BOSTON
PSYCHOLOGISTS CALL IT RESISTANCE WHEN A PATIENT FAILS TO TURN UP on time because he doesn’t really want to address his problems. It also explained why Jane was late walking out her front door that morning; she really didn’t want to view Leon Gott’s autopsy. She took her time dressing her daughter in the same Red Sox T-shirt and grass-stained overalls that Regina had insisted on wearing for the past five days. They lingered too long over their breakfast of Lucky Charms and toast, which made them twenty minutes late walking out the apartment door. Add a traffic-choked drive to Revere, where Jane’s mother lived, and by the time she pulled up outside Angela’s house, Jane was a full half hour behind schedule.
Her mother’s house seemed smaller every year, as though it were shrinking with age. Walking up to the front door with Regina in tow, Jane saw that the porch needed fresh paint, the gutters were clogged with autumn leaves, and the perennials in front still needed to be clipped back for the winter. She’d have to get on the phone with her brothers and see if they could all pitch in for a weekend, because Angela obviously needed the help.
She could also use a good night’s sleep, thought Jane when Angela opened the front door. Jane was startled by how tired her mother looked. Everything about her seemed worn down, from her faded blouse to her baggy jeans. When Angela bent down to pick up Regina, Jane spotted gray roots on her mother’s scalp, a startling sight because Angela was meticulous about her hairdresser appointments. Was this the same woman who’d shown up at a restaurant just last summer wearing red lipstick and spike heels?
“Here’s my little pumpkin,” Angela cooed as she carried Regina into the house. “Nonna’s so glad to see you. Let’s go shopping today, why don’t we? Aren’t you tired of these dirty overalls? We’ll buy you something new and pretty.”
“Don’t like pretty!”
“A dress, what do you think? A fancy princess dress.”
“Don’t like princess.”
“But every girl wants to be a princess!”
“I think she’d rather be the frog,” said Jane.
“Oh for heaven’s sake, she’s just like you.” Angela sighed in frustration. “You wouldn’t let me put you in a dress, either.”
“Not everyone’s a princess, Ma.”
“Or ends up with Prince Charming,” muttered Angela as she walked away carrying her granddaughter.
Jane followed her into the kitchen. “What’s going on?”
“I’m going to make some more coffee. You want some?”
“Ma, I can see that something’s going on.”
“You’ve gotta go to work.” Angela set Regina in her high chair. “Go, catch some bad guys.”
“Is it too much work for you, babysitting? You know you don’t have to do it. She’s old enough for day care now.”
“My granddaughter in day care? Not gonna happen.”
“Gabriel and I have been talking about it. You’ve already done so much for us, and we think you deserve a break. Enjoy your life.”
“She is the one thing I look forward to every day,” said Angela, pointing to her granddaughter. “The one thing that keeps my mind off …”
“Dad?”
Angela turned away and began filling the coffee reservoir with water.
“Ever since he came back,” said Jane, “I haven’t seen you look happy. Not one single day.”
“It’s gotten so complicated, having to make a choice. I’m getting pulled back and forth, stretched like taffy. I wish someone would just tell me what to do, so I wouldn’t have to choose between them.”
“You’re the one who has to make the choice. Dad or Korsak. I think you should choose the man who makes you happy.”
Angela turned a tormented face to hers. “How can I be happy if I spend the rest of my life feeling guilty? Having your brothers tell me that I chose to break up the family?”
“You didn’t choose to walk out. Dad did.”
“And now he’s back and he wants us all to be together again.”
“You have a right to move on.”
“When both my sons are insisting I give your father another chance? Father Donnelly says it’s what a good wife should do.”
Oh great, thought Jane. Catholic guilt was the most powerful guilt of all.
Jane’s cell phone rang. She glanced down and saw it was Maura calling; she let it go to voice mail.
“And poor Vince,” said Angela. “I feel guilty about him, too. All the wedding plans we made.”
“It could still happen.”
“I don’t see how, not now.” Angela sagged back against the kitchen counter as the coffeemaker gurgled and hissed behind her. “Last night I finally told him. Janie, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life.” And it showed on her face. The puffy eyes, the drooping mouth—was this the new and future Angela Rizzoli, sainted wife and mother?
There are already too many martyrs in the world, thought Jane. The idea that her mother would willingly join those legions made her angry.
“Ma, if this decision makes you miserable, you need to remember that it’s your decision. You’re choosing not to be happy. No one can make you do that.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because it’s true. You’re the one in control, and you have to take the wheel.” Her phone pinged with a text message, and she saw it was Maura again. STARTING AUTOPSY. RU COMING?
“Go on, go to work.” Angela waved her away. “You don’t need to bother yourself with this.”
“I want you to be happy, Ma.” Jane turned to leave, then looked back at Angela. “But you have to want it, too.”
It was a relief for Jane to step outside, take a breath of fresh cold air, and purge the gloom of the house from her lungs. But she couldn’t shake off her annoyance at her dad, at her brothers, at Father Donnelly, at every man who presumed to tell a woman what her duty was.
When her phone rang again, she answered with an irritated: “Rizzoli!”
“Uh, it’s me,” said Frost.
“Yeah, I’m on my way to the morgue. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“You’re not there already?”
“I got held up at my mom’s. Why aren’t you there?”
“I thought it might be more efficient if I, uh, followed up on a few other things.”
“Instead of barfing into a sink all morning. Good choice.”
“I’m still waiting for the phone carrier to release Gott’s call log. Meantime, here’s something interesting I pulled off Google. Back in May, Gott was featured in Hub Magazine. Title of the article was: ‘The Trophy Master: An Interview with Boston’s Master Taxidermist.’ ”
“Yeah, I saw a framed copy of that interview hanging in his house. It’s all about his hunting adventures. Shooting elephants in Africa, elk in Montana.”
“Well, you should read the online comments about that article. They’re posted on the magazine’s website. Apparently, he got the lettuce eaters—that’s what Gott called the anti-hunting crowd—all pissed off. Here’s one comment, posted by Anonymous: ‘Leon Gott should be hung and gutted, like the fucking animal he is.’ ”
“Hung and gutted? That sounds like a threat,” she said.
“Yeah. And maybe someone delivered.”
WHEN JANE SAW WHAT was displayed on the morgue table, she almost turned and walked right back out again. Even the sharp odor of formalin could not mask the stench of the viscera splayed across the steel table. Maura wore no respiratory hood, only her usual mask and plastic face guard. She was so focused on the intellectual puzzle posed by the entrails that she seemed immune to the smell. Standing beside her was a tall man with silvery eyebrows whom Jane did not recognize, and like Maura he was eagerly probing the array of viscera.
“Let’s start with the large bowel here,” he said, gloved hands sliding across the intestine. “We have cecum, ascending colon, transverse, descending colon …”
“But there’s no sigmoid colon,” said Maura.
“Right. The rectum is here, but there’s no sigmoid. That’s our first clue.”
“And it’s unlike the other specimen, which does have a sigmoid colon.”
The man gave a delighted chuckle. “I’m certainly glad you called me to see this. It’s not often I come across something this fascinating. I could dine out for months on this story.”
“Wouldn’t wanna be part of that dinner conversation,” said Jane. “I guess this is what they mean by reading the entrails.”
Maura turned. “Jane, we’re just comparing the two sets of viscera. This is Professor Guy Gibbeson. And this is Detective Rizzoli, homicide.”
Professor Gibbeson gave Jane a disinterested nod and dropped his gaze back to the intestines, which he obviously found far more fascinating.
“Professor of what subject?” asked Jane, still standing back from the table. From the smell.
“Comparative anatomy. Harvard,” he said without looking at her, his attention fixed on the bowel. “This second set of intestines, the one with the sigmoid colon, belongs to the victim, I presume?” he asked Maura.
“It appears so. The incised edges match up, but we’d need DNA to confirm it.”
“Now, turning our attention to the lungs, I can point out some pretty definitive clues.”
“Clues to what?” said Jane.
“To who owned this first set of lungs.” He picked up one pair of lungs, held them for a moment. Set them down and lifted the second set. “Similar sizes, so I’m guessing similar body masses.”
“According to the victim’s driver’s license, he was five foot eight and a hundred forty pounds.”
“Well, these would be his,” Gibbeson said, looking at the lungs he was holding. He put them down, picked up the other pair. “These are the lungs that really interest me.”
“What’s so interesting about them?” said Jane.
“Take a look, Detective. Oh, you’ll have to come much closer to see it.”
Suppressing a gag, Jane approached the butcher’s array of offal laid across the table. Detached from their owners, all sets of viscera looked alike to Jane, consisting of the same interchangeable parts that she, too, possessed. She remembered a poster of “The Visible Woman” hanging in her high school health class, revealing the organs in their anatomical positions. Ugly or beautiful, every woman is merely a package of organs encased in a shell of flesh and bone.
“Can you see the difference?” asked Gibbeson. He pointed to the first set of lungs. “That left lung has an upper lobe and a lower lobe. The right lung has both upper and lower lobes, plus a middle lobe. Which makes how many lobes in all?”
“Five,” said Jane.
“That’s normal human anatomy. Two lungs, five lobes. Now look at this second pair found in the same garbage pail. They’re of similar size and weight, but with an essential difference. You see it?”
Jane frowned. “It has more lobes.”
“Two extra lobes, to be exact. The right lung has four, the left has three. This is not an anatomical anomaly.” He paused. “Which means it’s not human.”
“That’s why I called Professor Gibbeson,” said Maura. “To help me identify which species we’re dealing with.”
“A large one,” said Gibbeson. “Human-sized, I’d say, judging by the heart and lungs. Now let’s see if we can find any answers in the liver.” He moved to the far end of the table, where the two livers were displayed side by side. “Specimen one has left and right lobes. Quadrate and caudate lobes …”
“That one’s human,” said Maura.
“But this other specimen …” Gibbeson picked up the second liver and flipped it over to examine the reverse side. “It has six lobes.”
Maura looked at Jane. “Again, not human.”
“So we’ve got two sets of guts,” said Jane. “One belonging to the victim, we assume. The other belonging to … what? A deer? A pig?”