She’d eaten a handful of crackers at home so that she would not face this ordeal on an empty stomach, and she was relieved not to feel even a twinge of nausea despite the odors, despite the grotesque condition of the remains. She was able to maintain her composure as she regarded the liverish-green abdomen. The Y-incision had not yet been made. The single gaping wound was the one thing she could not bring herself to look at. Instead, she focused on the neck, on the discoid bruises, visible even against the underlying postmortem discoloration, under both angles of the jaw. The marks left by the killer’s fingers, pressing into flesh.
“Manual strangulation,” said Isles. “Like Gail Yeager.”
The most intimate way to kill someone, Dr. Zucker had called it. Skin to skin. Your hands against her flesh. Pressing her throat as you feel her life drain away.
“And the X-rays?”
“A fracture of the left thyroid horn.”
Dr. Tierney cut in, “It’s not the neck that concerns us. It’s the wound. I suggest you put on a pair of gloves, Detective. You’ll need to examine this yourself.” He crossed to the cabinet where the gloves were stored. Took her time pulling on a pair of Smalls, using the delay to steel herself. At last she turned back to the table.
Dr. Isles already had the overhead light focused on the lower abdomen. The edges of the wound gaped like opened lips.
“The skin layer was opened with a single clean slice,” said Dr. Isles. “Made with a nonserrated blade. Once through the skin, deeper incisions followed. First the superficial fascia, then the muscle, and finally the pelvic peritoneum.”
Rizzoli stared into the maw of the wound, thinking of the hand that had held the blade, a hand so steady that it had traced the incision with a single confident slice.
She asked, softly: “Was the victim alive when this was done?”
“No. He used no suture, and there was no bleeding. This was a postmortem excision, performed after the patient’s heart stopped, after circulation ceased. The manner in which this procedure was done-the methodical sequence of incisions-indicates he has had surgical experience. He’s done this before.”
Dr. Tierney said, “Go ahead, Detective. Examine the wound.”
She hesitated, her hands chilled to ice in the latex gloves. Slowly she slipped her hand into the incision, burrowing deep into the pelvis of Karenna Ghent. She knew exactly what she would find, yet she was still shaken by the discovery. She looked at Dr. Tierney and saw confirmation in his eyes.
“The uterus was removed,” he said.
She pulled her hand from the pelvis. “It’s him,” she said softly. “Warren Hoyt did this.”
“Yet everything else is consistent with the Dominator,” said Gabriel Dean. “The abduction, the strangulation. Postmortem intercourse-”
“But not this,” she said, staring at the wound. “This is Hoyt’s fantasy. This is what turns him on. The cutting, the taking of the very organ that defines them as women and gives them a power he’ll never have.” She looked straight at Dean. “I know his work. I’ve seen it before.”
“We both have,” Dr. Tierney said to Dean. “I performed the autopsies last year, on Hoyt’s victims. This is his technique.”
Dean shook his head in disbelief. “Two different killers? Combining techniques?”
“The Dominator and the Surgeon,” said Rizzoli. “They’ve found each other.”
FOURTEEN
She sat in her car, warm air blasting from the AC vent, sweat beading on her face. Even the night’s heat could not dispel the chill she still felt from the autopsy room. I must be coming down with a virus, she thought, massaging her temples. And no wonder; she had been going full throttle for days, and now it was catching up with her. Her head ached and all she wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for a week.
She drove straight home. Walked into her apartment and once again performed the ritual that had become such an important part of maintaining her sanity. The turning of the dead bolts, the sliding of the chain into its groove, were performed with deliberate care, and only after she completed her security checklist and had locked every lock, peered into every closet, did she finally kick off her shoes, peel off her slacks and blouse. Stripped down to her underwear, she sank onto the bed and sat massaging her temples, wondering if she still had any aspirin in the medicine cabinet yet feeling too drained to get up and look.
Her apartment intercom buzzed. She snapped straight, pulse galloping, alarms lighting up every nerve. She was not expecting visitors, nor did she want any.
The buzzer rang again, the sound like steel wool against raw nerve endings.
She rose and went into the living room to press the intercom button. “Yes?”
“It’s Gabriel Dean. May I come up?”
Of all people, his was the last voice she’d expected to hear. She was so startled that for a moment she didn’t respond.
“Detective Rizzoli?” he said.
“What is this about, Agent Dean?”
“The autopsy. There are issues we need to talk about.”
She pressed the lock release and almost immediately wished she hadn’t. She didn’t trust Dean, yet she was about to let him into the safe haven of her apartment. With the careless press of a button, the decision had been made, and now she could not change her mind.
She’d barely had time to pull on a cotton bathrobe when he knocked. Through the fish-eye lens of the door’s peephole his sharp features appeared distorted. Ominous. By the time she’d unfastened all the various locks, that grotesquely distorted image had solidified in her mind. Reality was far less threatening. The man who stood in her doorway had tired eyes and a face that registered the strain of having witnessed too many horrors on too little sleep.
Yet his first question was about her: “Are you holding up all right?”
She understood the implication of that question: That she was not all right. That she was in need of checking up on, an unstable cop about to fracture into brittle shards.
“I’m perfectly fine,” she said.
“You left so soon after the autopsy. Before we had the chance to talk.”
“About what?”
“Warren Hoyt.”
“What do you want to know about him?”
“Everything.”
“I’m afraid that would take all night. And I’m tired.” She tugged her bathrobe tighter, suddenly self-conscious. It had always been important to her to appear professional, and she usually slipped on a blazer before heading to a crime scene. Now she stood before Dean in nothing more than her robe and underwear, and she did not like this feeling of vulnerability.
She reached for the door, a gesture with an unmistakable message: This conversation is over.
He didn’t budge from her doorway. “Look, I admit I made a mistake. I should have listened to you from the start. You were the one who saw it first. I didn’t recognize the parallels with Hoyt.”
“That’s because you never knew him.”
“So tell me about him. We need to work together, Jane.”
Her laughter was sharp as glass. “Now you’re interested in teamwork? This is new and different.”
Resigned to the fact that he was not leaving, she turned and walked into the living room. He followed her, shutting the door behind him.
“Talk to me about Hoyt.”
“You can read his file.”
“I already have.”
“Then you’ve got everything you need.”