Body Double (26 page)

She watched him for a moment, wondering how to recapture the cordial relationship they had once enjoyed. Perhaps it wasn’t so cordial after all, she thought. I just assumed it was, while all this time, he’s hidden his emotions from me, just as I hide mine. What a pair we are, the poker-faced duo. Every week tragedy passes across our autopsy table, but I have never seen him cry, nor has he seen me cry. We just go about the business of death like two workers on the factory floor.

He finished labeling the specimen jars and turned back to see she was still standing behind him. “Did you need anything, Dr. Isles?” he asked, and his voice, like his expression, revealed no hint of what had just passed between them. This was the Yoshima she had always known, quietly efficient, poised to offer his assistance.

She responded in kind. She removed X-rays from the envelope she’d carried into the room and mounted Nikki Wells’s films on the light box. “I’m hoping you remember this case,” she said, and flipped on the switch. “It’s from five years ago. A case out in Fitchburg.”

“What’s the name?”

“Nikki Wells.”

He frowned at the X-ray. Focused, immediately, on the collection of fetal bones overlying the maternal pelvis. “This was that pregnant woman? Killed with her sister?”

“You do remember it, then.”

“Both the bodies were burned?”

“That’s right.”

“I remember, it was Dr. Hobart’s case.”

“I’ve never met Dr. Hobart.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. He left about two years before you joined us.”

“Where is he working now? I’d like to talk to him.”

“Well, that would be hard. He’s dead.”

She frowned at him. “What?”

Sadly, Yoshima shook his head. “It was so hard on Dr. Tierney. He felt responsible, even though he had no choice.”

“What happened?”

“There were some . . . problems with Dr. Hobart. First he lost track of a few slides. Then he misplaced some organs, and the family found out. They sued our office. It was a big mess, a lot of bad publicity, but Dr. Tierney stood by him. Then some drugs went missing from a bag of personal effects, and he had no choice. He asked Dr. Hobart to resign.”

“What happened then?”

“Dr. Hobart went home and swallowed a handful of Oxycontin. They didn’t find him for three days.” Yoshima paused. “That was the autopsy no one here wanted to do.”

“Were there questions about his competence?”

“He may have made some mistakes.”

“Serious ones?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I’m wondering if he missed this.” She pointed to the X-ray. To the bright sliver embedded in the pubic bone. “His report on Nikki Wells doesn’t explain this metallic density here.”

“There are other metallic shadows on that film,” noted Yoshima. “I can see a bra hook here. And this looks like a snap.”

“Yes, but look at the lateral view. This sliver of metal is
in
the bone. Not overlying it. Did Dr. Hobart say anything about it to you?”

“Not that I recall. It’s not in his report?”

“No.”

“Then he must not have thought it was significant.”

Which meant it had probably not been brought up during Amalthea’s trial, she thought. Yoshima returned to his tasks, positioning basins and buckets, assembling paperwork on his clipboard. Though a young woman lay dead only a few feet away, Maura’s attention was not on the fresh corpse, but on the X-ray of Nikki Wells and her fetus, their bones melded together by fire into a single charred mass.

Why did you burn them? What was the point?
Had Amalthea felt pleasure, watching the flames consume them? Or was she hoping those flames would consume something else, some trace of herself that she did not want to be found?

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.”