Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

Labs.”
    Moore turned to the last page of the chart and saw the sheet of results.
HIV screen: Negative. VDRL (syphilis): Negative.
The page was tissue-thin, a sheet from a printed carbon form. The most important news of our lives, he thought, so often arrives on such flimsy paper. Telegrams. Exam scores. Blood tests.
    He closed the chart and laid it on the desk. “When you saw Nina the second time, the day she came in for the follow-up blood test, how did she strike you?”
    “Are you asking me if she was still traumatized?”
    “I have no doubt she was.”
    His quiet answer seemed to puncture Sarah’s swelling bubble of rage. She sat back, as though, without anger, she had lost some vital fuel. For a moment she considered his question. “When I saw Nina the second time, she was like one of the walking dead.”
    “How so?”
    “She sat in that chair where Detective Rizzoli is now, and I felt as if I could almost see straight through her. As if she was transparent. She hadn’t been to work since the rape. I think it was hard for her to face people, especially men. She was paralyzed by all these strange phobias. Afraid to drink tap water, or anything that hadn’t been sealed. It had to be in an unopened bottle or can, something that couldn’t be poisoned or drugged. She was afraid that men could look at her and see she’d been violated. She was convinced her rapist had left sperm on her bedsheets and clothes, and she was spending hours every day washing things over and over. Whoever Nina Peyton used to be, that woman was dead. What I saw in her place was a ghost.” Sarah’s voice had trailed off, and she sat very still, staring toward Rizzoli, seeing another woman in that chair. A succession of women, different faces, different ghosts, a parade of the damaged.
    “Did she say anything about being stalked? About the attacker reappearing in her life?”
    “A rapist never disappears from your life. For as long as you live, you’re always his property.” Sarah paused. And added, bitterly: “Maybe he just came to claim what was his.”
     

nine
    I t was not virgins the Vikings sacrificed, but harlots.
    In the year of our lord 922, the Arab diplomat ibn Fadlan witnessed just such a sacrifice among the people he called the Rus. He described them as tall and blond, men of perfect physique who traveled from Sweden, down the Russian rivers, to the southern markets of Kazaria and the Caliphate, where they traded amber and furs for the silk and silver of Byzantium. It was on that trade route, in a place called Bulgar, at the bend of the Volga, that a dead Viking man of great importance was prepared for his final journey to Valhalla.
    Ibn Fadlan witnessed the funeral.
    The dead man’s boat was hauled ashore and placed on posts of birch wood. A pavilion was built on the deck, and in this pavilion was a couch covered in Greek brocade. The corpse, which had been buried ten days, was then disinterred.
    To ibn Fadlan’s surprise, the blackened flesh did not smell.
    The newly dug-up corpse was then adorned in fine clothes: trousers and stockings, boots and a tunic, and a caftan of brocade with gold buttons. They placed him on the mattress inside the pavilion, and propped him up with cushions in a sitting position. Around him they placed bread and meat and onions, intoxicating drink, and sweet-smelling plants. They slew a dog and two horses, a rooster and a hen, and all these, too, they placed inside the pavilion, to serve his needs in Valhalla.
    Last, they brought a slave girl.
    For the ten days that the dead man had lain buried in the ground, the girl had been given over to whoredom. Dazed with drink, she was brought from tent to tent to service every man in the encampment. She lay with legs spread beneath a succession of sweating, grunting men, her well-used body a communal vessel into which the seed of all the tribesmen was spilled. In this way was she defiled, her flesh corrupted, her body made ready for sacrifice.
    On the tenth day, she was brought to the ship, accompanied by an old woman whom they called the Angel of Death. The girl removed her bracelets and finger rings. She drank deeply to intoxicate herself. Then she was brought into the pavilion, where the dead man sat.
    There, upon the brocade-draped mattress, she was defiled yet again. Six times, by six men, her body passed among them like shared meat. And when it was done, when the men were sated, the girl was stretched out at the side of her dead