The Apprentice

by Tess Gerritsen

  “What do we know about him? Our boy is obsessed with the dead. He craves the smell of them, the touch of them. He holds on to corpses until the stench becomes impossible to disguise, to hide. Only then does he surrender the remains. This is a man who probably gets turned on just by walking through a cemetery. So here he was, in the dark, indulging in a little erotic adventure.”

  “This is sick.”

  “Look into his mind, his universe. We may think it’s sick, but for him, this place is a little slice of paradise. A place where the dead are laid to rest. Just the place the Dominator would come. He walks around here and probably imagines a whole harem of sleeping women right beneath his feet.

  “But then he’s disturbed, surprised by the arrival of a security patrol. A guard who’s probably expecting to deal with nothing more dangerous than a few teenagers looking for a little nighttime adventure.”

  “And the guard lets a lone man stroll right up and cut his throat?”

  Dean was silent. For this he had no explanation. Neither did Rizzoli.

  By the time they walked back up the slope, the night was pulsing with blue lights, and her team was already stringing crime scene tape between stakes. Rizzoli stared at the grim carnival of activity and suddenly she felt too weary to deal with any of it. Seldom had she questioned her own judgment, doubted her own instincts. But tonight, faced with the evidence of her failure, she wondered if Gabriel Dean wasn’t right—that she had no business leading this investigation. That the trauma inflicted on her by Warren Hoyt had so damaged her that she could no longer function as a cop. Tonight she had made the wrong choice, had refused to release anyone from her team to answer the call for a premises check. We were only a mile away. Sitting in our cars, waiting for nothing, while this man was dying.

  The string of defeats had piled up so heavily on her shoulders that she felt her back sag as though under the weight of real stones. She returned to her car and flipped open her cell phone; Frost answered.

  “Yellow Cab dispatcher confirms the cabbie’s story,” he told her. “They got the call at two-sixteen. Male claiming his car was out of gas on Enneking Parkway. She dispatched Mr. Wilensky. We’re trying to track down the number the call came from.”

  “Our boy’s not stupid. The call’s going to lead nowhere. A pay phone. Or a stolen cell phone. Shit.” She slapped the dashboard.

  “So what about the cabbie? He comes up clean.”

  “Release him.”

  “You sure?”

  “It was all a game, Frost. The unsub knew we’d be waiting for him. He’s playing with us. Demonstrating he’s in control. That he’s smarter than us.” And he just proved it.

  She hung up and sat for a moment, collecting the energy to step out of the car and face what came next. Another death investigation. All the questions that would surely follow about her decisions tonight. She thought of how fiercely she had pinned her hopes on the belief that the unsub would adhere to his pattern. Instead he had used that very pattern to taunt her. To produce the fiasco she was now staring at.

  Several of the cops standing by the crime scene tape turned and looked her way—a signal that, tired as she was, she could not hide in her car much longer. She remembered Korsak’s thermos of coffee; awful as it was, she could use the shot of caffeine. She reached around to retrieve the thermos behind her seat and suddenly stopped.

  She looked up at the law enforcement personnel standing among the cruisers. She saw Gabriel Dean, lean and sleek as a black cat as he walked the crime scene perimeter. She saw cops scanning the ground, flashlights sweeping back and forth. But she did not see Korsak.

  She stepped out of the car and approached Officer Doud, who’d been part of the stakeout team. “Have you seen Detective Korsak?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “He wasn’t here when you arrived? He wasn’t waiting by the body?”

  “I haven’t seen him here at all.”

  She stared toward the trees, where she had encountered Gabriel Dean. Korsak was running right behind me. But he never caught up. And he didn’t come back here. . . .

  She began walking toward the trees, retracing the route she had run across the cemetery. During that sprint, she’d been so focused on pursuit that she’d paid little attention to Korsak, who’d trailed behind her. She remembered her own fear, the pounding heart, the night wind rushing past her face. She remembered his heavy breathing as he’d struggled to keep up. Then he’d fallen behind, and she’d lost track of him.

  She moved faster now, her flashlight sweeping left and right. Was this the route she’d taken? No, no, she’d gone down a different row of headstones. She recognized an obelisk looming to the left.

  Correcting course, she headed for the obelisk and almost tripped over Korsak’s legs.

  He lay crumpled beside a headstone, the shadow of his bulky torso merging with the granite. At once she was on her knees, screaming for assistance as she rolled him onto his back. One glance at his swollen, dusky face told her he was in cardiac arrest.

  She felt his neck, wanting so desperately to detect a carotid pulse that she almost mistook the bounding pulse of her own fingers for his. But he had none.

  She slammed her fist down on his chest. Even that violent punch did not jolt his heart awake.

  She tilted his head back and tugged his sagging jaw forward to open the airway. So many things about Korsak had once repelled her. The smell of his sweat and cigarettes, his noisy sniffling, his doughy handshake. None of that registered now as she sealed her mouth against his and blew air into his lungs. She felt his chest expand, heard a noisy wheeze as his lungs expelled the air again. She planted her hands on his chest and began CPR, doing the work his heart refused to do. She kept pumping as other cops arrived to assist, as her arms began to tremble and sweat soaked into her vest. Even as she pumped, she was mentally flogging herself. How had she overlooked him, lying here? Why hadn’t she noticed his absence? Her muscles burned and her knees ached, but she did not stop. She owed that much to him and would not abandon him a second time.

  An ambulance siren screamed closer.

  She was still pumping as the paramedics arrived. Only when someone took her arm and firmly tugged her away did she relinquish her role. She stood back, legs trembling, as the paramedics took over, inserting an I.V. line, hanging a bag of saline. They tilted Korsak’s head back and thrust a laryngoscope blade down his throat.

  “I can’t see the vocal cords!”

  “Jesus, he’s got a big neck.”

  “Help me reposition.”

  “Okay. Try it again!”

  Again the paramedic inserted the laryngoscope, straining to hold up the weight of Korsak’s jaw. With his massive neck and swollen tongue, Korsak looked like a freshly slaughtered bull.

  “Tube’s in!”

  They tore away the rest of Korsak’s shirt, baring a thick mat of hair, and slapped on defibrillator paddles. On the EKG monitor, a jagged line appeared.

  “He’s in V-tach!”

  The paddles discharged, a jolt of electrical current slicing through Korsak’s chest. The seizure jerked his heavy torso right off the grass and dropped him back in a flaccid mound. The cops’ multiple flashlight beams revealed every cruel detail, from the pale beer belly to the almost feminine breasts that are the embarrassment of so many overweight men.

  “Okay! He’s got a rhythm. Sinus tach—”

  “BP?”

  The cuff whiffed tight around his meaty arm. “Ninety systolic. Let’s move him!”

  Even after they’d transferred Korsak into the ambulance and the taillights had winked away into the night, Rizzoli did not move. Numb with exhaustion, she stared after it, imagining what would follow for him. The harsh lights of the E.R. More needles, more tubes. It occurred to her that she should call his wife, but she did not know her name. In fact, she knew almost nothing about his personal life, and it struck her as unbearably sad that she knew far more about the dead Yeagers than about the living, bre
athing man who’d worked beside her. The partner she’d failed.

  She looked down at the grass where he’d been lying. It still bore the imprint of his weight. She imagined him running after her but too short of breath to keep up. He would have pushed himself anyway, driven by male vanity, by pride. Did he clutch his chest before he went down? Did he try to call for help?

  I would not have heard him anyway. I was too busy trying to run down shadows. Trying to salvage my own pride.

  “Detective Rizzoli?” said Officer Doud. He’d approached so quietly, she had not even realized he was standing beside her.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid we’ve found another one.”

  “What?”

  “Another body.”

  Stunned, she could say nothing as she followed Doud across the damp grass, his flashlight lighting the way through the blackness. A flicker of more lights far ahead marked their destination. By the time she finally detected the first whiff of decay, they were several hundred yards from where the security guard had fallen.

  “Who found it?” she asked.

  “Agent Dean.”

  “Why was he searching all the way out here?”

  “I guess he was doing a general sweep.”

  Dean turned to face her as she approached. “I think we’ve found Karenna Ghent,” he said.

  The woman lay atop a grave site, her black hair splayed around her, clusters of leaves arranged among the dark strands in mock decoration of mortified flesh. She had been dead long enough for her belly to bloat, for purge fluid to trickle from her nostrils. But the impact of all these details faded in the greater horror of what had been done to the lower abdomen. Rizzoli stared at the gaping wound. A single transverse slice.

  The ground seemed to give way beneath her feet and she stumbled backward, blindly reaching for support and finding only air.

  It was Dean who caught her, grasping her firmly by the elbow. “It’s not a coincidence,” he said.

  She was silent, her gaze still fixed on that terrible wound. She remembered similar wounds on other women. Remembered a summer even hotter than this one.

  “He’s been following the news,” said Dean. “He knows you’re the lead investigator. He knows how to turn the tables, how to make a game of cat and mouse go both ways. That’s what it is to him, now. A game.”

  Although she registered his words, she didn’t understand what he was trying to tell her. “What game?”

  “Didn’t you see the name?” He aimed his flashlight at the words carved into the granite headstone:

  Beloved husband and father

  Anthony Rizzoli

  1901–1962

  “It’s a taunt,” said Dean. “And it’s aimed straight at you.”

  thirteen

  The woman sitting at Korsak’s bedside had lank brown hair that looked as if it had been neither washed nor combed in days. She did not touch him but simply gazed at the bed with vacant eyes, her hands resting in her lap, lifeless as a mannequin’s. Rizzoli stood outside the ICU cubicle, debating whether to intrude. Finally the woman looked up and met her gaze through the window, and Rizzoli could not simply walk away.

  She stepped into the cubicle. “Mrs. Korsak?” she asked.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Detective Rizzoli. Jane. Please call me Jane.”

  The woman’s expression remained blank; clearly she did not recognize the name.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know your first name,” said Rizzoli.

  “Diane.” The woman was silent for a moment; then she frowned. “I’m sorry. Who are you again?”

  “Jane Rizzoli. I’m with Boston P.D. I’ve been working with your husband on a case. He may have mentioned it.”

  Diane gave a vague shrug and looked back at her husband. Her face revealed neither grief nor fear. Only the numb passivity of exhaustion.

  For a moment Rizzoli simply stood in silent vigil over the bed. So many tubes, she thought. So many machines. And at their center was Korsak, reduced to senseless flesh. The doctors had confirmed a heart attack, and although his cardiac rhythm was now stable, he remained stuporous. His mouth hung agape, an endotracheal tube protruding like a plastic snake. A reservoir hanging at the side of the bed collected a slow trickle of urine. Though the bedsheet concealed his genitals, his chest and abdomen were bare, and one hairy leg protruded from beneath the sheet, revealing a foot with yellow unclipped toenails. Even as she took in these details, she felt ashamed of invading his privacy, of seeing him at his most vulnerable. Yet she could not look away. She felt compelled to stare, eyes drawn to all the intimate details, the very things that, were he awake, he would not want her to see.

  “He needs a shave,” said Diane.

  Such a trivial concern, yet it was the one spontaneous remark Diane had made. She had not moved a muscle but sat perfectly motionless, hands still limp, her placid expression carved in stone.

  Rizzoli searched for something to say, something she thought she should say to comfort her, and settled on a cliché. “He’s a fighter. He won’t give up easily.”

  Her words dropped like stones into a bottomless pond. No ripples, no effect. A long silence passed before Diane’s flat blue eyes at last focused on her.

  “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name again.”

  “Jane Rizzoli. Your husband and I were working a stakeout together.”

  “Oh. You’re the one.”

  Rizzoli paused, suddenly stricken by guilt. Yes, I’m the one. The one who abandoned him. Who left him lying alone in the darkness because I was so frantic to salvage my fucked-up night.

  “Thank you,” said Diane.

  Rizzoli frowned. “For what?”

  “For whatever you did. To help him.”

  Rizzoli looked into the woman’s vague blue eyes, and for the first time she noticed the tightly constricted pupils. The eyes of the anesthetized, she thought. Diane Korsak was in a narcotic daze.

  Rizzoli looked at Korsak. Remembered the night she had called him to the Ghent death scene and he’d arrived intoxicated. She remembered, too, the night they had stood together in the M.E.’s parking lot and Korsak had seemed reluctant to go home. Is this what he faced every evening? This woman with her blank stare and her robot voice?

  You never told me. And I never bothered to ask.

  She moved to the bed and squeezed his hand. Recalled how his moist handshake had once repelled her. Not today; today, she would have rejoiced had he squeezed back. But the hand in hers remained limp.

  It was eleven A.M. when she finally walked into her apartment. She turned the two dead bolts, pressed the button lock, and fastened the chain. Once, she would have thought all these locks were a sign of paranoia; once, she’d been satisfied with a simple knob lock and a weapon in her nightstand drawer. But a year ago Warren Hoyt had changed her life, and her door had since acquired these gleaming brass accessories. She stared at her array of locks, suddenly struck by how much she had become like every other victim of violent crime, desperate to barricade her home and shut out the world.

  The Surgeon had done this to her.

  And now this new unsub, the Dominator, had added his voice to the chorus of monsters braying outside her door. Gabriel Dean had understood at once that the choice of the grave on which Karenna Ghent’s corpse had been deposited was no accident. Although the tenant of that grave, Anthony Rizzoli, was not her relation, their shared name was clearly a message intended for her.

  The Dominator knows my name.

  She did not remove her holster until she had made the complete walk-through of her apartment. It was not a large space, and it took less than a minute to glance in the kitchen and the living room, then move down the short hallway to her bedroom, where she opened the closet, peeked under the bed. Only then did she unbuckle her holster and slip the weapon into her nightstand drawer. She peeled off her clothes and went into the bathroom. She locked the door—yet another automatic reflex, and completely unnecessary, but it was the on
ly way she could step into the shower and summon the nerve to pull the curtain shut. Moments later, her hair still slick with conditioner, she was seized by the feeling that she was not alone. She yanked open the curtain and stared at the empty bathroom, her heart hammering, the water streaming down her shoulders and onto the floor.

  She turned off the faucet. Leaned back against the tiled wall, breathing deeply, waiting for her heartbeat to slow. Through the whoosh of her own pulse she heard the hum of the ventilation fan. The rumble of pipes in her building. Everyday sounds that she had never bothered to register until now, when their very ordinariness served as a blessed focus.

  By the time her heartbeat finally slowed to normal, the water had chilled on her skin. She stepped out, toweled off, then knelt down to mop up the wet floor as well. For all her swaggering at work, her tough-cop act, she was now reduced to little more than shivering flesh. She saw, in the mirror, how fear had changed her. Staring back was a woman who had lost weight, whose already slim frame was slowly melting into gauntness. Whose face, once square and sturdy, now seemed thin as a wraith’s, the eyes large and dark in their deepening hollows.

  She fled the mirror and went into the bedroom. Hair still damp, she sank onto her bed and lay with eyes open, knowing she should try to catch at least a few hours’ sleep. But daylight winked brightly through the cracks in the window blinds, and she could hear traffic in the street below. It was noon, and she had been awake for nearly thirty hours and had not eaten in nearly twelve. Yet she could summon up neither an appetite nor the will to fall asleep. The events of that early morning still buzzed like a current through her nervous system, the memories crackling in a recurrent loop. She saw the security guard’s throat gaping open, his head turned at an impossible angle from his torso. She saw Karenna Ghent, leaves scattered in her hair.

  And she saw Korsak, his body bristling with tubes and wires.

  The three images cycled in her head like a strobe light, and she could not shut them off. She could not silence the buzzing. Was this what insanity felt like?

  Weeks ago, Dr. Zucker had urged her to seek counseling and she had angrily brushed him off. Now she wondered if he had detected something in her words, her gaze, that even she had not been aware of. The first cracks in her sanity, shearing deeper and wider, since the Surgeon had rocked her life.