Die Again (33 page)

I lift my head and look at Chris. “I can’t go on like this.
We
can’t.”

He gives a deep sigh. “I know.”

“I don’t want to, but I have to do this.”

“Then we’ll all go with you to Boston. You won’t be alone.”

“No.
No
. I don’t want Violet anywhere near him. I want her right here, where I know she’s safe. And you’re the only one I trust to take care of her.”

“But who’ll take care of
you
?”

“They will. You heard them say they won’t let anything happen to me.”

“And you trust them?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because you’re just a tool for them, a means to an end. They don’t care about you. They only want to catch
him
.”

“That’s what I want, too. I can help them do it.”

“By letting him catch a whiff of your scent? What if they can’t capture him? What if he turns the tables and follows you back here?”

That’s a possibility I hadn’t considered. I think of the nightmare I just awoke from. Johnny beckoning, promising safety, just before his jaws open wide. It’s my subconscious warning me to stay away. But if I do stay away, nothing changes, nothing heals. I will always be that cracked porcelain doll.

“I have no choice,” I say. “I have to trust them.”

“You can choose not to go.”

I reach for his hand. It’s a farmer’s hand, large and callused, strong enough to wrestle sheep to the ground and gentle enough to comb a little girl’s hair. “I need to finish this, darling. I’m going to Boston.”

C
HRISTOPHER HAS A LIST
of demands, and he presents them to Detective Rizzoli and Agent Dean with the glow of brimstone in his eyes.

“You will check in with me every day, so I know she’s fine,” he orders them. “I want to know that she’s healthy and safe. I want to know if she’s homesick. I want to know if she sneezes.”

“Please, Chris.” I sigh. “I’m not going to the moon.”

“The moon might be safer.”

“You have my word, we’ll look after her, Mr. DeBruin,” says Detective Rizzoli. “We’re not asking her to strap on a gun. She’s merely consulting with our team of detectives and our forensic psychologist. She’ll be away for a week, maybe two at the most.”

“I don’t want her sitting alone in some hotel room. I want her to stay with someone. A proper home, where she won’t feel isolated.”

Detective Rizzoli glances at her husband. “I’m sure we can come up with some sort of arrangement.”

“Where?”

“I need to make a phone call first. Find out if the home I’m thinking of will work out.”

“Whose home?”

“Someone I trust. A friend.”

“Before Millie gets on that plane, I want you to confirm it.”

“We’ll have all the details arranged before we leave Cape Town.”

Chris studies their faces for a moment, searching for reasons not to trust them. My husband is innately skeptical of people; it comes from growing up with an unreliable father and a mother who abandoned him when he was seven. He always fears he’ll lose the people he loves, and now he’s afraid of losing me.

“Everything will be fine, darling,” I say, sounding more confident than I actually feel. “They know exactly what they’re doing.”

BOSTON

M
AURA SET A VASE OF YELLOW ROSES ON THE DRESSER AND TOOK
one last glance around her guest bedroom. The white duvet was freshly laundered, the Turkish rug thoroughly vacuumed, and the bathroom supplied with fluffy white towels. The last time anyone had slept in this room was in August, when seventeen-year-old Julian Perkins had visited during his summer break from school. Since his departure, she’d hardly stepped into this room. Now she gave it a critical once-over, to confirm that all was ready for her houseguest. The window had a view of her back garden, but on this late-November afternoon, what she saw was a dreary landscape of bare perennials and brown grass. At least there was a bright touch of spring in the painting of luscious pink peonies hanging over the bed, and on the dresser with that vase of yellow roses. A cheerful welcome for a guest on a grim mission.

Jane had emailed to explain the situation, and Maura had read Millie’s file, so she knew what to expect. But when the doorbell rang and she laid eyes on Millie for the first time, she was taken aback by how haggard the woman looked. It was a long journey from Cape Town and
Jane looked bedraggled as well, but Millie appeared frail as ectoplasm, her eyes hollow, her thin frame almost lost in her oversized sweater.

“Welcome to Boston,” said Maura as they came into the house, Jane carrying Millie’s suitcase. “I apologize for the weather.”

Millie managed a wan smile. “I didn’t expect it to be so cold.” She looked down sheepishly at her enormous sweater. “I bought this at the airport. I think I could fit another woman in here.”

“You must be exhausted. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“That would be lovely, but first I think I need to use the toilet.”

“Your room’s down the hall, on the right, and you have your own bathroom. Please, take your time to get settled in. The tea can always wait.”

“Thank you.” Millie took her suitcase. “I’ll be a few minutes.”

Maura and Jane waited until they heard Millie’s bedroom door close. Then Jane said: “You sure this is okay? I tried to come up with another solution, but our apartment’s too small.”

“It’s perfectly fine, Jane. You said it’s only for a week, and you can’t stick that poor woman in a hotel.”

“Well, I do appreciate it. The only alternative was my mom’s house, but it’s a loony bin these days, with Dad driving her nuts.”

“How
are
things with your mother?”

“Besides her being psychotically depressed?” Jane shook her head. “I’m waiting for her to get up the nerve and kick him out. The trouble is, she tries so hard to make everyone else happy, she forgets all about herself.” Jane sighed. “My mom, the saint.”

Something my mother will never be, thought Maura. She thought about the last time she’d visited Amalthea in prison. Remembered the woman’s soulless eyes, her calculating gaze. Even then the tumor must have been incubating inside Amalthea, evil within evil, like poisonous nesting dolls. With cancer now consuming her, had she come to feel remorse? For such a creature, was redemption even possible? In a few months, six at the most, those eyes would go dark forever.
And I will always wonder
.

Jane looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go. Tell Millie I’ll pick her
up around ten tomorrow, for the team meeting. I’ve asked Brookline PD to send a cruiser by your house every so often, to keep an eye on things.”

“Is that necessary? No one knows she’s here.”

“It’s all about making her feel safe. It was a struggle just to get her here, Maura. As far as she’s concerned, we’ve brought her straight to the beast’s lair.”

“It may be true.”

“But we need her. We just have to keep her comfortable, so she doesn’t jump on a plane home.”

“I don’t mind a houseguest,” said Maura. She glanced down at the cat, who chose that instant to jump onto the coffee table. “Although
this
particular houseguest I’d love to get rid of.” She plucked up the cat and dropped him back on the floor.

“You two still not bonding, huh?”

“Oh, he’s bonded all right. To my can opener.” In disgust, Maura clapped cat hair from her hands. “So what do you make of her?”

Jane glanced toward the hallway and said quietly: “She’s scared, and I can’t blame her. She’s the only one who walked out alive, the only one who can ID him in court. Six years later, he’s still giving her nightmares.”

“It’s not hard to understand. You and I have been in her shoes.” She didn’t need to elaborate; they both knew what it was like to be hunted, to lie sleepless in your own bed, listening for the shattering of a window, the turn of the doorknob. They were part of the same unfortunate sisterhood of women who have been stalked by killers.

“She’s going to face a lot of questions tomorrow, be asked to relive some painful memories,” said Jane. “Make sure she gets a good night’s sleep.” As she stepped out the front door to leave, her cell phone rang and she paused on the porch to answer it. “Hey, Tam, we just got in. I’m heading over to catch up on …” She halted on the porch. “What? Are you sure?”

Maura watched as Jane hung up and stood staring at the phone as if it had just betrayed her. “What is it?”

Jane turned to face her. “We have a problem. Remember Jane Doe?”

“The bones from the backyard?”

“You had me convinced she was killed by Leopard Man.”

“I still believe it. The claw marks on her skull. The evidence of evisceration. The nylon cord. It all fits the picture.”

“The problem is, she’s just been identified, and it’s confirmed by DNA. Her name was Natalie Toombs, twenty years old. She was a coed at Curry College. White female, five foot three.”

“That’s all consistent with the skeletal remains I examined. What’s the problem?”

“Natalie vanished fourteen years ago.”

Maura stared at her. “Fourteen years? Do we know where Johnny Posthumus was then?”

“Working at a bush lodge in South Africa.” Jane shook her head. “He couldn’t have killed Natalie.”

“T
HIS SHOOTS YOUR ALL-POWERFUL
Leopard Man theory all to hell, Rizzoli,” said Darren Crowe. “Fourteen years ago, when Natalie Toombs vanished in Boston, this guy was working in Sabi Sands, South Africa. It’s all documented in the Interpol report. His employee records from the bush lodge, a log of his hours and pay stubs. Obviously, he didn’t kill Natalie. Which means you brought that witness all the way here from South Africa for nothing.”

Still groggy from a bad night’s sleep, Jane tried to focus on her laptop. She’d awakened disoriented that morning, had downed two cups of coffee to kick-start her brain before this team conference, but the deluge of new facts left her struggling to catch up. She felt the other three detectives watching her as she clicked through pages that confirmed what Tam had told her yesterday over the phone. Natalie Toombs, formerly referred to as Jane Doe, had been a twenty-year-old English major at Curry College, barely two miles from where her bones were found buried. Natalie had lived in an off-campus rental house with two other coeds, who described her as outgoing, athletic, and a nature lover. She was last seen on a Saturday afternoon, her
backpack full of books, leaving for a study date with someone named Ted, whom neither housemate had ever met.

The next day, the housemates reported her missing.

For fourteen years, the case had languished in the national missing persons database, along with thousands of other unsolved disappearances. Her mother, who’d since passed away, had provided the FBI with a DNA sample, in the event her daughter’s remains ever turned up. It was this DNA that confirmed the bones dug up in the backyard construction site were indeed Natalie’s.

Jane looked at Frost, who gave an apologetic shake of the head. “It’s hard to argue with the facts,” he said, sounding pained. It always hurt to admit when Crowe was right.

“You wasted a nice chunk of Boston PD change, flying that witness here from South Africa,” said Crowe. “Good job, Rizzoli.”

“But there’s physical evidence linking at least
one
murder to Botswana,” she pointed out. “That cigarette lighter. We know it belonged to Richard Renwick. How did it get from Africa to Maine, unless the killer carried it?”

“Who knows how many hands it’s passed through in the last six years? It could’ve gotten here in the pocket of some innocent tourist who picked it up God knows where. Any way you look at it, it’s clear that Natalie Toombs wasn’t killed by Johnny Posthumus. Her death predates all these other cases by nearly a decade. I’m calling it quits on our joint investigation. You keep looking for your Leopard Man, Rizzoli, and we’ll look for our perp. ’Cause I don’t think there’s any connection between our cases.” He turned to his partner. “Come on, Tam.”

“Millie DeBruin came all the way from Cape Town,” said Jane. “She’s waiting with Dr. Zucker right now. At least listen to her.”

“Why?”

“What if there
is
only one killer? What if he moves across states, across international borders, by assuming other identities?”

“Wait. Is this some
new
theory?” Crowe laughed. “An impostor who kills under other people’s names?”

“Henk Andriessen, our contact at Interpol, was the first person to suggest the possibility. Henk was bothered by the fact that Johnny Posthumus had no criminal record, no history of violence. He had a reputation as a top-notch safari guide, respected by his colleagues. What if the man who took those seven tourists into the bush
wasn’t
Johnny? None of these tourists had ever met him before. The African tracker had never worked with him before. Another man could have taken the real Johnny’s place.”

“An impostor? Then where’s the real Johnny?”

“He’d have to be dead.”

There was silence at the table as her three colleagues digested this new possibility.

“I’d say this puts you back at square one,” said Crowe. “Looking for a killer with no name, no identity. Good luck.”