The Apprentice: A Novel

by Tess Gerritsen

  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.

  The ringing phone awakened her. It seemed that she’d only just closed her eyes, and the first emotion that bubbled up as she groped for the phone was rage, that she could not be granted even a moment’s rest. She answered with a curt: “Rizzoli.”

  “Uh . . . Detective Rizzoli, this is Yoshima at the M.E.’s office. Dr. Isles was expecting you to come in for the Ghent postmortem.”

  “I am coming in.”

  “Well, she’s already started, and—”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nearly four. We tried to page you, but you didn’t answer.”

  She sat up so abruptly the room spun. She gave her head a shake and stared at the clock by her bed: 3:52. She had slept right through her alarm, as well as the sound of her pager. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Hold on a minute. Dr. Isles wants to speak to you.”

  She heard the clang of instruments on a metal tray; then Dr. Isles’s voice came on the phone. “Detective Rizzoli, you are coming in, right?”

  “It’ll take me half an hour to get there.”

  “Then we’ll wait for you.”

  “I don’t mean to hold you up.”

  “Dr. Tierney is coming in as well. You both need to see this.”

  This was highly unusual. With all the pathologists on staff to choose from, why would Dr. Isles call Dr. Tierney back from his recent retirement?

  “Is there some sort of problem?” asked Rizzoli.

  “That wound on the victim’s abdomen,” said Dr. Isles. “It’s not just a simple slash. It’s a surgical incision.”

  Dr. Tierney was already garbed and standing in the autopsy room when Rizzoli arrived. Like Dr. Isles, he normally shunned the use of a respirator, and tonight his only facial protection was a plastic shield, through which Rizzoli could read his grim expression. Everyone in the room looked equally somber, and they regarded Rizzoli with unnerving silence as she entered the room. By now, the presence of Agent Dean no longer surprised her, and she acknowledged his gaze with only a faint nod, wondering if he had managed to catch a few hours’ sleep as well. For the first time she saw fatigue in his eyes. Even Gabriel Dean was slowly being ground down by the weight of this investigation.

  “What have I missed?” she asked. Not yet ready to confront the remains, she kept her gaze on Isles.

  “We’ve completed the external examination. The criminalists have already taped for fibers, collected nail clippings, and combed hairs.”

  “What about the vaginal swabs?”

  Isles nodded. “There was motile sperm.”

  Rizzoli took a breath and finally focused on the body of Karenna Ghent. The foul odor nearly overwhelmed the Vicks menthol that, for the first time, she had dabbed under her nostrils. She no longer trusted her own stomach. So much had gone wrong these last few weeks, and she’d lost confidence in the very strengths that had sustained her through other investigations. When she’d stepped in this room, what she’d dreaded wasn’t the autopsy itself; rather, it was her own response to it. She could not predict, nor control, how she would react, and this, more than anything else, was what frightened her.

  She’d eaten a handful of crackers at home so that she would not face this ordeal on an empty stomach, and she was relieved not to feel even a twinge of nausea despite the odors, despite the grotesque condition of the remains. She was able to maintain her composure as she regarded the liverish-green abdomen. The Y-incision had not yet been made. The single gaping wound was the one thing she could not bring herself to look at. Instead, she focused on the neck, on the discoid bruises, visible even against the underlying postmortem discoloration, under both angles of the jaw. The marks left by the killer’s fingers, pressing into flesh.

  “Manual strangulation,” said Isles. “Like Gail Yeager.”

  The most intimate way to kill someone, Dr. Zucker had called it. Skin to skin. Your hands against her flesh. Pressing her throat as you feel her life drain away.

  “And the X rays?

  “A fracture of the left thyroid horn.”

  Dr. Tierney cut in, “It’s not the neck that concerns us. It’s the wound. I suggest you put on a pair of gloves, Detective. You’ll need to examine this yourself.”

  She crossed to the cabinet where the gloves were stored. Took her time pulling on a pair of Smalls, using the delay to steel herself. At last she turned back to the table.

  Dr. Isles already had the overhead light focused on the lower abdomen. The edges of the wound gaped like blackened lips.

  “The skin layer was opened with a single clean slice,” said Dr. Isles. “Made with a nonserrated blade. Once through the skin, deeper incisions followed. First the superficial fascia, then the muscle, and finally the pelvic peritoneum.”

  Rizzoli stared into the maw of the wound, thinking of the hand that had held the blade, a hand so steady that it had traced the incision with a single confident slice.

  She asked, softly: “Was the victim alive when this was done?”

  “No. He used no suture, and there was no bleeding. This was a postmortem excision, performed after the patient’s heart stopped, after circulation ceased. The manner in which this procedure was done—the methodical sequence of incisions—indicates he has had surgical experience. He’s done this before.”

  Dr. Tierney said, “Go ahead, Detective. Examine the wound.”

  She hesitated, her hands chilled to ice in the latex gloves. Slowly she slipped her hand into the incision, burrowing deep into the pelvis of Karenna Ghent. She knew exactly what she would find, yet she was still shaken by the discovery. She looked at Dr. Tierney and saw confirmation in his eyes.

  “The uterus was removed,” he said.

  She pulled her hand from the pelvis. “It’s him,” she said softly. “Warren Hoyt did this.”

  “Yet everything else is consistent with the Dominator,” said Gabriel Dean. “The abduction, the strangulation. Postmortem intercourse—”

  “But not this,” she said, staring at the wound. “This is Hoyt’s fantasy. This is what turns him on. The cutting, the taking of the very organ that defines them as women and gives them a power he’ll never have.” She looked straight at Dean. “I know his work. I’ve seen it before.”

  “We both have,” Dr. Tierney said to Dean. “I performed the autopsies last year, on Hoyt’s victims. This is his technique.”

  Dean shook his head in disbelief. “Two different killers? Combining techniques?”

  “The Dominator and the Surgeon,” said Rizzoli. “They’ve found each other.”

  fourteen

  She sat in her car, warm air blasting from the AC vent, sweat beading on her face. Even the night’s heat could not dispel the chill she still felt from the autopsy room. I must be coming down with a virus, she thought, massaging her temples. And no wonder; she had been going full throttle for days, and now it was catching up with her. Her head ached and all she wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for a week.

  She drove straight home. Walked into her apartment and once again performed the ritual that had become such an important part of maintaining her sanity. The turning of the dead bolts, the sliding of the chain into its groove, were performed with deliberate care, and only after she completed her security checklist and had locked every lock, peered into every closet, did she finally kick off her shoes, peel off her slacks and blouse. Stripped down to her underwear, she sank onto the bed and sat massaging her temples, wondering if she still had any aspirin in the medicine cabinet yet feeling too drained to get up and look.

  Her apartment intercom buzzed. She snapped straight, pulse galloping, alarms lighting up every nerve. She was not expecting visitors, nor did she want any. />
  The buzzer rang again, the sound like steel wool against raw nerve endings.

  She rose and went into the living room to press the intercom button. “Yes?”

  “It’s Gabriel Dean. May I come up?”

  Of all people, his was the last voice she’d expected to hear. She was so startled that for a moment she didn’t respond.

  “Detective Rizzoli?” he said.

  “What is this about, Agent Dean?”

  “The autopsy. There are issues we need to talk about.”

  She pressed the lock release and almost immediately wished she hadn’t. She didn’t trust Dean, yet she was about to let him into the safe haven of her apartment. With the careless press of a button, the decision had been made, and now she could not change her mind.

  She’d barely had time to pull on a cotton bathrobe when he knocked. Through the fish-eye lens of the door’s peephole his sharp features appeared distorted. Ominous. By the time she’d unfastened all the various locks, that grotesquely distorted image had solidified in her mind. Reality was far less threatening. The man who stood in her doorway had tired eyes and a face that registered the strain of having witnessed too many horrors on too little sleep.

  Yet his first question was about her: “Are you holding up all right?”

  She understood the implication of that question: That she was not all right. That she was in need of checking up on, an unstable cop about to fracture into brittle shards.

  “I’m perfectly fine,” she said.

  “You left so soon after the autopsy. Before we had the chance to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Warren Hoyt.”

  “What do you want to know about him?”

  “Everything.”

  “I’m afraid that would take all night. And I’m tired.” She tugged her bathrobe tighter, suddenly self-conscious. It had always been important to her to appear professional, and she usually slipped on a blazer before heading to a crime scene. Now she stood before Dean in nothing more than her robe and underwear, and she did not like this feeling of vulnerability.

  She reached for the door, a gesture with an unmistakable message: This conversation is over.

  He didn’t budge from her doorway. “Look, I admit I made a mistake. I should have listened to you from the start. You were the one who saw it first. I didn’t recognize the parallels with Hoyt.”

  “That’s because you never knew him.”

  “So tell me about him. We need to work together, Jane.”

  Her laughter was sharp as glass. “Now you’re interested in teamwork? This is new and different.”

  Resigned to the fact that he was not leaving, she turned and walked into the living room. He followed her, shutting the door behind him.

  “Talk to me about Hoyt.”

  “You can read his file.”

  “I already have.”

  “Then you’ve got everything you need.”

  “Not everything.”

  She turned to face him. “What else is there?”

  “I want to know what you know.” He stepped closer, and she felt a thrill of alarm because she was at such a disadvantage, standing before him in her bare feet, too exhausted to fend off his assault. It felt like an assault, all these demands he was making and the way his gaze seemed to penetrate what little clothing she wore.

  “There’s some sort of emotional bond between you two,” he said. “An attachment.”

  “Don’t call it a fucking attachment.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “He was the perp. I’m the one who cornered him. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Not so simple, from what I’ve heard. Whether or not you want to admit it, there is an attachment between you two. He’s purposefully stepped back into your life. That grave site where they left Karenna Ghent’s body was not chosen at random.”

  She said nothing. On that point she could not disagree.

  “He’s a hunter, just like you are,” said Dean. “You both hunt humans. That’s one bond between you. Common ground.”

  “There is no common ground.”

  “But you understand each other. No matter what your feelings are, you’re linked to him. You saw his influence on the Dominator before anyone else did. You were way ahead of us.”

  “And you thought I needed a shrink.”

  “Yes. At the time, I did.”

  “So now I’m not crazy. I’m brilliant.”

  “You’ve got the inside track into his mind. You can help us figure out what he’ll do next. What does he want?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You got a more intimate look at him than any other cop has.”

  “Intimate? Is that what you call it? That son of a bitch almost killed me.”

  “And there’s nothing more intimate than murder. Is there?”

  She hated him at that moment, because he had stated a truth she wanted to cringe from. He had pointed out the very thing she could not bear to acknowledge: That she and Warren Hoyt were forever bound to each other. That fear and loathing are more powerful emotions than love could ever be.

  She sank onto the couch. Once, she would have fought back. Once, she’d been fierce enough to match any man word for word. But tonight, she was tired, so tired, and she did not have the strength to fend off Dean’s questions. He would continue to push and prod until he had answers, and she might as well surrender to the inevitable. Get it over with so that he would leave her alone.

  She straightened and found herself staring at her hands, at the matching scars on her palms. These were only the most obvious souvenirs left by Hoyt; the other scars were not so visible: the healed fractures of her ribs and facial bones, which could still be seen on X-ray. Least visible of all were the fracture lines that still split her life, like cracks left by an earthquake. In the last few weeks, she had felt those cracks begin to widen, as though the ground itself threatened to give way beneath her feet.

  “I didn’t realize he was still there,” she whispered. “Standing right behind me in that cellar. In that house . . .”

  He sat down in the chair across from her. “You’re the one who found him. The only cop who knew where to look.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She gave a shrug, a laugh. “Dumb luck.”

  “No, it’s got to be more than that.”

  “Don’t give me credit I don’t deserve.”

  “I don’t think I’ve given you enough credit, Jane.”

  She looked up and found him staring at her with a directness that made her want to hide. But there was no place to retreat to, no defense she could mount against a gaze so piercing. How much does he see? she wondered. Does he know how exposed he makes me feel?

  “Tell me what happened in the cellar,” he said.

  “You know what happened. It’s in my statement.”

  “People leave things out of statements.”

  “There’s nothing more to tell.”

  “You’re not even going to try?”

  Anger ripped through her like shrapnel. “I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Yet you can’t help returning to it. Can you?”

  She stared at him, wondering what game he was playing and how she’d been so easily sucked into it. She had known other men who were charismatic, men who could draw a woman’s gaze so fast she’d get whiplash. Rizzoli had enough good sense to keep her distance from such men, to regard them for what they were: the genetically blessed among mere mortals. She had little use for such men, and they had little for her. But tonight, she had something Gabriel Dean needed, and he was focusing the full force of his attraction on her. And it was working. Never before had a man made her feel so confused and aroused all at once.

  “He had you trapped in the cellar,” said Dean.

  “I walked right into it. I didn’t know.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  It was a startling question and it made her pause. She thou
ght back to that afternoon, standing at the open cellar door, dreading the descent down those dark stairs. She remembered the suffocating heat of the house and how the sweat had soaked into her bra, her shirt. She remembered how fear had lit up every nerve in her body. Yes, she had known something was not right. She’d known what waited for her at the bottom of the steps.

  “What went wrong, Detective?”

  “The victim,” she whispered.

  “Catherine Cordell?”

  “She was in the cellar. Tied to a cot in the cellar . . .”

  “The bait.”

  She closed her eyes and could almost smell the scent of Cordell’s blood, of damp earth. Of her own sweat, sour with fear. “I took it. I took the bait.”

  “He knew you would.”

  “I should have realized—”

  “But you were focused on the victim. On Cordell.”

  “I wanted to save her.”

  “And that was your mistake.”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him in anger. “Mistake?”

  “You didn’t secure the area first. You left yourself open to attack. You committed the most basic of errors. Surprising, for someone so capable.”

  “You weren’t there. You don’t know the situation I faced.”

  “I read your statement.”

  “Cordell was lying there. Bleeding—”

  “So you responded the way any normal human being would. You tried to help her.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it got you into trouble. You forgot to think like a cop.”

  Her look of outrage did not seem to disturb him in the least. He merely gazed back at her, his expression immobile, his face so composed, so assured, that it only served to magnify her own turmoil.

  “I never forget to think like a cop,” she said.

  “In that cellar, you did. You let the victim distract you.”

  “My primary concern is always the victim.”

  “When it endangers you both? Is that logical?”

  Logical. Yes, that was Gabriel Dean. She had never met anyone like this man, who could regard both the living and the dead with an equal absence of emotion.

  “I couldn’t let her die,” she said. “That was my first—my only—thought.”