The Apprentice (31 page)

In the ICU, she walked straight past the ward clerk’s desk and headed to cubicle #5. There she halted, frowning through the glass partition.

A woman was lying in Korsak’s bed.

“Excuse me. Ma’am?” a nurse said. “Visitors need to check in.”

Rizzoli turned. “Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Vince Korsak. He should be in that bed.”

“I’m sorry; I came on duty at three—”

“You were supposed to call me if anything happened!”

By now, her agitation had attracted the attention of another nurse who quickly intervened, speaking in the soothing tones of one who has dealt often with upset relatives.

“Mr. Korsak was extubated this morning, ma’am.”

“What do you mean?”

“The tube in his throat—the one to help him breathe—we took it out. He’s doing fine now, so we transferred him to the intermediate care unit, down the hall.” She added, in defense: “We
did
call Mr. Korsak’s wife, you know.”

Rizzoli thought of Diane Korsak and her vacant eyes and wondered if the phone call had even registered, or if the information had simply dropped like a penny into a dark well.

By the time she reached Korsak’s room, she was calmer and back in control. Quietly she poked her head inside.

He was awake and staring at the ceiling. His belly bulged beneath the sheets. His arms lay perfectly still at his sides, as though he was afraid to move them lest he disturb the tangle of wires and tubes.

“Hey,” she said softly.

He looked at her. “Hey,” he croaked back.

“You feel like having a visitor?”

In answer, he patted the bed, an invitation for her to settle in. To stay.

She pulled a chair over to his bedside and sat down. His gaze had lifted again, not to the ceiling, as she’d thought at first, but to a cardiac monitor that was mounted in the corner of the room. An EKG blipped across the screen.

“That’s my heart,” he said. The tube had left him hoarse, and what came out was barely a whisper.

“Looks like it’s ticking okay,” she said.

“Yeah.” There was a silence, his gaze still fixed on the monitor.

She saw the bouquet of flowers that she’d sent that morning resting on his bedside table. It was the only vase in the room. Had no one else thought to send flowers? Not even his wife?

“I met Diane yesterday,” she said. He glanced at her, then quickly looked away, but not before she’d seen dismay in his eyes. “I guess she didn’t tell you.”

He shrugged. “She hasn’t been in today.”

“Oh. She’ll probably be in later, then.”

“Hell if I know.”

His reply caught her by surprise. Perhaps he’d surprised himself as well; his face suddenly flushed.

“I shouldn’t‘ve said that,” he said.

“You can say whatever you want to me.”

He looked up at the monitor again and sighed. “Okay, then. It sucks.”

“What does?”

“Everything. Guy like me goes through life, doing what he’s supposed to do. Brings in the paycheck. Gives the kid whatever she wants. Never takes a bribe, not once. Then suddenly I’m fifty-four and
wham
, my own ticker turns against me. And I’m lying flat on my back, thinking:
What the hell was it all for
? I follow the rules, and I end up with a loser daughter who still calls Daddy whenever she needs money. And a wife who’s zonked out of her head on whatever crap she can get from the pharmacy. I can’t compete with Prince Valium. I’m just the guy who puts a roof over her head and pays for all the friggin‘ prescriptions.” He gave a laugh, resigned and bitter.

“Why are you still married?”

“What’s the alternative?”

“Being single.”

“Being alone, you mean.” He said the word
alone
as if that was the worst option of all. Some people make choices hoping for the best; Korsak had made a choice simply to avoid the worst. He gazed up at his cardiac tracing, the twitching green symbol of his mortality. Bad choices or good, it had all led to this moment, in this
hospital
room, where fear kept company with regret.

And where will I be at his age? she wondered. Flat on my back in a hospital regretting the choices I made, yearning for the road I never took? She thought of her silent apartment with its blank walls, its lonely bed.

How was her life any better than Korsak’s?

“I keep worrying it’s gonna stop,” he said. “You know, just go flat-line. That’d scare the shit out of me.”

“Stop watching it.”

“If I stop watching, who the hell’s gonna keep an eye on it?”

“The nurses are watching out at the desk. They’ve got monitors out there, too, you know.”

“But are they really
watching
it? Or are they just goofing off, talking about shopping and boyfriends and shit? I mean, that’s my frigging heart up there.”

“They’ve got alarm systems, too. Anything the least bit irregular, their machine starts squealing.” He looked at her. “No shit?”

“What, you don’t trust me?”

“I dunno.”

They regarded each other for a moment, and she was pricked by shame. She had no right to expect his trust, not after what had happened in the cemetery. The vision still haunted her, of a stricken Korsak, lying alone and abandoned in the darkness. And she—so single-minded, so oblivious to everything but the chase. She could not look him in the eye, and her gaze dropped, settling instead on his beefy arm, crisscrossed with tape and I.V. tubing.

“I am so sorry,” she said. “God, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Not looking out for you.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Don’t you remember?” He shook his head.

She paused, suddenly realizing that he truly did not remember. That she could stop talking right now and he would never know how she’d failed him. Silence might be the easy way out, but she knew she couldn’t live with the burden.

“What do you remember, about the night in the cemetery?” she asked. “The last thing?”

“The last thing? I was running. I guess we were running, weren’t we? Chasing the perp.”

“What else?”

“I remember feeling really pissed off.”

“Why?”

He snorted. “ ‘Cause I couldn’t keep up with a friggin’ girl.”

“And then?”

He shrugged. “That’s it. That’s the last I remember. Till those nurses here started shoving that goddamn tube up my…” He stopped. “I woke up all right. You better believe I let ‘em know it, too.”

A silence passed, Korsak with his jaw squared, his gaze fixed stubbornly on the EKG monitor. Then he said, with quiet disgust: “I guess I screwed up the chase.”

This took her by surprise. “Korsak—”

“Look at this.” He waved at his bulging belly. “Like I swallowed a goddamn basketball. That’s what it looks like. Or I’m fifteen months knocked up. Can’t even run a race with a girl. I used to be fast, you know. Used to be built like a racehorse. Not like I am now. You shoulda seen me back then, Rizzoli. Wouldn’t recognize me. Bet you don’t believe any of it, do you? ‘Cause you just see me like I am now. Broken-down piece of shit. Smoke too much, eat too much.”
Drink too much
, she added silently. “… just an ugly tub of lard.” He gave his belly an angry slap.

“Korsak, listen to me. I’m the one who screwed up, not you.”

He looked at her, clearly confused.

“In the cemetery. We were both running. Chasing what we thought was the perp. You were right behind me. I heard you breathing, trying to keep up.”

“Like you gotta rub it in.”

“Then you weren’t there. You just weren’t there. But I kept running, and it was all a waste of time. It wasn’t the perp. It was Agent Dean, walking the perimeter. The perp was long gone. We were chasing after nothing, Korsak. A few shadows. That’s all.”

He was silent, waiting for the rest of the story.

She forced herself to continue. “That’s when I should’ve gone looking for you. I should’ve realized you weren’t around. But things got crazy. And I just didn’t think. I didn’t stop to wonder where you were…” She sighed. “I don’t know how long it took me to remember. Maybe it was only a few minutes. But I think—I’m afraid—it was a lot longer. And all that time, you were lying there, behind one of the gravestones. It took me so long to start searching for you. To remember.”

A silence passed. She wondered if he’d even registered what she’d said, because he began to fuss with his I.V. line, rearranging the loops of tubing. It was as if he didn’t want to look at her and was trying to focus instead on anything else.

“Korsak?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t you have anything to say?”

“Yeah. Forget it. That’s what I have to say.”

“I feel like such a jerk.”

“Why? ‘Cause you were doing your job?”

“Because I should’ve been watching out for my partner.”

“Like I’m your partner?”

“That night you were.”

He laughed. “That night I was a friggin‘ liability. A two-ton ball and chain, holding you back. You been getting all worked up about not looking out for me. Me, I’ve been lying here getting pissed off for falling down on the job. I mean,
literally
. Kerplunk. I been thinking about all the dumb-ass lies I keep telling myself. You see this gut?” Again he slapped his belly. “It was gonna disappear. Yeah, I believed that, too. That one of these days I was gonna go on a diet and get rid of the tire. Instead, I just keep buying bigger and bigger pants. Telling myself those clothing manufacturers are screwing around with the sizes, that’s all. Coupla years from now, maybe I’d end up wearing clown pants. Bozo pants. And a ton of Ex-Lax and water pills wouldn’t help me pass my physical.”

“You actually did that? Took pills to pass the physical?”

“I’m not saying one way or the other. I’m just telling you that this thing with my heart, it was a long time coming. It’s not like I didn’t know it could happen. But now that it
has
happened, it pisses me off.” He let out an angry snort. Looked up at the monitor again, where his heartbeat was blipping faster across the screen. “Now I got the ticker all stirred up.”

They sat for a moment, watching the EKG, waiting for his heart to slow down. She had never paid much attention to the heart beating in her own chest. As she watched the pattern traced by Korsak’s, she became aware of her own pulse. She had always taken her heartbeat for granted, and she wondered what it would be like, to hang on every beat, fearful that the next might not come. That the throb of life in her chest would suddenly go still.

She looked at Korsak, who lay with gaze still glued to the monitor, and she thought: He’s more than angry; he’s terrified.

Suddenly he sat up straight, his hand flying to his chest, his eyes wide in panic. “Call the nurse! Call the nurse!”

“What? What is it?”

“Don’t you hear that alarm? It’s my heart—”

“Korsak, it’s just my pager.”

“What?”

She unclipped the pager from her belt and turned off the beeping. Held it up for him to see the digital readout of the phone number. “See? It’s not your heart.”

He sank back on the pillows. “Jesus. Get that thing outta here. Could’ve given me a coronary.”

“Can I use this phone?”

He was lying with his hand still pressed to his chest, his whole body flaccid with relief. “Yeah, yeah. I don’t care.”

She picked up the receiver and dialed.

A familiar smoky voice answered: “Medical examiner’s office, Dr. Isles.”

“Rizzoli.”

“Detective Frost and I are sitting here looking at a set of dental X-rays on my computer. We’ve been going down that list that NCIC sent us of missing women in the New England area. This file was e-mailed to me from the Maine State Police.”

“What was the case?”

“It’s a murder-abduction from June second of this year. The murder victim was Kenneth Waite, age thirty-six. The abductee was his wife Maria Jean, age thirty-four. It’s Maria Jean’s X-rays I’m looking at.”

“We’ve found Rickets Lady?”

“It’s a match,” Isles answered. “Your girl’s now got a name: Maria Jean Waite. They’re faxing the records to us now.”

“Wait. Did you say this murder-abduction was in Maine?”

“A town called Blue Hill. Frost says he’s been there. It’s about a five-hour drive.”

“Our unsub’s got a bigger hunting territory than we thought.”

“Here, Frost wants to talk to you.”

Frost’s cheery voice came on the line. “Hey, you ever had a lobster roll?”

“What?”

“We can get lobster rolls on the way. There’s this great lunch shack up on Lincolnville Beach. We leave here by eight tomorrow, we can get there in time for lunch. My car or yours?”

“We can take mine.” She paused. And couldn’t stop herself from adding: “Dean will probably want to ride with us.”

There was a pause. “Okay,” Frost finally said, without enthusiasm. “If you think so.”

“I’ll give him a call.”

As she disconnected, she could feel Korsak’s gaze on her.

“So Mr. FBI’s part of the team now,” he said.

She ignored him and punched in Dean’s cell phone number.

“When did that happen?”

“He’s just another resource.”

“That’s not what you thought about him before.”

“We’ve had a chance to work together since then.”

“Don’t tell me. You’ve seen another
side
to him.”

She waved Korsak into silence as the call went through. But Dean did not answer. Instead, a recorded message came on the line: “Subscriber is not available at this time.”

She hung up and looked at Korsak. “Is there a problem?”

“You’re the one looks like she has a problem. You get a fresh lead, and you can’t
wait
to call your new fibbie pal. What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

“Doesn’t look that way to me.”

Heat flooded her face. She was not being honest with him, and they both knew it. Even as she’d dialed Dean’s cell phone number, she’d felt her pulse quicken, and she knew exactly what it meant. She felt like a junkie craving her fix, unable to stop herself from calling his hotel. Turning her back on Korsak’s baleful gaze, she faced out the window as the phone rang.

“Colonnade.”

“Could you connect me to one of your guests? His name’s Gabriel Dean.”