The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

dead.
    Dr. Isles presided over the autopsy with her usual dispassion. Her assistant, Yoshima, was equally matter-of-fact as he quietly set up instruments and angled lights. They both regarded the body of Richard Yeager with the cool gaze of scientists.
    Rigor mortis had faded since Rizzoli had seen the body yesterday, and Dr. Yeager now lay flaccid. The duct tape had been cut away, the boxer shorts removed, and most of the blood rinsed from his skin. He lay with arms limp at his sides, both hands swollen and purplish, like bruise-colored gloves, from the combination of tight bindings and livor mortis. But it was the slash wound across his neck that everyone now focused on.
    “Coup de grâce,” said Isles. With a ruler she measured the dimensions of the wound. “Fourteen centimeters.”
    “Weird, how it doesn’t seem all that deep,” said Korsak.
    “That’s because the cut was made along Langer’s Lines. Skin tension pulls the edges back together so it hardly gapes. It’s deeper than it looks.”
    “Tongue depressor?” said Yoshima.
    “Thanks.” Isles took it from him and gently slipped the rounded wooden edge into the wound, murmuring under her breath: “Say
ah
. . . .”
    “What the hell?” said Korsak.
    “I’m measuring wound depth. Nearly five centimeters.”
    Now Isles pulled a magnifier over the wound and peered into the meat-red slash. “The left carotid artery and the left jugular have both been transected. The trachea has also been incised. The level of tracheal penetration, just below the thyroid cartilage, suggests to me that the neck was extended first, before the slash was made.” She glanced up at the two detectives. “Your unknown subject pulled the victim’s head back, and then made a very deliberate incision.”
    “An execution,” said Korsak.
    Rizzoli remembered how the Crimescope had picked up the glow of hairs adhering to the blood-spattered wall. Dr. Yeager’s hairs, torn from his scalp as the blade cut into his skin.
    “What kind of blade?” she asked.
    Isles did not immediately respond to the question. Instead, she turned to Yoshima and said, “Sticky tape.”
    “I’ve already got the strips laid out here.”
    “I’ll approximate the margins. You apply the tape.”
    Korsak gave a startled laugh as he realized what they were doing. “You’re taping him back together?”
    Isles shot him a glance of dry amusement. “You prefer Super Glue?”
    “That supposed to hold his head on, or what?”
    “Come on, Detective. Sticky tape wouldn’t hold even your head on.” She looked down through the magnifier and nodded. “That’s fine, Yoshima. I can see it now.”
    “See what?” said Korsak.
    “The wonders of Scotch tape. Detective Rizzoli, you asked me what kind of blade he used.”
    “Please tell me it’s not a scalpel.”
    “No, it’s not a scalpel. Take a look.”
    Rizzoli stepped toward the magnifier and peered at the wound. The incised edges had been pulled together by the transparent tape, and what she now saw was a clearer approximation of the weapon’s cross-sectional shape. There were parallel striations along one edge of the incision.
    “A serrated blade,” she said.
    “At first glance, it does appear that way.”
    Rizzoli looked up and met Isles’s quietly challenging gaze. “But it’s not?”
    “The cutting edge itself is not serrated, because the other edge of the incision is absolutely smooth. And notice how these parallel scratches appear along only one-third of the incision? Not the entire length. Those scratch marks were made as the blade was being withdrawn. The killer started his incision under the left jaw, and sliced toward the front of the throat, ending the incision just on the far side of the tracheal ring. The scratch marks appear as he’s ending his cut, and slightly twisting the blade as he withdraws.”
    “So what made those scratches?”
    “It’s not from the cutting edge. This weapon has serrations on the back edge, and they made the parallel scratches as the weapon was pulled out.” Isles looked at Rizzoli. “This is typical of a Rambo or survival-type knife. Something a hunter might use.”
    A hunter.
Rizzoli looked at the thickly muscled shoulders of Richard Yeager and thought: This was not a man who’d meekly assume the role of prey.
    “Okay, so let me get this straight,” said Korsak. “This vic, Dr. Weight Lifter here, watches our perp pull out a big friggin’ Rambo knife. And he just sits there and lets