Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

where she works as a sales representative, and her colleague told me he doesn’t know when she will return to them. She is like a wounded beast, holed up in her cave, terrified of taking even one step out into the night. She knows what the night holds for her, because she has been touched by its evil, and even now she feels it seeping like vapor through the walls of her home. The curtains are closed tight, but the fabric is thin, and I see her moving about inside. Her silhouette is balled up, arms squeezed to her chest, as though her body has folded into itself. Her movements are jerky and mechanical as she paces back and forth.
    She is checking the locks on the doors, the latches on the windows. Trying to shut out the darkness.
    It must be stifling inside that little house. The night is like steam, and there are no air conditioners in any of her windows. All evening she has stayed inside, the windows closed despite the heat. I picture her gleaming with sweat, suffering through the long hot day and into the night, desperate to let in fresh air, but afraid of what else she might let in.
    She walks past the window again. Stops. Lingers there, framed by the rectangle of light. Suddenly the curtains flick apart, and she reaches through to unlock the latch. She slides up the window. Stands before it, taking in hungry gulps of fresh air. She has finally surrendered to the heat.
    There is nothing so exciting to a hunter as the scent of wounded prey. I can almost smell it wafting out, the scent of a bloodied beast, of defiled flesh. Just as she breathes in the night air, so, too, am I breathing in her scent. Her fear.
    My heart beats faster. I reach into my bag, to caress the instruments. Even the steel is warm to my touch.
    She closes the window with a bang. A few deep gulps of fresh air was all she dared allow herself, and now she retreats to the misery of her stuffy little house.
    After a while, I accept disappointment and I walk away, leaving her to sweat through the night in that oven of a bedroom.
    Tomorrow, they say, it will be even hotter.
     

five
    T his unsub is a classic picquerist,” said Dr. Lawrence Zucker. “Someone who uses a knife to achieve secondary or indirect sexual release. Picquerism is the act of stabbing or cutting, any repeated penetration of the skin with a sharp object. The knife is a phallic symbol—a substitution for the male sexual organ. Instead of performing normal sexual intercourse, our unsub achieves his release by subjecting his victim to pain and terror. It’s the power that thrills him. Ultimate power, over life and death.”
    Detective Jane Rizzoli was not easily spooked, but Dr. Zucker gave her the creeps. He looked like a pale and hulking John Malkovich, and his voice was whispery, almost feminine. As he spoke, his fingers moved with serpentine elegance. He was not a cop but a criminal psychologist from Northeastern University, a consultant for the Boston Police Department. Rizzoli had worked with him once before on a homicide case, and he’d given her the creeps then, too. It was not just his appearance but the way he so thoroughly insinuated himself into the perp’s mind and the obvious pleasure he derived from wandering in that satanic dimension. He
enjoyed
the journey. She could hear that almost subliminal hum of excitement in his voice.
    She glanced around the conference room at the other four detectives and wondered if anyone else was spooked by this weirdo, but all she saw was tired expressions and varying shades of five o’clock shadows.
    They were all tired. She herself had slept scarcely four hours last night. This morning she’d awakened in the dark pre-dawn, her mind zooming straight into fourth gear as it processed a kaleidoscope of images and voices. She had absorbed the Elena Ortiz case so deeply into her subconscious that in her dreams she and the victim had engaged in a conversation, albeit a nonsensical one. There had been no supernatural revelations, no clues from beyond the grave, merely images generated by the twitches of brain cells. Still, Rizzoli considered the dream significant. It told her just how much this case meant to her. Being lead detective on a high-profile investigation was like walking the high wire without a net. Nail the perp, and everyone applauded. Screw up, and the whole world watched you splat.
    This was now a high-profile case. Two days ago, the headline hit the front page of the local tabloid: “The Surgeon Cuts Again.” Thanks