Part 5 (1/2)
”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. t.i.tle 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 p.i.s.sed off. Here's one comment, posted by Anonymous: 'Leon Gott should be hung and gutted, like the f.u.c.king 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 cec.u.m, ascending colon, transverse, descending colon ...”
”But there's no sigmoid colon,” said Maura.
”Right. The r.e.c.t.u.m 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 ma.s.ses.”
”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.”