“Come on, it’s not like you haven’t seen guts before,” said Jane.
Maura didn’t answer as she plunged her hands deeper.
“Okay.” Jane sighed. “You don’t need us for this. Frost and I will check out the rest of the—”
“There’s too much,” Maura muttered.
“Too much what?”
“This isn’t a normal volume of viscera.”
“You’re the one who’s always talking about bacterial gases. Bloating.”
“Bloating doesn’t explain this.” Maura straightened, and what she held in her gloved hand made Jane cringe.
“A heart?”
“This is not a normal heart, Jane,” said Maura. “Yes, it has four chambers, but this aortic arch isn’t right. And the great vessels don’t look right, either.”
“Leon Gott was sixty-four,” said Frost. “Maybe he had a bad ticker.”
“That’s the problem. This doesn’t look like a sixty-four-year-old man’s heart.” Maura reached into the garbage pail again. “But this one does,” she said, and held out her other hand.
Jane looked back and forth between the two specimens. “Wait. There are two hearts in there?”
“And two complete sets of lungs.”
Jane and Frost stared at each other. “Oh shit,” he said.
THREE
FROST SEARCHED THE DOWNSTAIRS AND SHE TOOK THE UPSTAIRS. WENT room by room, opening closets and drawers, peering under beds. No gutted bodies anywhere, nor any signs of a struggle, but plenty of dust bunnies and cat hair. Mr. Gott—if indeed he was the man hanging in the garage—had been an indifferent housekeeper, and scattered across his dresser were old hardware store receipts, hearing aid batteries, a wallet with three credit cards and forty-eight dollars in cash, and a few stray bullets. Which told her that Mr. Gott was more than a little casual about firearms. She wasn’t surprised to open his nightstand drawer and find a fully loaded Glock inside, with a round in the chamber, ready to fire. Just the tool for the paranoid homeowner.
Too bad the gun was upstairs while the homeowner was downstairs, getting his guts ripped out.
In the bathroom cabinet she found the expected array of pills for a man of sixty-four. Aspirin and Advil, Lipitor and Lopressor. And on the countertop was a pair of hearing aids—high-end ones. He hadn’t been wearing them, which meant he might not have heard an intruder.
As she started downstairs, the telephone rang in the living room. By the time she reached it, the answering machine had already kicked in and she heard a man’s voice leave a message.
Hey, Leon, you never got back to me about the trip to Colorado. Let me know if you want to join us. Should be a good time.
Jane was about to play the message again, to see the caller’s phone number, when she noticed that the PLAY button was smeared with what looked like blood. According to the blinking display, there were two recorded messages, and she’d just heard the second one.
With a gloved finger she pressed PLAY.
November three, nine fifteen A.M.:… and if you call immediately, we can lower your credit card rates. Don’t miss this opportunity to take advantage of this special offer.
November six, two P.M.: Hey, Leon, you never got back to me about the trip to Colorado. Let me know if you want to join us. Should be a good time.
November 3 was a Monday, today was a Thursday. That first message was still on the machine, unplayed, because at nine on Monday morning, Leon Gott was probably dead.
“Jane?” said Maura. The gray tabby had followed her into the hallway and was weaving figure of eights between her legs.
“There’s blood on this answering machine,” said Jane, turning to look at her. “Why would the perp touch it? Why would he check the victim’s messages?”
“Come see what Frost found in the backyard.”
Jane followed her into the kitchen and out the back door. In a fenced yard landscaped only with patchy grass stood an outbuilding with metal siding. Too big to be just a storage shed, the windowless structure looked large enough to hide any number of horrors. As Jane stepped inside, she smelled a chemical odor, alcohol-sharp. Fluorescent bulbs cast the interior in a cold, clinical glare.
Frost stood beside a large worktable, studying a fearsome-looking tool bolted to it. “I thought at first this was a table saw,” he said. “But this blade doesn’t look like any saw I’ve ever come across. And those cabinets over there?” He pointed across the workshop. “Take a look at what’s inside them.”
Through the glass cabinet doors, Jane saw boxes of latex gloves and an array of frightening-looking instruments laid out on the shelves. Scalpels and knives, probes and pliers and forceps. Surgeon’s tools. Hanging from wall hooks were rubber aprons, splattered with what looked like bloodstains. With a shudder, she turned and stared at the plywood worktable, its surface scarred with nicks and gouges, and saw a clump of congealed, raw meat.
“Okay,” Jane murmured. “Now I’m freaking out.”
“This is like a serial killer’s workshop,” said Frost. “And this table is where he sliced and diced the bodies.”
In the corner was a fifty-gallon white barrel mounted to an electrical motor. “What the hell is that thing for?”
Frost shook his head. “It looks big enough to hold …”
She crossed to the barrel. Paused as she spotted red droplets on the floor. A smear of it streaked the hatch door. “There’s blood all around here.”
“What’s inside the barrel?” said Maura.
Jane gave the fastening bolt a hard pull. “And behind door number two is …” She peered into the open hatch. “Sawdust.”
“That’s all?”
Jane reached into the barrel and sifted through the flakes, stirring up a cloud of wood dust. “Just sawdust.”
“So we’re still missing the second victim,” said Frost.
Maura went to the nightmarish tool that Frost had earlier thought was a table saw. As she examined the blade, the cat was at her heels again, rubbing against her pant legs, refusing to leave her alone. “Did you get a good look at this thing, Detective Frost?”
“I got as close as I wanted to get.”
“Notice how this circular blade has a cutting edge that’s bent sideways? Obviously this isn’t meant for slicing.”
Jane joined her at the table and gingerly touched the blade edge. “This thing looks like it’d rip you to shreds.”
“And that’s probably what it’s for. I think it’s called a flesher. It’s used not to cut but to grind away flesh.”
“They make a machine like that?”
Maura crossed to a closet and opened the door. Inside was a row of what looked like paint cans. Maura reached for one large container and turned it around to read the contents. “Bondo.”
“An automotive product?” said Jane, glimpsing the image of a car on the label.
“The label says it’s filler, for car body work. To repair dings and scratches.” Maura set the can of Bondo back on the shelf. She couldn’t shake the gray cat, who followed her as she went to the cabinet and peered through glass doors at the knives and probes, laid out like a surgeon’s tool kit. “I think I know what this room was used for.” She turned to Jane. “You know that second set of viscera in the trash can? I don’t believe they’re human.”
“LEON GOTT WAS NOT a nice man. And I’m trying to be charitable,” said Nora Bazarian as she wiped a mustache of creamed carrots from her one-year-old son’s mouth. In her faded jeans and clinging T-shirt, with her blond hair pulled back in a girlish ponytail, she looked more like a teenager than a thirty-three-year-old mother of two. She had a mother’s skill at multitasking, efficiently feeding spoonfuls of carrots into her son’s open mouth between loading the dishwasher, checking on a cake in the oven, and answering Jane’s questions. No wonder the woman had a teenager’s waistline; she didn’t sit still for five seconds.
“You know what he yelled at my six-year-old?” said Nora. “Get off my lawn. I used to think
that was just a caricature of cranky old men, but Leon actually said that to my son. All because Timmy wandered next door to pet his dog.” Nora closed the dishwasher with a bang. “Bruno has better manners than his owner did.”
“How long did you know Mr. Gott?” asked Jane.
“We moved into this house six years ago, just after Timmy was born. We thought this was the perfect neighborhood for kids. You can see how well kept the yards are, for the most part, and there are other young families on this street, with kids Timmy’s age.” With balletic grace she pivoted to the coffeepot and refilled Jane’s cup. “A few days after we moved in, I brought Leon a plate of brownies, just to say hello. He didn’t even say thanks, just told me he didn’t eat sweets, and handed them right back. Then he complained that my new baby was crying too much, and why couldn’t I keep him quiet at night? Can you believe that?” She sat down and spooned more carrots into her son’s mouth. “To top it off, there were all those dead animals hanging on his wall.”
“So you’ve been inside his house.”
“Only once. He sounded so proud when he told me he’d shot most of them himself. What kind of a person kills animals just to decorate his walls?” She wiped a carroty dribble from the baby’s chin. “That’s when I decided we’d just stay away from him. Right, Sam?” she cooed. “Just stay away from that mean man.”
“When did you last see Mr. Gott?”
“I talked to Officer Root about all this. I last saw Leon over the weekend.”
“Which day?”
“Sunday morning. I saw him in his driveway. He was carrying groceries into his house.”
“Did you see anyone visit him that day?”
“I was gone for most of Sunday. My husband’s in California this week, so I took the kids down to my mom’s house in Falmouth. We didn’t get home till late that night.”
“What time?”
“Around nine thirty, ten.”
“And that night, did you hear anything unusual next door? Shouts, loud voices?”
Nora set down the spoon and frowned at her. The baby gave a hungry squawk, but Nora ignored him; her attention was entirely focused on Jane. “I thought—when Officer Root told me they found Leon hanging in his garage—I assumed it was a suicide.”
“I’m afraid it’s a homicide.”
“You’re certain? Absolutely?”
Oh yes. Absolutely. “Mrs. Bazarian, if you could think back to Sunday night—”
“My husband isn’t coming home until Monday, and I’m alone here with the kids. Are we safe?”
“Tell me about Sunday night.”
“Are my children safe?”
It was the first question any mother would ask. Jane thought about her own three-year-old daughter, Regina. Thought about how she would feel in Nora Bazarian’s position, with two young children, living so close to a place of violence. Would she prefer reassurance, or the truth, which was that Jane didn’t know the answer. She couldn’t promise that anyone was ever safe.
“Until we know more,” said Jane, “it would be a good idea to take precautions.”
“What do you know?”
“We believe it happened sometime Sunday night.”
“He’s been dead all this time,” Nora murmured. “Right next door, and I had no idea.”
“You didn’t see or hear anything unusual Sunday night?”
“You can see for yourself, he has a tall fence all around his yard, so we never knew what was going on there. Except when he was making that god-awful racket in his backyard workshop.”
“What kind of noise?”
“This horrible whine, like a power saw. To think he had the nerve to complain about a crying baby!”
Jane remembered seeing Gott’s hearing aids on the bathroom counter. If he’d been working with noisy machinery Sunday night, he’d certainly leave out those hearing aids. It was yet one more reason he would not have heard an intruder.
“You said you got home late Sunday night. Were Mr. Gott’s lights on?”
Nora didn’t even need to think about it. “Yes, they were,” she said. “I remember being annoyed because the light on his backyard shed shines directly into my bedroom. But when I went to bed, around ten thirty, the light was finally off.”
“What about the dog? Was he barking?”
“Oh, Bruno. He’s always barking, that’s the problem. He probably barks at houseflies.”
Of which there were now plenty, thought Jane. Bruno was barking at that moment, in fact. Not in alarm, but with doggy excitement about the many strangers in his front yard.
Nora turned toward the sound. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to find someone to take him. And the cats as well.”
“I’m not crazy about cats, but I wouldn’t mind keeping the dog here. Bruno knows us, and he’s always been friendly with my boys. I’d feel safer, having a dog here.”
She might not feel the same way if she knew Bruno was even now digesting morsels of his dead owner’s flesh.
“Do you know if Mr. Gott had any next of kin?” asked Jane.
“He had a son, but he died some years ago, on a foreign trip. His ex-wife’s dead, too, and I’ve never seen any woman there.” Nora shook her head. “It’s an awful thing to think about. Dead for four days and no one even notices. That’s how unconnected he seemed to be.”
Through the kitchen window, Jane caught a glimpse of Maura, who’d just emerged from Gott’s house and now stood on the sidewalk, checking messages on her cell phone. Like Gott, Maura lived alone, and even now she seemed an isolated figure, standing off by herself. Left to her solitary nature, might Maura one day evolve into another Leon Gott?
The morgue van had arrived, and the first TV crews were scrambling into position outside the police tape. But tonight, after all these cops and criminalists and reporters departed, the crime scene tape would remain, marking the home where a killer had visited. And here, right next door, was a mother alone with her two children.
“It wasn’t just random, was it?” said Nora. “Was it someone he knew? What do you think you’re dealing with?”
A monster was what Jane thought as she slipped her pen and notebook into her purse and stood up. “I notice you have a security system, ma’am,” she said. “Use it.”
FOUR
MAURA CARRIED THE CARDBOARD BOX FROM HER CAR INTO THE house and set it down on the kitchen floor. The gray tabby was mewing pitifully, begging to be released, but Maura kept him contained in the box as she hunted in her pantry for a cat-appropriate meal. She’d had no chance to stop at the grocery store for cat food, had impulsively taken on the tabby because no one else would, and the only alternative was the animal shelter.
And because the cat, by practically grafting himself to her leg, had clearly adopted her.
In the pantry Maura found a bag of dry dog food, left over from Julian’s last visit with his dog, Bear. Would a cat eat dog food? She wasn’t sure. She reached for a can of sardines instead.
The tabby’s cries turned frantic as Maura opened the can, releasing its fishy fragrance. She emptied the sardines into a bowl and opened the cardboard box. The cat shot out and attacked the fish so ravenously that the bowl skittered across the kitchen tiles.
“Guess sardines taste better than human, huh?” She stroked the tabby’s back, and his tail arched up in pleasure. She had never owned a cat. She’d never had the time or the inclination to adopt any pet, unless she counted the brief and ultimately tragic experience with the Siamese fighting fish. She wasn’t certain she wanted this pet, either, but here he was, purring like an outboard motor as his tongue licked the china bowl—the same bowl she used for her breakfast cereal. That was a disturbing thing to consider. Man-eating cat. Cross-contamination. She thought of all the diseases that felines were known to harbor: Cat scratch fever. Toxoplasma gondii. Feline leukemia. Rabies and roundworms and salmonella. Cats were veritable cesspools of infection, and one was now eating out
of her cereal bowl.
The tabby lapped up the last fragment of sardine and looked up at Maura with crystal-green eyes, his gaze so intent that he seemed to be reading her mind, recognizing a kindred spirit. This is how crazy cat ladies are created, she thought. They look into an animal’s eyes and think they see a soul looking back. And what did this cat see when he looked at Maura? The human with the can opener.
“If only you could talk,” she said. “If only you could tell us what you saw.”
But this tabby was keeping his secrets. He allowed her to give him a few more strokes, then he sauntered away into a corner, where he proceeded to wash himself. So much for feline affection. It was Feed me, now leave me alone. Maybe he truly was the perfect pet for her, both of them loners, unsuited for long-term companionship.
Since he was ignoring her, she ignored him and attended to her own dinner. She slid a leftover casserole of eggplant Parmesan into the oven, poured a glass of Pinot Noir, and sat down at her laptop to upload the photos from the Gott crime scene. On screen she saw once again the gutted body, the face stripped to bone, the blowfly larvae gorged on flesh, and she remembered all too vividly the smells of that house, the hum of the flies. It would not be a pleasant autopsy tomorrow. Slowly she clicked through the images, searching for details that she might have overlooked while at the scene, where the presence of cops and criminalists was a noisy distraction. She saw nothing that was inconsistent with her postmortem interval estimate of four to five days. The extensive injuries to the face, neck, and upper limbs could be attributed to scavenger damage. And that means you, she thought, glancing at the tabby, who was serenely licking his paws. What was his name? She had no idea, but she couldn’t just keep calling him Cat.
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