Vanish
A Novel
Chapter One
Dr. Maura Isles had not smelled fresh air all day. Since seven that
morning she had been inhaling the scent of death, an aroma so
familiar to her that she did not recoil as her knife sliced cold
skin, as foul odors wafted up from exposed organs. The police
officers who occasionally stood in the room to observe postmortems
were not so stoic. Sometimes Maura caught a whiff of the Vicks
ointment that they dabbed in their nostrils to mask the stench.
Sometimes even Vicks was not enough, and she'd see them suddenly go
wobbly and turn away, to gag over the sink. Cops were not
accustomed, as she was, to the astringent bite of formalin, the
sulfurous aroma of decaying membranes.
Today, there was an incongruous note of sweetness added to that
bouquet of odors: the scent of coconut oil, emanating from the skin
of Mrs. Gloria Leder, who now lay on the autopsy table. She was
fifty years old, a divorcee with broad hips and heavy breasts and
toenails painted a brilliant pink. Deep tan lines marked the edges
of the bathing suit she had been wearing when she was found dead
beside her ... read full excerpt from Vanish ebook
