Tess Gerritsen - The Apprentice

The Surgeon had done this to her.

And now this new unsub, the Dominator, had added his voice to the chorus of monsters braying outside her door. Gabriel Dean had understood at once that the choice of the grave on which Karenna Ghent’s corpse had been deposited was no accident. Although the tenant of that grave, Anthony Rizzoli, was not her relation, their shared name was clearly a message intended for her.

The Dominator knows my name.

She did not remove her holster until she had made the complete walk-through of her apartment. It was not a large space, and it took less than a minute to glance in the kitchen and the living room, then move down the short hallway to her bedroom, where she opened the closet, peeked under the bed. Only then did she unbuckle her holster and slip the weapon into her nightstand drawer. She peeled off her clothes and went into the bathroom. She locked the door-yet another automatic reflex, and completely unnecessary, but it was the only way she could step into the shower and summon the nerve to pull the curtain shut. Moments later, her hair still slick with conditioner, she was seized by the feeling that she was not alone. She yanked open the curtain and stared at the empty bathroom, her heart hammering, the water streaming down her shoulders and onto the floor.

She turned off the faucet. Leaned back against the tiled wall, breathing deeply, waiting for her heartbeat to slow. Through the whoosh of her own pulse she heard the hum of the ventilation fan. The rumble of pipes in her building. Everyday sounds that she had never bothered to register until now, when their very ordinariness served as a blessed focus.

By the time her heartbeat finally slowed to normal, the water had chilled on her skin. She stepped out, toweled off, then knelt down to mop up the wet floor as well. For all her swaggering at work, her tough-cop act, she was now reduced to little more than shivering flesh. She saw, in the mirror, how fear had changed her. Staring back was a woman who had lost weight, whose already slim frame was slowly melting into gauntness. Whose face, once square and sturdy, now seemed thin as a wraith’s, the eyes large and dark in their deepening hollows.

She fled the mirror and went into the bedroom. Hair still damp, she sank onto her bed and lay with eyes open, knowing she should try to catch at least a few hours’ sleep. But daylight winked brightly through the cracks in the window blinds, and she could hear traffic in the street below. It was noon, and she had been awake for nearly thirty hours and had not eaten in nearly twelve. Yet she could summon up neither an appetite nor the will to fall asleep. The events of that early morning still buzzed like a current through her nervous system, the memories crackling in a recurrent loop. She saw the security guard’s throat gaping open, his head turned at an impossible angle from his torso. She saw Karenna Ghent, leaves scattered in her hair.

And she saw Korsak, his body bristling with tubes and wires.

The three images cycled in her head like a strobe light, and she could not shut them off. She could not silence the buzzing. Was this what insanity felt like?

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 call 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.” He 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.