Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

source of water.
Ombrogenous
means it doesn’t get any water from streams or underground currents. Which means it gets no added oxygen or nutrients. It’s entirely rain-fed and stagnant, and that makes it superacidic. All the characteristics that make it a true bog.”
    “So it isn’t just any wet place.”
    “No. It has to be fed only by rainwater. Otherwise they’d call it a fen or a marsh.”
    “How is this important?”
    “Only real bogs have the conditions you need to preserve bodies. We’re talking about a specific kind of wetland.”
    “And would that limit where this body was preserved?”
    Frost nodded. “The Northeast has thousands of acres of wetland, but only a small fraction of them are true bogs. They’re found in the Adirondacks, in Vermont, and in northern and coastal Maine.”
    Detective Tripp shook his head. “I went hunting once, way up in northern Maine. There’s nothing there except trees and deer. If our boy has a little hidey-hole up there, good luck finding it.”
    Frost said, “The biologist, Dr. Welsh, said she might be able to narrow down the location if she had more information. So we sent her some bits of plant material that Dr. Isles picked out of the victim’s hair.”
    “This all helps,” said Zucker. “It gives us another data point for our killer’s geographic profile. You know the saying among criminal profilers:
You go where you know, and you know where you go.
People tend to stick to areas where they’re comfortable, places they’re familiar with. Maybe our unsub went to summer camp in the Adirondacks. Or he’s a hunter like you, Detective Tripp, and he knows the back roads, the hidden camps of Maine. What he did to the bog victim required advance planning. How did he get familiar with the area? Does he own a cabin there? And is it accessible at just the right time of year, while the water’s cold but not frozen, so she could be deposited quickly into the bog?”
    “There’s something else we know about him,” said Jane.
    “What would that be?”
    “He knew
exactly
how to preserve her. He knew the right conditions, the right water temperature. That’s specialized knowledge, not the kind of information that most people would have.”
    “Unless you’re an archaeologist,” said Zucker.
    Jane nodded. “We get back to the same theme again, don’t we?”
    Zucker leaned back, eyes narrowing in thought. “A killer who’s familiar with ancient funerary practices. Whose victim in New Mexico was a young woman working on a dig site. Now he seems to be fixated on yet another young woman working in a museum. How does he find these women? How does he meet them?” He looked at Jane. “Have you a list of Ms. Pulcillo’s friends and associates?”
    “It’s a pretty short list. Just the museum staff and the people in her apartment building.”
    “No gentlemen friends? You said she’s quite an attractive young woman.”
    “She says she hasn’t had a date since she moved to Boston five months ago.” Jane paused. “Actually, she’s kind of a strange bird.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Jane hesitated and glanced at Frost, who was steadfastly avoiding her gaze. “There’s something…off about her. I can’t explain it.”
    “Did you have the same reaction, Detective Frost?”
    “No,” Frost said, his mouth tightening. “I think Josephine’s scared, that’s all.”
    Zucker glanced back and forth between the two partners, and his eyebrows lifted. “A difference of opinion.”
    “Rizzoli’s reading too much into it,” said Frost.
    “I just get weird signals from her, that’s all,” said Jane. “As if she’s more afraid of
us
than the perp.”
    “Afraid of you, maybe,” said Frost.
    Detective Crowe laughed. “Who isn’t?”
    Zucker was silent for a moment, and Jane did not like the way he was studying her and Frost, as though probing the depths of the breach between them.
    Jane said, “The woman’s a loner, that’s all I’m saying. She goes to work, she goes home. Her whole life seems to be inside that museum.”
    “What about her colleagues?”
    “The curator’s a guy named Nicholas Robinson. Forty years old, single, no criminal record.”
    “Single?”
    “Yeah, it raised a red flag for me, too, but I can’t find anything that gives me a tingle. Besides, he’s the one who found Madam X in the basement. The rest of the staff are all volunteers, and their average age is around a hundred years old. I can’t imagine one of those