The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

since he was heavy enough to squash her flat. She could hear the two men moving about a few feet away.
    “The cord’s tangled,” said Mick. The Crimescope light suddenly shifted in Rizzoli’s direction as he turned to free up the power cord.
    The beam washed across the rug where Rizzoli was crouched. She stared. Framed by the background fluorescence of the rug fibers was a dark irregular spot, smaller than a dime.
    “Mick,” she said.
    “Can you lift that end of the coffee table? I think the cord’s wrapped around the leg.”
    “Mick.”
    “What?”
    “Bring the scope over here. Focus on the rug. Right where I am.”
    Mick came toward her. Korsak did, too; she could hear his adenoidal breathing moving closer.
    “Aim at my hand,” she said. “I’ve got my finger near the spot.”
    Bluish light suddenly bathed the rug, and her hand was a black silhouette against the fluorescing background.
    “There,” she said. “What is it?”
    Mick crouched beside her. “A stain of some kind. I should get a photo of that.”
    “But it’s a dark spot,” said Korsak. “I thought we were looking for something that fluoresces.”
    “When the background’s highly fluorescent, like these carpet fibers, body fluids may actually look dark, because they don’t fluoresce as brightly. This stain could be anything. The lab will have to confirm it.”
    “So what, are we gonna cut a piece out of this nice rug, just because we’ve found an old coffee stain or something?”
    Mick paused. “There’s one more trick we can try.”
    “What?”
    “I’m going to change the wavelength on this scope. Bring it down to UV shortwave.”
    “What does that do?”
    “It’s real cool if it happens.”
    Mick adjusted the settings, then focused the light on the area of rug containing the dark blot. “Watch,” he said, and flipped off the power to the Crimescope.
    The room went pitch-black. All except for one bright spot glowing at their feet.
    “What the hell is
that
?” said Korsak.
    Rizzoli felt as though she were hallucinating. She stared at the ghostly image, which seemed to burn with green fire. Even as she watched, the spectral glow began to fade. Seconds later, they were in complete blackness.
    “Phosphorescence,” said Mick. “It’s delayed fluorescence. It happens when UV light excites electrons in certain substances. The electrons take a little extra time to return to their baseline energy state. As they do, they release photons of light. That’s what we were seeing. We’ve got a stain here that phosphoresces bright green after exposure to short-wavelength UV light. That’s very suggestive.” He rose and switched on the room lights.
    In the sudden brightness, the rug they had been staring at with such fascination appeared utterly ordinary. But she could not look at it now without feeling a sense of revulsion, because she knew what had taken place there; the evidence of Gail Yeager’s ordeal still clung to those beige fibers.
    “It’s semen,” she said.
    “It very well could be,” said Mick as he set up the camera tripod and attached the Kodak Wratten filter for UV photography. “After I get a shot of this, we’ll cut out this section of the rug. The lab will have to confirm with acid phosphatase and microscopic.”
    But Rizzoli needed no confirmation. She turned toward the blood-spattered wall. She remembered the position of Dr. Yeager’s body, and she remembered the teacup that had fallen from his lap and shattered on the wood floor. The spot of phosphorescing green on the rug confirmed what she had feared. She understood what had happened, as surely as if the scene were playing out before her eyes.
    You dragged them from their beds to this room, with its wood floor. Bound the doctor’s wrists and ankles and taped over his mouth so he could not cry out, could not distract you. You sat him there, against that wall, making him your mute audience of one. Richard Yeager is still alive, and fully aware of what