It’s the only way I know how to cope, she thought, as his
arms
slipped around her. As his breath warmed her hair. She had learned long ago how
to
box up all those messy emotions. They were so poorly matched, the two of them.
Exuberant
Victor, married to the Queen of the Dead. Why did they ever think it would work?
Because I wanted his heat, his passion. I wanted what I myself
can
never be.
The ringing telephone made Victor’s hands go still on her
shoulders.
He stepped away, and left her longing for his warmth. She rose and went to the
kitchen
phone. One glance at the caller I.D., and she knew that this call would send her
back into the night, into the snow. As she spoke to the detective and jotted
down
directions, she saw Victor give a resigned shake of his head. Tonight, she was
the
one called to duty, and he was the one left behind.
She hung up. “I’m sorry, I have to leave.”
“The Grim Reaper calls?”
“A death scene in Roxbury. They’re waiting for me.”
He followed her down the hallway, toward the front door.
“Would
you like me to come with you?”
“Why?”
“To keep you company.”
“Believe me, there’s plenty of company at a death
scene.”
He glanced out the living room window, at the thickly falling
snow.
“It’s not a good night to be driving.”
“For either of us.” She bent down to pull on boots. She
was
glad he couldn’t see her face as she said, “There’s no need for
you
to drive back to the hotel. Why don’t you just stay here?”
“Spend the night, you mean?”
“It might be more convenient for you. You can make up the bed
in the guest room. I’ll probably be gone for a few hours.”
His silence made her flush. Still not looking at him, she buttoned
her coat. Suddenly anxious to escape, she opened the front door.
And heard him say, “I’ll wait up for you.”
Blue lights flashed through the gauze of falling snow. She pulled
up right behind one of the cruisers and a patrolman approached, his face half
hidden
behind his raised collar, like a turtle retracted into its shell. She rolled
down
her window and squinted against the glare of his flashlight. Snow blew in,
skittering
across her dashboard.
“Dr. Isles, M.E.’s office,” she said.
“Okay, you can park right where you are, ma’am.”
“Where’s the body?”
“Inside.” He waved his flashlight toward a building
across
the street. “Front door’s padlocked—gotta go in the alley
entrance.
Electricity’s off, so watch your step. You’ll need your flashlight.
All
kinds of boxes and shit piled up in that alley.”
She stepped out of the car, into a curtain of lacy white. Tonight
she
was fully prepared for the weather, and grateful that her feet were warm and dry
inside Thinsulate boots. At least six inches of new snow layered the road, but
the
flakes were soft and feathery and offered not even a whisper of resistance as
her
boots cut a trough through the drifts.
At the alley entrance, she turned on the flashlight, and saw a
strand
of sagging police tape, the yellow almost obscured by a coating of white. She
stepped
over it and dislodged a shower of flakes. The alley was obstructed by several
amorphous
piles obscured by snow. Her boot connected with something solid, and she heard
the
clatter of bottles. The alley had been used as a trash dump, and she wondered
what
distasteful items were hidden beneath this white blanket.
She knocked on the door and called out: “Hello? Medical
Examiner.”
The door swung open, and a flashlight glared in her eyes. She
could
not see the man holding it, but she recognized Detective Darren Crowe’s
voice.
“Hey, Doc. Welcome to roach city.”
“Would you mind shining that light somewhere else?”
The flashlight beam dropped from her face and she saw his
silhouette,
broad-shouldered and vaguely threatening. He was one of the younger detectives
in
the Homicide Unit, and every time she worked a case with him, she felt she was
walking
onto the set of a TV show, and Crowe was the series star, a movie-star cop with
blow-dried
hair and the attitude to match, cocky and self-assured. The only thing that men
like
Crowe respected in a woman was icy professionalism, and that’s what she
showed
him. While the male M.E.s might banter with Crowe, she could not; the barriers
had
to be maintained, the lines drawn, or he would find a way to chip at her
authority.
She pulled on gloves and shoe-covers and stepped into the
building.
Shining her flashlight around the room, she saw metallic surfaces reflect back
at
her. A huge refrigerator and metal countertops. A commercial stove top and
ovens.
“This used to be Mama Cortina’s Italian
restaurant,”
said Crowe. “Until Mama went out of business and filed for bankruptcy.
Building
got condemned two years ago, and the entrances were both padlocked. Alley door
looks
like it was broken open some time ago. All this kitchen equipment’s up for
auction,
but I don’t know who’d want it. It’s filthy.” He shone his
flashlight
at the gas burners, where years of accumulated grease had thickened to a black
crust.
Roaches scurried away from the light. “The place is crawling with ’em.
All this yummy grease to feed on.”
“Who found the body?”
“One of our boys from the narcotics division. They had a drug
bust going down, about a block from here. The suspect bolted, and they thought
he
came down this alley. They noticed the door had been pried open. Came inside
looking
for their perp, and got quite a surprise.” He pointed his flashlight at the
floor. “Some scrape marks across the dust here. Like the perp dragged the
victim
across this room.” He waved the light toward the other end of the kitchen.
“Body’s
that way. We gotta go through the dining room.”
“You’ve already videotaped in here?”
“Yeah. Had to lug in two battery packs to get enough light.
Already
ran’em both down. So it’s gonna be a little dim in there.”
She followed him toward the kitchen doorway, holding her arms
close
to her body, a reminder not to touch any surface—as if she would want to.
She
heard rustling all around her in the shadows, and thought of thousands of insect
legs skittering across the walls and clinging to the ceiling above her head. She
might be stoic about the gory and grotesque, but scavenging insects truly
repelled
her.
Stepping into the dining area, she smelled the tired bouquet of
scents
that always clings to alleys behind old restaurants: the smell of garbage and
stale
beer. But here, there was also something else, an ominously familiar odor that
made
her pulse quicken. It was the object of her visit here, and it stirred in her
both
curiosity and dread.
“Looks like bums have been crashing in here,” said
Crowe,
aiming his flashlight at the floor, where she saw an old blanket and bundles of
newspapers.
“And there are some candles over there. Lucky they didn’t burn the
place
down, with all this trash.” His flashlight moved across a mound of food
wrappers
and empty tin cans. Two yellow eyes stared at them from the top of the
pile—a
rat, unafraid, even cocky, daring them to advance on it.
Rats and roaches. With all these scavengers, what would be left of
the body? she wondered.
“It’s around that corner.” Crowe picked his way
with
athletic confidence past tables and stacked chairs. “Stay to this side.
There
are some footprints we’re trying to preserve. Someone tracked blood away
from
the body. They fade out right about there.”
He led her into a short hallway. Faint light spilled out a doorway
at the end. It came from the men’s restroom.
“Doc’s here,” Crowe called out.
Another flashlight beam appeared in the doorway. Crowe’s
partner,
Ed Sleeper, stepped out of the restroom and gave Maura a tired wave of his
gloved
hand. Sleeper was the oldest detective in the Homicide Unit, and every time she
saw
him, his shoulders seemed to be sagging a little deeper. She wondered how much
of
his dispiritedness had to do with being paired with Crowe. Neither wisdom nor
experience
could trump youthful aggression, and Sleeper had long since ceded control to his
overbearing partner.
“It’s not a pretty sight,” said Sleeper. “Just
be glad it’s not July. I don’t want to think about what it’d
smell
like if it wasn’t so damn cold in here.”
Crowe laughed. “Sounds like someone’s ready for
Florida.”
“Hey, I got a nice little condo all picked out. Only one
block
from the beach. I’m gonna wear nothing but swim trunks all day. Let it all
hang
out.”
Warm beaches, thought Maura. Sugary sand. Wouldn’t they all
love
to be there right now, instead of in this grim little hallway, lit only by their
trio of flashlights.
“All yours, Doc,” said Sleeper.
She moved to the doorway. Her flashlight beam fell on dirty floor
tiles,
laid in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern. It was tracked over with
footprints
and dried blood.
“Stay along the wall,” said Crowe.
She stepped into the room and instantly jerked backwards, startled
by a streak of movement near her feet. “Jesus,” she said, and gave a
startled
laugh.
“Yeah, those rats are big mothers,” said Crowe.
“And
they’ve had themselves a little feast in there.”
She saw a tail slither beneath the door of a bathroom stall, and
thought
of the old urban legend of rats swimming through sewer systems and popping out
of
toilets.
Slowly, she played her beam past two sinks with missing faucets,
past
a urinal, its drain clogged by trash and cigarette butts. Her beam dropped, to
the
nude body lying on its side beneath the urinal. The gleam of exposed facial
bones
peeked through tangled black hair. Scavengers had already been gorging on this
bounty
of fresh meat, and the torso was punctured by numerous rat bites. But it was not
the damage caused by sharp teeth that horrified her most; it was the diminutive
size
of the corpse.
A child?
Maura dropped to a crouch beside the body. It lay with its right
cheek
pressed against the floor. As she bent closer, she saw fully developed
breasts—not
a child at all, she thought, but a mature woman of small stature, her features
obliterated.
Feasting scavengers had gnawed hungrily on the exposed left side of the face,
devouring
skin and even nasal cartilage. The skin still remaining on the torso was deeply
pigmented.
Hispanic? she wondered, her light beam moving across bony shoulders, and down
the
knobby ridge of spine. Dark, almost purplish nodules were scattered across the
nude
torso. She focused her light on the left hip and buttock, and saw more lesions.
The
angry eruption ran all the way down the thigh and calf to the . . .
Her flashlight beam froze on the ankle. “My God,” she
said.
The left foot was missing. The ankle ended in a stump, the raw
edge
black with putrefaction.
She shifted her beam to the other ankle, and saw another stump.
The
right foot was missing as well.
“Now check out the hands,” said Crowe, who’d moved
close
beside her. He added his beam to hers, pooling their light on the arms, which
had
been tucked into the shadow of the torso.
Instead of hands, she saw two stumps, the edges ragged with the
teeth
marks of scavengers.
She rocked back, stunned.
“I take it rats didn’t eat those clean off,” said
Crowe.
She swallowed. “No. No, these were amputations.”
“You think he did it while she was still alive?”
She stared down at the stained tiles, and saw only small black
pools
of dried blood near the stumps, no machine-gun splatter. “There was no
arterial
pressure when these cuts were made. The parts were removed postmortem.” She
looked at Crowe. “Did you find them?”
“No. He took them. Who the hell knows why?”
“There’s a logical reason he might have done it,”
said
Sleeper. “We don’t have fingerprints now. We can’t I.D.
her.”
Maura said, “If he was trying to obliterate her identity . .
.”
She stared at the face, at the gleam of bone, and felt a fresh thrill of horror
at
its significance. “I need to roll her over,” she said.
She took a disposable sheet from her kit and spread it out beside
the
body. Together, Sleeper and Crowe logrolled the corpse onto the sheet.
Sleeper gave a gasp and flinched away. The right side of the face,
which had been pressed against the floor, now came into view. So, too, did the
single
bullet hole, punched into the left breast.
But it was not the bullet wound that had repelled Sleeper. It was
the
victim’s face, its lidless eye staring up at them. Lying against the
bathroom
tiles, the right side of the face should have been inaccessible to rodent teeth,
yet the skin was gone. Exposed muscle had dried in leathery strands, and a
pearly
nubbin of cheekbone poked through.
“The rats didn’t do that, either,” said Sleeper.
“No,” said Maura. “This damage wasn’t done by
scavengers.”
“Christ, did he just tear it off? It’s like he peeled
away
a . . .”
A mask.
Only this mask had not been made of rubber or
plastic,
but of human skin.
“He cut off the face. The hands. He’s left us with no
way
to identify her,” said Sleeper.
“But why take the feet?” said Crowe. “That
doesn’t
make any sense. No one gets identified by their toe prints. Besides, she
doesn’t
look like the kind of vic who’d be missed. What is she, black?
Latina?”
“What does her race have to do with whether she’s missed
or not?” asked Maura.
“I’m just saying, this isn’t some housewife from
the
suburbs. Or why would she end up in this neighborhood?”
