Body Double

want to know the truth. DNA doesn’t lie. With a swab of her mouth, I could have my answer. I could have my worst fears confirmed.

“You know where to find me,” said Amalthea. “Come back when you’re ready for the truth.” She stood, her ankle cuff clanking against the table leg, and stared up at the video camera. A signal to the guard that she wanted to leave.

“If you’re my mother,” said Maura, “then tell me who my father is.”

Amalthea glanced back at her, the smile once again on her lips. “Haven’t you guessed?”

The door opened, and the guard poked her head in. “Everything okay in here?”

The transformation was stunning. Just an instant before, Amalthea had looked at Maura with cold calculation. Now that creature vanished, replaced by a dazed husk of a woman who tugged on her ankle manacle, as though bewildered why she could not free herself. “Go,” she mumbled. “Wanna-wanna go.”

“Yes, honey, of course we’ll go.” The guard looked at Maura. “I guess you’re all done with her?”

“For now,” said Maura.

Rizzoli had not expected a visit from Charles Cassell, so she was surprised when the desk sergeant called to inform her that Dr. Cassell was waiting for her in the lobby. When she stepped out of the elevator and saw him, she was shocked by the change in his appearance. In just a week, he seemed to have aged ten years. Clearly he had lost weight, and his face was now gaunt and colorless. His suit jacket, though no doubt expensively tailored, seemed to hang, shapeless, on his drooping shoulders.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. “I need to know what’s going on.”

She nodded to the desk officer. “I’ll take him upstairs.”

As she and Cassell stepped inside the elevator, he said: “No one is telling me anything.”

“You realize, of course, that that’s standard during an active investigation.”

“Are you going to charge me? Detective Ballard says it’s just a matter of time.”

She looked at him. “When did he tell you that?”

“Every goddamn time I hear from him. Is that the strategy, Detective? Scare me, bully me into cutting a deal?”

She said nothing. She had not known about Ballard’s continuing phone calls to Cassell.

They stepped off the elevator and she brought him to the interview room, where they sat at a corner of the table, facing each other.

“Did you have something new to tell me?” she asked. “Because if not, there’s really no reason for this meeting.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“I don’t think you heard me the first time.”

“Is there something else you want to tell me?”

“You checked my airline travel, didn’t you? I gave you that info.”

“Northwest Airlines confirms you were on that flight. But that still leaves you without an alibi for the night of Anna’s murder.”

“And that incident with the dead bird in her mailbox-did you even bother to confirm where I was when that happened? I know I wasn’t in town. My secretary can tell you that.”

“Still, you understand it doesn’t prove your innocence. You could have hired someone else to wring a bird’s neck and deliver it to Anna’s mailbox.”

“I’ll freely admit the things I did do. Yes, I followed her. I drove by her house maybe half a dozen times. And yes, I did hit her that night-I’m not proud of that. But I never sent any death threats. I never killed any bird.”

“Is that all you came to say? Because if that’s it-” She started to rise.

To her shock, he reached out and grasped her arm, his grip so hard she instantly reacted in self-defense. She grabbed his hand and twisted it away.

He gave a grunt of pain and sat back, looking stunned.

“You want me to break your arm?” she said. “Just try that little trick again.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, staring at her with stricken eyes. Whatever anger he’d managed to summon up during this exchange suddenly seemed to drain right out of him. “God, I’m sorry…”

She watched him huddle in his chair and she thought: This grief is real.

“I just need to know what’s going on,” he said. “I need to know you’re doing something.”

“I’m doing my job, Dr. Cassell.”

“All you’re doing is investigating me.”

“That’s not true. This is a broad-based investigation.”

“Ballard said-”

“Detective Ballard is not in charge-I am. And trust me, I’m looking at every possible angle.”

He nodded. Took a deep breath and straightened. “That’s really what I wanted to hear, that everything’s being done. That you’re not overlooking anything. No matter what you think of me, the honest-to-god truth is, I did love her.” He ran his hand through his hair. “It’s terrible, when people leave you.”

“Yes, it is.”

“When you love someone, it’s only natural to want to hold on to them. You do crazy things, desperate things-”

“Even murder?”

“I didn’t kill her.” He met Rizzoli’s gaze. “But yes. I would have killed for her.”

Her cell phone rang. She rose from the chair. “Excuse me,” she said and left the room. It was Frost on the phone. “Surveillance just spotted a white van at the Van Gates residence,” he said. “It cruised by the house about fifteen minutes ago, but didn’t stop. There’s a chance the driver spotted our boys, so they’ve moved down the street a ways.”

“Why do you think it’s the right van?”

“The plates were stolen.”

“What?”

“They got a look at the license number. The plates were pulled off a Dodge Caravan three weeks ago, out in Pittsfield.”

Pittsfield, she thought, right across the state border from Albany.

Where a woman vanished just last month.

She stood with the receiver pressed to her ear, her pulse starting to hammer. “Where’s that van now?”

“Our team sat tight and didn’t follow it. By the time they heard back about the plates, it was gone. It hasn’t come back.”

“Let’s change out that car and move it to a parallel street. Bring in a second team to watch the house. If the van comes by again, we can do a leapfrog tail. Two cars, taking turns.”

“Right, I’m headed over there now.”

She hung up. Turned to look into the interview room where Charles Cassell was still sitting at the table, his head bowed. Is that love or obsession I’m looking at? she wondered.

Sometimes, you couldn’t tell the difference.

TWENTY-EIGHT

DAYLIGHT WAS FADING when Rizzoli cruised up Dedham Parkway. She spotted Frost’s car and pulled up behind him. Climbed out of her car and slid into his passenger seat.

“And?” she said. “What’s going on?”

“Not a damn thing.”

“Shit. It’s been over an hour. Did we scare him off?”