Body Double

No answer.

Why the hell do I keep trying? There’s nobody home in there. There’s no light in those eyes.

“Well,” said Maura. “I’ll come back another time. Maybe you’ll talk to me then.” With a sigh, Maura stood and looked around for the guard. She spotted her at the other end of the room. Maura had just raised her hand in a wave when she heard the voice. A whisper so soft she might have imagined it:

“Go away.”

Startled, Maura looked down at Amalthea, who was sitting in exactly the same position, lips twitching, gaze still unfocused.

Slowly, Maura sat back down. “What did you say?”

Amalthea’s gaze lifted to hers. And just for an instant, Maura saw awareness there. A gleam of intelligence. “Go away. Before he sees you.”

Maura stared. A chill clambered up her spine, made the hairs on the back of her neck bristle.

At the next table, the dishwater blonde was still crying. Her male visitor stood up and said, “I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to accept it. That’s the way it is.” He walked away, back to his life on the outside where women wore pretty blouses, not blue denim. Where doors that locked could be unlocked.

“Who?” Maura asked softly. Amalthea didn’t answer. “Who’s going to see me, Amalthea?” Maura pressed her. “What do you mean?”

But Amalthea’s gaze had clouded over. That brief flash of awareness was gone, and Maura was staring, once more, into a void.

“So, are we all done with the visit?” the guard asked cheerfully.

“Is she always like this?” asked Maura, watching Amalthea’s lips form soundless words.

“Pretty much. She has good days and bad days.”

“She hardly spoke to me at all.”

“She will, if she gets to know you better. Mostly keeps to herself, but sometimes she’ll come out of it. Writes letters, even uses the phone.”

“Whom does she call?”

“I don’t know. Her shrink, I guess.”

“Dr. O’Do

“The blond lady. She’s been in a few times, so Amalthea’s pretty comfortable with her. Aren’t you, honey?” Reaching for the prisoner’s arm, the guard said: “Come on, upsy daisy. Let’s walk you back.”

Obediently Amalthea rose to her feet and allowed the guard to guide her away from the table. She moved only a few steps, then stopped.

“Amalthea, let’s go.”

But the prisoner did not move. She stood as though her muscles had suddenly solidified.

“Honey, I can’t wait all day for you. Let’s go.”

Slowly Amalthea turned. Her eyes were still vacant. The words she said next came out in a voice that was not quite human, but mechanical. A foreign entity, cha

“Now you’re going to die, too,” she said. Then she turned and shuffled away, back to her cell.

“She has tardive dyskinesia,” said Maura. “That’s why Superintendent Gurley tried to discourage me from visiting her. She didn’t want me to see Amalthea’s condition. She didn’t want me to find out what they’ve done to her.”

“What exactly did they do to her?” said Rizzoli. She was once again behind the wheel, guiding them fearlessly past trucks that made the road shake, that rattled the little Subaru with turbulence. “Are you saying they turned her into some kind of zombie?”

“You saw her psychiatric record. Her first doctors treated her with phenothiazines. That’s a class of antipsychotic drugs. In older women, those drugs can have devastating side effects. One of them is called tardive dyskinesia-involuntary movements of the mouth and the face. The patient can’t stop chewing or puffing her cheeks or sticking out her tongue. She can’t control any of it. Think about what that’s like. Everyone staring at you as you make weird faces. You’re a freak.”

“How do you stop the movements?”

“You can’t. They should have discontinued the drugs immediately, as soon as she had the first symptoms. But they waited too long. Then Dr. O’Do

“Are you saying she didn’t need those drugs in the first place?”

“No. I’m saying they should have been stopped sooner.”

“So is she crazy? Or isn’t she?”

“That was their initial diagnosis. Schizophrenia.”

“And what’s your diagnosis?”

Maura thought about Amalthea’s blank stare, her cryptic words. Words that made no sense except as a paranoid’s delusion. “I would have to agree,” she said. With a sigh, she leaned back. “I don’t see myself in her, Jane. I don’t see any part of me in that woman.”

“Well, that’s got to be a relief. Considering.”

“But it’s still there, that link between us. You can’t deny your own DNA.”

“You know the old saying, blood is thicker than water? It’s bullshit, Doc. You don’t have anything in common with that woman. She had you, and she gave you up at birth. That’s that. Relationship over.”

“She knows so many answers. Who my father is. Who I am.”

Rizzoli shot her a sharp glance, then turned back to the road. “I’m going to give you some advice. I know you’ll wonder where I’m coming from on this. Believe me, I’m not pulling this out of thin air. But that woman, Amalthea Lank, is someone you need to stay away from. Don’t see her, don’t talk to her. Don’t even think about her. She’s dangerous.”

“She’s nothing but a burned-out schizophrenic.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

Maura looked at Rizzoli. “What do you know about her that I don’t?”

For a moment Rizzoli drove without speaking. It was not the traffic that preoccupied her; she seemed to be weighing her response, considering how best to phrase her answer. “Do you remember Warren Hoyt?” she finally asked. Though she said the name without discernible emotion, her jaw had squared, and her hands had tightened around the steering wheel.

Warren Hoyt, thought Maura. The Surgeon.

That was what the police had dubbed him. He had earned that nickname because of the atrocities he’d inflicted on his victims. His instruments were duct tape and a scalpel; his prey were women asleep in their beds, unaware of the intruder who stood beside them in the darkness, anticipating the pleasure of making the first cut. Jane Rizzoli had been his final target, his opponent in a game of wits he’d never expected to lose.

But it was Rizzoli who brought him down with a single shot, her bullet piercing his spinal cord. Now quadriplegic, his limbs paralyzed and useless, Warren Hoyt’s universe had shrunk to a hospital room, where the few pleasures left to him were those of the mind-a mind that remained as brilliant and dangerous as ever.

“Of course I remember him,” said Maura. She had seen the result of his work, the terrible mutilation his scalpel had wrought in the flesh of one of his victims.

“I’ve been keeping tabs on him,” said Rizzoli. “You know, just to reassure myself that the monster’s still in his cage. He’s still there, all right, on the spinal cord unit. And every Wednesday afternoon, for the last eight months, he’s been getting a visitor. Dr. Joyce O’Do

Maura frowned. “Why?”

“She claims it’s part of her research in violent behavior. Her theory is that killers aren’t responsible for their actions. That some bump on the noggin when they’re kids makes them prone to violence. Naturally, defense attorneys have her on speed dial. She’d probably tell you that Jeffrey Dahmer was just misunderstood, that John Wayne Gacy just got his head knocked a few too many times. She’ll defend anyone.”

“People do what they’re paid to do.”

“I don’t think she does it for the money.”

“Then for what?”

“For the chance to get up close and personal to people who kill. She says it’s her field of study, that she does it for science. Yeah, well, Josef Mengele did it for science, too. That’s just the excuse, a way to make what she does respectable.”