“These things drive me crazy,” Rizzoli said, fiddling with two different remotes. “I never did learn how to program mine.” She glanced at Frost.
“Hey, don’t ask me.”
Gorman sighed and took the remote. The zirconium-bedecked model suddenly vanished, replaced by a view of the Waites’ driveway. Wind hissed in the microphone, distorting the cameraman’s voice as he stated his name, DetectivePardee, the time, date, and location. It was five P.M. on June 2, a blustery day, the trees swaying. Pardee turned the camera toward the house and began walking up the steps, the camera’s image jittering on the TV. Rizzoli saw geraniums blooming in pots, the same geraniums that were now dead from neglect. A voice was heard, calling to Pardee, and the screen went blank for a few seconds.
“The front door was found unlocked,” said Gorman. “Housekeeper said that wasn’t unusual. People around here often leave their doors unlocked. She assumed someone was home, since Maria Jean never goes anywhere. She knocked first, but there was no answer.”
A fresh image suddenly sprang into view on-screen, the camera aimed through the open doorway, straight into the living room. This was what the housekeeper must have registered as she opened the door. As the stench, and the horror, washed over her.
“She took maybe one step into the house,” said Gorman. “Saw Kenny up against the far wall. And all that blood. Doesn’t remember seeing much of anything else. Just wanted to get the hell out of the house. Jumped in her car and hit the gas pedal so hard her tires dug tracks in the gravel.”
The camera moved into the room, panning across furniture, closing in on the main event: Kenneth Waite III, dressed only in boxer shorts, his head lolling to his chest. Early decomposition had bloated his features. The gas-filled abdomen ballooned out, and the face was swollen beyond resemblance to anything human. But it wasn’t the face she focused on; it was the object of incongruous delicacy, placed on his thighs.
“We didn’t know what to make of that,” said Gorman. “It looked to me like some sort of symbolic artifact. That’s how I classified it. A way of ridiculing the victim. ‘Look at me, all tied up, with this stupid teacup on my lap.’ It’s just what a wife might do to her husband, to show how much she despises him.” He sighed. “But that’s when I thought it might be Maria Jean who did it.”
The camera turned from the corpse and was moving up the hallway now. Retracing the killer’s steps, toward the bedroom where Kenny and Maria Jean had slept. The image swayed like the stomach-churning view through the porthole of a rocking ship. The camera paused at each doorway to offer a glimpse inside. First a bathroom, then a guest bedroom. As it continued up the hallway, Rizzoli’s pulse quickened. Without realizing it, she had stepped closer to the TV, as though she, and not Pardee, were the one walking up that long corridor.
Suddenly a view of the master bedroom swung onto the screen. Windows with green damask curtains. A dresser and wardrobe, both painted white, and the closet door. A four-poster bed, the covers pulled back, almost stripped off.
“They were surprised while sleeping,” said Gorman. “Kenny’s stomach was almost empty of food. At the time he was killed, he hadn’t eaten for at least eight hours.”
Rizzoli moved even closer to the TV, her gaze rapidly scanning the screen. Now Pardee turned back to the hallway.
“Rewind it,” she said to Gorman.
“Why?”
“Just go back. To when we first see the bedroom.”
Gorman handed her the remote. “It’s yours.”
She hit REWIND, and the tape whined backward. Once again Pardee was in the hallway, approaching the master bedroom. Once again, the view swept toward the right, slowly panning across the dresser, the wardrobe, the closet doors, then focusing on the bed. Frost was now standing right beside her, searching for the same thing.
She hit PAUSE. “It’s not there.”
“What isn’t?” said Gorman.
“The folded nightclothes.” She turned to him. “You didn’t find any?”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to.”
“It’s part of the Dominator’s signature. He folds the woman’s nightclothes. Displays them in the bedroom as a symbol of his control.”
“If it’s him, he didn’t do it here.”
“Everything else about this matches him. The duct tape, the teacup on the lap. The position of the male victim.”
“What you see is what we found.”
“You’re sure nothing was moved before the video was filmed?”
It was not a tactful question, and Gorman stiffened. “Well, I guess it’s always possible the first officer on the scene walked in here and decided to move stuff around, just to make things interesting for us.”
Frost, ever the diplomat, stepped in to smooth the chop that Rizzoli so often trailed in her wake. “It’s not like this perp keeps a checklist. Looks like this time, he varied it a little.”
“If it’s the same guy,” Gorman said.
Rizzoli turned from the TV and looked, once again, at the wall where Kenny had died and slowly bloated in the heat. She thought of the Yeagers and the Ghents, of duct tape and sleeping victims, of the many-stranded web of details that bound these cases so tightly to one another.
But here, in this house, the Dominator left out a step. He did not fold the nightclothes. Because he and Hoyt were not yet a team.
She remembered the afternoon in the Yeagers’ house, her gaze frozen on Gail Yeager’s nightgown, and she remembered the bone-chilling sense of familiarity.
Only with the Yeagers did the Surgeon and the Dominator begin their alliance. That was the day they lured me into the game, with a folded nightgown. Even from prison, Warren Hoyt managed to send me his calling card.
She looked at Gorman, who had settled onto one of the sheet-draped chairs and was once again wiping the sweat from his face. Already this meeting had drained him, and he was fading before their eyes.
“You never identified any suspects?” she asked.
“No one we could hang a hat on. That’s after four, five hundred interviews.”
“And the Waites, as far as you know, weren’t acquainted with either the Yeagers or the Ghents?”
“Those names never came up. Look, you’ll get copies of all our files in a day or two. You can cross-check everything we have.” Gorman folded up his handkerchief and slipped it back in his jacket pocket. “You might want to check the FBI as well,” he added. “See if they have anything to add.”
Rizzoli paused. “The FBI?”
“We sent a VICAP report way back. An agent from their behavioral unit came up. Spent a few weeks monitoring our investigation, then went back to Washington. Haven’t heard a word from him since.”
Rizzoli and Frost looked at each other. She saw her own astonishment reflected in his eyes.
Gorman slowly rose from the chair and took out the keys, a hint that he would like to end this meeting. Only as he was walking toward the door did Rizzoli finally summon the voice to ask the obvious question. Even though she did not want to hear the answer.
“The FBI agent who came up here,” she said. “Do you remember his name?”
Gorman paused in the doorway, clothes drooping on his gaunt frame. “Yes. His name was Gabriel Dean.”
TWENTY-ONE
She drove straight through the afternoon and into the night, her eyes on the dark highway, her mind on Gabriel Dean. Frost had dozed off beside her, and she was alone with her own thoughts, her rage. What else had Dean withheld from her? she wondered. What other information had he hoarded while watching her scramble for answers? From the very beginning, he had been a few steps ahead of her. The first to reach the dead security guard in the cemetery. The first to spot Karenna Ghent’s body posed atop the grave. The first to suggest the wet prep during Gail Yeager’s autopsy. He had already known, before any of them, that it would reveal live sperm. Because he’s encountered the Dominator before.