The Apprentice

“BP?”

The cuff whiffed tight around his meaty arm. “Ninety systolic. Let’s move him!”

Even after they’d transferred Korsak into the ambulance and the taillights had winked away into the night, Rizzoli did not move. Numb with exhaustion, she stared after it, imagining what would follow for him. The harsh lights of the E.R. More needles, more tubes. It occurred to her that she should call his wife, but she did not know her name. In fact, she knew almost nothing about his personal life, and it struck her as unbearably sad that she knew far more about the dead Yeagers than about the living, breathing man who’d worked beside her. The partner she’d failed.

She looked down at the grass where he’d been lying. It still bore the imprint of his weight. She imagined him ru

I would not have heard him anyway. I was too busy trying to run down shadows. Trying to salvage my own pride.

“Detective Rizzoli?” said Officer Doud. He’d approached so quietly, she had not even realized he was standing beside her.

“Yes?”

“I’m afraid we’ve found another one.”

“What?”

“Another body.”

Stu

“Who found it?” she asked.

“Agent Dean.”

“Why was he searching all the way out here?”

“I guess he was doing a general sweep.”

Dean turned to face her as she approached. “I think we’ve found Kare

The woman lay atop a grave site, her black hair splayed around her, clusters of leaves arranged among the dark strands in mock decoration of mortified flesh. She had been dead long enough for her belly to bloat, for purge fluid to trickle from her nostrils. But the impact of all these details faded in the greater horror of what had been done to the lower abdomen. Rizzoli stared at the gaping wound. A single transverse slice.

The ground seemed to give way beneath her feet and she stumbled backward, blindly reaching for support and finding only air.

It was Dean who caught her, grasping her firmly by the elbow. “It’s not a coincidence,” he said.

She was silent, her gaze still fixed on that terrible wound. She remembered similar wounds on other women. Remembered a summer even hotter than this one.

“He’s been following the news,” said Dean. “He knows you’re the lead investigator. He knows how to turn the tables, how to make a game of cat and mouse go both ways. That’s what it is to him, now. A game.”

Although she registered his words, she didn’t understand what he was trying to tell her. “What game?”

“Didn’t you see the name?” He aimed his flashlight at the words carved into the granite headstone:

Beloved husband and father

Anthony Rizzoli

1901-1962

“It’s a taunt,” said Dean. “And it’s aimed straight at you.”

THIRTEEN

The woman sitting at Korsak’s bedside had lank brown hair that looked as if it had been neither washed nor combed in days. She did not touch him but simply gazed at the bed with vacant eyes, her hands resting in her lap, lifeless as a ma

She stepped into the cubicle. “Mrs. Korsak?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“I’m Detective Rizzoli. Jane. Please call me Jane.”

The woman’s expression remained blank; clearly she did not recognize the name.

“I’m afraid I don’t know your first name,” said Rizzoli.

“Diane.” The woman was silent for a moment; then she frowned. “I’m sorry. Who are you again?”

“Jane Rizzoli. I’m with Boston P.D. I’ve been working with your husband on a case. He may have mentioned it.”

Diane gave a vague shrug and looked back at her husband. Her face revealed neither grief nor fear. Only the numb passivity of exhaustion.

For a moment Rizzoli simply stood in silent vigil over the bed. So many tubes, she thought. So many machines. And at their center was Korsak, reduced to senseless flesh. The doctors had confirmed a heart attack, and although his cardiac rhythm was now stable, he remained stuporous. His mouth hung agape, an endotracheal tube protruding like a plastic snake. A reservoir hanging at the side of the bed collected a slow trickle of urine. Though the bedsheet concealed his genitals, his chest and abdomen were bare, and one hairy leg protruded from beneath the sheet, revealing a foot with yellow unclipped toenails. Even as she took in these details, she felt ashamed of invading his privacy, of seeing him at his most vulnerable. Yet she could not look away. She felt compelled to stare, eyes drawn to all the intimate details, the very things that, were he awake, he would not want her to see.

“He needs a shave,” said Diane.

Such a trivial concern, yet it was the one spontaneous remark Diane had made. She had not moved a muscle but sat perfectly motionless, hands still limp, her placid expression carved in stone.

Rizzoli searched for something to say, something she thought she should say to comfort her, and settled on a cliche. “He’s a fighter. He won’t give up easily.”

Her words dropped like stones into a bottomless pond. No ripples, no effect. A long silence passed before Diane’s flat blue eyes at last focused on her.

“I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name again.”

“Jane Rizzoli. Your husband and I were working a stakeout together.”

“Oh. You’re the one.”

Rizzoli paused, suddenly stricken by guilt. Yes, I’m the one. The one who abandoned him. Who left him lying alone in the darkness because I was so frantic to salvage my fucked-up night.

“Thank you,” said Diane.

Rizzoli frowned. “For what?”

“For whatever you did. To help him.”

Rizzoli looked into the woman’s vague blue eyes, and for the first time she noticed the tightly constricted pupils. The eyes of the anesthetized, she thought. Diane Korsak was in a narcotic daze.

Rizzoli looked at Korsak. Remembered the night she had called him to the Ghent death scene and he’d arrived intoxicated. She remembered, too, the night they had stood together in the M.E.‘s parking lot and Korsak had seemed reluctant to go home. Is this what he faced every evening? This woman with her blank stare and her robot voice?

You never told me. And I never bothered to ask.

She moved to the bed and squeezed his hand. Recalled how his moist handshake had once repelled her. Not today; today, she would have rejoiced had he squeezed back. But the hand in hers remained limp.

It was eleven A.M. when she finally walked into her apartment. She turned the two dead bolts, pressed the button lock, and fastened the chain. Once, she would have thought all these locks were a sign of paranoia; once, she’d been satisfied with a simple knob lock and a weapon in her nightstand drawer. But a year ago Warren Hoyt had changed her life, and her door had since acquired these gleaming brass accessories. She stared at her array of locks, suddenly struck by how much she had become like every other victim of violent crime, desperate to barricade her home and shut out the world.

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 Kare