Tess Gerritsen - The Apprentice

“No.”

“Crimescope didn’t pick up any semen.”

“Maybe he was neater this time.”

“Or he didn’t rape her,” said Korsak. “And that’s why he didn’t need the teacup.”

Annoyed by his smoke, she turned her face to the open window and waved her hand to clear the air. “Murder doesn’t follow a set script,” she said. “Every victim reacts differently. It’s a two-character play, Korsak. The killer and the victim. Either one can affect the outcome. Dr. Yeager was a much bigger man than Alex Ghent. Maybe our unsub felt less confident about controlling Yeager, so he used the chinaware as a warning signal. Something he didn’t feel he needed to do with Ghent.”

“I don’t know.” Korsak flicked an ash out the window. “It’s such a weird-ass thing to do, that teacup. Part of his signature. Something he wouldn’t leave out.”

“Everything else was identical,” she pointed out. “Well-to-do couple. The man bound and posed. The woman missing.”

They fell silent as the same grim thought surely occurred to them both: The woman. What has he done to Karenna Ghent ?

Rizzoli already knew the answer. Though Karenna’s image would soon appear on TV screens across the city and a plea would go out for the public’s help, though Boston P.D. would scramble to follow up every phone tip, every sighting of a dark-haired woman, Rizzoli knew what the outcome would be. She could feel it, like a cold stone in her stomach. Karenna Ghent was dead.

“Gail Yeager’s body was dumped about two days after her abduction,” said Korsak. “It’s now been-what? Around twenty hours since this couple was attacked.”

“Stony Brook Reservation,” said Rizzoli. “That’s where he’ll bring her. I’ll reinforce the surveillance team.” She glanced at Korsak, “You see any way Joey Valentine fits into this one?”

“I’m working on it. He finally gave me a sample of his blood. DNA’s pending.”

“That doesn’t sound like a guilty man. You still watching him?”

“I was. Till he filed a complaint that I was harassing him.”

“Were you?”

Korsak laughed, snorting out a lungful of smoke. “Any grown man who gets off powder-puffing dead ladies is gonna squeal like a girl, no matter what I do.”

“How, exactly, do girls squeal?” she countered in irritation. “Kind of like boys do?”

“Aw, jeez. Don’t give me that bra-burning shit. My daughter’s always doing that. Then she runs out of money and comes whining to chauvinist-pig daddy for help.” Suddenly Korsak straightened. “Hey. Look who just showed up.”

A black Lincoln had pulled into a parking space across the street. Rizzoli saw Gabriel Dean emerge from the car, his trim, athletic figure pulled straight from the pages of GQ. He stood gazing up at the redbrick facade of the residence. Then he approached the patrolman manning the perimeter and showed his badge.

The patrolman let him through the tape.

“Get a load of that,” said Korsak. “Now that pisses me off. That same cop made me stand outside till you came out to get me. Like I’m just another bum off the street. But Dean, all he has to do is wave the magic badge and say ‘federal fucking agent’ and he’s golden. Why the hell does he get a pass?”

“Maybe because he bothered to tuck in his shirt.”

“Oh yeah, like a nice suit would do it for me. It’s all in the attitude. Look at him. Like he owns the goddamn world.”

She watched as Dean gracefully balanced on one leg to pull on a shoe cover. He thrust his long hands into gloves, like a surgeon preparing to operate. Yes, it was all in the attitude. Korsak was an angry pugilist who expected the world to kick him around. Naturally it did.

“Who called him here?” said Korsak.

“I didn’t.”

“Yet he just happens to show up.”

“He always does. Someone’s keeping him in the loop. It’s no one on my team. It goes higher.”

She stared at the front door again. Dean had stepped inside, and she imagined him standing in the living room, surveying the bloodstains. Reading them the way he reads a field report, the bright splatter detached from the humanity of its source.

“You know, I been thinking about it,” said Korsak. “Dean didn’t show up on the scene until nearly three days after the Yeagers were attacked. First time we see him is over at Stony Brook Reservation, when Mrs. Yeager’s body was found. Right?”

“Right.”

“So what took him so long? The other day, we were playing around with the idea it was an execution. Some trouble the Yeagers had gotten into. If they were already on the feds’ radar screen-under investigation, say, or being watched-you’d think the fibbies would be on the case the instant Dr. Yeager was whacked. But they waited three days to step in. What finally pulled them in? What got them interested?”

She looked at him. “Did you file a VICAP report?”

“Yeah. Took me a whole friggin‘ hour to finish it. A hundred eighty-nine questions. Weird shit like, ’Was any body part bitten off? What objects got shoved into which orifices?‘ Now I gotta file a supplementary report on Mrs. Yeager.”

“Did you request a profile evaluation when you transmitted the form?”

“No. I didn’t see the point of having some FBI profiler tell me what I already know. I just did my civic duty and sent in the VICAP form.”

VICAP, or the Violent Criminals Apprehension Program, was the FBI’s database of violent crimes. Compiling that database required the cooperation of often-harried law enforcement officers who, when confronted with the long VICAP questionnaire, many times did not even bother.

“When did you file the report?” she asked.

“Right after the postmortem on Dr. Yeager.”

“And that’s when Dean showed up. A day later.”

“You think that’s it?” asked Korsak. “That’s what pulled him in?”

“Maybe your report tripped an alarm.”

“What would get their attention?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at the front door, through which Dean had vanished. “And it’s pretty clear he’s not going to tell us.”

Jane Rizzoli was not a symphony kind of gal. The extent of her exposure to music was her collection of easy-listening CDs and the two years she’d played trumpet in the middle school band, one of only two girls who’d chosen that instrument. She’d been drawn to it because it produced the loudest, brassiest sound of all, not like those tooty clarinets or the chirpy flutes the other girls played. No, Rizzoli wanted to be heard, and so she sat shoulder to shoulder with the boys in the trumpet section. She loved it when the notes came blasting out.

Unfortunately, they were too often the wrong notes.

After her father banished her to the backyard for her practice sessions and then the neighborhood dogs began to howl in protest, she finally put the trumpet away for good. Even she could recognize that raw enthusiasm and strong lungs were not enough to make up for a discouraging lack of talent.

Since then, music had meant little more to her than white noise aboard elevators and thudding bass notes in passing cars. She had been inside the Symphony Hall on the corner of Huntington and Mass Ave only twice in her life, both times as a high school student attending field rrips to hear BSO rehearsals. In 1990, the Cohen Wing had been added, a part of Symphony Hall that Rizzoli had never before visited. When she and Frost entered the new wing, she was surprised by how modern it looked- not the dark and creaky building that she remembered.

They showed their badges to the elderly security guard, who snapped his kyphotic spine a little straighter lien he saw the two visitors were from Homicide.