Tess Gerritsen - The Surgeon

“The son. But the nurse was in the room the whole time. And she was there when the patient coded.”

“What happened just prior to the code?”

“She changed the IV bag. We’ve sent the bag for analysis.”

Rizzoli looked back at the video screen, where the image of the man in a white coat remained frozen in mid-stride. “This makes no sense. Why would he take such a risk?”

“This was a mop-up job, to get rid of a loose end — the witness.”

“But what did Nina Peyton actually witness? She saw a masked face. He knew she couldn’t identify him. He knew she posed almost no danger. Yet he went to a lot of trouble to kill her. He exposed himself to capture. What does he gain by it?”

“Satisfaction. He finally finished his kill.”

“But he could have finished it at her house. Moore, he let Nina Peyton live that night. Which means he planned to end it this way.”

“In the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“To what purpose?”

“I don’t know. But I find it interesting that of all the patients on that ward, it was Herman Gwadowski he chose as his diversion. A patient of Catherine Cordell’s.”

Moore’s beeper went off. As he took the call Rizzoli turned her attention back to the monitor. She pressed Play and watched the man in the white coat approach the door. He tilted his hip to hit the door’s opening bar and stepped into the stairwell. Not once did he allow any part of his face to be visible on camera. She hit Rewind, viewed the sequence again. This time, as his hip rotated slightly, she saw it: the bulge under his white coat. It was on his right side, at the level of his waist. What was he concealing there? A change of clothes? His murder kit?

She heard Moore say into the phone: “Don’t touch it! Leave it right where it is. I’m on my way.”

As he disconnected, Rizzoli asked: “Who’s that?”

“It’s Catherine,” said Moore. “Our boy’s just sent her another message.”

“It came up in interdepartmental mail,” said Catherine. “As soon as I saw the envelope, I knew it was from him.”

Rizzoli watched as Moore pulled on a pair of gloves — a useless precaution, she thought, since the Surgeon had never left his prints on any evidence. It was a large brown envelope with a string-and-button closure. On the top blank line was printed in blue ink: “To Catherine Cordell. Birthday greetings from A.C.”

Andrew Capra, thought Rizzoli.

“You didn’t open it?” asked Moore.

“No. I put it right down, on my desk. And I called you.”

“Good girl.”

Rizzoli thought his response was condescending, but Catherine clearly didn’t take it that way, and she flashed him a tense smile. Something passed between Moore and Catherine. A look, a warm current, that Rizzoli registered with a twinge of painful jealousy. It’s gone further than I realized between these two.

“It feels empty,” he said. With gloved hands, he unwound the string clasp. Rizzoli slid a sheet of plain white paper on the countertop to catch the contents. He lifted the flap and turned the envelope upside down.

Silky red-brown strands slid out and lay in a gleaming clump on the sheet of paper.

A chill shot up Rizzoli’s spine. “It looks like human hair.”

“Oh god. Oh god…. ”

Rizzoli turned and saw Catherine backing away in horror. Rizzoli stared at Catherine’s hair, then looked back at the strands that had fallen from the envelope. It’s hers. The hair is Cordell’s.

“Catherine.” Moore spoke softly, soothingly. “It may not be yours at all.”

She looked at him in panic. “What if it is? How did he—”

“Do you keep a hairbrush in your O.R. locker? Your office?”

“Moore,” said Rizzoli. “Check out these strands. They weren’t pulled off a hairbrush. The root ends have been cut.” She turned to Catherine. “Who last cut your hair, Dr. Cordell?”

Slowly Catherine approached the countertop and regarded the clipped strands as though staring at a poisonous viper. “I know when he did it,” she said softly. “I remember.”

“When?”

“It was that night…” She looked at Rizzoli with a stunned expression. “In Savannah.”

Rizzoli hung up the phone and looked at Moore. “Detective Singer confirms it. A clump of her hair was cut.”

“Why didn’t that appear in Singer’s report?”

“Cordell didn’t notice it until the second day of her hospitalization, when she looked in a mirror. Since Capra was dead, and no hair was found at the crime scene, Singer assumed the hair was cut by hospital personnel. Maybe during emergency treatment. Cordell’s face was pretty bruised up, remember? The E.R. may have snipped away some hair to clean her scalp.”

“Did Singer ever confirm it was someone in the hospital who cut it?”

Rizzoli tossed down her pencil and sighed. “No. He never followed up.”

“He just left it at that? Never mentioned it in his report because it didn’t make sense.”

“Well, it doesn’t make sense! Why weren’t the clippings found at the scene, along with Capra’s body?”

“Catherine doesn’t remember a large part of that night. The Rohypnol wiped out a significant chunk of her memory. Capra may have left the house. Returned later.”

“Okay. Here’s the biggest question of all. Capra’s dead. How did this souvenir end up in the Surgeon’s hands?”

For this, Moore had no answer. Two killers, one alive, one dead. What bound these two monsters to each other? The link between them was more than merely psychic energy; it had now taken on a physical dimension. Something they could actually see and touch.

He looked down at the two evidence bags. One was labeled: Unknown hair clippings. The second bag contained a sample of Catherine’s hair for comparison. He himself had snipped the coppery strands and had placed them into the Ziploc bag. Such hair would indeed make a tempting souvenir. Hair was so very personal. A woman wears it, sleeps with it. It carries fragrance and color and texture. A woman’s very essence. No wonder Catherine had been horrified to learn that a man she did not know possessed such an intimate part of her. To know that he had stroked it, sniffed it, acquainting himself like a lover with her scent.

By now, the Surgeon knows her scent well.

It was nearly midnight, but her lights were on. Through the closed curtains, he saw her silhouette glide past, and he knew she was awake.

Moore walked over to the parked cruiser and bent to talk to the two patrolmen inside. “Anything to report?”

“She hasn’t stepped outta the building since she got home. Doing a lot of pacing. Looks like she’s in for a restless night.”

“I’m going in to talk to her,” said Moore, and turned to cross the street.

“Staying all night?”

Moore halted. Turned stiffly to look at the cop. “Excuse me?”

“Are you staying all night? ’Cause if you are, we’ll pass it along to the next team. Just to let ’em know it’s one of ours upstairs with her.”

Moore swallowed back his anger. The patrolman’s question had been a reasonable one, so why had he been so quick to take offense?

Because I know how it must look, to be walking in her door at midnight. I know what must be going through their heads. It’s the same thing that’s going through my head.

The instant he stepped into her apartment, he saw the question in her eyes, and he answered with a grim nod. “I’m afraid the lab confirmed it. It was your hair he sent.”

She accepted the news in stunned silence.

In the kitchen, a kettle whistled. She turned and walked out of the room.

As he locked the door, his gaze lingered on the shiny new dead bolt. How insubstantial even tempered steel seemed, against an opponent who could walk through walls. He followed her into the kitchen and watched her turn off the heat to the squealing kettle. She fumbled with a box of tea bags, gave a startled gasp as they spilled out and scattered across the countertop. Such a minor mishap, yet it seemed to be the crushing blow. All at once she sagged against the counter, hands clenched, white knuckles against white tiles. She was fighting not to cry, not to fall apart before his eyes, and she was losing the battle. He saw her draw in a deep breath. Saw her shoulders knot up, her whole body straining to stifle the sob.