The Apprentice

The conference room door opened. They all turned to see Lieutenant Marquette poke his head into the room. “Detective Rizzoli?” he said. “I need to speak to you.”

“Right now?”

“If you don’t mind. Let’s go into my office.”

Judging by the expressions of everyone else in the room, the same thought had occurred to them all: Rizzoli’s being called to the woodshed. And she had no idea why. Flushing, she rose from her chair and walked out of the room.

Marquette was silent as they headed down the hall to the homicide unit. They stepped into his office and he shut the door. Through the glass partition, she saw detectives staring at her from their workstations. Marquette went to the window and snapped the blinds shut. “Why don’t you sit down, Rizzoli?”

“I’m fine. I just want to know what’s going on.”

“Please.” His voice quieter now, even gentle. “Sit down.”

His new solicitousness made her uneasy. She and Marquette had never really warmed to each other. The homicide unit was still a boy’s club, and she knew she was the bitch invader. She sank into a chair, her pulse starting to hammer.

For a moment he sat silent, as though trying to come up with the right words. “I wanted to tell you this before the others hear about it. Because I think this will be hardest on you. I’m sure it’s just a temporary situation and it’ll be resolved within days, if not hours.”

“What situation?”

“This morning, around five A.M., Warren Hoyt escaped custody.”

Now she understood why he’d insisted she sit down; he had expected her to crumble.

But she did not. She sat perfectly still, her emotions shut down, every nerve gone numb. When she spoke, her voice was so eerily calm, she scarcely recognized it as her own.

“How did it happen?” she asked.

“It was during a medical transfer. He was admitted last night to Fitchburg Hospital for an emergency appendectomy. We don’t really know how it happened. But in the operating room…” Marquette paused. “There are no witnesses left alive.”

“How many dead?” she asked. Her voice still flat. Still a stranger’s.

“Three. A nurse and a female anesthetist, prepping him for surgery. Plus the guard who accompanied him to the hospital.”

“Souza-Baranowski is a level-six facility.”

“Yes.”

“And they allowed him to go to a civilian hospital?”

“If it had been a routine admission, he would have been transported to the Shattuck prison unit. But in a medical emergency, it’s MCI policy to take prisoners to the nearest contracted facility. And the nearest one was in Fitchburg.”

“Who decided it was an emergency?”

“The prison nurse. She examined Hoyt, and consulted with the MCI physician. They both concurred he needed immediate attention.”

“Based on what findings?” Her voice was starting to sharpen now, the first note of emotion creeping in.

“There were symptoms. Abdominal pain-”

“He has medical training. He knew exactly what to tell them.”

“They also had abnormal lab tests.”

“What tests?”

“Something about a high white blood cell count.”

“Did they understand who they were dealing with? Did they have any idea?”

“You can’t fake a blood test.”

“He could. He worked in a hospital. He knows how to manipulate lab tests.”

“Detective-”

“For Christ’s sake, he was a fucking blood technician!” The shrillness of her own voice startled her. She stared at him, shocked by her outburst. And overwhelmed by the emotions that were finally blasting through her. Rage. Helplessness.

And fear. All these months, she had suppressed it, because she knew it was irrational to be afraid of Warren Hoyt. He had been locked in a place where he could not reach her, could not hurt her. The nightmares had merely been aftershocks, lingering echoes of an old terror that she hoped would eventually fade. But now fear made perfect sense, and it had her in its jaws.

Abruptly she shot to her feet and turned to leave.

“Detective Rizzoli!”

She stopped in the doorway.

“Where are you going?”

“I think you know where I have to go.”

“Fitchburg P.D. and the State Police have this under control.”

“Do they? To them, he’s just another con on the run. They’ll expect him to make the same mistakes all the others do. But he won’t. He’ll slip right through their net.”

“You don’t give them enough credit.”

“They don’t give Hoyt enough credit. They don’t understand what they’re dealing with,” she said.

But I do. I understand perfectly.

Outside, the parking lot shimmered white-hot under the glaring sun and the wind that blew from the street was thick and sulfurous. By the time she climbed into her car, her shirt was already soaked with sweat. Hoyt would like this heat, she thought. He thrived on it, the way a lizard thrives on the baking desert sand. And like any reptile, he knew how to quickly slither out of harm’s way.

They won’t find him.

As she drove toward Fitchburg, she thought of the Surgeon, loose in the world again. Imagined him walking city streets, the predator back among the prey. She wondered if she still had the fortitude to face him. If, having defeated him once, she had used up her lifetime quota of courage. She did not think of herself as a coward; she had never backed away from a challenge and had always plunged headlong into any fray. But the thought of confronting Warren Hoyt left her shaking.

I fought him once, and it almost killed me. I don’t know if I can do it again. If I can wrestle the monster back into his cage.

The perimeter was unma

But cold as it was, contaminated though it was, she could still read what had happened in this room, for it was written on the walls in blood. She saw the dried arcs of arterial spray released from a victim’s pulsing artery. It traced a sine wave across the wall and splattered the large erasable board where the day’s surgery schedule had been written, listing the O.R. room numbers, patients’ names, surgeons’ names, and operative procedures. A full day’s schedule had been booked. She wondered what had happened to the patients whose operations were abruptly canceled because the O.R. was now a crime scene. She wondered what the consequences were of a postponed cholecystectomy-whatever that was. That full schedule explained why the crime scene had been processed so quickly. The needs of the living must be served. One could not indefinitely shut down the town of Fitchburg’s busiest O.R.

The arcs of spurted blood continued across the schedule board, around a corner, and onto the next wall. Here the peaks were smaller as the systolic pressure fell, and the pulsations began to trail downward, sliding toward the floor. They ended in a smeared lake next to the reception desk.

The phone. Whoever died here was trying to reach the phone.

Beyond the reception area, a wide corridor lined by sinks led past the individual operating rooms. Men’s voices, and the crackle of a portable radio, drew her toward an open doorway. She walked along the row of scrub sinks, past a CST who scarcely gave her a glance. No one challenged her, even as she stepped into O.R. #4 and halted, appalled by the evidence of carnage. Though no victims remained in the room, their blood was everywhere, spattering walls, cabinets, and countertops and tracked across the floor by all those who had come in murder’s wake.