Die Again: A Rizzoli And Isles Novel Part 31

"When we know he was alive. Millie was with him on safari in Botswana."

"Are you absolutely certain about that?" Gabriel said quietly.

That made her go silent. Are we absolutely certain Millie told the truth? She pressed a hand to her temple as thoughts swirled like a windstorm in her head. Millie couldn't be lying, because known facts supported her. A pilot did deliver seven tourists to a landing strip in the Delta, among them a pa.s.senger with Elliot Gott's ID. Weeks later, Millie did stumble out of the wild, with a horrifying tale of ma.s.sacre in the bush. Animal scavenging had scattered the remains of the dead, and the bones of four of the victims were never found. Not Richard's. Not Sylvia's. Not Keiko's. Not Elliot's.

Because the real Elliot Gott was already dead. Murdered in Cape Town before the safari even began.

"Jane?" said Gabriel.

"Millie wasn't lying. She was wrong. She thought Johnny was the killer, but he was a victim, like the others. Killed by the man who used Elliot's ID to book the safari. And after it was all over, after he'd enjoyed his ultimate bush hunt, he went home. Back to who he really was."

"Alan Rhodes."

"Since he traveled with Elliot's ID, there'd be no record of him entering Botswana, nothing at all to connect him to the safari." Jane focused on the living room where she was standing. On the blank walls, the impersonal collection of books. "He's an empty sh.e.l.l, like his house," she said softly. "He can't afford to reveal the monster he really is, so he becomes other people. After he steals their ident.i.ties."

"And leaves no record of himself."

"But in Botswana, he made a mistake. One of his victims escaped, and she can identify ..." Jane suddenly turned to Maura, who had just stepped inside and was now watching her with questions in her eyes. "Millie's all by herself," Jane said to her.

"Yes. She's packing to go home."

"Oh G.o.d. We left her alone."

"Why does that matter?" asked Maura. "Isn't she now irrelevant to our case?"

"No, it turns out she's the key to it. She's the only one who can identify Alan Rhodes."

Maura shook her head in bewilderment. "But she's never met Rhodes."

"Yes she has. In Africa."

THE FOOTSTEPS MOVE CLOSER. I SHRINK BEHIND THE PANTRY DOOR, my heart banging as loud as drums. I can't see who has just broken into the house; I can only hear him, and he's lingering in the kitchen. I suddenly remember that I left my purse on the counter, and I hear him unzipping it now, hear coins clatter onto the floor. Oh G.o.d, please let him be just a thief. Let him take my wallet and then be on his way.

He must have found what he wanted, because I hear my purse thud onto the countertop. Please leave. Please leave.

But he doesn't. He moves, instead, across the kitchen. He will have to pa.s.s the pantry to get to the rest of the house. I stand frozen in the shadows, not daring to breathe. As he walks past the doorway crack, I glimpse his back and see curly dark hair, thick shoulders, a squarish head. There is something shockingly familiar about him, but it isn't possible. No, that man is dead, his bones scattered somewhere in the Okavango Delta. Then he turns toward the cracked doorway and I see his face. Everything I believed these past six years, everything I thought I knew, flips on its axis.

Elliot is alive. Poor, awkward Elliot, who pined after the blondes, who stumbled around in the bush, who was always the b.u.t.t of Richard's jokes. Elliot, who claimed he found a viper in his tent, a viper that no one else saw. I think back to the last night my companions were alive. I remember darkness, panic, gunshots. And a woman's last scream: Oh G.o.d, he has the gun!

Not Johnny. It was never Johnny.

He keeps walking past the pantry, and his footsteps fade away. Where is he? Is he standing still, just out of sight, waiting for me to show myself? If I step out of the pantry and try to slip out the kitchen door, will he spot me? Frantically I try to picture the backyard beyond that door. It's fully fenced, but where is the gate? I can't remember. I could get boxed in by that fence, trapped in a killing yard.

Or I could stay right here in the pantry and wait for him to find me.

I reach for a jar on the shelf. Raspberry jam. It feels solid and heavy in my hand; not much, but it's the only weapon I have. I ease around from behind the pantry door and peer out.

No one there.

I creep out of the pantry, into the brightly lit kitchen, where I'm painfully exposed in the glare. The back door is maybe ten paces away, across a floor littered with broken gla.s.s.

The phone rings, loud as a shriek. I freeze in place and the answering machine picks up. I hear Detective Rizzoli's voice on the line: Millie, please pick up. Millie, are you there? This is important ...

Through the urgent sound of her voice, I listen desperately for other sounds in the house, but I can't hear him.

Go. Go now.

Terrified of betraying my presence, I tiptoe around the broken gla.s.s. Nine paces to the door. Eight. I make it halfway across the kitchen when the cat shoots into the room, claws sliding across the slick tiles, loudly scattering shards.

The noise alerts him, and heavy footsteps move toward me. I'm out in the open, with nowhere to hide. I make a dash for the door. Just manage to grasp the k.n.o.b when hands grab my sweater and wrench me backward.

I whirl around, blindly swinging the jar at him. It slams into the side of his head and shatters, releasing a spray of raspberry jam, bright as blood.

He howls in rage and loses his grip. Just for an instant I'm free, and again I lurch for the door. Again, I almost make it.

Then he tackles me and we both go sprawling to the floor, sliding across gla.s.s and raspberry jam. The trash can topples, spilling out dirty wrappers and coffee grounds. I struggle to my knees, desperately crawling through scattered garbage.

A cord loops around my neck, goes taut, and yanks my head back.

I reach up, clawing at the cord, but it's tight, so tight it cuts like a blade into my flesh. I hear his grunt of effort. I can't loosen the cord. I can't breathe. The light starts to dim. My feet no longer work. So this is how I die, so far from home. From everyone I love.

As I sag backward, something sharp bites into my hand. My fingers close around the object, which I can barely feel because everything is going numb. Violet. Christopher. I should never have left you.

I fling my arm backward, slashing at his face.

Even through my darkening fog, I can hear his shriek. Suddenly the cord around my neck goes limp. The room brightens. Coughing, gasping, I release the object I've been holding and it clatters to the floor. It's the open cat-food can, its exposed lid sharp as a razor.

I haul myself to my feet and the countertop block of kitchen knives is right in front of me. He's moving in, and I turn to face him. Blood streams from his slashed brow, a waterfall of it, dripping into his eyes. He lunges, hands reaching for my throat. Partly blinded by his own blood, he doesn't see what I'm holding. What I bring up just as our bodies collide.

The butcher knife sinks into his belly.

The hands grappling at my throat suddenly fall away, limp. He drops to his knees where, just for an instant he remains upright, his eyes open, his face a b.l.o.o.d.y mask of surprise. His body tilts sideways, and I close my eyes as he hits the floor.

Suddenly I myself am wobbling. I stagger across the blood and gla.s.s and I sink into a chair. I drop my head in my hands, and through the roaring of blood in my ears I hear another sound. A siren. I have no strength to lift my head. I hear banging on the front door, and voices shouting: Police! But I cannot seem to move. Only when I hear them step in through the back door, and one of them utters a startled oath, do I finally look up.

Two policemen loom in front of me, both of them staring at the carnage in the room. "Are you Millie?" one of them asks. "Millie DeBruin?"

I nod.

He says, into his radio: "Detective Rizzoli, she's here. She's alive. But you're not gonna believe what I'm looking at."

A DAY LATER, THEY UNCOVERED HIS LAIR.

After ground-penetrating radar detected the underground chamber in Alan Rhodes's backyard, it took only a few minutes' shovel work to locate the entrance, a wooden hatch cover hidden under an inch of mulch.

Jane was the first to climb down the steps, descending into a chilly blackness that smelled of damp earth. At the bottom she reached a concrete floor and stared at what her flashlight revealed: the snow leopard pelt, mounted on the wall. Dangling from a hook beside it were steel claws, the razor-sharp tips polished to a gleaming brightness. She thought of the three parallel slashes on Leon Gott's torso. She thought of Natalie Toombs and the three nicks on her skull. Here was the tool that had left those marks in flesh and bone.

"What do you see down there?" called Frost.

"Leopard Man," she said softly.

Frost came down the stairs and they stood together, their flashlight beams slashing the darkness like sabers.

"Jesus," he said as his light fixed on the opposite wall. On the two dozen drivers' licenses and pa.s.sport photos tacked to corkboard. "They're from Nevada. Maine. Montana ..."

"It's his trophy wall," said Jane. Like Leon Gott and Jerry O'Brien, Alan Rhodes also displayed his kills, but on a wall that was for his eyes only. She focused on a page ripped from a pa.s.sport: Millie Jacobson, the trophy Rhodes thought he'd won, but this prize had been prematurely claimed. Next to Millie's photo were other faces, other names. Isao and Keiko Matsunaga. Richard Renwick. Sylvia Van Ofwegen. Vivian Kruiswyk. Elliot Gott.

And Johnny Posthumus, the bush guide who had fought to keep them alive. In Johnny's direct gaze, Jane saw a man ready to do whatever was necessary, without fear, without hesitation. A man prepared to face any beast in the wild. But Johnny had not realized that the most dangerous animal he would ever encounter was the client smiling back at him.

"There's a laptop in here," said Frost, crouched over a cardboard box. "It's a MacBook Air. You think it was Jodi Underwood's?"

"Turn it on."

With gloved hands, Frost lifted the computer and pressed the POWER b.u.t.ton. "Battery's dead."

"Is there a power cord?"

He reached deeper into the box. "I don't see one. There's some broken gla.s.s in here."

"From what?"

"It's a picture." He pulled out a framed photo, its protective gla.s.s shattered. He shone his flashlight on the image, and for a moment neither one of them said a word as they both registered its significance.

Two men stood together, the sun in their faces, the bright light defining every feature. They looked enough alike to be brothers, both with dark hair and squarish faces. The man on the left smiled straight into the lens, but the second man appeared caught by surprise just as he'd turned to face the camera.

"When was this taken?" said Frost.

"Six years ago."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know where this is. I've been there. It's Table Mountain, in Cape Town." She looked at Frost. "Elliot Gott and Alan Rhodes. They knew each other."

DETECTIVE RIZZOLI STANDS AT DR. ISLES'S FRONT DOOR, HOLDING A laptop case. "It's the last piece of the puzzle, Millie," she says. "I think you'll want to see it."

It's been almost a week since I survived Alan Rhodes's attack. Although the blood and gla.s.s are now gone, and the window has been replaced, I'm still reluctant to go into the kitchen. The memories are too vivid, and the bruises around my neck still too fresh, so instead we move into the living room. I settle onto the sofa between Dr. Isles and Detective Rizzoli, the two women who have been hunting the monster, and who tried to keep me safe from him. But in the end, I'm the one who had to save myself. I'm the one who had to die twice, in order to live again.

The gray tabby crouches on the coffee table and watches with a look of unsettling intelligence as Rizzoli opens her laptop and inserts a flash drive. "These are the photos from Jodi Underwood's computer," she says. "This is the reason Alan Rhodes killed her. Because these pictures tell a story, and he couldn't afford to let anyone see them. Not Leon Gott. Not Interpol. And certainly not you."

The screen fills with image tiles, all of them too small to make out any details. She clicks on the first tile and the photo blooms on-screen. It's a smiling, dark-haired man of about thirty, dressed in jeans and a photographer's vest, a backpack slung over his shoulder. He is standing in an airport check-in line. He has a squarish forehead and gentle eyes, and there is a happy innocence about him, the innocence of a lamb who has no idea he's headed for slaughter.

"This is Elliot Gott," says Rizzoli. "The real Elliot Gott. It was taken six years ago, just before he boarded the plane in Boston."

I study his features, the curly hair, the shape of his face. "He looks so much like ..."

"Like Alan Rhodes. That may be why Rhodes chose to kill him. He picked a victim who resembled him, so he could pa.s.s himself off as Elliot Gott. He used Gott's name when he met Sylvia and Vivian at the nightclub in Cape Town. He used Elliot's pa.s.sport and credit cards to book the flight to Botswana."

Which is where I met him. I think of the day I first laid eyes on the man who called himself Elliot. It was in the satellite air terminal in Maun, where the seven of us waited to board the bush plane into the Delta. I remember how nervous I was about flying on a small plane. I remember how Richard complained that I wasn't in the spirit of adventure, and why couldn't I be more cheerful about it, like those cute blond girls giggling on the bench? About that first meeting with Elliot, I remember almost nothing at all, because my focus was entirely on Richard. How I was losing him. How he seemed so bored with me. The safari was my last-gasp effort to salvage what we had together, so I scarcely paid attention to the awkward man who was hovering over the blondes.

Rizzoli advances to the next photo. It is a "selfie," taken aboard the airline flight. The real Elliot grins from the aisle coach seat as the female pa.s.senger on his right lifts a winegla.s.s to the camera.

"These are all cell phone photos that Elliot emailed to his girlfriend, Jodi. It's a day-by-day chronicle of what he saw and who he met," says Rizzoli. "We don't have the emailed text that accompanied these pictures, but they doc.u.ment his trip. And he took a lot of them." She clicks through the next photos, of his airline meal. The sunrise through the plane's window. And another selfie, where he's wearing a goofy grin as he leans into the aisle to show the cabin behind him. But this time, it's not Elliot I focus on; it's the man in the seat behind him, a man whose face is clearly visible.

Alan Rhodes.

"They were on the same flight," says Rizzoli. "Maybe that's how they met, on the plane. Or maybe they'd met earlier, in Boston. What we do know is, by the time Elliot arrived in Cape Town, he had a friend to hang out with."

She clicks another image icon, and a new photo glows on-screen. Elliot and Rhodes, standing together on Table Mountain.

"This picture is the last known photo taken of Elliot. Jodi Underwood had it framed and she gave it to Elliot's father. We believe it was hanging in Leon's house the day Alan Rhodes delivered the snow leopard. Leon recognized Rhodes from the photo. He probably asked Rhodes how he knew Elliot, and how they both happened to be in Cape Town. Later, Leon made phone calls. To Jodi Underwood, asking for all her photos from Elliot's trip. To Interpol, trying to reach Henk Andriessen. That photo was the catalyst for everything that followed. Leon Gott's murder. Jodi Underwood's murder. Maybe even the zookeeper, Debra Lopez, because she was there in Gott's house and heard the whole exchange. But the one person Rhodes was most afraid of was you."

I stare at the laptop screen. "Because I'm the only one who knew which of these men actually went on safari."

Rizzoli nods. "He had to keep you from ever seeing this picture."

Suddenly I can't bear to look at Rhodes's face any longer and I turn away. "Johnny," I whisper. That's the only word I say, just Johnny. A memory springs into my head, of him in the sunlight, his hair tawny as a lion's. I remember how he stood, with feet planted as firmly as a tree in its native African soil. How he'd asked me to trust him, told me that I must also learn to trust myself. And I think of the way he looked at me as we sat by the fire, the light of the flames flickering on his face. If only I'd listened to my heart; if only I'd put my faith in the man I wanted to believe in.

"So now you know the truth," Dr. Isles says gently.

"It could have turned out so differently." I blink, and a tear slides down my cheek. "He fought to keep us alive. And we all turned against him."

"In a way, Millie, he did keep you alive."

"How?"

"Because of Johnny-your fear of him-you stayed hidden in Touws River, where Alan Rhodes couldn't find you." Dr. Isles glances at Rizzoli. "Until we, unfortunately, brought you to Boston."

"Our fault," admits Rizzoli. "We had our eye on the wrong man."

So did I. I think of how Johnny has stalked me through my nightmares, when he was never the one I should have feared. Those bad dreams are fading now; last night I slept better than I have in six years. The monster is gone, and I'm the one who defeated him. Weeks ago, Detective Rizzoli told me it was the only way I'd ever sleep soundly again, and I'm confident that soon the nightmares will vanish entirely.

She closes the laptop. "So tomorrow you can fly home knowing it really is over. I'm sure your husband will be glad to have you back."

I nod. "Chris has been calling me about three times a day. He says this has made it into the news there."

"You'll go home a hero, Millie."

"I'm just happy to go home."

"Before you do, there's something I thought you might want to have." She reaches into the laptop bag and pulls out a large envelope. "Henk Andriessen emailed that to me. I printed it up for you."

I open the envelope and pull out a photograph. My throat closes over, and for a moment I can't make a sound. I can only stare at the picture of Johnny. He stands in knee-high gra.s.s, a rifle at his side. His hair is gilded by sunlight and his eyes are crinkled in mid-laugh. This is the Johnny I fell in love with, the real Johnny who was temporarily eclipsed by the shadow of a monster. This is how I must remember him, at home in the wild.

"It's one of the few good photos that Henk could find. It was taken by another bush guide around eight years ago. I thought you'd like it."

"How did you know?"

"Because I know what a mental whiplash it must be to find out that everything you believed about Johnny Posthumus was wrong. He deserves to be remembered for who he really was."