Under the Knife

by Tess Gerritsen

  “There were no surprises.”

  “It went against you?”

  “To say the least.” Miserable, she stared down at the table. “They said my work was substandard. I guess that’s a polite way of calling me a lousy doctor.”

  His silence, more than anything he could have said, told her how much the news disturbed him. With a sense of wonder she watched his hand close gently around hers.

  “It’s funny,” she remarked with an ironic laugh. “I never planned on being anything but a doctor. Now that I’m losing my job, I see how poorly qualified I am for anything else. I can’t type. I can’t take dictation. For God’s sake, I can’t even cook.”

  “Uh-oh. Now that’s a serious deficiency. You may have to beg on street corners.”

  It was another lousy joke, but this time she managed a smile. A meager one. “Promise to drop a few quarters in my hat?”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll buy you dinner.”

  She shook her head. “Thanks. But I’m not hungry.”

  “Better take me up on the offer,” he urged, squeezing her hand. “You never know where you next meal’s coming from.”

  She lifted her head and their gazes met across the table. The eyes she’d once thought so icy now held all the warmth of a summer’s day. “All I want is to go home with you, David. I want you to hold me. And not necessarily in that order.”

  Slowly he moved around the table and slid next to her. Then he pulled her into his arms and held her long and close. It was what she needed, this silent embrace, not of a lover but a friend.

  They both stiffened at the sound of the waitress clearing her throat. “I don’t believe this woman’s timing,” David muttered as he pulled away.

  “Anything else?” asked the waitress.

  “Yes,” David replied, smiling politely through clenched teeth. “If you don’t mind.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “A little privacy.”

  * * *

  KATE LET HIM talk her into dinner. A full stomach and a few glasses of wine left her flushed and giddy as they walked the dark streets to the parking garage. The lamps spilled a hazy glow across their faces. She clung to his arm and felt like singing, like laughing.

  She was going home with David.

  She slid onto the leather seat of the BMW and the familiar feeling of security wrapped around her like a blanket. She was in a capsule where no one, nothing, could hurt her. The feeling lasted all the way down the Pali Highway, clung to her as they slipped into the tunnel through the Koolau Mountains, kept her warm on the steep and winding road down the other side of the ridge.

  It shattered when David glanced in the rearview mirror and swore softly.

  She glanced sideways and saw the faint glow of a car’s headlights reflected on his face. “David?”

  He didn’t answer. She felt the rising hum of the engine as they accelerated.

  “David, is something wrong?”

  “That car. Behind us.”

  “What?”

  He frowned at the mirror. “I think we’re being followed.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  KATE WHIPPED HER head around and stared at the pair of headlights twinkling in the distance. “Are you sure?”

  “I only noticed because it has a dead left parking light. I know it pulled out behind us when we left the garage. It’s been on our tail ever since. All the way down the mountain.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s following us!”

  “Let’s try a little experiment.” He took his foot off the gas pedal.

  She went rigid in alarm. “Why are you slowing down?”

  “To see what he does.”

  As her heart accelerated wildly, Kate felt the BMW drift down to forty-five, then forty. Below the speed limit. She waited for the headlights to overtake them but they seemed to hang in the distance, as though some invisible force kept the cars apart.

  “Smart guy,” said David. “He’s staying just far enough behind so I can’t read his license.”

  “There’s a turnoff! Oh, please, let’s take it!”

  He veered off the highway and shot onto a two-lane road cut through dense jungle. Vine-smothered trees whipped past, their overhanging branches splattering the windshield with water. She twisted around and saw, through the backdrop of jungle, the same pair of headlights, twinkling in the darkness. Phantom lights that refused to vanish.

  “It’s him,” she whispered. She couldn’t bring herself to say the name, as if, just by uttering it, she would unleash some terrible force.

  “I should have known,” he muttered. “Dammit, I should’ve known!”

  “What?”

  “He was watching the hospital. That’s the only way he could’ve followed you—”

  He must have been right behind me, she thought, suddenly sick with the realization of what could have happened. And I never even knew he was there.

  “I’m going to lose him. Hold on.”

  She was thrown sideways by the violent lurch of the car. It was all she could do to hang on for dear life. The situation was out of her hands; this show was entirely David’s.

  Houses leaped past, a succession of brightly lit windows punctuated by the silhouettes of trees and shrubbery. The BMW weaved like a slalom skier through the darkness, rounding corners at a speed that made her claw the dashboard in terror.

  Without warning, he swerved into a driveway. The seat belt sliced into her chest as they jerked to a sudden standstill in a pitch-dark garage. Instantly, David cut off the engine. The next thing she knew, he was pulling her down into his arms. There she lay, wedged between the gearshift and David’s chest, listening, waiting. She could feel his heart hammering against her, could hear his harsh, uneven breaths. At least he was still able to breathe; she scarcely dared to.

  With mounting terror, she watched a flicker of light slowly grow brighter and brighter in the rearview mirror. From the road came the faint growl of an engine. David’s arms tensed around her. Already he had shifted his weight and now lay on top of her, shielding her body with his. For an eternity she lay crushed in his embrace, listening, waiting, as the sound of the engine faded away. Only when there was total silence did they finally creep up and peer through the rear window.

  The road was dark. The car had vanished.

  “What now?” she whispered.

  “We get the hell out of here. While we still can.” He turned the key; the engine’s purr seemed deafening. With his headlights killed, he let the car creep slowly out of the garage.

  As they wound their way out of the neighborhood, she kept glancing back, searching for the twin lights dancing beyond the trees. Only when they’d reached the highway did she allow herself a breath of relief. But to her alarm, David turned the car back toward Honolulu.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We can’t go home. Not now.”

  “But we’ve lost him!”

  “If he followed you from the hospital, then he trailed you straight to my office. To me. Unfortunately, I’m in the phone book. Address and all.”

  She sank back in shock and struggled to absorb this latest blow. They entered the Pali Tunnel. The succession of lights passing overhead was wildly disorienting, flash after flash that shocked her eyes.

  Where do I go now? she wondered. How long before he finds me? Will I have time to run? Time to scream? She shuddered as they emerged from the tunnel and were plunged into sudden darkness.

  “It’s my last resort,” David said. “But it’s the only place I can think of. You won’t be alone. And you’ll be perfectly safe.” He paused and added with an odd note of humor, “Just don’t drink the coffee.”

  She turned and stared at him in bewilderment. “Where are we going?”

  His answer had a distinctly apologetic ring. “My mother’s.”

  * * *

  THE TINY GRAY-HAIRED woman who opened the door was wearing a ratty bathrobe and pink bunny slippers. For a moment she stood there, bli
nking like a surprised mouse at the unexpected visitors. Then she clapped her hands and squeaked: “My goodness, David! How nice you’ve come for a visit! Oh, but this is naughty of you, not to call. You’ve caught us in our pajamas, like two ol—”

  “You’re gorgeous, Gracie,” cut in David as he tugged Kate into the house. Quickly he locked and bolted the door. Then, glancing out the curtained window, he demanded, “Is Mother awake?”

  “Why, yes, she’s…uh…” Gracie gestured vaguely at the foyer.

  From another room, a querulous voice called out: “For heaven’s sake, get rid of whoever it is and get in here! It’s your turn! And you’d better come up with something good. I just got a triple word score!”

  “She’s beating me again.” Gracie sighed mournfully.

  “Then she’s in a good mood?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen her in one.”

  “Get ready,” David muttered to Kate as he guided her across the foyer. “Mother?” he called out pleasantly. Too pleasantly.

  In a mauve and mahogany living room, a regal woman with blue-gray hair was sitting with her back turned to them. Her wrapped foot was propped up on a crushed velvet ottoman. On the tea table beside her lay a Scrabble board, crisscrossed with tiles. “I don’t believe it,” she announced to the wall. “It must be an auditory hallucination.” She turned and squinted at him. “Why, my son has actually come for a visit! Is the world at an end?”

  “Nice to see you, too, Mother,” he responded dryly. He took a deep breath, like a man gathering up the nerve to yank out his own teeth. “We need your help.”

  The woman’s eyes, as glitteringly sharp as crystals, suddenly focused on Kate. Then she noticed David’s arm, which was wrapped protectively around Kate’s shoulder. Slowly, knowingly, she smiled. With a grateful glance at the heavens she murmured fervently: “Glory hallelujah!”

  * * *

  “YOU NEVER TELL me anything, David,” Jinx Ransom complained as she sat with her son in the fern-infested kitchen an hour later.

  They were huddled over cups of cocoa, a ritual they hadn’t shared since he was a boy. How little it takes to be transported back to childhood, he reflected. One sip of chocolate, one disapproving look from his mother, and the pangs of filial guilt returned. Good old Jinx; she really knew how to make a guy feel young again. In fact, she made him feel about six years old.

  “Here you have a woman in your life,” said Jinx, “and you hide her from me. As if you’re ashamed of her. Or ashamed of me. Or maybe you’re ashamed of us both.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. I haven’t known her that long.”

  “You’re just ashamed to admit you’re human, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Mother.”

  “I’m the one who diapered you. I’m the one who watched you skin your knees. I even saw you break your arm on that blasted skateboard. You almost never cried, David. You still don’t cry. I don’t think you can. It’s some gene you inherited from your father. The Plymouth Rock curse. Oh, the emotions are in there somewhere, but you’re not about to let them show. Even when Noah died—”

  “I don’t want to talk about Noah.”

  “You see? The boy’s been gone eight years now and you still can’t hear his name without getting all tight in the face.”

  “Get to the point, Mother.”

  “Kate.”

  “What about her?”

  “You were holding her hand.”

  He shrugged. “She has a very nice hand.”

  “Have you gone to bed with her yet?”

  David sputtered hot chocolate all over the table. “Mother!”

  “Well it’s nothing to be ashamed of. People do it all the time. It’s what nature intended, though I sometimes think you imagine yourself immune to the whole blasted process. But tonight, I saw that look in your eye.”

  Swatting away a stray fern, he went to the sink for a paper towel and began dabbing the cocoa from his shirt.

  “Am I right?” asked Jinx.

  “Looks like I’ll need a clean shirt for tomorrow,” he muttered. “This one’s shot.”

  “Use one of your father’s shirts. So am I right?”

  He looked up. “About what, Mother?” he asked blankly.

  She raised her arm and made a throttling motion at the heavens. “I knew it was a mistake to have only one child!”

  Upstairs there was a loud thud. David glanced up at the ceiling. “What the hell is Gracie doing up there, anyway?”

  “Digging up some clothes for Kate.”

  David shuddered. Knowing Gracie’s incomparable taste in clothes, Kate would come down swathed from head to toe in some nauseating shade of pink. With bunny slippers to match. The truth was, he didn’t give a damn what she was wearing, if only she’d hurry downstairs. They’d been apart only fifteen minutes and already he missed her. It annoyed him, all these inconvenient emotions churning around inside him. It made him feel weak and helpless and all too…human.

  He turned eagerly at hearing a creak on the stairs and saw it was only Gracie.

  “Is that hot chocolate, Jinx?” Gracie demanded. “You know the milk upsets your stomach. You really should have tea instead.”

  “I don’t want tea.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Where’s Kate?” David called out bleakly.

  “Oh, she’s coming,” said Gracie. “She’s up in your room, looking at your old model airplanes.” Giggling, she confided to Jinx, “I told her they were proof that David was once a child.”

  “He was never a child,” grumbled Jinx. “He sprang from the womb a fully mature adult. Though smaller, of course. Perhaps he’ll do it backward. Perhaps he’ll get younger as the years go by. We’ll see him loosen up and become a real child.”

  “Like you, Mother?”

  Gracie put on the teakettle and sighed happily. “It’s so nice to have company, isn’t it?” She glanced around, startled, as the phone rang. “My goodness, it’s after ten. Who on earth—”

  David shot to his feet. “I’ll get it.” He grabbed the receiver and barked out: “Hello?”

  Pokie’s voice boomed triumphantly across the wires. “Have I got news for you.”

  “You’ve tracked down that car?”

  “Forget the car. We got the man.”

  “Decker?”

  “I’ll need Dr. Chesne down here to identify him. Half an hour, okay?”

  David glanced up to see Kate standing in the kitchen doorway. Her eyes were filled with questions. Grinning, he snapped her a victorious thumbs-up sign. “We’ll be right over,” he told Pokie. “Where you holding him? Downtown station?”

  There was a pause. “No, not the station.”

  “Where, then?”

  “The morgue.”

  * * *

  “HOPE YOU HAVE strong stomachs.” The medical examiner, a grotesquely chirpy woman named M.J., pulled open the stainless-steel drawer. It glided out noiselessly. Kate cringed against David as M.J. casually reached in and unzipped the plastic shroud.

  Under the harsh morgue lights, the corpse’s face looked artificial. This wasn’t a man; it was some sort of waxen image, a mockery of life.

  “Some yachtie found him this evening, floating facedown in the harbor,” explained Pokie.

  Kate felt David’s arm tighten around her waist as she forced herself to study the dead man’s bloated features. Distorted as he was, the open eyes were recognizable. Even in death they seemed haunted.

  Nodding, Kate whispered, “That’s him.”

  Pokie grinned, a response that struck her as surreal in that nightmarish room. “Bingo,” he grunted.

  M.J. ran her gloved hand over the dead man’s scalp. “Feels like we got a depressed skull fracture here….” She whisked off the shroud, revealing the naked torso. “Looks like he’s been in the water quite a while.”

  Suddenly nauseated, Kate turned and buried her face against David
’s shoulder. The scent of his aftershave muted the stench of formalin.

  “For God’s sake, M.J.,” David muttered. “Cover him up, will you?”

  M.J. zipped up the shroud and slid the drawer closed. “You’ve lost the old ironclad stomach, hey, Davy boy? If I remember right, you used to shrug off a lot worse.”

  “I don’t hang around stiffs the way I used to.” He guided Kate away from the body drawers. “Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  The medical examiner’s office was a purposefully cheerful room, complete with hanging plants and old movie posters, a bizarre setting for the gruesome business at hand. Pokie poured coffee from the automatic brewer and handed two cups to David and Kate. Then, sighing with satisfaction, he settled into a chair across from them. “So that’s how it wraps up,” he said. “No trial. No hassles. Just a convenient corpse. Too bad justice ain’t always this easy.”

  Kate stared down at her coffee. “How did he die, Lieutenant?” she whispered.

  Pokie shrugged. “Happens now and then. Get some guy who’s had a little too much to drink. Falls off a pier, bashes his head on the rocks. Hell, we find floaters all the time. Boat bums, mostly.” He glanced at M.J. “What do you think?”

  “Can’t rule out anything yet,” mumbled M.J. She was hunched at her desk and wolfing down a late supper. A meat-loaf sandwich dripping with ketchup, Kate noted, her stomach threatening to turn inside out. “When a body’s been in the water that long, anatomy gets distorted. I’ll tell you after the autopsy.”

  “Just how long was he in the water?” asked David.

  “A day. More or less.”

  “A day?” He looked at Pokie. “Then who the hell was following us tonight?”

  Pokie grinned. “You just got yourself an active imagination.”

  “I’m telling you, there was a car!”

  “Lot of cars out on the road. Lot of headlights look the same.”

  “Well, it sure wasn’t my guy in the drawer,” said M.J., crumpling up her sandwich wrappings. She chomped enthusiastically into a bright red apple. “Far as I know, dead men don’t drive.”

  “When are you going to know the cause of death?” David snapped.