Tess Gerritsen - The Surgeon

He opened the first accordion folder and began to read.

When he finally rose from his chair three hours later and stretched the kinks from his back, it was already noon and he had barely begun to scale the mountain of paper. He had not caught even a whiff of the Surgeon’s scent. He walked around the table, eyeing the labels on the boxes that had not yet been opened, and spotted one that said: “#12 Fox/Torregrossa/Voorhees/Cordell. Press clippings/Videos/Misc.”

He opened the box and found half a dozen videotapes on top of a thick stack of folders. He took out the video labeled: Capra Residence. It was dated June 16. The day after the attack on Catherine.

He found Singer at his desk, eating a sandwich. A deli special, piled high with roast beef. The desk itself told him much about Singer. It was organized to the nth degree, the stacks of papers lined up with corners squared. A cop who was great with details but probably a pain in the ass to work with.

“Is there a VCR I could use?” said Moore.

“We keep it locked up.”

Moore waited, his next request so obvious he didn’t bother to voice it. With a dramatic sigh, Singer reached into his desk for the keys and stood up. “I guess you want it right now, don’t you?”

From the storage room, Singer took out the cart with the VCR and TV and rolled it into the room where Moore had been working. He plugged in the cords, pressed the power buttons, and grunted in satisfaction when everything came on.

“Thanks,” said Moore. “I’ll probably need it for a few days.”

“You come up with any big-time revelations yet?” There was no mistaking the note of sarcasm in his voice.

“I’m just getting started.”

“I see you got the Capra video.” Singer shook his head. “Man, was there weird shit in that house.”

“I drove past the address last night. There’s only an empty lot.”

“Building burned down ’bout a year ago. After Capra, the landlady couldn’t rent out the upstairs apartment. So she started chargin’ for tours, and believe it or not, she got herself a lot of takers. Y’know, the sick as shit Anne Rice crowd, come to worship at the monster’s den. Hell, landlady herself was somethin’ weird.”

“I’ll need to speak to her.”

“Not unless you can talk to the dead.”

“The fire?”

“Crispy critter.” Singer laughed. “Smokin’ is bad for your health. She sure proved it.”

Moore waited until Singer walked out. Then he inserted the “Capra Residence” tape into the VCR slot.

The first images were exterior, daylight, a view of the front of the house where Capra had lived. Moore recognized the tree in the front yard with the Spanish moss. The house itself was charmless, a two-story box in need of paint. The voice-over of the cameraman gave the date, time, and location. He identified himself as Savannah detective Spiro Pataki. Judging by the quality of daylight, Moore guessed the video had been shot in the early morning. The camera panned the street, and he saw a jogger run past, face turned toward the lens in curiosity. Traffic was heavy (the morning commute hour?) and a few neighbors stood on the sidewalk, staring at the cameraman.

Now the view swung back to the house and approached the front door with handheld jerkiness. Once inside, Detective Pataki briefly panned the first floor, where the landlady, Mrs. Poole, lived. Moore glimpsed faded carpets, dark furniture, an ashtray overflowing with cigarettes. The fatal habit of a future crispy critter. The camera moved up some narrow stairs, and through a door with a heavy dead bolt installed, into the upstairs apartment of Andrew Capra.

Moore felt claustrophobic just looking at it. The second floor had been cut into small rooms, and whoever had done this “renovation” must have gotten a special deal on wood paneling. Every wall was covered in dark veneer. The camera moved up a hallway so narrow it seemed to be burrowing through a tunnel. “Bedroom on the right,” said Pataki on camera, swinging the lens through the doorway to catch a view of a twin bed, neatly made up, a nightstand, a dresser. All the furniture that would fit in that dim little cave.

“Moving toward the rear living area,” said Pataki as the camera jerked once again into the tunnel. It emerged in a larger room where other people stood around, looking grim. Moore spotted Singer by a closet door. Here’s where the action was.

The camera focused on Singer. “This door was padlocked,” Singer said, pointing to the broken lock. “We had to pry off the hinges. Inside we found this.” He opened the closet door and yanked on the light chain.

The camera went briefly out of focus, then abruptly sharpened again, the image filling the screen with startling clarity. It was a black-and-white photograph of a woman’s face, eyes wide and lifeless, the neck slashed so deeply the tracheal cartilage was laid open.

“I believe this is Dora Ciccone,” said Singer. “Okay, focus on this one now.”

The camera moved to the right. Another photograph, another woman.

“These appear to be postmortem photos, taken of four different victims. I believe we are looking at the death images of Dora Ciccone, Lisa Fox, Ruth Voorhees, and Jennifer Torregrossa.”

It was Andrew Capra’s private photo gallery. A retreat in which to relive the pleasure of his slaughters. What Moore found more disturbing than the images themselves was the remaining blank space on the walls, and the little package of thumbtacks sitting on a shelf. Plenty of room for more.

The camera shifted dizzingly out of the closet and was once again in the larger room. Slowly Pataki swung around, capturing on camera a couch, a TV, a desk, a phone. Bookshelves filled with medical textbooks. The camera continued its pan until it came to the kitchen area. It focused on the refrigerator.

Moore leaned closer, his throat suddenly dry. He already knew what that refrigerator contained, yet he found his pulse quickening, his stomach turning in dread, as he saw Singer walk to the refrigerator. Singer paused and looked at the camera.

“This is what we found inside,” he said, and opened the door.

He took a walk around the block, and this time he scarcely noticed the heat, he was so chilled by the images on that videotape. He felt relieved just to be out of the conference room, which was now intimately associated with horror. Savannah itself, with its syrupy air and its soft green light, made him uneasy. The city of Boston had sharp edges and jarring voices, every building, every scowling face, in harsh focus. In Boston, you knew you were alive, if only because you were so irritated. Here, nothing seemed in focus. He saw Savannah as though through gauze, a city of genteel smiles and sleepy voices, and he wondered what darkness lay hidden from view.

When he returned to the squad room, he found Singer typing at a laptop. “Hold on,” said Singer, and he hit Spellcheck. God forbid there be any misspellings in his reports. Satisfied, he looked at Moore. “Yeah?”

“Did you ever find Capra’s address book?”

“What address book?”

“Most people keep a personal address book near their telephone. I didn’t see one in the video of his apartment, and I didn’t find one on your property list.”

“You’re talking over two years ago. If it wasn’t on our list, then he didn’t have one.”

“Or it was removed from his apartment before you got there.”

“What’re you fishing for? I thought you came to study Capra’s technique, not solve the case again.”

“I’m interested in Capra’s friends. Everyone who knew him well.”

“Hell, no one did. We interviewed the doctors and nurses he worked with. His landlady, the neighbors. I drove out to Atlanta to talk to his aunt. His only living relative.”