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Maura’s gaze was still on the X-ray, on that lethal white star. She thought of what Abe had just said: Each tip’s as sharp as a claw. And she remembered the scratch marks left on the victim’s car. Like the claw mark of a raptor’s talon.
She turned back to the table, just as Abe completed his scalp incision. In that brief instant, before he peeled the skin flap forward, Maura found herself unavoidably staring at the dead woman’s face. Death had mottled the lips to a dusky blue. The eyes were open, the exposed corneas dry and clouded by exposure to air. The eye’s bright gleam during life is merely the light’s reflection off moist corneas; when the lids no longer blink, when the cornea is no longer bathed in fluid, the eyes turn dry and dull. It’s not the departure of the soul that drains the appearance of life from one’s eyes; it’s simply the cessation of the blink reflex. Maura gazed down at the two clouded bands across the cornea, and for an instant she imagined the eyes as they must have looked while alive. It was a startling glimpse into the mirror. She had the sudden, vertiginous thought that in fact she was the one lying on the table. That she was watching her own corpse being autopsied. Didn’t ghosts linger in the same places they frequented while alive? This is my haunt, she thought. The autopsy lab. This is where I’m doomed to spend eternity.
Abe peeled the scalp forward and the face collapsed like a rubber mask.
Maura shuddered. Looking away, she noticed that Rizzoli was once again watching her. Is she looking at me? Or at my ghost?
The whir of the Stryker saw seemed to drill straight into her marrow. Abe cut through the dome of exposed skull, preserving the segment where the bullet had punched through. Gently, he pried off and removed the cap of bone. The Black Talon tumbled out of the open cranium and clattered into the basin Yoshima was holding beneath it. It gleamed there, its metal points splayed open like the petals of a lethal blossom.
The brain was mottled with dark blood.
“Extensive hemorrhage, both hemispheres. Just what you’d expect from the X-rays,” Abe said. “The bullet entered here, left temporal bone. But it didn’t exit. You can see it there, in the films.” He pointed to the light box, where the bullet stood out as a bright starburst, resting against the i
Frost said, “Fu
“There was probably ricochet. The bullet punched into the cranium and bounced back and forth, slicing through brain. Expending all its energy on the soft tissue. Like spi
“Dr. Bristol?” It was his secretary, Stella, on the intercom.
“Yeah?”
“I found that case with the Black Talon. Victim’s name was Vassily Titov. Dr. Tierney did the autopsy.”
“Who was the detective on that case?”
“Um… here it is. Detectives Va
“I’ll check with them,” said Rizzoli. “See what they remember about it.”
“Thanks, Stella,” called Bristol. He looked at Yoshima, who had the camera ready. “Okay, snap away.”
Yoshima began to take photos of the exposed brain, capturing a permanent record of its appearance before Abe removed it from its bony house. Here is where a lifetime’s worth of memories were laid down, Maura thought, as she gazed at the glistening folds of gray matter. The ABC’s of childhood. Four times four is sixteen. The first kiss, the first lover, the first heartbreak. All are deposited, as packets of messenger RNA, into this complex collection of neurons. Memory was merely biochemistry, yet it defined each human being as an individual.
With a few nicks of the scalpel, Abe freed the brain and carried it in both hands, as though bearing treasure, to the countertop. He would not dissect it today; instead he would let it soak in a basin of fixative, to be sectioned later. But he needed no microscopic examination to see the evidence of trauma; it was there, in the bloody discoloration on the surface.
“So we’ve got the entrance wound here, in the left temple,” said Rizzoli.
“Yes, and the skin hole and cranial hole line up perfectly,” said Abe.
“That’s consistent with a straight shot into the side of the head.”
Abe nodded. “The perp probably pointed right through the driver’s window. And the window was open, so there was no glass to distort the trajectory.”
“So she’s just sitting there,” said Rizzoli. “Warm night. Window down. Eight o’clock, it’s getting dark. And he walks up to her car. Just points the gun and fires.” Rizzoli shook her head. “Why?”
“Didn’t take the purse,” said Abe.
“So not a robbery,” said Frost.
“Which leaves us with a crime of passion. Or a hit.” Rizzoli glanced at Maura. There it was again-that possibility of a targeted killing.
Did he hit the right target?
Abe suspended the brain in a bucket of formalin. “No surprises so far,” he said, as he turned to perform the neck dissection.
“You’ll be ru
Abe shrugged. “We can send one off, but I’m not sure it’s necessary. The cause of death is right up there.” He nodded toward the light box, where the bullet stood out against the cranial shadow. “You have any reason to want a tox screen? Did CST find any drugs or paraphernalia in the car?”
“Nothing. The car was pretty tidy. I mean, except for the blood.”
“And all of it is from the victim?”
“It’s all B positive, anyway.”
Abe glanced at Yoshima. “You typed our gal yet?”
Yoshima nodded. “It matches. She’s B positive.”
No one was looking at Maura. No one saw her chin snap up, or heard her sharp intake of breath. Abruptly she turned so they could not see her face, and she untied her mask, pulling it off with a brisk tug.
As she crossed to the trash can, Abe called out: “You bored with us already, Maura?”
“This jet lag is getting to me,” she said, shrugging off the gown. “I think I’m going to go home early. I’ll see you tomorrow, Abe.”
She fled the lab without a backward glance.
The drive home went by in a blur. Only as she reached the outskirts of Brookline did her brain suddenly unlock. Only then did she break out of the obsessive loop of thoughts that kept playing in her head. Don’t think about the autopsy. Put it out of your mind. Think about di
She stopped at the grocery store. Her refrigerator was empty, and unless she wanted to eat tuna and frozen peas tonight, she needed to shop. It was a relief to focus on something else. She threw items into her cart with manic urgency. Far safer to think about food, about what she would cook for the rest of the week. Stop thinking about blood spatters and women’s organs in steel basins. I need grapefruits and apples. And don’t those eggplants look good? She picked up a bundle of fresh basil and greedily inhaled its scent, grateful that its pungency swept away, if only for the moment, all the remembered smells of the autopsy lab. A week of bland French meals had left her starved for spices; tonight, she thought, I’ll cook a Thai green curry so hot it will burn my mouth.
At home she changed into shorts and a T-shirt and threw herself into preparing di
I look like her. Exactly like her.
A chill swept through her, as though the face in the window was not a reflection, but a phantom staring back. The lid on the pot rattled from the rising steam. Ghosts trying to get out. Desperate to get her attention.