Body Double

TWENTY-FOUR

DR. JOYCE P. O’DONNELL WALKED into the homicide unit’s conference room looking as though she owned the place. Her sleek St. John’s suit had probably cost more than Rizzoli’s entire clothing budget for a year. Three-inch heels emphasized her already statuesque height. Although three cops were watching her as she sat down at the table, she revealed not a flicker of discomfort. She knew how to take control of a room, a skill that Rizzoli could not help envying, even though she despised the woman.

The dislike was clearly mutual. O’Donnell cast one icy glance at Rizzoli, then her gaze moved on past Barry Frost, before she finally turned her full attention on Lieutenant Marquette, the homicide unit’s ranking officer. Of course she would focus on Marquette; O’Donnell didn’t waste her time with underlings.

“This is an unexpected invitation, Lieutenant,” she said. “I don’t often get asked to Schroeder Plaza.”

“Detective Rizzoli was the one who suggested it.”

“Even more unexpected, then. Considering.”

Considering we play for opposite teams, thought Rizzoli. I catch the monsters; you defend them.

“But as I told Detective Rizzoli on the phone,” O’Donnell continued, “I can’t help you unless you help me. If you want me to help you find the Beast, you have to share what information you have.”

In answer, Rizzoli slid a folder to O’Donnell. “That’s what we know about Elijah Lank so far.” She saw the eager gleam in the psychiatrist’s eyes as she reached for the folder. This was what O’Donnell lived for: a glimpse of a monster. A chance to get close to the beating heart of evil.

O’Donnell opened the file. “His high school record.”

“From Fox Harbor.”

“An IQ of 136. But only average grades.”

“Your classic underachiever.” Capable of great things if he applies himself, one teacher had written, not realizing where Elijah Lank’s achievements would take him. “After his mother died, he was raised by his father, Hugo. The father never held down a job for long. Apparently spent most of his days with a bottle, and died of pancreatitis when Elijah was eighteen.”

“And this is the same household Amalthea grew up in.”

“Yeah. She came to live with her uncle when she was nine, after her mother died. No one even knows who her father was. So there you have the Lank family of Fox Harbor. A drunk uncle, a sociopathic cousin, and a girl who grows up schizophrenic. Just your nice wholesome American family.”

“You called Elijah sociopathic.”

“What else would you call a boy who buries his classmate alive, just for the fun of it?”

O’Donnell turned to the next page. Anyone else reading that file would wear an expression of horror, but the look on her face was one of fascination.

“The girl he buried was only fourteen,” said Rizzoli. “Alice Rose was the new kid in school. She was also hearing impaired, which is why the other kids tormented her. And probably why Elijah chose her. She was vulnerable, easy prey. He invited her up to his house, then led her through the woods to a pit he’d dug. He threw her inside, covered the hole with boards, and piled rocks on top. When questioned about it later, he said the whole thing was a prank. But I think he honestly meant to kill her.”

“According to this report, the girl came out of it unharmed.”

“Unharmed? Not exactly.”

O’Donnell looked up. “But she did survive it.”

“Alice Rose spent the next five years of her life being treated for severe depression and anxiety attacks. When she was nineteen, she climbed into a bathtub and slit her wrists. As far as I’m concerned, Elijah Lank is responsible for her death. She was his first victim.”

“Can you prove there are others?”

“Forty-five years ago, a married couple named Karen and Robert Sadler vanished from Kennebunkport. Karen Sadler was eight months pregnant at the time. Their remains were found just last week, in that same plot of land where Elijah buried Alice Rose alive. I think the Sadlers were Elijah’s kills. His and Amalthea’s.”

O’Donnell had gone very still, as though she was holding her breath.

“You’re the one who first suggested it, Dr. O’Donnell,” said Lieutenant Marquette. “You said Amalthea had a partner, someone she’d called the Beast. Someone who helped her kill Nikki and Theresa Wells. That’s what you told Dr. Isles, isn’t it?”

“No one else believed my theory.”

“Well, now we do,” said Rizzoli. “We think the Beast is her cousin, Elijah.”

O’Donnell’s eyebrow lifted in amusement. “A case of killing cousins?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time that cousins have killed together,” pointed out Marquette.

“True,” O’Donnell said. “Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono-the Hillside Stranglers-they were cousins.”

“So there’s a precedent,” said Marquette. “Cousins as killing partners.”

“You didn’t need me to tell you that.”

“You knew about the Beast before anyone else did,” said Rizzoli. “You’ve been trying to find him, to contact him through Amalthea.”

“But I haven’t succeeded. So I don’t see how I can help you find him. I don’t even know why you asked me here, Detective, since you have so little regard for my research.”

“I know Amalthea talks to you. She wouldn’t say a word to me when I saw her yesterday. But the guards told me she does talk to you.”

“Our sessions are confidential. She’s my patient.”

“Her cousin isn’t. He’s the one we want to find.”

“Well, where was his last known location? You must have some information you can start with.”

“We have almost none. Nothing on his whereabouts in decades.”

“Do you even know that he’s alive?”

Rizzoli sighed. Admitted: “No.”

“He’d be nearly seventy years old now, wouldn’t he? That’s getting a little geriatric for a serial killer.”

“Amalthea is sixty-five,” said Rizzoli. “Yet no one ever doubted that she killed Theresa and Nikki Wells. That she crushed their skulls, soaked their bodies in gasoline, and lit them on fire.”

O’Donnell leaned back in her chair and regarded Rizzoli for a moment. “Tell me why Boston PD is even pursuing Elijah Lank. These are old murders-not even your jurisdiction. What’s your interest in this?”

“Anna Leoni’s murder may be tied in.”

“How?”

“Just before she was murdered, Anna was asking a lot of questions about Amalthea. Maybe she learned too much.” Rizzoli slid another file to O’Donnell.

“What’s this?”

“You’re familiar with the FBI’s National Crime Information Center? It maintains a searchable database of missing persons from across the country.”

“Yes, I’m aware of NCIC.”

“We submitted a search request using the key words female and pregnant. That’s what we got back from the FBI. Every case they have in their database, back to the 1960s. Every pregnant woman who’s vanished in the continental U.S.”

“Why did you specify pregnant women?”

“Because Nikki Wells was nine months pregnant. Karen Sadler was eight months pregnant. Don’t you find that awfully coincidental?”

O’Donnell opened the folder and confronted pages of computer printouts. She looked up in surprise. “There are dozens of names in here.”

“Consider the fact that thousands of people go missing every year in this country. If a pregnant woman vanishes every so often, it’s only a blip against that bigger background; it won’t raise any red flags. But when one woman a month vanishes, over a forty-year span, then the total numbers start to add up.”

“Can you link any of these missing persons cases to Amalthea Lank or her cousin?”

“That’s why we called you. You’ve had over a dozen sessions with her. Is there anything she’s told you about her travels? Where she’s lived, where she’s worked?”

O’Donnell closed the folder. “You’re asking me to breach patient-doctor confidentiality. Why would I?”

“Because the killing isn’t over. It hasn’t stopped.”

“My patient can’t kill anyone. She’s in prison.”

“Her partner isn’t.” Rizzoli leaned forward, closer to the woman she so thoroughly despised. But she needed O’Donnell now, and she managed to quell her revulsion. “The Beast fascinates you, doesn’t he? You want to know more about him. You want to get inside his head, know what makes him tick. You like hearing all the details. That’s why you should help us. So you can add one more monster to your collection.”

“What if we’re both wrong? Maybe the Beast is just a figment of our imaginations.”

Rizzoli looked at Frost. “Why don’t you turn on that overhead projector?”

Frost rolled the projector into position and flipped on the power switch. In this age of computers and PowerPoint slide shows, an overhead projector felt like Stone Age technology. But she and Frost had opted for the quickest, most straightforward way to make their case. Frost now opened a folder and took out multiple transparencies on which they’d recorded data points in various colors of marker ink.

Frost slid a sheet onto the overhead projector. A map of the U.S. appeared on the screen. Now he overlaid the map with the first transparency. Six black dots were added to the image.

“What do the dots signify?” O’Donnell asked.

“Those are NCIC case reports from the first six months of 1984,” said Frost. “We chose that year because it’s the first full year the FBI’s computerized database went active. So the data should be pretty complete. Each one of those dots represents a report of a missing pregnant woman.” He aimed a laser pointer at the screen. “There’s a certain amount of geographical scatter there, one case up there in Oregon, one in Atlanta. But notice this little cluster down here in the southwest.” Frost circled the relevant corner of the map. “One woman missing in Arizona, one in New Mexico. Two in Southern California.”

“What am I supposed to make of that?”

“Well, let’s take a look at the next six-month period. July through December, 1984. Maybe it’ll become clearer.”

Frost laid the next transparency over the map. A new set of dots was added, these marked in red.

“Again,” he said, “You’ll see some scatter around the country. But notice we have another cluster.” He sketched a circle around a group of three red dots. “San Jose, Sacramento, and Eugene, Oregon.”

O’Donnell said, softly: “This is getting interesting.”

“Wait until you see the next six months,” said Rizzoli.

With the third transparency, yet another set of dots was added, these in green. By now the pattern was unmistakable. A pattern that O’Donnell stared at with disbelieving eyes.

“My god,” she said. “The cluster keeps moving.”

Rizzoli nodded. Grimly she faced the screen. “From Oregon, it heads northeast. During the next six months, two pregnant women vanish from Washington state, then a third one disappears one state over, in Montana.” She turned and looked at O’Donnell. “It doesn’t stop there.”

O’Donnell rocked forward in her chair, her face alert as a cat about to pounce. “Where does the cluster move next?”

Rizzoli looked at the map. “Through that summer and fall, it moves straight east to Illinois and Michigan, New York and Massachusetts. Then it makes an abrupt drop to the south.”

“Which month?”

Rizzoli glanced at Frost, who shuffled through the printouts. “The next case shows up in Virginia, on December fourteenth,” he said.

O’Donnell said, “It’s moving with the weather.”

Rizzoli looked at her. “What?”

“The weather. See how it moved across the upper Midwest during the summer months? By fall, it’s in New England. And then, in December, it suddenly goes south. Just as the weather turns cold.”

Rizzoli frowned at the map. Jesus, she thought. The woman’s right. Why didn’t we see that?

“What happens next?” asked O’Donnell.

“It makes a complete circle,” said Frost. “Moves across the south, Florida to Texas. Eventually heads back to Arizona.”

O’Donnell rose from her chair and crossed to the screen. She stood there for a moment, studying the map. “What was the time cycle again? How long did it take to complete that circuit?”

“That time, it took three and a half years to circle the country,” said Rizzoli.

“A leisurely pace.”

“Yeah. But notice how it never stays in one state for long, never harvests too many victims in a single area. It just keeps moving, so the authorities never see the pattern, never realize it’s been going on for years and years.”

“What?” O’Donnell turned. “The cycle repeats?”

Rizzoli nodded. “It starts all over again, retracing the same route. The way old nomadic tribes used to follow the buffalo herds.”

“Authorities never noticed the pattern?”

“Because these hunters never stop moving. Different states, different jurisdictions. A few months in one region and then they’re gone. Onto the next hunting ground. Places they return to again and again.”

“Familiar territory.”

“Where we go depends upon where we know. And where we know depends upon where we go,” Rizzoli said, quoting one of the principles of geographic criminal profiling.

“Have any bodies turned up?”

“None of these have. These are the cases that remain open.”

“So they must have burial caches. Places to conceal victims, dispose of bodies.”

“We’re assuming they’d be out-of-the-way places,” said Frost. “Rural areas, or bodies of water. Since none of these women have been found.”

“But they found Nikki and Theresa Wells,” said O’Donnell. “Those bodies weren’t buried, but burned.”

“The sisters were found November twenty-fifth. We went back and checked the weather records. There was an unexpected snowstorm that week-eighteen inches fell in a single day. It took Massachusetts by surprise, closing down a number of roads. Maybe they couldn’t get to their usual burial spot.”

“And that’s why they burned the bodies?”

“As you pointed out, the vanishings seem to move with the weather,” said Rizzoli. “As it turns cold, they head south. But that November, New England was caught by surprise. No one expected such an early snowfall.” She turned to O’Donnell. “There’s your Beast. Those are his footprints on that map. I think Amalthea was with him every step of the way.”

“What are you asking me to do, a psychological profile? Explain why they killed?”

“We know why they did it. They weren’t killing for pleasure, or for thrills. These are not your usual serial killers.”

“Then what was their motive?”

“Absolutely mundane, Dr. O’Donnell. In fact, their motive is probably boring to a monster hunter like you.”

“I don’t find murder boring in the least. Why do you think they killed?”

“Did you know there are no employment records for either Amalthea or Elijah? We can’t find any evidence that either of them held down a job or paid into Social Security, or filed an income tax report. They owned no credit cards, had no bank accounts. For decades, they were invisible people, living on the outermost fringes of society. So how did they eat? How did they pay for food and gas and lodging?”

“Cash, I assume.”

“But where does the cash come from?” Rizzoli turned to the map. “That’s how they made their living.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Some people catch fish, some people pick apples. Amalthea and her partner were harvesters, too.” She looked at O’Donnell. “Forty years ago, Amalthea sold two newborn daughters to adoptive parents. She was paid forty thousand dollars for those babies. I don’t think they were hers to give.”

O’Donnell frowned. “Are you talking about Dr. Isles and her sister?”

“Yes.” Rizzoli felt a twinge of satisfaction when she saw O’Donnell’s stunned expression. This woman had no idea what she was dealing with, thought Rizzoli. The psychiatrist who so regularly consorts with monsters has been taken by surprise.

“I examined Amalthea,” said O’Donnell. “I concurred with the other psychiatrists-”

“That she was psychotic?”

“Yes.” O’Donnell released a sharp breath. “What you’re showing me here-this is a different creature entirely.”

“Not insane.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what she is.”

“She and her cousin killed for money. For cold hard cash. That sounds a lot like sanity to me.”

“Possibly…”

“You get along with murderers, Dr. O’Donnell. You talk to them, spend hours with people like Warren Hoyt.” Rizzoli paused. “You understand them.”

“I try to.”

“So what kind of killer is Amalthea? Is she a monster? Or just a businesswoman?”

“She’s my patient. That’s all I care to say.”

“But you’re questioning your diagnosis right now, aren’t you?” Rizzoli pointed to the screen. “That’s logical behavior, what you see there. Nomadic hunters, following their prey. Do you still think she’s insane?”

“I repeat, she’s my patient. I need to protect her interests.”

“We’re not interested in Amalthea. It’s the other one we want. Elijah.” Rizzoli moved closer to O’Donnell, until they were almost face-to-face. “He hasn’t stopped hunting, you know.”

“What?”

“Amalthea has been in custody for almost five years, now.” Rizzoli looked at Frost. “Show the data points since Amalthea Lank was arrested.”

Frost removed the earlier transparencies and placed a new one on the map. “The month of January,” he said. “A pregnant woman vanishes in South Carolina. In February, it’s a woman in Georgia. In March, it’s Daytona Beach.” He laid down another sheet. “Six months later, it’s happening in Texas.”

“Amalthea Lank was in prison all those months,” said Rizzoli. “But the abductions continued. The Beast didn’t stop.”

O’Donnell stared at the relentless march of data points. One dot, one woman. One life. “Where are we now in the cycle?” she asked softly.

“A year ago,” said Frost, “it reached California and began heading north again.”

“And now? Where is it now?”

“The last reported abduction was a month ago. In Albany, New York.”

“Albany?” O’Donnell looked at Rizzoli. “That means…”

“By now, he’s in Massachusetts,” said Rizzoli. “The Beast is coming to town.”

Frost turned off the overhead projector and the sudden shut-off of the fan left the room eerily silent. Though the screen was now blank, the image of the map seemed to linger, burned into everyone’s memories. The ringing of Frost’s cell phone seemed all the more startling in that quiet room.

Frost said, “Excuse me,” and left the room.

Rizzoli said to O’Donnell: “Tell us about the Beast. How do we find him?”

“The same way you’d find any other flesh-and-blood man. Isn’t that what you police do? You already have a name. Go from there.”

“He has no credit card, no bank account. He’s hard to track.”

“I’m not a bloodhound.”

“You’ve been talking to the one person closest to him. The one person who might know how to find him.”

“Our sessions were confidential.”

“Does she ever refer to him by name? Does she give any hint at all that it’s her cousin, Elijah?”

“I’m not at liberty to share any private conversations I had with my patient.”

“Elijah Lank isn’t your patient.”

“But Amalthea is, and you’re trying to build a case against her as well. Multiple charges of homicide.”

“We’re not interested in Amalthea. He’s the one I want.”

“It’s not my job to help you catch your man.”

“What about your goddamn civic responsibility?”

“Detective Rizzoli,” said Marquette.

Rizzoli’s gaze stayed on O’Donnell. “Think about that map. All those dots, all those women. He’s here, now. Hunting for the next one.”

O’Donnell’s gaze dropped to Rizzoli’s bulging abdomen. “Then I guess you’d better be careful, Detective. Shouldn’t you?”

Rizzoli watched in rigid silence as O’Donnell reached for her briefcase. “I doubt I could add much, anyway,” she said. “As you said, this killer is driven by logic and practicality, not lust. Not enjoyment. He needs to make a living, plain and simple. His chosen occupation just happens to be a little out of the ordinary. Criminal profiling won’t help you catch him. Because he’s not a monster.”

“And I’m sure you’d recognize one.”

“I’ve learned to. But then, so have you.” O’Donnell turned to the door. Stopped and glanced back with a bland smile. “Speaking of monsters, Detective, your old friend asks about you, you know. Every time I visit him.”

O’Donnell didn’t need to say his name; they both knew she was talking about Warren Hoyt. The man who continued to surface in Rizzoli’s nightmares, whose scalpel had carved the scars in her palms nearly two years ago.

“He still thinks about you,” said O’Donnell. Another smile, quiet and sly. “I just thought you’d like to know that you’re remembered.” She walked out the door.

Rizzoli felt Marquette ’s gaze, watching for her reaction. Waiting to see if she’d lose it, right there and then. She was relieved when he too walked out of the room, leaving her alone to pack up the overhead projector. She gathered up the transparencies, unplugged the machine, and wound up the cord into tight coils, all her anger directed at that cord as she wrapped it around her hand. She wheeled the projector out into the hallway and almost collided with Frost, who was just snapping his cell phone shut.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Where?”

“Natick. They’ve got a missing woman.”

Rizzoli frowned at him. “Is she…”

He nodded. “She’s nine months pregnant.”