The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

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