Die Again (3 page)

“I should stop taking the pills,” I tell him.

“What, and get malaria? Oh right, that makes sense.”

“What do you want me to do? Richard, tell me what you want me to do.”

“I don’t
know
.” He sighs and turns away from me. His back is like cold concrete, a wall that encases his heart, locking it beyond my reach. After a moment, he says softly: “I don’t know where we’re going, Millie.”

But I know where Richard is going. Away from me. He’s been pulling away from me for months, so subtly, so gradually that until now, I refused to see it. I could chalk it up to:
Oh, we’re both so busy lately
. He’s been scrambling to finish the revisions on
Blackjack
. I’ve been struggling through our annual inventory at the bookshop. All will be better between us when our lives slow down. That’s what I kept telling myself.

Outside our tent, the night is alive with sounds of the Delta. We are camped not far from a river, where earlier we saw hippos. I think I can hear them now, along with the croaks and cries and grunts of countless other creatures.

But inside our tent, there is only silence.

So this is where love comes to die. In a tent, in the bush, in Africa. If we were back in London, I’d be out of bed, dressed and off to my girlfriend’s flat for brandy and sympathy. But here I’m trapped inside canvas, surrounded by things that want to eat me. Sheer claustrophobia makes me desperate to claw my way out of the tent, to run screaming into the night. It must be these malaria pills, wreaking havoc with my brain. I want it to be the pills, because that means it’s not my fault I’m feeling hopeless. I really must stop taking them.

Richard has fallen deeply asleep. How can he do that, just drop off so peacefully when I feel I’m about to shatter? I listen to him breathe in and out, so relaxed, so steady. The sound of him not caring.

He is still deeply asleep when I awake the next morning. As the pale light of dawn seeps through the seams of our tent, I think with dread of the day ahead. Another uneasy drive as we sit side by side, trying to be civil with each other. Another day of slapping mosquitoes and peeing in the bushes. Another evening of watching Richard flirt and feeling another piece of my heart crumble away. This holiday cannot possibly get worse, I think.

And then I hear the sound of a woman shrieking.

BOSTON

I
T WAS THE MAILMAN WHO CALLED IT IN. ELEVEN FIFTEEN A.M., SHAKY
voice on a cell phone:
I’m on Sanborn Avenue, West Roxbury, oh-two-one-three-two. The dog—I saw the dog in the window …
 And that’s how it came to the attention of Boston PD. A cascade of events that started with an alert mail carrier, one in an army of foot soldiers deployed six days a week in neighborhoods across America. They are the eyes of the nation, sometimes the only eyes that notice which elderly widow has not collected her mail, which old bachelor doesn’t answer his doorbell, and which porch has a yellowing pile of newspapers.

The first clue that something was amiss inside the large house on Sanborn Avenue, zip code 02132, was the overstuffed mailbox, something that US postal carrier Luis Muniz first noticed on day number two. Two days’ worth of uncollected mail wasn’t necessarily a cause for alarm. People go away for the weekend. People forget to request a hold on home delivery.

But on day number three, Muniz started to worry.

On day number four, when Muniz opened the mailbox and found
it still jam-packed with catalogs and magazines and bills, he knew he had to take action.

“So he knocks on the front door,” said Patrolman Gary Root. “Nobody answers. He figures he’ll check with the next-door neighbor, see if she knows what’s going on. Then he looks in the window and spots the dog.”

“That dog over there?” asked Detective Jane Rizzoli, pointing to a friendly-looking golden retriever who was now tied to the mailbox.

“Yeah, that’s him. The tag on his collar says his name’s Bruno. I took him outta the house, before he could do any more …” Patrolman Root swallowed. “Damage.”

“And the mail carrier? Where’s he?”

“Took the rest of the day off. Probably getting a stiff drink somewhere. I got his contact info, but he probably can’t tell you much more than what I just told you. He never went inside the house, just called nine one one. I was first on the scene, found the front door unlocked. Walked in and …” He shook his head. “Wish I hadn’t.”

“You talk to anyone else?”

“The nice lady next door. She came out when she saw the cruisers parked out here, wanted to know what was going on. All I told her was that her neighbor was dead.”

Jane turned and faced the house where Bruno the friendly retriever had been trapped. It was an older two-story, single-family home with a porch, a two-car garage, and mature trees in front. The garage door was closed, and a black Ford Explorer, registered to the homeowner, was parked in the driveway. This morning, there would have been nothing to distinguish the residence from the other well-kept houses on Sanborn Avenue, nothing that would catch a cop’s eye and make him think: Wait a minute, there’s something wrong here. But now there were two patrol cars parked at the curb, rack lights flashing, which made it obvious to anyone passing by that yes, something was very wrong here. Something that Jane and her partner, Barry Frost, were about to confront. Across the street, a gathering crowd of neighbors stood gaping at the house. Had any of them noticed
the occupant hadn’t been seen in a few days, hadn’t walked his dog or picked up his mail? Now they were probably telling one another:
Yeah, I knew something wasn’t right
. Everyone’s brilliant in retrospect.

“You want to walk us through the house?” Frost asked Patrolman Root.

“You know what?” said Root. “I’d rather not. I finally got the smell outta my nose, and I don’t care for another whiff of it.”

Frost swallowed. “Uh … that bad?”

“I was in there maybe thirty seconds, tops. My partner didn’t last even that long. It’s not like there’s anything in there I need to point out to you. You can’t miss it.” He looked at the golden retriever, who responded with a playful bark. “Poor pup, trapped in there with nothing to eat. I know he had no choice, but still …”

Jane glanced at Frost, who was staring at the house like a condemned prisoner facing the gallows. “What’d you have for lunch?” she asked him.

“Turkey sandwich. Potato chips.”

“Hope you enjoyed it.”

“This isn’t helping, Rizzoli.”

They climbed the porch steps and paused to pull on gloves and shoe covers. “You know,” she said, “there’s this pill called Compazine.”

“Yeah?”

“Works pretty good for morning sickness.”

“Great. When I get knocked up, I’ll give it a try.”

They looked at each other and she saw him take a deep breath, just as she was doing. One last gulp of clean air. With a gloved hand she opened the door, and they stepped inside. Frost lifted his arm to cover his nose, blocking the smell that they were far too familiar with. Whether you called it
cadaverine
, or
putrescine
, or any other chemical name, it all came down to the stench of death. But it was not the smell that made Jane and Frost pause just inside the door; it was what they saw hanging on the walls.

Everywhere they looked, eyes stared back at them. A whole gallery of the dead, confronting these new intruders.

“Jesus,” murmured Frost. “Was he some kind of big-game hunter?”

“Well, that is definitely big game,” said Jane, staring up at the mounted head of a rhino and wondering what kind of bullet it took to kill such a creature. Or the Cape buffalo beside it. She moved slowly past the row of trophies, her shoe covers swishing across the wood floor, gaping at animal heads so life-like she almost expected the lion to roar. “Are these even legal? Who the hell shoots a leopard these days?”

“Look. The dog wasn’t the only pet running around in here.”

A variety of reddish-brown paw prints tracked across the wood floor. The larger set would match Bruno, the golden retriever, but there were smaller prints as well, dotted throughout the room. Brown smears on the windowsill marked where Bruno had propped up his front paws to look out at the mail carrier. But it wasn’t merely the sight of a dog that caused Luis Muniz to dial 911; it was what protruded from that dog’s mouth.

A human finger.

She and Frost followed the trail of paw prints, passing beneath the glassy eyes of a zebra and a lion, a hyena and a warthog. This collector did not discriminate by size; even the smallest creatures had their ignominious place on these walls, including four mice posed with tiny china cups, seated around a miniature table. A Mad Hatter’s grotesque tea party.

As they moved through the living room and into a hallway, the stench of putrefaction grew stronger. Though she could not yet see its source, Jane could hear the ominous buzz of its supplicants. A fat fly buzzed a few lazy circles around her head and drifted away through a doorway.

Always follow the flies. They know where dinner is served
.

The door hung ajar. Just as Jane pushed it wider, something white streaked out and shot past her feet.

“Holy crap!” yelled Frost.

Heart banging, Jane glanced back at the pair of eyes peering out from under the living room sofa. “It’s just a cat.” She gave a relieved laugh. “That explains the smaller paw prints.”

“Wait, you hear that?” said Frost. “I think there’s another cat in there.”

Jane took a breath and stepped through the doorway, into the garage. A gray tabby trotted over to greet her and silkily threaded back and forth between her legs, but Jane ignored it. Her gaze was fixed on what hung from the ceiling hoist. The flies were so thick she could feel their hum in her bones as they swarmed around the ripe feast that had been flayed open for their convenience, exposing meat that now squirmed with maggots.

Frost lurched away, gagging.

The nude man hung upside down, his ankles bound with orange nylon cord. Like a pig carcass hanging in a slaughterhouse, his abdomen had been sliced open, the cavity stripped of all organs. Both arms dangled free, and the hands would have almost touched the floor—if the hands had still been attached. If hunger had not forced Bruno the dog, and maybe the two cats as well, to start gnawing off the flesh of their owner.

“So now we know where that finger came from,” Frost said, his voice muffled behind his sleeve. “Jesus, it’s everyone’s worst nightmare. Getting eaten by your own cat …”

For three starving house pets, what now hung from the hoist would certainly look like a feast. The animals had already disarticulated the hands and stripped away so much skin and muscle and cartilage from the face that the white bone of one orbit was exposed, a pearly ridge peeking through shredded flesh. The facial features were gnawed beyond recognition, but the grotesquely swollen genitals left no doubt this was a man—an older one, judging by the silvery pubic hair.

“Hung and dressed like game,” said a voice behind her.

Startled, Jane turned to see Dr. Maura Isles standing in the doorway.
Even at a death scene as grotesque as this one, Maura managed to look elegant, her black hair as sleek as a gleaming helmet, her gray jacket and pants perfectly tailored to her slim waist and hips. She made Jane feel like the sloppy cousin with flyaway hair and scuffed shoes. Maura did not quail from the smell but moved straight to the carcass, heedless of the flies that were dive-bombing her head. “This is disturbing,” she said.

“Disturbing?” Jane snorted. “I was thinking more along the lines of
totally fucked up
.”

The gray tabby abandoned Jane and went to Maura, where it rubbed back and forth against her leg, purring loudly. So much for feline loyalty.

Maura nudged the cat away with her foot, but her attention stayed focused on the body. “Abdominal and thoracic organs missing. The incision looks very decisive, from pubis down to xiphoid. It’s what a hunter would do to a deer or a boar. Hang it, gut it, leave it to age.” She glanced up at the ceiling hoist. “And that looks like something you’d use to hang game. Clearly this house belongs to a hunter.”

“Those look like what a hunter would use, too,” said Frost. He pointed to the garage workbench, where a magnetized rack held a dozen lethal-looking knives. All of them appeared clean, the blades bright and gleaming. Jane stared at the boning knife. Imagined that razor edge slicing through flesh as yielding as butter.

“Odd,” said Maura, focusing on the torso. “These wounds here don’t look like they’re from a knife.” She pointed to three incisions that sliced down the rib cage. “They’re perfectly parallel, like blades mounted together.”

“Looks like a claw mark,” said Frost. “Could the animals have done that?”

“They’re too deep for a cat or dog. These appear to be postmortem, with minimal oozing …” She straightened, focusing on the floor. “If he was butchered right here, the blood must have been hosed away. See that drain in the concrete? It’s something a hunter would install if he used this space to hang and age meat.”

“What’s the thing about aging? I never understood the point of hanging meat,” said Frost.

“Postmortem enzymes act as a natural tenderizer, but it’s usually done at temperatures just above freezing. In here it feels like, what, about fifty degrees? Warm enough to get decomp. And maggots. I’m just glad it’s November. It would smell a lot worse in August.” With a pair of tweezers, Maura picked off one of the maggots and studied it as it squirmed in her gloved palm. “These look like third instar stage. Consistent with a time of death about four days ago.”

“All those mounted heads in the living room,” said Jane. “And he ends up hanging, like some dead animal. I’d say we’ve got a theme going here.”

“Is this victim the homeowner? Have you confirmed his identity?”

“Kind of hard to make a visual ID with his hands and face gone. But I’d say the age matches. The homeowner of record is Leon Gott, age sixty-four. Divorced, lived alone.”

“He certainly didn’t die alone,” said Maura, staring into the gaping incision at what was now little more than an empty shell. “Where are they?” she said, and suddenly turned to face Jane. “The killer hung the body here. What did he do with the organs?”