The Apprentice: A Novel

by Tess Gerritsen

  He reached for the autopsy photo. “I find it interesting that she was neither mutilated nor dismembered. Except for the natural changes of early decomposition, the corpse seems to be in rather good condition.” He looked at Rizzoli for confirmation.

  “There were no open wounds,” she said. “The cause of death was strangulation.”

  “Which is the most intimate way to kill someone.”

  “Intimate?”

  “Think of what it means to manually strangle someone. How personal it is. The close contact. Skin to skin. Your hands against her flesh. Pressing her throat as you feel her life drain away.”

  Rizzoli stared at him in disgust. “Jesus.”

  “This is how he thinks. What he feels. This is the universe he inhabits, and we have to learn what that universe is like.” Zucker pointed to Gail Yeager’s photo. “He’s driven to possess her body, to own it, dead or alive. This is a man who develops a personal attachment to a corpse, and he’ll continue to fondle it. Sexually abuse it.”

  “Then why dispose of it?” asked Sleeper. “Why not keep it around for seven years? Like that King Herod did with his wife.”

  “Practical reasons?” Zucker offered. “He may live in an apartment building, where the smell of a decomposing body would attract notice. Three days is about as long as one would want to keep a corpse.”

  Crowe laughed. “Try three seconds.”

  “Then you’re saying he has almost a lover’s attachment to this body,” said Rizzoli.

  Zucker nodded.

  “It must have been hard for him to just dump her there. In Stony Brook.”

  “Yes, it would have been difficult. Like having your lover leave you.”

  She thought of that place in the woods. The trees, the dappled shade. So far from the heat and noise of the city. “It’s not just a dump site,” she said. “Maybe it’s consecrated ground.”

  They all looked at her.

  “Say again?” said Crowe.

  “Detective Rizzoli has hit on exactly the point I was getting at,” said Zucker. “That spot, in the reserve, is not just a place to throw away used corpses. You have to ask yourself, Why didn’t he bury them? Why does he leave them exposed to possible discovery?”

  Rizzoli said, softly, “Because he visits them.”

  Zucker nodded. “These are his lovers. His harem. He returns again and again, to look at them, touch them. Maybe even embrace them. That’s why he sheds corpse hairs. When he handles the bodies, he picks up their hairs on his clothes.” Zucker looked at Rizzoli. “That postmortem strand matches the second set of remains?”

  She nodded. “Detective Korsak and I started with the assumption this unsub picked up the strand from his workplace. Now that we know where that hair came from, does it make any sense to keep pursuing the funeral home angle?”

  “Yes,” said Zucker. “And I’ll tell you why. Necrophiles are attracted to corpses. They get a sexual charge out of handling the bodies. Embalming them, dressing them. Applying their makeup. They may try to gain access to this thrill by choosing jobs in the death industry. An embalmer’s assistant, for example, or a mortuary beautician. Keep in mind, that unidentified set of remains may not be a murder victim at all. One of the most well known necrophiles was a psychotic named Ed Gein, who started off by raiding cemeteries. Digging up women’s bodies to bring home. It was only later that he turned to homicide as a means of obtaining corpses.”

  “Oh man,” Frost muttered. “This just keeps getting better.”

  “It’s one aspect of the wide spectrum of human behavior. Necrophiliacs strike us as sick and perverted. But they’ve always been with us, this subsegment of people driven by strange obsessions. Bizarre hungers. Yes, some of them are psychotic. But some of them are perfectly normal in every way.”

  Warren Hoyt was perfectly normal, too.

  It was Gabriel Dean who spoke next. Up till then, he had not said a word during the entire meeting, and Rizzoli was startled to hear his deep baritone.

  “You said that this unsub might return to the woods to visit his harem.”

  “Yes,” said Zucker. “That’s why the stakeout of Stony Brook should continue indefinitely.”

  “And what happens when he discovers his harem has vanished?”

  Zucker paused. “He will not take it well.”

  The words sent a chill up Rizzoli’s spine. They are his lovers. How would any man react when his lover was stolen from him?

  “He’ll be frantic,” said Zucker. “Enraged that someone would take his possessions. And anxious to replace what he’s lost. It will send him hunting again.” Zucker looked at Rizzoli. “You have to keep this out of the media’s eye, as long as possible. The stakeout may be your best chance to catch him. Because he will return to those woods, but only if he thinks it’s safe. Only if he believes the harem is still there, waiting for him.”

  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 unmanned. Rizzoli paused in the hospital corridor, glancing around for a uniformed officer, but saw only a few nurses standing nearby, two of them embracing each other for comfort, the others huddled together and spoke in low tones, faces gray with shock.

  She ducked under the drooping yellow tape and walked unchallenged through the double doors, which automatically hissed open to admit her into the O.R. reception area. She saw the smears and busy tango steps of bloody footprints on the floor. A CST was already packing up his kit. This was a cold scene, picked over and trampled on, just waiting to be released for cleanup.

  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.

  “Ma’am? Ma’am?”

  Two men in plainclothes stood by the instrument cabinet, frowning at her. The taller one crossed toward her, his paper shoe covers sucking against the sticky floor. He was in his mid-thirties, and he carried himself with that cocky air of superiority that all heavily muscled men exhibited. Masculine compensation, she thought, for his rapidly receding hairline.

  Before he could ask the obvious question, she held out her badge. “Jane Rizzoli, Homicide. Boston P.D.”

  “What’s Boston doing here?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know your name,” she answered.

  “Sergeant Canady. Fugitive Apprehension Section.”

  A Massachusetts State Police officer. She started to shake his hand, then saw he was wearing latex gloves. He didn’t seem inclined to offer her the courtesy, in any event.

  “Can we help you?” Canady asked.

  “Maybe I can help you.”

  Canady did not seem particularly thrilled by the offer. “How?”

  She looked at the multiple streamers of blood flung across the wall. “The man who did this—Warren Hoyt—”

  “What about him?”

  “I know him very well.”

  Now the shorter man joined them. He had a pale face and ears like Dumbo’s, and although he, too, was obviously a cop, he did not seem to share Canady’s sense of territoriality. “Hey, I know you. Rizzoli. You’re the one put him away.”

  “I worked with the team.”

  “Naw, you’re the one cornered him out in Lithia.” Unlike Canady, he was not wearing gloves and he gave her a handshake. “Detective Arlen. Fitchburg P.D. You drive all the way out here just for this?”

  “As soon as I heard.” Her gaze drifted back to the walls. “You realize who you’re up against, don’t you?”

  Canady cut in: “We have things under control.”

  “Do you know his history?”

  “We know what he did here.”

  “But do you know him?”

  “We have his files from Souza-Baranowski.”

  “And the guards there had no idea who they were dealing with. Or this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “I’ve never failed to bring one back,” said Canady. “They all make the same mistakes.”

  “Not this one.”

  “He’s only had six hours.”

  “Six hours?” She shook her head. “You’ve already lost him.”

  Canady bristled. “We’re canvassing the neighborhood. Set up roadblocks and vehicle checks. Media’s been alerted, and his photo’s been broadcast on every local TV station. As I said, it’s under control.”

  She didn’t respond but turned her attention back to the ribbons of blood. “Who died in here?” she asked softly.

  It was Arlen who answered. “The anesthetist and the O.R. nurse. Anesthetist was lying there, at that end of the table. The nurse was found over here, by the door.”

  “They didn’t scream? They didn’t alert the guard?”

  “They would have had a hard time making
any noise at all. Both women were slashed right through the larynx.”

  She moved to the head of the table and looked at the metal pole where a bag of I.V. solution hung, the plastic tube and catheter trailing toward a pool of water on the floor. A glass syringe lay shattered beneath the table.

  “They had his I.V. going,” she said.

  “It was started in the E.R.,” said Arlen. “He was moved directly here, after the surgeon examined him downstairs. They diagnosed a ruptured appendix.”

  “Why didn’t the surgeon come up with him? Where was he?”

  “He was seeing another patient in the E.R. Came up probably ten, fifteen minutes after all this happened. Walked through the double doors, saw the dead MCI guard lying out in the reception area, and ran straight for the phone. Practically the entire E.R. staff rushed up, but there was nothing they could do for any of the victims.”

  She looked at the floor and saw the swipes and smears of too many shoes, too much chaos to ever be interpreted.

  “Why wasn’t the guard in here, watching the prisoner?” she asked.

  “The O.R.’s supposed to be a sterile zone. No street clothes allowed. He was probably told to wait outside the room.”

  “But isn’t it MCI policy for their prisoners to be shackled at all times when they’re out of the facility?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even in the O.R., even under anesthesia, Hoyt should have had his leg or arm handcuffed to the table.”

  “He should have.”

  “Did you find the handcuffs?”

  Arlen and Canady glanced at each other.

  Canady said, “The cuffs were lying on the floor, under the table.”

  “So he was shackled.”

  “At one point, yes—”

  “Why would they release him?”

  “A medical reason, maybe?” suggested Arlen. “To start another I.V.? Reposition him?”

  She shook her head. “They’d need the guard in here to unlock the cuffs. The guard wouldn’t walk out, leaving his prisoner in here unshackled.”