Dr. Maura Isles had not smelled fresh air all day. Since seven that morning she had been inhaling the scent of death, an aroma so familiar to her that she did not recoil as her knife sliced cold skin, as foul odors wafted up from exposed organs. The police officers who occasionally stood in the room to observe postmortems were not so stoic. Sometimes Maura caught a whiff of the Vicks ointment that they dabbed in their nostrils to mask the stench. Sometimes even Vicks was not enough, and she'd see them suddenly go wobbly and turn away, to gag over the sink. Cops were not accustomed, as she was, to the astringent bite of formalin, the sulfurous aroma of decaying membranes.

Today, there was an incongruous note of sweetness added to that bouquet of odors: the scent of coconut oil, emanating from the skin of Mrs. Gloria Leder, who now lay on the autopsy table. She was fifty years old, a divorcee with broad hips and heavy breasts and toenails painted a brilliant pink. Deep tan lines marked the edges of the bathing suit she had been wearing when she was found dead beside her apartment swimming pool. It had been a bikini--not the most flattering choice for a body sagging with middle age. When was the last time I had the chance to put on my bathing suit? Maura thought, and she felt an absurd flash of envy for Mrs. Gloria Leder, who'd spent the last moments of her life enjoying this summer day. It was almost August, and Maura had not yet visited the beach or sat by a swimming pool or even sunbathed in her own backyard.

"Rum and Coke," said the young cop standing at the foot of the table. "I think that's what she had in her glass. It was sitting next to her patio chair."

This was the first time Maura had seen Officer Buchanan in her morgue. He made her nervous, the way he kept fussing with his paper mask and shifting from foot to foot. The boy looked way too young to be a cop. They were all starting to look too young.

"Did you retain the contents of that glass?" she asked Officer Buchanan.

"Uh . . . no, ma'am. I took a good whiff. She was definitely drinking a rum and Coke."

"At nine A.M.?" Maura looked across the table at her assistant, Yoshima. As usual, he was silent, but she saw one dark eyebrow tilt up, as eloquent a comment as she would get from Yoshima.

"She didn't get down too much of it," said Officer Buchanan.

"The glass was still pretty full."

"Okay," said Maura. "Let's take a look at her back."

Together, she and Yoshima log-rolled the corpse onto its side.

"There's a tattoo here on the hip," noted Maura. "Little blue butterfly."

"Geez," said Buchanan. "A woman her age?"

Maura glanced up. "You think fifty's ancient, do you?"

"I mean--well, that's my mom's age."

Careful, boy. I'm only ten years younger.

She picked up the knife and began to cut. This was her fifth postmortem of the day, and she made swift work of it. With Dr. Costas on vacation, and a multivehicle accident the night before, the cold room had been crammed with body bags that morning. Even as she'd worked her way through the backlog, two more bodies had been delivered to the refrigerator. Those would have to wait until tomorrow. The morgue's clerical staff had already left for the evening, and Yoshima kept looking at the clock, obviously anxious to be on his way home.

She incised skin, gutted the thorax and abdomen. Removed dripping organs and placed them on the cutting board to be sectioned. Little by little, Gloria Leder revealed her secrets: a fatty liver, the telltale sign of a few too many rums and Cokes. A uterus knobby with fibroids.

And finally, when they opened the...

 

"NEVER FAILS TO DELIVER CHILLING SUSPENSE . . .
leaves the reader breathless."

 

"IT'S SCARY JUST HOW GOOD TESS GERRITSEN IS--this is crime writing at its unputdownable, nerve-tingling best."

 

"THE STORY ZIPS ALONG. . . . A DELIGHTFULLY BIZARRO PLOT TWIST."

 

Vanish by Tess Gerritsen
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