She looked down at what she’d just written:
Mutualism: symbiosis with mutual advantage to both or all organisms involved.
The word that defined Warren Hoyt’s pact with his new partner. The Surgeon and the Dominator, working as a team. Hunting and feeding off carrion together.
“Warren Hoyt has always worked best with a partner,” said Dr. Zucker. “It’s how he likes to hunt. The way he used to hunt with Andrew Capra, until Capra’s death. Indeed, Hoyt requires the participation of another man as part of his ritual.”
“But he was hunting on his own last year,” said Barry Frost. “He didn’t have a partner then.”
“In a way, he did,” said Zucker. “Think about the victims he chose, here in Boston. All of them were women who’d been sexually assaulted—not by Hoyt, but by other men. He’s attracted to damaged women, women who’ve been marked by rape. In his eyes, that made them dirty, contaminated. And therefore approachable. Deep down, Hoyt is afraid of normal women, and his fear makes him impotent. He can only feel empowered when he thinks of them as inferior. Symbolically destroyed. When he hunted with Capra, it was Capra who assaulted the women. Only then did Hoyt use his scalpel. Only then could he derive full satisfaction from the ritual that followed.” Zucker looked around the room and saw heads nodding. These were details that the cops in this room already knew. Except for Dean, they had all worked on the Surgeon investigation; they were all familiar with Warren Hoyt’s handiwork.
Zucker opened a file folder on the table. “Now we come to our second killer. The Dominator. His ritual is almost a mirror image of Warren Hoyt’s. He’s not afraid of women. Nor is he afraid of men. In fact, he chooses to attack women who live with male partners. It isn’t just a matter of the husband or boyfriend being inconveniently present. No, the Dominator seems to want the man there, and he goes in prepared to deal with him. A stun gun and duct tape to immobilize the husband. The positioning of the male victim so he’s forced to watch what happens next. The Dominator doesn’t just kill the man straightaway, which would be the practical move. He gets his thrills by having an audience. By knowing another man is there to watch him claim his prize.”
“And Warren Hoyt gets his thrills by watching,” said Rizzoli.
Zucker nodded. “Exactly. One killer likes to perform. One likes to watch. It’s a perfect example of mutualism. These two men are natural partners. Their cravings complement each other. Together, they’re more effective. They can better control their prey. They can combine their skills. Even while Hoyt was still in prison, the Dominator was copying Hoyt’s techniques. He was already borrowing elements from the Surgeon’s signature.”
This was a point Rizzoli had recognized before anyone else, but no one in the room acknowledged that particular detail. Perhaps they’d forgotten, but she hadn’t.
“We know Hoyt received a number of letters from the general public. Even from prison, he managed to recruit an admirer. He cultivated him, maybe even instructed him.”
“An apprentice,” said Rizzoli softly.
Zucker looked at her. “That’s an interesting word you use. Apprentice. Someone who acquires a skill or craft under the tutelage of a master. In this case, it’s the craft of the hunt.”
“But which one is the apprentice?” said Dean. “And which one is the master?”
Dean’s question unnerved Rizzoli. For the past year, Warren Hoyt had represented the worst evil she could imagine. In a world where hunters stalked, none could match him. Now Dean had brought up a possibility she didn’t want to consider: that the Surgeon was but an acolyte to someone even more monstrous.
“Whatever their relationship,” said Zucker, “they are far more effective as a team than as individuals. And as a team, it’s possible the pattern of their attacks will change.”
“How so?” asked Sleeper.
“Until now, the Dominator has chosen couples. He props up the man as his audience, someone to watch the assault. He wants another man there, to see him claim the prize.”
“But now he has a partner,” said Rizzoli. “A man who’ll watch. A man who wants to watch.”
Zucker nodded. “Hoyt just might fill the pivotal role in the Dominator’s fantasy. The watcher. The audience.”
“Which means he may not choose a couple next time,” she said. “He’d choose …” She stopped, not wanting to finish the thought.
But Zucker was waiting to hear her answer, an answer he had already arrived at. He sat with head cocked, pale eyes watching her with eerie intensity.
It was Dean who said it. “They’ll choose a woman, living alone,” he said.
Zucker nodded. “Easy to subdue, easy to control. With no husband to worry about, they can focus all their attention on the woman.”
My car. My home. Me.
Rizzoli pulled into a parking space at Pilgrim Hospital and turned off the ignition. For a moment she did not step out of the car but sat with doors locked, scanning the garage. As a cop, she’d always considered herself a warrior, a hunter. Never had she thought of herself as prey. But now she found herself behaving as prey, wary as a rabbit preparing to leave the safety of its den. She, who had always been fearless, was reduced to casting nervous glances out her car window. She, who had kicked down doors, who’d always joined the first wave of cops barreling into a suspect’s home. She caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror and saw the wan face, the haunted eyes, of a woman she scarcely knew. Not a conqueror, but a victim. A woman she despised.
She shoved open the door and stepped out. Stood straight, reassured by the weight of her weapon, holstered snugly at her hip. Let the bastards come; she was ready for them.
She rode alone in the garage elevator, shoulders squared, pride trumping fear. When she stepped off again, she saw other people, and now her weapon felt unnecessary, even excessive. She tugged down her suit jacket to keep the holster concealed as she walked into the hospital, and stepped into the elevator, joining a trio of fresh-faced medical students with stethoscopes poking out of their pockets. They traded medical-speak among themselves, showing off their freshly minted vocabulary, ignoring the tired-looking woman standing beside them. Yes, the one with the concealed weapon on her hip.
In the ICU, she walked straight past the ward clerk’s desk and headed to cubicle #5. There she halted, frowning through the glass partition.
A woman was lying in Korsak’s bed.
“Excuse me. Ma’am?” a nurse said. “Visitors need to check in.”
Rizzoli turned. “Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Vince Korsak. He should be in that bed.”
“I’m sorry; I came on duty at three—”
“You were supposed to call me if anything happened!”
By now, her agitation had attracted the attention of another nurse who quickly intervened, speaking in the soothing tones of one who has dealt often with upset relatives.
“Mr. Korsak was extubated this morning, ma’am.”
“What do you mean?”
“The tube in his throat—the one to help him breathe—we took it out. He’s doing fine now, so we transferred him to the intermediate care unit, down the hall.” She added, in defense: “We did call Mr. Korsak’s wife, you know.”
Rizzoli thought of Diane Korsak and her vacant eyes and wondered if the phone call had even registered, or if the information had simply dropped like a penny into a dark well.
By the time she reached Korsak’s room, she was calmer and back in control. Quietly she poked her head inside.
He was awake and staring at the ceiling. His belly bulged beneath the sheets. His arms lay perfectly still at his sides, as though he was afraid to move them lest he disturb the tangle of wires and tubes.
“Hey,” she said softly.
He looked at her. “Hey,” he croaked back.
“You feel like having a visitor?”
In answer, he patted the bed, an invitation for her to settle in. To stay.
She pulled
a chair over to his bedside and sat down. His gaze had lifted again, not to the ceiling, as she’d thought at first, but to a cardiac monitor that was mounted in the corner of the room. An EKG blipped across the screen.
“That’s my heart,” he said. The tube had left him hoarse, and what came out was barely a whisper.
“Looks like it’s ticking okay,” she said.
“Yeah.” There was a silence, his gaze still fixed on the monitor.
She saw the bouquet of flowers that she’d sent that morning resting on his bedside table. It was the only vase in the room. Had no one else thought to send flowers? Not even his wife?
“I met Diane yesterday,” she said.
He glanced at her, then quickly looked away, but not before she’d seen dismay in his eyes.
“I guess she didn’t tell you.”
He shrugged. “She hasn’t been in today.”
“Oh. She’ll probably be in later, then.”
“Hell if I know.”
His reply caught her by surprise. Perhaps he’d surprised himself as well; his face suddenly flushed.
“I shouldn’t’ve said that,” he said.
“You can say whatever you want to me.”
He looked up at the monitor again and sighed. “Okay, then. It sucks.”
“What does?”
“Everything. Guy like me goes through life, doing what he’s supposed to do. Brings in the paycheck. Gives the kid whatever she wants. Never takes a bribe, not once. Then suddenly I’m fifty-four and wham, my own ticker turns against me. And I’m lying flat on my back, thinking: What the hell was it all for? I follow the rules, and I end up with a loser daughter who still calls Daddy whenever she needs money. And a wife who’s zonked out of her head on whatever crap she can get from the pharmacy. I can’t compete with Prince Valium. I’m just the guy who puts a roof over her head and pays for all the friggin’ prescriptions.” He gave a laugh, resigned and bitter.
“Why are you still married?”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Being single.”
“Being alone, you mean.” He said the word alone as if that was the worst option of all. Some people make choices hoping for the best; Korsak had made a choice simply to avoid the worst. He gazed up at his cardiac tracing, the twitching green symbol of his mortality. Bad choices or good, it had all led to this moment, in this hospital room, where fear kept company with regret.
And where will I be at his age? she wondered. Flat on my back in a hospital, regretting the choices I made, yearning for the road I never took? She thought of her silent apartment with its blank walls, its lonely bed. How was her life any better than Korsak’s?
“I keep worrying it’s gonna stop,” he said. “You know, just go flat-line. That’d scare the shit out of me.”
“Stop watching it.”
“If I stop watching, who the hell’s gonna keep an eye on it?”
“The nurses are watching out at the desk. They’ve got monitors out there, too, you know.”
“But are they really watching it? Or are they just goofing off, talking about shopping and boyfriends and shit? I mean, that’s my frigging heart up there.”
“They’ve got alarm systems, too. Anything the least bit irregular, their machine starts squealing.”
He looked at her. “No shit?”
“What, you don’t trust me?”
“I dunno.”
They regarded each other for a moment, and she was pricked by shame. She had no right to expect his trust, not after what had happened in the cemetery. The vision still haunted her, of a stricken Korsak, lying alone and abandoned in the darkness. And she—so single-minded, so oblivious to everything but the chase. She could not look him in the eye, and her gaze dropped, settling instead on his beefy arm, crisscrossed with tape and I.V. tubing.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “God, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Not looking out for you.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Don’t you remember?”
He shook his head.
She paused, suddenly realizing that he truly did not remember. That she could stop talking right now and he would never know how she’d failed him. Silence might be the easy way out, but she knew she couldn’t live with the burden.
“What do you remember, about the night in the cemetery?” she asked. “The last thing?”
“The last thing? I was running. I guess we were running, weren’t we? Chasing the perp.”
“What else?”
“I remember feeling really pissed off.”
“Why?”
He snorted. “ ’Cause I couldn’t keep up with a friggin’ girl.”
“And then?”
He shrugged. “That’s it. That’s the last I remember. Till those nurses here started shoving that goddamn tube up my …” He stopped. “I woke up all right. You better believe I let ’em know it, too.”
A silence passed, Korsak with his jaw squared, his gaze fixed stubbornly on the EKG monitor. Then he said, with quiet disgust: “I guess I screwed up the chase.”
This took her by surprise. “Korsak—”
“Look at this.” He waved at his bulging belly. “Like I swallowed a goddamn basketball. That’s what it looks like. Or I’m fifteen months knocked up. Can’t even run a race with a girl. I used to be fast, you know. Used to be built like a racehorse. Not like I am now. You shoulda seen me back then, Rizzoli. Wouldn’t recognize me. Bet you don’t believe any of it, do you? ’Cause you just see me like I am now. Broken-down piece of shit. Smoke too much, eat too much.”
Drink too much, she added silently.
“… just an ugly tub of lard.” He gave his belly an angry slap.
“Korsak, listen to me. I’m the one who screwed up, not you.”
He looked at her, clearly confused.
“In the cemetery. We were both running. Chasing what we thought was the perp. You were right behind me. I heard you breathing, trying to keep up.”
“Like you gotta rub it in.”
“Then you weren’t there. You just weren’t there. But I kept running, and it was all a waste of time. It wasn’t the perp. It was Agent Dean, walking the perimeter. The perp was long gone. We were chasing after nothing, Korsak. A few shadows. That’s all.”
He was silent, waiting for the rest of the story.
She forced herself to continue. “That’s when I should’ve gone looking for you. I should’ve realized you weren’t around. But things got crazy. And I just didn’t think. I didn’t stop to wonder where you were.…” She sighed. “I don’t know how long it took me to remember. Maybe it was only a few minutes. But I think—I’m afraid—it was a lot longer. And all that time, you were lying there, behind one of the gravestones. It took me so long to start searching for you. To remember.”
A silence passed. She wondered if he’d even registered what she’d said, because he began to fuss with his I.V. line, rearranging the loops of tubing. It was as if he didn’t want to look at her and was trying to focus instead on anything else.
“Korsak?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you have anything to say?”
“Yeah. Forget it. That’s what I have to say.”
“I feel like such a jerk.”
“Why? ’Cause you were doing your job?”
“Because I should’ve been watching out for my partner.”
“Like I’m your partner?”
“That night you were.”
He laughed. “That night I was a friggin’ liability. A two-ton ball and chain, holding you back. You been getting all worked up about not looking out for me. Me, I’ve been lying here getting pissed off for falling down on the job. I mean, literally. Kerplunk. I been thinking about all the dumb-ass lies I keep telling myself. You see this gut?” Again he slapped his belly. “It was gonna disappear. Yeah, I believed that, too. That one of these days I was gonna go on a diet and get rid of the tire. Instead, I
just keep buying bigger and bigger pants. Telling myself those clothing manufacturers are screwing around with the sizes, that’s all. Coupla years from now, maybe I’d end up wearing clown pants. Bozo pants. And a ton of Ex-Lax and water pills wouldn’t help me pass my physical.”
“You actually did that? Took pills to pass the physical?”
“I’m not saying one way or the other. I’m just telling you that this thing with my heart, it was a long time coming. It’s not like I didn’t know it could happen. But now that it has happened, it pisses me off.” He let out an angry snort. Looked up at the monitor again, where his heartbeat was blipping faster across the screen. “Now I got the ticker all stirred up.”
They sat for a moment, watching the EKG, waiting for his heart to slow down. She had never paid much attention to the heart beating in her own chest. As she watched the pattern traced by Korsak’s, she became aware of her own pulse. She had always taken her heartbeat for granted, and she wondered what it would be like, to hang on every beat, fearful that the next might not come. That the throb of life in her chest would suddenly go still.
She looked at Korsak, who lay with gaze still glued to the monitor, and she thought: He’s more than angry; he’s terrified.
Suddenly he sat up straight, his hand flying to his chest, his eyes wide in panic. “Call the nurse! Call the nurse!”
“What? What is it?”
“Don’t you hear that alarm? It’s my heart—”
“Korsak, it’s just my pager.”
“What?”
She unclipped the pager from her belt and turned off the beeping. Held it up for him to see the digital readout of the phone number. “See? It’s not your heart.”
He sank back on the pillows. “Jesus. Get that thing outta here. Could’ve given me a coronary.”
“Can I use this phone?”
He was lying with his hand still pressed to his chest, his whole body flaccid with relief. “Yeah, yeah. I don’t care.”
She picked up the receiver and dialed.
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