Vanish: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

already down. We were
all
down.”
    Maura looked up from the mass of lungs dripping on the cutting board. “They could have wired themselves to detonate.”
    “There were no explosives. These people weren’t terrorists.”
    “The rescue team wouldn’t know that. Plus, there may have been a concern about the fentanyl gas they used. You know that a fentanyl derivative was also used to end the Moscow theater siege?”
    “Yes.”
    “In Moscow, it caused a number of fatalities. And here they were, using something similar on a pregnant hostage. They couldn’t expose a fetus to its effects for too long. The takedown had to be fast and clean. That was how they justified it.”
    “So they’re claiming these kill shots were necessary.”
    “That’s what Lieutenant Stillman was told. Boston PD had no part in the planning or execution of the takedown.”
    Turning to the light box where X-rays were hanging, he asked: “Those are Olena’s?”
    “Yes.”
    He moved in for a closer look. Saw a bright comma against the skull, a scattering of fragments throughout the cranial cavity.
    “That’s all internal ricochet,” she said.
    “And this C-shaped opacity here?”
    “It’s a fragment caught between the scalp and the skull. Just a piece of lead that sheared off as the bullet punctured bone.”
    “Do we know which member of the entry team fired this head shot?”
    “Not even Hayder has a list of their names. By the time our Crime Scene Unit processed the scene, the entry team was probably on its way back to Washington, and beyond our reach. They swept up everything when they left. Weapons, cartridge evidence. They even took the knapsack that Joseph Roke brought into the building. They left us only the bodies.”
    “It’s how the world works now, Maura. The Pentagon’s authorized to send a commando unit into any American city.”
    “I’ll tell you something.” She set down her scalpel and looked at him. “This scares the hell out of me.”
    The intercom buzzed. Maura glanced up as her secretary said, over the speaker: “Dr. Isles, Agent Barsanti’s on the line again. He wants to talk to you.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    “Not a thing.”
    “Good. Just say I’ll call him back.” She paused. “When and
if
I have the time.”
    “He’s getting really rude, you know.”
    “Then you don’t have to be polite to him.” Maura looked at Yoshima. “Let’s finish up before we get interrupted again.”
    She reached deep into the open belly and began resecting the abdominal organs. Out came stomach and liver and pancreas and endless loops of small intestine. Slitting open the stomach, Maura found it empty of food; only greenish secretions dripped out into the basin. “Liver, spleen, and pancreas within normal limits,” she noted. Gabriel watched the foul-smelling offal pile up in the basin, and it disturbed him to think that in his own belly were the same glistening organs. Looking down at Olena’s face, he thought: Once you cut beneath the skin, even the most beautiful woman looks like any other. A mass of organs encased in a hollow package of muscle and bone.
    “All right,” Maura said, her voice muffled as she probed even deeper in the cavity. “I can see where the other bullets tracked through. They’re up against the spine here, and we’ve got some retroperitoneal bleeding.” The abdomen was now gutted of most of its organs, and she was peering into an almost hollow shell. “Could you put up the abdominal and thoracic films? Let me just check the position of those other two bullets.”
    Yoshima crossed to the light box, took down the skull films, and clipped up a new set of X-rays. The ghostly shadows of heart and lungs glowed inside their bony cage of ribs. Dark pockets of gas were lined up like bumper cars inside intestinal tunnels. Against the softer haze of organs, the bullets stood out like bright chips against the column of lumbar spine.
    Gabriel stared at the films for a moment, and his gaze suddenly narrowed as he remembered what Joe had told him. “There’s no view of the arms,” he said.
    “Unless there’s obvious trauma, we don’t normally X-ray the limbs,” said Yoshima.
    “Maybe you should.”
    Maura glanced up. “Why?”
    Gabriel went back to the table and examined the left arm. “Look at this scar. What do you think of it?”
    Maura circled around to the corpse’s left side and examined the arm. “I see it, just above the elbow. It’s well healed. I don’t