Last to Die: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

nothing to be done but just move on.” With a grunt he rose and walked out of the room, trailing the scent of pine and tobacco.
    “There’s the milk of human kindness for you,” Karla said under her breath. “With Roman setting the example, no wonder we’ve got students killing chickens.”
    Gottfried said, “But Mr. Roman does bring up a valid point, about the importance of maintaining routine. The students need that. They need time to mourn, of course, but they also need to know that life goes on.” He looked at Lily. “We are going ahead with the field trip to Quebec?”
    “I haven’t canceled anything,” she said. “The hotel rooms are booked, and the children have been talking about it for weeks.”
    “Then you should take them as promised.”
    “They’re not all going, are they?” said Maura. “Given Teddy’s situation, I think it’s too dangerous for him to be out in public and exposed.”
    “Detective Rizzoli made that perfectly clear,” said Lily. “He’ll stay here, where we know he’s safe. Will and Claire will stay behind as well. And of course, Julian.” Lily smiled. “He told me he wants moretime alone with you. Which is quite the compliment, Dr. Isles, coming from a teenager.”
    “This still feels wrong, somehow,” said Karla. “To take them on a fun field trip when Anna’s just died. We should stay here, to honor her. To figure out what drove her to this.”
    “Grief,” said Lily quietly. “Sometimes it catches up with you. Even years later.”
    Pasquantonio harrumphed. “That happened, what? Twenty-two years ago?”
    “You’re talking about the murder of Anna’s husband?” asked Maura.
    Pasquantonio nodded and reached for the brandy bottle to refill his glass. “She told me all about it. How Frank was snatched from his car. How his company paid the ransom, but Frank was executed anyway, and his body was dumped days later. No arrest was ever made.”
    “That must have enraged her,” said Maura. “And anger turned inward results in depression. If she carried that rage all these years …”
    “We all do,” said Pasquantonio. “It’s why we’re here. Why we choose this work. Rage is the fuel that keeps us going.”
    “Fuel can also be dangerous. It explodes.” Maura looked around the room, at people who had all been scarred by violence. “Are you certain
you
can handle it? Can your students? I saw what was hanging from that willow tree. Someone here has already proven he—or she—is capable of killing.”
    There was an uncomfortable moment of silence as the teachers looked at one another.
    Gottfried said, “It is something that concerns us. Something that Anna and I discussed yesterday. That one of our students may be deeply disturbed, perhaps even—”
    “A psychopath,” said Lily.
    “And you have no idea which one?” said Maura.
    Gottfried shook his head. “That was what bothered Anna the most. That she had no idea which student it might be.”
    A PSYCHOPATH . D EEPLY DISTURBED .
    That conversation left Maura uneasy as she climbed the stairs later that night. She thought about damaged children and how violence can twist souls. She thought about what sort of child would kill a rooster for amusement, slice it open, and display it with entrails hanging in a tree. She wondered in which room, in this castle, that child now slept.
    Instead of returning to her room, she kept climbing the stairs to the turret. To Anna’s office. She had visited the room earlier that evening, with the state police detectives, so when she stepped into the office and flipped on the lights she expected no surprises, no new revelations. Indeed, the room appeared as they’d left it. The quartz crystals, dangling in the window. The stubs of incense sticks, burned down to gray ash. On the desk was a stack of charts, the top one still open to a police report from St. Thomas. It was Teddy Clock’s file. Nearby was the vase of roses that Anna had cut that morning. Maura tried to imagine what might have gone through Anna’s head as she snipped the stems and inhaled the perfume.
This is the last day I will smell flowers
? Or had there been no thoughts of time running out, no farewells to life, just an ordinary morning in the garden?
    What made this day turn out so tragically different?
    She circled the room, seeking any lingering trace of Anna. She did not believe in ghosts, and those who refuse to believe will never encounter one. But she paused in the room anyway, inhaling