Tess Gerritsen's Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Bundle Page 51

  “Variations on a theme,” she said. “Women and pain. How many ways can you defile a body? How many ways can you inflict torture? Warren had a pattern he stuck to for several years. Maybe he’s ready to expand his horizons.”

  “Or this unsub is ready to expand his.”

  She paused. “The Dominator?”

  “We may have turned it around. Maybe it’s our unknown subject who seeks a mentor. And he’s chosen Warren Hoyt as his teacher.”

  She stared at him, chilled by the thought. The word teacher implied mastery. Authority. Was this the role into which Hoyt had transformed during his months behind prison walls? Had confinement nurtured his fantasies, honed his urges to razor-sharp purpose? He had been formidable enough before his arrest; she did not even want to think about a more powerful incarnation of Warren Hoyt.

  Dean sank back in the chair, blue eyes regarding his glass of tequila. He had sipped only sparingly, and now he set the glass down on the coffee table. He’d always struck her as a man who never let his discipline weaken, who had learned to keep all impulses in check. But fatigue was taking its toll, and his shoulders were slumping, his eyes shot through with red. He rubbed his hand across his face. “How do two monsters manage to connect in a city the size of Boston?” he said. “How do they find each other?”

  “And so fast?” she added. “The Ghents were attacked only two days after Warren escaped.”

  Dean lifted his head and looked at her. “They already knew each other.”

  “Or they knew of each other.”

  Certainly the Dominator would have known about Warren Hoyt. It was impossible to read a Boston newspaper last fall and be ignorant of the atrocities he had committed. Even if they had not met, Hoyt would know about the unsub as well, if only through news reports. He would have heard about the Yeagers’ deaths, would have known that there existed a monster very much like him. He would wonder who this other predator might be, this brother in blood. Communication through murder, the message relayed via TV news shows and the Boston Globe.

  He’s seen me on TV as well. Hoyt knew I was at the Yeager death scene. And now he is trying to make my reacquaintance.

  Dean’s touch made her flinch. He was frowning at her, leaning even closer than before, and it seemed to her that no man had ever focused on her so intently.

  No man except the Surgeon.

  “It’s not the Dominator who’s playing games with me,” she said. “It’s Hoyt. The stakeout fiasco—it was meant to bring me down. It’s the only way he can approach a woman, by bringing her down first. Demoralizing her, tearing away bits and pieces of her life. It’s why he chose rape victims to kill. Women who’d already been symbolically destroyed. Before he attacks, he needs to have us weak. Afraid.”

  “You’re the last woman I’d ever characterize as weak.”

  She flushed at the praise, because she knew it was not deserved. “I’m just trying to explain to you the way he works,” she said. “How he stalks his prey. Incapacitates them before he moves in. He did it with Catherine Cordell. Before his final attack, he played mind games to terrify her. Sent her messages to let her know he could walk in and out of her life without her knowing he was there. Like a ghost, walking through walls. She didn’t know when he’d appear next, or what direction the attack would come from. But she knew it was coming. That’s how he wears you down. By letting you know that someday, when you least expect it, he’ll come for you.”

  Despite the chilling nature of her words, she had maintained a calm voice. Unnaturally calm. Through it all, Dean watched her with quiet intensity, as though searching for a glimpse of real emotion, real weakness. She let him see none.

  “Now he has a partner,” she said. “Someone he can learn from. Someone he can teach in return. A hunting team.”

  “You think they’ll stay together.”

  “Warren would want to. He’d want a partner. They’ve already killed together once. That’s a powerful bond, sealed in blood.” She took a final sip of her drink, draining the glass. Would it numb her brain of nightmares tonight? Or was she beyond the comforts of anesthesia?

  “Have you requested protection?”

  His question startled her. “Protection?”

  “A cruiser, at the very least. To watch your apartment.”

  “I’m a cop.”

  He tilted his head, as though waiting for the rest of the answer.

  “If I were a man,” she said, “would you have asked that question?”

  “You’re not a man.”

  “That means I automatically need protection?”

  “Why do you sound so offended?”

  “Why does my being a woman make me incapable of defending my own home?”

  He sighed. “Do you always have to outdo the men, Detective?”

  “I’ve worked hard to be treated like everyone else,” she said. “I’m not going to ask for special favors because I’m a woman.”

  “It’s because you’re a woman that you’re in this position. The Surgeon’s sexual fantasies are about women. And the Dominator’s attacks aren’t about the husbands, but about the wives. He rapes the wives. You can’t tell me that your being female is irrelevant to this situation.”

  She flinched at the mention of rape. Up till now, the discussion of sexual assault had been about other women. That she was a potential victim brought the focus to a far more intimate level, a level she was not comfortable discussing with any man. Even more than the subject of rape, it was Dean himself who made her uneasy. The way he studied her, as though she held some secret he was eager to mine.

  “It’s not about you being a cop, or whether you’re capable of defending yourself,” he said. “It’s about you being a woman. A woman Warren Hoyt has probably fantasized about all these months.”

  “Not me. Cordell’s the one he wants.”

  “Cordell is out of his reach. He can’t touch her. But you’re right here. You’re within his grasp, the very woman he almost defeated. The woman he pinned to the floor in that cellar. He had his blade at your throat. He could already smell your blood.”

  “Stop it, Dean.”

  “In a way, he’s already claimed you. You’re already his. And you’re out in the open every day, working the very crimes he leaves behind. Every dead body’s a message meant for your eyes. A preview of what he has planned for you.”

  “I said, stop it.”

  “And you think you don’t need protection? You think a gun and an attitude is all it takes to stay alive? Then you’re ignoring your own gut feelings. You know what he’ll do next. You know what he craves, what turns him on. And what turns him on is you. What he plans to do to you.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Her outburst startled them both. She stared at him, dismayed by her loss of control and by the tears that sprang from nowhere. Goddamn it, goddamn it, she would not cry. She had never let a man see her crumble, and she wouldn’t allow Dean to be the first.

  She took a deep breath and said, quietly, “I want you to leave now.”

  “I’m only asking you to listen to your own instincts. To accept the same protection you’d offer any other woman.”

  She stood and went to the door. “Good night, Agent Dean.”

  For a moment he did not move, and she wondered what it would take to eject this man from her home. At last he rose to leave, but when he reached the door he stopped and looked down at her. “You’re not invincible, Jane,” he said. “And no one expects you to be.”

  Long after he’d walked out, she stood with her back pressed to the locked door, her eyes closed, trying to calm the turmoil left in the wake of his visit. She knew she was not invincible. She had learned that a year ago, when she’d looked up into the Surgeon’s face and waited for the bite of his scalpel. She did not need to be reminded of that, and she resented the brutal manner in which Dean had brought home that lesson.

  She crossed back to the couch and picked up the phone from the end table. It would not be dawn yet in London, but she
could not delay making this call.

  Moore answered on the second ring, his voice gruff but alert despite the hour.

  “It’s me,” said Rizzoli. “Sorry to wake you.”

  “Let me go into the other room.”

  She waited. Over the phone she heard the creak of box springs as he got out of bed, then the sound of a door closing behind him.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “The Surgeon’s hunting again.”

  “There’s been a victim?”

  “I saw the autopsy a few hours ago. It’s his work.”

  “He didn’t waste any time.”

  “It gets worse, Moore.”

  “How could it get any worse?”

  “He has a new partner.”

  A long pause. Then, softly: “Who is it?”

  “We think it’s the same unsub who killed that couple in Newton. Somehow, he and Hoyt found each other. They’re hunting together.”

  “So quickly? How could they link up just like that?”

  “They knew each other. They had to know each other.”

  “Where did they meet? When?”

  “That’s what we have to find out. It could be key to the Dominator’s identity.” Suddenly she thought of the operating room from which Hoyt had escaped. The handcuffs. It had not been the guard who’d unlocked them. Someone else had walked into that O.R. to free Hoyt, someone disguised perhaps in an orderly’s scrub suit or a doctor’s borrowed lab coat.

  “I should be there,” said Moore. “I should be working this with you—”

  “No, you shouldn’t. You should be right where you are, with Catherine. I don’t think Hoyt can find her. But he’ll be trying. He never gives up; you know that. And now there are two of them, and we have no idea what this partner looks like. If he turns up in London, you won’t know his face. You need to be ready.”

  As if anyone could be ready for the Surgeon’s attack, she thought as she hung up. A year ago, Catherine Cordell had thought she was ready. She’d turned her home into a fortress and lived her life as though under siege. Yet Hoyt had slipped through her defenses; he had struck when she least expected it, in a place she thought was safe.

  Just as I think my home is safe.

  She rose and crossed to the window. Looking down at the street, she wondered if, at that moment, anyone was looking at her, watching her as she stood framed in the window’s light. She would not be difficult to find. All the Surgeon had to do was look in the phone book under “RIZZOLI J.”

  On the street below, a vehicle slowed down and pulled over to the curb. A police cruiser. She watched it for a moment, but it did not move, and the engine lights shut off, indicating it had settled in for a stay. She had not requested protective surveillance, but she knew who had.

  Gabriel Dean.

  History echoes with the screams of women.

  The pages of textbooks pay scant attention to the lurid details that we hunger to know. Instead we are told dry accounts of military strategies and flank attacks, of the cunning of generals and the massing of armies. We see illustrations of men in armor, swords locked, muscled bodies twisting in the throes of combat. We see paintings of leaders astride noble mounts, gazing at fields where soldiers stand like rows of wheat awaiting the scythe. We see maps with arrows tracing the march of conquering armies, and read the lyrics of war ballads, sung in the name of king and country. The triumphs of men are always writ large, in the blood of soldiers.

  No one speaks of the women.

  But we all know they were there, soft flesh and smooth skin, their perfume wafting through history’s pages. We all know, though we may not speak of it, that war’s savagery is not confined to the battlefield. That when the last enemy soldier has fallen, and one army stands victorious, it is toward the conquered women that the army next turns its attentions.

  So it has always been, though the brutal reality is seldom mentioned in the history books. Instead, I read of wars that are as shiny as brass, with glory for all. Of Greeks battling under the watchful eyes of the Gods, and of the fall of Troy, which the poet Virgil tells us was a war fought by heroes: Achilles and Hector, Ajax and Odysseus, names now enshrined for eternity. He writes of clanging swords and flying arrows and blood-soaked earth.

  He leaves out the best parts.

  It is the playwright Euripides who tells us of the aftermath for the Trojan women, but even he is circumspect. He does not dwell on the titillating details. He tells us that a terrified Cassandra was dragged from Athena’s temple by a Greek chieftain, but we are left to fantasize about what comes next. The tearing open of her robes, the baring of her skin. His thrusts between her virgin thighs. Her shrieks of pain and despair.

  Across the fallen city of Troy, such shrieks would have echoed from other women’s throats, as the victorious Greeks took what was due them, marking their victory in the flesh of conquered women. Were any men of Troy left alive to watch? The ancients do not mention it. But what better way to crow victory than to abuse the body of your enemy’s beloved? What more powerful proof is there that you have defeated him, humiliated him, than to force him to watch as you take your pleasure, again and again?

  This much I understand: triumph requires an audience.

  I am thinking of the Trojan women as our car glides along Commonwealth Avenue, steady with the flow of traffic. It is a busy road, and even at nine P.M., cars move slowly, giving me time to leisurely study the building.

  The windows are dark; neither Catherine Cordell nor her new husband are at home.

  That’s all I allow myself, that one look, and then the building slides out of view. I know the block is being watched, yet I could not resist that glimpse of her fortress, as impregnable as the walls of any castle. An empty castle, now, no longer of any interest to those who would storm it.

  I look at my driver, whose face is hidden in shadow. I see only a silhouette and the gleam of eyes, like two hungry sparks in the night.

  On the Discovery Channel, I have watched videos of lions at night, the green fire of their eyes burning in the darkness. I am reminded of those lions, of how they stared with hungry purpose, waiting for the moment to spring. I now see that hunger in the eyes of my companion.

  The same hunger he surely sees in mine.

  I roll down my window and inhale deeply as the warm scent of the city wafts in. The lion, sniffing the air over the savanna. Searching for the scent of prey.

  fifteen

  They drove together in Dean’s car, heading west toward the town of Shirley, forty-five miles from Boston. Dean said little during the drive, but the silence between them only seemed to magnify her awareness of his scent, his calm assurance. She scarcely gave him a glance for fear he’d see, in her eyes, the turmoil he’d inspired.

  Instead, she glanced down and saw dark-blue carpet at her feet. She wondered if it was nylon six, six, #802 blue, wondered how many cars had similar carpeting. Such a popular color; it seemed that everywhere she looked now, she saw blue carpets, and imagined countless shoe soles trailing #802 nylon fibers all over the streets of Boston.

  The air conditioner was too cold; she shut the vent by her knees and stared out at fields of tall grass, longing to feel the heat outside this overcooled bubble. Outside, morning haze hung like gauze over green fields and trees stood motionless, their leaves unstirred by even the faintest breeze. Rizzoli seldom ventured into rural Massachusetts. She was a city girl, born and bred, and she felt no affinity for the countryside with its empty spaces and biting bugs. Nor did she feel its lure today.

  Last night, she had not slept well. She had startled awake several times, had lain with heart pounding as she listened for footsteps, for the whisper of an intruder’s breath. At five A.M. she rose from bed feeling drugged and unrested. Only after two cups of coffee had she felt alert enough to call the hospital and ask about Korsak’s condition.

  He was still in the ICU. Still on a ventilator.

  She lowered the window a crack and warm air blew in, sm
elling of grass and earth. She considered the sad possibility that Korsak might never again enjoy such smells or feel the wind in his face. She tried to remember if the last words they’d exchanged were good ones, friendly ones, but she could not remember.

  At Exit 36, Dean followed the signs to MCI-Shirley. Souza-Baranowski, the level-six security facility where Warren Hoyt had been housed, loomed off to their right. He parked in the visitors’ lot and turned to look at her.

  “You feel the need to walk out any time,” he said, “just do it.”

  “Why are you expecting me to bail?”

  “Because I know what he did to you. Anyone in your position would have problems working this case.”

  She saw genuine concern in his eyes, and she did not want it; it only reinforced how fragile was her courage.

  “Let’s just do it, okay?” she said, and shoved open her car door. Pride kept her walking with grim determination into the building. It propelled her through the security check-in at the outer control desk, where she and Dean presented their badges and handed in their weapons. As they waited for an escort, she read the Dress Code, posted in the visitor process area:

  The following items are not allowed to be worn by any visitor: Bare feet. Bathing suits or shorts. Any clothing that displays gang affiliation. Any clothing similar to that issued to an inmate or uniformed personnel. Double-layered clothing. Drawstring clothing. Easy-access clothing. Excessively baggy, loose, thick, or heavy clothing …

  The list was endless, proscribing everything from hair ribbons to underwire bras.

  A corrections officer finally appeared, a heavyset man dressed in MCI summer blues. “Detective Rizzoli and Agent Dean? I’m Officer Curtis. Come this way.”

  Curtis was friendly, even jovial, as he escorted them through the first locked door and into the pedestrian trap. Rizzoli wondered if he would be so pleasant if they were not law enforcement officers, part of the same brotherhood. He told them to remove their belts, shoes, jackets, watches, and keys and to place them on the table for his examination. Rizzoli took off her Timex and laid it down next to Dean’s gleaming Omega. Then she proceeded to shrug off her blazer, just as Dean was doing. There was something uncomfortably intimate about the process. As she unbuckled her belt and pulled it out of her trouser loops, she felt Curtis staring at her, the way a man watches a woman undress. She took off her low-heeled pumps, set them down beside Dean’s shoes, and coolly met Officer Curtis’s gaze. Only then did he avert his eyes. Next, she turned her pockets inside out and followed Dean through the metal detector.