Die Again (Rizzoli & Isles, #11)(93)
Back into the hallway, past a bathroom, to the last doorway.
Even before she stepped through, she already knew Rhodes wasn’t there. He was probably never coming back. Standing in his bedroom, she looked around at blank walls. The queen bed had a stark white cover. The dresser was bare and dust-free. She thought of her own dresser at home, a magnet for keys and coins, socks and bras. You could tell a lot about people by looking at what migrated to their dressers and their countertops, and what she saw here, on Alan Rhodes’s dresser, was a man without an identity. Who are you?
From the bedroom window, she looked down at the street, where yet another Danvers PD patrol car had just pulled up. This neighborhood was outside Boston PD’s jurisdiction, but in their rush to capture Rhodes she and Frost had not wasted time waiting for Danvers detectives to assist. Now there’d be bureaucratic hell to pay.
“There’s a trapdoor up here,” said Frost, standing in the closet.
She squeezed in beside him and looked up at the ceiling panel, where a pull rope dangled. It probably led to attic storage space, where families stash boxes they never open, filled with items they couldn’t bring themselves to throw out. Frost tugged on the rope and the panel swung open, revealing a drop-down ladder and a shadowy space overhead. They shot a tense glance at each other, then Frost climbed the ladder.
“All clear!” he called down. “Just a bunch of stuff.”
She followed him through the trapdoor and turned on her pocket flashlight. In the gloom she glimpsed a row of cardboard boxes. This could be anyone’s attic, a depository for clutter, for the reams of tax documents and financial papers you fear you might need someday when the IRS comes calling. She opened one box and saw bank statements and loan documents. Moved on to the next and the next. Found copies of Biodiversity and Conservation. Old sheets and towels. Books and more books. There was nothing here to tie Rhodes to any crimes at all, much less murder.
Have we made another mistake?
She climbed back down the ladder, into the bedroom with its bare walls and spotless bedspread. Her uneasiness grew as another car pulled up outside. Detective Crowe climbed out, and she felt her blood pressure shoot up as he strutted toward the house. Seconds later, someone pounded on the front door. She went downstairs and found Crowe grinning at her from the front porch.
“So, Rizzoli, I hear the city of Boston’s not big enough for you. You breaking down doors in the suburbs now?” He walked in and made a lazy stroll around the living room. “What’ve you got on this guy Rhodes?”
“We’re still looking.”
“Funny, ’cause he’s got a clean record. No arrests, no convictions. You sure you tagged the right guy?”
“He ran, Crowe. He released two large cats to cover his escape, and he hasn’t been seen since. It makes the death of Debra Lopez look less and less like an accident.”
“Murder by leopard?” Crowe shot her a skeptical look. “Why would he kill a zookeeper?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did he kill Gott? And Jodi Underwood?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a lot of don’t knows.”
“There’s trace evidence linking him to Jodi Underwood. That tiger hair on her bathrobe. We also know he was a student at Curry College, the same year Natalie Toombs vanished, so there’s a link to her as well. Remember how Natalie was last seen leaving for a study date with someone named Ted? Rhodes’s middle name is Theodore. According to his bio at the zoo, before he started college, he spent a year in Tanzania. Maybe that’s where he learned about the leopard cult.”
“A lot of circumstantials.” Crowe waved his arm at the sterile-looking living room. “I gotta say, I don’t see anything here that screams Leopard Man.”
“Maybe that’s significant. There’s not a whole lot here, period. There are no photos, no pictures, not even a DVD or a CD to tell us about his personal tastes. The books and magazines are all related to his work. The only medicine in his bathroom is aspirin. And you know what’s missing?”
“What?”
“Mirrors. There’s only one small shaving mirror in the upstairs bathroom.”
“Maybe he doesn’t care how he looks. Or are you going to tell me he’s a vampire?”
She turned away at his laughter. “A giant blank, that’s what this house is. It’s like he tried to keep it a sterile zone, a place just for show.”
“Or this is exactly who he is. A totally dull guy with nothing to hide.”
“There’s got to be something here. We just haven’t found it yet.”
“And if you don’t?”
She refused to consider the possibility, because she knew she was right. She had to be right.
But as the afternoon slid into evening and a team of criminalists scoured the house for evidence, her stomach knotted tighter and tighter with uncertainty. She could not believe she’d made a mistake, but it was beginning to look like one. They’d invaded the home of a man with no known criminal past. They’d broken a window, pulled apart his house, and found nothing to tie him to the murders, not even a fragment of nylon cord. They’d also attracted the attention of keenly curious neighbors, and those neighbors had nothing bad to say about Alan Rhodes, although no one admitted to knowing him well. He was quiet and polite. Never seemed to have any girlfriends. Liked to garden, always hauling home bags of mulch.