The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

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