Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

from the hearth, she could count the sleeping bodies: Grace curled up on the sofa; Doug and Elaine sleeping close together, almost touching. Always almost touching. She could guess who had migrated toward whom in the night. It was so obvious, now that she was aware of it: the way Elaine looked at Doug, the way she so frequently touched him, her eager acquiescence to everything he suggested. Arlo lay alone beside the hearth, the blanket molding his body like a shroud. His teeth clattered together as a fresh chill gripped his body.
    She rose, her back stiff from the floor, and placed more wood in the fireplace. Crouching close, she warmed herself as the fire crackled to life, bright and fierce. Turning, she looked at Arlo, whose face was now illuminated by the flames.
    His hair was greasy and stiff with sweat. His skin had taken on the yellowish cast of a corpse. If not for his chattering teeth, she might have thought him already dead.
    “Arlo,” she said softly.
    Slowly, his eyelids lifted. His gaze seemed to come from some deep and shadowy pit, as though he had fallen far beyond all reach of help. “So … cold,” he whispered.
    “I’ve built up the fire again. It’ll be warmer in here soon.” She touched his forehead, and the heat of his skin was so startling that she felt as if her hand were seared. At once she went to the coffee table, where they had lined up all the medicines, and struggled to read the labels in the dark. She found the bottles of amoxicillin and Tylenol, and shook out capsules into her hand. “Here. Take these.”
    “What is it?” Arlo grunted as she lifted his head to help him swallow the pills.
    “You have a fever. That’s why you’re shivering. These should make you feel better.”
    He swallowed the pills and slumped back, seized by another chill so violent that she thought he might be convulsing. But his eyes were open and aware. She surrendered her own blanket to him, draping yet another layer of wool over his body. She knew that she should check the condition of his leg, but the room was still too dark, and she didn’t want to light the kerosene lamp yet, not while everyone else was still asleep. Already the window had brightened. In another hour or so, it would be dawn, and she could examine his limb. But she already knew what she would find. The fever meant his leg was almost certainly infected, and bacteria had invaded his bloodstream. She also knew that the amoxicillin was not a powerful enough antibiotic to save him.
    They had only twenty tablets left, anyway.
    She glanced at Doug, tempted to wake him so that he could share this burden, but Doug was still deeply asleep. So she alone sat beside Arlo, holding his hand, stroking his arm through the blankets.Though his forehead was hot, his hand was alarmingly chilled, more like dead flesh than living.
    And I know what dead flesh feels like
.
    Since her days as a medical student, it was the autopsy room, and not the patient’s bedside, where she’d felt most comfortable. The dead don’t expect you to make small talk or listen to their endless complaints or watch while they writhe in pain. The dead are beyond pain, and they don’t expect you to perform miracles you are incapable of. They wait patiently and uncomplainingly as long as it takes for you to finish your job.
    Looking down at Arlo’s racked face, she thought: It’s not the dead who make me uneasy, but the living.
    Yet she remained at his side, holding his hand as dawn broke, as his chills gradually ebbed. He was breathing more easily now, and beads of sweat glistened on his face.
    “Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked softly, watching her with eyes that were feverishly bright.
    “Why do you ask?”
    “Your job. If anyone ever saw a ghost, it would be you.”
    She shook her head. “I’ve never seen one.”
    “So you don’t believe.”
    “No.”
    He stared beyond her, focused on something that she could not see. “But they’re here, in this room. Watching us.”
    She touched his forehead. His skin was already cooler to the touch, his fever fading. Yet he was clearly delirious, his eyes tracking the room as though following the progress of phantoms gliding past.
    It was light enough now for her to look at his leg.
    He did not protest as she lifted the blanket. He was nude from the waist down, his penis shriveled and almost lost in the nest of brown pubic hair. In the night he had wet himself, and the towels they had placed under him were soaked. She