Body Double: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

spilled to the floor. She dropped her head in her hands and began to cry. Cried as the baby kicked inside her, cried until her throat ached and the mail was soaked with her tears.
    I want him back the way he was. When he loved me.
    Through the stuttering of her own sobs, she heard the squeal of a door. It came from the garage. Her head shot up, hope blooming in her chest.
    He’s home! He’s come home to tell me he’s sorry.
    She jumped up so quickly that her chair tipped over. Giddy, she opened the door and stepped into the garage. Stood blinking in the gloom, bewildered. The only car parked in the garage was hers.
    “Dwayne?” she said.
    A strip of sunlight caught her eye; the door leading to the side yard was ajar. She crossed the garage to close it. She had just pushed it shut when she heard a footfall behind her, and she froze, heart thumping. Knew, in that instant, that she was not alone.
    She turned. Halfway around, darkness met her.

SIX
    M AURA STEPPED FROM THE AFTERNOON SUNSHINE into the cool gloom of the Church of Our Lady of Divine Light. For a moment she could see only shadows, the vague outlines of pews, and the silhouette of a lone woman parishioner seated at the front, her head bowed. Maura slipped into a pew and sat down. She let the silence envelop her as her eyes adjusted to the dim interior. In the stained glass windows above, glowing with richly somber hues, a woman with swirling hair gazed adoringly at a tree from which hung a bloodred apple. Eve in the Garden of Eden. Woman as temptress, seducer. Destroyer. Staring up at the window, she felt a sense of disquiet, and her gaze moved to another. Though she had been raised by Catholic parents, she did not feel at home in the church. She gazed at the jewel-toned images of holy martyrs framed in these windows, and though they might now be enshrined as saints, she knew that, as living flesh and blood, they could not have been flawless. That their time on earth was surely marred by sins and bad choices and petty desires. She knew, better than most, that perfection was not human.
    She rose to her feet, turned toward the aisle, and paused. Father Brophy was standing there, the light from the stained glass casting a mosaic of colors on his face. He had approached so quietly that she hadn’t heard him, and now they faced each other, neither one daring to break the silence.
    “I hope you’re not leaving already,” he finally said.
    “I just came to meditate for a few minutes.”
    “Then I’m glad I caught you before you left. Would you like to talk?”
    She glanced toward the rear doors, as though contemplating escape. Then she released a sigh. “Yes. I think I would.”
    The woman in the front pew had turned and was watching them. And what does she see? Maura wondered. The handsome young priest. An attractive woman. Intent whispers exchanged beneath the gazes of saints.
    Father Brophy seemed to share Maura’s uneasiness. He glanced at the other parishioner, and he said: “It doesn’t have to be here.”
    They walked in Jamaica Riverway Park, following the tree-shaded path that led alongside the water. On this warm afternoon, they shared the park with joggers and cyclists and mothers pushing baby strollers. In such a public place, a priest walking with a troubled parishioner could hardly stir gossip. This is how it always has to be between us, she thought as they ducked beneath the drooping branches of a willow. No hint of scandal, no whiff of sin. What I want most from him is what he can’t give me. Yet here I am.
    Here we both are.
    “I wondered when you’d come by to see me,” he said.
    “I’ve wanted to. It’s been a rough week.” She stopped and gazed at the river. The whish of traffic from the nearby road obscured the sound of the rushing water. “I’m feeling my own mortality these days.”
    “You haven’t before?”
    “Not like this. When I watched that autopsy last week—”
    “You watch so many of them.”
    “Not just watch them, Daniel. I
perform
them. I hold the scalpel in my hand and I cut. I do it almost every day at work, and it never bothered me. Maybe it means I’ve lost touch with humanity. I’ve grown so detached that I don’t even register it’s human flesh I’m slicing. But that day, watching it, it all became personal. I looked at her and I saw myself on the table. Now I can’t pick up a scalpel without thinking about her. About what her life might have been like, what she felt, what she was