Vanish: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel Read Free Page A

knife. The fingers and toes were purple, the arms marbled with blue.
    She pressed her fingers to the woman’s neck and felt icy skin. Bending close to the lips, she waited for the whisper of a breath, the faintest puff of air against her cheek.
    The corpse opened its eyes.
    Maura gasped and lurched backward. She collided with the gurney behind her, and almost fell as the wheels rolled away. She scrambled back to her feet and saw that the woman’s eyes were still open, but unfocused. Blue-tinged lips formed soundless words.
    Get her out of the refrigerator! Get her warm!
    Maura shoved the gurney toward the door but it didn’t budge; in her panic she’d forgotten to unlock the wheels. She stamped down on the release lever and pushed again. This time it rolled, rattling out of the cold room into the warmer loading area.
    The woman’s eyes had drifted shut again. Leaning close, Maura could feel no air moving past the lips.
Oh Jesus. I can’t lose you now.
    She knew nothing about this stranger—not her name, nor her medical history. This woman could be teeming with viruses, yet she sealed her mouth over the woman’s, and almost gagged at the taste of chilled flesh. She delivered three deep breaths, and pressed her fingers to the neck to check for a carotid pulse.
    Am I imagining it? Is that my own pulse I feel, throbbing in my fingers?
    She grabbed the wall phone and dialed 911.
    “Emergency operator.”
    “This is Dr. Isles in the medical examiner’s office. I need an ambulance. There’s a woman here, in respiratory arrest—”
    “Excuse me, did you say the medical examiner’s office?”
    “Yes! I’m at the rear of the building, just inside the loading bay. We’re on Albany Street, right across from the medical center!”
    “I’m dispatching an ambulance now.”
    Maura hung up. Once again, she quelled her disgust as she pressed her lips to the woman’s. Three more quick breaths, then her fingers were back on the carotid.
    A pulse. There was definitely a pulse!
    Suddenly she heard a wheeze, a cough. The woman was moving air now, mucus rattling in her throat.
    Stay with me. Breathe, lady. Breathe!
    A loud whoop announced the arrival of the ambulance. She shoved open the rear doors and stood squinting against flashing lights as the vehicle backed up to the dock. Two EMTs jumped out, hauling their kits.
    “She’s in here!” Maura called.
    “Still in respiratory arrest?”
    “No, she’s breathing now. And I can feel a pulse.”
    The two men trotted into the building and halted, staring at the woman on the gurney. “Jesus,” one of them murmured. “Is that a
body
bag?”
    “I found her in the cold room,” said Maura. “By now, she’s probably hypothermic.”
    “Oh, man. If this isn’t your worst nightmare.”
    Out came the oxygen mask and IV lines. They slapped on EKG leads. On the monitor, a slow sinus rhythm blipped like a lazy cartoonist’s pen. The woman had a heartbeat and she was breathing, yet she still looked dead.
    Looping a tourniquet around one flaccid arm, the EMT asked: “What’s her story? How did she get here?”
    “I don’t know anything about her,” said Maura. “I came down to check on another body in the cold room and I heard this one moving.”
    “Does this, uh, happen very often here?”
    “This is a first time for me.” And she hoped to God it was the last.
    “How long has she been in your refrigerator?”
    Maura glanced at the hanging clipboard, where the day’s deliveries were recorded, and saw that a Jane Doe had arrived at the morgue around noon.
Eight hours ago. Eight hours zipped in a shroud. What if she’d ended up on my table? What if I had sliced into her chest?
Rummaging through the receiving in-basket, she found the envelope containing the woman’s paperwork. “Weymouth Fire and Rescue brought her in,” she said. “An apparent drowning . . .”
    “Whoa, Nelly!” The EMT had just stabbed an IV needle into a vein and the patient suddenly jerked to