The Apprentice

She looked at Dean. “Then that list the Pentagon gave you. The names of the Fayetteville soldiers who served in Kosovo-”

“The list was incomplete,” he said.

“How incomplete? How many names were left off?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you ask the CIA?”

“That’s where I hit walls.”

“They won’t name names?”

“They don’t have to,” said Conway. “If your unsub was involved in black ops abroad, it will never be acknowledged.”

“Even if their boy’s now killing on home turf?”

“Especially if he’s killing on home turf,” said Dean. “It would be a public relations disaster. What if he chose to testify? What sensitive information might he leak to the press? You think the Agency wants us to know their boy’s breaking into homes and slaughtering law-abiding citizens? Abusing women’s corpses? There’s no way to keep that off the front pages.”

“So what did the Agency tell you?”

“That they had no information that was relevant to the Fayetteville homicide.”

“It sounds like a standard brush-off.”

“It was far more than that,” said Conway. “Within a day of Agent Dean’s query to the CIA, he was pulled off the Fayetteville investigation and told to return to Washington. That order came straight from the office of the FBI’s deputy director.”

She stared at him, stu

“That’s when Agent Dean came to me,” said Conway.

“Because you’re on the Armed Services Committee?”

“Because we’ve known each other for years. Marines have a way of finding each other. And trusting each other. He asked me to make inquiries on his behalf. But I’m afraid I couldn’t make any headway.”

“Even a senator can’t?”

Conway gave her an ironic smile. “A Democratic senator from a liberal state, I should add. I may have served my country as a soldier. But certain elements within Defense will never entirely accept me. Or trust me.”

Her gaze dropped to the photos on the coffee table. To the gallery of dead men, chosen for slaughter not because of their politics or ethnicity or beliefs but because they had been married to beautiful wives. “You could have told me this weeks ago,” she said.

“Police investigations leak like sieves,” said Dean.

“Not mine.”

“Any police investigation. If this information was shared with your team, it would eventually leak to the media. And that would bring your work straight to the attention of the wrong people. People who’ll try to prevent you from making an arrest.”

“You really think they’d protect him? After what he’s done?”

“No, I think they want to put him away just as much as we do. But they want it done quietly, out of the public eye. Clearly they’ve lost track of him. He’s out of their control, killing civilians. He’s become a walking time bomb, and they can’t afford to ignore the problem.”

“And if they catch him before we do?”

“We’ll never know about it, will we? The killings will just stop. And we’ll always wonder.”

“That’s not what I call satisfying closure,” she said.

“No, you want justice. An arrest, a trial, a conviction. The whole nine yards.”

“You make it sound like I’m asking for the moon.”

“In this case, you may be.”

“Is that why you brought me here? To tell me I’ll never catch him?”

He leaned toward her with a look of sudden intensity. “We want exactly what you want, Jane. The whole nine yards. I’ve been tracking this man since Kosovo. You think I’d settle for anything less?”

Conway said, quietly: “You understand now, Detective, why we brought you here? The need for secrecy?”

“It seems to me there’s already too much of it.”

“But for now, it’s the only way to achieve eventual and complete disclosure. Which is, I assume, what we all want.”

She gazed for a moment at Senator Conway. “You paid for my trip, didn’t you? The plane tickets, the limos, the nice hotel. This isn’t on the FBI’s dime.”

Conway gave a nod. A wry smile. “Things that really matter,” he said, “are best kept off the record.”

TWENTY-THREE

The sky had opened up and rain pounded like a thousand hammers on the roof of Dean’s Volvo. The windshield wipers thrashed across a watery view of stalled traffic and flooded streets.

“A good thing you’re not flying back tonight,” he said. “The airport’s probably a mess.”

“In this weather, I’ll keep my feet on the ground, thank you.”

He shot her an amused look. “And I thought you were fearless.”

“What gave you that impression?”

“You did. You work hard at it, too. The armor always stays on.”

“You’re trying to crawl inside my head again. You’re always doing that.”

“It’s just a matter of habit. It’s what I did in the Gulf War. Psychological ops.”

“Well, I’m not the enemy, okay?”

“I never thought you were, Jane.”

She looked at him and could not help admiring, as she always did, the clean, sharp lines of his profile. “But you didn’t trust me.”

“I didn’t know you then.”

“So have you changed your mind?”

“Why do you think I asked you to come to Washington?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, and gave a reckless laugh. “Because you missed me and couldn’t wait to see me again?”

His silence made her flush. Suddenly she felt stupid and desperate, precisely the traits she despised in other women. She stared out the window, avoiding his gaze, the sound of her own voice, her own foolish words, still ringing in her ears.

In the road ahead, cars were finally starting to move again, tires churning through deep puddles.

“Actually,” he said, “I did want to see you.”

“Oh?” The word tossed off carelessly. She had already embarrassed herself; she wouldn’t repeat the mistake.

“I wanted to apologize. For telling Marquette you weren’t up to the job. I was wrong.”

“When did you decide that?”

“There wasn’t a specific moment. It was just… watching you work, day after day. Seeing how focused you are. How driven you are to get everything right.” He added, quietly: “And then I found out what you’ve been dealing with since last summer. Issues I hadn’t been aware of.”

“Wow. ‘And she manages to do her job anyway.’ ”

“You think I feel sorry for you,” he said.

“It’s not particularly flattering to hear: ‘Look how much she’s accomplished, considering what she has to deal with.’ So give me a medal in the Special Olympics. The one for emotionally screwed-up cops.”

He gave a sigh of exasperation. “Do you always look for the hidden motive behind every compliment, every word of praise? Sometimes, people mean exactly what they say, Jane.”

“You can understand why I’d be more than a little skeptical about anything you tell me.”

“You think I still have a secret agenda.”

“I don’t know anymore.”

“But I must have one, right? Because you certainly don’t deserve a genuine compliment from me.”

“I get your point.”

“You may get it. But you don’t really believe it.” He braked at a red light and looked at her. “Where does all the skepticism come from? Has it been that tough for you, being Jane Rizzoli?”

She gave a weary laugh. “Let’s not go there, Dean.”

“Is it the part about being a woman cop?”

“You can probably fill in the blanks.”

“Your colleagues seem to respect you.”

“There are some notable exceptions.”

“There always are.”

The light turned green, and his gaze went back to the road.

“It’s the nature of police work,” she said. “All that testosterone.”

“Then why did you choose it?”

“Because I flunked home ec.”

At that, they both laughed. The first honest laugh they’d shared.

“The truth is,” she said, “I’ve wanted to be a cop since I was twelve years old.”

“Why?”

“Everyone respects cops. At least, that’s how it seems to a kid. I wanted the badge, the gun. The things that’d make people stand up and take notice of me. I didn’t want to end up in some office where I’d just disappear. Where I’d turn into the invisible woman. That’d be like getting buried alive, to be someone no one listens to. No one notices.” She leaned an elbow against the door and rested her head in her hand. “Now, anonymity’s starting to look pretty good.” At least the Surgeon wouldn’t know my name.