The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

Crowe got here around three.
    The M.E. arrived around three-thirty.” He paused. “I didn’t realize you were coming in, too.”
    “Dr. Isles called me. I guess we’re all parking on the golf course for now?”
    “Detective Sleeper ordered it. Doesn’t want any vehicles visible from Enneking Parkway. Keeps us out of the public’s eye.”
    “Any media turned up yet?”
    “No, ma’am. I was careful not to radio it in. Used the call box down the road instead.”
    “Good. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they won’t turn up at all.”
    “Uh-oh,” said Doud. “Could this be our first jackal arriving?”
    A dark-blue Marquis rolled across the golf course grass and pulled up beside the M.E.’s van. A familiar overweight figure hauled himself out and smoothed his sparse hair over his scalp.
    “He’s not a reporter,” said Rizzoli. “This guy I’m expecting.”
    Korsak lumbered toward them. “You really think it’s her?” he asked.
    “Dr. Isles says it’s a strong possibility. If so, your homicide just moved into Boston city limits.” She looked at Doud. “Which way do we approach it, so we don’t contaminate things?”
    “You’re okay going from the east. Sleeper and Crowe have already videoed the site. The footprints and drag marks all come from the other direction, starting at Enneking Parkway. Just follow your nose.”
    She and Korsak slipped under the police tape and headed into the woods. This section of second-growth trees was as dense as any deep forest. They ducked beneath spiky branches that scratched their faces, and snagged their trouser legs on brambles. They emerged on the East Boundary jogging trail and spotted a strand of police tape, fluttering from a tree.
    “The jogger was running along this path when his dog got away from him,” she said. “Looks like Sleeper left us a trail of tape.”
    They crossed the jogging path and plunged once again into the woods.
    “Oh man. I think I can smell it already,” said Korsak.
    Even before they saw the body, they heard the ominous hum of flies. Dry twigs snapped beneath their shoes, the sound as startling as gunfire. Through the trees ahead, they saw Sleeper and Crowe, faces contorted in disgust as they waved away insects. Dr. Isles was crouched near the ground, a few diamonds of sunlight dappling her black hair. Drawing closer, they saw what Isles was doing.
    Korsak uttered an appalled groan. “Ah, shit. That I didn’t need to see.”
    “Vitreous potassium,” said Isles, and the words sounded almost seductive in her smoky voice. “It’ll give us another estimate for the postmortem interval.”
    The time of death would be difficult to determine, Rizzoli thought, gazing down at the nude corpse. Isles had rolled it onto a sheet, and it lay faceup, eyes bulging from the heat-expanded tissues inside the cranium. A necklace of disk-shaped bruises ringed the throat. The long blond hair was a stiff mat of straw. The abdomen was bloated, and the belly was tinted a liverish green. Blood vessels had been stained by the bacterial breakdown of blood, and the veins were startlingly visible, like black rivers flowing beneath the skin. But all these horrors paled in view of the procedure Isles was now performing. The membranes around the human eye are the most sensitive surface of the body; a single eyelash or the tiniest grain of sand caught beneath an eyelid can cause immense discomfort. So it made both Rizzoli and Korsak wince to watch Isles pierce the corpse’s eye with a twenty-gauge needle. Slowly she sucked the vitreous fluid into a 10 cc syringe.
    “Looks nice and clear,” said Isles, sounding pleased. She placed the syringe in an ice-filled cooler, then rose to her feet and surveyed the site with a regal gaze. “Liver temp is only two degrees cooler than ambient temp,” she said. “And there’s no insect or animal damage. She hasn’t been lying here very long.”
    “It’s just a dump?” asked Sleeper.
    “Lividity indicates she died while lying faceup. See how it’s darker on the back, where the blood’s pooled? But she was found lying here facedown.”
    “She was moved here.”
    “Less than twenty-four hours ago.”
    “Looks like she’s been dead a lot longer than that,” said Crowe.
    “Yes. She’s flaccid, and there’s significant bloating.
    Skin’s already slipping off.”
    “Is that a nosebleed?” asked Korsak.
    “Decomposed blood. She’s starting to purge. Fluids are being forced out by the internal buildup