to the psychologist. “That’s what we know about her so far. She was a graduate student working in New Mexico when she vanished.”
“What was she studying?”
“Archaeology.”
Zucker’s eyebrow shot up. “Do I sense a theme here?”
“It’s hard not to. That summer, Lorraine was working with a group of students at an archaeological dig in Chaco Canyon. On the day she vanished, she told her colleagues that she was going into town. She left on her motorbike in the late afternoon and never came back. Weeks later, the bike was found miles away, near a Navajo reservation. From what I gather about the area, there’s not much in the way of population. It’s mostly open desert and dirt roads.”
“So there are no witnesses.”
“None. And now it’s twenty-five years later, and the detective who investigated her disappearance is dead. All we have is his report. Which is why Frost and I are flying out to New Mexico to talk to the archaeologist who was director of the dig. He was one of the last people who saw her alive.”
Zucker looked at the photos. “She appears to have been an athletic young woman.”
“She was. A hiker, a camper. A woman who spent a lot of time with a shovel. Not the kind of gal who’d give up without a fight.”
“But there was a bullet in her leg.”
“Which may have been the only way this perp could control his victims. The only way he could bring down Lorraine Edgerton.”
“Both of Bog Lady’s legs were broken,” Frost pointed out.
Zucker nodded. “Which certainly makes the case that the same unsub killed both women. What about the bog victim? The one found in the trunk?”
Jane slid him the folder for Bog Lady. “We have no ID on her yet,” she said. “So we don’t know if she’s linked in any way to Lorraine Edgerton. NCIC is running her through their database, and we’re just hoping that someone, somewhere reported her missing.”
Zucker scanned the autopsy report. “Adult female, age eighteen to thirty-five. Excellent dentition, orthodontic work.” He looked up. “I’d be surprised if her disappearance wasn’t reported. The method of preservation must tell you what part of the country she was killed in. How many states have peat bogs?”
“Actually,” Frost said, “a lot of them. So that doesn’t narrow it down a great deal.”
“Get ready,” Jane warned with a laugh. “Detective Frost is now Boston PD’s official bog expert.”
“I spoke to a Dr. Judith Welsh, a biologist over at University of Massachusetts,” said Frost. He pulled out his notebook and flipped it open to the relevant pages. “Here’s what she told me. You can find sphagnum wetlands in New England, Canada, the Great Lakes, and Alaska. Anywhere that’s both temperate and wet. You can even find peat bogs in Florida.” He glanced up. “In fact, they found bog bodies not far from Disney World.”
Detective Crowe laughed. “Seriously?”
“Over a hundred of them, and they’re probably eight thousand years old. It’s called the Windover Burial Site. But their bodies weren’t preserved. They’re just skeletons, really, not like our Bog Lady at all. It’s hot down there so they decomposed, even though they were soaking in peat.”
“That means we can eliminate any southern bogs?” said Zucker.
Frost nodded. “Our victim’s too well preserved. At the time of her immersion, the water had to be cold, four degrees Celsius or lower. That’s the only way she’d come out looking as good as she does.”
“Then we’re talking about the northern states. Or Canada.”
“Canada would present a problem for our perp,” Jane pointed out. “You’d have to bring a dead body over the border.”
“I think we can eliminate Alaska as well,” said Frost. “There’s another border crossing. Not to mention a long drive.”
“It still leaves a lot of territory,” Zucker said. “A lot of states with bogs where he could have stashed her body.”
“Actually,” said Frost, “we can narrow it down to ombrogenous bogs.”
Everyone in the room looked at him. “What?” said Detective Tripp.
“Bogs are really cool things,” said Frost, launching enthusiastically into the topic. “The more I find out about them, the more interesting they get. You start off with plant matter soaking in stagnant water. The water’s so cold and low in oxygen that the moss just sits there not decaying, piling up year after year till it’s at least a couple of feet deep. If the water’s stagnant, then the bog’s ombrogenous.”
Crowe looked at Tripp and said drily, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
“Is any of this really relevant?” asked Tripp.
Frost flushed. “Yeah. And if you’d just listen, maybe you’d learn something.”
Jane glanced at her partner in surprise. Rarely did Frost show irritation, and she hadn’t expected him to do so over the subject of sphagnum moss.
Zucker said, “Please continue, Detective Frost. I’d like to know exactly what makes a bog ombrogenous.”
Frost took a breath and straightened in his chair. “It refers to the source of water. Ombrogenous means it doesn’t get any water from streams or underground currents. Which means it gets no added oxygen or nutrients. It’s entirely rain-fed and stagnant, and that makes it superacidic. All the characteristics that make it a true bog.”
“So it isn’t just any wet place.”
“No. It has to be fed only by rainwater. Otherwise they’d call it a fen or a marsh.”
“How is this important?”
“Only real bogs have the conditions you need to preserve bodies. We’re talking about a specific kind of wetland.”
“And would that limit where this body was preserved?”
Frost nodded. “The North
east has thousands of acres of wetland, but only a small fraction of them are true bogs. They’re found in the Adirondacks, in Vermont, and in northern and coastal Maine.”
Detective Tripp shook his head. “I went hunting once, way up in northern Maine. There’s nothing there except trees and deer. If our boy has a little hidey-hole up there, good luck finding it.”
Frost said, “The biologist, Dr. Welsh, said she might be able to narrow down the location if she had more information. So we sent her some bits of plant material that Dr. Isles picked out of the victim’s hair.”
“This all helps,” said Zucker. “It gives us another data point for our killer’s geographic profile. You know the saying among criminal profilers: You go where you know, and you know where you go. People tend to stick to areas where they’re comfortable, places they’re familiar with. Maybe our unsub went to summer camp in the Adirondacks. Or he’s a hunter like you, Detective Tripp, and he knows the back roads, the hidden camps of Maine. What he did to the bog victim required advance planning. How did he get familiar with the area? Does he own a cabin there? And is it accessible at just the right time of year, while the water’s cold but not frozen, so she could be deposited quickly into the bog?”
“There’s something else we know about him,” said Jane.
“What would that be?”
“He knew exactly how to preserve her. He knew the right conditions, the right water temperature. That’s specialized knowledge, not the kind of information that most people would have.”
“Unless you’re an archaeologist,” said Zucker.
Jane nodded. “We get back to the same theme again, don’t we?”
Zucker leaned back, eyes narrowing in thought. “A killer who’s familiar with ancient funerary practices. Whose victim in New Mexico was a young woman working on a dig site. Now he seems to be fixated on yet another young woman working in a museum. How does he find these women? How does he meet them?” He looked at Jane. “Have you a list of Ms. Pulcillo’s friends and associates?”
“It’s a pretty short list. Just the museum staff and the people in her apartment building.”
“No gentlemen friends? You said she’s quite an attractive young woman.”
“She says she hasn’t had a date since she moved to Boston five months ago.” Jane paused. “Actually, she’s kind of a strange bird.”
“What do you mean?”
Jane hesitated and glanced at Frost, who was steadfastly avoiding her gaze. “There’s something … off about her. I can’t explain it.”
“Did you have the same reaction, Detective Frost?”
“No,” Frost said, his mouth tightening. “I think Josephine’s scared, that’s all.”
Zucker glanced back and forth between the two partners, and his eyebrows lifted. “A difference of opinion.”
“Rizzoli’s reading too much into it,” said Frost.
“I just get weird signals from her, that’s all,” said Jane. “As if she’s more afraid of us than the perp.”
“Afraid of you, maybe,” said Frost.
Detective Crowe laughed. “Who isn’t?”
Zucker was silent for a moment, and Jane did not like the way he was studying her and Frost, as though probing the depths of the breach between them.
Jane said, “The woman’s a loner, that’s all I’m saying. She goes to work, she goes home. Her whole life seems to be inside that museum.”
“What about her colleagues?”
“The curator’s a guy named Nicholas Robinson. Forty years old, single, no criminal record.”
“Single?”
“Yeah, it raised a red flag for me, too, but I can’t find anything that gives me a tingle. Besides, he’s the one who found Madam X in the basement. The rest of the staff are all volunteers, and their average age is around a hundred years old. I can’t imagine one of those fossils dragging a body out of a bog.”
“So you’re left with no viable suspects.”
“And three victims who probably weren’t even killed in the state of Massachusetts, much less in our jurisdiction,” said Crowe.
“Well, they’re all in our jurisdiction now,” Frost pointed out.
“We’ve managed to search all the crates in the museum basement and we haven’t found any other victims. But you never know, there might be hidden spaces behind other walls.” He glanced down at his ringing cell phone and suddenly stood. “Excuse me, I gotta take this call.”
As Frost stepped out of the room, Zucker’s gaze turned back to Jane. “I’m curious about something you said earlier, regarding Ms. Pulcillo.”
“What about her?”
“You described her as a strange bird. Yet Detective Frost saw nothing of the kind.”
“Yeah. Well, we have a difference of opinion.”
“How deep a difference?”
Was she supposed to tell him what she really thought? That Frost’s judgment had gone haywire because his wife was out of town and he was lonely and Josephine Pulcillo had big brown eyes?
“Is there something about the woman that may bias you against her?”
“What?” Jane gave a laugh of disbelief. “You think I’m the one who—”
“Why does she make you uneasy?”
“She doesn’t. There’s just a caginess about her. Like she’s trying to stay one step ahead.”
“Of you? Or the killer? From what I heard, the young woman had every right to be afraid. A body was left in her car. It almost sounds like a gift from the killer—an offering, if you will. To his next companion.”
His next companion. That phrase raised gooseflesh on Jane’s arms.
“I take it she’s in a secure location?” said Zucker. When no one immediately answered him, he looked around the table. “I’m sure we all agree she could be in jeopardy. Where is she?”
“That’s an issue we’re trying to clear up right now,” admitted Jane.
“You don’t know where she is?”
“She told us she was going to stay with an aunt named Connie Pulcillo in Burlington, Vermont, but we can’t find any listing with that name. We’ve left messages on Josephine’s voice mail and she hasn’t responded.”
Zucker shook his head. “This is not good news. Have you checked her Boston residence?”
“She’s not there. A neighbor in her building saw her leave Friday morning with two suitcases.”
“Even if she’s left Boston, she may not be safe,” said Zucker.
“This unsub is clearly comfortable operating across state lines. He doesn’t seem to have geographic boundaries. He could have followed her.”
“If he knows where she is. Even we can’t find her.”
“But she’s his only focus. She may have been his only focus for some time. If he’s been watching her, following her, then he may know exactly where she is.” Zucker leaned back, clearly disturbed.
“Why hasn’t she answered her phone? Is it because she can’t?”
Before Jane could respond, the door opened and Frost came back into the room. She took one look at his face and knew instantly that something was wrong. “What is it?”
“Josephine Pulcillo is dead,” he said.
His stark announcement sent a jolt through the room as shocking as the voltage from a stun gun.
“Dead?” Jane shot straight up in her chair. “How? What the hell happened?”
“It was a car accident. But—”
“So it wasn’t our killer.”
“No. It was definitely not our perp,” said Frost.
Jane heard anger in his voice, and she saw it as well in his tight mouth, his narrowed eyes.
“She died in San Diego,” said Frost. “Twenty-four years ago.”
SEVENTEEN
They’d been driving for half an hour before Jane finally brought up the painful subject, a subject they’d managed to avoid during the flight from Boston to Albuquerque.
“You had a thing for her. Didn’t you?” she asked.
Frost didn’t look at
her. He stayed focused on his driving, his gaze fixed on the road where the blacktop shimmered, hot as a griddle under the New Mexico sun. In all the time they’d worked together, she’d never felt such a wall between them, an impenetrable barrier that she could not seem to chip through. This wasn’t the good-natured Barry Frost that she knew; this was his evil twin, and any minute now he was going to start speaking in tongues and his head would demonically spin around.
“We really need to talk about this, you know,” she insisted.
“Give it a rest, why can’t you?”
“You can’t keep kicking yourself over this. She’s a pretty girl and she pulled the wool over your eyes. It can happen to any guy.”
“But not to me.” He looked at her at last, his anger so raw that it silenced her. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it,” he said and focused, once again, on the road. A moment passed, and the only noise was the air conditioner and the sound of their car slicing through the heat.
She had never traveled to New Mexico before. She’d never even seen the desert before. But she scarcely noticed the landscape flying past their windows; what mattered to her now was healing this rift between them, and the only way to do it was to talk it through, whether Frost was willing to or not.
“You aren’t the only one who’s surprised,” said Jane. “Dr. Robinson had no idea. You should have seen his face when I told him she’s a fraud. If she lied about something as basic as her own name, what else did she lie about? She took in a lot of people, including her college professors.”
“But not you. You saw through it.”
“I just got a funny feeling about her, that’s all.”
“Cop’s instinct.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“So what the hell happened to mine?”
Jane gave a laugh. “A different instinct was operating. She’s pretty, she’s scared, and wham-o. The Boy Scout wanted to save her.”
“Whoever the hell she is.”
They still did not know the answer; what they did know was that she was not the real Josephine Pulcillo, who had died twenty-four years ago when she was only two years old. Yet years later, that dead girl managed to attend college and graduate school. She managed to open a bank account, get a driver’s license, and land a job in an obscure Boston museum. The child had been resurrected as a different woman, whose true origins remained a mystery.
The Rizzoli & Isles Series 10-Book Bundle Page 200