“If it wasn’t Charles Cassell.” Rizzoli crossed to the living room window and gazed out at a curtain of leaves dripping with rain. “Well, this place is awfully isolated. No neighbors. Nothing but trees. I’d want a few extra locks, too.” She gave an uneasy laugh. “You know, I never did like it, out in the woods. Bunch of us went camping once, in high school. Drove up to New Hampshire and laid our sleeping bags out around the campfire. I didn’t sleep a wink. I kept thinking: How do I know what’s out there, watching me? Up in the trees, hiding in the bushes.”
“Come on,” said Maura. “I want to show you the rest of the house.” She led the way to the kitchen, and flipped the wall switch. Fluorescent lights flickered on with an ominous hum. The harsh glare brought out every crack, every buckle in the ancient linoleum. She looked down at the black and white checkerboard pattern, yellowed with wear, and thought about all the spilled milk and tracked-in mud that, over the years, had surely left their microscopic traces on this floor. What else had seeped into these cracks and seams? What terrible events had left their residue?
“These are brand-new dead bolts, too,” said Rizzoli, standing at the back door.
Maura crossed to the cellar door. “This is what I wanted you to see.”
“Another bolt?”
“But see how tarnished this one is? It isn’t new. This bolt’s been here a long time. Miss Clausen said it was already on the door when she bought the property at auction twenty-eight years ago. And here’s the strange part.”
“What?”
“The only place this door leads is down to the cellar.” She looked at Rizzoli. “It’s a dead end.”
“Why would anyone need to lock this door?”
“That’s what I wondered.”
Rizzoli opened the door, and the smell of damp earth rose from the darkness. “Oh man,” she muttered. “I hate going down into cellars.”
“There’s a light chain, right over your head.”
Rizzoli reached up and gave the chain a tug. The bulb came on, its anemic glow spilling down a narrow stairway. Below were only shadows. “You sure there’s no other way into this cellar?” she asked, peering down into shadow. “A coal hatch or something?”
“I walked all around the outside of this house. I didn’t see any outside doors leading into the cellar.”
“Have you been down there?”
“I didn’t see any reason to.” Until today.
“Okay.” Rizzoli pulled a mini Maglite from her pocket and took a deep breath. “I guess we should take a look.”
The lightbulb swayed above them, tilting shadows back and forth as they descended creaky stairs. Rizzoli moved slowly, as though testing each step before she trusted her weight to it. Never before had Maura known Rizzoli to be so tentative, so cautious, and that apprehension was fueling her own. By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, the door to the kitchen seemed far above them, in another dimension.
The bulb at the bottom of the stairs had burned out. Rizzoli swept her Maglite across a floor of packed earth, damp from seeping rainwater. The beam revealed a stack of paint cans and a rolled-up carpet, moldering against one wall. In a corner sat a crate filled with bundles of kindling for the living room fireplace. Nothing here seemed out of the ordinary, nothing justified the sense of threat that Maura had felt at the top of the stairs.
“Well, you’re right,” said Rizzoli. “There doesn’t seem to be another way out of here.”
“Just that door up there, to the kitchen.”
“Which means the bolt doesn’t make any sense. Unless . . .” Rizzoli’s beam suddenly came to a halt on the far wall.
“What is it?”
Rizzoli crossed the cellar and stood staring. “Why is this thing here? What would anyone use it for?”
Maura moved closer. Felt a chill clamber up her spine when she saw what Rizzoli’s Maglite was shining on. It was an iron ring, lodged in one of the massive cellar stones. What would anyone use this for? Rizzoli had asked. The answer made Maura step away, repelled by the visions it conjured up.
This is not a cellar; it’s a dungeon.
Rizzoli’s flashlight jerked upward. “Someone’s inside the house,” she whispered.
Through the pounding of her own heart, Maura heard the floor creaking above them. Heard heavy footsteps move through the house. Approach the kitchen. A silhouette suddenly loomed in the doorway, and the flashlight beam that flooded down was so bright, Maura had to turn away, blinded.
“Dr. Isles?” a man called.
Maura squinted up into the light. “I can’t see you.”
“Detective Yates. CSU just got here, too. You want to take us through the house before we start?”
Maura released a sharp breath. “We’re coming up.”
By the time Maura and Rizzoli emerged from the cellar, there were four men standing in the kitchen. Maura had met Maine state detectives Corso and Yates the week before, at the clearing in the woods. Two CSU techs, who introduced themselves merely as Pete and Gary, had joined them, and they all paused for a round of handshakes.
Yates said, “So is this some kind of treasure hunt?”
“No guarantees we’ll find anything,” said Maura.
Both CSU techs were looking around the kitchen, scanning the floor. “This linoleum looks pretty beat up,” said Pete. “What period of time are we looking at?”
“The Sadlers vanished forty-five years ago. The suspect would still have been living here, with her cousin. After they left, the house went empty for years, before it got sold at auction.”
“Forty-five years ago? Yeah, this linoleum could be that old.”
“I know the carpet in the living room’s more recent, only about twenty years old,” Maura said. “We’d have to pull it up to check that floor.”
“We haven’t tried this on anything older than fifteen years. This would be a new record for us.” Pete glanced at the kitchen window. “Won’t be dark for at least another two hours.”
“Then let’s start in the cellar,” said Maura. “It’s dark enough down there.”
They all pitched in to haul various equipment from the van: video and still cameras and tripods, boxes with protective gear and aerosol sprayers and distilled water, an Igloo cooler containing bottles of chemicals, and electrical cords and flashlights. All these they carried down the narrow steps into the cellar, which suddenly felt cramped as six people and camera gear crowded in. Only half an hour earlier, Maura had regarded this same gloomy space with uneasiness. Now, as she watched the men matter-of-factly set up tripods and uncoil electrical cords, the room lost its power to frighten her. This is only damp stone and packed earth, she thought. There are no ghosts down here.
“I don’t know about this,” said Pete, turning the bill of his Sea Dogs baseball cap backward. “You’ve got a dirt floor here. It’s going to have a high iron content. Could light up everywhere. That’s gonna be hard to interpret.”
“I’m more interested in the walls,” said Maura. “Smears, spatter patterns.” She pointed to the block of granite with the iron ring. “Let’s start with that wall.”
“We’ll need a baseline photo first. Let me set up the tripod. Detective Corso, can you mount the ruler up on that wall right there? It’s luminescent. It’ll give us a frame of reference.”
Maura looked at Rizzoli. “You should go upstairs, Jane. They’re going to start mixing the Luminol. I don’t think you should be exposed to it.”
“I didn’t think it was that toxic.”
“Still, you shouldn’t take the chance. Not with the baby.”
Rizzoli sighed. “Yeah, okay.” Slowly she headed up the steps. “But I hate missing a light show.” The cellar door swung shut behind her.
“Man, shouldn’t she be on maternity leave already?” Yates said.
“She has another six weeks to go,” said Maura.
One of the techs laughed. “Like that woman cop in Fargo, huh? How do you chase down a perp when you’re that knocked
up?”
Through the closed cellar door, Rizzoli yelled: “Hey, I may be knocked up, but I’m not deaf!”
“She’s also armed,” said Maura.
Detective Corso said, “Can we get started here?”
“There are masks and goggles in that box,” said Pete. “You all might want to pass those around.”
Corso handed a respirator and a pair of goggles to Maura. She slipped them on and watched as Gary began measuring chemicals.
“We’re going with a Weber prep,” he said. “It’s a little more sensitive, and I think it’s safer to use. This stuff is irritating enough on the skin and eyes.”
“Are those stock solutions you’re mixing?” asked Maura, her voice muffled through the mask.
“Yeah, we keep ’em stored in the lab refrigerator. Mix all three together in the field, along with distilled water.” He capped the jar and gave it a vigorous shake. “Anyone here wear contact lenses?”
“I do,” said Yates.
“Then you might want to step out, Detective. You’re gonna be more sensitive, even wearing those goggles.”
“No, I wanna watch.”
“Then stay back when we start spraying.” He gave the bottle one more swirl, then decanted the contents into a spray bottle. “Okay, we’re ready to rock. Let me snap a photo first. Detective, can you move away from that wall?”
Corso stepped to the side and Pete pressed the shutter release cable. The flash went off as the camera captured a baseline image of the wall they were about to spray with Luminol.
“You want the lights off now?” said Maura.
“Let Gary get in position first. Once it’s dark, we’re gonna be stumbling around here. So everyone just pick a spot and stay there, okay? Only Gary moves.”
Gary crossed to the wall and held up the spray bottle containing Luminol. With his goggles and mask, he looked like a pest exterminator, about to squirt some offending roach.
“Hit the lights, Dr. Isles.”
Maura reached out to the flood lamp beside her and switched it off, plunging the cellar into pitch blackness.
“Go ahead, Gary.”
They could hear the hiss of the spray bottle. Flecks of greenish-blue suddenly glowed in the darkness, like stars in the night sky. Now a ghostly circle appeared, seeming to float in the darkness, unattached. The iron ring.
“It may not be blood at all,” said Pete. “Luminol reacts with a lot of things. Rust, metals. Bleach solutions. That iron ring would probably glow anyway, whether there’s blood on it or not. Gary, can you move aside while I get this shot? This is going to be a forty-second exposure, so just stand tight.” When the shutter finally clicked, he said: “Lights, Dr. Isles.”
Maura fumbled in the darkness for the flood lamp switch. When the light came on, she was staring at the stone wall.
“What do you think?” asked Corso.
Pete shrugged. “Not too impressive. There’s going to be a lot of false positives down here. You’ve got soil staining all those rocks. We’ll try the other walls, but unless you see a handprint or a major splatter, it’s not going to be easy to pick up blood against this background.”
Maura noticed Corso glancing at his watch. It had been a long drive for both Maine state detectives, and she could see he was starting to wonder if this was a waste of time.
“Let’s keep going,” she said.
Pete moved the tripod and positioned his camera lens to focus on the next wall. He clicked off a flash photo, then said, “Lights.”
Again, the room went pitch black.
The spray bottle hissed. More blue-green flecks magically appeared like fireflies twinkling in the darkness as the Luminol reacted with oxidized metals in the stone, producing pinpoints of luminescence. Gary sprayed a fresh arc across the wall, and a new swath of stars appeared, eclipsed by his shadowy outline as he moved past. There was a loud thump, and the silhouette suddenly lurched forward.
“Shit.”
“You okay, Gary?” said Yates.
“Hit my shin against something. The stairs, I think. Can’t see a goddamn thing in this . . .” He stopped. Then murmured: “Hey, guys. Look at this.”
As he moved aside, a patch of blue-green floated into view, like a ghostly pool of ectoplasm.
“What the hell is that?” said Corso.
“Light!” called Pete.
Maura turned on the lamp. The blue-green pool vanished. In its place she saw only the wooden staircase leading up to the kitchen.
“It was on that step there,” said Gary. “When I tripped, it caught some of the spray.”
“Let me reposition this camera. Then I want you to move up to the top of those stairs. Think you can feel your way down if we turn off the lights?”
“I don’t know. If I go slowly enough—”
“Spray the steps as you come down.”
“No. No, I think I’m gonna start from the bottom and go up. I don’t like the idea of backing down the stairs in the dark.”
“Whatever you’re comfortable with.” The camera flash went off. “Okay, Gary. I’ve got my baseline. Whenever you’re ready.”
“Yeah. You can hit the light, Doc.”
Maura turned off the lamp.
Once again, they heard the hiss of the spray bottle dispersing its fine mist of Luminol. Near the ground, a splash of blue-green appeared, then above it another splash, like ghostly pools of water. They could hear Gary’s heavy breathing through his mask, and the creak of the steps as he backed up the stairs, spraying the whole time. Step after step lit up, forming an intensely luminous cascade.
A waterfall of blood.
There was nothing else that this could be, she thought. It was smeared across every step, trickles of it streaking down the sides of the staircase.
“Jesus,” murmured Gary. “It’s even brighter up here, on the top step. Looks like it came from the kitchen. Seeped under the door and dripped down the stairs.”
“Everyone stay right where you are. I’m taking the shot. Forty-five seconds.”
“It might be dark enough outside now,” said Corso. “We can start on the rest of the house.”
Rizzoli was waiting for them in the kitchen as they came up the stairs, hauling their equipment. “Sounds like it was quite a light show,” she said.
“I think we’re about to see even more,” said Maura.
“Where do you want to start spraying now?” Pete asked Corso.
“Right here. The floor nearest the cellar door.”
This time, Rizzoli did not leave the room when the lights went off. She backed off and watched from a distance as the mist of Luminol was sprayed across the floor. A geometric pattern suddenly glowed at their feet, a blue-green checkerboard of old blood trapped in the linoleum’s repeating pattern. The checkerboard grew like blue fire spreading across a landscape. Now it streaked up one vertical surface, into broad swipes and smears, into arcs of bright droplets.
“Turn on the lights,” said Yates, and Corso flipped the switch.
The smears vanished. They stared at the kitchen wall, which no longer glowed blue. At worn linoleum with its repeating pattern of black and white squares. They saw no horror here, just a room with yellowed flooring and tired appliances. Yet everywhere they had looked, only a moment ago, they had seen blood screaming at them.
Maura stared at the wall, the image of what she’d seen there still burned in her memory. “That was arterial spray,” she said softly. “This is the room where it happened. This is where they died.”
“But you saw blood in the cellar as well,” said Rizzoli.
“On the steps.”
“Okay. So we know at least one victim is killed in this room, since there’s arterial spray on that wall there.” Rizzoli paced across the kitchen, unruly curls hiding her eyes as she focused on the floor. She stopped. “How do we know there aren’t other victims? How do we know this blood is from the Sadlers?”
“We don’t.”
Rizzoli crossed to the cellar
and opened the door. There she stood for a moment, gazing down the dark stairway. She turned and looked at Maura. “That cellar has a dirt floor.”
A moment passed in silence.
Gary said, “We have GPR gear in the van. We used it two days ago, on a farm out in Machias.”
“Bring it into the house,” said Rizzoli. “Let’s take a look at what’s under that dirt.”
TWENTY-TWO
GPR, OR GROUND-PENETRATING RADAR, uses electromagnetic waves to probe beneath the ground’s surface. The SIR System-2 machine that the techs unloaded from the van had two antennae, one to send out a pulse of high frequency electromagnetic energy into the ground, the other to measure the echoing waves bounced back by subsurface features. A computer screen would display the data, showing the various strata as a series of horizontal layers. As the techs carried the equipment down the steps, Yates and Corso marked off one-meter intervals on the cellar floor to form a search grid.
“With all this rain,” said Pete, unrolling electrical cable, “the soil’s going to be pretty damp.”
“Does that make a difference?” asked Maura.
“GPR response varies depending on the subsurface water content. You need to adjust the EM frequency to account for it.”
“Two hundred megahertz?” asked Gary.
“It’s where I’d start. You don’t want to go any higher, or we’ll get too much detail.” Pete connected cables to the backpack console and powered up the laptop. “That’s going to be something of a problem out here, especially with all these woods around us.”
“What do the trees have to do with it?” Rizzoli asked.
“This house is built on a wood lot. There’s probably a number of cavities under here, left over from decayed roots. That’s going to confuse the picture.”
Gary said, “Help me get on this backpack.”
“How’s that? You need to adjust the straps?”
“No, they feel fine.” Gary took a breath and looked around the cellar. “I’ll start at that end.”
As Gary moved the GPR across the earthen floor, the subsurface profile appeared on the laptop screen in undulating stripes. Maura’s medical training had made her familiar with ultrasounds and CT scans of the human body, but she had no idea how to interpret these ripples on the screen.