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a few miles from here.”
    “The residence is an apartment building. Her neighbors don’t seem to know much about her. We’re still trying to reach the landlady, to let us into the unit.”
    “Does the name Jessop ring any bells?” asked Rizzoli.
    She shook her heard. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
    “Do you know anyone in Maine?”
    “Why do you ask?”
    “There was a speeding ticket in her purse. Looks like she got pulled over two days ago, driving south on the Maine Turnpike.”
    “I don’t know anyone in Maine.” Maura took a deep breath. Asked: “Who found her?”
    “Your neighbor Mr. Telushkin made the call,” said Rizzoli. “He was out walking his dog when he noticed the Taurus parked at the curb.”
    “When was that?”
    “Around eight P.M. ”
    Of course, thought Maura. Mr. Telushkin walked his dog at precisely the same time every night. Engineers were like that, precise and predictable. But tonight he had encountered the unpredictable.
    “He didn’t hear anything?” Maura asked.
    “He said he’d heard what he thought was a car backfiring, maybe ten minutes before that. But no one saw it happen. After he found the Taurus, he called nine-one-one. Reported that someone had just shot his neighbor, Dr. Isles. Brookline Police responded first, along with Detective Eckert here. Frost and I arrived around nine.”
    “Why?” Maura said, finally asking a question that had occurred to her when she’d first spotted Rizzoli standing on her front lawn. “Why are you in Brookline? This isn’t your beat.”
    Rizzoli glanced at Detective Eckert.
    He said, a little sheepishly, “You know, we only had one homicide last year in Brookline. We thought, under the circumstances, it made sense to call in Boston.”
    Yes, it did make sense, Maura realized. Brookline was little more than a bedroom community trapped within the city of Boston. Last year, Boston PD had investigated sixty homicides. Practice made perfect, with murder investigations as well as anything else.
    “We would have come in on this anyway,” said Rizzoli. “After we heard who the victim was. Who we thought it was.” She paused. “I have to admit, it never even occurred to me that it might
not
be you. I took one look at the victim and assumed . . .”
    “We all did,” said Frost.
    There was a silence.
    “We knew you were due to fly home this evening from Paris,” said Rizzoli. “ That’s what your secretary told us. The only thing that didn’t make sense to us was the car. Why you’d be sitting in a car registered to another woman.”
    Maura drained her glass and set it on the coffee table. One drink was all she could handle tonight. Already, her limbs were numb and she was having trouble focusing. The room had softened to a blur, the lamps casting everything in a warm glow. This is not real, she thought. I’m asleep in a jet somewhere over the Atlantic, and I’ll wake up to find the plane has landed. That none of this has happened.
    “We don’t know anything yet about Anna Jessop,” said Rizzoli. “All we do know—what we’ve all seen with our own eyes—is that whoever she is, she’s a dead ringer for you, Doc. Maybe her hair’s a little longer. Maybe there’s a few differences here and there. But the point is, we were fooled. All of us. And we
know
you.” She paused. “You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you?”
    Yes, Maura could, but she didn’t want to say it. She just sat staring at the glass on the coffee table. At the melting ice cubes.
    “If we were fooled, anyone else could have been as well,” said Rizzoli. “Including whoever fired that bullet into her head. It was just before eight P.M. when your neighbor heard the backfire. Already getting dark. And there she was, sitting in a parked car just a few yards from your driveway. Anyone seeing her in that car would assume it’s you.”
    “You think I was the target,” said Maura.
    “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
    Maura shook her