The Surgeon (30 page)

control and could finish the job with cold efficiency.
Moore set aside the autopsy report and confronted the
remains of his dinner, sitting on a tray beside him. Suddenly
queasy, he carried the tray to the door and set it outside in the
hall. Then he returned to the desk and opened the next folder,
which contained the crime lab reports.
The first sheet was a microscopic: Spermatozoa identified
in swab from victim's vaginal vault.
He knew that DNA analysis of this sperm later confirmed it
was Capra's. Prior to killing Dora Ciccone, he had raped her.
Moore turned to the next page and found a bundle of
reports from Hair and Fiber. The victim's pubic area had been
combed and the hairs examined. Among the samples was a
reddish-brown pubic hair that matched Capra's. He flipped
through the next few pages of Hair and Fiber reports, which
examined various stray hairs found at the crime scene. Most
of the samples were from the victim herself, either pubic or
head hairs. There was also a short blond strand retrieved from
the blanket, later identified as nonhuman, based on the
complex structural pattern of the medulla. A handwritten
addendum said: "Vic's mother owns Golden Retriever. Similar
hairs found on backseat of vic's car."
He turned to the last page from Hair and Fiber, and
stopped. It was an analysis of yet another hair, this one human
but never identified. It had been found on the pillow. In any

home, a variety of stray hairs can be found. Humans shed
dozens of hairs a day, and depending on how fastidious a
housekeeper you are and how often you vacuum, blankets
and carpets and couches accumulate a microscopic record of
every visitor who has ever spent significant time in your home.
This single hair, found on the pillow, could have come from a
lover, a houseguest, a relative. It was not Andrew Capra's.
Single human head hair, light brown, A0 (curved), shaft
length: 5 centimeters. Telogen phase. Trichorrhexis
invaginata noted. Unidentified origin.
Trichorrhexis invaginata. Bamboo hair.
The Surgeon was there.
He sat back, stunned. Earlier that day he had read the
Savannah lab reports for Fox, Voorhees, Torregrossa, and
Cordell. In none of those crime scenes had a hair with
Trichorrhexis invaginata been found.
But Capra's partner had been there all along. He had
remained invisible, leaving no semen, no DNA, behind. The
only evidence of his presence was this single strand of hair,
and Catherine's buried memory of his voice.

Their partnership began with the very first killing. In
Atlanta.

twenty
P    eter Falco was up to his elbows in blood. He
glanced up from the table as Catherine pushed into the
trauma room. Whatever tensions had grown between them,
whatever uneasiness she felt in Peter's presence, were
instantly shoved aside. They had assumed the roles of two
professionals working together in the heat of battle.
"Another one coming in!" said Peter. "That makes four.
They're still cutting him out of the car."

Blood spurted from the incision. He grabbed a clamp from
the tray and thrust it into the open abdomen.
"I'll assist," said Catherine, and broke the tape seal on a
sterile gown.
"No, I can handle this. Kimball needs you in Room Two."
As if to emphasize his statement, an ambulance wail
pierced the hubbub of the room.
"That one's yours," said Falco. "Have fun."
Catherine ran out to the ambulance loading dock. Already,
Dr. Kimball and two nurses were waiting outside as the
beeping vehicle backed up. Even before Kimball yanked the
ambulance door open, they could hear the patient screaming.
He was a young man, tattoos mapping his arms and
shoulders. He thrashed and cursed as the crew rolled out his
stretcher. Catherine took one glance at the blood-soaked
sheet covering his lower extremities and knew why he was
shrieking.
"We gave him a ton of morphine at the scene," said the
paramedic as they wheeled him into Trauma Two. "Didn't
seem to touch him!"
"How much?" said Catherine.

"Forty, forty-five milligrams IV. We stopped when his BP
started dropping."
"Transfer on my count!" said a nurse. "One, two, three!"
"Jesus fucking CHRIST! IT HURTS !"
"I know, sweetie; I know."
"You don't know a FUCKING THING!"
"You'll feel better in a minute. What's your name, son?"
"Rick . . . Oh Jesus, my leg--"
"Rick what?"
"Roland!"
"Do you have any allergies, Rick?"
"What's wrong with you FUCKING PEOPLE ?"
"We have vitals?" cut in Catherine as she pulled on gloves.
"BP one-oh-two over sixty. Pulse a hundred thirty."
"Ten milligrams morphine, IV push," said Kimball.
"SHIT! GIMME A HUNDRED!"

As the rest of the staff scurried around drawing bloods and
hanging IV bags, Catherine peeled back the blood-soaked
sheet and caught her breath when she saw the emergency
tourniquet tied around what was barely recognizable as a
limb. "Give him thirty," she said. The lower right leg was
attached by only a few shreds of skin. The nearly severed limb
was a pulpy red mass, the foot twisted nearly backward.
She touched the toes and they were stone cold; of course
there would be no pulse.
"They said the artery was pumping out," said the
paramedic. "First cop on the scene put on the tourniquet."
"That cop saved his life."
"Morphine's in!"
Catherine directed the light onto the wound. "Looks like the
popliteal nerve and artery are both severed. He's lost vascular
supply to this leg." She looked at Kimball, and they both
understood what had to be done.
"Let's get him to O.R.," said Catherine. "He's stable enough
to be moved. That'll free up this trauma room."
"Just in time," said Kimball as they heard another
ambulance siren wailing closer. He turned to leave.
"Hey. Hey! " The patient grabbed Kimball's arm. "Aren't you

the doctor? It fucking hurts! Tell these bitches to do
something!"
Kimball shot Catherine a wry look. And he said, "Be nice to
'em, bud. These bitches are running the show."
Amputation was not a choice Catherine ever made lightly. If
a limb could be saved, she would do everything in her power
to reattach it. But when she stood in the O.R. a half hour later,
scalpel in hand, and looked down at what remained of her
patient's right leg, the choice was obvious. The calf was
macerated and both the tibia and fibula crushed to splinters.
Judging by the uninjured left leg, his right limb had once been
well formed and muscular, a leg deeply bronzed by the sun.
The bare foot--strangely intact despite the shocking angle at
which it pointed--had the tan lines of sandal straps, and there
was sand under the toenails. She did not like this patient and
had not appreciated his cursing or the insults he'd hurled in
his pain at her and the other women on the hospital staff, but
as her scalpel sliced through his flesh, shaping a posterior
skin flap, as she sawed off the sharp edges of the fractured
tibia and fibula, she worked with a sense of sadness.
The O.R. nurse removed the severed leg from the table and
wrapped a drape over it. A foot that had once savored the
warmth of beach sand would soon be reduced to ash,
cremated with all the other sacrificed organs and limbs that
found their way to the hospital's pathology department.

The operation left Catherine depressed and drained. When
at last she stripped off her gloves and gown and walked out of
the O.R., she was not in any mood to see Jane Rizzoli waiting
for her.
She went to the sink to wash the smell of talc and latex from
her hands. "It's midnight, Detective. Don't you ever sleep?"
"Probably about as much as you do. I have some questions
for you."
"I thought you were no longer on the case."
"I'll never be off this case. No matter what anyone says."
Catherine dried her hands and turned to look at Rizzoli.
"You don't like me much, do you?"
"Whether or not I like you isn't important."
"Was it something I said to you? Something I did?"
"Look, are you finished up here for the night?"
"It's because of Moore, isn't it? That's why you resent me."
Rizzoli's jaw squared. "Detective Moore's personal life is
his business."
"But you don't approve."

"He never asked my opinion."
"Your opinion's clear enough."
Rizzoli eyed her with undisguised distaste. "I used to
admire Moore. I thought he was one of a kind. A cop who
never crossed the line. It turns out he's no better than anyone
else. What I can't believe is that the reason he messed up
was a woman."
Catherine pulled off her O.R. cap and dropped it in the
rubbish bin. "He knows it was a mistake," she said, and she
pushed out of the O.R. wing, into the hallway.
Rizzoli followed her. "Since when?"
"Since he left town without a word. I guess I was just a
temporary lapse in judgment for him."
"Is that what he was for you? A lapse in your judgment?"
Catherine stood in the hallway, blinking away tears. I don't
know I don't know what to think.
.
"You seem to be at the center of everything, Dr. Cordell.
You're right up there onstage, the focus of everyone's
attention. Moore's. The Surgeon's."
Catherine turned in anger to Rizzoli. "You think I want any of
this? I never asked to be a victim!"

"But it keeps happening to you, doesn't it? There's some
kind of weird bond between you and the Surgeon. I didn't see
it at first. I thought he killed those other victims to play out his
sick fantasies. Now I think it was all about you. He's like a cat,
killing birds and bringing them home to his mistress, to prove
his worth as a hunter. Those victims were offerings meant to
impress you. The more scared you get, the more successful
he feels. That's why he waited to kill Nina Peyton until she was
in this hospital, under your care. He wanted you to witness his
skill firsthand. You're his obsession. I want to know why."
"He's the only one who can answer that."
"You have no idea?"
"How could I? I don't even know who he is."
"He was in your house with Andrew Capra. If what you said
under hypnosis is true."
"Andrew was the only one I saw that night. Andrew's the only
one . . ." She stopped. "Maybe I'm not his real obsession,
Detective. Have you thought about that? Maybe Andrew is."
Rizzoli frowned, struck by that statement. Catherine
suddenly realized that she had hit on the truth. The center of
the Surgeon's universe was not her but Andrew Capra. The
man he emulated, perhaps even worshiped. The partner
Catherine had wrenched from him.

She glanced up as her name was called over the hospital
address system.
"Dr. Cordell, STAT, E.R. Dr. Cordell, STAT, E.R."
God, will they never leave me alone?
She punched the Down button for the elevator.
"Dr. Cordell?"
"I don't have time for any of your questions. I have patients
to see."
"When will you have the time?"
The door slid open and Catherine stepped in, the weary
soldier called back to the front lines. "My night's just begun."
By their blood will I know them.
I survey the racks of test tubes the way one lusts over
chocolates in a box, wondering which will be tastiest. Our
blood is as unique as we are, and my naked eye discerns
varying shades of red, from bright cardinal to black cherry. I
am familiar with what gives us this broad palette of colors; I
know the red is from hemoglobin, in varying states of
oxygenation. It is chemistry, nothing more, but ah, such

chemistry has the power to shock, to horrify. We are all
moved by the sight of blood.
Even though I see it every day, it never fails to thrill me.
I look over the racks with a hungry gaze. The tubes have
come from all over the greater Boston area, funneled in
from doctors' offices and clinics and the hospital next door.
We are the largest diagnostic lab in the city. Anywhere in
Boston, should you open your arm to the phlebotomist's
needle, the chances are your blood will find its way here. To
me.
I log in the first rack of specimens. On each tube is a label
with the patient's name, the doctor's name, and the date.
Next to the rack is the bundle of accompanying requisition
forms. It is the forms I reach for, and I flip through them,
scanning the names.
Halfway through the stack, I stop. I am looking at a
requisition for Karen Sobel, age twenty-five, who lives at
7536 Clark Road in Brookline. She is Caucasian and
unmarried. All this I know because it appears on the form,
along with her Social Security number and employer's
name and insurance carrier.
The doctor has requested two blood tests: an HIV screen,
and a VDRL, for syphilis.

On the line for diagnosis, the doctor has written: "Sexual
assault."
In the rack, I find the tube containing Karen Sobel's blood.
It is a deep and somber red, the blood of a wounded beast. I
hold it in my hand, and as it warms to my touch, I see her,
feel her, this woman named Karen. Broken and stumbling.
Waiting to be claimed.
Then I hear a voice that startles me, and I look up.
Catherine Cordell has just walked into my lab.
She is standing so close, I can almost reach out and
touch her. I am stunned to see her here, especially at this
remote hour between darkness and dawn. Seldom do any
physicians venture into our basement world, and to see her
now is an unexpected thrill, as arresting as the vision of
Persephone descending into Hades.
I wonder what has brought her. Then I see her hand
several tubes of straw-colored fluid to the technician at the
next bench, and hear the words "pleural effusion," and I
understand why she has deigned to visit us. Like many
physicians, she does not trust the hospital couriers with
certain precious body fluids, and she has personally carried
the tubes down the tunnel that connects Pilgrim Hospital with
the Interpath Labs building.

I watch her walk away. She passes right by my bench. Her
shoulders sag, and she sways, her legs wobbly, as though
she is struggling through deep mud. Fatigue and the
fluorescent lights make her skin look like little more than a
milky wash over the fine bones of her face. She vanishes
out the door, never knowing that I've been watching her.
I look down at Karen Sobel's tube, which I am still holding,
and suddenly the blood seems dull and lifeless. A prey not
even worth the hunt. Not when compared to what has just
walked past me.
I can still smell Catherine's scent.
I log onto the computer, and under "doctor's name" I type:
"C. Cordell." On the screen appear all the lab tests she has
ordered in the last twenty-four hours. I see that she has been
in the hospital since 10:00 P.M. It is now 5:30 A.M., and a
Friday. She faces a whole clinic day ahead of her.
My workday is now coming to an end.
When I step out of the building, it is 7:00 A.M., and the
morning sunlight slices straight into my eyes. Already the
day is warm. I walk to the medical center parking garage,
take the elevator to the fifth level, and head along the row of
cars to stall # 541, where her car is parked. It is a lemon-
yellow Mercedes, this year's model. She keeps it sparkling