Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

her. Just take her home.”
    “He’s right,” said Gabriel. “We don’t need to look at the body.”
    “Not the body.” She took a breath and straightened. “I want to see the crash site. I want to see where it happened.”

A LIGHT SNOW WAS FALLING THE NEXT MORNING WHEN G ABRIEL and Jane stepped out of their car and walked to the edge of the road. There they stood in silence, staring down into the ravine where the burned hulk of the Suburban was still lodged. A path of trampled snow marked the winding trail that the recovery team had hiked down the day before to retrieve the bodies. It would have been an exhausting climb back up to the road, carrying the stretchers up switchbacks, boots sliding on icy rocks.
    “I want to get closer,” she said, starting down the trail.
    “There’s nothing down there to look at.”
    “I owe it to her. I need to see where she died.” She kept walking, her gaze focused on the slippery path. Beneath the fresh dusting of powder, the snow was icy and treacherous, and she had to move slowly. Her thighs soon ached from the steep descent, and melting snowflakes, mingled with her sweat, trickled down her cheeks. She began to spot debris from the crash, scattered down the slope: afragment of twisted metal, a lone tennis shoe, a scrap of blue cloth, all of it starting to vanish now beneath fresh powder. By the time she finally reached the blackened vehicle, it was covered by a light coating of snow. The scent of fire still hung in that cold and pristine air, and she could see the scars left by the fire: the charred bushes and the scorched pine branches. She thought of the Suburban’s terrifying trajectory as it plummeted off the cliff. Imagined the shrieks as the last split seconds of life flashed before Maura’s eyes.
    She halted, releasing a shaken breath as she watched falling snow slowly erase the ugly evidence of death. Footsteps crunched closer, and Gabriel came to a stop beside her.
    “It’s so hard to believe,” Jane said. “You wake up in the morning, thinking it’ll just be another day. You get in a car with some friends. And suddenly it’s over. Everything you knew and thought and felt, in an instant, it’s all gone.”
    He drew her close beside him. “That’s why we have to enjoy every minute.”
    She brushed snow off the vehicle, revealing a streak of blackened metal. “You never know, do you? Which little decision will end up changing your life. If she hadn’t come to this conference, she wouldn’t have met Doug Comley. She wouldn’t have climbed into his truck.” Abruptly she lifted her hand from the Suburban, as though the touch of it burned her. Staring at the ruined truck, she imagined the last days in Maura’s life. They now knew it was Comley whom they’d seen with Maura on the surveillance tape. They’d viewed his photograph on the staff physician website of the San Diego hospital where he’d worked as a pathologist. Forty-two years old, a divorced single father, he’d been an attendee at the same medical conference. Attractive man spots equally attractive woman, and nature takes its course. Dinner, conversation, all sorts of possibilities swirling in their heads. Any woman would be tempted, even a woman as levelheaded as Maura. What kind of future, after all, could Daniel Brophy promise her, except a lifetime of furtive meetings and disappointments and regrets? If Daniel had given her whatshe needed, Maura wouldn’t have strayed. She wouldn’t have joined Douglas Comley on his doomed excursion.
    She would be alive.
    Daniel was no doubt tormented by those same thoughts. They had left him at the hotel without telling him where they were going. This was not a visit he should make. Now, standing in the gently falling snow, she was not sure that she should have come, either. What purpose did it serve, to see this blackened hulk, to visualize the vehicle’s plunge through the air, the flying glass, the explosion of flames? But now I’ve seen it, she thought. And I can go home.
    She and Gabriel turned and headed back up the trail. The wind had picked up, and fine snow swirled into her face, stinging her eyes. She sneezed, and when she opened her eyes again, something blue fluttered past. She picked it up and saw that it was a torn airline ticket envelope, the edges blackened by fire. A scrap of the boarding pass was still inside, but only the five last letters of the name were visible.
    inger
.
    She looked at Gabriel. “What was the name of