The Apprentice

Marquette paused. Leaned forward with a frown. “That’s a serious charge.”

“No more serious than the charge he’s leveling at me.”

“You have anything to back it up?”

“I called the FBI’s Boston office this morning.”

“Yes?”

“They know nothing about Agent Gabriel Dean.”

Marquette sat back in his chair and regarded her for a moment, saying nothing.

“He came here straight from Washington,” she said. “The Boston office had nothing to do with it. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. If we ask them for a criminal profile, it always goes through their area field division coordinator. This didn’t go through their field division. It came straight from Washington. Why is the FBI mucking around in my investigation in the first place? And what does Washington have to do with it?”

Still, Marquette said nothing.

She pressed on, her frustration building, her control starting to crack. “You told me the order to cooperate came through the police commissioner.”

“Yes, it did.”

“Who in the FBI approached OPC? Which part of the Bureau are we dealing with?”

Marquette shook his head. “It wasn’t the Bureau.”

“What?”

“The request didn’t come from the FBI. I spoke to OPC last week, the day Dean showed up. I asked them that same question.”

“And?”

“I promised them I’d keep this confidential. I expect the same from you.” Only after she’d given a nod of assent did he continue. “The request came from Senator Conway’s office.”

She stared at him in bewilderment. “What does our senator have to do with all this?”

“I don’t know.”

“OPC wouldn’t tell you?”

“They may not know, either. But it’s not a request they’d brush off, not when it comes direct from Conway. And he’s not asking for the moon. Just interagency cooperation. We do it all the time.”

She leaned forward and said, quietly: “Something’s wrong, Lieutenant. You know it. Dean hasn’t been straight with us.”

“I didn’t call you in here to talk about Dean. We’re talking about you.”

“But it’s his word you’re relying on. Does the FBI now dictate orders to Boston P.D.?”

This seemed to take Marquette aback. Abruptly straightening, he eyed her across the desk. She had hit just the right nerve. The Bureau versus Us. Are you really in charge?

“Okay,” he said. “We talked. You listened. That’s good enough for me.”

“For me, too.” She stood up.

“But I’ll be watching, Rizzoli.”

She gave him a nod. “Aren’t you always?”

“I’ve found some interesting fibers,” Erin Volchko said. “They were lifted with sticky tape from the skin of Gail Yeager.”

“More navy-blue carpet?” asked Rizzoli.

“No. To be honest, I’m not sure what these are.”

Erin did not often admit that she was baffled. That alone piqued Rizzoli’s interest in the slide now under the microscope. Through the lens, she saw a single dark strand.

“We’re looking at a synthetic fiber, whose color I’d characterize as drab green. Based on its refractive indices, this is our old friend DuPont nylon, type six, six.”

“Just like the navy-blue carpet fibers.”

“Yes. Nylon six, six is a very popular fiber due to its strength and resilience. You’ll find it in a large variety of fabrics.”

“You said this was lifted off Gail Yeager’s skin?”

“These fibers were found clinging to her hips, her breasts, and a shoulder.”

Rizzoli frowned. “A sheet? Something he used to wrap her body?”

“Yes, but not a sheet. Nylon wouldn’t be appropriate for that use, due to its low moisture absorbency. Also, these particular threads are made up of extremely fine thirty-denier filaments, ten filaments to a thread. And the thread’s finer than a human hair. This kind of fiber would produce a finished product that’s very tight. Maybe weatherproof.”

“A tent? A tarp?”

“Possible. That’s the kind of fabric one might use to wrap a body.”

Rizzoli had a bizarre vision of packaged tarps hanging in Wal-Mart, the manufacturer’s suggested uses printed on the label: PERFECT FOR CAMPING, WEATHERPROOFING AND WRAPPING DEAD BODIES.

“If it’s just a tarp, we’re dealing with a pretty generic piece of fabric,” said Rizzoli.

“C’mon, Detective. Would I drag you over here to look at a perfectly generic fiber?”

“It’s not?”

“It’s actually quite interesting.”

“What’s interesting about a nylon tarp?”

Erin reached for a folder on the lab countertop and pulled out a computer-generated graph, on which a line traced a silhouette of jagged peaks. “I ran an ATR analysis on these fibers. This is what popped out.”

“ATR?”

“Attenuated Total Reflection. It uses infrared microspectroscopy to examine single fibers. Infrared radiation is beamed at the fiber, and we read the spectra of light that bounces back. This graph shows the IR characteristics of the fiber itself. It simply confirms that it’s nylon six, six, as I told you earlier.”

“No surprise.”

“Not yet,” said Erin, a sly smile playing at her lips. She took a second graph from the folder, laid it beside the first. “Here we see the IR tracing of exactly the same fiber. Notice anything?”

Rizzoli gazed back and forth. “They’re different.”

“Yes, they are.”

“But if these are from the same fiber, the graphs should be identical.”

“For this second graph, I altered the image plane. This ATR is the reflection from the surface of the fiber. Not the core.”

“So the surface and the core are different.”

“Right.”

“Two different fibers twisted together?”

“No. It’s a single fiber. But the fabric has had a surface treatment. That’s what the second ATR is picking up- the surface chemicals. I ran it through the chromatograph, and it seems to be silicone-based. After the fibers were woven and dyed, a silicone rub was applied to the finished fabric.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. Waterproofing? Tear resistance? It must be an expensive process. I think this fabric has some very specific purpose. I just don’t know what it is.”

Rizzoli leaned back on the lab stool. “Find this fabric,” she said, “and we’ll find our perp.”

“Yes. Unlike generic blue carpet, this fabric is unique.”

The monogrammed towels were draped over the coffee table for all the party guests to see, the letters AR, for Angela Rizzoli, entwined in baroque curlicues. Jane had chosen them in peach, her mother’s favorite color, and had paid extra for the deluxe birthday gift wrapping with apricot ribbons and a cluster of silk flowers. They’d been delivered specifically by Federal Express, because her mother associated those red, white, and blue trucks with surprise packages and happy events.

And Angela Rizzoli’s fifty-ninth birthday party should have qualified as a happy event. Birthdays were a very big deal in the Rizzoli family. Every December, when Angela bought a fresh calendar for the new year, the first thing she did was flip through the months, marking the family’s various birthdays. To forget a loved one’s special day was a serious transgression. To forget your mother’s birthday was an unforgivable sin, and Jane knew better than to ever let the day slip by uncelebrated. She’d been the one to buy ice cream and string up the decorations, the one who’d sent out invitations to the dozen neighbors who were now gathered in the Rizzoli living room. She was the one now slicing the cake and passing the paper plates to guests. She’d done her duty as always, but this year the party had fallen flat. And all because of Frankie.

“Something’s wrong,” Angela said. She sat flanked on the couch by her husband and younger son, Michael, and she stared without joy at the gifts displayed on her coffee table-enough bath oil beads and talcum powder to keep her smelling sweet into the next decade. “Maybe he’s sick. Maybe there’s been an accident and nobody’s called me yet.”