“Our evening shift nurse is running a little late, so I hope you don’t mind sitting here while I keep an eye on Randall,” said Lauren. “We moved him into this room because he’s always loved the sea. Now he can look at it all the time.” She reached for a tissue and gently dabbed the drool from his mouth. “There. There, now.” She turned and looked at the two detectives. “You see why I didn’t want to drive all the way up to Boston. I don’t like to leave him for too long with the nurses. He gets agitated. He can’t talk, but I know he misses me when I’m gone.”
Lauren sat back down in the armchair and focused on Frost. “Have you made any progress with the investigation?”
Once again, it was Rizzoli who responded, determined to hold this woman’s attention, and irritated that it kept slipping away from her.
“We’re following some new leads,” she said.
“But you didn’t drive all the way to Hyannis just to tell me that.”
“No. We came to talk about some issues we felt more comfortable handling in person.”
“And you wanted to look us over, I imagine.”
“We wanted a sense of Camille’s background. Her family.”
“Well, here we are.” Lauren waved her arm. “This is the house she grew up in. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? Why she’d leave this for a convent. Randall gave her everything any girl could ask for. A brand-new BMW for her birthday. Her own pony. A closet full of dresses that she hardly ever wore. Instead, she chose to wear black for the rest of her life. She chose . . .” Lauren shook her head. “We still don’t get it.”
“You were both unhappy about her decision?”
“Oh, I could live with it. After all, it was her life. But Randall never accepted it. He kept hoping she’d change her mind. That she’d get tired of whatever it is nuns do all day, and she’d finally come home.” She looked at her husband, lying mute in the bed. “I think that’s why he had his stroke. She was his only child, and he couldn’t believe she left him.”
“What about Camille’s birth mother, Mrs. Maginnes? You told me on the phone that she was dead.”
“Camille was only eight years old when it happened.”
“When what happened?”
“Well, they called it an accidental overdose, but are any of those really accidents? Randall had already been widowed several years when I met him. I guess you could call us a reconstituted family. I have two sons from my first marriage, and Randall had Camille.”
“How long have you and Randall been married?”
“Almost seven years now.” She looked at her husband. Added, with a note of resignation, “For better or for worse.”
“Were you and your stepdaughter close? Did she share much with you?”
“Camille?” Lauren shook her head. “I have to be perfectly honest. We never really bonded, if that’s what you’re asking. She was already thirteen when I met Randall, and you know what kids are like at that age. They want nothing to do with adults. It’s not that she treated me like her evil stepmother or anything. We just didn’t, well, connect, I guess. I made the effort, I really did, but she was always so . . .” Lauren suddenly stopped, as though afraid she’d say something she shouldn’t.
“What’s the word you’re looking for, Mrs. Maginnes?”
Lauren thought about it. “Strange,” she said finally. “Camille was strange.” She looked at her husband, who was staring at her, and quickly said, “I’m sorry, Randall. I know it’s awful for me to say that, but these are policemen. They want to hear the truth.”
“What do you mean by strange?” asked Frost.
“You know how, when you walk into a party, you sometimes spot someone who’s standing all alone?” said Lauren. “Someone who won’t look you in the eye? She was always off by herself in a corner, or hiding out in her room. It never occurred to us what she was doing up there. Praying! Down on her knees and praying. Reading those books she got from one of the Catholic girls at school. We’re not even Catholic, we’re Presbyterians. But there she was, locked in her room. Whipping herself with a belt, can you believe it? To make herself pure. Where do they get such ideas?”
Outside, the wind sprayed sea salt on the windows. Randall Maginnes gave a soft moan. Rizzoli noticed that he was looking straight at her. She gazed back at him, wondering how much of this conversation he understood. Full comprehension would be the greater curse, she thought. To know everything that was going on around you. To know your daughter, your only natural child, is dead. To know your wife feels burdened by your care. To know that the terrible odor you’re forced to inhale is your own.
She heard footsteps and turned to see two young men walk into the room. Clearly they were Lauren’s sons, with the same reddish-brown hair, the same handsome features stamped on their faces. Though both were dressed casually in jeans and crew-neck sweaters, they managed, like their mother, to project stylish confidence. Thoroughbreds, thought Rizzoli.
She reached out to shake their hands. Did it firmly, establishing her authority. “I’m Detective Rizzoli,” she said.
“My sons, Blake and Justin,” said Lauren. “They’re home from college for the holidays.”
My sons, she had said. Not our sons. In this family, reconstitution had not completely blended the lines of love. Even after seven years of marriage, her sons were still hers, and Randall’s daughter was his.
“These are our two budding lawyers in the family,” said Lauren. “With all the arguments they have around the dinner table, they’ve had plenty of practice for the courtroom.”
“Discussions, Mom,” said Blake. “We call them discussions.”
“Sometimes I can’t tell the difference.”
The boys sat down with the easy grace of athletes, and looked at Rizzoli, as though expecting the entertainment to begin.
“In college, huh?” she said. “Where do you boys go?”
“I’m at Amherst,” said Blake. “And Justin’s at Bowdoin.”
Both within easy driving distance to Boston.
“And you want to be lawyers? Both of you?”
“I’ve already got my application in to law schools,” said Blake. “I’m thinking of entertainment law. Maybe work out in California. I’m getting a minor in film studies, so I think I’m laying a pretty good foundation for it.”
“Yeah, and he wants to hang out with cute actresses, too,” said Justin. For that comment, he got a playful jab in the ribs. “Well, he does!”
Rizzoli wondered about two brothers who could exchange such lighthearted banter while their stepsister lay, so recently deceased, in the morgue.
She asked, “When did you two last see your sister?”
Blake and Justin looked at each other. Said, almost in unison, “Grandma’s funeral.”
“That was in March?” She looked at Lauren. “When Camille came home for a visit?”
Lauren nodded. “We had to petition the church to let her come home for the services. It’s like asking for a prisoner’s parole. I couldn’t believe it when they didn’t let her come home again in April, after Randall had his stroke. Her own father! And she just accepted their decision. Just did what they told her to do. You have to wonder what goes on inside those convents, that they’re so afraid to let them out. What sorts of abuse they’re hiding. But that’s probably why she liked being there.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because it’s what she craved. Punishment. Pain.”
“Camille?”
“I told you, Detective, she was strange. When she was sixteen, she took off her shoes and went walking barefoot. In January. It was ten degrees outside! The maid found her standing in the snow. Of course, all our neighbors soon heard about it as well. We had to take her to the hospital for frostbite. She told the doctor she did it because the saints had suffered, and she wanted to feel pain, too. She thought it would bring her closer to God.” Lauren shook her head. “What can you do with a girl like that?”
Love her, thought Rizzoli. Tr
y to understand her.
“I wanted her to see a psychiatrist, but Randall wouldn’t hear of it. He never, ever admitted that his own daughter was . . .” Lauren paused.
“Just say it, Mom,” said Blake. “She was crazy. That’s what we all thought.”
Camille’s father made a soft moan.
Lauren rose to wipe another thread of drool from his mouth. “Where is that nurse, anyway? She was supposed to be here at three.”
“When Camille came home in March, how long did she stay?” asked Frost.
Lauren looked at him, distracted. “About a week. She could have stayed longer, but she chose to go back to the convent early.”
“Why?”
“I guess she didn’t like being around all these people. We had a lot of my relatives up from Newport for the funeral.”
“You did tell us she was reclusive.”
“That’s an understatement.”
Rizzoli asked, “Did she have many friends, Mrs. Maginnes?”
“If she did, she never brought any of them home to meet us.”
“How about at school?” Rizzoli looked at the two boys, who glanced at each other.
Justin said, with unnecessary callousness, “Only the wallflower crowd.”
“I meant boyfriends.”
Lauren gave a startled laugh. “Boyfriends? When all she dreamed about was becoming the bride of Christ?”
“She was an attractive young woman,” said Rizzoli. “Maybe you didn’t see it, but I’m sure there were boys who noticed it. Boys who were interested in her.” She looked at Lauren’s sons.
“No one wanted to go out with her,” said Justin. “They’d get laughed at.”
“And when she came home, in March? Did she spend time with any friends? Did any men seem particularly interested in her?”
“Why do you keep asking about boyfriends?” said Lauren.
Rizzoli could think of no way to avoid revealing the truth. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this. But shortly before Camille was murdered, she bore a child. A baby who died at birth.” She looked at the brothers.
They stared back at her with equally stunned expressions.
For a moment, the only sound in the room was the wind whipping off the sea, rattling the windows.
Lauren said, “Haven’t you been reading the news? All those terrible things the priests have been doing? She’s been in a convent for the last two years! She’s been under their supervision, their authority. You should talk to them.”
“We’ve already questioned the one priest who had access to the convent. He willingly gave us his DNA. Those tests are pending.”
“So you don’t even know yet if he’s the father. Why bother us with these questions?”
“The baby would have been conceived sometime in March, Mrs. Maginnes. The month she came home for that funeral.”
“And you think that it happened here?”
“You had a house full of guests.”
“What are you asking me to do? Call up every man who happened to visit here that week? ‘Oh by the way, did you sleep with my stepdaughter?’ ”
“We have the infant’s DNA. With your help, we might be able to identify the father.”
Lauren shot to her feet. “I’d like you to leave now.”
“Your stepdaughter’s dead. Don’t you want us to find her killer?”
“You’re looking in the wrong place.” She walked to the doorway and called out: “Maria! Can you show these policemen out?”
“DNA would give us the answer, Mrs. Maginnes. With just a few swabs, we could put all suspicions to rest.”
Lauren turned and faced her. “Then start with the priests. And leave my family alone.”
Rizzoli slid into the car and pulled the door shut. As Frost warmed the engine, she gazed at the house, and remembered how impressed she’d been when she’d caught her first glimpse of it.
Before she had met the people inside.
“Now I know why Camille left home,” she said. “Imagine growing up in that house. With those brothers. With that stepmother.”
“They seemed a lot more upset about our questions than about the girl’s death.”
As they drove through the granite pillars, Rizzoli took one last backward look at the house. Imagined a young girl, gliding like a wraith among those vast rooms. A girl derided by her stepbrothers, ignored by her stepmother. A girl whose hopes and dreams are ridiculed by those who are supposed to love her. Every day in that house would bring another punishing blow to your soul, more painful than the sting of frostbite as you walk barefoot in the snow. You want to be closer to God, to know the unconditional warmth of His love. For that they laugh at you, or pity you, or tell you that you’re a candidate for the psychiatrist’s couch.
No wonder the walls of the convent had seemed so welcoming.
Rizzoli sighed and turned to look at the road that stretched ahead. “Let’s go home,” she said.
“This diagnosis has me stumped,” said Maura.
She laid out a series of digital photographs on the conference room table. Her four colleagues did not so much as flinch at the images, for they had all seen far worse sights in the autopsy lab than these views of rat-bitten skin and angry nodules. They seemed far more focused on the box of fresh blueberry muffins that Louise had brought in that morning for case conference, an offering that the doctors were happily devouring, even as they stared at stomach-turning photos. Those who work with the dead learn to keep the sights and smells of their jobs from ruining their appetites, and among the pathologists now seated at the table was one known to be particularly fond of seared foie gras, a pleasure undimmed by the fact he dissected human livers by day. Judging by his ample belly, nothing ruined Dr. Abe Bristol’s appetite, and he happily munched on his third muffin as Maura set down the last of the images.
“This is your Jane Doe?” asked Dr. Costas.
Maura nodded. “Female, approximate age thirty to forty-five, with a gunshot wound to the chest. She was found about thirty-six hours after death inside an abandoned building. There was postmortem excision of the face, as well as amputations of the hands and the feet.”
“Whoa. There’s a sick boy for you.”
“It’s these skin lesions that stump me,” she said, gesturing to the array of photos. “The rodents did some damage, but there’s enough intact skin left to see the gross appearance of these underlying lesions.”
Dr. Costas picked up one of the photos. “I’m no expert,” he said solemnly, “but I’d call this a classic case of red bumps.”
Everyone laughed. Physicians flummoxed by skin lesions often resorted to simply describing the skin’s appearance, without knowing its cause. Red bumps could be caused by anything from a viral infection to autoimmune disease, and few skin lesions are unique enough to point to an immediate diagnosis.
Dr. Bristol stopped chewing his muffin long enough to point to one of the photos and say, “You’ve got some ulcerations here.”
“Yes, some of the nodules have shallow ulcerations with crust formation. And a few have the silvery scales you’d see in psoriasis.”
“Bacterial cultures?”
“Nothing unusual is growing out. Just Staph. epidermidis.”
Staph epi was a common skin bacteria, and Bristol merely shrugged. “Contaminant.”
“What about the skin biopsies?” asked Costas.
“I looked at the slides yesterday,” said Maura. “There are acute inflammatory changes. Edema, infiltration by granulocytes. Some deep micro-abscesses. There are also inflammatory changes in the blood vessels as well.”
“And you have no bacteria growing?”
“Both the Gram stain and Fite Faraco stains are negative for bacteria. These are sterile abscesses.”
“You already know the cause of death, right?” said Bristol, his dark beard catching the crumbs of his muffin. “Does it really matter what these nodules are?”
“I hate to think I’m missing something obvious here. We hav
e no identification on this victim. We don’t know anything about her, except for the cause of death and the fact she was covered with these lesions.”
“Well, what’s your diagnosis?”
Maura looked down at the ugly swellings, like a mountain range of carbuncles across the victim’s skin. “Erythema nodosum,” she said.
“Cause?”
She shrugged. “Idiopathic.” Meaning, quite simply, cause unknown.
Costas laughed. “There’s a wastebasket diagnosis for you.”
“I don’t know what else to call it.”
“Neither do we,” said Bristol. “Erythema nodosum works for me.”
Back at her desk, Maura reviewed the typed autopsy report for Rat Lady, which she had dictated earlier, and felt dissatisfied as she signed it. She knew the victim’s approximate time of death, and the cause of death. She knew the woman was most likely poor, and that she had surely suffered from the humiliation of her appearance.
She looked down at the box of biopsy slides, labeled with the name Jane Doe and the case number. She pulled out one of the slides and slid it under the microscope lens. Swirls of pink and purple came into focus through the eyepiece. It was a hematoxylin and eosin stain of the skin. She saw the dark stipples of acute inflammatory cells, saw the fibrous circle of a blood vessel infiltrated by white cells, signs that the body was fighting back, sending its soldiers of immune cells into battle against . . . what?
Where was the enemy?
She sat back in her chair, thinking of what she’d seen on autopsy. A woman with no hands or face, mutilated by a killer who harvested identities as well as lives.
But why the feet? Why did he take the feet?
This is a killer who seems to operate with cool logic, she thought, not twisted perversions. He shoots to kill, using an efficiently lethal bullet. He strips the victim but does not sexually abuse her. He amputates the hands and feet and peels off the face. Then he leaves the corpse in a place where its skin will soon be gnawed away by scavengers.