Die Again (Rizzoli & Isles, #11)(20)

Jane frowned. “Those three scratches again.”

“Both sides of the face, penetrating to bone. Three parallel nicks. Because of the soft-tissue damage by the owner’s pets, I couldn’t see them. Until I looked at these X rays.”

“What kind of tool would do that?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see anything in his workshop that would make these marks.”

“You said yesterday it looked like it was done postmortem.”

“Yes.”

“So what’s the point of these lacerations if it’s not to kill or to inflict pain?”

Maura thought about it. “Ritual,” she said.

For a moment there was only silence in the room. Jane thought of other crime scenes, other rituals. She thought of the scars she would always carry on her hands, souvenirs of a killer who’d had rituals of his own, and she felt those scars ache again.

The buzz of the intercom almost made her jump.

“Dr. Isles?” said Maura’s secretary. “Phone call for you from a Dr. Mikovitz. He says you left a message this morning with one of his colleagues.”

“Oh, of course.” Maura picked up the phone. “This is Dr. Isles.”

Jane turned her gaze back to the X ray, to those three parallel nicks on the cheekbones. She tried to imagine what could have left such a mark. It was a tool that neither she nor Maura had encountered before.

Maura hung up and turned to Dr. Gibbeson. “You were absolutely right,” she said. “That was the Suffolk Zoo. Kovo’s carcass was delivered to Leon Gott on Sunday.”

“Hold on,” said Jane. “What the hell is Kovo?”

Maura pointed to the unidentified set of entrails on the morgue table. “That’s Kovo. A snow leopard.”





“KOVO WAS ONE OF OUR MOST POPULAR EXHIBITS. HE WAS WITH US nearly eighteen years, so we were all heartbroken when he had to be euthanized.” Dr. Mikovitz spoke in the hushed voice of a grieving family member, and judging by the many photos displayed on the walls of his office, the animals in the Suffolk Zoo were indeed like family to him. With his wiry red hair and wisp of a goatee, Dr. Mikovitz looked like a zoo denizen himself, perhaps some exotic species of monkey with wise dark eyes that now regarded Jane and Frost across his desk. “We haven’t yet issued any press release about it, so I was startled when Dr. Isles inquired whether we’d had any recent losses in our large-cat collection. How on earth did she know?”

“Dr. Isles is good at sniffing out all sorts of obscure information,” said Jane.

“Yes, well, she certainly caught us by surprise. It’s something of a, well, sensitive matter.”

“The death of a zoo animal? Why?”

“Because he had to be euthanized. That always gets negative reactions. And Kovo was a very rare animal.”

“What day was this done?”

“It was Sunday morning. Our veterinarian Dr. Oberlin came in to administer the lethal injection. Kovo’s kidneys had been failing for some time and he’d lost a great deal of weight. Dr. Rhodes pulled him off exhibit a month ago, to spare him the stress of being in public. We hoped we could pull him through this illness, but Dr. Oberlin and Dr. Rhodes finally agreed that it was time to do it. Much as it grieved them both.”

“Dr. Rhodes is another veterinarian?”

“No, Alan is an expert on large-cat behavior. He knew Kovo better than anyone else did. He’s the one who delivered Kovo to the taxidermist.” Dr. Mikovitz glanced up at a knock on his door. “Ah, here’s Alan now.”

The title Large-Cat Expert conjured up images of a rugged outdoorsman in safari clothes. The man who walked into the office was indeed wearing a khaki uniform with dusty trousers and stray burrs clinging to his fleece jacket, as if he’d just come off a hiking trail, but there was nothing particularly rugged about Rhodes’s pleasantly open face. In his late thirties, with springy dark hair, he had the block-shaped head of Frankenstein’s monster, but a friendly version.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Rhodes, clapping dust from his pant legs. “We had an incident at the lion enclosure.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?” said Dr. Mikovitz.

“No fault of the cats. It’s the damn kids. Some teenager thought he’d prove his manhood, so he climbed the outer fence and fell into the moat. I had to go in and drag him out.”

“Oh my God. Are we going to have any liability issues?”

“I doubt it. He was never in any real danger, and I think he found it so humiliating he’ll never tell a soul.” Rhodes gave a pained smile to Jane and Frost. “Just another fun day with idiot humans. My lions, at least, have more than an ounce of common sense.”

“This is Detective Rizzoli, Detective Frost,” said Mikovitz.

Rhodes extended a callused hand to them. “I’m Dr. Alan Rhodes. I’m a wildlife biologist specializing in felid behavior. All cats, large and small.” He glanced at Mikovitz. “So have they found Kovo?”

“I don’t know, Alan. They just arrived, and we haven’t gotten to that subject yet.”

“Well, we need to know.” Rhodes turned back to Jane and Frost. “Animal pelts deteriorate quite rapidly after death. If it isn’t immediately harvested and processed, it loses its value.”