Body Double: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

the floor, a small dining table with chipped Formica. In the corner, a Frigidaire growled. But it was the back door she focused on. It had three locks, brass plates gleaming. She felt her heart starting to thump faster as she fastened the locks. Then she turned and was startled to see yet another bolted door in the kitchen. Where did that one lead?
    She slid open the bolt and opened the door. She saw narrow wooden stairs leading down into darkness. Cool air rose from below, and she smelled damp earth. The back of her neck was prickling.
    The cellar. Why would anyone want to lock the door to the cellar?
    She closed the door, slid the bolt shut. That’s when she realized this lock was different; it was rusted, old.
    Now she felt the need to check that all the windows were bolted as well. Anna had been frightened so badly that she had turned this house into a fortress, and Maura could still feel that fear permeating every room. She tested the kitchen windows, then moved to the living room.
    Only when she was satisfied that the windows were all secure in the rest of the house did she finally begin exploring the bedroom. Standing before the open closet, she gazed at the clothes inside. Sliding the hangers across the pole, she eyed each garment, noting they were precisely her size. She pulled a dress from its hanger—a black knit, with the clean, simple lines that she herself favored. She imagined Anna standing in a department store, lingering over this dress on the rack. Checking the price tag, holding up the garment against her body as she gazed into a mirror, thinking: This is the one I want.
    Maura unbuttoned her blouse, removed her slacks. She stepped into the black dress, and as she pulled up the zipper, she felt the fabric close over her curves like a second skin. She turned to face the mirror. This is what Anna saw, she thought. The same face, the same figure. Did she, too, deplore the thickening of her hips, the signs of impending middle age? Did she too turn sideways, to check the flatness of her belly? Surely all women who try on new dresses perform an identical ballet in front of a mirror. Turn this way, turn that. Do I look fat from behind?
    She paused, her right side to the mirror, staring at a strand of hair that clung to the fabric. She plucked it off and held it up to the light. It was black like hers, but longer. A dead woman’s hair.
    The ringing telephone made her jerk around. She went to the nightstand and paused, heart pounding, as the phone rang a second time, a third, each jangle unbearably loud in that silent house. Before it could ring a fourth time she picked up the receiver.
    “Hello? Hello?”
    There was a click, and then the dial tone.
    Wrong number, she thought. That’s all it is.
    Outside, the wind was picking up, and even through the closed window she heard the groan of swaying trees. But inside the house, it was so silent she could hear her own heartbeat. Is this what your nights were like? she wondered. In this house, surrounded by dark woods?
    That night, before she climbed into bed, she locked the bedroom door, then propped a chair against it as well. She felt a little sheepish doing so. There was nothing to be afraid of, yet she felt more threatened here than in Boston, where the predators were human and far more dangerous than any animal that might lurk among these woods.
    Anna was afraid here, too.
    She could feel that fear, still lingering in this house with its barricaded doors.
    She bolted awake to the sound of screeching. Lay gasping for breath, heart thudding. Only an owl, no reason to panic. She was in the woods, for god’s sake; of course she’d hear animals. Her sheets were soaked in sweat. She had locked the window before going to bed, and the room now felt stifling, airless. I can’t breathe, she thought.
    She rose and slid open the window. Stood taking in deep breaths of fresh air as she stared out at the trees, their leaves silvered by moonlight. Nothing moved; the woods had once again gone silent.
    She returned to bed and this time slept soundly until dawn.
    Daylight changed everything. She heard birdsong, and looking out her window, saw two deer cross the yard and bound off into the woods, white tails flashing. With sunlight streaming into the room, the chair she’d propped up against the door last night now struck her as irrational. I won’t be telling anyone about this, she thought, as she pulled it aside.
    In the kitchen she made coffee from a bag of ground