The Surgeon r-1

by Tess Gerritsen

  She left it hanging and sidled to the doorway. Glanced into the next room and saw a living room, a shabby couch, a few chairs.

  Where was Hoyt? Where?

  She moved into the living room. Halfway across, she gave a squeak of fright as her beeper vibrated. Shit. She turned it off and continued across the living room.

  In the foyer she halted, staring.

  The front door hung wide open.

  He’s out of the house.

  She stepped onto the porch. As mosquitoes whined around her head, she scanned the front yard, looking beyond the dirt driveway, where her car was parked, to the tall grass and the nearby fringe of woods with its ragged edge of advancing saplings. Too many places out there to hide. While she’d been battering like a stupid bull at the back door, he’d slipped out the front door and fled into the woods.

  Cordell is in the house. Find her.

  She stepped back into the house and hurried up the stairs. It was hot in the upper rooms, and airless, and she was sweating rivers as she quickly searched the three bedrooms, the bathroom, the closets. No Cordell.

  God, she was going to suffocate in here.

  She went back down the stairs, and the silence of the house made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. All at once, she knew that Cordell was dead. That what she’d heard from the barn must have been a mortal cry, the last sound uttered from a dying throat.

  She returned to the kitchen. Through the window over the sink, she had an unobstructed view of the barn.

  He saw me walk through the grass, cross to that barn. He saw me open those doors. He knew I’d find the Mercedes. He knew his time was up.

  So he finished it. And he ran.

  The refrigerator clunked a few times and fell silent. She heard her own heartbeat, pattering like a snare drum.

  Turning, she saw the door to the cellar. The only place she hadn’t searched.

  She opened the door and saw darkness gaping below. Oh hell, she hated this, walking from the light, descending down those steps to what she knew would be a scene of horror. She didn’t want to do it, but she knew Cordell had to be down there.

  Rizzoli reached into her pocket for the mini-Maglite. Guided by its narrow beam, she took a step down, then another. The air felt cooler, moister.

  She smelled blood.

  Something brushed across her face and she jerked back, startled. Let out a sharp breath of relief when she realized it was only a pull chain for a light, swinging above the stairs. She reached up and gave the chain a tug. Nothing happened.

  The penlight would have to do.

  She aimed the beam at the steps again, lighting her way as she descended, holding her weapon close to her body. After the stifling heat upstairs, the air down here felt almost frigid, chilling the sweat on her skin.

  She reached the bottom of the stairs, her shoes landing on packed earth. Even cooler down here, the smell of blood stronger. The air thick and damp. Silent, so silent; still as death. The loudest sound was her own breath, rushing in and out of her lungs.

  She swung the beam in an arc, almost screamed when her reflection flashed right back at her. She stood with weapon aimed, her heart hammering, as she saw what it was that reflected the light.

  Glass jars. Large apothecary jars, lined up on a shelf. She did not need to look at the objects floating inside to know what those jars contained.

  His souvenirs.

  There were six jars, each one labeled with a name. More victims than they ever knew.

  The last one was empty, but the name was already written on the label, the container ready and waiting for its prize. The best prize of all.

  Catherine Cordell.

  Rizzoli swung around, her Maglite zigzagging around the cellar, flitting past massive posts and foundation stones, and coming to an abrupt halt on the far corner. Something black was splashed on the wall.

  Blood.

  She shifted the beam, and it fell directly on Cordell’s body, wrists and ankles bound with duct tape to the bed. Blood glistened, fresh and wet, on her flank. On one white thigh was a single crimson handprint where the Surgeon had pressed his glove onto her flesh, as though to leave his mark. The tray of surgical instruments was still there by the bed, a torturer’s assortment of tools.

  Oh god. I was so close to saving you….

  Sick with rage, she moved the beam of her light up the length of Cordell’s blood-splashed torso until it stopped at the neck. There was no gaping wound, no coup de grace.

  The light suddenly wavered. No, not the light; Cordell’s chest had moved!

  She’s still breathing.

  Rizzoli ripped the duct tape off Cordell’s mouth and felt warm breath against her hand. Saw Cordell’s eyelids flutter.

  Yes!

  Felt a burst of triumph yet at the same time a niggling sense that something was terribly wrong. No time to think about it. She had to get Cordell out of here.

  Holding the Maglite between her teeth, she swiftly cut both Cordell’s wrists free and felt for a pulse. She found one — weak, but definitely present.

  Still, she could not shake the sense that something was wrong. Even as she started to cut the tape binding Cordell’s right ankle, even as she reached toward the left ankle, the alarms were going off in her head. And then she knew why.

  That scream. She’d heard Cordell’s scream all the way from the barn.

  But she’d found Cordell’s mouth covered with tape.

  He took it off. He wanted her to scream. He wanted me to hear it.

  A trap.

  Instantly her hand went for her gun, which she’d laid on the bed. She never reached it.

  The two-by-four slammed into her temple, a blow so hard it sent her sprawling facedown on the packed earthen floor. She struggled to rise to her hands and knees.

  The two-by-four came whistling at her again, whacked into her side. She heard ribs crack, and the breath whooshed out of her. She rolled onto her back, the pain so terrible she could not draw air into her lungs.

  A light came on, a single bulb swaying far overhead.

  He stood above her, his face a black oval beneath the cone of light. The Surgeon, eyeing his new prize.

  She rolled onto her uninjured side and tried to push herself off the ground.

  He kicked her arm out from under her and she collapsed onto her back again, the impact jarring her broken ribs. She gave a cry of agony and could not move. Even as he stepped closer. Even as she saw the two-by-four looming over her head.

  His boot came down on her wrist, crushing it against the ground.

  She screamed.

  He reached toward the instrument tray and picked up one of the scalpels.

  No. God, no.

  He dropped to a crouch, his boot still holding down her wrist, and raised the scalpel. Brought it down in a merciless arc toward her open hand.

  A shriek this time, as steel penetrated her flesh and pierced straight through to the earthen floor, skewering her hand to the ground.

  He picked up another scalpel from the tray. Grabbed her right hand and pulled, extending her right arm. He stamped his boot down, pinning her wrist. Again he raised the scalpel. Again, he brought it down, stabbing through flesh and earth.

  This time, her scream was weaker. Defeated.

  He rose and stood gazing at her for a moment, the way a collector admires the bright new butterfly he has just pinned to the board.

  He went to the instrument tray and picked up a third scalpel. With both her arms stretched out, her hands staked to the ground, Rizzoli could only watch and wait for the final act. He walked around behind her and crouched down. Grasped the hair at the crown of her head and yanked it backward, hard, extending her neck. She was staring straight up at him, and still his face was little more than a dark oval. A black hole, devouring all light. She could feel her carotids bounding at her throat, pulsing with each beat of her heart. Blood was life itself, flowing through her arteries and veins. She wondered how long she would stay consci
ous after the blade did its work. Whether death would be a gradual fadeout to black. She saw its inevitability. All her life she had been a fighter, all her life she had raged against defeat, but in this she was conquered. Her throat lay bare, her neck arched backward. She saw the gleam of the blade and closed her eyes as he touched it to her skin.

  Lord, let it be quick.

  She heard him take a preparatory breath, felt his grip suddenly tighten on her hair.

  The blast of the gun shocked her.

  Her eyelids flew open. He was still crouched above her, but he was no longer gripping her hair. The scalpel fell from his hand. Something warm dribbled onto her face. Blood.

  Not hers, but his.

  He toppled backward and vanished from her line of vision.

  Already resigned to her own death, now Rizzoli lay stunned by the prospect that she would live. She struggled to take in a host of details at once. She saw the lightbulb swaying like a bright moon on a string. On the wall, shadows moved. Turning her head, she saw Catherine Cordell’s arm drop weakly back to the bed.

  Saw the gun slide from Cordell’s hand and thud to the floor.

  In the distance, a siren wailed.

  Twenty-seven

  Rizzoli was sitting up in her hospital bed, glowering at the TV. Bandages encased her hands so thoroughly they looked like boxing gloves. A large bald spot had been shaved on the side of her head, where the doctors had stitched up a scalp laceration. She fussed with the TV remote, and at first she did not notice Moore standing in the doorway. Then he knocked. When she turned and looked at him he saw, just for an instant, a glimmer of vulnerability. Then her usual defenses sprang back into place and she was the old Rizzoli, her gaze wary as he walked into the room and took the chair by her bed.

  On the TV whined the annoying background theme of a soap opera.

  “Can you turn off that crap?” she blurted in frustration and gestured to the remote control with one bandaged paw. “I can’t press the buttons. They expect me to use my goddamn nose or something.”

  He took the remote and pressed the Off button.

  “Thank you,” she huffed. And winced from the pain of three broken ribs.

  With the TV off, a long silence stretched between them. Through the open doorway, they heard a doctor’s name paged and the rattle of the meal cart wheeling down the hall.

  “They taking good care of you out here?” he asked.

  “It’s okay, for a hick hospital. Probably better than being in the city.”

  While both Catherine and Hoyt had been airlifted to Pilgrim Medical Center in Boston due to their more serious injuries, Rizzoli had been brought by ambulance to this small regional hospital. Despite its distance from the city, just about every detective in the Boston Homicide Unit had already made the pilgrimage here to visit Rizzoli.

  And they’d all brought flowers. Moore’s bouquet of roses was almost lost among the many arrangements displayed on the tray tables and the nightstand, even on the floor.

  “Wow,” he said. “You’ve picked up a lot of admirers.”

  “Yeah. Can you believe it? Even Crowe sent flowers. Those lilies over there. I think he’s trying to tell me something. Doesn’t it look like a funeral arrangement? See those nice orchids here? Frost brought those in. Hell, I should’ve sent him flowers for saving my ass.”

  It was Frost who’d called the state police for assistance. When Rizzoli failed to answer his pages, he’d contacted Dean Hobbs at the FoodMart to track down her whereabouts and learned she’d driven out to the Sturdee Farm to talk to a black-haired woman.

  Rizzoli continued her inventory of the flower arrangements. “That huge vase with those tropical things came from Elena Ortiz’s family. The carnations are from Marquette, the cheapskate. And Sleeper’s wife brought in that hibiscus plant.”

  Moore shook his head in amazement. “You remember all that?”

  “Yeah, well, nobody ever sends me flowers. So I’m committing this moment to memory.”

  Again he caught a glimpse of vulnerability shining through her brave mask. And he saw something else that he had never noticed before, a luminosity in her dark eyes. She was bruised, bandaged, and sporting an ugly bald patch on her head. But once you overlooked the flaws of her face, the square jaw, the boxy forehead, you saw that Jane Rizzoli had beautiful eyes.

  “I just spoke to Frost. He’s over at Pilgrim,” said Moore. “He says Warren Hoyt is going to recover.”

  She said nothing.

  “They removed the breathing tube from Hoyt’s throat this morning. He’s still got another tube in his chest, because of a collapsed lung. But he’s breathing on his own.”

  “Is he awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Talking?”

  “Not to us. To his attorney.”

  “God, if I’d had the chance to finish off that son of a bitch—”

  “You wouldn’t have done it.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I think you’re too good a cop to make that mistake again.”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “You’ll never know.”

  And neither will you. We never know until the beast of opportunity is staring us in the face.

  “I just thought you should know that,” he said, and rose to leave.

  “Hey, Moore.”

  “Yes?”

  “You didn’t say anything about Cordell.”

  He had, in fact, purposely avoided bringing up the subject of Catherine. She was the main source of conflict between Rizzoli and him, the unhealed wound that had crippled their partnership.

  “I hear she’s doing okay,” said Rizzoli.

  “She came through surgery fine.”

  “Did he — did Hoyt—”

  “No. He never completed the excision. You arrived before he could do it.”

  She leaned back, looking relieved.

  “I’m going to Pilgrim to see her now,” he said.

  “And what happens next?”

  “Next, we get you back to work so you can start answering your own damn phone.”

  “No, I mean, what happens between you and Cordell?”

  He paused, and his gaze shifted to the window, where sunlight spilled over the vase of lilies, turning the petals aglow. “I don’t know.”

  “Marquette still giving you grief about it?”

  “He warned me not to get involved. And he’s right. I shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t help myself. It makes me wonder if…”

  “You’re not Saint Thomas after all?”

  He gave a sad laugh and nodded.

  “There’s nothing as boring as perfection, Moore.”

  He sighed. “There are choices to make. Hard ones.”

  “The important choices are always tough.”

  He mulled it over for a moment. “Maybe it’s not my choice at all,” he said, “but hers.”

  As he walked to the door, Rizzoli called out: “When you see Cordell, tell her something for me, willya?”

  “What shall I say?”

  “Next time, aim higher.”

  * * *

  I don’t know what happens next.

  He drove east toward Boston with his window open, and the air blowing in felt cooler than it had in weeks. A Canadian front had rolled in during the night, and on this crisp morning the city smelled clean, almost pure. He thought of Mary, his own sweet Mary, and of all the ties that would forever bind him to her. Twenty years of marriage, with all its countless memories. The whispers late at night, the private jokes, the history. Yes, the history. A marriage is made up of such little things as burned suppers and midnight swims, yet it’s those little things that bind two lives into one. They had been young together, and together they had grown into middle age. No woman but Mary could own his past.

  It was his future that lay unclaimed.

  I don’t know what will happen next. But I do know what would make me happy. And I think I could make her happy as well. At this time in our lives, could we a
sk for any greater blessing?

  With each mile he drove, he shed another layer of uncertainty. When at last he stepped out of his car at Pilgrim Hospital, he could walk with the sure step of a man who knows he has made the right decision.

  He rode the elevator to the fifth floor, checked in at the nursing station, and walked down the long hall to Room 523. He knocked softly and stepped inside.

  Peter Falco was sitting at Catherine’s bedside.

  This room, like Rizzoli’s, smelled of flowers. The morning light flooded Catherine’s window, bathing the bed and its occupant in a golden glow. She was asleep. An IV bottle hung over her bed, and the saline glistened like liquid diamonds as it dripped into the line.

  Moore stood across from Falco, and for a long time the two men did not speak.

  Falco leaned over to kiss Catherine’s forehead. Then he stood up, and his gaze met Moore’s. “Take care of her.”

  “I will.”

  “And I’ll hold you to it,” Falco said, and walked out of the room.

  Moore took his place in the chair at Catherine’s side and reached for her hand. Reverently he pressed it to his lips. Said again, softly: “I will.”

  Thomas Moore was a man who kept his promises; he would keep this one as well.

  Epilogue

  It is cold in my cell. Outside, the harsh winds of February are blowing and I am told it has once again begun to snow. I sit on my cot, a blanket draped over my shoulders, and remember how the delicious heat had enveloped us like a cloak on the day we walked the streets of Livadia. To the north of that Greek town, there are two springs which were known in ancient times as Lethe and Mnemosyne. Forgetfulness and Memory. We drank from both springs, you and I, and then we fell asleep in the dappled shade of an olive grove.

  I think of this now, because I do not like this cold. It makes my skin dry and cracked, and I cannot slather on enough cream to counter winter’s effects. It is only the lovely memory of heat, of you and me walking in Livadia, the sunbaked stones warming our sandals, that comforts me now.

  The days go slowly here. I am alone in my cell, shielded from the other inmates by my notoriety. Only the psychiatrists talk to me, but they are losing interest, because I can offer them no thrilling glimpse of pathology. As a child I tortured no animals, set no fires, and I never wet my bed. I attended church. I was polite to my elders.