Body Double: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

number. He clicked on the first icon, and an X-ray filled the screen. A crooked line of teeth, like tumbling white dominoes.
    “Well, this certainly isn’t one of ours,” he said. “Look at the teeth on this one! It’s an orthodontist’s nightmare.”
    “Or an orthodontist’s gold mine,” said Rizzoli.
    Daljeet closed that image, and clicked on the next icon. Another X-ray, this one with a gaping space between incisors. “I don’t think so,” he said.
    Maura’s attention drifted back to the table. To the bones of the unnamed woman. She stared down at the skull with its gracile brow line and delicate zygomatic arch. A face of gentle proportions.
    “Well,
hello,
” she heard Daljeet say. “I think I recognize these teeth.”
    She turned to look at the computer screen. Saw an X-ray of lower molars and the bright glow of dental fillings.
    Daljeet rose from his chair and crossed to the table where the male skeleton was laid out. He picked up the mandible and carried it back to the computer to compare.
    “Amalgam filling numbers eighteen and nineteen,” he noted. “Yes. Yes, that matches . . .”
    “What’s the name on that X-ray?” Rizzoli asked.
    “Robert Sadler.”
    “Sadler . . . Sadler . . .” Rizzoli flipped through the pages of computer printouts. “Okay, I found the entry. Sadler, Robert. Caucasian male, age twenty-nine. Five foot eleven, brown hair, brown eyes.” She looked at Daljeet, who nodded.
    “That’s compatible with our remains.”
    Rizzoli continued reading. “He was a building contractor. Last seen in his hometown of Kennebunkport, Maine. Reported missing July third, 1960, along with his . . .” She paused. Turned to look at the table where the female’s bones had been laid out. “Along with his wife.”
    “What was her name?” asked Maura.
    “Karen. Karen Sadler. I have the case number for you.”
    “Give it to me,” said Daljeet, turning back to the computer. “Let’s see if her X-rays are here.” Maura stood close behind him, staring over his shoulder as he clicked on the correct icon, and an image appeared on the screen. It was an X-ray taken when Karen Sadler was alive and sitting in her dentist’s chair. Anxious, perhaps, about the prospect of a cavity and the inevitable drilling that would result. She could not have imagined, as she’d clamped down on the cardboard wing to hold the unexposed film in place, that this same image her dentist captured that day would be glowing, years later, on a pathologist’s computer screen.
    Maura saw a row of molars, and the bright metallic glow of a crown. She crossed to the X-ray light box, where Daljeet had clipped up the panograph he’d taken of the unidentified woman’s teeth. She said, softly, “It’s her. These bones are Karen Sadler’s.”
    “So we have a double match,” said Daljeet. “Both husband and wife.”
    Behind them, Rizzoli flipped through the printouts, looking for Karen Sadler’s missing persons report. “Okay, here she is. Caucasian female, age twenty-five. Blond hair, blue eyes . . .” She suddenly stopped. “There’s something wrong here. You’d better check those X-rays again.”
    “Why?” said Maura.
    “Just check them again.”
    Maura studied the panograph, then turned to look at the computer screen. “They are a match, Jane. What’s the problem?”
    “You’re missing another set of bones.”
    “Whose bones?”
    “A fetus.” Rizzoli looked at her, a stunned expression on her face. “Karen Sadler was eight months pregnant.”
    There was a long silence.
    “We found no other remains,” Daljeet said.
    “You could have missed them,” said Rizzoli.
    “We sifted the soil. Thoroughly excavated that grave site.”
    “Scavengers might have dragged them away.”
    “Yes, that’s always possible. But this
is
Karen Sadler.”
    Maura went to the table and stared down at the woman’s pelvis, thinking about another woman’s bones, glowing on an X-ray light box.
Nikki Wells was pregnant, too.
    She swung the magnifying lens over the table and switched on the light. Focused the lens over the pubic ramus. Reddish dirt had crusted over the symphysis, where the two rami met, joined by leathery cartilage. “Daljeet, could I have a wet Q-tip or gauze? Something to wipe this dirt away.”
    He filled a basin of water and tore open a packet of Q-tips. He set them on the tray beside her. “What are you looking for?”
    She didn’t answer him. Her attention was focused on dabbing away