Vanish (25 page)

Rizzoli came in holding a bouquet so huge that he looked like an explorer peering through

dense jungle.

“So how’s my girl?” said Frank.

“I’m feeling great, Dad.”

“The kid’s bawling up a storm in the nursery. Got a set of lungs on her.”

“Mikey’s coming by to see you after work,” said Angela. “Look, I brought lamb spaghetti.

You don’t have to tell me what hospital food’s like. What’d they bring you for breakfast,

anyway?” She went to the tray and lifted the cover. “My god, look at these eggs, Frank! Like

rubber! Do they
try
to make the food this bad?”

“Nothing wrong with a baby girl, no sir,” Frank said. “Daughters are great, hey Gabe? You

gotta watch ’em, though. When she turns sixteen, you be sure to keep those boys away.”

“Sixteen?” Jane snorted. “Dad, by then the horse has left the barn.”

“What’re you saying? Don’t tell me that when
you
were sixteen—”

“—so what’re you going to call her, hon? I can’t believe you haven’t chosen a name yet.”

“We’re still thinking about it.”

“What’s to think about? Name her after your grandma Regina.”

“She’s got another grandma, you know,” said Frank.

“Who’d call a girl Ignatia?”

“It was good enough for my mom.”

Jane looked across the room at Gabriel, and saw that his gaze had strayed back to the window.

He’s still thinking about Joseph Roke. Still wondering about his death.

There was a knock on the door, and yet another familiar head popped into the room. “Hey,

Rizzoli!” said Vince Korsak. “You skinny again?” He stepped in, clutching the ribbons of three

Mylar balloons bobbing overhead. “How’re you doing, Mrs. Rizzoli, Mr. Rizzoli? Congrats on

being new grandparents!”

“Detective Korsak,” said Angela. “Are you hungry? I brought Jane’s favorite spaghetti. And

we have paper plates here.”

“Well, I’m sort of on a diet, ma’am.”

“It’s lamb spaghetti.”

“Ooh. You’re a naughty woman, tempting a man off his diet.” Korsak wagged one fat finger at

her and Angela gave a high, girlish laugh.

My god, thought Jane. Korsak is flirting with my mom. I don’t think I want to watch this.

“Frank, can you take out those paper plates? They’re in the sack.”

“It’s only ten A.M. It’s not even lunchtime.”

“Detective Korsak is hungry.”

“He just told you he’s on a diet. Why don’t you listen to him?”

There was yet another knock on the door. This time a nurse walked in, wheeling a bassinet.

Rolling it over to Jane’s bed, she announced: “Time to visit with Mommy,” and lifted out the

swaddled newborn. She placed it in Jane’s arms.

Angela swooped in like a bird of prey. “Ooh, look at her, Frank! Oh god, she’s so precious!

Look at that little face!”

“How can I get a look? You’re all over her.”

“She’s got my mother’s mouth—”

“Well,
that’s
something to brag about.”

“Janie, you should try feeding her now. You need to get practice before your milk comes in.”

Jane looked around the room at the audience crowded around her bed. “Ma, I’m not really

comfortable with—” She paused, glancing down at the baby as it suddenly gave a howl.
Now

what do I do?

“Maybe she’s got gas,” said Frank. “Babies always get gas.”

“Or she’s hungry,” Korsak suggested. He would.

The baby only cried harder.

“Let me take her,” said Angela.

“Who’s the mommy here?” Frank said. “She needs the practice.”

“You don’t want a baby to keep crying.”

“Maybe if you put your finger in her mouth,” said Frank. “That’s what we used to do with

you, Janie. Like this—”

“Wait!” said Angela. “Did you wash your hands, Frank?”

The sound of Gabriel’s ringing cell phone was almost lost in the bedlam. Jane glanced at her

husband as he answered it and saw him frown at his watch. She heard him say: “I don’t think I

can make it right now. Why don’t you go ahead without me?”

“Gabriel?” Jane asked. “Who’s calling?”

“Maura’s starting the autopsy on Olena.”

“You should go in.”

“I hate to leave you.”

“No, you need to be there.” The baby was screaming even louder now, squirming as though

desperate to escape its mother’s arms. “One of us should see it.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Look at all the company I’ve got here.
Go.
”

Gabriel bent down to kiss her. “I’ll see you later,” he murmured. “Love you.”

“Imagine that,” said Angela, shaking her head in disapproval after Gabriel had walked out of

the room. “I can’t believe it.”

“What, Mom?”

“He leaves his wife and new baby and runs off to watch some dead person get cut open?”

Jane looked down at her daughter, still howling and red-faced in her arms, and she sighed.
I

only wish I could go with him.

By the time Gabriel donned gown and shoe covers and walked into the autopsy lab, Maura had

already lifted the breastbone and was reaching into the chest cavity. She and Yoshima did not

exchange a word of unnecessary chatter as her scalpel sliced through vessels and ligaments,

freeing the heart and lungs. She worked with silent precision, eyes revealing no emotion above

the mask. If Gabriel did not already know her, he would find her efficiency chilling.

“You made it after all,” she said.

“Have I missed anything important?”

“No surprises so far.” She gazed down at Olena. “Same room, same corpse. Strange to think

this is the second time I’ve seen this woman dead.”

This time, thought Gabriel, she’ll stay dead.

“So how is Jane doing?”

“She’s fine. A little overwhelmed by visitors right now, I think.”

“And the baby?” She dropped pink lungs into a basin. Lungs that would never again fill with

air or oxygenate blood.

“Beautiful. Eight pounds two ounces, ten fingers and ten toes. She looks just like Jane.”

For the first time, a smile tugged at Maura’s eyes. “What’s her name?”

“For the moment, she’s still ‘Baby Girl Rizzoli-Dean.’ ”

“I hope
that
changes soon.”

“I don’t know. I’m starting to like the sound of it.” It felt disrespectful, talking about such

happy details while a dead woman lay between them. He thought of his new daughter taking

her first breath, catching her first blurry look at the world, even as Olena’s body was starting to

cool.

“I’ll drop by the hospital to see her this afternoon,” said Maura. “Or is she already overdosed

on visitors?”

“Believe me, you would be one of the truly welcome ones.”

“Detective Korsak been by yet?”

He sighed. “Balloons and all. Good old Uncle Vince.”

“Don’t knock him. Maybe he’ll volunteer to babysit.”

“That’s just what a baby needs. Someone to teach her the fine art of loud burping.”

Maura laughed. “Korsak’s a good man. Really, he is.”

“Except for the fact he’s in love with my wife.”

Maura set down her knife and looked at him. “Then he’d want her to be happy. And he can see

that you both are.” Reaching once again for her scalpel, she added: “You and Jane give the rest

of us hope.”

The rest of us.
Meaning all the lonely people in the world, he thought. Not so long ago, he was

one of them.

He watched as Maura dissected the coronary arteries. How calmly she held a dead woman’s

heart in her hands. Her scalpel sliced open cardiac chambers, laying them bare to inspection.

She probed and measured and weighed. Yet Maura Isles seemed to keep her own heart safely

locked away.

His gaze dropped to the face of the woman they knew only as Olena. Hours ago, I was talking

to her, he thought, and these eyes looked back at me, saw me. Now they were dull, the corneas

clouded and glazed over. The blood had been washed away, and the bullet wound was a raw

pink hole punched into the left temple.

“This looks like an execution,” he said.

“There are other wounds in the left flank.” She pointed to the light box. “You can see two

bullets on X-ray, up against the spine.”

“But this wound here.” He stared down at her face. “This was a kill shot.”

“The assault team clearly wasn’t taking any chances. Joseph Roke was shot in the head as

well.”

“You’ve done his postmortem?”

“Dr. Bristol finished it an hour ago.”

“Why execute them? They were already down. We were
all
down.”

Maura looked up from the mass of lungs dripping on the cutting board. “They could have

wired themselves to detonate.”

“There were no explosives. These people weren’t terrorists.”

“The rescue team wouldn’t know that. Plus, there may have been a concern about the fentanyl

gas they used. You know that a fentanyl derivative was also used to end the Moscow theater

siege?”

“Yes.”

“In Moscow, it caused a number of fatalities. And here they were, using something similar on a

pregnant hostage. They couldn’t expose a fetus to its effects for too long. The takedown had to

be fast and clean. That was how they justified it.”

“So they’re claiming these kill shots were necessary.”

“That’s what Lieutenant Stillman was told. Boston PD had no part in the planning or execution

of the takedown.”

Turning to the light box where X-rays were hanging, he asked: “Those are Olena’s?”

“Yes.”

He moved in for a closer look. Saw a bright comma against the skull, a scattering of fragments

throughout the cranial cavity.

“That’s all internal ricochet,” she said.

“And this C-shaped opacity here?”

“It’s a fragment caught between the scalp and the skull. Just a piece of lead that sheared off as

the bullet punctured bone.”

“Do we know which member of the entry team fired this head shot?”

“Not even Hayder has a list of their names. By the time our Crime Scene Unit processed the

scene, the entry team was probably on its way back to Washington, and beyond our reach.

They swept up everything when they left. Weapons, cartridge evidence. They even took the

knapsack that Joseph Roke brought into the building. They left us only the bodies.”

“It’s how the world works now, Maura. The Pentagon’s authorized to send a commando unit

into any American city.”

“I’ll tell you something.” She set down her scalpel and looked at him. “This scares the hell out

of me.”

The intercom buzzed. Maura glanced up as her secretary said, over the speaker: “Dr. Isles,

Agent Barsanti’s on the line again. He wants to talk to you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Not a thing.”

“Good. Just say I’ll call him back.” She paused. “When and
if
I have the time.”

“He’s getting really rude, you know.”

“Then you don’t have to be polite to him.” Maura looked at Yoshima. “Let’s finish up before

we get interrupted again.”

She reached deep into the open belly and began resecting the abdominal organs. Out came

stomach and liver and pancreas and endless loops of small intestine. Slitting open the stomach,

Maura found it empty of food; only greenish secretions dripped out into the basin. “Liver,

spleen, and pancreas within normal limits,” she noted. Gabriel watched the foul-smelling offal

pile up in the basin, and it disturbed him to think that in his own belly were the same glistening

organs. Looking down at Olena’s face, he thought: Once you cut beneath the skin, even the

most beautiful woman looks like any other. A mass of organs encased in a hollow package of

muscle and bone.

“All right,” Maura said, her voice muffled as she probed even deeper in the cavity. “I can see

where the other bullets tracked through. They’re up against the spine here, and we’ve got some

retroperitoneal bleeding.” The abdomen was now gutted of most of its organs, and she was

peering into an almost hollow shell. “Could you put up the abdominal and thoracic films? Let

me just check the position of those other two bullets.”

Yoshima crossed to the light box, took down the skull films, and clipped up a new set of Xrays. The ghostly shadows of heart and lungs glowed inside their bony cage of ribs. Dark

pockets of gas were lined up like bumper cars inside intestinal tunnels. Against the softer haze

of organs, the bullets stood out like bright chips against the column of lumbar spine.

Gabriel stared at the films for a moment, and his gaze suddenly narrowed as he remembered

what Joe had told him. “There’s no view of the arms,” he said.

“Unless there’s obvious trauma, we don’t normally X-ray the limbs,” said Yoshima.

“Maybe you should.”

Maura glanced up. “Why?”

Gabriel went back to the table and examined the left arm. “Look at this scar. What do you think

of it?”

Maura circled around to the corpse’s left side and examined the arm. “I see it, just above the

elbow. It’s well healed. I don’t feel any masses.” She looked at Gabriel. “What about it?”

“It’s something that Joe told me. I know it sounds crazy.”

“What?”

“He claimed she had a microchip implanted in her arm. Right here, under the skin, to track her

whereabouts.”

For a moment Maura just stared at him. Suddenly she laughed. “That’s not a very original

delusion.”

“I know, I know what it sounds like.”

“It’s a classic. The government-implanted microchip.”

Gabriel turned to look once again at the X-rays. “Why do you think Barsanti is so eager to

transfer these bodies? What does he think you’re going to find?”

Maura fell silent for a moment, her gaze on Olena’s arm.