“You know, sometimes your gut feeling’s the best thing you can go with.”

“Sometimes, that’s all it is. A feeling, not a fact. There’s nothing sacred about a cop’s instinct. What the hell is instinct, anyway? How many times does a hunch turn out dead wrong?” She turned on the engine. “Too damn often.”

“So I didn’t tick you off?”

She slammed her door shut. “No.”

“You sure?”

She glanced through the open window at him. He stood squinting in the sunlight, eyes narrowed to slits under a bushy fringe of eyebrow. On his arms, dark hairs bristled, heavy as a pelt, and his stance, hips thrust forward, shoulders sagging, made her think of a slouching gorilla. No, he had not ticked her off. But she could not look at him without registering a twinge of distaste.

“I just can’t spend any more time on this,” she said. “You know how it is.”

Back at her desk, Rizzoli focused her attention on all the paperwork that had accumulated. On top was the file for Airplane Man, whose identity remained unknown and whose ruined body still lay unclaimed in the M.E.‘s office. She had neglected this victim too long. But even as she opened the folder and reviewed the autopsy photos, she was still thinking of the Yeagers and of a man who had corpse hair on his clothes. She reviewed the schedule of Logan Airport’s jet landings and takeoffs, but it was Gail Yeager’s face that stayed on her mind, smiling from the photo on the dresser. She remembered the gallery of women’s photos that had been taped to the wall of the conference room a year ago, during the Surgeon investigation. Those women had been smiling, too, their faces captured at a moment when they were still warm flesh, when life still glowed in their eyes. She could not think of Gail Yeager without remembering the dead who had gone before her.

She wondered if Gail was already among them.

Her pager vibrated, the buzz like an electric shock from her belt. An advance warning of a discovery that would rock her day. She picked up the phone.

A moment later, she was hurrying out of the building.

FIVE

The dog was a yellow Lab, excited to near hyseria by the police officers standing nearby. He capered and barked at the end of his leash, which was tied to a tree. The dog’s owner, a wiry middle-aged man in running shorts, sat nearby on a large rock, head drooping into his hands, ignoring his dog’s pleading yips for attention.

“Owner’s name is Paul Vandersloot. Lives on River Street, just a mile from here,” said Patrolman Gregory Doud, who had secured the scene and had already strung a semicircle of police tape on the trees.

They were standing on the edge of the municipal golf course, staring into the woods of Stony Brook Reservation, which directly abutted the golf course. Located at the southern tip of Boston’s city limits, this reservation was surrounded by a sea of suburbs. But within Stony Brook’s 475 acres was a rugged landscape of wooded hills and valleys, rocky outcroppings, and marshes fringed with cattails. In winter, cross-country skiers explored the park’s ten miles of trails; in summer, joggers found refuge in its quiet forests.

And so had Mr. Vandersloot, until his dog led him to what lay among the trees.

“He says he comes here every afternoon to take his dog for a run,” said Officer Doud. “Usually goes up the East Boundary Road trail first, through the woods, then loops back along this inside edge of the golf course. It’s about a four-mile run. Says he keeps the dog on a leash the whole time. But today, the dog got away from him. They were going up the trail when the dog took off west, into the woods, and wouldn’t come back. Vandersloot went chasing after him. Practically tripped right over the body.” Doud glanced at the jogger, who was still huddled on the rock. “Called nine-one-one.”

“He use a cell phone?”

“No, ma’am. Went to a phone booth down at the Thompson Center. I got here around two-twenty. I was careful not to touch anything. Just walked into the woods far enough to confirm it was a body. About fifty yards in, I could already smell it. Then, after another fifty yards, I saw it. Backed right out and secured the scene. Closed off both ends of the Boundary Road trail.”

“And when did everyone else get here?”

“Detectives Sleeper and Crowe got here around three. The M.E. arrived around three-thirty.” He paused. “I didn’t realize you were coming in, too.”

“Dr. Isles called me. I guess we’re all parking on the golf course for now?”

“Detective Sleeper ordered it. Doesn’t want any vehicles visible from Enneking Parkway. Keeps us out of the public’s eye.”

“Any media turned up yet?”

“No, ma’am. I was careful not to radio it in. Used the call box down the road instead.”

“Good. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they won’t turn up at all.”

“Uh-oh,” said Doud. “Could this be our first jackal arriving?”

A dark-blue Marquis rolled across the golf course grass and pulled up beside the M.E.‘s van. A familiar overweight figure hauled himself out and smoothed his sparse hair over his scalp.

“He’s not a reporter,” said Rizzoli. “This guy I’m expecting.”

Korsak lumbered toward them. “You really think it’s her?” he asked.

“Dr. Isles says it’s a strong possibility. If so, your homicide just moved into Boston city limits.” She looked at Doud. “Which way do we approach it, so we don’t contaminate things?”

“You’re okay going from the east. Sleeper and Crowe have already videoed the site. The footprints and drag marks all come from the other direction, starting at Enneking Parkway. Just follow your nose.”

She and Korsak slipped under the police tape and headed into the woods. This section of second-growth trees was as dense as any deep forest. They ducked beneath spiky branches that scratched their faces, and snagged their trouser legs on brambles. They emerged on the East Boundary jogging trail and spotted a strand of police tape, fluttering from a tree.

“The jogger was running along this path when his dog got away from him,” she said. “Looks like Sleeper left us a trail of tape.”

They crossed the jogging path and plunged once again into the woods.

“Oh man. I think I can smell it already,” said Korsak.

Even before they saw the body, they heard the ominous hum of flies. Dry twigs snapped beneath their shoes, the sound as startling as gunfire. Through the trees ahead, they saw Sleeper and Crowe, faces contorted in disgust as they waved away insects. Dr. Isles was crouched near the ground, a few diamonds of sunlight dappling her black hair. Drawing closer, they saw what Isles was doing.

Korsak uttered an appalled groan. “Ah, shit. That I didn’t need to see.”

“Vitreous potassium,” said Isles, and the words sounded almost seductive in her smoky voice. “It’ll give us another estimate for the postmortem interval.”

The time of death would be difficult to determine, Rizzoli thought, gazing down at the nude corpse. Isles had rolled it onto a sheet, and it lay faceup, eyes bulging from the heat-expanded tissues inside the cranium. A necklace of disk-shaped bruises ringed the throat. The long blond hair was a stiff mat of straw. The abdomen was bloated, and the belly was tinted a liverish green. Blood vessels had been stained by the bacterial breakdown of blood, and the veins were startlingly visible, like black rivers flowing beneath the skin. But all these horrors paled in view of the procedure Isles was now performing. The membranes around the human eye are the most sensitive surface of the body; a single eyelash or the tiniest grain of sand caught beneath an eyelid can cause immense discomfort. So it made both Rizzoli and Korsak wince to watch Isles pierce the corpse’s eye with a twenty-gauge needle. Slowly she sucked the vitreous fluid into a 10 cc syringe.