Tess Gerritsen - The Surgeon

He moved to her desk and gazed straight down at her. “You’re one of the best cops I’ve ever worked with. But tonight, you shot a man in cold blood, and I saw it.”

“You didn’t have to see it.”

“But I did.”

“What did we really see up there, Moore? A lot of shadows, a lot of movement. The separation between a right choice and a wrong choice is this thin.” She held up two fingers, nearly touching. “And we allow for that. We allow each other the benefit of the doubt.”

“I tried to.”

“You didn’t try hard enough.”

“I won’t lie for another cop. Even if she’s my friend.”

“Let’s remember who the fucking bad guys are here. Not us .”

“If we start lying, how do we draw the line between them and us ? Where does it end?”

She took the bag of ice off her face and pointed to her cheek. One eye was swollen shut and the entire left side of her face was blown up like a mottled balloon. The brutal appearance of her injury shocked him. “This is what Pacheco did to me. Not just a friendly little slap, is it? You talk about them and us . Which side was he on? I did the world a favor by blowing him away. No one’s going to miss the Surgeon.”

“Karl Pacheco was not the Surgeon. You blew away the wrong man.”

She stared at him, her bruised face a lurid Picasso that was half-grotesque, half-normal. “We had a DNA match! He was the one—”

“The one who raped Nina Peyton, yes. Nothing about him matches the Surgeon.” He dropped a Hair and Fiber report on her desk.

“What’s this?”

“The microscopic on Pacheco’s head hair. Different color, different curl, different cuticle density from the strand in Elena Ortiz’s wound margin. No evidence of bamboo hair.”

She sat motionless, staring at the lab report. “I don’t understand.”

“Pacheco raped Nina Peyton. That’s all we can say about him with any certainty.”

“Both Sterling and Ortiz were raped—”

“We can’t prove Pacheco did it. Now that he’s dead, we’ll never know.”

She looked up at him, and the uninjured side of her face was twisted with anger. “It had to be him. Pick three random women in this city, and what are the chances all of them have been raped? That’s what the Surgeon’s managed to do. He’s batted three out of three. If he’s not the one raping them, how does he know which ones to choose, which ones to slaughter? If it’s not Pacheco, then it’s a buddy, a partner. Some fucking vulture feeding off the carrion Pacheco leaves behind.” She thrust the lab report back at him. “Maybe I didn’t shoot the Surgeon. But the man I did shoot was scum. Everyone seems to forget that fact. Pacheco was scum. Do I get a medal?” She rose to her feet and shoved her chair, hard, against the desk. “Administrative duty. Marquette’s turned me into a fucking desk jockey. Thanks a lot.”

In silence he watched her walk away and could think of nothing to say, nothing he could do to repair the rift between them.

He went to his own workstation and sank into the chair. I’m a dinosaur, he thought, lumbering through a world where truth-tellers are despised. He could not think about Rizzoli now. The case against Pacheco had disintegrated, and they were back at square one, hunting for a nameless killer.

Three raped women. It kept coming back to that. How was the Surgeon finding them? Only Nina Peyton had reported her rape to the police. Elena Ortiz and Diana Sterling had not. Theirs was a private trauma, known only to the rapists, their victims, and the medical professionals who had treated them. But the three women had sought medical attention in different places: Sterling in the office of a Back Bay gynecologist. Ortiz in the Pilgrim Hospital E.R. Nina Peyton in the Forest Hills Women’s Clinic. There was no overlap of personnel, no doctor or nurse or receptionist who had come into contact with more than one of these women.

Somehow the Surgeon knew those women were damaged, and he was attracted by their pain. Sexual killers choose their prey from among the most vulnerable members of society. They seek women they can control, women they can degrade, women who do not threaten them. And who is more fragile than a woman who has been violated?

As Moore walked out, he paused to look at the wall where the photos of Sterling, Ortiz, and Peyton were tacked. Three women, three rapes.

And a fourth. Catherine was raped in Savannah.

He blinked as the image of her face suddenly flashed into mind, an image that he could not help adding to that victims’ gallery on the wall.

Somehow, it all goes back to what happened that night in Savannah. It all goes back to Andrew Capra.

In the heart of Mexico City, human blood once ran in rivers. Beneath the foundations of the modern metropolis lie the ruins of Templo Mayor, the great Aztec site which dominated ancient Tenochtitlán. Here, tens of thousands of unfortunate victims were sacrificed to the gods.

The day I walked those temple grounds, I felt some measure of amusement that nearby loomed a cathedral, where Catholics light candles and whisper prayers to a merciful God in heaven. They kneel near the very place where the stones were once slippery with blood. I visited on a Sunday, not knowing that on Sundays admission is free to the public, and the Museum of Templo Mayor was aswarm with children, their voices echoing brightly in the halls. I do not care for children, or for the disorder they stir; if ever I return, I will remember to avoid museums on Sundays.

But it was my last day in the city, so I put up with the irritating shards of noise. I wanted to see the excavation, and I wanted to tour Hall Two. The Hall of Ritual and Sacrifice.

The Aztecs believed that death is necessary for life. To maintain the sacred energy of the world, to ward off catastrophe and ensure that the sun continues to rise, the gods must be fed human hearts. I stood in the Hall of Ritual and saw, in the glass case, the sacrificial knife which had carved flesh. It had a name: Tecpatl Ixcuahua. The Knife with the Broad Forehead. The blade was made of flint, and the handle was in the shape of a kneeling man.

How, I wondered, does one go about cutting out a human heart when equipped with only a flint knife?

That question consumed me as I walked later that afternoon in the Alameda Central, ignoring the filthy urchins who trailed behind me, begging for coins. After a while they realized I could not be seduced by brown eyes or toothy smiles, and they left me alone. At last I was allowed some measure of peace — if such a thing is possible in the cacophony of Mexico City. I found a cafe, and sat at an outdoor table sipping strong coffee, the only patron who chose to be outside in the heat. I crave the heat; it soothes my cracking skin. I seek it the way a reptile seeks a warm rock. And so, on that sweltering day, I drank coffee and considered the human chest, puzzling over how best to approach the beating treasure within.

The Aztec sacrificial ritual has been described as swift, with a minimum of torture, and this presents a dilemma. I know it is hard work to crack through the sternum and separate the breastbone, which protects the heart like a shield. Cardiac surgeons make a vertical incision down the center of the chest, and split the sternum in two with a saw. They have assistants who help them separate the bony halves, and they use a variety of sophisticated instruments to widen the field, every tool fashioned of gleaming stainless steel.

An Aztec priest, with only a flint knife, would have problems using such an approach. He would need to pound on the breastbone with a chisel to split it down the center, and there would be a great deal of struggling. A great deal of screaming.