“Are you Dr. Maura Isles?” the woman asked.
“Yes.”
“She asked me to bring this to you.” The woman handed the box to Maura. It wasn’t heavy, but whatever it contained gave a clatter.
“What is this?” asked Maura.
“I don’t know. I was just asked to deliver it to your house. Merry Christmas, ma’am.” The woman turned and made her way down the steps, onto the icy walkway.
“Wait. Who asked you to bring it?” Maura called out.
The woman did not answer but headed toward a white van that stood idling at the curb. Perplexed, Maura watched the woman climb into the vehicle and drive away.
The bitter cold drove Maura back into the house, and as she nudged the door closed with her foot, she felt the box’s contents shift and rattle. She carried it into the living room and set it on the coffee table. The top was sealed with weathered packing tape and there were no labels, nothing to identify to whom it belonged or what it might contain.
She went to the kitchen for a pair of scissors, and when she returned she found that the cat had climbed on the coffee table and was now pawing at the sealed box, eager to crawl inside.
She slit the tape and pulled open the flaps.
Inside was a jumble of random items that might have come from a thrift-store grab bag: An old ladies’ wristwatch, the hands frozen at 4:15. A plastic bag with costume jewelry. A patent-leather clutch purse, cracked and peeling. Deeper down were a dozen photographs of people she didn’t recognize, posing in various locations. She saw an old farmhouse, a small-town street, a picnic under a tree. Judging by the clothing and hairstyles, these photos had been taken sometime during the 1940s or ’50s. Why would someone send these items to her house?
Reaching deeper, she found an envelope containing more loose photos. She shuffled through the images and suddenly stared at a face she recognized. A face that made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. The photos dropped to the floor, where they lay like a poisonous snake at her feet.
She ran into the kitchen and called Jane.
—
“DID YOU SEE HER LICENSE plate?” asked Jane. “Can you tell me anything that might help me trace the vehicle?”
“It was a white van,” said Maura, pacing her living room. “That’s all I remember.”
“Old, new? Ford, Chevy?”
“You know I can’t tell the difference! All cars look alike to me!” Maura huffed out a breath and sank onto her sofa. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called you on Christmas, but I freaked out. I probably overreacted.”
“Overreacted?” Jane gave a disbelieving laugh. “You just got a creepy Christmas gift delivered right to your front door, sent by a serial killer who’s supposed to be locked up in maximum security. That should alarm the hell out of you. It alarms me. The question is, what does Amalthea want from you?”
Maura stared at the photo that had so rattled her. It was a dark-haired woman standing under a spreading oak tree, her eyes gazing at the camera with unflinching directness. Her white dress was sheer as gauze, showing off her slim waist and slender arms. If this were some stranger’s photo, Maura would consider it a charming image, taken on a pretty country road. But she knew who that young woman was. She hugged herself and said softly, “She looked so much like me….”
As Jane slowly shuffled through the photos, Maura sat silent, focusing instead on the Christmas tree that she’d halfheartedly decorated last week. She still hadn’t opened the gifts underneath it, most of them from her colleagues at the ME’s office. Jane’s gift, wrapped in gaudy purple and silver foil, sat front and center. She had planned to open them all this morning, but the arrival of the cardboard box had swept away any Christmas spirit from this house. Was the box intended as some sort of peace offering? Perhaps Amalthea, using her own twisted logic, thought that Maura would want these keepsakes from her birth family. A family Maura wished she’d never heard of. A family of monsters.
The last of those monsters was now dying a slow and painful death from cancer. When Amalthea’s gone, will I finally be free of them? Maura wondered. Can I go back to thinking of myself as Maura Isles, daughter of the respectable Mr. and Mrs. Isles of San Francisco?
“Jesus. Get a load of the happy family,” said Jane, eyeing a photo with Amalthea, her husband, and their son. “Mommy, Daddy, and little Ted Bundy. The kid definitely looked like her.”
The kid. My murderous brother, thought Maura. The first time she’d laid eyes on him was when she’d examined his corpse. Here in this photo was her bloodline, a family whose trade had been murder for profit. Did Amalthea send her these mementos to remind her that she could never escape who she really was?
“She’s just playing head games again,” said Jane, tossing down the photos. “She must’ve had this box stashed away somewhere, maybe in a storage unit. Then she got that woman to deliver it to you, on Christmas, no less. Too bad you can’t tell me more about the van. Help me find out who that woman was.”
“Even if you knew, what could you do about it? It’s not illegal to drop off a box of photos.”
“This is intimidation. Amalthea’s stalking you.”
“From her bed in the hospital?”
“Maura, this must have upset you; otherwise you wouldn’t have called me.”
“I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Like I’m your last resort? Jesus, I’m the first person you should call. You shouldn’t be dealing with this all by yourself. And what is this, spending Christmas alone, just you and that damn cat? I swear, next year I’m gonna drag you to dinner at my mom’s.”
“Gee, that sounds like fun.”
Jane sighed. “Tell me what you’d like me to do about this box.”
Maura looked down at the cat, who was rubbing up against her leg, feigning affection in hopes of another meal. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I am gonna do. I’ll make sure Amalthea can’t do this again. Obviously she’s got people on the outside running errands for her. I’m gonna lock that woman down so tight, she won’t ever be able to reach you.”
A sudden thought made Maura freeze, a thought so disturbing it sent a chill up her neck. Even the cat seemed to sense the disturbance, and it watched her with new alertness. “What if Amalthea wasn’t the one who sent this?”
“Who else would send it? Her husband’s dead. Her son’s dead. There’s no one else alive in that family.”
Maura turned to Jane. “Are we sure of that?”
THE WEEK AFTER CHRISTMAS IS not officially a holiday week, but it might as well be if you work in the PR biz as I do. No one is answering my phone calls or emails today. None of my usual newspaper contacts want to hear about the scandalous new memoir by the TV celebrity who just happens to be my god-awful client. This last week in December is a dead zone when it comes to selling books or pitching stories about books, but this happens to be the week that the memoir by Miss Victoria Avalon, reality-TV star, has been tossed into the marketplace. Of course, Miss Avalon did not really write her book, because she’s close to illiterate. A reliable ghostwriter was hired for the task, a woman named Beth who turns in clean if uninspired copy and always delivers on time. Beth hates Victoria, or so it’s rumored. As a book publicist, I’m privy to a lot of inside gossip, and this particular nugget is almost certainly true, because Victoria is eminently hateable. I hate her too. But I also admire her for her who-gives-a-fuck-what-you-think attitude, because that’s exactly the attitude you need to get ahead in the world. In that way, Victoria and I are alike. I really don’t give a fuck either; I just do a better job of hiding it.
In fact, I’m superb at hiding it.
And so I sit at my desk, a smile on my face, as I explain to Victoria over the phone why none of the hoped-for interviews we pitched to radio or TV have come through. This is because it’s only a few days after Christmas, I tell her, and everyone’s still too stuffed with turkey and booze to return my calls. Yes, Victoria, it’s an o
utrage. Yes, Victoria, everyone knows how big a name you are. (Your tits appeared in Esquire! You were married to a New England Patriots tight end for a grand total of eight months!) Victoria thinks it’s my fault the publicity isn’t rolling in the door for her, my fault that those stacks and stacks of her (actually Beth’s) book aren’t moving in Barnes & Noble.
I keep smiling even when she starts to yell at me. It’s important to smile even while on the phone, because people can hear the smile in your voice. It’s also important because my boss, Mark, is watching me from his desk, and I can’t let him see that our client is going ballistic and will probably fire Booksmart Media as her publicity firm. I’m smiling as she calls me a stupid little Barbie. I’m even smiling as she slams down the phone.
Mark says, “Is she upset?”
“Yes. She expected to be on the bestseller list.”
He snorts. “They all expect that. You handled her well.”
I don’t know if he’s flattering me or if he means it. We both know that Victoria Avalon is never going to be on any bestseller list. And we both know that I’ll be blamed for it.
I need to get her some press coverage for her stupid book, ASAP. I turn to my computer to see if Victoria’s name has turned up anywhere in any media. Even a gossip column will do. I wake up the screen and the Boston Globe home page lights up. That’s when I spot the latest news—not about Victoria, who I suddenly don’t give a fuck about. No, this is a front-page story about the dead young man found on the pier at Jeffries Point a few nights ago. On TV yesterday, they reported that the victim was shot with arrows. The police now know the man’s name.
“Maybe we should pitch her book to Arthur again,” says Mark. “I think he just needs a nudge. Her memoir is tangentially related to football, and I can see it showing up in his sports column.”
I look up at Mark. “What?”
“Victoria was married to that football guy. It’s an angle for a sports columnist, don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry.” I grab my purse and jump out of my chair. “I need to run out for a while.”
“Okay. Nothing seems to be happening today anyway. But if you get a chance to review that press packet we’re sending out for Alison Reeve’s book—”
I don’t hear the rest of what he says, because I am already running out the door.
THEY NOW KNEW THE DEAD man’s name. Stretched out on the autopsy table was Timothy McDougal, age twenty-five, an unmarried accountant who lived in Boston’s North End. The tips of the three arrows were still embedded in his chest, but Yoshima had cut off the fletch ends with bolt cutters, leaving only metal stubs protruding from the flesh. Even so, cutting the Y incision was a challenge, and Maura’s scalpel sketched a crooked line down the chest as she avoided cutting into the puncture wounds. The angle of each arrow’s penetration had already been captured on X-ray, where it was obvious that one of the arrows had penetrated the descending aorta. It certainly would have qualified as a mortal wound.
Except for the fact this man was already dead when that arrow pierced his chest.
The morgue door opened and Jane walked in, tying on her face mask. “Frost won’t be coming. He’s visiting the victim’s sister again. She’s taking this pretty hard. Worst Christmas ever.”
Maura looked down at the corpse of Timothy McDougal, who was last seen alive on the afternoon of December 24, when he’d cheerfully waved to his neighbor as he walked out of his apartment building. The next morning, he was expected at his younger sister’s house in Brookline for Christmas brunch. He never appeared. By then the report of a young man’s body on Jeffries Point was already on the news, and, fearing the worst, the sister called the police.
“Their parents are both dead, and he was her only sibling,” said Jane. “Imagine being only twenty-two and having no family left in the world.”
Maura put down the scalpel and picked up pruning shears. “What did you learn from the sister? Any leads?”
“She insists Tim had no enemies and he’s never been in trouble. Best big brother ever. Everybody loved him.”
“Except for whoever shot him with these arrows,” Yoshima said.
Maura finished snapping apart the ribs, and she lifted the sternal shield. Frowning into the exposed cavity, she asked, “Any history of drug use?”
“Sister says absolutely not. He was a health-food nut.”
“Any drugs turn up in his residence?”
“Frost and I went through his apartment inch by inch. It’s just a studio, so there wasn’t much to search. We found no drugs, no paraphernalia, not even a baggie of weed. Just some wine in the fridge and a bottle of tequila in the cabinet. This guy was so clean he would’ve squeaked.”
“Or so everyone believes.”
“Yeah.” Jane shrugged. “You never know what the truth is.”
Every human being had secrets, and too often it was Maura who uncovered them: The upstanding citizen found dead with child porn clutched in his lifeless hand. Or the perfect society wife with the syringe of heroin and a needle still embedded in her arm. Timothy McDougal almost certainly had secrets as well, and now Maura had to uncover the most baffling secret of all.
What killed you?
Staring into the open thorax, she could not yet discern the answer, although the cause of death had seemed apparent judging by the X-rays. Now that the chest was open, she could see the arrow itself, could feel the steel tip poking through the aorta wall. The descending aorta was the major highway through which all blood bound for the lower body flowed. Rupture it and blood will pulse out like a cannon, propelled by every heartbeat. If this man had died of internal exsanguination, she should be looking at a cavity filled with blood, but there was not enough pooled in here. Which told her that by the time the arrow penetrated his aorta, his heart had already stopped beating.
“I can see by your face that there’s some kind of problem,” said Jane.
Maura’s answer was to reach for the scalpel. She did not like uncertainty, and she began to cut with new urgency. Out came a healthy young man’s heart and lungs. She saw no coronary disease, no emphysema, no evidence that he had ever abused cigarettes. The liver and spleen were disease-free, and the pancreas should have provided him with a lifetime’s worth of insulin.
She placed the stomach on the dissection tray and slit it open. Out spilled brown liquid with the strong stench of alcohol. She paused, scalpel hovering above the tray, suddenly struck by the memory of another incised stomach. Another whiff of alcohol. “Whiskey,” she said.
“So he was drinking before he died.”
Maura looked at Jane. “Does that remind you of another victim?”
“You’re thinking of Cassandra Coyle.”
“She had wine in her stomach. I couldn’t find the cause of her death either. Is alcohol a common denominator here? Something delivered in a drink?”
“We canvassed all the bars in Cassandra’s neighborhood. Every place within walking distance.”
“And no one remembered seeing her?”
“One waitress said Cassandra’s photo looked familiar, but she said the woman she thought was Cassandra was drinking with another woman. She didn’t remember any man with her.”
“Did these two victims know each other? Have the same circle of friends?”
Jane considered this. “I’m not aware of any connection. They lived in different neighborhoods, worked in completely different jobs.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Frost should still be with Tim’s sister. Let’s find out if she knew Cassandra.”
As Jane spoke with Frost, Maura spread open the stomach, revealing no trace of undigested food. When the victim was last seen, it was a holiday afternoon, when a single young man might meet friends for a drink before dinner. Cassandra Coyle’s stomach had been preprandial as well, containing only traces of wine. Was drinks with friends the common factor?
She looked at Yoshima. “Do we have the tox screen back yet for Cassandra Coyle?”
“It hasn’t been
two weeks, but I marked it expedite. Let me check,” he said, and crossed to the computer.
Jane hung up her phone. “Timothy’s sister says she’s never heard the name Cassandra Coyle. And I can’t really think of any connection between these two victims, except for the fact they were both young, healthy, and drank booze before they died.”
“And they were both mutilated postmortem.”
Jane paused. “Well, yeah. There’s that.”
“Got it,” called out Yoshima. “Cassandra Coyle’s tox screen came back positive for alcohol. And for ketamine.”
“Ketamine?” Maura crossed to the computer and stared at the report. “Blood alcohol’s point zero four. Ketamine level is two milligrams per liter.”
“Isn’t that a date-rape drug?” said Jane.
“Actually, it’s an anesthetic, sometimes used for date rape. But I found no evidence that Cassandra was raped.”
“So now we know what killed her,” said Jane.
“No, we don’t.” Maura looked up from the computer. “She didn’t die from ketamine. This blood level is in the therapeutic range for anesthesia. It’s enough to incapacitate but not high enough to kill a healthy young woman.”
“Maybe she was given a drug you didn’t screen for.”
“I screened for everything I could think of.”
“Then what killed her, Maura?”
“I don’t know.” Maura returned to the table and stared at Timothy McDougal. “I don’t know what killed this man either. We now have two young victims with no apparent cause of death.” Maura shook her head. “I’m missing something.”
“You never miss anything.”
“If our killer uses alcohol and ketamine to incapacitate his victims, what does he do next? They’re unconscious and vulnerable. How does he kill them, without leaving any trace of—” Abruptly she turned to Yoshima. “Let’s get out the CrimeScope. Before I do any more dissection, I want to examine his face.”