Body Double: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

unpredictable.
    “He didn’t hear anything?” Maura asked.
    “He said he’d heard what he thought was a car backfiring, maybe ten minutes before that. But no one saw it happen. After he found the Taurus, he called nine-one-one. Reported that someone had just shot his neighbor, Dr. Isles. Brookline Police responded first, along with Detective Eckert here. Frost and I arrived around nine.”
    “Why?” Maura said, finally asking a question that had occurred to her when she’d first spotted Rizzoli standing on her front lawn. “Why are you in Brookline? This isn’t your beat.”
    Rizzoli glanced at Detective Eckert.
    He said, a little sheepishly, “You know, we only had one homicide last year in Brookline. We thought, under the circumstances, it made sense to call in Boston.”
    Yes, it did make sense, Maura realized. Brookline was little more than a bedroom community trapped within the city of Boston. Last year, Boston PD had investigated sixty homicides. Practice made perfect, with murder investigations as well as anything else.
    “We would have come in on this anyway,” said Rizzoli. “After we heard who the victim was. Who we thought it was.” She paused. “I have to admit, it never even occurred to me that it might
not
be you. I took one look at the victim and assumed . . .”
    “We all did,” said Frost.
    There was a silence.
    “We knew you were due to fly home this evening from Paris,” said Rizzoli. “ That’s what your secretary told us. The only thing that didn’t make sense to us was the car. Why you’d be sitting in a car registered to another woman.”
    Maura drained her glass and set it on the coffee table. One drink was all she could handle tonight. Already, her limbs were numb and she was having trouble focusing. The room had softened to a blur, the lamps casting everything in a warm glow. This is not real, she thought. I’m asleep in a jet somewhere over the Atlantic, and I’ll wake up to find the plane has landed. That none of this has happened.
    “We don’t know anything yet about Anna Jessop,” said Rizzoli. “All we do know—what we’ve all seen with our own eyes—is that whoever she is, she’s a dead ringer for you, Doc. Maybe her hair’s a little longer. Maybe there’s a few differences here and there. But the point is, we were fooled. All of us. And we
know
you.” She paused. “You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you?”
    Yes, Maura could, but she didn’t want to say it. She just sat staring at the glass on the coffee table. At the melting ice cubes.
    “If we were fooled, anyone else could have been as well,” said Rizzoli. “Including whoever fired that bullet into her head. It was just before eight P.M. when your neighbor heard the backfire. Already getting dark. And there she was, sitting in a parked car just a few yards from your driveway. Anyone seeing her in that car would assume it’s you.”
    “You think I was the target,” said Maura.
    “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
    Maura shook her head. “None of this makes sense.”
    “You have a very public job. You testify at homicide trials. You’re in the newspaper. You’re our Queen of the Dead.”
    “Don’t call me that.”
    “It’s what all the cops call you. What the press calls you. You know that, don’t you?”
    “It doesn’t mean I like that nickname. In fact, I can’t stand it.”
    “But it does mean you’re noticed. Not just because of what you do, but also because of the way you look. You know the guys notice you, don’t you? You’d have to be blind not to see it. Nice-looking woman always gets their attention. Right, Frost?”
    Frost gave a start, obviously not expecting to be put on the spot, and his cheeks reddened. Poor Frost, so easily caught in a blush. “It’s only human nature,” he admitted.
    Maura looked at Father Brophy, who did not return her gaze. She wondered if he, too, was subject to the same laws of attraction. She wanted to think so; she wanted to believe that Daniel was not immune to the same thoughts that went through her head.
    “Nice-looking woman in the public eye,” said Rizzoli. “Gets stalked, attacked in front of her own residence. It’s happened before. What was the name of that actress out in L.A.? The one who got murdered.”
    “Rebecca Schaefer,” said Frost.
    “Right. And then there’s the Lori Hwang case here. You remember her, Doc.”
    Yes, Maura remembered it, because she had performed the autopsy on the Channel Six