Die Again (Rizzoli & Isles, #11)(83)

Maura watched as Jane hung up and stood staring at the phone as if it had just betrayed her. “What is it?”

Jane turned to face her. “We have a problem. Remember Jane Doe?”

“The bones from the backyard?”

“You had me convinced she was killed by Leopard Man.”

“I still believe it. The claw marks on her skull. The evidence of evisceration. The nylon cord. It all fits the picture.”

“The problem is, she’s just been identified, and it’s confirmed by DNA. Her name was Natalie Toombs, twenty years old. She was a coed at Curry College. White female, five foot three.”

“That’s all consistent with the skeletal remains I examined. What’s the problem?”

“Natalie vanished fourteen years ago.”

Maura stared at her. “Fourteen years? Do we know where Johnny Posthumus was then?”

“Working at a bush lodge in South Africa.” Jane shook her head. “He couldn’t have killed Natalie.”

“THIS SHOOTS YOUR ALL-POWERFUL Leopard Man theory all to hell, Rizzoli,” said Darren Crowe. “Fourteen years ago, when Natalie Toombs vanished in Boston, this guy was working in Sabi Sands, South Africa. It’s all documented in the Interpol report. His employee records from the bush lodge, a log of his hours and pay stubs. Obviously, he didn’t kill Natalie. Which means you brought that witness all the way here from South Africa for nothing.”

Still groggy from a bad night’s sleep, Jane tried to focus on her laptop. She’d awakened disoriented that morning, had downed two cups of coffee to kick-start her brain before this team conference, but the deluge of new facts left her struggling to catch up. She felt the other three detectives watching her as she clicked through pages that confirmed what Tam had told her yesterday over the phone. Natalie Toombs, formerly referred to as Jane Doe, had been a twenty-year-old English major at Curry College, barely two miles from where her bones were found buried. Natalie had lived in an off-campus rental house with two other coeds, who described her as outgoing, athletic, and a nature lover. She was last seen on a Saturday afternoon, her backpack full of books, leaving for a study date with someone named Ted, whom neither housemate had ever met.

The next day, the housemates reported her missing.

For fourteen years, the case had languished in the national missing persons database, along with thousands of other unsolved disappearances. Her mother, who’d since passed away, had provided the FBI with a DNA sample, in the event her daughter’s remains ever turned up. It was this DNA that confirmed the bones dug up in the backyard construction site were indeed Natalie’s.

Jane looked at Frost, who gave an apologetic shake of the head. “It’s hard to argue with the facts,” he said, sounding pained. It always hurt to admit when Crowe was right.

“You wasted a nice chunk of Boston PD change, flying that witness here from South Africa,” said Crowe. “Good job, Rizzoli.”

“But there’s physical evidence linking at least one murder to Botswana,” she pointed out. “That cigarette lighter. We know it belonged to Richard Renwick. How did it get from Africa to Maine, unless the killer carried it?”

“Who knows how many hands it’s passed through in the last six years? It could’ve gotten here in the pocket of some innocent tourist who picked it up God knows where. Any way you look at it, it’s clear that Natalie Toombs wasn’t killed by Johnny Posthumus. Her death predates all these other cases by nearly a decade. I’m calling it quits on our joint investigation. You keep looking for your Leopard Man, Rizzoli, and we’ll look for our perp. ’Cause I don’t think there’s any connection between our cases.” He turned to his partner. “Come on, Tam.”

“Millie DeBruin came all the way from Cape Town,” said Jane. “She’s waiting with Dr. Zucker right now. At least listen to her.”

“Why?”

“What if there is only one killer? What if he moves across states, across international borders, by assuming other identities?”

“Wait. Is this some new theory?” Crowe laughed. “An impostor who kills under other people’s names?”

“Henk Andriessen, our contact at Interpol, was the first person to suggest the possibility. Henk was bothered by the fact that Johnny Posthumus had no criminal record, no history of violence. He had a reputation as a top-notch safari guide, respected by his colleagues. What if the man who took those seven tourists into the bush wasn’t Johnny? None of these tourists had ever met him before. The African tracker had never worked with him before. Another man could have taken the real Johnny’s place.”

“An impostor? Then where’s the real Johnny?”

“He’d have to be dead.”

There was silence at the table as her three colleagues digested this new possibility.

“I’d say this puts you back at square one,” said Crowe. “Looking for a killer with no name, no identity. Good luck.”

“Maybe we don’t have a name,” said Jane, “but we do have a face. And we have someone who’s seen it.”

“Your witness identified Johnny Posthumus.”

“Based on a single passport photo. We all know that photos can lie.”

“So can witnesses.”

“Millie isn’t a liar,” Jane shot back. “She went through hell and she didn’t even want to come here. But she’s sitting out there with Dr. Zucker right now. The least you can do is listen to her.”