The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

didn’t see the magic that evening as she stared across the undulating surface of waterlogged peat. What she saw was a cold stew of corpses.
    “I’ll do the autopsy tomorrow,” said Dr. Singh. “If you’d like to observe, you’re certainly welcome.”
    What she really wanted to do was drive home to Boston. Take a hot shower, kiss her daughter good night, and climb into bed with Gabriel. But her work here was not yet finished.
    “The autopsy will be in Augusta?” she asked.
    “Yes, around eight o’clock. Can I expect you?”
    “I’ll be there.” She took a deep breath and straightened. “I guess I’d better find a place to stay for the night.”
    “The Hawthorn Motel’s a few miles down the road. It serves a good breakfast. Not that awful continental stuff, but lovely omelets and pancakes.”
    “Thanks for the tip,” she said.
Only a pathologist could stand over a dripping corpse and talk so enthusiastically about pancakes.
    She walked back up the trail by flashlight, the path now well marked by little flags of police tape. Emerging from the trees, she found that the parking lot was starting to empty out; only a few official vehicles remained. The state police had already searched the building, but all they’d found was trash and the putrefying remains of that raccoon she had spotted earlier. They had not found Josephine or Bradley Rose.
    But he’s been here, she thought, gazing toward the woods. He parked near these trees. He walked the trail to the bog. There he tugged on a rope and hauled one of his keepsakes from the water, the way a fisherman hauls in his catch.
    She climbed into her car and drove back along that crumbling road, her poor Subaru jouncing across potholes that seemed even more treacherous in the dark. Moments after she turned onto the main road, her cell phone rang.
    “I’ve been trying to reach you for at least two hours,” said Frost.
    “There was no reception at the bog. They finished searching and found only the one body. I’m wondering if he has another stash—”
    “Where are you now?” Frost cut in.
    “I’m staying here for the night. I want to watch the autopsy tomorrow.”
    “I mean right
now,
where are you?”
    “I’m going to check into a motel. Why?”
    “What’s the name of the motel?”
    “I think it’s called the Hawthorn. It’s around here somewhere.”
    “Okay, I’ll see you there in a few hours.”
    “You’re coming up to Maine?”
    “I’m already on my way. And someone’s joining us.”
    “Who?”
    “We’ll talk about it when we get there.”
             
     
    Jane stopped first at a local drugstore for new underwear and socks and then to pick up a take-out pepperoni pizza. While her hand-washed pants hung drying in the bathroom, she sat in her room at the Hawthorn Motel, eating pizza as she read Jimmy Otto’s file. There were three volumes, one for each year he had been a student at the Hilzbrich Institute. No, not a student—an inmate, she thought, remembering the ugly concrete building, the remote location. A place to securely segregate from society the sort of boys you didn’t want anywhere near your daughters.
    Jimmy Otto, most of all.
    She paused at the transcript of what Jimmy had said during a private therapy session. He’d been only sixteen years old.

When I was thirteen, I saw this picture in a history book. It was in a concentration camp where all these women were killed in the gas chambers. Their bodies were naked, lying in a row. I think about that picture a lot, about all those women. Dozens and dozens of them, just lying there like they’re waiting for me to do whatever I want with them. Fuck them in any hole. Poke sticks in their eyes. Slice off their nipples. I want there to be a bunch of women at one time, a whole row of them. Or it’s not a party, is it?
But how do you collect more than one at a time? Is there some way to keep a corpse from rotting, a way to keep it fresh? I’d like to find out, because it’s no fun if a woman just rots away and leaves me…

    A knock on her motel room door made Jane snap straight. She dropped the half-eaten slice of pizza in the box and called out, in a none-too-steady voice: “Yes? Who is it?”
    “It’s me,” Barry Frost answered.
    “Just a second.” She went into the bathroom and pulled on her still-damp slacks. By the time she got to the door, her nerves were steady again, her heart no longer racing. She opened the door and found a surprise awaiting