The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

asked.
    “No, ma’am.”
    “He wasn’t here when you arrived? He wasn’t waiting by the body?”
    “I haven’t seen him here at all.”
    She stared toward the trees, where she had encountered Gabriel Dean.
Korsak was running right behind me. But he never caught up. And he didn’t come back here. . . .
    She began walking toward the trees, retracing the route she had run across the cemetery. During that sprint, she’d been so focused on pursuit that she’d paid little attention to Korsak, who’d trailed behind her. She remembered her own fear, the pounding heart, the night wind rushing past her face. She remembered his heavy breathing as he’d struggled to keep up. Then he’d fallen behind, and she’d lost track of him.
    She moved faster now, her flashlight sweeping left and right. Was this the route she’d taken? No, no, she’d gone down a different row of headstones. She recognized an obelisk looming to the left.
    Correcting course, she headed for the obelisk and almost tripped over Korsak’s legs.
    He lay crumpled beside a headstone, the shadow of his bulky torso merging with the granite. At once she was on her knees, screaming for assistance as she rolled him onto his back. One glance at his swollen, dusky face told her he was in cardiac arrest.
    She felt his neck, wanting so desperately to detect a carotid pulse that she almost mistook the bounding pulse of her own fingers for his. But he had none.
    She slammed her fist down on his chest. Even that violent punch did not jolt his heart awake.
    She tilted his head back and tugged his sagging jaw forward to open the airway. So many things about Korsak had once repelled her. The smell of his sweat and cigarettes, his noisy sniffling, his doughy handshake. None of that registered now as she sealed her mouth against his and blew air into his lungs. She felt his chest expand, heard a noisy wheeze as his lungs expelled the air again. She planted her hands on his chest and began CPR, doing the work his heart refused to do. She kept pumping as other cops arrived to assist, as her arms began to tremble and sweat soaked into her vest. Even as she pumped, she was mentally flogging herself. How had she overlooked him, lying here? Why hadn’t she noticed his absence? Her muscles burned and her knees ached, but she did not stop. She owed that much to him and would not abandon him a second time.
    An ambulance siren screamed closer.
    She was still pumping as the paramedics arrived. Only when someone took her arm and firmly tugged her away did she relinquish her role. She stood back, legs trembling, as the paramedics took over, inserting an I.V. line, hanging a bag of saline. They tilted Korsak’s head back and thrust a laryngoscope blade down his throat.
    “I can’t see the vocal cords!”
    “Jesus, he’s got a big neck.”
    “Help me reposition.”
    “Okay. Try it again!”
    Again the paramedic inserted the laryngoscope, straining to hold up the weight of Korsak’s jaw. With his massive neck and swollen tongue, Korsak looked like a freshly slaughtered bull.
    “Tube’s in!”
    They tore away the rest of Korsak’s shirt, baring a thick mat of hair, and slapped on defibrillator paddles. On the EKG monitor, a jagged line appeared.
    “He’s in V-tach!”
    The paddles discharged, a jolt of electrical current slicing through Korsak’s chest. The seizure jerked his heavy torso right off the grass and dropped him back in a flaccid mound. The cops’ multiple flashlight beams revealed every cruel detail, from the pale beer belly to the almost feminine breasts that are the embarrassment of so many overweight men.
    “Okay! He’s got a rhythm. Sinus tach—”
    “BP?”
    The cuff whiffed tight around his meaty arm. “Ninety systolic. Let’s move him!”
    Even after they’d transferred Korsak into the ambulance and the taillights had winked away into the night, Rizzoli did not move. Numb with exhaustion, she stared after it, imagining what would follow for him. The harsh lights of the E.R. More needles, more tubes. It occurred to her that she should call his wife, but she did not know her name. In fact, she knew almost nothing about his personal life, and it struck her as unbearably sad that she knew far more about the dead Yeagers than about the living, breathing man who’d worked beside her. The partner she’d failed.
    She looked down at the grass where he’d been lying. It still bore the imprint of his weight. She imagined him running after her but