Die Again (Rizzoli & Isles, #11)(97)

After ground-penetrating radar detected the underground chamber in Alan Rhodes’s backyard, it took only a few minutes’ shovel work to locate the entrance, a wooden hatch cover hidden under an inch of mulch.

Jane was the first to climb down the steps, descending into a chilly blackness that smelled of damp earth. At the bottom she reached a concrete floor and stared at what her flashlight revealed: the snow leopard pelt, mounted on the wall. Dangling from a hook beside it were steel claws, the razor-sharp tips polished to a gleaming brightness. She thought of the three parallel slashes on Leon Gott’s torso. She thought of Natalie Toombs and the three nicks on her skull. Here was the tool that had left those marks in flesh and bone.

“What do you see down there?” called Frost.

“Leopard Man,” she said softly.

Frost came down the stairs and they stood together, their flashlight beams slashing the darkness like sabers.

“Jesus,” he said as his light fixed on the opposite wall. On the two dozen drivers’ licenses and passport photos tacked to corkboard. “They’re from Nevada. Maine. Montana …”

“It’s his trophy wall,” said Jane. Like Leon Gott and Jerry O’Brien, Alan Rhodes also displayed his kills, but on a wall that was for his eyes only. She focused on a page ripped from a passport: Millie Jacobson, the trophy Rhodes thought he’d won, but this prize had been prematurely claimed. Next to Millie’s photo were other faces, other names. Isao and Keiko Matsunaga. Richard Renwick. Sylvia Van Ofwegen. Vivian Kruiswyk. Elliot Gott.

And Johnny Posthumus, the bush guide who had fought to keep them alive. In Johnny’s direct gaze, Jane saw a man ready to do whatever was necessary, without fear, without hesitation. A man prepared to face any beast in the wild. But Johnny had not realized that the most dangerous animal he would ever encounter was the client smiling back at him.

“There’s a laptop in here,” said Frost, crouched over a cardboard box. “It’s a MacBook Air. You think it was Jodi Underwood’s?”

“Turn it on.”

With gloved hands, Frost lifted the computer and pressed the POWER button. “Battery’s dead.”

“Is there a power cord?”

He reached deeper into the box. “I don’t see one. There’s some broken glass in here.”

“From what?”

“It’s a picture.” He pulled out a framed photo, its protective glass shattered. He shone his flashlight on the image, and for a moment neither one of them said a word as they both registered its significance.

Two men stood together, the sun in their faces, the bright light defining every feature. They looked enough alike to be brothers, both with dark hair and squarish faces. The man on the left smiled straight into the lens, but the second man appeared caught by surprise just as he’d turned to face the camera.

“When was this taken?” said Frost.

“Six years ago.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know where this is. I’ve been there. It’s Table Mountain, in Cape Town.” She looked at Frost. “Elliot Gott and Alan Rhodes. They knew each other.”





DETECTIVE RIZZOLI STANDS AT DR. ISLES’S FRONT DOOR, HOLDING A laptop case. “It’s the last piece of the puzzle, Millie,” she says. “I think you’ll want to see it.”

It’s been almost a week since I survived Alan Rhodes’s attack. Although the blood and glass are now gone, and the window has been replaced, I’m still reluctant to go into the kitchen. The memories are too vivid, and the bruises around my neck still too fresh, so instead we move into the living room. I settle onto the sofa between Dr. Isles and Detective Rizzoli, the two women who have been hunting the monster, and who tried to keep me safe from him. But in the end, I’m the one who had to save myself. I’m the one who had to die twice, in order to live again.

The gray tabby crouches on the coffee table and watches with a look of unsettling intelligence as Rizzoli opens her laptop and inserts a flash drive. “These are the photos from Jodi Underwood’s computer,” she says. “This is the reason Alan Rhodes killed her. Because these pictures tell a story, and he couldn’t afford to let anyone see them. Not Leon Gott. Not Interpol. And certainly not you.”

The screen fills with image tiles, all of them too small to make out any details. She clicks on the first tile and the photo blooms on-screen. It’s a smiling, dark-haired man of about thirty, dressed in jeans and a photographer’s vest, a backpack slung over his shoulder. He is standing in an airport check-in line. He has a squarish forehead and gentle eyes, and there is a happy innocence about him, the innocence of a lamb who has no idea he’s headed for slaughter.

“This is Elliot Gott,” says Rizzoli. “The real Elliot Gott. It was taken six years ago, just before he boarded the plane in Boston.”

I study his features, the curly hair, the shape of his face. “He looks so much like …”

“Like Alan Rhodes. That may be why Rhodes chose to kill him. He picked a victim who resembled him, so he could pass himself off as Elliot Gott. He used Gott’s name when he met Sylvia and Vivian at the nightclub in Cape Town. He used Elliot’s passport and credit cards to book the flight to Botswana.”

Which is where I met him. I think of the day I first laid eyes on the man who called himself Elliot. It was in the satellite air terminal in Maun, where the seven of us waited to board the bush plane into the Delta. I remember how nervous I was about flying on a small plane. I remember how Richard complained that I wasn’t in the spirit of adventure, and why couldn’t I be more cheerful about it, like those cute blond girls giggling on the bench? About that first meeting with Elliot, I remember almost nothing at all, because my focus was entirely on Richard. How I was losing him. How he seemed so bored with me. The safari was my last-gasp effort to salvage what we had together, so I scarcely paid attention to the awkward man who was hovering over the blondes.