The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

unrelenting fierceness, and she flushed even deeper as Rizzoli’s words continued to pummel her.
    “He was polite, you said. Cooperative. Well, of course. He had exactly what he wanted: a woman in the room with him. A woman sitting close enough to get him excited. He hides it, though; he’s good at that. Good at holding a perfectly normal conversation, even as he’s thinking about cutting your throat.”
    “You are out of control,” said O’Donnell.
    “You think I’m just trying to scare you?”
    “Isn’t it obvious?”
    “Here’s something that should really scare the shit out of you. Warren Hoyt got a good whiff of you. He’s been turned on by you. Now he’s out, and he’s hunting again. And guess what? He never forgets a woman’s scent.”
    O’Donnell stared back, fear at last registering in her eyes. Rizzoli could not help but derive some satisfaction from seeing that fear. She wanted O’Donnell to have a taste of what she herself had suffered this past year.
    “Get used to being afraid,” said Rizzoli. “Because you need to be.”
    “I’ve worked with men like him,” said O’Donnell. “I know when to be afraid.”
    “Hoyt is different from anyone you’ve ever met.”
    O’Donnell gave a laugh. Her bravado had returned, braced by pride. “They’re all different. All unique. And I never turn my back on any of them.”

seventeen
    My dear Dr. O’Donnell,
    You asked about my earliest childhood memories. I have heard that few people retain memories of their lives from before the age of three, because the immature brain has not acquired the ability to process language, and we need language to interpret the sights and sounds we experience during infancy. Whatever the explanation for childhood amnesia may be, it does not apply to me, as I remember certain details of my childhood quite well. I can call to mind distinct images which, I believe, date back to when I was about eleven months old. No doubt you’ll dismiss these as fabricated memories, built on stories I must have heard from my parents. I assure you, these memories are quite real, and if my parents were alive, they would tell you that my recollections are accurate and could not have been based on any stories I might have heard. By the very nature of the images, these were not events my family was likely to talk about.
    I remember my crib, wooden slats painted white, the rail dimpled with gnaw marks from my teething. A blue blanket that had some sort of tiny creatures printed on it. Birds or bees or maybe little bears. And over the crib, a soaring contraption which I now know was a mobile, but at the time struck me as something quite magical. Glittering, always moving. Stars and moons and planets, my father later told me, just the sort of thing he would hang over his son’s crib. He was an aerospace engineer, and he believed that you could turn any child into a genius if you just stimulated the growing brain, whether it be with mobiles or flash cards or tapes with his father’s voice reciting the multiplication tables.
    I have always been good at math.
    But these are memories I doubt you have much interest in. No, you are searching for the darker themes, not my memories of white cribs and pretty mobiles. You want to know why I am the way I am.
    So I suppose I should tell you about Mairead Donohue.
    I learned her name years later, when I told an aunt about my early recollections, and she said, “Oh, my God. You actually remember Mairead?” Yes indeed, I remember her. When I call to mind the images from my nursery, it is not my mother’s face but the face of Mairead that stares down at me over the railing of my crib. White skin, marred by a single mole which perches like a black fly on her cheek. Green eyes that are both beautiful and cold. And her smile—even a child as young as I was could see what adults are blind to: there is hatred in that smile. She hates the household where she works. She hates the stink of diapers. She hates my hungry cries which interrupt her sleep. She hates the circumstances which have brought her to this hot Texas city, so different from her native Ireland.
    Most of all, she hates me.
    I know this, because she demonstrates it in a dozen quiet and subtle ways. She does not leave any evidence of her abuse; oh no, she is too clever for that. Instead her hatred takes the form of angry whispers, soft as a snake’s hiss, as she leans over my crib. I cannot understand the words, but I hear their venom,