The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

test.”
    “He could. He worked in a hospital. He knows how to manipulate lab tests.”
    “Detective—”
    “For Christ’s sake, he was a fucking
blood
technician!” The shrillness of her own voice startled her. She stared at him, shocked by her outburst. And overwhelmed by the emotions that were finally blasting through her. Rage. Helplessness.
    And fear. All these months, she had suppressed it, because she knew it was irrational to be afraid of Warren Hoyt. He had been locked in a place where he could not reach her, could not hurt her. The nightmares had merely been aftershocks, lingering echoes of an old terror that she hoped would eventually fade. But now fear made perfect sense, and it had her in its jaws.
    Abruptly she shot to her feet and turned to leave.
    “Detective Rizzoli!”
    She stopped in the doorway.
    “Where are you going?”
    “I think you know where I have to go.”
    “Fitchburg P.D. and the State Police have this under control.”
    “Do they? To them, he’s just another con on the run. They’ll expect him to make the same mistakes all the others do. But he won’t. He’ll slip right through their net.”
    “You don’t give them enough credit.”
    “They don’t give Hoyt enough credit. They don’t understand what they’re dealing with,” she said.
    But I do. I understand perfectly.
    Outside, the parking lot shimmered white-hot under the glaring sun and the wind that blew from the street was thick and sulfurous. By the time she climbed into her car, her shirt was already soaked with sweat. Hoyt would like this heat, she thought. He thrived on it, the way a lizard thrives on the baking desert sand. And like any reptile, he knew how to quickly slither out of harm’s way.
    They won’t find him.
    As she drove toward Fitchburg, she thought of the Surgeon, loose in the world again. Imagined him walking city streets, the predator back among the prey. She wondered if she still had the fortitude to face him. If, having defeated him once, she had used up her lifetime quota of courage. She did not think of herself as a coward; she had never backed away from a challenge and had always plunged headlong into any fray. But the thought of confronting Warren Hoyt left her shaking.
    I fought him once, and it almost killed me. I don’t know if I can do it again. If I can wrestle the monster back into his cage.

    The perimeter was unmanned. Rizzoli paused in the hospital corridor, glancing around for a uniformed officer, but saw only a few nurses standing nearby, two of them embracing each other for comfort, the others huddled together and spoke in low tones, faces gray with shock.
    She ducked under the drooping yellow tape and walked unchallenged through the double doors, which automatically hissed open to admit her into the O.R. reception area. She saw the smears and busy tango steps of bloody footprints on the floor. A CST was already packing up his kit. This was a cold scene, picked over and trampled on, just waiting to be released for cleanup.
    But cold as it was, contaminated though it was, she could still read what had happened in this room, for it was written on the walls in blood. She saw the dried arcs of arterial spray released from a victim’s pulsing artery. It traced a sine wave across the wall and splattered the large erasable board where the day’s surgery schedule had been written, listing the O.R. room numbers, patients’ names, surgeons’ names, and operative procedures. A full day’s schedule had been booked. She wondered what had happened to the patients whose operations were abruptly canceled because the O.R. was now a crime scene. She wondered what the consequences were of a postponed cholecystectomy—whatever that was. That full schedule explained why the crime scene had been processed so quickly. The needs of the living must be served. One could not indefinitely shut down the town of Fitchburg’s busiest O.R.
    The arcs of spurted blood continued across the schedule board, around a corner, and onto the next wall. Here the peaks were smaller as the systolic pressure fell, and the pulsations began to trail downward, sliding toward the floor. They ended in a smeared lake next to the reception desk.
    The phone. Whoever died here was trying to reach the phone.
    Beyond the reception area, a wide corridor lined by sinks led past the individual operating rooms. Men’s voices, and the crackle of a portable radio, drew her toward an open doorway. She walked along the row of