Tess Gerritsen - The Surgeon

“I didn’t hear him come into my house,” she said. “I didn’t wake up until he was standing over my bed. I shouldn’t have left the windows open. I shouldn’t have taken the pills….”

“What pills?” Moore asked gently.

“I was having trouble sleeping, because of…” Her voice faded.

“The rape?”

She looked away, avoiding his gaze. “I was having nightmares. At the clinic, they gave me pills. To help me sleep.”

And a nightmare, a real nightmare, walked right into her bedroom.

“Did you see his face?” he asked.

“It was dark. I could hear him breathing, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream.”

“You were already tied down?”

“I don’t remember him doing it. I don’t remember how it happened.”

Chloroform, thought Moore, to subdue her first. Before she was fully awake.

“What happened then, Nina?”

Her breathing accelerated. On the monitor above her bed, the heart tracing blipped faster.

“He sat in a chair by my bed. I could see his shadow.”

“And what did he do?”

“He — he talked to me.”

“What did he say?”

“He said…” She swallowed. “He said that I was dirty. Contaminated. He said I should be disgusted by my own filth. And that he — he was going to cut out the part that was tainted and make me pure again.” She paused. And said, in a whisper: “That’s when I knew I was going to die.”

Though Catherine’s face had turned white, the victim herself looked eerily composed, as though she were talking about another woman’s nightmare, not her own. She was no longer looking at Moore but staring at some point beyond him, seeing from afar a woman tied to a bed. And in a chair, hidden in the darkness, a man quietly describing the horrors he planned next. For the Surgeon, thought Moore, this is foreplay. This is what excites him. The smell of a woman’s fear. He feeds on it. He sits by her bed and fills her mind with images of death. Sweat blooms on her skin, sweat that exudes the sour scent of terror. An exotic perfume he craves. He breathes it in, and he is excited.

“What happened next?” said Moore.

No answer.

“Nina?”

“He turned the lamp on my face. He put it right in my eyes, so I couldn’t see him. All I could see was that bright light. And he took my picture.”

“And then?”

She looked at him. “Then he was gone.”

“He left you alone in the house?”

“Not alone. I could hear him, walking around. And the TV — all night, I heard the TV.”

The pattern has changed, thought Moore, and he and Frost exchanged stunned looks. The Surgeon was now more confident. More daring. Instead of completing his kill within a few hours, he had delayed. All night, and the next day, he had left his prey tied to her bed, to contemplate her coming ordeal. Heedless of the risks, he had drawn out her terror. Drawn out his pleasure.

The heartbeats on the monitor had sped up again. Though her voice sounded flat and lifeless, beneath the calm facade the fear remained.

“What happened then, Nina?” he asked.

“Sometime in the afternoon, I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up, it was dark again. I was so thirsty. It was all I could think about, how much I wanted water….”

“Did he leave you at any time? Were you ever alone in the house?”

“I don’t know. All I could hear was the TV. When he turned it off, I knew. I knew he was coming back into my room.”

“And when he did, did he turn on the light?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see his face?”

“Just his eyes. He was wearing a mask. The kind that doctors wear.”

“But you did see his eyes.”

“Yes.”

“Did you recognize him? Had you ever seen this man before in your life?”

There was a long silence. Moore felt his own heart pounding as he waited for the answer he hoped for.

Then she said, softly: “No.”

He sank back in his chair. The tension in the room had suddenly collapsed. To this victim, the Surgeon was a stranger, a man without a name, whose reasons for choosing her remained a mystery.

Masking the disappointment in his voice, he said: “Describe him for us, Nina.”

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, as though to conjure up the memory. “He had… he had short hair. Cut very neatly…”

“What color?”

“Brown. A light shade of brown.”

Consistent with the strand of hair they’d found in Elena Ortiz’s wound. “So he was Caucasian?” said Moore.

“Yes.”

“Eyes?”

“A pale color. Blue or gray. I was afraid to look straight at them.”

“And the shape of his face? Round, oval?”

“Narrow.” She paused. “Ordinary.”

“Height and weight?”

“It’s hard to—”

“Your best guess.”

She sighed. “Average.”

Average. Ordinary. A monster who looked like any other man.

Moore turned to Frost. “Let’s show her the six-packs.”

Frost handed him the first book of mug shots, called six-packs because there were six photographs per page. Moore set the book on a bedside tray table and wheeled it in front of the patient.

For the next half hour they watched with sinking hopes as she flipped through the books without pausing. No one spoke; there was only the hiss of the oxygen and the sound of the pages being turned. These photos were of known sex offenders, and as Nina turned page after page it seemed to Moore that there was no end to the faces, that this parade of images represented the dark side of every man, the reptilian impulse disguised by a human mask.

He heard a tap on the cubicle window. Looking up, he saw Jane Rizzoli gesturing to him.

He stepped out to speak to her.

“Any ID yet?” she asked.

“We’re not going to get one. He was wearing a surgeon’s mask.”

Rizzoli frowned. “Why a mask?”

“It could be part of his ritual. Part of what turns him on. Playing doctor is his fantasy. He told her he was going to cut out the organ that had been defiled. He knew she was a rape victim. And what did he cut out? He went right for the womb.”

Rizzoli gazed into the cubicle. She said quietly: “I can think of another reason why he wore that mask.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t want her to see his face. He didn’t want her to identify him.”

“But that would mean…”

“It’s what I’ve been saying all along.” Rizzoli turned and looked at Moore. “The Surgeon fully intended for Nina Peyton to survive.”

How little we truly see into the human heart, thought Catherine as she studied the X ray of Nina Peyton’s chest. Standing in semidarkness, she gazed at the film clipped to the light box, studying the shadows cast by bones and organs. The rib cage, the trampoline of diaphragm, and resting atop it the heart. Not the seat of the soul, but merely a muscular pump, unendowed with any more mystical purpose than the lungs or the kidneys. Yet even Catherine, so grounded in science, could not look at Nina Peyton’s heart without being moved by its symbolism.

It was the heart of a survivor.

She heard voices in the next room. It was Peter, requesting a patient’s films from the file clerk. A moment later he walked into the reading room and paused when he saw her, standing by the light box.

“You’re still here?” he said.

“So are you.”

“But I’m the one on call tonight. Why don’t you go home?”

Catherine turned back to Nina’s chest X ray. “I want to be sure this patient is stable first.”

He came to stand right beside her, so tall, so imposing, that she had to fight the impulse to step away. He scanned the film.

“Other than some atelectasis, I don’t see much there to worry about.” He focused on the name “Jane Doe” in the corner of the film. “Is this the woman in Bed Twelve? The one with all the cops hanging around?”