Rizzoli & Isles Story 01 - Freaks Read Free Page B

footsteps echoed across the stone floor as she approached them through the shadows. “I’m alone,” she called out. “And I’m not armed. All I have is a flashlight, and I’m going to turn it on.”
    “What the hell’s going on?” Rayner demanded.
    “I’m Dr. Maura Isles, the medical examiner. I performed your daughter’s autopsy, and I can prove that Lucas Henry didn’t kill her.”
    “How the hell can you prove that?”
    “By showing you the real killer.” Maura’s flashlight came on, and Jane squinted at the sudden glare of the beam. “Lucas, tell me where Kimberly was sleeping.”
    The boy’s voice was shaky in the darkness. “I couldn’t find a coffin for her. So we dragged in that cardboard box. Over there.”
    Maura’s flashlight beam swept the shadows and came to a stop on a giant appliance carton. She approached it and read the shipping label. “This box was sent from North Carolina.”
    “So what?” said Rayner.
    She bent down and stared into the carton. “Jane, do you want to come take a look?”
    Jane crouched down beside her and whispered: “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
    “I told you. Identifying the killer.” Maura aimed her flashlight beam into the box, scanning past rumpled blankets and a stained pillow, to focus on the corner above. “There’s our perp.”
    Jane stared at the gossamer web, and the creature that had woven it. “A spider?”
    “Genus
Latrodectus
. A black widow. It probably hitched a ride from NorthCarolina and bit the victim while she was sleeping in this box. She may not have even felt the bite. In most healthy adults, the poison’s not fatal, but Kimberly was not a healthy adult. She was malnourished and medically fragile.” Maura’s voice dropped so that only Jane could hear her next words. “Death would have been excruciating. Muscle spasms, abdominal pain, followed by respiratory arrest. No wonder passersby heard her screaming.”
    Jane rose to her feet and turned to Rayner. “Your daughter wasn’t murdered, sir. It was a spider bite. A freak death. And the killer’s right here, in this box.”
    Slowly the man lowered his weapon. Even as Jane took it away and handcuffed him, Rayner stood motionless, his head bowed. “I only wanted justice,” he said. “Justice for my little girl.”
    “And you’ll have it, Mr. Rayner,” said Jane. “In this case, all it takes is the heel of a shoe.”

Read on for an exciting preview of Tess Gerritsen’s next thrilling novel featuring Maura Isles and Jane Rizzoli
    THE SILENT GIRL
    ONE
SAN FRANCISCO
    A LL DAY , I HAVE BEEN WATCHING THE GIRL . She gives no indication that she’s aware of me, although my rental car is within view of the street corner where she and the other teenagers have gathered this afternoon, doing whatever bored kids do to pass the time. She looks younger than the others, but perhaps it’s because she’s Asian and petite at seventeen, just a wisp of a girl. Her black hair is cropped as short as a boy’s, and her blue jeans are ragged and torn. Not a fashion statement, I think, but a result of hard use and life on the streets. She puffs on a cigarette and exhales a cloud of smoke with the nonchalance of a street thug, an attitude that doesn’t match her pale face and delicate Chinese features. She is pretty enough to attract the hungry stares of two men who pass by. The girl notices their gazes and looks straight back at them, unafraid. It’s easy to be fearless when danger is merely an abstract concept. Faced with a real threat, how would this girl react? I wonder. Wouldshe fight or would she crumble? I want to know, but I have yet to see her put to the test.
    As evening falls, the teenagers on the corner begin to disband. First one and then another wanders away. In San Francisco, even summer nights are chilly, and those who remain huddle together in their sweaters and jackets, lighting one another’s cigarettes, savoring the ephemeral heat of the flame. But