Body Double (7 page)

“What about her residence? She had an address in Brighton, right? You must have spoken to her neighbors.”

“We finally got hold of the landlady late last night. She says she rented it out to Anna Jessop three months ago. She let us into the apartment.”

“And?”

“It’s empty, Doc. Not a stick of furniture, not a frying pan, not a toothbrush. Someone had paid for cable TV and a phone line, but no one was there.”

“What about the neighbors?”

“Never saw her. They called her ‘the ghost.’”

“There must be some prior address. Another bank account—”

“We’ve looked. We can’t find
anything
on this woman that dates back earlier.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” said Rizzoli, “that until six months ago, Anna Jessop didn’t exist.”

FOUR

W
HEN
R
IZZOLI WALKED INTO
J. P. D
OYLE’S,
she found the usual suspects gathered around the bar. Cops, most of them, trading the day’s war stories over beer and peanuts. Located right down the street from Boston PD’s Jamaica Plain substation, Doyle’s was probably the safest watering hole in the city. Make one false move, and a dozen cops would be on you like a New England Patriots’ pile-on. She knew this crowd, and they all knew her. They parted to let the pregnant lady through, and she saw a few grins as she waddled in among them, her belly leading the way like a ship’s prow.

“Geez, Rizzoli,” someone called out. “You putting on weight or what?”

“Yeah.” She laughed. “But unlike you, I’ll be skinny by August.”

She made her way toward Detectives Vann and Dunleavy, who were waving at her from the bar. Sam and Frodo—that’s what everyone called the pair. The fat Hobbit and the skinny one, partners so long they acted like an old married couple, and probably spent more time with each other than they did with their wives. Rizzoli seldom saw the two apart, and she figured it was only a matter of time before they started dressing in matching outfits.

They grinned and saluted her with identical pints of Guinness.

“Hey, Rizzoli,” said Vann.

“—you’re late,” said Dunleavy.

“Already on our second round—”

“—You want one?”

Jesus, they even finished each other’s sentences. “It’s too noisy in here,” she said. “Let’s go in the other room.”

They headed into the dining area, toward her usual booth beneath the Irish flag. Dunleavy and Vann slid in opposite her, sitting cozily side by side. She thought of her own partner, Barry Frost, a nice guy, even a swell guy, but with whom she had absolutely nothing in common. At the end of the day, she went her way, Frost went his. They liked each other well enough, but she didn’t think she could stand much more togetherness than that. Certainly not as much as these two guys.

“So you’ve got yourself a Black Talon vic,” said Dunleavy.

“Last night, out in Brookline,” she said. “First Talon since your case. That was what, two years ago?”

“Yeah, about.”

“Closed?”

Dunleavy gave a laugh. “Nailed tight as a coffin.”

“Who was the shooter?”

“Guy named Antonin Leonov. Ukrainian immigrant, two-bit player, trying to go big league. Russian mob would’ve taken him out eventually, if we hadn’t arrested him first.”

“What a moron,” snorted Vann. “He had no idea we were watching him.”

“Why were you?” she asked.

“We got a tip he was expecting a delivery from Tajikistan,” said Dunleavy. “Heroin. Big one. We were on his tail for almost a week, and he never spotted us. So we follow him to his partner’s house. Vassily Titov. Titov must’ve pissed off Leonov or something. We watch as Leonov goes into Titov’s house. Then we hear gunshots, and Leonov comes back out.”

“And we’re waiting for him,” said Vann. “Like I said, a moron.”

Dunleavy raised his Guinness in a toast. “Open and shut. Perp’s caught with the weapon. We’re there to witness it. Don’t know why he even bothered to plead innocent. Took the jury less than an hour to come back with the verdict.”

“Did he ever tell you how he got hold of those Black Talons?” she asked.

“You kidding?” said Vann. “He wouldn’t tell us anything. Hardly spoke any English, but he sure as hell knew the word
Miranda.
”

“We brought a team in to search his house and business,” said Dunleavy. “Found, like, eight boxes of Black Talons stored in his warehouse, can you believe it? Don’t know how he got his hands on so many, but he had quite a stash.” Dunleavy shrugged. “So that’s the scoop on Leonov. I don’t see how he connects with your shooting.”

“There’ve been only two Black Talon shootings here in five years,” she said. “Your case and mine.”

“Yeah, well, there’s probably a few bullets still floating around out there on the black market. Hell, check eBay. All I know is, we nailed Leonov, and good.” Dunleavy downed his pint. “You’ve got yourself a different shooter.”

Something she had already concluded. A feud between small-time Russian mobsters two years ago did not seem relevant to the murder of Anna Jessop. That Black Talon bullet was a dead link.

“You’ll lend me that file on Leonov?” she asked. “I still want to look it over.”

“On your desk tomorrow.”

“Thanks, guys.” She slid out of the booth and hauled herself to her feet.

“So when’re you popping?” asked Vann, nodding at her belly.

“Not soon enough.”

“The guys, they have a bet going, you know. On the baby’s sex.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I think we’re up to seventy bucks it’s a girl, forty bucks it’s a boy.”

Vann giggled. “And twenty bucks,” he said, “is on
other.
”

Rizzoli felt the baby give a kick as she let herself into her apartment. Settle down in there, Junior, she thought. It’s bad enough you treated me like a punching bag all day; now you’re going to keep it up all night as well? She didn’t know if she was carrying a boy, girl, or other; all she knew was that this kid was eager to be born.

Just stop trying to kung-fu your way out, okay?

She threw her purse and keys on the kitchen counter, kicked off her shoes by the door, and tossed her blazer over a dining room chair. Two days ago her husband, Gabriel, had left for Montana as part of an FBI team investigating a paramilitary weapons cache. Now the apartment was sliding back into the same comfortable anarchy that had reigned here before their marriage. Before Gabriel had moved in and instilled some semblance of discipline. Leave it to an ex-Marine to rearrange your pots and pans in order of size.

In the bedroom, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. She scarcely recognized herself, apple-cheeked and sway-backed, her belly bulging beneath maternity stretch pants. When did I disappear? she thought. Am I still there, hidden somewhere in that distorted body? She confronted that stranger’s reflection, remembering how flat her belly had once been. She did not like the way her face had plumped up, the way her cheeks had turned as rosy as a child’s. The glow of pregnancy, Gabriel had called it, trying to reassure his wife that she did not, in fact, look like a shiny-nosed whale. That woman there is not really me, she thought. That’s not the cop who can kick down doors and blow away perps.

She flopped on her back onto the bed and spread both arms across the mattress like a bird taking flight. She could smell Gabriel’s scent in the sheets. I miss you tonight, she thought. This was not the way marriage was supposed to be. Two careers, two work-obsessed people. Gabriel on the road, her alone in this apartment. But she’d known, going into it, that it would not be easy. That there’d be too many nights like this one, when his job, or hers, would keep them apart. She thought of calling him again, but they had already talked twice that morning, and Verizon was stealing enough of her paycheck as it was.

Oh, what the hell.

She rolled sideways, pushed herself off the bed, and was about to reach for the phone on the nightstand when it suddenly rang. Startled, she looked at the caller ID readout. An unfamiliar number—not Gabriel’s.

She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Detective Rizzoli?” a man asked.

“Yes it is.”

“I apologize for the late hour. I just got back into town this evening, and—”

”Who’s calling, please?”

“Detective Ballard, Newton PD. I understand you’re lead investigator on that shooting last night, out in Brookline. A victim named Anna Jessop.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Last year, I caught a case here. It involved a woman named Anna Jessop. I don’t know if it’s the same person, but—”

“You said you’re with Newton PD?”

“Yes.”

“Could you identify Ms. Jessop? If you viewed the remains?”

A pause. “I think I need to. I need to be sure it’s her.”

“And if it is?”

“Then I know who killed her.”

Even before Detective Rick Ballard pulled out his ID, Rizzoli could have guessed the man was a cop. As she walked into the reception area of the M.E.’s building, he immediately rose to his feet, as though at attention. His eyes were a direct and crystalline blue, his brown hair clipped in a conservative cut, and his shirt was pressed with military neatness. He had the same quiet air of command that Gabriel possessed, the same rock-solid gaze that seemed to say,
In a pinch, you can count on me.
He made her wish, just for an instant, that she was slim-waisted again, and attractive. As they shook hands, as she looked at his ID, she felt him studying her face.

Definitely a cop, she thought.

“You ready to do this?” she asked. When he nodded, she glanced at the receptionist. “Is Dr. Bristol downstairs?”

“He’s finishing up an autopsy right now. He said you can meet him down there.”

They took the elevator to the basement level and walked into the morgue anteroom, where cabinets held supplies of shoe covers and masks and paper caps. Through the large viewing window they could see into the autopsy lab, where Dr. Bristol and Yoshima were at work on a gaunt, gray-haired man. Bristol spotted them through the glass and he waved in greeting.

“Ten minutes more!” he said.

Rizzoli nodded. “We’ll wait.”

Bristol had just made the scalp incision. Now he peeled the scalp forward over the cranium, collapsing the face.

“I always hate this part,” said Rizzoli. “When they start messing with the face. The rest, I can handle.”

Ballard didn’t say anything. She looked at him and saw that his back was now rigid, his face grimly stoic. Since he was not a homicide detective, he probably did not make many visits to the morgue, and the procedure now going on beyond that window must surely strike him as appalling. She remembered the first visit she’d ever made here as a police cadet. She’d been part of a group from the academy, the only woman among the six brawny cadets, and the men had all towered over her. Everyone had expected the girl to be the squeamish one, that she’d be the one who’d turn away during the autopsy. But she had planted herself front and center, had watched the entire procedure without flinching. It was one of the men, the most strapping among them, who had paled and stumbled off to a nearby chair. She wondered if Ballard was about to do the same. Under fluorescent lights, his skin had taken on a sickly pallor.

In the autopsy room, Yoshima began sawing the cranium open. The whir of blade against bone seemed to be more than Ballard could deal with. He turned from the window, fixing his gaze instead on the boxes of gloves stacked up in various sizes on the shelf. Rizzoli actually felt a little sorry for him. It had to be humiliating when you were a tough-looking guy like Ballard, to let a girl cop see you going rubber-kneed.

She shoved a stool his way, then pulled one up for herself. Gave a sigh as she sat down. “Nowadays, I’m not so good at standing on my feet too long.”

He sat down too, looking relieved to be focused on anything other than that whining bone saw. “Is that your first?” he asked, pointing to her belly.

“Yep.”

“Boy or girl?”

“I don’t know. We’ll be happy either way.”

“That’s how I felt when my daughter was born. Ten fingers and toes, that’s all I was asking for . . .” He paused, swallowing hard, as the saw continued to whine.

“How old is your daughter now?” asked Rizzoli, trying to distract him.

“Oh, fourteen, going on thirty. Not a barrel of laughs right now.”

“Rough age for girls.”

“See all my gray hairs coming in?”

Rizzoli laughed. “My mom used to do that. Point to her head and say, ‘These gray hairs are all
your
fault.’ I have to admit, I wasn’t nice to be around when I was fourteen. It’s the age.”

“Well, we’ve got some problems going on, too. My wife and I separated last year. Katie’s getting pulled in different directions. Two working parents, two households.”

“That’s gotta be hard on a kid.”

The whine of the bone saw mercifully ceased. Through the window, Rizzoli saw Yoshima remove the skullcap. Saw Bristol free up the brain, cupping it gently in both hands as he extracted it from the cranium. Ballard kept his gaze averted from the window, his attention focused on Rizzoli.

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” he said.

“What is?”

“Working as a cop. Your condition and all.”

“At least no one expects me to kick down any doors these days.”

“My wife was a rookie when she got pregnant.”

“Newton PD?”

“Boston. They wanted to yank her right off patrol. She told them being pregnant was an advantage. Said perps are a lot more courteous.”

“Perps? They’re never courteous to me.”

In the next room, Yoshima was sewing the corpse’s incision closed with needle and suture, a macabre tailor stitching together not fabric, but flesh. Bristol stripped off his gloves, washed his hands, then lumbered out to meet his visitors.

“Sorry for the delay. Took a little longer than I expected. The guy had tumors all over his abdomen and never saw a doctor. So instead, he gets me.” He reached out with a beefy hand, still damp, to greet Ballard. “Detective. So you’re here to take a look at our gunshot.”

Rizzoli saw Ballard’s face tighten. “Detective Rizzoli asked me to.”