The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

unsteady hands. Suddenly she could not breathe.
    She walked out of the room, out of the house. Stood in the front yard, drawing in desperate breaths of air. Footsteps followed her out, but she did not turn to see who it was. Only when he spoke did she know it was Korsak.
    “You okay, Rizzoli?”
    “I’m fine.”
    “You didn’t look fine.”
    “I was just feeling a little dizzy.”
    “It’s a flashback to the Hoyt case, isn’t it? Seeing this, it’s gotta shake you up.”
    “How would you know?”
    A pause. Then, with a snort: “Yeah, you’re right. How the hell would I know?” He started back to the house.
    She turned and called out: “Korsak?”
    “What?”
    They stared at each other for a moment. The night air was not unpleasant, and the grass smelled cool and sweet. But dread was thick as nausea in her stomach.
    “I know what she’s feeling,” she said softly. “I know what she’s going through.”
    “Mrs. Yeager?”
    “You have to find her. You have to pull out all the stops.”
    “Her face is all over the news. We’re following up every phone tip, every sighting.” Korsak shook his head and sighed. “But you know, at this point, I gotta wonder if he’s kept her alive.”
    “He has. I know he has.”
    “How can you be so sure?”
    She hugged herself to quell the trembling and looked at the house. “It’s what Warren Hoyt would have done.”

three
    O f all her duties as a detective in Boston’s homicide unit, it was the visits to the unobtrusive brick building on Albany Street that Rizzoli disliked most. Though she suspected she was no more squeamish than her male colleagues, she in particular could not afford to reveal any vulnerability. Men were too good at spotting weaknesses, and they would inevitably aim for those tender places with their barbs and their practical jokes. She had learned to maintain a stoic front, to gaze without flinching upon the worst the autopsy table had to offer. No one suspected how much sheer nerve it took for her to walk so matter-of-factly into that building. She knew the men thought of her as the fearless Jane Rizzoli, the bitch with the brass balls. But sitting in her car in the parking lot behind the M.E.’s office, she felt neither fearless nor brassy.
    Last night, she had not slept well. For the first time in weeks, Warren Hoyt had crept back into her dreams, and she had awakened drenched in sweat, her hands aching from the old wounds.
    She looked down at her scarred palms and suddenly wanted to start the car and drive away, anything to avoid the ordeal that awaited her inside the building. She did not have to be here; this was, after all, a Newton homicide—not her responsibility. But Jane Rizzoli had never been a coward, and she was too proud to back down now.
    She stepped out of the car, slammed the door shut with a fierce bang, and walked into the building.
    She was the last to arrive in the autopsy lab, and the other three people in the room gave her quick nods of greeting. Korsak was draped in an extra-large O.R. gown and wearing a bouffant paper cap. He looked like an overweight housewife in a hairnet.
    “What have I missed?” she asked as she, too, pulled on a gown to protect her clothes from unexpected splatter.
    “Not much. We’re just talking about the duct tape.”
    Dr. Maura Isles was performing the autopsy. The Queen of the Dead was what the homicide unit had dubbed her a year ago, when she’d first joined the Commonwealth of Massachusetts medical examiner’s office. Dr. Tierney himself had lured her to Boston from her plum faculty position at the U.C. San Francisco Medical School. It did not take long for the local press to start calling her by her Queen of the Dead nickname as well. At her first Boston court appearance, testifying for the M.E.’s office, she had arrived dressed in Goth black. The TV cameras had followed her regal figure as she strode up the courthouse steps, a strikingly pale woman with a slash of red lipstick, shoulder-length raven hair with blunt bangs, and an attitude of cool imperviousness. On the stand, nothing had rattled her. As the defense attorney flirted, cajoled, and finally resorted in desperation to outright bullying, Dr. Isles had answered his questions with unfailing logic, all the while maintaining her Mona Lisa smile. The press loved her. Defense attorneys dreaded her. And homicide cops were both spooked and fascinated by this woman who’d chosen to spend her days in communion with the