The Apprentice: A Novel Read online

  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 Marla 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 Washington.”

  She paused, startled by the abrupt turn in conversation. “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 and 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.

  It is an instinct preordained by our DNA. We are all hunters, seasoned through the eons in nature’s bloody crucible. In this, I am no different from you or anyone else, and I find it some source of amusement how many psychologists and psychiatrists have paraded through my life these past twelve months, seeking to understand me, probing my childhood, as though somewhere in my past there was a moment, an incident, which turned me into the creature I am today. I’m afraid I have disappointed them all, because there was no such defining moment. Rather, I have turned their questions around. Instead I ask them why they think they are any different? Surely they have entertained images they’re ashamed of, images that horrify them, images they cannot suppress?

  I watch, amused, as they deny it. They lie to me, the way they lie to themselves, but I see the uncertainty in their eyes. I like to push them to the edge, force them to stare over the precipice, into the dark well of their fantasies.

  The only difference between them and me is that I am neither ashamed nor horrified by mine.

  But I am classified the sick one. I am the one who needs to be analyzed. So I tell them all the things they secretly want to hear, things I know will fascinate them. During the hour or so in which they visit me, I indulge their curiosity, because that’s the real reason they’ve come to see me. No one else will stoke their fantasies the way I can. No one else will take them to such forbidden territory. Even as they are trying to profile me, I am profiling them, measuring their appetite for blood. As I talk, I watch their faces for the telltales signs of excitement. The dilated pupils. The craning forward of the neck. The flushed cheeks, the bated breath.

  I tell them about my visit to San Gimignano, a town perched in the rolling hills of Tuscany. Strolling among the souvenir shops and the outdoor cafes, I came across a museum devoted entirely to the subject of torture. Right, as you know, up my alley. It is dim inside, the poor lighting meant to reproduce the atmosphere of a medieval dungeon. The gloom also obscures the expressions of the tourists, sparing them the shame of revealing just how eagerly they stare at the displays.

  One display in particular draws everyone’s attention: a Venetian device, dating back to the 1600s, designed to punish women found guilty of sexual congress with Satan. Made of iron, and fashioned into the shape of a pear, it is inserted into the vagina of the unlucky accused. With each turn of a screw, the pear expands, until the cavity ruptures with fatal results. The vaginal pear is only one device in an array of ancient instruments meant to mutilate breasts and genitals in the name of the holy church, which could not abide the sexual powers of women. I am perfectly matter-of-fact as I describe these devices to my doctors, most of whom have never visited such a museum and who would no doubt be embarrassed to admit any desire to see one. But even as I tell them about the four-clawed breast rippers and the mutilating chastity belts, I am watching their eyes. Searching beneath their surface repulsion and horror, to see the undercurrent of excitement. Arousal.

  Oh yes, they all want to hear the details.

  As the plane touched down, Rizzoli closed the file on Warren Hoyt’s letter and looked out the window. She saw gray skies, heavy with rain, and sweat gleaming on the faces of workers standing on the tarmac. It would be a steam bath outside, but she welcomed the heat, because Hoyt’s words so deeply chilled her.

  In the limo ride to the hotel, she stared out through tinted windows at a city she had visited only twice before, the last time for an interagency conference at the FBI’s Hoover Building. On that visit, she had arrived at night, and she remembered how awed she’d been at the sight of the memorials, aglow in floodlights. She remembered a week of hard partying and how she’d tried to match the men beer for beer, bad joke for bad joke. How booze and hormones and a strange city had all added up to a night of desperate sex with a fellow conference attendee, a cop from Providence—marrie
d, of course. This was what Washington meant to her: The city of regrets and stained sheets. The city that had taught her she was not immune to the temptations of a bad cliché. That although she might think she was the equal of any man, when it came to the morning after, she was the one who felt vulnerable.

  In line at the Watergate Hotel registration desk, she eyed the stylish blonde ahead of her. Perfect hair, red shoes with sky-high heels. A woman who looked as if she actually belonged at the Watergate. Rizzoli was painfully aware of her own scuffed and cloddish blue pumps. Girl-cop shoes, meant to be walked in, and walked in a lot. No need for excuses, she thought. This is me; this is who I am. The girl from Revere who hunts monsters for a living. High heels are not what hunters wear.

  “May I help you, ma’am?” a clerk called to her.

  Rizzoli wheeled her bag to the counter. “There should be a reservation. Rizzoli.”

  “Yes, your name’s right here. And there’s a message from a Mr. Dean. Your meeting’s scheduled at three-thirty.”

  “Meeting?”

  He glanced up from his computer screen. “You didn’t know about it?”

  “I guess I do now. Is there an address?”

  “No, ma’am. But a car will be here to pick you up at three.” He handed her a key card and smiled. “Looks like you’re all taken care of.”

  Black clouds smeared the sky, and the tingle of an approaching thunderstorm lifted the hair on her arms. She stood just outside the lobby, sweating in the rain-heavy air, and waited for the limo to arrive. But it was a dark-blue Volvo that swung into the porte cochere and stopped beside her.

  She peered through the passenger window and saw it was Gabriel Dean behind the wheel.

  The lock clicked open and she slid into the seat beside him. She had not expected to face him so soon, and she felt unprepared. Resentful that he appeared so calm and in control while she was still disoriented by the morning’s travel.

  “Welcome to Washington, Jane,” he said. “How was the trip?”

  “Smooth enough. I could get to like riding in limousines.”

  “And the room?”

  “Way better than I’m used to.”

  A ghost of a smile touched his lips as he turned his attention to driving. “So it’s not all torture for you.”

  “Did I say it was?”

  “You don’t look particularly happy to be here.”

  “I’d be a lot happier if I knew why I was here.”

  “It’ll be clear once we get there.”

  She glanced out at the street names and realized they were headed northwest, in the opposite direction from FBI headquarters. “We’re not going to the Hoover Building?”

  “No. Georgetown. He wants to meet you at his house.”

  “Who does?”

  “Senator Conway.” Dean glanced at her. “You’re not carrying, are you?”

  “My weapon’s still packed in my suitcase.”

  “Good. Senator Conway doesn’t allow firearms into his house.”

  “Security concerns?”

  “Peace of mind. He served in Vietnam. He doesn’t need to see any more guns.”

  The first raindrops began to patter on the windshield.

  She sighed. “I wish I could say the same.”

  Senator Conway’s study was furnished in dark wood and leather—a man’s room, with a man’s collection of artifacts, thought Rizzoli, noting the array of Japanese swords mounted on the wall. The silver-haired owner of that collection greeted her with a warm handshake and a quiet voice, but his coal-dark eyes were direct as lasers, and she felt him openly taking her measure. She endured his scrutiny, only because she understood that nothing could proceed unless he was satisfied by what he saw. And what he saw was a woman who stared straight back at him. A woman who cared little about the subtleties of politics but cared greatly about the truth.

  “Please, have a seat, Detective,” he said. “I know you just flew in from Boston. You probably need time to decompress.”

  A secretary brought in a tray of coffee and china cups. Rizzoli curbed her impatience while the coffee was poured, cream and sugar passed around. At last the secretary withdrew, closing the door behind her.

  Conway set down his cup, untouched. He had not really wanted it, and now that the ceremony had been dispensed with, he focused all his attention on her. “It was good of you to come.”

  “I hardly had much of a choice.”

  Her bluntness made him smile. Though Conway observed all the social niceties of handshakes and hospitality, she suspected that he, like most native New Englanders, valued straight talk as much as she did. “Shall we get straight to business, then?”

  She set down her cup as well. “I’d prefer that.”

  Dean was the one who stood and crossed to the desk. He brought a bulging accordion folder back to the sitting area and took out a photograph, which he laid on the coffee table in front of her.

  “June 25, 1999,” he said.

  She stared at the image of a bearded man, sitting slumped, a spray of blood on the whitewashed wall behind his head. He was dressed in dark trousers and a torn white shirt. His feet were bare. On his lap was perched a china cup and saucer.

  She was still reeling, struggling to process the image, when Dean laid a second photograph next to it. “July 15, 1999,” he said.

  Again the victim was a man, this one clean-shaven. Again he had died sitting propped up against a blood-splattered wall.

  Dean set down a third photograph of yet another man. But this one was bloated, his belly taut with the expanding gases of decomposition. “September 12,” he said. “The same year.”

  She sat stunned by this gallery of the dead, laid out so neatly on the cherry-wood table. A record of horror set incongruously among the civilized clutter of coffee cups and teaspoons. As Dean and Conway waited silently, she picked up each photo in turn, forcing herself to take in the details of what made each case unique. But all were variations on the same theme that she had seen played out in the homes of the Yeagers and the Ghents. The silent witness. The conquered, forced to watch the unspeakable.

  “What about the women?” she asked. “There must have been women.”

  Dean nodded. “Only one was positively identified. The wife of case number three. She was found partly buried in the woods about a week after that photo was taken.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Strangulation.”

  “Postmortem sexual assault?”

  “There was fresh semen collected from her remains.”

  Rizzoli took a deep breath. Asked, softly: “And the other two women?”

  “Due to the advanced state of decomposition, their identities could not be confirmed.”

  “But you had remains?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why couldn’t you I.D. them?”

  “Because we were dealing with more than two bodies. Many, many more.”

  She looked up and found herself staring directly into Dean’s eyes. Had he been watching her the whole time, awaiting her startled reaction? In answer to her silent question, he handed her three files.

  She opened the first folder and found an autopsy report on one of the male victims. Automatically she flipped to the last page and read the conclusions:

  Cause of death: massive hemorrhage due to single slash wound, with complete transection of left carotid artery and left jugular vein.

  The Dominator, she thought. It’s his kill.

  She let the pages fall back into place. Suddenly she was staring at the first page of the report. At a detail she had missed in her rush to read the conclusions.

  It was in the second paragraph: Autopsy performed on 16 July 1999, 22:15, in mobile facility located Gjakove, Kosovo.

  She reached for the next two pathology files and focused immediately on the locations of the autopsies.

  Peje, Kosovo.

  Djakovica, Kosovo.

  “The autopsies were done in the field,” said Dean. “Performed, sometimes
, under primitive circumstances. Tents and lantern light. No running water. And so many remains to process that we were overwhelmed.”

  “These were war crimes investigations,” she said.

  He nodded. “I was with the first FBI team that arrived in June 1999. We went at the request of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. ICTY, for short. Sixty-five of us were deployed on that first mission. Our job was to locate and preserve evidence in one of the largest crime scenes in history. We collected ballistic evidence from the massacre sites. We exhumed and autopsied over a hundred Albanian victims, and probably missed hundreds more that we couldn’t find. And the whole time we were there, the killing was still going on.”

  “Vengeance killings,” said Conway. “Completely predictable, given the context of that war. Or any war, for that matter. Both Agent Dean and I are ex-marines. I served in Vietnam, and Agent Dean was in Desert Storm. We’ve seen things we can’t bring ourselves to talk about, things that make us question why we human beings consider ourselves any better than animals. During the war, it was Serbs killing Albanians, and after the war, it was the Albanian KLA killing Serb civilians. There’s plenty of blood on the hands of both sides.”

  “That’s what we thought these homicides were, at first,” said Dean, pointing to the crime scene photos on the coffee table. “Revenge killings in the aftermath of war. It wasn’t our mission to deal with ongoing lawlessness. We were there specifically at the Tribunal’s request, to process war crimes evidence. Not these.”

  “Yet you did process them,” said Rizzoli, looking at the FBI letterhead on the autopsy report. “Why?”

  “Because I recognized them for what they were,” said Dean. “These murders weren’t based on ethnicity. Two of the men were Albanian; one was a Serb. But they all had something in common. They were married to young wives. Attractive wives, who were abducted from their homes. By the third attack, I knew this killer’s signature. I knew what we were dealing with. But these cases fell under the jurisdiction of the local justice system, not the ICTY, which brought us there.”