Last to Die: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel Read Free Page B

be showing up, too.”
    She looked up at the stunning four-story redbrick residence and murmured: “Wow.”
    “I figure it’s worth fifteen, twenty million.”
    But that was before the ghosts moved in, she thought, staring at the handsome bow windows and the elaborately carved pediment above the massive front door. Beyond that front door were horrors she had no stomach to confront. Three dead children. This was the curse of parenthood; every dead child wears the face of your own. As she pulled on gloves and shoe covers, she was donning emotional protection as well. Like the construction worker who puts on his hard hat, she donned her own armor and stepped inside.
    She looked up at a stairwell that soared four stories to a glass-domed roof, through which sunlight streamed in a shower of gold. Many voices, most of them male, echoed down that stairwell from the upper floors. Although she craned her neck, she could not spot anyone from the foyer, could just hear those voices, like the rumblings ofghosts in a house that, over a century, would have sheltered many souls.
    “A glimpse of how the other half lives,” said a male voice.
    She turned to see Detective Crowe standing in a doorway. “And dies,” she said.
    “We’ve parked the boy next door. The neighbor lady was kind enough to let him wait in her house. The kid knows her, and we thought he’d feel more comfortable being interviewed there.”
    “First I need to know what happened in
this
house.”
    “We’re still trying to figure that out.”
    “What’s with all the brass showing up? I heard the commissioner’s on his way.”
    “Just take a look at the place. Money talks, even when you’re dead.”
    “Where did this family’s money come from?”
    “Bernard Ackerman’s a retired investment banker. His family’s owned this house for two generations. Big-time philanthropists. You name the charity, they probably gave to it.”
    “How did this go down?”
    “Why don’t you just take the tour?” He waved her into the room from which he’d just emerged. “You tell me what
you
think.”
    Not that her opinion mattered much to Darren Crowe. When she’d first joined the homicide unit, their clashes had been bitter, and his disdain all too apparent. She still detected hints of it in his laugh, his tone of voice. Whatever respect she’d earned in his eyes would always be probationary, and here was yet another opportunity to lose it.
    She followed him through a parlor where the twenty-foot ceiling was ornately painted with cherubs and grapevines and gold-leaf rosettes. There was scarcely any chance to admire that ceiling or the oil paintings, because Crowe walked straight through into the library, where Jane saw Lieutenant Marquette and Dr. Maura Isles. On thiswarm June day, Maura was wearing a peach-colored blouse, an uncharacteristically cheerful color for someone who usually favored wintry blacks and grays. With her stylishly geometric haircut and her elegant features, Maura looked like a woman who might actually live in a mansion like this, surrounded by oil paintings and Persian carpets.
    They stood surrounded by books, displayed in floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves. Some of those volumes had tumbled onto the floor, where a silver-haired man lay facedown, one arm propped upright against the bookcase, as though reaching for a volume even in death. He was dressed in pajamas and slippers. The bullet had penetrated both his hand and his forehead, and on the shelf above the body a starburst of blood had splattered the leather-bound spines. The victim put up his hand to block the bullet, thought Jane. He saw it coming. He knew he was going to die.
    “My time of death estimate is consistent with what the witness told you,” Maura said to Marquette.
    “Early morning, then. Sometime after midnight.”
    “Yes.”
    Jane crouched down over the body and studied the entrance wound. “Nine millimeter?”
    “Or possibly a three fifty-seven,” said Maura.
    “You