The Apprentice (33 page)

“There were no other wounds?” asked Rizzoli.

“Just the neck. Like an execution.”

“Stun gun marks?”

Gorman paused. “You know, he was here about two days when the housekeeper found him. Two warm days. By then, the skin wasn’t looking too good. Not to mention smelling too good. Could’ve easily missed a stun gun mark.”

“Did you ever examine this floor under an alternate light source?”

“It was pretty much a bloody mess in here. I’m not sure what we would have seen under a Luma-lite. But it’s all on the crime scene video.” He glanced around the room and spotted the TV and VCR. “Why don’t we take a look at it? It should answer most of your questions.” Rizzoli crossed to the TV, pressed the ON buttons, and inserted the tape into the slot. The Home Shopping Network blared from the TV, featuring a zirconium pendant necklace for only $99.95, its facets sparkling on the throat of a swan-necked model.

“These things drive me crazy,” Rizzoli said, fiddling with two different remotes. “I never did learn how to program mine.” She glanced at Frost.

“Hey, don’t ask me.”

Gorman sighed and took the remote. The zirconium-bedecked model suddenly vanished, replaced by a view of the Waites’ driveway. Wind hissed in the microphone, distorting the cameraman’s voice as he stated his name,
Detective
Pardee,
the time, date, and location. It was
five P.M. on June 2, a blustery day, the trees swaying. Pardee turned the camera toward the house and began walking up the steps, the camera’s image jittering on the TV. Rizzoli saw geraniums blooming in pots, the same geraniums that were now dead from neglect. A voice was heard, calling to Pardee, and the screen went blank for a few seconds.

“The front door was found unlocked,” said Gorman. “Housekeeper said that wasn’t unusual. People around here often leave their doors unlocked. She assumed someone was home, since Maria Jean never goes anywhere. She knocked first, but there was no answer.”

A fresh image suddenly sprang into view on-screen, the camera aimed through the open doorway, straight into the living room. This was what the housekeeper must have registered as she opened the door. As the stench, and the horror, washed over her.

“She took maybe one step into the house,” said Gorman. “Saw Kenny up against the far wall. And all that blood. Doesn’t remember seeing much of anything else. Just wanted to get the hell out of the house. Jumped in her car and hit the gas pedal so hard her tires dug tracks in the gravel.”

The camera moved into the room, panning across furniture, closing in on the main event: Kenneth Waite III, dressed only in boxer shorts, his head lolling to his chest. Early decomposition had bloated his features. The gas-filled abdomen ballooned out, and the face was swollen beyond resemblance to anything human. But it wasn’t the face she focused on; it was the object of incongruous delicacy, placed on his thighs.

“We didn’t
know what to make of that
,
” said Gorman. “It looked to me like some sort of symbolic artifact. That’s how I
classified it. A way
of ridiculing
the
victim. ‘Look at me, all tied up, with this stupid teacup on my lap.’ It’s just what a wife might do to her husband, to show how much she despises him.” He sighed. “But that’s when I thought it might be Maria Jean who did it.”

The camera turned from the corpse and was moving up the hallway now. Retracing the killer’s steps, toward the bedroom where Kenny and Maria Jean had slept. The image swayed like the stomach-churning view through the porthole of a rocking ship. The camera paused at each doorway to offer a glimpse inside. First a bathroom, then a guest bedroom. As it continued up the hallway, Rizzoli’s pulse quickened. Without realizing it, she had stepped closer to the TV, as though she, and not Pardee, were the one walking up that long corridor.

Suddenly a view of the master bedroom swung onto the screen. Windows with green damask curtains. A dresser and wardrobe, both painted white, and the closet door. A four-poster bed, the covers pulled back, almost stripped off.

“They were surprised while sleeping,” said Gorman. “Kenny’s stomach was almost empty of food. At the time he was killed, he hadn’t eaten for at least eight hours.”

Rizzoli moved even closer to the TV, her gaze rapidly scanning the screen. Now Pardee turned back to the hallway.

“Rewind it,” she said to Gorman.

“Why?”

“Just go back. To when we first see the bedroom.”

Gorman handed her the remote. “It’s yours.”

She hit REWIND, and the tape whined backward. Once again Pardee was in the hallway, approaching the master bedroom. Once again, the view swept toward the right, slowly panning across the dresser, the wardrobe, the closet doors, then focusing on the bed. Frost was now standing right beside her, searching for the same thing.

She hit PAUSE. “It’s not there.”

“What isn’t?” said Gorman.

“The folded nightclothes.” She turned to him. “You didn’t find any?”

“I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

“It’s part of the Dominator’s signature. He folds the woman’s nightclothes. Displays them in the bedroom as a symbol of his control.”

“If it’s him, he didn’t do it here.”

“Everything else about this matches him. The duct tape, the teacup on the lap. The position of the male victim.”

“What you see is what we found.”

“You’re sure nothing was moved before the video was filmed?”

It was not a tactful question, and Gorman stiffened. “Well, I guess it’s always
possible
the first officer on the scene walked in here and decided to move stuff around, just to make things interesting for us.”

Frost, ever the diplomat, stepped in to smooth the chop that Rizzoli so often trailed in her wake. “It’s not like this perp keeps a checklist. Looks like this time, he varied it a little.”

“If it’s the same guy,” Gorman said.

Rizzoli turned from the TV and looked, once again, at the wall where Kenny had died and slowly bloated in the heat. She thought of the Yeagers and the Ghents, of duct tape and sleeping victims, of the many-stranded web of details that bound these cases so tightly to one another.

But here, in this house, the Dominator left out a step. He did not fold the nightclothes. Because he and Hoyt were not yet a team.

She remembered the afternoon in the Yeagers’ house, her gaze frozen on Gail Yeager’s nightgown, and she remembered the bone-chilling sense of familiarity.

Only with the Yeagers did the Surgeon and the Dominator begin their alliance. That was the day they lured me into the game, with a folded nightgown. Even from prison, Warren Hoyt managed to send me his calling card.

She looked at Gorman, who had settled onto one of the sheet-draped chairs and was once again wiping the sweat from his face. Already this meeting had drained him, and he was fading before their eyes.

“You never identified any suspects?” she asked.

“No one we could hang a hat on. That’s after four, five hundred interviews.”

“And the Waites, as far as you know, weren’t acquainted with either the Yeagers or the Ghents?”

“Those names never came up. Look, you’ll get copies of all our files in a day or two. You can cross-check everything we have.” Gorman folded up his handkerchief and slipped it back in his jacket pocket. “You might want to check the FBI as well,” he added. “See if they have anything to add.”

Rizzoli paused. “The FBI?”

“We sent a VICAP report way back. An agent from their behavioral unit came up. Spent a few weeks monitoring our investigation, then went back to Washington. Haven’t heard a word from him since.”

Rizzoli and Frost looked at each other. She saw her own astonishment reflected in his eyes.

Gorman slowly rose from the chair and took out the keys, a hint that he would like to end this meeting. Only as he was walking toward the door did Rizzoli finally summon the voice to ask the obvious question. Even though she did not want to hear the answer.

“The FBI agent who came up here,” she said. “Do you remember his name?”

Gorman paused in the doorway, clothes drooping on his gaunt frame. “Yes. His name was Gabriel Dean.”

She drove straight through the afternoon and into the night, her eyes on the dark highway, her mind on Gabriel Dean. Frost had dozed off beside her, and she was alone with her own thoughts, her rage. What else had Dean withheld from her? she wondered. What other information had he hoarded while watching her scramble for answers? From the very beginning, he had been a few steps ahead of her. The first to reach the dead security guard in the cemetery. The first to spot Karenna Ghent’s body posed atop the grave. The first to suggest the wet prep during Gail Yeager’s autopsy. He had already known, before any of them, that it would reveal live sperm.
Because he’s encountered the Dominator before
.

But what Dean had not anticipated was that the Dominator would take a partner.
That’s when Dean showed up at my apartment. That’s the first time he took an interest in me. Because I had something he wanted, something he needed. I was his guide into the mind of Warren Hoyt
.

Beside her Frost gave a noisy snort in his sleep. She glanced at him and saw that his jaw hung slack, the picture of unguarded innocence. Not once, in all the time they’d worked together, had she seen a dark side to Barry Frost. But Dean’s deception had so thoroughly shaken her that now, looking at Frost, she wondered what he, too, concealed from her. What cruelties even he kept hidden from view.

It was nearly nine when she finally walked into her apartment. As always, she took the time to secure the locks on her door, but this time it was not fear that possessed her as she fastened the chain and turned the dead bolts, but anger. She drove the last bolt home with a hard snap, then walked straight to the bedroom without pausing to perform her usual rituals of checking the closets and glancing into every room. Dean’s betrayal had temporarily driven out all thoughts of Warren Hoyt. She unbuckled her holster, slid the weapon into her night-stand drawer, and slammed the drawer shut. Then she turned and looked at herself in the dresser mirror, disgusted by what she saw. The medusa’s cap of unruly hair. The wounded gaze. The face of a woman who has let a man’s attractions blind her to the obvious.

The ringing phone startled her. She stared down at the Caller ID display: Washington D.C.

The phone rang twice, three times, as she marshaled control over her emotions. When at last she answered it, she greeted the caller with a cool: “Rizzoli.”

“I understand you’ve been trying to reach me,” said Dean.

She closed her eyes. “You’re in Washington,” she said, and though she tried to keep the hostility out of her voice, the words came out like an accusation.

“I was called back last night. I’m sorry we didn’t get the chance to talk before I left.”

“And what would you have told me? The truth, for a change?”

“You have to understand, this is a highly sensitive case.”

“And that’s why you never told me about Maria Jean Waite?”

“It wasn’t immediately vital to your part of the investigation.”

“Who the hell are you to decide? Oh, wait a minute! I forgot. You’re the fucking
FBI
.”

“Jane,” he said quietly. “I want you to come to Washngton.”

She paused, startled by the abrupt turn in conversanon. “Why?”

“Because we can’t talk about this over the phone.”

“You expect me to jump on a plane without knowing why?”

“I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think it was necessary. It’s already been cleared with Lieutenant Marquette, through OPC. Someone will be calling you with the arrangements.”

“Wait. I don’t understand—”

“You will. When you get here.” The line went dead.

Slowly she set down the receiver. Stood staring at the phone, not believing what she’d just heard. When it rang again, she picked it up at once.

“Detective Jane Rizzoli?” a woman’s voice said.

“Speaking.”

“I’m calling to make arrangements for your trip to Washington tomorrow. I could book you on US Airways, flight six-five-two-one, leaving Boston twelve noon, arriving in Washington, one-thirty-six P.M. Is that all right?”

“Just a second.” Rizzoli grabbed a pen and notepad began to write the flight information. “That sounds fine.”

“And returning to Boston on Thursday, there’s a US Airways flight six-four-oh-six, leaving Washington nine-thirty A.M., arriving Boston ten-fifty-three.”

“I’m staying there overnight?”

“That was the request from Agent Dean. We have you booked into the Watergate Hotel, unless there’s another hotel you’d prefer.”

“No. The, uh, Watergate will be fine.”

“A limousine will pick you up at your apartment at ten o’clock tomorrow and take you to the airport. There’ll be another one to meet you when you arrive in D.C. May I have your fax number, please?”

Moments later, Rizzoli’s fax machine began to print. She sat on the bed, staring at the neatly typed itinerary and bewildered by the speed with which events were unfolding. At that moment, more than anything, she longed to talk to Thomas Moore, to ask for his advice. She reached for the phone, then slowly put it down again. Dean’s caution had thoroughly spooked her, and she no longer trusted the security of her own phone line.

It suddenly occurred to her that she had not performed her nightly ritual of checking the apartment. Now she felt driven to confirm that all was secure in her fortress. She reached in the nightstand drawer and took out her weapon. Then, as she had done every night for the past year, she went from room to room, searching for monsters.

Dear Dr. O’Donnell,

In your last letter, you asked me at what point did
I know that I was different from everyone else. To be honest, I’m not
certain that I am different. I think that I am simply more honest, more aware.
More in touch with the same primitive urges that whisper to us all.

I’m certain that you also hear these whispers,
that forbidden images must sometimes flash through your mind like lightning,
illuminating, just for an instant, the bloody landscape of your dark subconscious.
Or you’ll walk through the woods and spot a bright and unusual bird, and
your very first impulse, before the boot heel of higher morality crushes it,
is the urge to hunt it down. To kill it.