Read Online The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel by Tess Gerritsen - Free Book Online Page A

light passed through a synthetic fiber, it often came out polarized in two different planes, as though shining through a crystal. The double refraction was called birefringence. Each type of fiber had a characteristic index, which could be measured with a polarizing microscope.
    “This particular blue fiber,” said Erin, “has a birefringence index of point zero six three.”
    “Is that characteristic for something in particular?”
    “Nylon six, six. Commonly used in carpets, because it’s resistant to stains, it’s resilient, and it’s tough. In particular, this fiber’s cross-sectional shape and infrared spectrograph match a DuPont product called Antron, used in carpet manufacture.”
    “And it’s dark blue?” said Rizzoli. “That’s not a color most people would choose for a home. It sounds like auto carpet.”
    Erin nodded. “In fact, this particular color, number eight-oh-two blue, has long been offered as a standard option in luxury-priced American cars. Cadillacs and Lincolns, for instance.”
    Rizzoli immediately understood where this was going. She said, “Cadillac makes hearses.”
    Erin smiled. “So does Lincoln.”
    They were both thinking the same thing:
The killer is someone who works with corpses.
    Rizzoli considered all the people who might come into contact with the dead. The cop and the medical examiner who are called to the scene of an unattended death. The pathologist and his assistant. The embalmer and the funeral director. The restorer, who washes the hair and applies makeup, so the loved one is presentable for final viewing. The dead pass through a succession of living guardians, and traces of this passage might cling to any and all who have laid hands on the deceased.
    She looked at Erin. “The missing woman. Gail Yeager . . .”
    “What about her?”
    “Her mother died last month.”

    Joey Valentine was making the dead come alive.
    Rizzoli and Korsak stood in the brightly lit prep room of the Whitney Funeral Home and Chapel and watched as Joey dug through his Graftobian makeup kit. Inside were tiny jars of cream highlighters and rouges and lipstick powders. It looked like any theatrical makeup kit, but these creams and rouges were meant to breathe life into the ashen skin of corpses. Elvis Presley’s velvet voice sang “Love Me Tender” on a boom box while Joey pressed modeling wax onto the corpse’s hands, plugging the various holes and incisions left by multiple I.V. catheters and arterial cut-downs.
    “This was Mrs. Ober’s favorite music,” he said as he worked, glancing occasionally at the three snapshots clipped to the easel, which he’d set up beside the prep table. Rizzoli assumed they were images of Mrs. Ober, although the living woman who appeared in those photos bore little resemblance to the gray and wasted corpse on which Joey was now laboring.
    “Son says she’s an Elvis freak,” said Joey. “Went to Graceland three times. He brought over that cassette, so I could play it while I do her makeup. I always try to play their favorite song or tune, you know. Helps me get a feeling for them. You learn a lot about someone just by what music they listen to.”
    “What’s an Elvis fan supposed to look like?” asked Korsak.
    “You know. Brighter lipstick. Bigger hair. Nothing like someone who listens to, say, Shostakovich.”
    “So what music did Mrs. Hallowell listen to?”
    “I don’t really remember.”
    “You worked on her only a month ago.”
    “Yes, but I don’t always remember the details.” Joey had finished his wax job on the hands. Now he moved to the head of the table, where he stood nodding to the beat of “You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog.” Dressed in black jeans and Doc Martens, he looked like a hip young artist contemplating a blank canvas. But his canvas was cold flesh, and his medium was the makeup brush and the rouge pot. “Touch of Bronze Blush Light, I think,” he said, and reached for the appropriate jar of rouge. With a