The Apprentice (8 page)

“Why don’t you apply? Seems like it’d be a step up.”

“I’m happy with my job the way it is.” Joey turned his attention back to Mrs. Ober, whose face had now taken on a rosy glow. He reached for an eyebrow comb and began to stroke brown coloring onto her gray eyebrows, his hands working with almost loving delicacy. At an age when most young men are eager to tackle life, Joey Valentine had chosen instead to spend his days with the dead. He had shepherded corpses from hospitals and nursing homes to this clean, bright room. He had washed and dried them, shampooed their hair, brushed on creams and powders to grant them the illusion of life. As he stroked color on Mrs. Ober’s cheeks, he murmured: “Nice. Oh yes, that’s really nice. You’re going to look fabulous…”

“So, Joey,” said Korsak. “You been working here seven years, right?”

“Didn’t I just tell you that?”

“And you never bothered to apply for any, like, professional credentials?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?”

“Is that because you knew you wouldn’t get a license?”

Joey froze, his hand about to stroke on lipstick. He said nothing.

“Does old Mr. Whitney know about your criminal record?” asked Korsak.

At last Joey looked up. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

“Maybe I should. Seeing as how you scared the shit out of that poor girl.”

“I was only eighteen. It was a mistake—”

“A mistake? What, you peeped in the wrong window? Spied on the wrong girl?”

“We went to high school together! It wasn’t like I didn’t know her!”

“So you only peep in windows of girls you know? What else you done, you never got caught for?”

“I told you, it was a mistake!”

“You ever sneak into someone’s house? Go into their bedroom? Maybe filch a little something like a bra, or a nice pair of panties?”

“Oh, Jesus.” Joey stared down at the lipstick he’d just dropped on the floor. He looked as though he was about to be sick.

“You know, Peeping Toms have a way of going on to other things,” said Korsak, unrelenting. “Bad things.”

Joey went to the boom box and shut it off. In the silence that followed, he stood with his back turned to them, staring out the window at the cemetery across the road. “You’re trying to fuck up my life,” he said.

“No, Joey. We’re just trying to have a frank conversation here.”

“Mr. Whitney doesn’t know.”

“And he doesn’t have to.”

“Unless?”

“Where were you on Sunday night?”

“At home.”

“By yourself?”

Joey sighed. “Look, I know what this is all about. I know what you’re trying to do. But I told you, I hardly knew Mrs. Yeager. All I did was take care of her mother. I did a good job, you know. Everyone told me so, afterward. How alive she looked.”

“You mind if we take a peek in your car?”

“Why?”

“Just to check it out.”

“Yes, I mind. But you’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?”

“Only with your permission.” Korsak paused. “You know, cooperation is a two-way street.”

Joey just kept staring out the window. “There’s a burial out there today,” he said softly. “See all the limousines? Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved watching funeral processions. They’re so beautiful. So dignified. It’s the one thing people still do right. The one thing they haven’t ruined. Not like weddings, where they do stupid things like jumping out of planes. Or saying their vows on national television. At funerals, we still show respect for what’s proper…”

“Your car, Joey.”

At last, Joey turned and crossed to one of the cabinet drawers. Reaching inside, he pulled out a set of keys, which he handed to Korsak. “It’s the brown Honda.”

Rizzoli and Korsak stood in the parking lot, staring down at the taupe carpet that lined the trunk of Joey Valentine’s car.

“Shit.” Korsak slammed down the trunk hood. “I’m not through with this guy.”

“You haven’t got a thing on him.”

“You see his shoes? Looked to me like size eleven. And the hearse has navy-blue carpet.”

“So do thousands of other cars. It doesn’t make him vour man.”

“Well, it sure ain’t old Whitney.” Joey’s boss, Leon Whitney, was sixty-six years old.

“Look, we already got the unsub’s DNA,” said Korsak. “All we need is Joey’s.”

“You think he’ll just spit in a cup for you?”

“If he wants to keep his job. I think he’ll sit up and beg
like
a dog for me.”

She looked across the road, shimmering with heat, and gazed at the cemetery, where the funeral procession was now winding its dignified way toward the exit. Once the dead are buried, life moves on, she thought. Whatever the tragedy, life must always move on.
And so should I
.

“I can’t afford to spend any more time on this,” she said.

“What?”

“I’ve got my own caseload. And I don’t think the Yeager case has anything to do with Warren Hoyt.”

“That’s not what you thought three days ago.”

“Well, I was wrong.” She crossed the parking lot to her car, opened the door, and rolled down the windows. Waves of heat rushed out at her from the baking interior.

“Did I tick you off or something?” he asked.

“No.”

“So why are you bailing out?”

She slid behind the wheel. The seat felt searing, even through her slacks. “I’ve spent the last year trying to get over the Surgeon,” she said. “I’ve got to let go of him. I’ve got to stop seeing his hand in everything I run across.”

“You know, sometimes your gut feeling’s the best thing you can go with.”

“Sometimes, that’s all it is. A feeling, not a fact. There’s nothing sacred about a cop’s instinct. What the hell is instinct, anyway? How many times does a hunch turn out dead wrong?” She turned on the engine. “Too damn often.”

“So I didn’t tick you off?”

She slammed her door shut. “No.”

“You sure?”

She glanced through the open window at him. He stood squinting in the sunlight, eyes narrowed to slits under a bushy fringe of eyebrow. On his arms, dark hairs bristled, heavy as a pelt, and his stance, hips thrust forward, shoulders sagging, made her think of a slouching gorilla. No, he had not ticked her off. But she could not look at him without registering a twinge of distaste.

“I just can’t spend any more time on this,” she said. “You know how it is.”

Back at her desk, Rizzoli focused her attention on all the paperwork that had accumulated. On top was the file for Airplane Man, whose identity remained unknown and whose ruined body still lay unclaimed in the M.E.‘s office. She had neglected this victim too long. But even as she opened the folder and reviewed the autopsy photos, she was still thinking of the Yeagers and of a man who had corpse hair on his clothes. She reviewed the schedule of Logan Airport’s jet landings and takeoffs, but it was Gail Yeager’s face that stayed on her mind, smiling from the photo on the dresser. She remembered the gallery of women’s photos that had been taped to the wall of the conference room a year ago, during the Surgeon investigation. Those women had been smiling, too, their faces captured at a moment when they were still warm flesh, when life still glowed in their eyes. She could not think of Gail Yeager without remembering the dead who had gone before her.

She wondered if Gail was already among them.

Her pager vibrated, the buzz like an electric shock from her belt. An advance warning of a discovery that would rock her day. She picked up the phone.

A moment later, she was hurrying out of the building.

The dog was a yellow Lab, excited to near hyseria by the police officers standing nearby. He capered and barked at the end of his leash, which was tied to a tree. The dog’s owner, a wiry middle-aged man in running shorts, sat nearby on a large rock, head drooping into his hands, ignoring his dog’s pleading yips for attention.

“Owner’s name is Paul Vandersloot. Lives on River Street, just a mile from here,” said Patrolman Gregory Doud, who had secured the scene and had already strung a semicircle of police tape on the trees.

They were standing on the edge of the municipal golf course, staring into the woods of Stony Brook Reservation, which directly abutted the golf course. Located at the southern tip of Boston’s city limits, this reservation was surrounded by a sea of suburbs. But within Stony Brook’s 475 acres was a rugged landscape of wooded hills and valleys, rocky outcroppings, and marshes fringed with cattails. In winter, cross-country skiers explored the park’s ten miles of trails; in summer, joggers found refuge in its quiet forests.

And so had Mr. Vandersloot, until his dog led him to what lay among the trees.

“He says he comes here every afternoon to take his dog for a run,” said Officer Doud. “Usually goes up the East Boundary Road trail first, through the woods, then loops back along this inside edge of the golf course. It’s about a four-mile run. Says he keeps the dog on a leash the whole time. But today, the dog got away from him. They were going up the trail when the dog took off west, into the woods, and wouldn’t come back. Vandersloot went chasing after him. Practically tripped right over the body.” Doud glanced at the jogger, who was still huddled on the rock. “Called nine-one-one.”

“He use a cell phone?”

“No, ma’am. Went to a phone booth down at the Thompson Center. I got here around two-twenty. I was careful not to touch anything. Just walked into the woods far enough to confirm it was a body. About fifty yards in, I could already smell it. Then, after another fifty yards, I saw it. Backed right out and secured the scene. Closed off both ends of the Boundary Road trail.”

“And when did everyone else get here?”

“Detectives Sleeper and Crowe got here around three. The M.E. arrived around three-thirty.” He paused. “I didn’t realize you were coming in, too.”

“Dr. Isles called me. I guess we’re all parking on the golf course for now?”

“Detective Sleeper ordered it. Doesn’t want any vehicles visible from Enneking Parkway. Keeps us out of the public’s eye.”

“Any media turned up yet?”

“No, ma’am. I was careful not to radio it in. Used the call box down the road instead.”

“Good. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they won’t turn up at all.”

“Uh-oh,” said Doud. “Could this be our first jackal arriving?”

A dark-blue Marquis rolled across the golf course grass and pulled up beside the M.E.‘s van. A familiar overweight figure hauled himself out and smoothed his sparse hair over his scalp.

“He’s not a reporter,” said Rizzoli. “This guy I’m expecting.”

Korsak lumbered toward them. “You really think it’s her?” he asked.

“Dr. Isles says it’s a strong possibility. If so, your homicide just moved into Boston city limits.” She looked at Doud. “Which way do we approach it, so we don’t contaminate things?”

“You’re okay going from the east. Sleeper and Crowe have already videoed the site. The footprints and drag marks all come from the other direction, starting at Enneking Parkway. Just follow your nose.”

She and Korsak slipped under the police tape and headed into the woods. This section of second-growth trees was as dense as any deep forest. They ducked beneath spiky branches that scratched their faces, and snagged their trouser legs on brambles. They emerged on the East Boundary jogging trail and spotted a strand of police tape, fluttering from a tree.

“The jogger was running along this path when his dog got away from him,” she said. “Looks like Sleeper left us a trail of tape.”

They crossed the jogging path and plunged once again into the woods.

“Oh man. I think I can smell it already,” said Korsak.

Even before they saw the body, they heard the ominous hum of flies. Dry twigs snapped beneath their shoes, the sound as startling as gunfire. Through the trees ahead, they saw Sleeper and Crowe, faces contorted in disgust as they waved away insects. Dr. Isles was crouched near the ground, a few diamonds of sunlight dappling her black hair. Drawing closer, they saw what Isles was doing.

Korsak uttered an appalled groan. “Ah, shit. That I didn’t need to see.”

“Vitreous potassium,” said Isles, and the words sounded almost seductive in her smoky voice. “It’ll give us another estimate for the postmortem interval.”

The time of death would be difficult to determine, Rizzoli thought, gazing down at the nude corpse. Isles had rolled it onto a sheet, and it lay faceup, eyes bulging from the heat-expanded tissues inside the cranium. A necklace of disk-shaped bruises ringed the throat. The long blond hair was a stiff mat of straw. The abdomen was bloated, and the belly was tinted a liverish green. Blood vessels had been stained by the bacterial breakdown of blood, and the veins were startlingly visible, like black rivers flowing beneath the skin. But all these horrors paled in view of the procedure Isles was now performing. The membranes around the human eye are the most sensitive surface of the body; a single eyelash or the tiniest grain of sand caught beneath an eyelid can cause immense discomfort. So it made both Rizzoli and Korsak wince to watch Isles pierce the corpse’s eye with a twenty-gauge needle. Slowly she sucked the vitreous fluid into a 10 cc syringe.

“Looks nice and clear,” said Isles, sounding pleased. She placed the syringe in an ice-filled cooler, then rose to her feet and surveyed the site with a regal gaze. “Liver temp is only two degrees cooler than ambient temp,” she said. “And there’s no insect or animal damage. She hasn’t been lying here very long.”

“It’s just a dump?” asked Sleeper.

“Lividity indicates she died while lying faceup. See how it’s darker on the back, where the blood’s pooled? But she was found lying here facedown.”

“She was moved here.”

“Less than twenty-four hours ago.”

“Looks like she’s been dead a lot longer than that,” said Crowe.

“Yes. She’s flaccid, and there’s significant bloating. Skin’s already slipping off.”

“Is that a nosebleed?” asked Korsak.

“Decomposed blood. She’s starting to purge. Fluids are being forced out by the internal buildup of gases.”

“Time of death?” asked Rizzoli.

Isles paused, her gaze fixed for a moment on the grotesquely swollen remains of a woman they all believed was Gail Yeager. Flies buzzed, filling the silence with their greedy hum. Except for the long blond hair, there was little about the corpse that resembled the woman in the photographs, a woman who once had surely turned men’s heads with just a smile. It was a disturbing reminder that both the beautiful and the homely are reduced by bacteria and insects to the grim equality of moldering flesh.