Free The Apprentice by Tess Gerritsen Page A

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