Tess Gerritsen - The Surgeon

She is checking the locks on the doors, the latches on the windows. Trying to shut out the darkness.

It must be stifling inside that little house. The night is like steam, and there are no air conditioners in any of her windows. All evening she has stayed inside, the windows closed despite the heat. I picture her gleaming with sweat, suffering through the long hot day and into the night, desperate to let in fresh air, but afraid of what else she might let in.

She walks past the window again. Stops. Lingers there, framed by the rectangle of light. Suddenly the curtains flick apart, and she reaches through to unlock the latch. She slides up the window. Stands before it, taking in hungry gulps of fresh air. She has finally surrendered to the heat.

There is nothing so exciting to a hunter as the scent of wounded prey. I can almost smell it wafting out, the scent of a bloodied beast, of defiled flesh. Just as she breathes in the night air, so, too, am I breathing in her scent. Her fear.

My heart beats faster. I reach into my bag, to caress the instruments. Even the steel is warm to my touch.

She closes the window with a bang. A few deep gulps of fresh air was all she dared allow herself, and now she retreats to the misery of her stuffy little house.

After a while, I accept disappointment and I walk away, leaving her to sweat through the night in that oven of a bedroom.

Tomorrow, they say, it will be even hotter.

This unsub is a classic picquerist,” said Dr. Lawrence Zucker. “Someone who uses a knife to achieve secondary or indirect sexual release. Picquerism is the act of stabbing or cutting, any repeated penetration of the skin with a sharp object. The knife is a phallic symbol — a substitution for the male sexual organ. Instead of performing normal sexual intercourse, our unsub achieves his release by subjecting his victim to pain and terror. It’s the power that thrills him. Ultimate power, over life and death.”

Detective Jane Rizzoli was not easily spooked, but Dr. Zucker gave her the creeps. He looked like a pale and hulking John Malkovich, and his voice was whispery, almost feminine. As he spoke, his fingers moved with serpentine elegance. He was not a cop but a criminal psychologist from Northeastern University, a consultant for the Boston Police Department. Rizzoli had worked with him once before on a homicide case, and he’d given her the creeps then, too. It was not just his appearance but the way he so thoroughly insinuated himself into the perp’s mind and the obvious pleasure he derived from wandering in that satanic dimension. He enjoyed the journey. She could hear that almost subliminal hum of excitement in his voice.

She glanced around the conference room at the other four detectives and wondered if anyone else was spooked by this weirdo, but all she saw was tired expressions and varying shades of five o’clock shadows.

They were all tired. She herself had slept scarcely four hours last night. This morning she’d awakened in the dark pre-dawn, her mind zooming straight into fourth gear as it processed a kaleidoscope of images and voices. She had absorbed the Elena Ortiz case so deeply into her subconscious that in her dreams she and the victim had engaged in a conversation, albeit a nonsensical one. There had been no supernatural revelations, no clues from beyond the grave, merely images generated by the twitches of brain cells. Still, Rizzoli considered the dream significant. It told her just how much this case meant to her. Being lead detective on a high-profile investigation was like walking the high wire without a net. Nail the perp, and everyone applauded. Screw up, and the whole world watched you splat.

This was now a high-profile case. Two days ago, the headline hit the front page of the local tabloid: “The Surgeon Cuts Again.” Thanks to the Boston Herald , their unsub had his own moniker, and even the cops were using it. The Surgeon.

God, she’d been ready to take on a high-wire act, ready for the chance to either soar or crash on her own merits. A week ago, when she’d walked into Elena Ortiz’s apartment as lead detective, she had known, in an instant, that this was the case that would make her career, and she was anxious to prove herself.

How quickly things changed.

Within a day, her case had ballooned into a much wider investigation, led by the unit’s Lieutenant Marquette. The Elena Ortiz case had been folded into the Diana Sterling case, and the team had grown to five detectives, in addition to Marquette: Rizzoli and her partner, Barry Frost; Moore and his heavyset partner, Jerry Sleeper; plus a fifth detective, Darren Crowe. Rizzoli was the only woman on the team; indeed, she was the only woman in the entire homicide unit, and some men never let her forget it. Oh, she got along fine with Barry Frost, despite his irritatingly sunny disposition. Jerry Sleeper was too phlegmatic to get anybody pissed off at him or to be pissed off at anyone else. And as for Moore — well, despite her initial reservations, she was actually beginning to like him and truly respect him for his quietly methodical work. Most important, he seemed to respect her . Whenever she spoke, she knew that Moore listened.

No, it was the fifth cop on the team, Darren Crowe, she had issues with. Major issues. He sat across the table from her now, his tanned face wearing its usual smirk. She’d grown up with boys like him. Boys with lots of muscle, lots of girlfriends. Lots of ego.

She and Crowe despised each other.

A stack of papers came around the table. Rizzoli took a copy and saw it was a criminal profile that Dr. Zucker had just completed.

“I know some of you think my work is hocus-pocus,” said Zucker. “So let me explain my reasoning. We know the following things about our unknown subject. He enters the victim’s residence through an open window. He does this in the early morning hours, sometime between midnight and two A.M. He surprises the victim in her bed. Immediately incapacitates her with chloroform. He removes her clothes. He restrains her by binding her to the bed using duct tape around her wrists and ankles. He reinforces that with strips across her upper thighs and mid-torso. Finally, he tapes her mouth shut. Utter control is what he achieves. When the victim awakens shortly thereafter, she cannot move, cannot scream. It’s as though she’s paralyzed, yet she’s awake and aware of everything that happens next.

“And what happens next is surely anyone’s worst nightmare.” Zucker’s voice had faded to a monotone. The more grotesque the details, the softer he spoke, and they were all leaning forward, hanging on his words.

“The unsub begins to cut,” said Zucker. “According to the autopsy report, he takes his time. He is meticulous. He slices through the lower abdomen, layer by layer. First the skin, then the subcutaneous layer, the fascia, the muscle. He uses suture to control the bleeding. He identifies and removes only the organ he wants. Nothing more. And what he wants is the womb.”

Zucker looked around the table, taking note of their reactions. His gaze fell on Rizzoli, the only cop in the room who possessed the organ of which they spoke. She stared back, resentful that her gender had caused him to focus on her.

“What does that tell us about him, Detective Rizzoli?” he asked.

“He hates women,” she said. “He cuts out the one thing that makes them women.”

Zucker nodded, and his smile made her shudder. “It’s what Jack the Ripper did to Annie Chapman. By taking the womb, he defeminizes his victim. He steals her power. He ignores their jewelry, their money. He wants just one thing, and once he’s harvested his souvenir, he can proceed to the finale. But first, there is a pause before the ultimate thrill. The autopsy on both victims indicates that he stops at this point. Perhaps an hour passes, as the victims continue to bleed slowly. A pool of blood collects in their wound. What is he doing during that time?”