Part 2 (1/2)

”Okay.” Jane sighed. ”You don't need us for this. Frost and I will check out the rest of the-”

”There's too much,” Maura muttered.

”Too much what?”

”This isn't a normal volume of viscera.”

”You're the one who's always talking about bacterial gases. Bloating.”

”Bloating doesn't explain this.” Maura straightened, and what she held in her gloved hand made Jane cringe.

”A heart?”

”This is not a normal heart, Jane,” said Maura. ”Yes, it has four chambers, but this aortic arch isn't right. And the great vessels don't look right, either.”

”Leon Gott was sixty-four,” said Frost. ”Maybe he had a bad ticker.”

”That's the problem. This doesn't look like a sixty-four-year-old man's heart.” Maura reached into the garbage pail again. ”But this one does,” she said, and held out her other hand.

Jane looked back and forth between the two specimens. ”Wait. There are two hearts in there?”

”And two complete sets of lungs.”

Jane and Frost stared at each other. ”Oh s.h.i.+t,” he said.

FROST SEARCHED THE DOWNSTAIRS AND SHE TOOK THE UPSTAIRS. WENT room by room, opening closets and drawers, peering under beds. No gutted bodies anywhere, nor any signs of a struggle, but plenty of dust bunnies and cat hair. Mr. Gott-if indeed he was the man hanging in the garage-had been an indifferent housekeeper, and scattered across his dresser were old hardware store receipts, hearing aid batteries, a wallet with three credit cards and forty-eight dollars in cash, and a few stray bullets. Which told her that Mr. Gott was more than a little casual about firearms. She wasn't surprised to open his nightstand drawer and find a fully loaded Glock inside, with a round in the chamber, ready to fire. Just the tool for the paranoid homeowner.

Too bad the gun was upstairs while the homeowner was downstairs, getting his guts ripped out.

In the bathroom cabinet she found the expected array of pills for a man of sixty-four. Aspirin and Advil, Lipitor and Lopressor. And on the countertop was a pair of hearing aids-high-end ones. He hadn't been wearing them, which meant he might not have heard an intruder.

As she started downstairs, the telephone rang in the living room. By the time she reached it, the answering machine had already kicked in and she heard a man's voice leave a message.

Hey, Leon, you never got back to me about the trip to Colorado. Let me know if you want to join us. Should be a good time.

Jane was about to play the message again, to see the caller's phone number, when she noticed that the PLAY b.u.t.ton was smeared with what looked like blood. According to the blinking display, there were two recorded messages, and she'd just heard the second one.

With a gloved finger she pressed PLAY.

November three, nine fifteen A.M.:... and if you call immediately, we can lower your credit card rates. Don't miss this opportunity to take advantage of this special offer.

November six, two P.M.: Hey, Leon, you never got back to me about the trip to Colorado. Let me know if you want to join us. Should be a good time.

November 3 was a Monday, today was a Thursday. That first message was still on the machine, unplayed, because at nine on Monday morning, Leon Gott was probably dead.

”Jane?” said Maura. The gray tabby had followed her into the hallway and was weaving figure of eights between her legs.

”There's blood on this answering machine,” said Jane, turning to look at her. ”Why would the perp touch it? Why would he check the victim's messages?”

”Come see what Frost found in the backyard.”

Jane followed her into the kitchen and out the back door. In a fenced yard landscaped only with patchy gra.s.s stood an outbuilding with metal siding. Too big to be just a storage shed, the windowless structure looked large enough to hide any number of horrors. As Jane stepped inside, she smelled a chemical odor, alcohol-sharp. Fluorescent bulbs cast the interior in a cold, clinical glare.

Frost stood beside a large worktable, studying a fearsome-looking tool bolted to it. ”I thought at first this was a table saw,” he said. ”But this blade doesn't look like any saw I've ever come across. And those cabinets over there?” He pointed across the workshop. ”Take a look at what's inside them.”

Through the gla.s.s cabinet doors, Jane saw boxes of latex gloves and an array of frightening-looking instruments laid out on the shelves. Scalpels and knives, probes and pliers and forceps. Surgeon's tools. Hanging from wall hooks were rubber ap.r.o.ns, splattered with what looked like bloodstains. With a shudder, she turned and stared at the plywood worktable, its surface scarred with nicks and gouges, and saw a clump of congealed, raw meat.

”Okay,” Jane murmured. ”Now I'm freaking out.”

”This is like a serial killer's workshop,” said Frost. ”And this table is where he sliced and diced the bodies.”

In the corner was a fifty-gallon white barrel mounted to an electrical motor. ”What the h.e.l.l is that thing for?”

Frost shook his head. ”It looks big enough to hold ...”

She crossed to the barrel. Paused as she spotted red droplets on the floor. A smear of it streaked the hatch door. ”There's blood all around here.”

”What's inside the barrel?” said Maura.

Jane gave the fastening bolt a hard pull. ”And behind door number two is ...” She peered into the open hatch. ”Sawdust.”

”That's all?”

Jane reached into the barrel and sifted through the flakes, stirring up a cloud of wood dust. ”Just sawdust.”

”So we're still missing the second victim,” said Frost.

Maura went to the nightmarish tool that Frost had earlier thought was a table saw. As she examined the blade, the cat was at her heels again, rubbing against her pant legs, refusing to leave her alone. ”Did you get a good look at this thing, Detective Frost?”

”I got as close as I wanted to get.”

”Notice how this circular blade has a cutting edge that's bent sideways? Obviously this isn't meant for slicing.”

Jane joined her at the table and gingerly touched the blade edge. ”This thing looks like it'd rip you to shreds.”

”And that's probably what it's for. I think it's called a flesher. It's used not to cut but to grind away flesh.”

”They make a machine like that?”

Maura crossed to a closet and opened the door. Inside was a row of what looked like paint cans. Maura reached for one large container and turned it around to read the contents. ”Bondo.”

”An automotive product?” said Jane, glimpsing the image of a car on the label.

”The label says it's filler, for car body work. To repair dings and scratches.” Maura set the can of Bondo back on the shelf. She couldn't shake the gray cat, who followed her as she went to the cabinet and peered through gla.s.s doors at the knives and probes, laid out like a surgeon's tool kit. ”I think I know what this room was used for.” She turned to Jane. ”You know that second set of viscera in the trash can? I don't believe they're human.”

”LEON GOTT WAS NOT a nice man. And I'm trying to be charitable,” said Nora Bazarian as she wiped a mustache of creamed carrots from her one-year-old son's mouth. In her faded jeans and clinging T-s.h.i.+rt, with her blond hair pulled back in a girlish ponytail, she looked more like a teenager than a thirty-three-year-old mother of two. She had a mother's skill at mult.i.tasking, efficiently feeding spoonfuls of carrots into her son's open mouth between loading the dishwasher, checking on a cake in the oven, and answering Jane's questions. No wonder the woman had a teenager's waistline; she didn't sit still for five seconds.

”You know what he yelled at my six-year-old?” said Nora. ”Get off my lawn. I used to think that was just a caricature of cranky old men, but Leon actually said that to my son. All because Timmy wandered next door to pet his dog.” Nora closed the dishwasher with a bang. ”Bruno has better manners than his owner did.”

”How long did you know Mr. Gott?” asked Jane.