She flinched as Rick’s window imploded, as glass stung her cheek. She opened her eyes again to stare at him. At what was left of his face, now bloody pulp. Slowly his body slumped toward her. His head landed on her thighs, and the heat of his blood soaked into her lap.
“Rick. Rick!”
A movement outside drew her stunned gaze. She looked up, and from out of the darkness, a figure in black emerged, moving toward her with robotic efficiency.
Coming to kill me.
Drive. Drive.
She shoved at Rick’s body, struggling to move him off the gear-shift, his ruined face oozing blood, turning her hands slippery. She managed to yank the gear into reverse, and hit the gas.
The Lexus lurched backward, out of the stall.
The shooter was somewhere behind her, moving in.
Sobbing with the effort, she pushed Rick’s face off the gear-shift and her fingers sank into bloodied meat. She jammed the gear into drive.
The rear window exploded, and she cringed as glass showered her hair.
She floored the accelerator. The Lexus screeched forward. The shooter had cut off her nearest parking lot exit; there was only one direction she could go now, toward the adjoining parking lot for the Boston University Medical Center. The two lots were separated only by a curb. She drove straight toward that curb, bracing herself for the bump. Felt her chin snap forward, her teeth slam together, as her tires bounced up over the concrete.
Another bullet flew; the windshield disintegrated.
Maura ducked as shattered glass rained onto the dashboard, pelleting her face. The Lexus careened forward, out of control. She glanced up to see the lamppost straight ahead. Unavoidable. She closed her eyes just before the air bag exploded. She was slammed back against her seat.
Slowly she opened her eyes, stunned. Her horn blasted, unceasing. It did not stop, even as she rolled away from the collapsed air bag, even as she shoved open her door and tumbled out, onto the pavement.
She staggered to her feet, ears ringing from the horn’s continuing blare. Managed to duck behind the cover of a nearby parked car. Legs unsteady, she forced herself to keep moving along that row of cars, until she suddenly came to a stop.
A wide expanse of open pavement lay in front of her.
She dropped to her knees behind a tire and peered around the bumper. Felt the blood freeze in her veins as she saw the dark figure stride out of the shadows, relentless as a machine, moving toward the smashed Lexus. It stepped beneath the pool of light cast by the streetlamp.
Maura saw the glint of blond hair, the streak of a ponytail.
The shooter yanked open the passenger door and leaned inside to look at Ballard’s body. Suddenly her head popped up again and she stared, head swiveling, her gaze sweeping the parking lot.
Maura ducked back behind the wheel. Her pulse throbbed in her temples, her breaths were gulps of panic. She looked toward the empty pavement, starkly lit by another streetlamp. Beyond it, across the street, was the bright red EMERGENCY sign for the Medical Center ER. She had only to make it across that open pavement, and then across Albany Street. Already, the blare of her car horn must be attracting the attention of hospital personnel.
So close. Help is so close.
Heart banging, she rocked onto the balls of her feet. Afraid to move, afraid to stay. Slowly she eased forward and peered around the tire.
Black boots were planted right on the other side of the car.
Run.
In an instant she was sprinting straight for that open pavement. No thought of evasive moves, no dodging left and right, just all-out panicked flight. The red EMERGENCY sign glowed ahead of her. I can make it, she thought. I can—
The bullet was like a slam to her shoulder. It sent her pitching forward, sprawling onto blacktop. She tried to rise to her knees, but her left arm collapsed beneath her. What’s wrong with my arm, she thought, why can’t I use my arm? Groaning, she rolled onto her back and saw the glare of the parking-lot lamp shining above her.
The face of Carmen Ballard moved into view.
“I killed you once,” Carmen said. “Now I have to do it all over again.”
“Please. Rick and I—we never—”
“He wasn’t yours to take.” Carmen raised her gun. The barrel was a dark eye, staring at Maura. “Fucking whore.” Her hand tensed, about to squeeze off the killing shot.
Another voice suddenly cut in—a man’s. “Drop the weapon!”
Carmen blinked in surprise. Glanced sideways.
Standing a few yards away was a hospital security guard, his gun trained on Carmen. “Did you hear me, lady?” he barked. “Drop it!”
Carmen’s aim wavered. She glanced down at Maura, then back at the guard, her rage, her hunger for revenge, battling with the reality of the consequences.
“We were never lovers,” said Maura, her voice so weak she wondered if Carmen could hear it through the far-off bleat of the car horn. “Neither were they.”
“Liar.” Carmen’s gaze snapped back to Maura. “You’re just like her. He left me because of her. He left me.”
“That wasn’t Anna’s fault—”
“Yes it was. And now it’s yours.” She kept her focus on Maura, even as tires screeched to a stop. Even as a new voice yelled:
“Officer Ballard! Drop the weapon!”
Rizzoli.
Carmen glanced sideways, a last calculating look as she weighed her choices. Two weapons were now trained on her. She had lost; no matter what she chose, her life was over. As Carmen stared back down at her, Maura could see, in her eyes, the decision she’d made. Maura watched as Carmen’s arms straightened, steadying her aim on Maura, the barrel poised for its final blast. She watched Carmen’s hands tighten around the grip, preparing to squeeze off the killing shot.
The blast shocked Maura. It knocked Carmen sideways; she staggered. Fell.
Maura heard pounding footsteps, a crescendo of sirens. And a familiar voice murmuring,
“Oh, Jesus. Doc!”
She saw Rizzoli’s face hovering above her. Lights pulsed on the street. All around her shadows approached. Ghosts, welcoming her to their world.
THIRTY-TWO
SEEING IT FROM the other side now. As a patient, not a doctor, the ceiling lights flickering past her as the gurney rolled down the hall, as the nurse in a bouffant cap glanced down, concern in her eyes. The wheels squeaked and the nurse panted a little as she pushed the gurney through double doors, into the operating room. Different lights glared overhead now, harsher, blinding. Like the lights of the autopsy room.
Maura closed her eyes against them. As the OR nurses transferred her to the table, she thought of Anna, lying naked beneath identical lamps, her body carved open, strangers peering down at her. She felt Anna’s spirit hovering above her, watching, just as Maura had once stared down at Anna. My sister, she thought as the pentobarbital slid into her veins, as the lights faded. Are you waiting for me?
But when she awakened, it wasn’t Anna she saw; it was Jane Rizzoli. Slats of daylight glowed through the partially closed blinds, casting bright horizontal bars across Rizzoli’s face as she leaned toward Maura.
“Hey, Doc.”
“Hey,” Maura whispered back.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Not so good. My arm …” Maura winced.
“Looks like it’s time for more drugs.” Rizzoli reached over and pressed the nurse’s call button.
“Thank you. Thank you for everything.”
They fell silent as the nurse came in to inject a dose of morphine into the IV. The silence lingered after the nurse had left, and the drug began to work its magic.
Maura said, softly: “Rick …”
“I’m sorry. You do know he’s …”
I know. She blinked back tears. “We never had a chance.”
“She wasn’t about to let you have a chance. That claw mark in your car door—that was all about him. About staying away from her husband. The slashed screens, the dead bird in the m
ailbox—all the threats Anna blamed on Cassell—I think that was Carmen, trying to scare Anna into leaving town. Into leaving her husband alone.”
“But then Anna came back to Boston.”
Rizzoli nodded. “She came back, because she learned she had a sister.”
Me.
“So Carmen finds out that the girlfriend’s back in town,” said Rizzoli. “Anna left that message on Rick’s answering machine, remember? The daughter heard it and told her mother. There goes any hope Carmen had of a reconciliation. The other woman was moving in again, on her territory. Her family.”
Maura remembered what Carmen had said: He wasn’t yours to take.
“Charles Cassell said something to me, about love,” said Rizzoli. “He said, there’s a kind of love that never lets go, no matter what. It sounds almost romantic, doesn’t it? Till death do us part. Then you think about how many people get killed because a lover won’t let go, won’t give up.”
By now, the morphine had spread through her bloodstream. Maura closed her eyes, welcoming the drug’s embrace. “How did you know?” she murmured. “Why did you think of Carmen?”
“The Black Talon. That’s the clue I should have followed all along—that bullet. But I got thrown off the track by the Lanks. By the Beast.”
“So did I,” whispered Maura. She felt the morphine dragging her toward sleep. “I think I’m ready, Jane. For the answer.”
“The answer to what?”
“Amalthea. I need to know.”
“If she’s your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Even if she is, it doesn’t mean a thing. It’s just biology. What do you gain by that knowledge?”
“The truth.” Maura sighed. “At least I’ll know the truth.”
The truth, thought Rizzoli as she walked to her car, is seldom what people really want to hear. Wouldn’t it be better to hold on to the thinnest sliver of hope that you are not the spawn of monsters? But Maura had asked for the facts, and Rizzoli knew they would be brutal. Already, searchers had found two sets of women’s remains buried on the forested slope, not far from where Mattie Purvis had been confined. How many other pregnant women had known the terrors of that same box? How many had awakened in the darkness and had clawed, shrieking, at those impenetrable walls? How many had understood, as Mattie had, that a terrible finale waited in store for them once their usefulness, as living incubators, was over?
Could I have survived that horror? I’ll never know the answer. Not until I’m the one in the box.
When she reached her car in the parking garage, she found herself checking all four tires to confirm they were intact, found herself scanning the cars around her, searching for anyone who might be watching. This is what the job does to you, she thought; you begin to feel evil all around you, even when it’s not there.
She climbed into her Subaru and started the engine. Sat for a moment as it idled, as the air blowing from the vents slowly cooled down. She reached into her purse for the cell phone, thinking: I need to hear Gabriel’s voice. I need to know that I am not Mattie Purvis, that my husband does love me. The way I love him.
Her call was answered on the first ring. “Agent Dean.”
“Hey,” she said.
Gabriel gave a startled laugh. “I was about to call you.”
“I miss you.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say. I’m heading to the airport now.”
“The airport? Does that mean—”
“I’m catching the next flight to Boston. So how about a date with your husband tonight? Think you can pencil me in?”
“In permanent ink. Just come home. Please, come home.”
A pause. Then he said, softly: “Are you okay, Jane?”
Unexpected tears stung her eyes. “Oh, it’s these goddamn hormones.” She wiped her face and laughed. “I think I need you right now.”
“You hold that thought. Because I’m on my way.”
Rizzoli was smiling as she drove toward Natick to visit a different hospital, a different patient. The other survivor in this tale of slaughter. These are two extraordinary women, she thought, and I’m privileged to know them both.
Judging by all the TV vans in the hospital parking lot, and all the reporters milling near the lobby entrance, the press, too, had decided that Mattie Purvis was a woman worth knowing. Rizzoli had to walk through a gantlet of reporters to get into the lobby. The tale of the lady buried in the box had set off a national news frenzy. Rizzoli had to flash her ID to two different security guards before finally being allowed to knock on Mattie’s hospital room door. When she heard no answer, she stepped into the room.
The TV was on, but with the sound off. Images flickered onscreen, unwatched. Mattie lay in bed, eyes closed, looking nothing like the well-scrubbed young bride in the wedding photo. Her lips were bruised and swollen; her face was a map of nicks and scratches. A coiled IV tube was taped to a hand which had scabbed fingers and broken nails. It looked like the claw of a feral creature. But the expression on Mattie’s face was serene; it was a sleep without nightmares.
“Mrs. Purvis?” said Rizzoli softly.
Mattie opened her eyes and blinked a few times before she fully focused on her visitor. “Oh. Detective Rizzoli, you’re back again.”
“I thought I’d check in on you. How’re you feeling today?”
Mattie gave a deep sigh. “So much better. What time is it?”
“Nearly noon.”
“I’ve slept all morning?”
“You deserve it. No, don’t sit up, just take it easy.”
“But I’m tired of being flat on my back.” Mattie pushed back the covers and sat up, uncombed hair falling in limp tangles.
“I saw your baby through the nursery window. She’s beautiful.”
“Isn’t she?” Mattie smiled. “I’m going to call her Rose. I’ve always liked that name.”
Rose. A shiver went through Rizzoli. It was just a coincidence, one of those unexplainable convergences in the universe. Alice Rose. Rose Purvis. One girl long dead, the other just beginning her life. Yet another thread, however fragile, that connected the lives of two girls across the decades.
“Did you have more questions for me?” Mattie asked.
“Well, actually …” Rizzoli pulled a chair next to the bed and sat down. “I asked you so many things yesterday, Mattie. But I never asked you how you did it. How you managed.”
“Managed?”
“To stay sane. To not give up.”
The smile on Mattie’s lips faded. She looked at Rizzoli with wide, haunted eyes and murmured: “I don’t know how I did it. I never imagined I could ever …” She stopped. “I wanted to live, that’s all. I wanted my baby to live.”
They were quiet for a moment.
Then Rizzoli said: “I should warn you about the press. They’re all going to want a piece of you. I had to walk through a whole mob of them outside. So far, the hospital’s managed to keep them away from you, but when you get home, it’s going to be a different story. Especially since …” Rizzoli paused.
“Since what?”
“I just want you to be prepared, that’s all. Don’t let anyone rush you into something you don’t want to do.”
Mattie frowned. Then her gaze lifted to the muted TV, where the noon news was playing. “He’s been on every channel,” she said.
On the screen, Dwayne Purvis stood before a sea of microphones. Mattie reached for the TV remote and turned up the volume.
“This is the happiest day of my life,” Dwayne said to the crowd of reporters. “I have my wonderful wife and daughter back. It’s been an ordeal I can’t even begin to describe. A nightmare that none of you could possibly imagine. Thank God, thank God for happy endings.”
Mattie pressed the OFF button. But her gaze remained on the blank TV. “It doesn’t feel real,” she said. “It’s like it never happened. That’s why I can sit here and be so calm about it, because I don’t believe I was really there, in that box.
”
“You were, Mattie. It’s going to take time for you to process it. You might have nightmares. Flashbacks. You’ll step into an elevator, or look into a closet, and suddenly you’ll feel like you’re back in the box again. But it will get better, I promise you. Just remember that—it does get better.”
Mattie looked at her with glistening eyes. “You know.”
Yes, I know, thought Rizzoli, her hands closing over the scars on her palms. They were the evidence of her own ordeal, her own battle for sanity. Survival is only the first step.
There was a knock on the door. Rizzoli stood up as Dwayne Purvis walked in, carrying an armful of red roses. He went straight to his wife’s bedside.
“Hey, babe. I would have come up sooner, but it’s a zoo down there. They all wanted interviews.”
“We saw you on TV,” said Rizzoli. Trying to sound neutral, though she could not look at him without remembering the interview at the Natick police station. Oh, Mattie, she thought. You can do better than this man.
He turned to look at Rizzoli, and she saw his tailored shirt, his neatly knotted silk tie. The scent of his aftershave overwhelmed the fragrance of the roses. “So how’d I do?” he asked eagerly.
She told the truth. “You looked like a real pro on TV.”
“Yeah? It’s amazing, all the cameras out there. This has got everyone so excited.” He looked at his wife. “You know, hon, we need to document everything. Just so we have a record of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, right now. This moment. We should have a picture of this moment. Me bringing you flowers as you lie in your hospital bed. I’ve already got pictures of the kid. Had the nurse bring her up to the window. But we need to get close-ups. You holding her, maybe.”
“Her name is Rose.”
“And we don’t have any of you and me together. We definitely need a few photos of us. I brought a camera.”
“My hair isn’t combed, Dwayne. I’m a mess. I don’t want any pictures.”
“Come on. They’re all asking for ’em.”
“Who is? Who are the pictures for?”
“That’s something we can decide later. We can take our time, weigh all the offers. The story’s worth so much more if it comes with photos.” He pulled a camera from his pocket and handed it to Rizzoli. “Here, you mind taking the picture?”
The Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Bundle Page 123
