The Apprentice

“You actually did that? Took pills to pass the physical?”

“I’m not saying one way or the other. I’m just telling you that this thing with my heart, it was a long time coming. It’s not like I didn’t know it could happen. But now that it has happened, it pisses me off.” He let out an angry snort. Looked up at the monitor again, where his heartbeat was blipping faster across the screen. “Now I got the ticker all stirred up.”

They sat for a moment, watching the EKG, waiting for his heart to slow down. She had never paid much attention to the heart beating in her own chest. As she watched the pattern traced by Korsak’s, she became aware of her own pulse. She had always taken her heartbeat for granted, and she wondered what it would be like, to hang on every beat, fearful that the next might not come. That the throb of life in her chest would suddenly go still.

She looked at Korsak, who lay with gaze still glued to the monitor, and she thought: He’s more than angry; he’s terrified.

Suddenly he sat up straight, his hand flying to his chest, his eyes wide in panic. “Call the nurse! Call the nurse!”

“What? What is it?”

“Don’t you hear that alarm? It’s my heart-”

“Korsak, it’s just my pager.”

“What?”

She unclipped the pager from her belt and turned off the beeping. Held it up for him to see the digital readout of the phone number. “See? It’s not your heart.”

He sank back on the pillows. “Jesus. Get that thing outta here. Could’ve given me a coronary.”

“Can I use this phone?”

He was lying with his hand still pressed to his chest, his whole body flaccid with relief. “Yeah, yeah. I don’t care.”

She picked up the receiver and dialed.

A familiar smoky voice answered: “Medical examiner’s office, Dr. Isles.”

“Rizzoli.”

“Detective Frost and I are sitting here looking at a set of dental X-rays on my computer. We’ve been going down that list that NCIC sent us of missing women in the New England area. This file was e-mailed to me from the Maine State Police.”

“What was the case?”

“It’s a murder-abduction from June second of this year. The murder victim was Ke

“We’ve found Rickets Lady?”

“It’s a match,” Isles answered. “Your girl’s now got a name: Maria Jean Waite. They’re faxing the records to us now.”

“Wait. Did you say this murder-abduction was in Maine?”

“A town called Blue Hill. Frost says he’s been there. It’s about a five-hour drive.”

“Our unsub’s got a bigger hunting territory than we thought.”

“Here, Frost wants to talk to you.”

Frost’s cheery voice came on the line. “Hey, you ever had a lobster roll?”

“What?”

“We can get lobster rolls on the way. There’s this great lunch shack up on Lincolnville Beach. We leave here by eight tomorrow, we can get there in time for lunch. My car or yours?”

“We can take mine.” She paused. And couldn’t stop herself from adding: “Dean will probably want to ride with us.”

There was a pause. “Okay,” Frost finally said, without enthusiasm. “If you think so.”

“I’ll give him a call.”

As she disco

“So Mr. FBI’s part of the team now,” he said.

She ignored him and punched in Dean’s cell phone number.

“When did that happen?”

“He’s just another resource.”

“That’s not what you thought about him before.”

“We’ve had a chance to work together since then.”

“Don’t tell me. You’ve seen another side to him.”

She waved Korsak into silence as the call went through. But Dean did not answer. Instead, a recorded message came on the line: “Subscriber is not available at this time.”

She hung up and looked at Korsak. “Is there a problem?”

“You’re the one looks like she has a problem. You get a fresh lead, and you can’t wait to call your new fibbie pal. What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

“Doesn’t look that way to me.”

Heat flooded her face. She was not being honest with him, and they both knew it. Even as she’d dialed Dean’s cell phone number, she’d felt her pulse quicken, and she knew exactly what it meant. She felt like a junkie craving her fix, unable to stop herself from calling his hotel. Turning her back on Korsak’s baleful gaze, she faced out the window as the phone rang.

“Colo

“Could you co

“One minute please.”

As she waited, she hunted about for the right words to say to him, the right tone of voice. Measured. Businesslike. A cop. You’re a cop.

The hotel operator came back on the line. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Dean is no longer a guest here.”

Rizzoli frowned, her grip tightening on the phone. “Did he leave a forwarding number?”

“There’s none listed.”

Rizzoli stared out the window, her eyes suddenly dazed by the setting sun. “When did he check out?” she asked.

“An hour ago.”

TWENTY

Rizzoli closed the file containing the pages faxed from the Maine State Police and focused out the window at the passing woods, at the occasional glimpse of a white farmhouse through the trees. Reading in the car always made her queasy, and the details of Maria Jean Wake’s disappearance only intensified her discomfort. The lunch they’d eaten on the way did not help matters. Frost had been eager to try the lobster rolls from one of the roadside shacks, and although she’d enjoyed the meal at the time, the mayo

As she felt better, she began to take note of the natural beauty outside her car window. She’d never ventured this far into Maine before. The farthest north she’d ever made it was as a ten-year-old, when her family had driven to Old Orchard Beach in the summertime. She remembered the boardwalk and the carny rides, blue cotton candy and corn on the cob. And she remembered walking into the sea and how the water was so cold, it pierced straight to her bones like icicles. Yet she had kept wading in, precisely because her mother had warned her not to. “It’s too cold for you, Janie,” Angela had called out. “Stay on the nice warm sand.” And then Jane’s brothers had chimed in: “Yeah, don’t go in, Janie; you’ll freeze off your ugly chicken legs!” So of course she had gone in, striding grim-faced across the sand to where the sea lapped and foamed, and stepping into water that made her gasp. But it was not the water’s cold sting she remembered all these years later; rather, it was the heat of her brothers’ gazes as they watched her from the beach, taunting her, daring her to wade even deeper into that breath-stealing cold. And so she had marched in, the water rising to her thighs, her waist, her shoulders, moving without hesitation, without even a pause to brace herself. She’d pushed on because it was not pain she feared most; it was humiliation.

Now Old Orchard Beach was a hundred miles behind them and the view she saw from the car looked nothing like the Maine she remembered from her childhood. This far up the coast, there were no boardwalks or carny rides. Instead she saw trees and green fields and the occasional village, each anchored around a white church spire.

“Alice and I drive up this way every July,” said Frost.

“I’ve never been up here.”

“Never?” He glanced at her with a look of surprise she found a