Die Again (Rizzoli & Isles, #11)(25)

“As far as I could tell. Detective Rizzoli spoke to Greg, and he’s pretty devastated about this. And before you ask the obvious question, Greg said he was nowhere near this cage when it happened. He said he came running when he heard the screams.”

“Debbie’s?”

Rhodes looked pained. “I doubt she lived long enough to make a sound. No, it was some visitor screaming. She saw blood and started yelling for help.” He swung open the exhibit gate. “She’s lying in the back, near the boulders.”

Only three paces into the enclosure, Maura halted, disturbed by the evidence of carnage. This was what Jane had described as “buckets of blood,” and it was splashed across foliage, congealed in pools on the concrete pathway. Arterial splatters arced in multiple directions, sprayed out by the victim’s last, desperate heartbeats.

Rhodes looked down at the toppled bucket and rake. “She probably never saw him coming.”

The human body contains five liters of blood, and this was where Debbie Lopez had spilled most of hers. It had still been wet when others walked through it; Maura saw multiple footprints and smears across the concrete. “If he attacked her here,” she said, “why did he drag her to the back of the cage? Why not consume her where she fell?”

“Because a leopard’s instinct is to guard his kill. In the wild, there’d be scavengers who’d fight him for it. Lions and hyenas. So leopards move their kill out of reach.”

Blood smears marked the leopard’s progress as he had dragged his prize of human flesh along the concrete path. In that trail of streaks and swipes, one clear paw print stood out, startling evidence of the size and power of this killer. The trail led to the rear of the enclosure. At the base of a massive artificial boulder lay the body, covered with an olive-green blanket. The dead leopard sprawled nearby, jaws gaping open.

“He dragged the body up onto the ledge,” said Rhodes. “We pulled her down to do CPR.”

Maura looked up at the boulder and saw the dried stream of blood that had trickled from the ledge. “He got her all the way up there?”

Rhodes nodded. “That’s how powerful they are. They can haul a heavy kudu into a tree. Their instinct is to go high and leave the carcass hanging over a branch, where they can gorge undisturbed. That’s what he was about to do when Greg shot him. By then, Debbie was already gone.”

Maura donned gloves and crouched down to pull aside the blanket. One glance at what was left of the victim’s throat told her that the attack was not survivable. In appalled silence she stared at the crushed larynx and exposed trachea, at a neck ripped open so deeply that the head lolled back, nearly decapitated.

“That’s how they do it,” said Rhodes, his gaze averted, his voice unsteady. “Cats are designed by nature to be perfect killing machines, and they go straight for the throat. They crush the spine, tear open the jugular and carotids. At least they make sure their prey’s dead before they start feeding. I’m told it’s a quick death. Exsanguination.”

Not quick enough. Maura pictured Debbie Lopez’s agonal seconds, the blood pulsing like a water cannon from her severed carotids. It would also flood into her torn trachea, drowning her lungs. A rapid death, yes, but for this victim, those final seconds of terror and suffocation must have seemed an eternity.

She pulled the blanket back over the dead woman’s face and turned her attention to the leopard. It was a magnificent animal, with a massive chest and a lustrous pelt that gleamed in the dappled sunlight. She stared at razor-sharp teeth and imagined how easily they would crush and tear a woman’s throat. With a shudder she rose to her feet and saw, through the exhibit bars, that the morgue retrieval team had arrived.

“She loved this cat,” said Rhodes, gazing down at Rafiki. “After he was born, she bottle-fed him like a baby. I don’t think she ever imagined he’d do this to her. And that’s what really killed her. She forgot he was the predator, and we’re his prey.”

Maura peeled off her gloves. “Has the family been notified?”

“She has a mother in St. Louis. Our director, Dr. Mikovitz, has already called her.”

“My office will need her contact information. For the funeral arrangements after the autopsy.”

“Is an autopsy really necessary?”

“The cause of death seems obvious, but there are always questions that need to be answered. Why did she make this fatal mistake? Was she impaired by drugs or alcohol or some medical condition?”

He nodded. “Of course. I didn’t even think of that. But I’d be shocked if you found any drugs in her system. That just wouldn’t be the woman I knew.”

The woman you believed you knew, thought Maura as she walked out of the cage. Every human on this earth had secrets. She thought of her own, so closely guarded, and how startled her colleagues would be to learn of them. Even Jane, who knew her best of all.

As the morgue retrieval team wheeled the stretcher into the enclosure, Maura stood on the public pathway, gazing over the railing at what the visitors would have seen. The spot where the leopard first attacked was out of view, hidden by a wall, and shrubbery would have obscured the dragging of the body. But the rock ledge where he’d guarded his kill was clearly visible, and it was now marked by the gruesome trail of blood that had dripped down the boulder.

No wonder people had been shrieking.