Body Double: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

it’s loose now,” said Daljeet. “Let’s lift it out.”
    He laid out a plastic sheet, then reached deep into the hole. His hands emerged cradling the skull, the mandible partly anchored to it by helpful spirals of blackberry roots. He laid his treasure on the sheet.
    For a moment, no one said anything. They were all staring at the shattered temporal bone.
    Detective Yates pointed to the metallic glint of one of the molars. “Isn’t that a filling?” he said. “In that tooth?”
    “Yes. But dentists were using amalgam fillings a hundred years ago,” said Daljeet.
    “So it could still be an old burial.”
    “But where are the coffin fragments? If this was a formal burial, there should be a coffin. And there’s this little detail.” Daljeet pointed to the crush fracture. He looked up at the two detectives bending over his shoulder. “Whatever the age of these remains, I think you have a crime scene here.”
    The other men had crowded in around them, and suddenly the air felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of it. The buzz of mosquitoes seemed to grow to a pulsing roar. It’s so warm, she thought. She rose to her feet and walked on unsteady legs toward the edge of the woods, where the canopy of oak and maple cast a welcome shade. Sinking onto a rock, she dropped her head in her hands, thinking: This is what I get for not eating breakfast.
    “Maura?” called Ballard. “Are you okay?”
    “It’s just this heat. I need to cool down for a moment.”
    “Would you like some water? I have some in my truck, if you don’t mind drinking from the same bottle.”
    “Thank you. I could use some.”
    She watched as he headed toward his vehicle, the back of his shirt stained with wings of sweat. He didn’t bother to pick his way delicately across the uneven field, but just forged ahead, boots tramping across broken soil. Purposeful. That’s the way Ballard walked, like a man who knew what needed to be done, and simply got on with it.
    The bottle he brought back to her was warm from sitting in the truck. She took a greedy gulp, water trickling down her chin. Lowering the bottle, she found Ballard watching her. For a moment she didn’t notice the hum of insects, the murmur of men’s voices as they worked yards away. Here, in the green shadows beneath the trees, she could focus only on him. On the way his hand brushed hers as he took the bottle back. On the soft light dappling his hair, and the web of laugh lines around his eyes. She heard Daljeet call her name, but she didn’t answer, didn’t turn away; neither did Ballard, who seemed just as trapped in the moment. She thought: One of us has got to break the spell. One of us has got to snap back out of it. But I can’t seem to manage it.
    “Maura?” Daljeet was suddenly standing right beside her; she hadn’t even heard his approach. “We have an interesting problem,” he said.
    “What problem?”
    “Come take another look at that ilium.”
    Slowly she rose to her feet, feeling steadier now, her head clear. The drink of water, the few moments in the shade, had given her a second wind. She and Ballard followed Daljeet back to the hip bone, and she saw that Daljeet had already cleared away some of the soil, exposing more of the pelvis.
    “I got it down to the sacrum on this side,” he said. “You can just see the pelvic outlet and the ischial tuberosity, here.”
    She dropped to a crouch beside him. Said nothing for a moment, just stared at the bone.
    “What’s the problem?” said Ballard.
    “We need to expose the rest of this,” she said. She looked up at Daljeet. “Do you have another trowel?”
    He passed one to her; it was like the slap of a scalpel handle in her palm. Suddenly she was at work, and all grim business. Kneeling side by side, trowels in hand, she and Daljeet cleared away more stony soil. Tree roots had woven through bony fossae, anchoring the bones to their grave, and they had to cut away the wiry tangle to free the pelvis. The deeper they dug, the faster her heart began to beat. Treasure hunters might dig for gold; she dug for secrets. For the answers that only a grave can reveal. With each trowelful of dirt they removed, more of the pelvis came into view. They worked feverishly now, tools probing deeper.
    When at last they stared down at the exposed pelvis, they were both too stunned to speak.
    Maura rose to her feet and walked back to look at the skull, still lying on the plastic sheet. Kneeling beside it, she