She drove straight home, hands shaking as she clutched the wheel. Only when she was in her garage, the door safely closed, did her breathing begin to steady, her heart to slow.
Inside the house, the first thing she did was call Jane.
“Harry O’Brien,” she said. “Did you question him?”
“Of course we did,” said Jane. “How do you even know about O’Brien?”
“I know he once threatened Scanlon. It made the newspapers, after Kitty O’Brien’s suicide. Jane, I think he’s involved. I recognized his voice.”
“You spoke to him? What the hell are you doing, getting in the middle of an investigation?”
“We met by accident, in Olmsted Park. I went to the death scene, to see if I remembered anything, and O’Brien was there. We had a few words, and I had this—this sudden flash of recognition. I’ve heard his voice before, Jane. Maybe it was that night.”
“Saturday?”
“It’s possible, isn’t it? Even though there’s so much I don’t remember, there could be bits and pieces that I did retain. A face, a voice.”
“It couldn’t have been O’Brien that night. He had an alibi.”
“You’re absolutely sure it’s real?”
“He was visiting a friend in Swampscott. Frost and I interviewed her, and she swears O’Brien was at her house till midnight.”
“Is she reliable?”
“She’s an architect. Her mother was there that night, too. Apparently the evening was some sort of matchmaking plot to pair Mom off with Harry. It’s rock-solid, Maura.”
But even as she hung up, Maura could not shake off the certainty that she’d heard Harry O’Brien’s voice that night.
She sat on her living room sofa and stretched out on the cushions, trying to call up another memory. Here was where she’d awakened Sunday morning. The night before, someone had laid her on this sofa. Had words been spoken, words that she might still remember? She closed her eyes.
The doorbell rang.
She snapped straight, heart slamming against her chest. She forced herself to rise from the sofa and peeked through the glass panel.
A dark-haired young woman, pretty and petite, stood on the porch.
Maura took a deep breath and felt the tension go out of her. She opened the door. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” the woman said, “but I’m trying to find David Chatworth’s house. I know he lives around here somewhere, but my cell phone just died. Could I borrow your phone book?”
“Of course. Hold on,” said Maura. She turned toward the kitchen, where she kept the phone directory. Made it only halfway up the hall when she heard the front door suddenly slam shut.
Footsteps closed in behind her.
Jane sat at her desk, troubled by her conversation with Maura. Flash of recognition was how Maura had described her reaction to O’Brien, a certainty that she’d met him. But it couldn’t have happened on Saturday night, because O’Brien was at his friend’s house in Swampscott.
She pulled out her file on their interview with Monica Vargas, the woman whom O’Brien had been visiting. Thirty-five years old and an architect, she lived alone in an impressive house with a view of the sea. She had been definite about O’Brien’s visit, had told Jane and Frost that O’Brien arrived around six pm, dined with Monica and her mother, and the three of them had watched Woody Allen DVDs. Around midnight, O’Brien left her house. Monica had offered the police her mother’s phone number, should they need further corroboration.
Yes, a rock-solid alibi.
But now, thinking back to that interview, Jane recalled details about Monica that suddenly seemed significant. Her poise, her beauty. An attractive female professional, confident and accomplished.
Like Sarah Shapiro and Kitty O’Brien. Like Maura Isles.
She spun around to her computer and was just about to do a background check on Monica Vargas when her phone rang.
“We finally got into Scanlon’s TracFone,” said Frost.
“We have access to his calls?”
“We have everything. And you won’t believe what’s here.”
She saw the excitement on Frost’s face when she walked into the crime lab. He sat in front of a computer screen as a printer churned out pages of documents.
“He hardly made any calls on this phone,” he said. “But he did use it to send text messages.” He pointed to the computer screen. “We’ve got them all here, dating back four years. About a dozen of them. And they were all sent to the same recipient.”
Jane frowned at the date of the most recent text. “Scanlon sent one Saturday night. Eight thirty pm.”
“Look at what he wrote.” Frost clicked on the body of the text, and one sentence appeared. It was an address in Brookline. Maura’s.
“This is how Scanlon told his partner where to find the next catch,” she said, and she gave Frost an excited slap on the back. “We’ve got the second perp!”
“Wait. You need to see something else. The other texts.” He scrolled down the list. “See the dates? This one here, eighteen months ago, corresponds to the attack on Sarah Shapiro. And this one, just before it, was Kitty O’Brien.”
“So we have a record of every attack. Every victim’s address.”
“Right. Now look at this one.” He clicked on a text from nine months earlier.
Jane stared at the address. Swampscott. “It’s Monica Vargas! She was a victim, too?”
“Only she never reported it,” said Frost. “And Julia Chan, the woman who gave Sarah Shapiro her alibi? Her address is in here as well. Somehow, these women managed to connect. They found each other. We’ve got a whole nest of victims here, and they’re covering for each other. We can’t trust anyone’s alibi.”
“Which means Harry O’Brien could have killed Scanlon. He could have been … oh, Jesus.” Jane snatched up her cell phone.
“What?”
“Maura spoke to Harry O’Brien this evening. She recognized him.”
“Does he know that?”
Jane hung up. “She’s not answering her phone.”
It was dark when they arrived at Maura’s house. There were no lights on inside, and the front door was unlocked. Jane and Frost glanced at each other, a grim acknowledgment of what could very well await them. They both drew their weapons, and Jane gave the door a nudge. She slipped through first, moved into the living room.
Suddenly a lamp came on. Jane froze.
Harry O’Brien stood clutching Maura as a shield in front of him, his gun pressed to her temple.
“Drop it, O’Brien!” Jane ordered, her weapon raised. She heard Frost move beside her, caught a peripheral view of his gun, clutched in both hands.
“We don’t want violence, Detective,” another voice said, and Jane glanced in surprise at Sarah Shapiro, who rose to her feet from the armchair. “Harry just wants to settle things, once and for all.”
“By killing a witness?” said Jane. “The one person who remembers he was here that night?” She looked at O’Brien. “You were stalking Scanlon. Oh, it was in the name of justice, I get that. The scum deserved to die, and any jury will sympathize.”
“I don’t want to go to jail,” he said.
“You should’ve thought of that before you stabbed him.”
“Did I?” He shook his head. “I told you, I was with a friend that night.”
“She’s covering for you. That alibi will fall apart.”
“No, it won’t. We built a fortress, Detective. You just haven’t realized it yet, because you haven’t finished your job.”
“I know you’re all in this together. And I know this is not helping your case.” She tightened her grip on the Glock. “Drop the gun.”
“Why? I have nothing to lose.”
“Your life?”
O’Brien’s laugh was bitter. “My life is over. It ended when Kitty died. I’m just tying up loose ends.”
“Like Scanlon?”
“And his partner.”
He knows there’s a second man. “We will find that partner, Harry. I swear we will. And he’ll pay.”
“Oh, I know you’ll find him.”
“Drop the gun and we’ll talk. We’ll work on finding him together. We’ll see justice done.”
He seemed to weigh her words, and she saw the struggle in his eyes. The indecision. “It never comes soon enough,” he said softly.
“What doesn’t?”
“Justice. Sometimes you have to give it a nudge.” With that, he pushed Maura so hard that she went sprawling against the sofa. He raised his gun, and the barrel was aimed directly at Jane.
Gunfire exploded as both Jane and Frost opened fire. The bullets punched into O’Brien’s chest, sent him slamming backward against the bookcase. He leaned there staring at them for a moment, an odd smile on his lips, the gun already falling from his hand. Slowly he slid down to the floor, and Sarah dropped to her knees beside him, sobbing, screaming.
He had not fired a single shot.
Maura crouched over the body, felt for a pulse, and began CPR. But staring into O’Brien’s eyes, Jane saw the light fade away. And she knew there was nothing left to save.
A day later, they found the body.
They tracked down the recipient of Scanlon’s text messages, and it led them to the handsome Newton residence of William Heathcote, age forty-two. There they found Mr. Heathcote slumped in the driver’s seat of his silver Mercedes, which was parked inside his garage. He had been dead for several days, which meant he could well have died the same night as Scanlon. The cause of death was immediately apparent: a single gunshot to the right temple. A Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter pistol, reportedly stolen in Miami a year before, was in his hand.
In the Mercedes trunk was a plastic bag containing two chefs’ knives, both covered in dried blood.
It was almost certainly Scanlon’s blood, thought Jane as she watched the CSU team tag the evidence. No case could come more prettily tied up with a bow. The evidence was all there to help the police draw the obvious conclusion: Heathcote stabbed Scanlon to death in Olmsted Park, then drove home and committed suicide. In a single bloody evening, two predators met their end.
Jane didn’t believe it for a second; neither did Maura.
They stood together in Heathcote’s driveway, watching as the Boston PD tow truck pulled away with the Mercedes, bound for the crime lab. It was late afternoon, dark clouds were moving in, and the air felt prickly with impending thunder.
But for Maura, the storm had already passed. “Harry was a hero, Jane,” she said. “He never meant to hurt me. He came to my house without a single bullet in that gun.”
“We didn’t know that. We had no choice.”
“Of course you had no choice. It was supposed to happen this way. He wanted to go out with a blaze of publicity, so his daughter would be remembered. And he wouldn’t have to face any questions.” Maura paused. “He had cancer.”
“Harry told you that?”
“No. Dr. Bristol did the autopsy this morning. Harry’s body was riddled with tumors. I think he knew he was dying, and he chose this way to end it.”
Leaving me with the nightmares, thought Jane, looking up at the darkening sky. Taking a man’s life leaves a stain on your soul, even if you’re forced to do it. Even if the man you kill wants you to pull that trigger.
“We both know it was a conspiracy,” said Jane. “Harry and those victims, they planned this together. They covered for each other. For all I know, they each took their turn stabbing Christopher Scanlon. Fifteen stab wounds, two different knives? And not a single fingerprint.” Jane sighed in frustration. “I know what happened, I just can’t prove it.”
“Do you really want to?”
“You’re the one who’s always hung up on the facts, the truth. But you’re willing to ignore the truth of this case?”
“I could have been a victim, too. I was like a staked goat, drugged and laid out on my sofa, where anything could have been done to me. But it never happened because they stopped it. I don’t know which of them was there in my house, or how many. All I know is that this time, the victims fought back. They caught and killed two monsters.” Maura looked straight at her. “And they saved me.”
Maybe that’s worth more than any truth, thought Jane as she watched Maura climb into her Lexus and drive away. And she remembered what Harry O’Brien had said: Justice. Sometimes you have to give it a nudge.
That you did, Mr. O’Brien. That you did.
Rizzoli & Isles: Die Again is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Tess Gerritsen
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Gerritsen, Tess.
Rizzoli & Isles : die again : a novel / Tess Gerritsen.
pages; cm.—(Rizzoli & Isles)
ISBN 978-0-345-54385-1
eBook ISBN 978-0-345-54386-8
1. Rizzoli, Jane, Detective (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Isles, Maura (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Policewomen—Fiction. 4. Women forensic scientists—Fiction.
I. Title. II. Title: Die again.
PS3557.E687R585 2014 813′.54—dc23 2014032292
www.ballantinebooks.com
Jacket design: Scott Biel
Jacket image: © Lauren Bates/Flickr/Getty Images
v3.1
Contents
Master - Table of Contents
Die Again
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Dedication
Acknowledgments
ONE
OKAVANGO DELTA, BOTSWANA
IN THE SLANTING LIGHT OF DAWN I SPOT IT, SUBTLE AS A WATERMARK, pressed into the bare patch of dirt. Were it midday, when the African sun glares down hot and bright, I might have missed it entirely, but in early morning, even the faintest dips and depressions cast shadows, and as I emerge from our tent that lone footprint catches my eye. I crouch down beside it and feel a sudden chill when I realize that only a thin layer of canvas shielded us while we slept.
Richard emerges through the tent flap and gives a happy grunt as he stands and stretches, inhaling the scents of dew-laden grass and wood smoke and breakfast cooking on the campfire. The smells of Africa. This adventure is Richard’s dream;
it has always been Richard’s, not mine. I’m the good-sport girlfriend whose default mode is Of course I’ll do it, darling. Even when it means twenty-eight hours and three different planes, from London to Johannesburg to Maun and then into the bush, the last plane a rickety crate flown by a hung-over pilot. Even when it means two weeks in a tent, swatting mosquitoes and peeing behind bushes.
Even if it means I could die, which is what I’m thinking as I stare down at that footprint, pressed into the dirt barely three feet from where Richard and I were sleeping last night.
“Smell the air, Millie!” Richard crows. “Nowhere else does it smell like this!”
“There was a lion here,” I say.
“I wish I could bottle it and bring it home. What a souvenir that would be. The smell of the bush!”
He isn’t listening to me. He’s too high on Africa, too wrapped up in his great-white-adventurer fantasy where everything is brilliant and fantastic, even last night’s meal of tinned pork and beans, which he declared the “splendid-est supper ever!”
I repeat, louder: “There was a lion here, Richard. It was right next to our tent. It could have clawed its way in.” I want to alarm him, want him to say, Oh my God, Millie, this is serious.
Instead he blithely calls out to the nearest members of our group: “Hey, come take a look! We had a lion here last night!”
First to join us are the two girls from Cape Town, whose tent is pitched beside ours. Sylvia and Vivian have Dutch last names that I can neither spell nor pronounce. They’re both in their twenties, tan and long-legged and blond, and at first I had trouble telling them apart, until Sylvia finally snapped at me in exasperation: “It’s not like we’re twins, Millie! Can’t you see that Vivian has blue eyes and I have green?” As the girls kneel on either side of me to examine the paw print, I notice that they smell different, too. Vivian-with-the-blue-eyes smells like sweet grass, the fresh, unsoured scent of youth. Sylvia smells like the citronella lotion she’s always slathering on to repel the mosquitoes, because DEET is a poison. You do know that, don’t you? They flank me like blond-goddess bookends, and I can’t help but see that Richard is once again eyeing Sylvia’s cleavage, which is so blatantly displayed in her low-cut tank top. For a girl so conscientious about coating herself in mosquito repellent, she exposes an alarming amount of bitable skin.
The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle Page 311
