Body Double

“Not soon enough.”

“The guys, they have a bet going, you know. On the baby’s sex.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I think we’re up to seventy bucks it’s a girl, forty bucks it’s a boy.”

Va

Rizzoli felt the baby give a kick as she let herself into her apartment. Settle down in there, Junior, she thought. It’s bad enough you treated me like a punching bag all day; now you’re going to keep it up all night as well? She didn’t know if she was carrying a boy, girl, or other; all she knew was that this kid was eager to be born.

Just stop trying to kung-fu your way out, okay?

She threw her purse and keys on the kitchen counter, kicked off her shoes by the door, and tossed her blazer over a dining room chair. Two days ago her husband, Gabriel, had left for Montana as part of an FBI team investigating a paramilitary weapons cache. Now the apartment was sliding back into the same comfortable anarchy that had reigned here before their marriage. Before Gabriel had moved in and instilled some semblance of discipline. Leave it to an ex-Marine to rearrange your pots and pans in order of size.

In the bedroom, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. She scarcely recognized herself, apple-cheeked and sway-backed, her belly bulging beneath maternity stretch pants. When did I disappear? she thought. Am I still there, hidden somewhere in that distorted body? She confronted that stranger’s reflection, remembering how flat her belly had once been. She did not like the way her face had plumped up, the way her cheeks had turned as rosy as a child’s. The glow of pregnancy, Gabriel had called it, trying to reassure his wife that she did not, in fact, look like a shiny-nosed whale. That woman there is not really me, she thought. That’s not the cop who can kick down doors and blow away perps.

She flopped on her back onto the bed and spread both arms across the mattress like a bird taking flight. She could smell Gabriel’s scent in the sheets. I miss you tonight, she thought. This was not the way marriage was supposed to be. Two careers, two work-obsessed people. Gabriel on the road, her alone in this apartment. But she’d known, going into it, that it would not be easy. That there’d be too many nights like this one, when his job, or hers, would keep them apart. She thought of calling him again, but they had already talked twice that morning, and Verizon was stealing enough of her paycheck as it was.

Oh, what the hell.

She rolled sideways, pushed herself off the bed, and was about to reach for the phone on the nightstand when it suddenly rang. Startled, she looked at the caller ID readout. An unfamiliar number-not Gabriel’s.

She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Detective Rizzoli?” a man asked.

“Yes it is.”

“I apologize for the late hour. I just got back into town this evening, and-”

”Who’s calling, please?”

“Detective Ballard, Newton PD. I understand you’re lead investigator on that shooting last night, out in Brookline. A victim named A

“Yes, I am.”

“Last year, I caught a case here. It involved a woman named A

“You said you’re with Newton PD?”

“Yes.”

“Could you identify Ms. Jessop? If you viewed the remains?”

A pause. “I think I need to. I need to be sure it’s her.”

“And if it is?”

“Then I know who killed her.”

Even before Detective Rick Ballard pulled out his ID, Rizzoli could have guessed the man was a cop. As she walked into the reception area of the M.E.’s building, he immediately rose to his feet, as though at attention. His eyes were a direct and crystalline blue, his brown hair clipped in a conservative cut, and his shirt was pressed with military neatness. He had the same quiet air of command that Gabriel possessed, the same rock-solid gaze that seemed to say, In a pinch, you can count on me. He made her wish, just for an instant, that she was slim-waisted again, and attractive. As they shook hands, as she looked at his ID, she felt him studying her face.

Definitely a cop, she thought.

“You ready to do this?” she asked. When he nodded, she glanced at the receptionist. “Is Dr. Bristol downstairs?”

“He’s finishing up an autopsy right now. He said you can meet him down there.”

They took the elevator to the basement level and walked into the morgue anteroom, where cabinets held supplies of shoe covers and masks and paper caps. Through the large viewing window they could see into the autopsy lab, where Dr. Bristol and Yoshima were at work on a gaunt, gray-haired man. Bristol spotted them through the glass and he waved in greeting.

“Ten minutes more!” he said.

Rizzoli nodded. “We’ll wait.”

Bristol had just made the scalp incision. Now he peeled the scalp forward over the cranium, collapsing the face.

“I always hate this part,” said Rizzoli. “When they start messing with the face. The rest, I can handle.”

Ballard didn’t say anything. She looked at him and saw that his back was now rigid, his face grimly stoic. Since he was not a homicide detective, he probably did not make many visits to the morgue, and the procedure now going on beyond that window must surely strike him as appalling. She remembered the first visit she’d ever made here as a police cadet. She’d been part of a group from the academy, the only woman among the six brawny cadets, and the men had all towered over her. Everyone had expected the girl to be the squeamish one, that she’d be the one who’d turn away during the autopsy. But she had planted herself front and center, had watched the entire procedure without flinching. It was one of the men, the most strapping among them, who had paled and stumbled off to a nearby chair. She wondered if Ballard was about to do the same. Under fluorescent lights, his skin had taken on a sickly pallor.

In the autopsy room, Yoshima began sawing the cranium open. The whir of blade against bone seemed to be more than Ballard could deal with. He turned from the window, fixing his gaze instead on the boxes of gloves stacked up in various sizes on the shelf. Rizzoli actually felt a little sorry for him. It had to be humiliating when you were a tough-looking guy like Ballard, to let a girl cop see you going rubber-kneed.

She shoved a stool his way, then pulled one up for herself. Gave a sigh as she sat down. “Nowadays, I’m not so good at standing on my feet too long.”

He sat down too, looking relieved to be focused on anything other than that whining bone saw. “Is that your first?” he asked, pointing to her belly.

“Yep.”

“Boy or girl?”

“I don’t know. We’ll be happy either way.”

“That’s how I felt when my daughter was born. Ten fingers and toes, that’s all I was asking for…” He paused, swallowing hard, as the saw continued to whine.

“How old is your daughter now?” asked Rizzoli, trying to distract him.

“Oh, fourteen, going on thirty. Not a barrel of laughs right now.”

“Rough age for girls.”

“See all my gray hairs coming in?”

Rizzoli laughed. “My mom used to do that. Point to her head and say, ‘These gray hairs are all your fault.’ I have to admit, I wasn’t nice to be around when I was fourteen. It’s the age.”

“Well, we’ve got some problems going on, too. My wife and I separated last year. Katie’s getting pulled in different directions. Two working parents, two households.”

“That’s gotta be hard on a kid.”

The whine of the bone saw mercifully ceased. Through the window, Rizzoli saw Yoshima remove the skullcap. Saw Bristol free up the brain, cupping it gently in both hands as he extracted it from the cranium. Ballard kept his gaze averted from the window, his attention focused on Rizzoli.

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” he said.

“What is?”