The Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Bundle

by Tess Gerritsen

  The tube is nearly full. She pulls it from the Vacutainer needle and pops a second tube onto the needle. This tube is a purple-top, for a complete blood count. When this one, too, is filled, she pulls the needle from my vein, snaps the tourniquet loose, and jams a wad of cotton against the puncture site.

  “Hold it,” she commands.

  Helplessly I rattle the handcuff on my left wrist, which is fastened to the frame of the clinic cot. “I can’t,” I say in a defeated voice.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” she sighs. No sympathy, just irritation. There are some who despise the weak, and she is one of them. Given absolute power, and a vulnerable subject, she could easily transform into the same sort of monsters who tortured Jews in concentration camps. Cruelty is there beneath the surface, disguised by the white uniform and the name tag with R.N.

  She glances at the guard. “Hold it,” she says.

  He hesitates, then clamps his fingers against the cotton, pressing it to my skin. His reluctance to touch me is not because he’s afraid of any violence on my part; I have always been well behaved and polite, a model prisoner, and none of the guards fear me. No, it is my blood that makes him nervous. He sees red oozing into the cotton and imagines all sorts of microbial horrors swarming toward his fingers. He looks relieved when the nurse tears open a bandage and tapes the cotton wad in place. At once he goes to the sink and washes his hands with soap and water. I want to laugh at his terror of something as elemental as blood. Instead I lie motionless on the cot, my knees drawn up, my eyes closed, as I release an occasional whimper of distress.

  The nurse leaves the room with the tubes of my blood, and the guard, his hands thoroughly washed, sits down in a chair to wait.

  And wait.

  What feels like hours goes by in that cold and sterile room. We hear nothing from the nurse; it’s as if she has abandoned us, forgotten us. The guard shifts in his chair, wondering what could be taking her so long.

  I already know.

  By now, the machine has completed its analysis of my blood, and she holds the results in her hand. The numbers alarm her. All concerns about a prisoner’s malingering have fled; she sees the evidence, there in the printout, that a dangerous infection rages in my body. That my complaint of abdominal pain is surely genuine. Although she has examined my belly, felt my muscles flinch, and heard me groan at her touch, she did not quite believe my symptoms. She has been a prison nurse too long, and experience has made her skeptical of inmates’ physical complaints. In her eyes we are all manipulators and con men, and our every symptom is just another pitch for drugs.

  But a lab test is objective. The blood goes into the machine and a number comes out. She cannot ignore an alarming white blood cell count. And so she is surely on the telephone, consulting with the medical officer: “I have a prisoner here with severe abdominal pain. He does have bowel sounds, but his belly’s tender in the right lower quadrant. What really worries me is his white count …”

  The door opens, and I hear the squeak of the nurse’s shoes on the linoleum. When she addresses me, there is none of that sneering tone she’d used earlier. Now she is civil, even respectful. She knows she is dealing with a seriously ill man and if anything should happen to me she will be held responsible. Suddenly I am not an object of contempt but a time bomb that could destroy her career. And she has already delayed too long.

  “We’re going to transfer you to the hospital,” she says, and looks at the guard. “He needs to be moved immediately.” “Shattuck?” he asks, referring to the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital Correctional Unit in Boston.

  “No, that’s too far away. He can’t wait that long. I’ve arranged a transfer to Fitchburg Hospital.” There is urgency in her voice, and the guard now glances at me with concern.

  “So what’s wrong with him?” he asks.

  “It could be a ruptured appendix. I’ve got the paperwork all ready, and I’ve called the Fitchburg E.R. He’ll have to go by ambulance.”

  “Aw, shit. Then I gotta ride with him. How long’s this gonna take?”

  “He’ll probably be admitted. I think he needs surgery.”

  The guard glances at his watch. He is thinking about the end of his shift and whether someone will show up in time to relieve him at the hospital. He is not thinking about me but about the details of his own schedule, his own life. I am merely a complication.

  The nurse folds a bundle of papers and slips them into an envelope. She hands this to the guard. “This is for the Fitchburg E.R. Be sure the doctor gets it.”

  “It’s gotta be by ambulance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Makes security a problem.”

  She glances at me. My wrist is still handcuffed to the cot. I lie perfectly still, with my knees bent—the classic position of a patient suffering from excruciating peritonitis. “I wouldn’t worry too much about security. This one’s way too sick to put up a fight.”

  seven

  “Necrophilia,” said Dr. Lawrence Zucker, “or ‘love of the dead,’ has always been one of mankind’s dark secrets. The word comes from the Greek, but as far back as the days of the pharaohs there was evidence of its practice. A beautiful or high-ranking woman who died at that time was always kept from the embalmers until at least three days after her death. This was to ensure that her body wasn’t sexually abused by the men charged with preparing her for burial. Sexual abuse of the dead has been recorded throughout history. Even King Herod was said to have had sex with his wife for seven years after her death.”

  Rizzoli looked around the conference room and was struck by the eerie familiarity of this scene: a gathering of tired detectives, files and crime scene photos scattered on the table. The whispery voice of psychologist Lawrence Zucker, luring them into the nightmarish mind of a predator. And the chill—most of all, she remembered the chill of this room, and how it had seeped into her bones and numbed her hands. Many of the faces were the same as well: Detectives Jerry Sleeper and Darren Crowe and her partner, Barry Frost. The cops with whom she had worked on the Surgeon investigation a year ago.

  Another summer, another monster.

  But this time, one face was absent from the team. Detective Thomas Moore was not among them, and she missed his presence, missed his quiet assurance, his steadfastness. Though they’d had a falling-out during the Surgeon investigation, they had since mended their friendship, and now his absence was like a gaping hole in their team.

  In Moore’s place, sitting in the very chair Moore usually occupied, was a man she did not trust: Gabriel Dean. Anyone walking into this meeting would notice immediately that Dean was the outsider in this gathering of cops. From his well-tailored suit to his military posture, he stood out from the others, and they were all aware of the divide. No one spoke to Dean; he was the silent observer, the Bureau man whose role remained a mystery to them all.

  Dr. Zucker continued. “Sex with a corpse is an activity most of us don’t care to think about. But it’s mentioned repeatedly in literature, in history, and in a number of criminal cases. Nine percent of serial killer victims are sexually violated postmortem. Jeffrey Dahmer, Henry Lee Lucas, and Ted Bundy all admitted to it.” His gaze dropped to the autopsy photo of Gail Yeager. “So the presence of fresh ejaculate in this victim is not all that surprising.”

  Darren Crowe said, “They used to say this was something only the wackos did. That’s what an FBI profiler once told me. That these are the nuts who wander around jabbering to themselves.”

  “Yes, it was once thought of as a sign of a severely disordered killer,” said Zucker. “Someone who shuffles around in a psychotic daze. It’s true, a number of these perps are psychotics who fall into the category of disorganized killers—neither sane nor intelligent. They have so little control over their own impulses that they’ll leave all sorts of evidence behind. Hairs, semen, fingerprints. They’re the easy ones to catch, because they don’t know, or they don’t care, about forensics.”

  “So what about this guy?”

 
“This unsub is not psychotic. He’s an entirely different creature.” Zucker opened the folder of photos from the Yeager house and arranged them on the table. Then he looked at Rizzoli. “Detective, you walked through the crime scene.”

  She nodded. “This unsub was methodical. He came with a murder kit. He was neat and efficient. He left almost no trace evidence behind.”

  “There was semen,” Crowe pointed out.

  “But not in a place we’d be likely to search for it. We might easily have missed it. In fact, we almost did.”

  “And your overall impression?” asked Zucker.

  “He’s organized. Intelligent.” She paused. And added, “Exactly like the Surgeon.”

  Zucker’s gaze locked on hers. Zucker had always made her uneasy, and she felt invaded by his speculative look. But Warren Hoyt had to be on all their minds. She could not be the only one who felt this was a replay of an old nightmare.

  “I agree with you,” said Zucker. “This is an organized killer. He follows what some profilers would call a cognitive-object theme. His behavior isn’t just to achieve immediate gratification. His actions have a specific goal, and that goal is to be in complete control of a woman’s body—in this case, the victim, Gail Yeager. This unsub wants to possess her, use her even after her death. By assaulting her in front of the husband, he establishes this right of possession. He becomes the dominator, over both of them.”

  He reached for the autopsy photo. “I find it interesting that she was neither mutilated nor dismembered. Except for the natural changes of early decomposition, the corpse seems to be in rather good condition.” He looked at Rizzoli for confirmation.

  “There were no open wounds,” she said. “The cause of death was strangulation.”

  “Which is the most intimate way to kill someone.”

  “Intimate?”

  “Think of what it means to manually strangle someone. How personal it is. The close contact. Skin to skin. Your hands against her flesh. Pressing her throat as you feel her life drain away.”

  Rizzoli stared at him in disgust. “Jesus.”

  “This is how he thinks. What he feels. This is the universe he inhabits, and we have to learn what that universe is like.” Zucker pointed to Gail Yeager’s photo. “He’s driven to possess her body, to own it, dead or alive. This is a man who develops a personal attachment to a corpse, and he’ll continue to fondle it. Sexually abuse it.”

  “Then why dispose of it?” asked Sleeper. “Why not keep it around for seven years? Like that King Herod did with his wife.”

  “Practical reasons?” Zucker offered. “He may live in an apartment building, where the smell of a decomposing body would attract notice. Three days is about as long as one would want to keep a corpse.”

  Crowe laughed. “Try three seconds.”

  “Then you’re saying he has almost a lover’s attachment to this body,” said Rizzoli.

  Zucker nodded.

  “It must have been hard for him to just dump her there. In Stony Brook.”

  “Yes, it would have been difficult. Like having your lover leave you.”

  She thought of that place in the woods. The trees, the dappled shade. So far from the heat and noise of the city. “It’s not just a dump site,” she said. “Maybe it’s consecrated ground.”

  They all looked at her.

  “Say again?” said Crowe.

  “Detective Rizzoli has hit on exactly the point I was getting at,” said Zucker. “That spot, in the reserve, is not just a place to throw away used corpses. You have to ask yourself, Why didn’t he bury them? Why does he leave them exposed to possible discovery?”

  Rizzoli said, softly, “Because he visits them.”

  Zucker nodded. “These are his lovers. His harem. He returns again and again, to look at them, touch them. Maybe even embrace them. That’s why he sheds corpse hairs. When he handles the bodies, he picks up their hairs on his clothes.” Zucker looked at Rizzoli. “That postmortem strand matches the second set of remains?”

  She nodded. “Detective Korsak and I started with the assumption this unsub picked up the strand from his workplace. Now that we know where that hair came from, does it make any sense to keep pursuing the funeral home angle?”

  “Yes,” said Zucker. “And I’ll tell you why. Necrophiles are attracted to corpses. They get a sexual charge out of handling the bodies. Embalming them, dressing them. Applying their makeup. They may try to gain access to this thrill by choosing jobs in the death industry. An embalmer’s assistant, for example, or a mortuary beautician. Keep in mind, that unidentified set of remains may not be a murder victim at all. One of the most well known necrophiles was a psychotic named Ed Gein, who started off by raiding cemeteries. Digging up women’s bodies to bring home. It was only later that he turned to homicide as a means of obtaining corpses.”

  “Oh man,” Frost muttered. “This just keeps getting better.”

  “It’s one aspect of the wide spectrum of human behavior. Necrophiliacs strike us as sick and perverted. But they’ve always been with us, this subsegment of people driven by strange obsessions. Bizarre hungers. Yes, some of them are psychotic. But some of them are perfectly normal in every way.”

  Warren Hoyt was perfectly normal, too.

  It was Gabriel Dean who spoke next. Up till then, he had not said a word during the entire meeting, and Rizzoli was startled to hear his deep baritone.

  “You said that this unsub might return to the woods to visit his harem.”

  “Yes,” said Zucker. “That’s why the stakeout of Stony Brook should continue indefinitely.”

  “And what happens when he discovers his harem has vanished?”

  Zucker paused. “He will not take it well.”

  The words sent a chill up Rizzoli’s spine. They are his lovers. How would any man react when his lover was stolen from him?

  “He’ll be frantic,” said Zucker. “Enraged that someone would take his possessions. And anxious to replace what he’s lost. It will send him hunting again.” Zucker looked at Rizzoli. “You have to keep this out of the media’s eye, as long as possible. The stakeout may be your best chance to catch him. Because he will return to those woods, but only if he thinks it’s safe. Only if he believes the harem is still there, waiting for him.”

  The conference room door opened. They all turned to see Lieutenant Marquette poke his head into the room. “Detective Rizzoli?” he said. “I need to speak to you.”

  “Right now?”

  “If you don’t mind. Let’s go into my office.”

  Judging by the expressions of everyone else in the room, the same thought had occurred to them all: Rizzoli’s being called to the woodshed. And she had no idea why. Flushing, she rose from her chair and walked out of the room.

  Marquette was silent as they headed down the hall to the homicide unit. They stepped into his office and he shut the door. Through the glass partition, she saw detectives staring at her from their workstations. Marquette went to the window and snapped the blinds shut. “Why don’t you sit down, Rizzoli?”

  “I’m fine. I just want to know what’s going on.”

  “Please.” His voice quieter now, even gentle. “Sit down.”

  His new solicitousness made her uneasy. She and Marquette had never really warmed to each other. The homicide unit was still a boy’s club, and she knew she was the bitch invader. She sank into a chair, her pulse starting to hammer.

  For a moment he sat silent, as though trying to come up with the right words. “I wanted to tell you this before the others hear about it. Because I think this will be hardest on you. I’m sure it’s just a temporary situation and it’ll be resolved within days, if not hours.”

  “What situation?”

  “This morning, around five A.M., Warren Hoyt escaped custody.”

  Now she understood why he’d insisted she sit down; he had expected her to crumble.

  But she did not. She sat perfectly still, her emotions shut down, every nerve gone numb. When
she spoke, her voice was so eerily calm, she scarcely recognized it as her own.

  “How did it happen?” she asked.

  “It was during a medical transfer. He was admitted last night to Fitchburg Hospital for an emergency appendectomy. We don’t really know how it happened. But in the operating room …” Marquette paused. “There are no witnesses left alive.”

  “How many dead?” she asked. Her voice still flat. Still a stranger’s.

  “Three. A nurse and a female anesthetist, prepping him for surgery. Plus the guard who accompanied him to the hospital.”

  “Souza-Baranowski is a level-six facility.”

  “Yes.”

  “And they allowed him to go to a civilian hospital?”

  “If it had been a routine admission, he would have been transported to the Shattuck prison unit. But in a medical emergency, it’s MCI policy to take prisoners to the nearest contracted facility. And the nearest one was in Fitchburg.”

  “Who decided it was an emergency?”

  “The prison nurse. She examined Hoyt, and consulted with the MCI physician. They both concurred he needed immediate attention.”

  “Based on what findings?” Her voice was starting to sharpen now, the first note of emotion creeping in.

  “There were symptoms. Abdominal pain—”

  “He has medical training. He knew exactly what to tell them.”

  “They also had abnormal lab tests.”

  “What tests?”

  “Something about a high white blood cell count.”

  “Did they understand who they were dealing with? Did they have any idea?”

  “You can’t fake a blood test.”

  “He could. He worked in a hospital. He knows how to manipulate lab tests.”

  “Detective—”

  “For Christ’s sake, he was a fucking blood technician!” The shrillness of her own voice startled her. She stared at him, shocked by her outburst. And overwhelmed by the emotions that were finally blasting through her. Rage. Helplessness.