Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

his only available shelter for miles?” Cathy heaved out an agitated breath and shoved the gearshift back into drive. “Let’s get closer.”
    They started down the valley road, and through intermittent stands of pine, Jane caught other views of the settlement, the destruction more appalling with every new glimpse. By now the sound of their vehicle had filtered down the slope, and the lone coyote fled toward the surrounding woods. As their SUV drew closer, Jane spotted dark lumps scattered across the nearby field of snow, and she realized that they, too, were coyotes. But they were lying motionless.
    “Jesus, it looks like the whole pack was slaughtered,” said Jane.
    “Hunters.”
    “Why?”
    “Coyotes aren’t real popular in ranching country.” Cathy pulled to a stop beside the first burned foundation, and they both stared across the field of dead animals. At the edge of the woods, the lone surviving coyote stood watching them, as though he, too, wanted answers.
    “This is weird,” murmured Jane. “I don’t see blood anywhere. I’m not sure those animals were shot.”
    “Then how’d they die?”
    Jane stepped out of the SUV and almost slipped on ice. Snowmelt from the fire had flash-frozen into a hard glaze that was now dusted with an inch of white powder. Everywhere she looked, she saw scavenger prints on that fine layer of snow. The destruction stunned her. She heard Cathy’s boots crunch away across the ice, but Jane remained beside the vehicle, staring at the jumble of charred wood and metal, here and there spotting a recognizable object in the ruins. A shattered mirror, a scorched doorknob. A ceramic sink, filled with a miniature ice rink of frozen water. An entire village reduced to rubble and ashes.
    The scream was piercing, every echo flying back from the mountains like shards of glass. Jane bolted straight in alarm and sawCathy standing at the far edge of the ruins. Her gaze was fixed to the ground, her gloved hand clapped over her mouth. In jerky robotic steps she began to back away.
    Jane started toward her. “What is it? Cathy?”
    The other woman did not answer. She was still staring downward, still in a stumbling retreat. As Jane drew closer, she spied bits of color on the ground. A scrap of blue here, a fleck of pink there. Fragments of cloth, she realized, the edges shredded. As she moved beyond the last burned foundation, the snow became deep and more riddled with scavenger tracks. The prints were everywhere, as if coyotes had staged a hoedown.
    “Cathy?”
    At last the woman turned to her, and her face was drained of color. Unable to speak, all she could do was point to the ground, at one of the dead coyotes.
    Only then did Jane realize that Cathy was not pointing at the animal, but at a pair of bones poking up like slender white stalks from the snow. They might have been the remains of wild animal prey, ripped apart and gnawed on by predators, except for one small detail. Encircling those bones was something that did not belong to any animal.
    Jane crouched down and stared at the pink and purple beads strung on a loop of elastic. A child’s bracelet.
    Her heart was pounding as she rose back to her feet. She looked across the snowy expanse that stretched toward the trees, and saw craters in the snow where the coyotes had been digging for treasure, fresh meat on which they had begun to feast.
    “They’re still here,” Cathy said softly. “The families, the children. The people in Kingdom Come never left.” She stared down at the ground, as if seeing some new horror at her feet. “They’re right
here.”

B Y NIGHTFALL, THE CORONER’S RECOVERY TEAM HAD EXTRACTED the fifteenth body from the frozen ground. It had lain entangled with the other corpses, buried together in one communal pit, limbs mingled in a grotesque group hug. The grave had been shallow, covered with only a thin layer of soil, so thin that even through a foot and a half of snow scavengers had detected the trove of meat. Like the fourteen bodies before it, this corpse emerged from the pit with limbs frozen and rigid, eyelashes encrusted with ice. It was only an infant, about six months old, dressed in a long-sleeved cotton sleeper decorated with tiny airplanes. An indoor outfit. Like the other bodies, this one bore no marks of violence. Except for postmortem damage by carnivores, the cadavers were strangely, disturbingly perfect.
    This baby was the most perfect of all, eyes closed as if in sleep, its skin