The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

women. He likes to tie them down and slice open their abdomens. It turns him on to play surgeon. Except he does it while they’re wide awake. While they know exactly what he’s doing to them.”
    “Yet you called him normal.”
    “He’s not insane. He knew what he was doing, and he enjoyed it.”
    “So you believe he was simply born evil.”
    “That’s exactly the word I’d use for him,” said Rizzoli.
    O’Donnell regarded her for a moment with a gaze that seemed to bore straight into her. How much did she see? Did her psychiatric training enable her to peer through one’s public mask, to see the traumatized flesh below?
    Abruptly O’Donnell rose to her feet. “Why don’t you come into my office?” she said. “There’s something you should see.”
    Rizzoli and Dean followed her down a hallway, shoes muffled by the wine-red carpet running the length of the corridor. The room she led them into was a stark contrast to the richly decorated sitting room. O’Donnell’s office was devoted strictly to business: white walls, bookshelves lined with reference texts, and standard metal filing cabinets. Walking into this room, thought Rizzoli, would snap one instantly into work mode. And it seemed to have precisely that effect on O’Donnell. With grim purpose, she crossed to her desk, snatched up an X-ray envelope, and carried it to a viewing box mounted on the wall. She thrust a film into the clips and flipped a switch.
    The viewing box flickered on, backlighting an image of a human skull.
    “Frontal view,” said O’Donnell. “A twenty-eight-year-old white male construction worker. He was a law-abiding citizen described as considerate, a good husband. A loving father to his six-year-old daughter. Then he was hurt at a work site when a beam swung into his head.” She looked at her two visitors. “Agent Dean probably sees it already. How about you, Detective?”
    Rizzoli moved closer to the light box. She did not often study X rays, and she could only focus on the broader picture: the dome of the cranium, the twin hollows of the eye sockets, the picket fence of teeth.
    “I’ll put up the lateral view,” said O’Donnell, and she slid a second X ray onto the box. “Do you see it now?”
    The second film showed the skull in profile. Rizzoli could now see a fine web of fracture lines radiating backward from the front of the cranium. She pointed to them.
    O’Donnell nodded. “He was unconscious when they brought him into the E.R. A CT scan showed hemorrhaging, with a large subdural hematoma—a collection of blood—pressing on the frontal lobes of his brain. The blood was surgically drained, and he went on to recover. Or rather, he appeared to recover. He went home and eventually returned to work. But he was not the same man. Again and again, he lost his temper on the job and was fired. He began to sexually molest his daughter. Then, after an argument with his wife, he beat her so brutally her corpse was unrecognizable. He started pounding and he couldn’t stop. Even after he’d shattered most of her teeth. Even when her face was reduced to nothing but pulp and bone fragments.”
    “You’re going to tell me it can all be blamed on
that?
” said Rizzoli, pointing to the fractured skull.
    “Yes.”
    “Give me a break.”
    “Look at that film, Detective. See where the fracture is located? Consider which part of the brain lies right beneath it.” She turned and looked at Dean.
    He met her gaze without expression. “The frontal lobes,” he said.
    A faint smile twitched on O’Donnell’s lips. Clearly she enjoyed the chance to challenge an old rival.
    Rizzoli said, “What’s the point of this X ray?”
    “I was called in by the man’s defense attorney to perform a neuropsychiatric evaluation. I used what we call the Wisconsin Card Sort Test and a Category Test from the Halstead-Reitan Battery. I also ordered an MRI—magnetic resonance imaging—scan of his brain. All of them pointed to the same conclusion: This man suffered severe damage to both his frontal lobes.”
    “Yet you said he fully recovered from the injury.”
    “He
appeared
to recover.”
    “Was he brain-damaged or wasn’t he?”
    “Even with extensive damage to the frontal lobes, you can still walk and talk and perform daily functions. You could have a conversation with someone who’s had a frontal lobotomy and you might not detect anything wrong. But he is most certainly damaged.” She pointed to the X ray. “What this