The Apprentice: A Novel

by Tess Gerritsen

  “You drove them around town while they were here?”

  “Only back and forth between the house and Symphony Hall.”

  Rizzoli glanced in her notebook. “I understand the house on Beacon Hill belongs to a symphony board member. A Christopher Harm. Does he often invite musicians to stay there?”

  “During the summer, when he’s in Europe. It’s so much nicer than a hotel room. Mr. Harm trusts classical musicians. He knows they’ll take good care of his home.”

  “Have any guests at Mr. Harm’s house ever complained of problems there?”

  “Problems?”

  “Trespassers. Burglaries. Anything that’s made them uneasy.”

  Evelyn shook her head. “It’s Beacon Hill, Detective. You couldn’t ask for a nicer neighborhood. I know Alex and Karenna loved it there.”

  “When did you last see them?”

  Evelyn swallowed. Said, softly: “Last night. When I found Alex . . .”

  “I meant while he was still alive, Ms. Petrakas.”

  “Oh.” Evelyn gave an embarrassed laugh. “Of course, that’s what you meant. I’m sorry; I’m not thinking. It’s just so hard to concentrate.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I even bothered to come in to work today. It just seemed like something I needed to do.”

  “The last time you saw them?” Rizzoli prompted her.

  This time Evelyn answered in a steadier voice. “It was the night before last. After their performance, I drove them back to Beacon Hill. It was around eleven or so.”

  “Did you just drop them off? Or did you go inside with them?”

  “I let them off right in front of their house.”

  “Did you see them actually walk in?”

  “Yes.”

  “So they didn’t ask you inside.”

  “I think they were pretty tired. And they were feeling a little depressed.”

  “Why?”

  “After all the anticipation about performing in Boston, it wasn’t as big an audience as they’d expected. And we’re supposed to be the city of music. If this was the best we could draw here, what could they hope for in Detroit or Memphis?” Evelyn stared unhappily toward the stage. “We’re dinosaurs, Detective. Karenna said that, in the car. Who appreciates classical music anymore? Most young people would rather watch music videos. People jiggling around with metal studs in their faces. It’s all about sex and glitter and stupid costumes. And why does that singer, what’s his name, have to stick his tongue out? What’s that got to do with music?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Frost agreed, warming at once to the topic. “You know, Ms. Petrakas, my wife and I had this very same conversation the other day. Alice, she loves classical music. Really loves it. Every year, we buy season tickets to the symphony.”

  Evelyn gave him a sad smile. “Then I’m afraid you’re a dinosaur, too.”

  As they rose to leave, Rizzoli spotted a glossy program lying on the seat in front of her. She reached across to pick it up. “Are the Ghents in here?” she asked.

  “Turn to page five,” said Evelyn. “There. That’s their publicity photo.”

  It was a picture of two people in love.

  Karenna, slim and elegant in an off-the-shoulder black gown, gazed up into her husband’s smiling eyes. Her face was luminous, her hair as dark as a Spaniard’s. Alexander looked down at her with a boyish smile, an unruly forelock of pale hair dipping over his eye.

  Evelyn said softly: “They were beautiful, weren’t they? It’s strange, you know. I never got the chance to sit down and really talk with them. But I did know their music. I’ve listened to their recordings. I’ve watched them perform, up on that stage. You can tell a lot about someone just by listening to their music. And the one thing I remember was how tenderly they played. I think that’s the word I’d use to describe them. They were such tender people.”

  Rizzoli looked at the stage and imagined Alexander and Karenna on the night of their final performance. Her black hair lustrous under the stage lights, his cello gleaming. And their music, like the voices of two lovers singing to each other.

  “The night they performed,” said Frost. “You said it was a disappointing turnout.”

  “Yes.”

  “How big was the audience?”

  “I believe we sold around four hundred fifty tickets.”

  Four hundred fifty pairs of eyes, thought Rizzoli, all of them focused on the stage, where a couple in love were wreathed in light. What emotions did the Ghents inspire in their audience? The pleasure of music, well played? The joy of watching two young people in love? Or had other, darker emotions stirred in the heart of someone seated in this very hall? Hunger. Envy. The bitterness of wanting what another man possesses.

  She looked down again, at the photo of the Ghents.

  Was it her beauty that caught your eye? Or was it the fact they were in love?

  She drank black coffee and stared at the dead piling up on her desk. Richard and Gail Yeager. Rickets Lady. Alexander Ghent. And Airplane Man, who, although no longer considered a homicide victim, still weighed on her mind. The dead always did. A never-ending supply of corpses, each one demanding her attention, each one with his or her own tale of horror to tell, if Rizzoli would just dig deep enough to lay bare the bones of their stories. She’d been digging so long that all the dead she’d ever known were beginning to blend together like skeletons tangled in a mass grave.

  When the DNA lab paged her at noon, she was relieved to escape, at least for the moment, that accusing stack of files. She left her desk and headed down the hall to the south wing.

  The DNA lab was in S253, and the criminalist who’d paged her was Walter De Groot, a blond Dutchman with a pale man-in-the-moon face. Usually he winced when he saw her, since her visits were almost always for the purpose of prodding or cajoling him, anything to hurry along a DNA profile. Today, though, he gave her a broad grin.

  “I’ve developed the autorad,” he said. “It’s hanging there now.”

  An autorad, or autoradiogram, was an X-ray film that captured the pattern of DNA fragments. De Groot took down the film from the drying line and clipped it onto a light box. Parallel rows of dark blots tracked from top to bottom.

  “What you see here is the VNTR profile,” he said. “That’s short for ‘variable numbers of tandem repeats.’ I’ve extracted the DNA from the different sources you’ve provided, and isolated the fragments with the particular loci we’re comparing. These aren’t really genes, but sections of the DNA strand that repeat with no clear purpose. They make good identification markers.”

  “So what are these various tracks? What do they correspond to?”

  “The first two lanes, starting at the left, are the controls. Number one is a standard DNA ladder, to help us estimate the relative positions for the various samples. Lane two is a standard cell line, again used as a control. Lanes three, four, and five are evidentiary lines, taken from known origins.”

  “Which origins?”

  “Lane three is suspect Joey Valentine’s. Lane four is Dr. Yeager’s. Lane five is Mrs. Yeager’s.”

  Rizzoli’s gaze lingered on lane five. She tried to wrap her mind around the concept that this was part of the blueprint that had created Gail Yeager. That a unique human being, from the precise shade of her blond hair to the sound of her laughter, could be distilled down to this chain of dark blots. She saw no humanity in this autorad, nothing of the woman who had loved a husband and mourned a mother. Is this all we are? A necklace of chemicals? Where, in the double helix, does the soul lie?

  Her gaze shifted to the final two lanes. “And what are these last ones?” she asked.

  “These are the unidentifieds. Lane six is from that semen stain on the Yeagers’ rug. Lane seven is the fresh semen collected from Gail Yeager’s vaginal vault.”

  “These last two look like a match.”

  “That’s correct. Both unidentified DNA samples are from the same man. And, you’ll notice, it’s not Dr. Yeager or Mr. Val
entine. This effectively eliminates Mr. Valentine as the semen source.”

  She stared at the two unidentified lanes. The genetic fingerprint of a monster.

  “There’s your unsub,” said De Groot.

  “Have you called CODIS? Any chance we could talk them into moving a little faster on a data search?”

  CODIS was a national DNA data bank. It stored the genetic profiles of thousands of convicted offenders, as well as unidentified profiles from crime scenes across the country.

  “Actually, that’s the reason I paged you. I sent them the rug stain DNA last week.”

  She sighed. “Meaning we’ll hear back from them in a year.”

  “No, Agent Dean just called me. Your unsub’s DNA isn’t in CODIS.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Agent Dean gave you the news?”

  “He must have cracked the whip at them or something. In all my time here, I’ve never seen a CODIS request expedited this fast.”

  “Did you confirm that directly with CODIS?”

  De Groot frowned. “Well, no. I assumed that Agent Dean would know—”

  “Please call them. I want it confirmed.”

  “Is there some, uh, question about Dean’s reliability?”

  “Let’s just play it safe, okay?” She looked, once again, at the light box. “If it’s true our boy’s not in CODIS . . .”

  “Then you’ve got yourself a new player, Detective. Or someone who’s managed to stay invisible to the system.”

  She stared in frustration at the chain of blots. We have his DNA, she thought. We have his genetic profile. But we still don’t know his name.

  Rizzoli slipped a disk into her CD player and sank onto the couch as she toweled off her wet hair. The rich strains of a solo cello poured from the speaker like melted chocolate. Though she was not a fan of classical music, she had bought a CD of Alex Ghent’s early recordings in the Symphony Hall gift shop. If she was to familiarize herself with every aspect of his death, so, too, should she know about his life. And much of his life was music.

  Ghent’s bow glided over the cello strings, the melody of Bach’s Suite no. 1 in G Major rising and falling like the swells of an ocean. It had been recorded when he was only eighteen. When he’d sat in a studio, his fingers warm flesh as they’d pressed the strings, steadied the bow. Those same fingers now lay white and chilled in the morgue refrigerator, their music silenced. She had watched his autopsy that morning and had noted the fine, long fingers, had imagined them flying up and down the cello’s neck. That human hands could unite with mere wood and strings to produce such rich sounds seemed a miracle.

  She picked up the CD cover and studied his photograph, taken when he was still only a boy. His eyes gazed downward, and his left arm was draped around the instrument, embracing its curves, as he would one day embrace his wife, Karenna. Though Rizzoli had searched for a CD featuring both of them, all their joint recordings were sold out in the gift shop. Only Alexander’s was in stock. The lonely cello, calling to its mate. And where was that mate now? Alive and in torment, facing the ultimate terror of death? Or was she beyond pain and already in the early stages of decomposition?

  The phone rang. She turned down the CD player and picked up the receiver.

  “You’re there,” said Korsak.

  “I came home to take a shower.”

  “I called just a few minutes ago. You didn’t answer.”

  “Then I guess I didn’t hear it. What’s up?”

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  “If anything turns up, you’ll be the first one I call.”

  “Yeah. Like you called me even once today? I had to hear about Joey Valentine’s DNA from the lab guy.”

  “I didn’t get the chance to tell you. I’ve been running around like crazy.”

  “Remember, I’m the one who first brought you in on this.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “You know,” said Korsak, “it’s going on fifty hours since he took her.”

  And Karenna Ghent has probably been dead for two days, she thought. But death wouldn’t deter her killer. It would whet his appetite. He’d look at her corpse and see only an object of desire. Someone he can control. She doesn’t resist him. She is cool, passive flesh, yielding to any and all indignities. She is the perfect lover.

  The CD was still playing softly, Alexander’s cello weaving its mournful spell. She knew where this was going, knew what Korsak wanted. And she didn’t know how to turn him down. She rose from the couch and turned off the CD. Even in the silence, the strains of the cello seemed to linger.

  “If it’s like the last time, he’ll dump her tonight,” said Korsak.

  “We’ll be ready for him.”

  “So am I part of the team or what?”

  “We’ve already got our stakeout crew.”

  “You don’t have me. You could use another warm body.”

  “We’ve already assigned the positions. Look, I’ll call you as soon as anything—”

  “Fuck this ‘calling me’ shit, okay? I’m not gonna sit by the phone like some goddamn wallflower. I’ve known this perp longer than you, longer than anyone. How would you feel, someone cuts in on your dance? Leaves you outta the takedown? You think about that.”

  She did. And she understood the anger that was now raging through him. Understood it better than anyone, because it had once happened to her. The shunting aside, the bitter view from the sidelines while others moved in to claim her victory.

  She looked at her watch. “I’m leaving right now. If you want to join me, you’ll have to meet me there.”

  “What’s your stakeout position?”

  “The parking area across the road from Smith Playground. We can meet at the golf course.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  twelve

  At two A.M. in Stony Brook Reservation, the air was muggy and thick as soup. Rizzoli and Korsak sat in her parked car, closely abutting dense shrubbery. From their position, they could observe all cars entering Stony Brook from the east. Additional surveillance vehicles were stationed along Enneking Parkway, the main thoroughfare winding through the reservation. Any vehicle that pulled off onto one of the dirt parking areas could swiftly be hemmed in on all sides by converging vehicles. It was a purse-string trap, from which no car could escape.

  Rizzoli was sweating in her vest. She rolled down the window and breathed in the scent of decaying leaves and damp earth. Forest smells.

  “Hey, you’re letting in mosquitoes,” complained Korsak.

  “I need the fresh air. It smells like cigarettes in here.”

  “I only lit up one. I don’t smell it.”

  “Smokers never do.”

  He looked at her. “Jeez, you been snapping at me all night. You got a problem with me, maybe we should talk about it.”

  She stared out the window, toward the road, which remained dark and untraveled. “It’s not about you,” she said.

  “Who, then?”

  When she didn’t answer, he gave a grunt of comprehension. “Oh. Dean again. So what’d he do now?”

  “Few days ago, he complained about me to Marquette.”

  “What’d he tell him?”

  “That I’m not the right man for the job. That maybe I need counseling for unresolved issues.”

  “He talking about the Surgeon?”

  “What do you think?”

  “What an asshole.”

  “And today, I find out we got instant feedback from CODIS. It’s never happened before. All Dean has to do is snap his fingers, and everyone jumps. I just wish I knew what he was doing here.”

  “Well, that’s the thing about fibbies. They say information is power, right? So they keep it from us, ’cause it’s a macho game to them. You and me, we’re just pawns to Mr. James Fucking Bond.”

  “You’re getting confused with the CIA.”

  “CIA, FBI.” He shrugged. “All those alphabet agencies, they’re all about secrets.”

&nb
sp; The radio crackled. “Watcher Three. We got a vehicle, late-model sedan, moving south on Enneking Parkway.”

  Rizzoli tensed, waiting for the next team to report in.

  Now Frost’s voice, in the next vehicle. “Watcher Two. We see him. Still moving south. Doesn’t look like he’s slowing down.”

  Seconds later, a third unit reported: “Watcher Five. He’s just passed the intersection of Bald Knob Road. Heading out of the park.”

  Not our boy. Even at this early-morning hour, Enneking Parkway was well traveled. They had lost count of how many vehicles they’d tracked through the reservation. Too many false alarms punctuating long intervals of boredom had burned up all her adrenaline, and she was fast sliding into sleep-deprived torpor.

  She leaned back with a disappointed sigh. Beyond the windshield she saw the blackness of woods, lit only by the occasional spark of a firefly. “Come on, you son of a bitch,” she murmured. “Come to Mama. . . .”

  “You want some coffee?” asked Korsak.

  “Thanks.”

  He poured a cup from his thermos and handed it to her. The coffee was black and bitter and utterly disgusting, but she drank it anyway.

  “Made it extra strong tonight,” he said. “Two scoops of Folgers instead of one. Puts hair on your chest.”

  “Maybe that’s what I need.”

  “I figure, I drink enough of this stuff, some of that hair might migrate back up to my head.”

  She looked off toward the woods, where darkness hid rotting leaves and foraging animals. Animals with teeth. She remembered the gnawed remains of Rickets Lady and thought of raccoons chewing on ribs and dogs rolling skulls around like balls, and what she imagined, staring into the trees, was not Bambi.

  “I can’t even talk about Hoyt anymore,” she said. “Can’t mention him without people giving me that pitying look. Yesterday, I tried to point out the parallels between the Surgeon and our new boy, and I could see Dean thinking: She’s still got the Surgeon on the brain. He thinks I’m obsessed.” She sighed. “Maybe I am. Maybe that’s how it’ll always be. I’ll walk onto any crime scene and I’ll see his handiwork. Every perp will have his face.”