Body Double

Into her bedroom.

ELEVEN

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, a Fox Harbor police cruiser came bouncing down her dirt road. It pulled up in front of the cottage, and a cop climbed out. He was in his fifties, bull-necked, his blond hair going bald on top.

“Dr. Isles?” he said, offering her a meaty handshake. “Roger Gresham, chief of police.”

“I didn’t know I’d get the chief himself.”

“Yeah, well, we were pla

“We?” She frowned as another vehicle, a Ford Explorer, came up the driveway and pulled up next to Gresham ’s cruiser. The driver stepped out and waved at her.

“Hello, Maura,” said Rick Ballard.

For a moment she just looked at him, startled by his unexpected arrival. “I had no idea you were here,” she finally said.

“I drove up last night. When did you get in?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“You spent the night in this house?”

“The motel was full. Miss Clausen-the rental agent-offered to let me sleep here.” She paused. Added on a defensive note, “She did say the police were finished with it.”

Gresham gave a snort. “Bet she charged you for the night, too. Didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“That Britta, she’s something else. She’d charge ya for air if she could.” Turning toward the house, he said: “So where did you see those footprints?”

Maura led the men past the front porch and around the corner of the house. They stayed to the side of the path, sca

“Fresh deer tracks here,” said Gresham, pointing.

“Yes, there were a pair of deer that came through here this morning,” said Maura.

“That could explain those tracks you saw.”

“Chief Gresham,” said Maura, and sighed. “I can tell a boot print from a deer track.”

“No, I mean some guy might’ve been out here hunting. Out of season, you understand. Followed those deer outta the woods.”

Ballard suddenly halted, his gaze fixed on the ground.

“Do you see them?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. His voice was strangely quiet.

Gresham squatted down beside Ballard. A moment passed. Why didn’t they say something? A wind stirred the trees. Shivering, she looked up at the swaying branches. Last night, someone had come out of those woods. He had stood outside her room. Had stared in her window while she slept.

Ballard glanced up at the house. “Is that a bedroom window?”

“Yes.”

“Yours?”

“Yes.”

“Did you close your curtains last night?” He looked over his shoulder at her, and she knew what he was thinking: Did you treat them to an inadvertent peep show last night?

She flushed. “There aren’t any curtains in that room.”

“Those are too big to be Britta’s boots,” said Gresham. “She’s the only person who’d be tramping around up here, checking on the house.”

“Looks like a Vibram sole,” said Ballard. “Size eight, maybe nine.” His gaze followed the prints back toward the woods. “Deer tracks overlie them.”

“Which means he came through here first,” said Maura. “Before the deer did. Before I woke up.”

“Yes, but how long before?” Ballard straightened and stood peering through the window into her bedroom. For a long time he did not say anything, and once again she grew impatient with their silence, anxious to hear a reaction-any reaction-from these men.

“You know, it hasn’t rained here in close to a week,” said Gresham. “Those boot prints may not be all that fresh.”

“But who’d be walking around here, looking in windows?” she asked.

“I can call Britta. Maybe she had a man up to work on the place. Or someone peeked in there ’cause they were curious.”

“Curious?” asked Maura.

“Everyone up here’s heard about what happened to your sister, down in Boston. Some folks might want to peek into her house.”

“I don’t understand that kind of morbid curiosity. I never have.”

“Rick here tells me you’re a medical examiner, right? Well, you must have to deal with the same thing I do. Everyone wanting to know the details. You won’t believe how many folks have asked me about the shooting. Don’t you think some of these busybodies might want to take a peek inside her house?”

She stared at him in disbelief. The silence was suddenly broken by the crackle of Gresham ’s car radio.

“Excuse me,” he said, and headed back to his cruiser.

“Well,” she said. “I guess that pretty much dispenses with my concerns, doesn’t it?”

“I happen to take your concerns very seriously.”

“Do you?” She looked at him. “Come inside, Rick. I want to show you something.”

He followed her back up the steps to the front porch, and into the house. She swung the door shut and pointed to the array of brass locks.

“That’s what I wanted you to see,” she said.

He frowned at the locks. “Wow.”

“There’s more. Come with me.”

She led him into the kitchen. Pointed to more gleaming chains and bolts barring the back door. “These are all new. A

“She had reason to be afraid. All the death threats. She didn’t know when Cassell might turn up here.”

She looked at him. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To find out if he did?”

“I’ve been showing his photograph around town.”

“And?”

“So far, no one remembers seeing him. But it doesn’t mean he wasn’t here.” He pointed to the locks. “Those make perfect sense to me.”

Sighing, she sank into a chair at the kitchen table. “How could our lives have turned out so differently? There I was, getting off a plane from Paris while she…” She swallowed. “What if I’d been raised in A

“You’re two different people, Maura. You may have her face, her voice. But you’re not A

She looked up at him. “Tell me more about my sister.”

“I’m not sure where to start.”

“Anything. Everything. You just said I sound like her.”

He nodded. “You do. The same inflections. The same pitch.”

“You remember her that well?”

“A

“Dr. Isles,” said Gresham. “I wonder if you could do me a little favor. Come up the road with me a ways. There’s something I need you to look at.”

“What sort of thing?”

“That was dispatch on the radio. They got a call from the construction crew right up the road. Their bulldozer turned up some-well, some bones.”

She frowned. “Human?”

“That’s what they’re wondering.”

Maura rode with Gresham in the cruiser, with Ballard following right behind them in his Explorer. The trip was barely worth climbing into the car for, just a short curve up the road, and there the bulldozer was, sitting in a freshly cleared lot. Four men in hard hats stood in the shade next to their pickup trucks. One of them came forward to meet them as Maura, Gresham, and Ballard climbed out of the vehicles.

“Hey, Chief.”

“Hey, Mitch. Where is it?”

“Out near the bulldozer. I spotted that bone, and I just shut my engine right down. There used to be an old farmhouse here, on this lot. Last thing I want to do is dig up some family graveyard.”

“We’ll just have Dr. Isles here take a look before I make any calls. I’d hate to have the M.E. drive all the way over from Augusta for a bunch of bear bones.”

Mitch led the way across the clearing. The newly churned-up soil was an obstacle course of ankle-snagging roots and overturned rocks. Maura’s pumps were not designed for hiking, and no matter how carefully she picked her way across the terrain, she could not avoid soiling the black suede.