The Apprentice: A Novel

by Tess Gerritsen

  Rizzoli said, softly: “He has another victim.”

  “That’s one possibility. I’d like to propose another.” Erin crossed to another countertop and returned with a small tray bearing a section of duct tape lying adhesive-side up. “This piece was peeled off Dr. Yeager’s wrists. I want to show it to you under UV. Hit that wall switch, will you?”

  Rizzoli flipped the switch. In the sudden darkness, Erin’s small UV lamp glowed an eerie blue-green. It was a far less powerful light source than the Crimescope that Mick had used in the Yeager residence, but as its beam washed across the strip of tape, startling details were nonetheless revealed. Adhesive tape left behind at crime scenes can be a detective’s treasure trove. Fibers, hairs, fingerprints, even a criminal’s DNA left behind in skin cells, may adhere to tape. Under UV, Rizzoli could now see bits of dust and a few short hairs. And, along one edge of the tape, what looked like a very fine fringe of fibers.

  “Do you see how these fibers at the extreme edge are continuous?” said Erin. “They run the whole length of the tape taken from his wrists, as well as from his ankles. They almost look like a manufacturer’s artifact.”

  “But they’re not?”

  “No, they’re not. If you lay a roll of tape on its side, the edges pick up traces of whatever the roll is lying on. These are fibers from that surface. Everywhere we go, we pick up traces of our environment. And we later leave behind those traces in other locations. So has your unsub.” Erin switched on the room lights and Rizzoli blinked in the sudden glare.

  “What sort of fibers are these?”

  “I’ll show you.” Erin removed the slide containing the strand of hair and replaced it with another slide. “Take a look through the teaching head. I’ll explain what we’re seeing.”

  Rizzoli peered into the eyepiece and saw a dark fiber, curled into a C.

  “This is from the edge of the duct tape,” said Erin. “I used forced hot air to peel apart all the various layers of the tape. These dark-blue fibers ran along the entire length. Now let me show you the cross section.” Erin reached for a file folder, from which she removed a photograph. “This is how it looks under the scanning electron microscope. See how the fiber has a delta shape? Like a little triangle. It’s manufactured this way to reduce dirt trapping. This delta shape is characteristic of carpet fibers.”

  “So this is man-made material?”

  “Right.”

  “What about birefringence?” Rizzoli knew that when light passed through a synthetic fiber, it often came out polarized in two different planes, as though shining through a crystal. The double refraction was called birefringence. Each type of fiber had a characteristic index, which could be measured with a polarizing microscope.

  “This particular blue fiber,” said Erin, “has a birefringence index of point zero six three.”

  “Is that characteristic for something in particular?”

  “Nylon six, six. Commonly used in carpets, because it’s resistant to stains, it’s resilient, and it’s tough. In particular, this fiber’s cross-sectional shape and infrared spectrograph match a Dupont product called Antron, used in carpet manufacture.”

  “And it’s dark blue?” said Rizzoli. “That’s not a color most people would choose for a home. It sounds like auto carpet.”

  Erin nodded. “In fact, this particular color, number eight-oh-two blue, has long been offered as a standard option in luxury-priced American cars. Cadillacs and Lincolns, for instance.”

  Rizzoli immediately understood where this was going. She said, “Cadillac makes hearses.”

  Erin smiled. “So does Lincoln.”

  They were both thinking the same thing: The killer is someone who works with corpses.

  Rizzoli considered all the people who might come into contact with the dead. The cop and the medical examiner who are called to the scene of an unattended death. The pathologist and his assistant. The embalmer and the funeral director. The restorer, who washes the hair and applies makeup, so the loved one is presentable for final viewing. The dead pass through a succession of living guardians, and traces of this passage might cling to any and all who have laid hands on the deceased.

  She looked at Erin. “The missing woman. Gail Yeager . . .”

  “What about her?”

  “Her mother died last month.”

  Joey Valentine was making the dead come alive.

  Rizzoli and Korsak stood in the brightly lit prep room of the Whitney Funeral Home and Chapel and watched as Joey dug through his Graftobian makeup kit. Inside were tiny jars of cream highlighters and rouges and lipstick powders. It looked like any theatrical makeup kit, but these creams and rouges were meant to breathe life into the ashen skin of corpses. Elvis Presley’s velvet voice sang “Love Me Tender” on a boom box while Joey pressed modeling wax onto the corpse’s hands, plugging the various holes and incisions left by multiple I.V. catheters and arterial cut-downs.

  “This was Mrs. Ober’s favorite music,” he said as he worked, glancing occasionally at the three snapshots clipped to the easel, which he’d set up beside the prep table. Rizzoli assumed they were images of Mrs. Ober, although the living woman who appeared in those photos bore little resemblance to the gray and wasted corpse on which Joey was now laboring.

  “Son says she’s an Elvis freak,” said Joey. “Went to Graceland three times. He brought over that cassette, so I could play it while I do her makeup. I always try to play their favorite song or tune, you know. Helps me get a feeling for them. You learn a lot about someone just by what music they listen to.”

  “What’s an Elvis fan supposed to look like?” asked Korsak.

  “You know. Brighter lipstick. Bigger hair. Nothing like someone who listens to, say, Shostakovich.”

  “So what music did Mrs. Hallowell listen to?”

  “I don’t really remember.”

  “You worked on her only a month ago.”

  “Yes, but I don’t always remember the details.” Joey had finished his wax job on the hands. Now he moved to the head of the table, where he stood nodding to the beat of “You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog.” Dressed in black jeans and Doc Martens, he looked like a hip young artist contemplating a blank canvas. But his canvas was cold flesh, and his medium was the makeup brush and the rouge pot. “Touch of Bronze Blush Light, I think,” he said, and reached for the appropriate jar of rouge. With a mixing spatula, he began blending colors on a stainless-steel palette. “Yeah, this looks about right for an old Elvis girl.” He began smoothing it onto the corpse’s cheeks, blending it all the way up to the hairline, where silver roots peeked beneath the black dye job.

  “Maybe you remember talking to Mrs. Hallowell’s daughter,” said Rizzoli. She pulled out a photo of Gail Yeager and showed it to Joey.

  “You should ask Mr. Whitney. He handles most of the arrangements here. I’m just his assistant—”

  “But you and Mrs. Yeager must have discussed her mother’s makeup for the funeral. Since you prepared the remains.”

  Joey’s gaze lingered on Gail Yeager’s photograph. “I remember she was a really nice lady,” he said softly.

  Rizzoli gave him a questioning look. “Was?”

  “Look, I’ve been following the news. You don’t really think Mrs. Yeager’s still alive, do you?” Joey turned and frowned at Korsak, who was wandering around the prep room, peeking into cabinets. “Uh . . . Detective? Are you looking for something in particular?”

  “Naw. Just wondered what kind of stuff you keep in a mortuary.” He reached into one of the cabinets. “Hey, is this thing a curling iron?”

  “Yes. We do shampoos and waves. Manicures. Everything to make our clients look their best.”

  “I hear you’re pretty good at it.”

  “They’ve all been satisfied with my work.”

  Korsak laughed. “They can tell you that themselves, huh?”

  “I mean, their families. Their families are satisfied.”

  Korsak put down the curling iron. “Yo
u’ve been working for Mr. Whitney, what, seven years now?”

  “About that.”

  “Must’ve been right out of high school.”

  “I started off washing his hearses. Cleaning the prep room. Answering the night calls for pickup. Then Mr. Whitney had me help him with the embalming. Now that he’s getting on in years, I do almost everything here.”

  “So I guess you got an embalmer’s license, huh?”

  A pause. “Uh, no. I never got around to applying. I just help Mr. Whitney.”

  “Why don’t you apply? Seems like it’d be a step up.”

  “I’m happy with my job the way it is.” Joey turned his attention back to Mrs. Ober, whose face had now taken on a rosy glow. He reached for an eyebrow comb and began to stroke brown coloring onto her gray eyebrows, his hands working with almost loving delicacy. At an age when most young men are eager to tackle life, Joey Valentine had chosen instead to spend his days with the dead. He had shepherded corpses from hospitals and nursing homes to this clean, bright room. He had washed and dried them, shampooed their hair, brushed on creams and powders to grant them the illusion of life. As he stroked color on Mrs. Ober’s cheeks, he murmured: “Nice. Oh yes, that’s really nice. You’re going to look fabulous. . . .”

  “So, Joey,” said Korsak. “You been working here seven years, right?”

  “Didn’t I just tell you that?”

  “And you never bothered to apply for any, like, professional credentials?”

  “Why do you keep asking me that?”

  “Is that because you knew you wouldn’t get a license?”

  Joey froze, his hand about to stroke on lipstick. He said nothing.

  “Does old Mr. Whitney know about your criminal record?” asked Korsak.

  At last Joey looked up. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

  “Maybe I should. Seeing as how you scared the shit out of that poor girl.”

  “I was only eighteen. It was a mistake—”

  “A mistake? What, you peeped in the wrong window? Spied on the wrong girl?”

  “We went to high school together! It wasn’t like I didn’t know her!”

  “So you only peep in windows of girls you know? What else you done, you never got caught for?”

  “I told you, it was a mistake!”

  “You ever sneak into someone’s house? Go into their bedroom? Maybe filch a little something like a bra, or a nice pair of panties?”

  “Oh, Jesus.” Joey stared down at the lipstick he’d just dropped on the floor. He looked as though he was about to be sick.

  “You know, Peeping Toms have a way of going on to other things,” said Korsak, unrelenting. “Bad things.”

  Joey went to the boom box and shut it off. In the silence that followed, he stood with his back turned to them, staring out the window at the cemetery across the road. “You’re trying to fuck up my life,” he said.

  “No, Joey. We’re just trying to have a frank conversation here.”

  “Mr. Whitney doesn’t know.”

  “And he doesn’t have to.”

  “Unless?”

  “Where were you on Sunday night?”

  “At home.”

  “By yourself?”

  Joey sighed. “Look, I know what this is all about. I know what you’re trying to do. But I told you, I hardly knew Mrs. Yeager. All I did was take care of her mother. I did a good job, you know. Everyone told me so, afterward. How alive she looked.”

  “You mind if we take a peek in your car?”

  “Why?”

  “Just to check it out.”

  “Yes, I mind. But you’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?”

  “Only with your permission.” Korsak paused. “You know, cooperation is a two-way street.”

  Joey just kept staring out the window. “There’s a burial out there today,” he said softly. “See all the limousines? Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved watching funeral processions. They’re so beautiful. So dignified. It’s the one thing people still do right. The one thing they haven’t ruined. Not like weddings, where they do stupid things like jumping out of planes. Or saying their vows on national television. At funerals, we still show respect for what’s proper. . . .”

  “Your car, Joey.”

  At last, Joey turned and crossed to one of the cabinet drawers. Reaching inside, he pulled out a set of keys, which he handed to Korsak. “It’s the brown Honda.”

  Rizzoli and Korsak stood in the parking lot, staring down at the taupe carpet that lined the trunk of Joey Valentine’s car.

  “Shit.” Korsak slammed down the trunk hood. “I’m not through with this guy.”

  “You haven’t got a thing on him.”

  “You see his shoes? Looked to me like size eleven. And the hearse has navy-blue carpet.”

  “So do thousands of other cars. It doesn’t make him your man.”

  “Well, it sure ain’t old Whitney.” Joey’s boss, Leon Whitney, was sixty-six years old.

  “Look, we already got the unsub’s DNA,” said Korsak. “All we need is Joey’s.”

  “You think he’ll just spit in a cup for you?”

  “If he wants to keep his job. I think he’ll sit up and beg like a dog for me.”

  She looked across the road, shimmering with heat, and gazed at the cemetery, where the funeral procession was now winding its dignified way toward the exit. Once the dead are buried, life moves on, she thought. Whatever the tragedy, life must always move on. And so should I.

  “I can’t afford to spend any more time on this,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’ve got my own caseload. And I don’t think the Yeager case has anything to do with Warren Hoyt.”

  “That’s not what you thought three days ago.”

  “Well, I was wrong.” She crossed the parking lot to her car, opened the door, and rolled down the windows. Waves of heat rushed out at her from the baking interior.

  “Did I tick you off or something?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “So why are you bailing out?”

  She slid behind the wheel. The seat felt searing, even through her slacks. “I’ve spent the last year trying to get over the Surgeon,” she said. “I’ve got to let go of him. I’ve got to stop seeing his hand in everything I run across.”

  “You know, sometimes your gut feeling’s the best thing you can go with.”

  “Sometimes, that’s all it is. A feeling, not a fact. There’s nothing sacred about a cop’s instinct. What the hell is instinct, anyway? How many times does a hunch turn out dead wrong?” She turned on the engine. “Too damn often.”

  “So I didn’t tick you off?”

  She slammed her door shut. “No.”

  “You sure?”

  She glanced through the open window at him. He stood squinting in the sunlight, eyes narrowed to slits under a bushy fringe of eyebrow. On his arms, dark hairs bristled, heavy as a pelt, and his stance, hips thrust forward, shoulders sagging, made her think of a slouching gorilla. No, he had not ticked her off. But she could not look at him without registering a twinge of distaste.

  “I just can’t spend any more time on this,” she said. “You know how it is.”

  Back at her desk, Rizzoli focused her attention on all the paperwork that had accumulated. On top was the file for Airplane Man, whose identity remained unknown and whose ruined body still lay unclaimed in the M.E.’s office. She had neglected this victim too long. But even as she opened the folder and reviewed the autopsy photos, she was still thinking of the Yeagers and of a man who had corpse hair on his clothes. She reviewed the schedule of Logan Airport’s jet landings and takeoffs, but it was Gail Yeager’s face that stayed on her mind, smiling from the photo on the dresser. She remembered the gallery of women’s photos that had been taped to the wall of the conference room a year ago, during the Surgeon investigation. Those women had been smiling, too, their faces captured at a moment when they were still warm flesh, when life still glowed
in their eyes. She could not think of Gail Yeager without remembering the dead who had gone before her.

  She wondered if Gail was already among them.

  Her pager vibrated, the buzz like an electric shock from her belt. An advance warning of a discovery that would rock her day. She picked up the phone.

  A moment later, she was hurrying out of the building.

  five

  The dog was a yellow Lab, excited to near hysteria by the police officers standing nearby. He capered and barked at the end of his leash, which was tied to a tree. The dog’s owner, a wiry middle-aged man in running shorts, sat nearby on a large rock, head drooping into his hands, ignoring his dog’s pleading yips for attention.

  “Owner’s name is Paul Vandersloot. Lives on River Street, just a mile from here,” said Patrolman Gregory Doud, who had secured the scene and had already strung a semicircle of police tape on the trees.

  They were standing on the edge of the municipal golf course, staring into the woods of Stony Brook Reservation, which directly abutted the golf course. Located at the southern tip of Boston’s city limits, this reservation was surrounded by a sea of suburbs. But within Stony Brook’s 475 acres was a rugged landscape of wooded hills and valleys, rocky outcroppings, and marshes fringed with cattails. In winter, cross-country skiers explored the park’s ten miles of trails; in summer, joggers found refuge in its quiet forests.

  And so had Mr. Vandersloot, until his dog led him to what lay among the trees.

  “He says he comes here every afternoon to take his dog for a run,” said Officer Doud. “Usually goes up the East Boundary Road trail first, through the woods, then loops back along this inside edge of the golf course. It’s about a four-mile run. Says he keeps the dog on a leash the whole time. But today, the dog got away from him. They were going up the trail when the dog took off west, into the woods, and wouldn’t come back. Vandersloot went chasing after him. Practically tripped right over the body.” Doud glanced at the jogger, who was still huddled on the rock. “Called nine-one-one.”