The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

details of his own schedule, his own life. I am merely a complication.
    The nurse folds a bundle of papers and slips them into an envelope. She hands this to the guard. “This is for the Fitchburg E.R. Be sure the doctor gets it.”
    “It’s gotta be by ambulance?”
    “Yes.”
    “Makes security a problem.”
    She glances at me. My wrist is still handcuffed to the cot. I lie perfectly still, with my knees bent—the classic position of a patient suffering from excruciating peritonitis. “I wouldn’t worry too much about security. This one’s way too sick to put up a fight.”

seven
    “ N ecrophilia,” said Dr. Lawrence Zucker, “or ‘love of the dead,’ has always been one of mankind’s dark secrets. The word comes from the Greek, but as far back as the days of the pharaohs there was evidence of its practice. A beautiful or high-ranking woman who died at that time was always kept from the embalmers until at least three days after her death. This was to ensure that her body wasn’t sexually abused by the men charged with preparing her for burial. Sexual abuse of the dead has been recorded throughout history. Even King Herod was said to have had sex with his wife for seven years after her death.”
    Rizzoli looked around the conference room and was struck by the eerie familiarity of this scene: a gathering of tired detectives, files and crime scene photos scattered on the table. The whispery voice of psychologist Lawrence Zucker, luring them into the nightmarish mind of a predator. And the chill—most of all, she remembered the chill of this room, and how it had seeped into her bones and numbed her hands. Many of the faces were the same as well: Detectives Jerry Sleeper and Darren Crowe and her partner, Barry Frost. The cops with whom she had worked on the Surgeon investigation a year ago.
    Another summer, another monster.
    But this time, one face was absent from the team. Detective Thomas Moore was not among them, and she missed his presence, missed his quiet assurance, his steadfastness. Though they’d had a falling-out during the Surgeon investigation, they had since mended their friendship, and now his absence was like a gaping hole in their team.
    In Moore’s place, sitting in the very chair Moore usually occupied, was a man she did not trust: Gabriel Dean. Anyone walking into this meeting would notice immediately that Dean was the outsider in this gathering of cops. From his well-tailored suit to his military posture, he stood out from the others, and they were all aware of the divide. No one spoke to Dean; he was the silent observer, the Bureau man whose role remained a mystery to them all.
    Dr. Zucker continued. “Sex with a corpse is an activity most of us don’t care to think about. But it’s mentioned repeatedly in literature, in history, and in a number of criminal cases. Nine percent of serial killer victims are sexually violated postmortem. Jeffrey Dahmer, Henry Lee Lucas, and Ted Bundy all admitted to it.” His gaze dropped to the autopsy photo of Gail Yeager. “So the presence of fresh ejaculate in this victim is not all that surprising.”
    Darren Crowe said, “They used to say this was something only the wackos did. That’s what an FBI profiler once told me. That these are the nuts who wander around jabbering to themselves.”
    “Yes, it was once thought of as a sign of a severely disordered killer,” said Zucker. “Someone who shuffles around in a psychotic daze. It’s true, a number of these perps are psychotics who fall into the category of disorganized killers—neither sane nor intelligent. They have so little control over their own impulses that they’ll leave all sorts of evidence behind. Hairs, semen, fingerprints. They’re the easy ones to catch, because they don’t know, or they don’t care, about forensics.”
    “So what about this guy?”
    “This unsub is not psychotic. He’s an entirely different creature.” Zucker opened the folder of photos from the Yeager house and arranged them on the table. Then he looked at Rizzoli. “Detective, you walked through the crime scene.”
    She nodded. “This unsub was methodical. He came with a murder kit. He was neat and efficient. He left almost no trace evidence behind.”
    “There was semen,” Crowe pointed out.
    “But not in a place we’d be likely to search for it. We might easily have missed it. In fact, we almost did.”
    “And your overall impression?” asked Zucker.
    “He’s organized.