Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

as smooth and milky white as porcelain.
Just a doll
was what Jane had first thought when she’d glimpsed the tiny corpse in the pit.It’s what she’d wanted to believe. But soon the truth was apparent as the coroner’s team, biohazard garb covering their heavy winter clothes, gingerly freed the body from its grave.
    Jane had watched the steady succession of cadavers emerge, and the infant was what upset her most, because it made her think of her own daughter. She tried to block out the image, but it had already sprung into her head: Regina’s lifeless face, the skin feathered with frost.
    Abruptly she turned away from the pit and walked back to where the vehicles were parked. Cathy was still huddled inside her SUV. Jane climbed in beside her and swung the door shut. The vehicle stank of smoke, and Jane saw that the ashtray was full. Hands shaking, Cathy lit yet another cigarette and took a trembling puff. The two women sat for a moment without speaking. Through the windshield, they watched a member of the recovery team place the pitifully small bundle inside the morgue vehicle and swing the door shut. There was too little daylight left. Tomorrow the digging would resume, and they would certainly find more bodies. At the bottom of the pit, workers had already glimpsed an adult’s rigid limb.
    “No knife wounds. No bullet holes,” said Jane as she watched the morgue vehicle drive away. “They look like they just fell asleep. And died.”
    “Jonestown,” murmured Cathy. “You remember that, don’t you? The Reverend Jim Jones. He brought nearly a thousand followers from California to Guyana. Established his own colony. When US authorities came to investigate, he ordered his followers to commit suicide. More than nine hundred people died.”
    “You think this was a mass suicide, too?”
    “What else would it be?” Cathy stared out the window at the burial pit. “In Jonestown, they made the children drink first. Gave them cyanide mixed in sweet punch. Flavor Aid. Imagine doing that. Filling a bottle with poison. Picking up your own baby. Slipping the nipple in its mouth. Imagine watching him drink, knowing that it’s the last time he’ll ever look up at you and smile.”
    “No, I can’t imagine that.”
    “But in Jonestown, they did it. They killed their own children, and then they killed themselves. All because some so-called
prophet
told them to.” Cathy turned to her with a haunted face. The deepening shadows of the vehicle emphasized the hollows of her eyes. “Jeremiah Goode has the power to command them. He can make you surrender your possessions and turn your back on the world. He can make you give up your daughter and cast out your son. He can hand you a cup of poison, tell you to drink it, and you’d do it. You’d do it with a smile, because there’s nothing as important as pleasing him.”
    “I asked you this question before. I think I know the answer. This
is
personal for you, isn’t it?”
    Jane’s words, spoken so softly, seemed to stun Cathy. She went very still as her cigarette slowly burned down to ash. Abruptly she stubbed it out and met Jane’s gaze. “You better believe this is fucking personal,” she said.
    Jane asked no questions, made no comments. She was wise enough to give her the time and space to say more when she was ready.
    Cathy broke off eye contact and stared out at the fading light. “Sixteen years ago,” she said, “I lost my best friend to The Gathering. She and I were as close as sisters—even closer. Katie Sheldon lived next door to us, and I’d known her since we were two years old. Her father was a carpenter, unemployed a lot of the time. A nasty little man who lorded it over his family like a two-bit emperor. Her mother was a housewife. Such a blank personality, I hardly remember her. They were just the kind of family The Gathering seems to attract. People who have no other connections, who need a reason for existence in their purposeless lives. And Katie’s father, he probably liked the idea of any religion that gave him full rein to lord it over his family. Not to mention the young girls he’d get to screw. Multiple wives, Armageddon, the end times—he happily embraced it all. All of Jeremiah’s bullshit. So the family moved away from our neighborhood. To Plain of Angels.
    “Katie and I promised to write each other. And I did. I wrote letter after letter, and never got anything back. But I never stopped thinking about her, wondering what