Body Double: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

attacker.”
    “And strong, too.” Costas bent down and gently tilted the head backward, revealing an open ring of glistening cartilage. “We’re all the way to vertebral column here.” He released the head and it rolled forward, incised edges once again kissing together.
    “An execution,” she murmured.
    “Pretty much.”
    “The second victim—in the living room—”
    “The wife. She died in the ER an hour ago.”
    “But that execution wasn’t so efficient,” said Rizzoli. “We think the killer took out the man first. Maybe Van Gates was expecting the visit. Maybe he even let him into his kitchen, thinking it was business. But he didn’t expect the attack. There were no defense wounds, no signs of a struggle. He turned his back on the killer, and went down like a slaughtered lamb.”
    “And the wife?”
    “Bonnie was a different story.” Rizzoli stared down at Van Gates, at the dyed tufts of transplanted hair, symbols of an old man’s vanity. “I think Bonnie walked in on them. She comes into the kitchen and sees the blood. Sees her husband sitting here on the floor, his neck almost severed. The killer’s in here too, still holding the knife. The air conditioner’s going, and all the windows are shut tight. Double-paned, for insulation. So our team parked down the street, they wouldn’t hear her screams. If she even managed to scream.”
    Rizzoli turned to look at the doorway leading to the hall. Paused as though she saw the dead woman herself standing there.
    “She sees the killer coming at her. But unlike her husband, she fights back. All she can do, as that knife comes at her, is grab it by the blade. It cuts right into the palm of her hand, through skin, tendons, all the way to bone. It slices so deep the artery’s severed.”
    Rizzoli pointed through the doorway, at the hallway beyond. “She runs that way, her hand spurting blood. He’s right behind her, and corners her in the living room. Even then she fights back, tries to fend off the blade with her arms. But he makes one more cut, across her throat. Not as deep as the incision in her husband’s neck, but it’s deep enough.” Rizzoli looked at Maura. “She was alive when we found her. That’s how close we came.”
    Maura stared down at Terence Van Gates, slumped against the cabinet. She thought of the little house in the woods where two cousins had formed their poisonous bond.
A bond that endures even now.
    “You remember what Amalthea said to you, the first day you went to visit her?” said Rizzoli.
    Maura nodded.
Now you’re going to die, too.
    “We both thought it was just psychotic rambling,” said Rizzoli. She looked down at Van Gates. “It seems pretty clear now that it was a warning. A threat.”
    “Why? I don’t know any more than you do.”
    “Maybe it’s because of who you
are,
Doc. Amalthea’s daughter.”
    An icy wind swept up Maura’s spine. “My father,” she said softly. “If I really am her daughter, then who is my father?”
    Rizzoli didn’t say Elijah Lank’s name; she didn’t need to.
    “You’re the living proof of their partnership,” said Rizzoli. “Half your DNA is his.”
    She locked her front door and turned the dead bolt. Paused there, thinking of Anna and all the brass bolts and chains that had adorned the little house in Maine. I’m turning into my sister, she thought. Soon I’ll be cowering behind barricades, or fleeing my own home for a new city, a new identity.
    Headlights trailed across the closed curtains of her living room. She glanced out and saw a police cruiser glide by. Not Brookline this time, but a patrol car with BOSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT emblazoned on the side. Rizzoli must have requested it, she thought.
    She went into the kitchen and mixed herself a drink. Nothing fussy tonight, not her usual cosmopolitan, just orange juice and vodka and ice. She sat at the kitchen table and sipped it, ice cubes rattling in her glass. Drinking alone; not a good sign, but what the hell. She needed the anesthesia, needed to stop thinking of what she’d seen tonight. The air conditioner hissed its cool breath from the ceiling. No open windows tonight; everything was locked and secure. The cold glass chilled her fingers. She set it down and looked at her palm, at the pale blush of capillaries.
Does their blood run in my veins?
    The doorbell rang.
    Her head snapped up; she turned toward the living room, her heart beating a quickstep, every muscle in her body rigid. Slowly she rose