The Apprentice: A Novel Read online

  The Apprentice

  A Novel

  Tess Gerritsen

  Ballantine Books • New York

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Also by Tess Gerritsen

  Copyright Page

  To Terrina and Mike

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Throughout the writing of this book, I’ve had a wonderful team cheering me on, offering advice, and providing me with the emotional nourishment I needed to keep forging ahead. Many, many thanks to my agent, friend, and guiding light, Meg Ruley, and to Jane Berkey, Don Cleary, and the fabulous folks at the Jane Rotrosen Agency. I owe thanks as well to my superb editor, Linda Marrow, to Gina Centrello, for her unflagging enthusiasm, to Louis Mendez, for keeping me on top of things, and to Gilly Hailparn and Marie Coolman, for supporting me through the sad, dark days after September 11th, and guiding me safely home. Thanks also to Peter Mars for his information on the Boston P.D., and to Selina Walker, my cheerleader on the other side of the pond.

  Finally, my deepest thanks to my husband, Jacob, who knows just how difficult it is to live with a writer—and sticks with me anyway.

  Prologue

  T oday I watched a man die.

  It was an unexpected event, and I still marvel at the fact that this drama unfolded at my very feet. So much of what passes for excitement in our lives cannot be anticipated, and we must learn to savor the spectacles as they come, and appreciate the rare thrills that punctuate the otherwise monotonous passage of time. And my days do pass slowly here, in this world behind walls, where men are merely numbers, distinguished not by our names, nor by our god-given talents, but by the nature of our trespasses. We dress alike, eat the same meals, read the same worn books from the same prison cart. Every day is like another. And then some startling incident reminds us that life can turn on a dime.

  So it happened today, August second, which ripened gloriously hot and sunny, just the way I like it. While the other men sweat and shuffle about like lethargic cattle, I stand in the center of the exercise yard, my face turned to the sun like a lizard soaking up warmth. My eyes are closed, so I do not see the knife’s thrust, nor do I see the man stumble backward and fall. But I hear the rumble of agitated voices, and I open my eyes.

  In a corner of the yard, a man lies bleeding. Everyone else backs away and assumes their usual see-nothing, know-nothing masks of indifference.

  I alone walk toward the fallen man.

  For a moment I stand looking down at him. His eyes are open and sentient; to him, I must be merely a black cutout against the glaring sky. He is young, with white-blond hair, his beard scarcely thicker than down. He opens his mouth and pink froth bubbles out. A red stain is spreading across his chest.

  I kneel beside him and tear open his shirt, baring the wound, which is just to the left of the sternum. The blade has slid in neatly between ribs, and has certainly punctured the lung, and perhaps nicked the pericardium. It is a mortal wound, and he knows it. He tries to speak to me, his lips moving without sound, his eyes struggling to focus. He wants me to bend closer, perhaps to hear some deathbed confession, but I am not the least bit interested in anything he has to say.

  I focus, instead, on his wound. On his blood.

  I am well acquainted with blood. I know it down to its elements. I have handled countless tubes of it, admired its many different shades of red. I have spun it in centrifuges into bicolored columns of packed cells and straw-colored serum. I know its gloss, its silken texture. I have seen it flow in satiny streams out of freshly incised skin.

  The blood pours from his chest like holy water from a sacred spring. I press my palm to the wound, bathing my skin in that liquid warmth, and blood coats my hand like a scarlet glove. He believes I am trying to help him, and a brief spark of gratitude lights his eyes. Most likely this man has not received much charity in his short life; how ironic that I should be mistaken as the face of mercy.

  Behind me, boots shuffle and voices bark commands: “Back! Everyone get back!”

  Someone grasps my shirt and hauls me to my feet. I am shoved backward, away from the dying man. Dust swirls and the air is thick with shouts and curses as we are herded into a corner. The instrument of death, the shiv, lies abandoned on the ground. The guards demand answers, but no one saw anything, no one knows anything.

  No one ever does.

  In the chaos of that yard, I stand slightly apart from the other prisoners, who have always shunned me. I raise my hand, still dripping with the dead man’s blood, and inhale its smooth and metallic fragrance. Just by its scent, I know it is young blood, drawn from young flesh.

  The other prisoners stare at me, and edge even farther away. They know I am different; they have always sensed it. As brutal as these men are, they are leery of me, because they understand who—and what—I am. I search their faces, seeking my blood brother among them. One of my kind. I do not see him, not here, even in this house of monstrous men.

  But he does exist. I know I am not the only one of my kind who walks this earth.

  Somewhere, there is another. And he waits for me.

  one

  Already the flies were swarming. Four hours on the hot pavement of South Boston had baked the pulverized flesh, releasing the chemical equivalent of a dinner bell, and the air was alive with buzzing flies. Though what remained of the torso was now covered with a sheet, there was still much exposed tissue for scavengers to feast on. Bits of gray matter and other unidentifiable parts were dispersed in a radius of thirty feet along the street. A skull fragment had landed in a second-story flower box, and clumps of tissue adhered to parked cars.

  Detective Jane Rizzoli had always possessed a strong stomach, but even she had to pause, eyes closed, fists clenched, angry at herself for this moment of weakness. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it. She was the only female detective in the Boston P.D. homicide unit, and she knew that the pitiless spotlight was always trained on her. Every mistake, every triumph, would be noted by all. Her partner, Barry Frost, had already tossed up his breakfast in humiliatingly public view, and he was now sitting with his head on his knees in their air-conditioned vehicle, waiting for his stomach to settle. She could not afford to fall victim to nausea. She was the most visible law enforcement officer on the scene, and from the other side of the police tape the public stood watching, registering every move she made, every detail of her appearance. She knew she looked younger than her age of thirty-four, and she was self-conscious about maintaining an air of authority. What she lacked in height she compensated for with her direct gaze, her squared shoulders. She had learned the art of dominating a scene, if only through sheer intensity.

  But this heat was sapping her resolve. She had started off dressed in her usual blazer and slacks and with her hair neatly combed. Now the blazer was off, her blouse was wrinkled, and the humidity had fr
izzed her dark hair into unruly coils. She felt assaulted on all fronts by the smells, the flies, and the piercing sunlight. There was too much to focus on all at once. And all those eyes were watching her.

  Loud voices drew her attention. A man in a dress shirt and tie was trying to argue his way past a patrolman.

  “Look, I gotta get to a sales conference, okay? I’m an hour late as it is. But you’ve got your goddamn police tape wrapped around my car, and now you’re saying I can’t drive it? It’s my own friggin’ car!”

  “It’s a crime scene, sir.”

  “It’s an accident!”

  “We haven’t determined that yet.”

  “Does it take you guys all day to figure it out? Why don’t you listen to us? The whole neighborhood heard it happen!”

  Rizzoli approached the man, whose face was glazed with sweat. It was eleven-thirty and the sun, near its zenith, shone down like a glaring eye.

  “What, exactly, did you hear, sir?” she asked.

  He snorted. “Same thing everyone else did.”

  “A loud bang.”

  “Yeah. Around seven-thirty. I was just getting outta the shower. Looked out my window, and there he was, lying on the sidewalk. You can see it’s a bad corner. Asshole drivers come flying around it like bats outta hell. Must’ve been a truck hit him.”

  “Did you see a truck?”

  “Naw.”

  “Hear a truck?”

  “Naw.”

  “And you didn’t see a car, either?”

  “Car, truck.” He shrugged. “It’s still a hit-and-run.”

  It was the same story, repeated half a dozen times by the man’s neighbors. Sometime between seven-fifteen and seven-thirty A.M., there’d been a loud bang in the street. No one actually saw the event. They had simply heard the noise and found the man’s body. Rizzoli had already considered, and rejected, the possibility that he was a jumper. This was a neighborhood of two-story buildings, nothing tall enough to explain such catastrophic damage to a jumper’s body. Nor did she see any evidence of an explosion as the cause of this much anatomical disintegration.

  “Hey, can I get my car out now?” the man said. “It’s that green Ford.”

  “That one with the brains splattered on the trunk?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think?” she snapped, and walked away to join the medical examiner, who was crouched in the middle of the road, studying the asphalt. “People on this street are jerks,” said Rizzoli. “No one gives a damn about the victim. No one knows who he is, either.”

  Dr. Ashford Tierney didn’t look up at her but just kept staring at the road. Beneath sparse strands of silver hair, his scalp glistened with sweat. Dr. Tierney seemed older and more weary than she had ever seen him. Now, as he tried to rise, he reached out in a silent request for assistance. She took his hand and she could feel, transmitted through that hand, the creak of tired bones and arthritic joints. He was an old southern gentleman, a native of Georgia, and he’d never warmed to Rizzoli’s Boston bluntness, just as she had never warmed to his formality. The only thing they had in common was the human remains that passed across Dr. Tierney’s autopsy table. But as she helped him to his feet, she was saddened by his frailty and reminded of her own grandfather, whose favorite grandchild she had been, perhaps because he’d recognized himself in her pride, her tenaciousness. She remembered helping him out of his easy chair, how his stroke-numbed hand had rested like a claw on her arm. Even men as fierce as Aldo Rizzoli are ground down by time to brittle bones and joints. She could see its effect in Dr. Tierney, who wobbled in the heat as he took out his handkerchief and dabbed the sweat from his forehead.

  “This is one doozy of a case to close out my career,” he said. “So tell me, are you coming to my retirement party, Detective?”

  “Uh . . . what party?” said Rizzoli.

  “The one you all are planning to surprise me with.”

  She sighed. Admitted, “Yeah, I’m coming.”

  “Ha. I always could get a straight answer from you. Is it next week?”

  “Two weeks. And I didn’t tell you, okay?”

  “I’m glad you did.” He looked down at the asphalt. “I don’t much like surprises.”

  “So what do we have here, Doc? Hit-and-run?”

  “This seems to be the point of impact.”

  Rizzoli looked down at the large splash of blood. Then she looked at the sheet-draped corpse, which was lying a good twelve feet away, on the sidewalk.

  “You’re saying he first hit the ground here, and then bounced way over there?” said Rizzoli.

  “It would appear so.”

  “That’s got to be a pretty big truck to cause this much splatter.”

  “Not a truck,” was Tierney’s enigmatic answer. He started walking along the road, eyes focused downward.

  Rizzoli followed him, batting at swarms of flies. Tierney came to a stop about thirty feet away and pointed to a grayish clump on the curb.

  “More brain matter,” he noted.

  “A truck didn’t do this?” said Rizzoli.

  “No. Or a car, either.”

  “What about the tire marks on the vic’s shirt?”

  Tierney straightened, his eyes scanning the street, the sidewalks, the buildings. “Do you notice something quite interesting about this scene, Detective?”

  “Apart from the fact there’s a dead guy over there who’s missing his brain?”

  “Look at the point of impact.” Tierney gestured toward the spot in the road where he’d been crouching earlier. “See the dispersal pattern of body parts?”

  “Yeah. He splattered in all directions. Point of impact is at the center.”

  “Correct.”

  “It’s a busy street,” said Rizzoli. “Vehicles do come around that corner too fast. Plus, the vic has tire marks on his shirt.”

  “Let’s go look at those marks again.”

  As they walked back to the corpse, they were joined by Barry Frost, who had finally emerged from the car, looking wan and a little embarrassed.

  “Man, oh man,” he groaned.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “You think maybe I picked up the stomach flu or something?”

  “Or something.” She’d always liked Frost, had always appreciated his sunny and uncomplaining nature, and she hated to see his pride laid so low. She gave him a pat on the shoulder, a motherly smile. Frost seemed to invite mothering, even from the decidedly unmaternal Rizzoli. “I’ll just pack you a barf bag next time,” she offered.

  “You know,” he said, trailing after her, “I really do think it’s just the flu. . . .”

  They reached the torso. Tierney grunted as he squatted down, his joints protesting the latest insult, and lifted the disposable sheet. Frost blanched and retreated a step. Rizzoli fought the impulse to do the same.

  The torso had broken into two parts, separated at the level of the umbilicus. The top half, wearing a beige cotton shirt, stretched east to west. The bottom half, wearing blue jeans, lay north to south. The halves were connected by only a few strands of skin and muscle. The internal organs had spilled out and lay in a pulpified mass. The back half of the skull had shattered open, and the brain had been ejected.

  “Young male, well nourished, appears to be of Hispanic or Mediterranean origin, in his twenties to thirties,” said Tierney. “I see obvious fractures of the thoracic spine, ribs, clavicles, and skull.”

  “Couldn’t a truck do this?” Rizzoli asked.

  “It’s certainly possible a truck could have caused massive injuries like these.” He looked at Rizzoli, his pale-blue eyes challenging hers. “But no one heard or saw such a vehicle. Did they?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” she admitted.

  Frost finally managed a comment. “You know, I don’t think those are tire tracks on his shirt.”

  Rizzoli focused on the black streaks across the front of the victim’s shirt. With a gloved hand, she touched one of the smears, and look
ed at her finger. A smudge of black had transferred to her latex glove. She stared at it for a moment, processing this new information.

  “You’re right,” she said. “It’s not a tire track. It’s grease.”

  She straightened and looked at the road. She saw no bloody tire marks, no auto debris. No pieces of glass or plastic that would have shattered on impact with a human body.

  For a moment, no one spoke. They just looked at one another, as the only possible explanation suddenly clicked into place. As if to confirm the theory, a jet roared overhead. Rizzoli squinted upward, to see a 747 glide past, on its landing approach to Logan International Airport, five miles to the northeast.

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Frost, shading his eyes against the sun. “What a way to go. Please tell me he was already dead when he fell.”

  “There’s a good chance of it,” said Tierney. “I would guess his body slipped out as the wheels came down, on landing approach. That’s assuming it was an inbound flight.”

  “Well, yeah,” said Rizzoli. “How many stowaways are trying to get out of the country?” She looked at the dead man’s olive complexion. “So he’s coming in on a plane, say, from South America—”

  “It would’ve been flying at an altitude of at least thirty thousand feet,” said Tierney. “Wheel wells aren’t pressurized. A stowaway would be dealing with rapid decompression. Frostbite. Even in high summer, the temperatures at those altitudes are freezing. A few hours under those conditions, he’d be hypothermic and unconscious from lack of oxygen. Or already crushed when the landing gear retracted on takeoff. A prolonged ride in the wheel well would probably finish him off.”

  Rizzoli’s pager cut into the lecture. And a lecture it would surely turn into; Dr. Tierney was just beginning to hit his professorial stride. She glanced at the number on her beeper but did not recognize it. A Newton prefix. She reached for her cell phone and dialed.

  “Detective Korsak,” a man answered.

  “This is Rizzoli. Did you page me?”

  “You on a cell phone, Detective?”