Last to Die

“They’d be old,” said Maura.

“No scar formation, no deformities. You know, I can recognize those.”

There was no missing the irritation in his voice. She was the interloper, the high-and-mighty expert from the big city who’d questioned his competence. She chose not to engage him and focused instead on the X-rays. What he had said was correct: At first glance, there were no obvious old fractures of the arms or legs. She moved closer to study first the right tibia, then the left. The darker skin on Anna’s shins had raised her suspicions, and what she saw on these films confirmed her diagnosis.

“Do you see this, Dr. Owen?” Maura pointed to the outline of the tibia. “Notice the layering and the thickness.”

The young pathologist frowned. “It is thicker, I agree.”

“There are endosteal changes here as well. Do you see them? These are highly suggestive.” She looked at Randy. “Can we see the ankle films now?”

“Suggestive of what?” he asked, still unconvinced by this expert from Boston.

“Periostitis. Inflammatory changes of the membrane covering the bone.” Maura pulled down the tibia X-rays. “Ankle films, please.”

Tight-lipped, he shoved the new X-rays under the clips, and what Maura saw in those films swept away any doubts she’d had. Dr. Owen, standing beside her, murmured a troubled: Oh.

“These are classic bony changes,” said Maura. “I’ve seen them only twice before. Once in an immigrant from Algeria. The second was a corpse that turned up in a freighter, a man from South America.”

“What are you looking at?” said Randy.

“The changes in the right calcaneus,” said Dr. Owen. She pointed to the right heel bone.

Maura said, “You can see them in the left calcaneus, too. Those deformities are from multiple old fractures that have since healed.”

“Both her feet were broken?” said Randy.

“Repeatedly.” She stared at the X-rays and shuddered at their significance. “Falaka,” she said softly.

“I’ve read about it,” said Dr. Owen. “But I never thought I’d see a case in Maine.”

Maura looked at Randy. “It’s also known as bastinado. The feet are beaten on the sole, which breaks bones, ruptures tendons and ligaments. It’s known in many places around the world. The Middle East, Asia. South America.”

“You mean someone did this to her?”

Maura nodded. “And those changes in the tibias that I pointed out are also from repeated beatings. Something heavy was slammed against the shins. It may not be enough to actually fracture bone, but it leaves permanent changes in the periosteum from repeated hemorrhages.” Maura went back to the table, where Anna’s broken body lay. She understood, now, the significance of that grid of scars on the breasts, the abdomen. What she did not understand was why any of this had been done to Anna. Or when.

“It still doesn’t explain why she killed herself,” said Dr. Owen.

“No,” Maura admitted. “But it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? If her death is somehow connected to her past. To what caused these scars.”

“You’re now questioning whether this was a suicide?”

“After seeing this, I question everything. And now we have another mystery.” She looked at Dr. Owen. “Why was Anna Welliver tortured?”

A jail cell diminishes any man, and so it was with Icarus.

Viewed through the bars, he seemed smaller, inconsequential. Now stripped of his Italian suit and his Panerai wristwatch, he wore a lurid orange jumpsuit and rubber flip-flops. His solitary cell was furnished only with a sink, a toilet, and a concrete shelf bed with a thin mattress, on which he was now sitting.

“You know,” he said, “that every man has his price.”

“And what would yours be?” I asked.

“I have already paid it. Everything I ever valued has been lost.” He looked up at me with bright blue eyes, so unlike the soft brown eyes of his dead son Carlo. “I was speaking of your price.”

“Me? I can’t be bought.”

“Then you are merely a simpleminded patriot? You do this for love of country?”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “I’ve heard that before. All it means is that the alternative offer was not high enough.”

“There isn’t any offer high enough to make me sell out my country.”

He gave me a look akin to pity, as if I were feebleminded. “All right, then. Go back to your country. But you do know, you’ll go home poorer than you need to be.”

“Unlike some people,” I taunted him, “at least I can go home.”

He smiled, and that smile made my hands suddenly go cold. As if I were looking into the face of my future. “Can you?”

TWENTY-THREE

 

JANE HAD TO ADMIT, DARREN CROWE LOOKED GOOD ON TV. SITTING at her desk in the homicide unit, she watched the interview on the department’s TV, admiring Crowe’s sharp suit, blow-dried hair, and those dazzling teeth. She wondered if he’d bleached his teeth himself with a drugstore whitening kit, or if he’d paid a professional to polish up the pearly whites.

“Reuben with double sauerkraut,” said Frost, setting a sandwich bag on her desk. He dropped into the chair beside hers and unwrapped his usual lunch, a turkey on white, no lettuce.

“Look how that reporter’s ogling him,” Jane said, pointing to the blond correspondent interviewing Crowe. “I swear, any second now she’s gonna rip off her blazer and scream, Take me, Officer! ”

“No one ever says that to me.” Frost sighed, resignedly biting into his sandwich.

“He’s milking this like a pro. Oh look, here he comes with the deep thoughts expression.”

“I saw him practicing that look in the john.”

“Deep thoughts?” She snorted as she unwrapped her Reuben sandwich. “Like he has any. The way he’s staring at that chick, he’s thinking more along the lines of deep throat.”

They sat eating their sandwiches as they watched Crowe on TV describing the Zapata takedown. Could have surrendered, but chose to run … We exercised restraint at all times … clearly the actions of a guilty man …

Her appetite suddenly gone, Jane put down her Reuben.

Illegal aliens like Zapata who bring their violence to this country will be dealt with. That’s my pledge to the good citizens of Boston.

“This is bullshit,” she said. “Just like that, he’s got Zapata tried and convicted.”

Frost didn’t say anything, simply kept eating his turkey sandwich as if nothing else mattered, and that annoyed her. Usually she appreciated her partner’s unflappability. No drama, no meltdowns, just a maddeningly even-keeled Boy Scout who now reminded her of a cow calmly chewing grass.

“Hey,” she said. “Doesn’t this bother you?”

He looked at her, his mouth full of turkey. “I know it bothers you.”

“But you’re okay with it? Closing the book when we’ve got no murder weapon, nothing in Zapata’s possession