The Apprentice: A Novel

by Tess Gerritsen

  Unruffled, O’Donnell replied: “As law enforcement, you see only the end result. The brutality, the violence. Terrible crimes that are the natural consequence of what these men have experienced.”

  “And what do you see?”

  “What came before, in their lives.”

  “Now you’re going to tell me it’s all due to their unhappy childhoods.”

  “Do you know anything about Warren’s childhood?”

  Rizzoli could feel her blood pressure rising. She had no desire to talk about the roots of Hoyt’s obsessions. “His victims don’t give a damn about his childhood. And neither do I.”

  “But do you know about it?”

  “I’m told it was perfectly normal. I know he had a better childhood than a lot of men who don’t cut up women.”

  “Normal.” O’Donnell seemed to find this word amusing. She looked at Dean for the first time since they’d all sat down. “Agent Dean, why don’t you give us your definition of normal?”

  A look passed between them, hostile echoes of an old battle not fully resolved. But whatever emotions Dean was now feeling did not register in his voice. He said, calmly: “Detective Rizzoli is asking the questions. I suggest you answer them, Doctor.”

  That he had not already wrestled away control of the interview surprised Rizzoli. Dean struck her as a man accustomed to taking control, yet in this he had ceded to her and had chosen instead the role of observer.

  She had allowed her anger to scattershoot the conversation. Now it was time to reclaim command, and for that she would need to keep her anger in check. To proceed calmly and methodically.

  She asked, “When did you start writing to each other?”

  O’Donnell responded, just as businesslike: “About three months ago.”

  “And why did you decide to write him?”

  “Wait a minute.” O’Donnell gave a startled laugh. “You have it wrong. I didn’t initiate this correspondence.”

  “Are you saying Hoyt did?”

  “Yes. He wrote me first. He said he’d heard of my work on the neurology of violence. He knew I’d been a defense witness in other trials.”

  “He wanted to hire you?”

  “No. He knew there was no chance his sentence could be altered. Not at this late date. But he thought I’d be interested in his case. I was.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you asking why was I interested?”

  “Why would you waste any time writing to someone like Hoyt?”

  “He’s exactly the sort of person I want to know more about.”

  “He’s been seen by half a dozen shrinks. There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s perfectly normal, except for the fact he likes to kill women. He likes to tie them down and slice open their abdomens. It turns him on to play surgeon. Except he does it while they’re wide awake. While they know exactly what he’s doing to them.”

  “Yet you called him normal.”

  “He’s not insane. He knew what he was doing, and he enjoyed it.”

  “So you believe he was simply born evil.”

  “That’s exactly the word I’d use for him,” said Rizzoli.

  O’Donnell regarded her for a moment with a gaze that seemed to bore straight into her. How much did she see? Did her psychiatric training enable her to peer through one’s public mask, to see the traumatized flesh below?

  Abruptly O’Donnell rose to her feet. “Why don’t you come into my office?” she said. “There’s something you should see.”

  Rizzoli and Dean followed her down a hallway, shoes muffled by the wine-red carpet running the length of the corridor. The room she led them into was a stark contrast to the richly decorated sitting room. O’Donnell’s office was devoted strictly to business: white walls, bookshelves lined with reference texts, and standard metal filing cabinets. Walking into this room, thought Rizzoli, would snap one instantly into work mode. And it seemed to have precisely that effect on O’Donnell. With grim purpose, she crossed to her desk, snatched up an X-ray envelope, and carried it to a viewing box mounted on the wall. She thrust a film into the clips and flipped a switch.

  The viewing box flickered on, backlighting an image of a human skull.

  “Frontal view,” said O’Donnell. “A twenty-eight-year-old white male construction worker. He was a law-abiding citizen described as considerate, a good husband. A loving father to his six-year-old daughter. Then he was hurt at a work site when a beam swung into his head.” She looked at her two visitors. “Agent Dean probably sees it already. How about you, Detective?”

  Rizzoli moved closer to the light box. She did not often study X rays, and she could only focus on the broader picture: the dome of the cranium, the twin hollows of the eye sockets, the picket fence of teeth.

  “I’ll put up the lateral view,” said O’Donnell, and she slid a second X ray onto the box. “Do you see it now?”

  The second film showed the skull in profile. Rizzoli could now see a fine web of fracture lines radiating backward from the front of the cranium. She pointed to them.

  O’Donnell nodded. “He was unconscious when they brought him into the E.R. A CT scan showed hemorrhaging, with a large subdural hematoma—a collection of blood—pressing on the frontal lobes of his brain. The blood was surgically drained, and he went on to recover. Or rather, he appeared to recover. He went home and eventually returned to work. But he was not the same man. Again and again, he lost his temper on the job and was fired. He began to sexually molest his daughter. Then, after an argument with his wife, he beat her so brutally her corpse was unrecognizable. He started pounding and he couldn’t stop. Even after he’d shattered most of her teeth. Even when her face was reduced to nothing but pulp and bone fragments.”

  “You’re going to tell me it can all be blamed on that?” said Rizzoli, pointing to the fractured skull.

  “Yes.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “Look at that film, Detective. See where the fracture is located? Consider which part of the brain lies right beneath it.” She turned and looked at Dean.

  He met her gaze without expression. “The frontal lobes,” he said.

  A faint smile twitched on O’Donnell’s lips. Clearly she enjoyed the chance to challenge an old rival.

  Rizzoli said, “What’s the point of this X ray?”

  “I was called in by the man’s defense attorney to perform a neuropsychiatric evaluation. I used what we call the Wisconsin Card Sort Test and a Category Test from the Halstead-Reitan Battery. I also ordered an MRI—magnetic resonance imaging—scan of his brain. All of them pointed to the same conclusion: This man suffered severe damage to both his frontal lobes.”

  “Yet you said he fully recovered from the injury.”

  “He appeared to recover.”

  “Was he brain-damaged or wasn’t he?”

  “Even with extensive damage to the frontal lobes, you can still walk and talk and perform daily functions. You could have a conversation with someone who’s had a frontal lobotomy and you might not detect anything wrong. But he is most certainly damaged.” She pointed to the X ray. “What this man has is called frontal disinhibition syndrome. The frontal lobes affect our foresight and judgment. Our ability to control inappropriate impulses. If they’re damaged, you become socially disinhibited. You display inappropriate behavior, without any feelings of guilt or emotional pain. You lose the ability to control your violent impulses. And we all have them, those moments of rage, when we want to strike back. Ram our car into someone who’s cut us off in traffic. I’m sure you know what it feels like, Detective. To be so angry you want to hurt someone.”

  Rizzoli said nothing, silenced by the truth of O’Donnell’s words.

  “Society thinks of violent acts as manifestations of evil or immorality. We’re told we have ultimate control over our own behavior, that each and every one of us has the free will to choose not to hurt another human being. But it’s not just morality that guides us. Biology does as well. Our frontal lobes help us
integrate thoughts and actions. They help us weigh the consequences of those actions. Without such control, we’d give in to every wild impulse. That’s what happened to this man. He lost the ability to control his behavior. He had sexual feelings toward his daughter, so he molested her. His wife made him angry, so he beat her to death. From time to time, we all have disturbing or inappropriate thoughts, however fleeting. We see an attractive stranger, and sex flashes into our heads. That’s all it is—just a brief thought. But what if we gave in to the impulse? What if we couldn’t stop ourselves? That sexual impulse could lead to rape. Or worse.”

  “And that was his defense? ‘My brain made me do it’?”

  Annoyance sparked in O’Donnell’s eyes. “Frontal disinhibition syndrome is an accepted diagnosis among neurologists.”

  “Yeah, but did it work in court?”

  A cold pause. “Our legal system is still working with a nineteenth-century definition of insanity. Is it any wonder the courts are ignorant of neurology as well? This man is now on death row in Oklahoma.” Grimly O’Donnell jerked the films from the light box and slid them into the envelope.

  “What does this have to do with Warren Hoyt?”

  O’Donnell crossed to her desk, picked up another X-ray envelope and withdrew a new pair of films, which she clipped onto the light box. It was another set of skull films, a frontal and lateral view, but smaller. A child’s skull.

  “This boy fell while climbing a fence,” said O’Donnell. “He landed facedown, hitting his head on pavement. Look here, on this frontal view. You can see a tiny crack, running upward about the level of his left eyebrow. A fracture.”

  “I see it,” said Rizzoli.

  “Look at the patient’s name.”

  Rizzoli focused on the small square at the edge of the film, containing identifying data. What she saw made her go very still.

  “He was ten years old at the time of the injury,” said O’Donnell. “A normal, active boy growing up in a wealthy Houston suburb. At least, that’s what his pediatric records indicate, and what his elementary school reported. A healthy child, above-average intelligence. Played well with others.”

  “Until he grew up and started killing them.”

  “Yes, but why did Warren start killing?” O’Donnell pointed to the films. “This injury could be a factor.”

  “Hey, I fell off a jungle gym when I was seven. Whacked my head against one of the bars. I’m not out there slicing people.”

  “Yet you do hunt humans. Just as he does. You are, in fact, a professional hunter.”

  Rage blasted Rizzoli’s face with heat. “How can you compare me to him?”

  “I’m not, Detective. But consider what you’re feeling right now. You’d probably like to slap me, wouldn’t you? So what’s stopping you? What is it that holds you back? Is it morality? Good manners? Or is it just cool logic, informing you that there’ll be consequences? The certainty that you’ll be arrested? All these considerations together keep you from assaulting me. And it’s in your frontal lobes where this mental processing takes place. Thanks to those intact neurons, you’re able to control your destructive impulses.” O’Donnell paused. And added with a knowing look, “Most of the time.”

  Those last words, aimed like a spear, found their mark. It was a tender point of vulnerability. Only a year ago, during the Surgeon investigation, Rizzoli had made a terrible mistake that would forever shame her. In the heat of a chase, she had shot and killed an unarmed man. She stared back at O’Donnell and saw the glint of satisfaction in the other woman’s eyes.

  Dean broke the silence. “You told us Hoyt was the one who contacted you. What was he hoping to gain by all this? Attention? Sympathy?”

  “How about plain human understanding?” said O’Donnell.

  “Is that all he asked from you?”

  “Warren is struggling for answers. He doesn’t know what drives him to kill. He does know he’s different. And he wants to know why.”

  “He actually told you this?”

  O’Donnell went to her desk and picked up a file folder. “I have his letters here. And the videotape of our interview.”

  “You went to Souza-Baranowski?”

  “Yes.”

  “At whose suggestion?”

  O’Donnell hesitated. “We both thought it would be helpful.”

  “But who actually brought up the idea of a meeting?”

  It was Rizzoli who answered the question for O’Donnell. “He did. Didn’t he? Hoyt asked for the meeting.”

  “It may have been his suggestion. But we both wanted to do it.”

  “You don’t have the faintest idea why he really asked you there,” said Rizzoli. “Do you?”

  “We had to meet. I can’t evaluate a patient without seeing him face-to-face.”

  “And while you were sitting there, face-to-face, what do you suppose he was thinking?”

  O’Donnell’s expression was dismissive. “You would know?”

  “Oh yeah. I know exactly what goes on in the Surgeon’s head.” Rizzoli had found her voice again, and the words came out cold and relentless. “He asked you to come because he wanted to scope you out. He does that with women. Smiles at us, talks nicely to us. It’s in his school records, isn’t it? ‘Polite young man,’ the teachers said. I bet he was polite when you met him, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, he was—”

  “Just an ordinary, cooperative guy.”

  “Detective, I’m not so naive as to think he’s a normal man. But he was cooperative. And he was troubled by his actions. He wants to understand the reasons for his behavior.”

  “So you told him it was because of that bonk on the head.”

  “I told him the head injury was a contributing factor.”

  “He must have been happy to hear that. To have an excuse for what he did.”

  “I gave him my honest opinion.”

  “You know what else made him happy?”

  “What?”

  “Being in the same room with you. You did sit in the same room, didn’t you?”

  “We met in the interview room. There was continuous video surveillance.”

  “But there was no barrier between you. No protective window. No Plexiglas.”

  “He never threatened me.”

  “He could lean right up to you. Study your hair, smell your skin. He particularly likes to smell a woman’s scent. It turns him on. What really arouses him is the smell of fear. Dogs can smell fear, did you know that? When we get scared, we release hormones that animals can detect. Warren Hoyt can smell it, too. He’s like any other creature who hunts. He picks up the scent of fear, of vulnerability. It feeds his fantasies. And I can imagine what his fantasies were when he sat in that room with you. I’ve seen what those fantasies lead to.”

  O’Donnell tried to laugh but couldn’t quite pull it off. “If you’re trying to scare me—”

  “You have a long neck, Dr. O’Donnell. I guess some would call it a swan neck. He would have noticed that. Didn’t you catch him, just once, staring at your throat?”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Didn’t his eyes sort of glance down, every so often? Maybe you thought he was looking at your breasts, the way other men do. But not Warren. He doesn’t seem to care much about breasts. It’s throats he’s attracted to. He thinks of a woman’s throat as dessert. The part he can’t wait to slice into. After he finishes with another part of her anatomy.”

  Flushing, O’Donnell turned to Dean. “Your partner’s way out of line here.”

  “No,” said Dean quietly. “I think Detective Rizzoli’s right on target.”

  “This is sheer intimidation.”

  Rizzoli laughed. “You were in a room with Warren Hoyt. And you didn’t feel intimidated then?”

  O’Donnell fixed her with a cold stare. “It was a clinical interview.”

  “You thought it was. But he considered it something else.” Rizzoli moved toward her, a move of quiet aggression that was not lost on O’Donne
ll. Though O’Donnell was taller and more imposing in both stature and status, she could not match Rizzoli’s unrelenting fierceness, and she flushed even deeper as Rizzoli’s words continued to pummel her.

  “He was polite, you said. Cooperative. Well, of course. He had exactly what he wanted: a woman in the room with him. A woman sitting close enough to get him excited. He hides it, though; he’s good at that. Good at holding a perfectly normal conversation, even as he’s thinking about cutting your throat.”

  “You are out of control,” said O’Donnell.

  “You think I’m just trying to scare you?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Here’s something that should really scare the shit out of you. Warren Hoyt got a good whiff of you. He’s been turned on by you. Now he’s out, and he’s hunting again. And guess what? He never forgets a woman’s scent.”

  O’Donnell stared back, fear at last registering in her eyes. Rizzoli could not help but derive some satisfaction from seeing that fear. She wanted O’Donnell to have a taste of what she herself had suffered this past year.

  “Get used to being afraid,” said Rizzoli. “Because you need to be.”

  “I’ve worked with men like him,” said O’Donnell. “I know when to be afraid.”

  “Hoyt is different from anyone you’ve ever met.”

  O’Donnell gave a laugh. Her bravado had returned, braced by pride. “They’re all different. All unique. And I never turn my back on any of them.”

  seventeen

  My dear Dr. O’Donnell,

  You asked about my earliest childhood memories. I have heard that few people retain memories of their lives from before the age of three, because the immature brain has not acquired the ability to process language, and we need language to interpret the sights and sounds we experience during infancy. Whatever the explanation for childhood amnesia may be, it does not apply to me, as I remember certain details of my childhood quite well. I can call to mind distinct images which, I believe, date back to when I was about eleven months old. No doubt you’ll dismiss these as fabricated memories, built on stories I must have heard from my parents. I assure you, these memories are quite real, and if my parents were alive, they would tell you that my recollections are accurate and could not have been based on any stories I might have heard. By the very nature of the images, these were not events my family was likely to talk about.