Body Double: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

you’re in labor. Came down that slope there, out of the woods.”
    “I can’t imagine.”
    “You should see the box he kept her in, like a coffin. Buried alive for a week—I don’t know how she came out of it still sane.”
    Maura thought of young Alice Rose, trapped in a pit all those years ago. Just one night of despair and darkness had haunted her for the rest of her short life. In the end, it had killed her. Yet Mattie Purvis had emerged not only sane, but prepared to fight back. To survive.
    “We found the white van,” said Rizzoli.
    “Where?”
    “It’s parked way up on one of the maintenance roads, about thirty, forty yards away from the pit where he buried her. We never would have found her there.”
    “Have you found any remains yet? There must be victims buried nearby.”
    “We’ve just started to look. There’s a lot of trees, a large area to search. It’ll take time for us to comb that whole hill for graves.”
    “All these years, all those missing women. One of them could be my . . .” Maura stopped, and looked up at the trees on the slope.
One of them could be my mother. Maybe I don’t have a monster’s blood in my veins at all. Maybe my real mother has been dead all these years. Another victim, buried somewhere in those woods.
    “Before you make any assumptions,” said Rizzoli, “you need to see the corpse.”
    Maura frowned at her. Looked down at the shrouded body lying at her feet. She knelt and reached for a corner of the sheet.
    “Wait. I should warn you—”
    “Yes?”
    “It’s not what you’re expecting.”
    Maura hesitated, her hand hovering over the sheet. Insects hummed, greedy for access to fresh meat. She took a breath and peeled back the cover.
    For a moment she didn’t say a word as she stared at the face she’d just exposed. What stunned her was not the ruined left eye, or the screwdriver handle jammed deep into the orbit. That gruesome detail was merely a feature to be noted, mentally filed away as she would file a dictated report. No, it was the face that held her attention, that horrified her.
    “He’s too young,” she murmured. “This man’s too young to be Elijah Lank.”
    “I’d guess he’s about thirty, thirty-five.”
    Maura released a shocked breath. “I don’t understand . . .”
    “You do see it, don’t you?” Rizzoli asked quietly. “Black hair, green eyes.”
    Like mine.
    “I mean, sure, there could be a million guys with hair and eyes that color. But the resemblance . . .” She paused. “Frost saw it, too. We all saw it.”
    Maura pulled the sheet over the corpse and stepped back, retreating from the truth which had stared so undeniably from the dead man’s face.
    “Dr. Bristol’s on his way now,” said Frost. “We didn’t think you’d want to do this autopsy.”
    “Then why did you call me?”
    “Because you said you wanted to be in the loop,” said Rizzoli. “Because I promised I would. And because . . .” Rizzoli looked down at the draped body. “Because you’d find out sooner or later who this man was.”
    “But we don’t know who he was. You think you see a resemblance. That’s not proof.”
    “There’s more. Something we just learned this morning.”
    Maura looked at her. “What?”
    “We’ve been trying to track down Elijah Lank’s whereabouts. Searching for any place his name may have popped up. Arrests, traffic tickets, anything. This morning we got a fax from a county clerk in North Carolina. It was a death certificate. Elijah Lank died eight years ago.”
    “Eight years ago? Then he wasn’t with Amalthea when she killed Theresa and Nikki Wells.”
    “No. By then, Amalthea was working with a new partner. Someone who stepped in to take Elijah’s place. To continue the family business.”
    Maura turned and stared at the lake, its water now blindingly bright. I don’t want to hear the rest of this, she thought. I don’t want to know.
    “Eight years ago, Elijah died of a heart attack in a Greenville hospital,” said Rizzoli. “He showed up in the emergency room complaining of chest pain. According to their records, he was brought to the ER by his family.”
    Family.
    “His wife, Amalthea,” said Rizzoli. “And their son, Samuel.”
    Maura took a deep breath and smelled both decay and the scent of summer in the air. Death and life mingled in a single perfume.
    “I’m sorry,” said Rizzoli. “I’m sorry you had to find out. There’s still a chance we’re wrong about this man, you