Body Double: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

adopt a healthy Caucasian newborn these days? There just aren’t enough to go around. It’s supply and demand, that’s all.”
    Rizzoli sank back, appalled that a woman would sell her babies for cold hard cash.
    “Now that’s all I can tell you,” said Van Gates. “If you want to find out more, well, maybe you cops should try talking to each other. You’d save a lot of time.”
    That last statement puzzled her. Then she remembered what he’d said only a moment earlier:
I don’t need to go through this again.
    “Who else has asked you about this woman?” she said.
    “You people all go about it the same way. You come in, threaten to make my life miserable if I don’t cooperate—”
    “It was another cop?”
    “Yes.”
    “Who?”
    “I don’t remember. It was months ago. I must’ve blocked out his name.”
    “Why did he want to know?”
    “Because she put him up to it. They came in together.”
    “Anna Leoni came in with him?”
    “He was doing it for her. A favor.” Van Gates snorted. “We should all have cops doing us favors.”
    “This was several months ago? They came in to see you together?”
    “I just said that.”
    “And you told her the mother’s name?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So why did Anna call you last week? If she already knew her mother’s name?”
    “Because she saw some photo in
The Boston Globe.
A lady who looks just like her.”
    “Dr. Maura Isles.”
    He nodded. “Ms. Leoni asked me directly, so I told her.”
    “Told her what?”
    “That she had a sister.”

THIRTEEN
    T HE BONES CHANGED EVERYTHING.
    Maura had planned to drive home to Boston that evening. Instead she returned briefly to the cottage to change into jeans and a T-shirt, then drove back in her own car to the clearing. I’ll stay a little longer, she thought, and leave by four o’clock. But as the afternoon wore on, as the crime scene unit arrived from Augusta and search teams began walking the grid that Corso had mapped out in the clearing, Maura lost track of the time. She took only one break, to wolf down a chicken sandwich that volunteers had delivered to the site. Everything tasted like the mosquito repellent she’d slathered all over her face, but she was so hungry she would have happily gnawed on a dry crust of bread. Her appetite sated, she once again pulled on gloves, picked up a trowel, and knelt down in the dirt beside Dr. Singh.
    Four o’clock came and went.
    The cardboard boxes began to fill with bones. Ribs and lumbar vertebrae. Femurs and tibias. The bulldozer had not, in fact, scattered the bones far. The female’s remains were all located within a six-foot radius; the male’s, bound together in a web of blackberry roots, were even more contained. There appeared to be only two individuals, but it took all afternoon to unearth them. Gripped by the excitement of the dig, Maura could not bring herself to leave, not when every shovelful of dirt she sifted might reveal some new prize. A button or a bullet or a tooth. As a Stanford University undergraduate, she had spent a summer working on an archaeological site in Baja. Though the temperatures there had soared well into the nineties, and her only shade was a broad-brimmed hat, she had worked straight into the hottest part of the day, driven by the same fever that afflicts treasure hunters who believe that the next artifact is only inches away. That fever was what she experienced now, kneeling among the ferns, swatting at blackflies. It was what kept her digging through the afternoon and into the evening as storm clouds moved in. As thunder rumbled in the distance.
    That, and the quiet thrill she felt whenever Rick Ballard came near.
    Even as she sifted through dirt, teased away roots, she was aware of him. His voice, his proximity. He was the one who brought her a fresh water bottle, who handed her the sandwich. Who stopped to place a hand on her shoulder and ask how she was doing. Her male colleagues at the M.E.’s office seldom touched her. Perhaps it was her aloofness, or some silent signal she gave off that told them she did not welcome personal contact. But Ballard did not hesitate to reach for her arm, to rest his hand on her back.
    His touches left her flushed.
    When the CSU team began packing up their tools for the day, she was startled to realize it was already seven, and daylight was fading. Her muscles ached, her clothes were filthy. She stood on legs trembling with weariness, and watched Daljeet tape shut the two boxes of