Tess Gerritsen - The Surgeon

“Since he left town without a word. I guess I was just a temporary lapse in judgment for him.”

“Is that what he was for you? A lapse in your judgment?”

Catherine stood in the hallway, blinking away tears. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.

“You seem to be at the center of everything, Dr. Cordell. You’re right up there onstage, the focus of everyone’s attention. Moore’s. The Surgeon’s.”

Catherine turned in anger to Rizzoli. “You think I want any of this? I never asked to be a victim!”

“But it keeps happening to you, doesn’t it? There’s some kind of weird bond between you and the Surgeon. I didn’t see it at first. I thought he killed those other victims to play out his sick fantasies. Now I think it was all about you. He’s like a cat, killing birds and bringing them home to his mistress, to prove his worth as a hunter. Those victims were offerings meant to impress you. The more scared you get, the more successful he feels. That’s why he waited to kill Nina Peyton until she was in this hospital, under your care. He wanted you to witness his skill firsthand. You’re his obsession. I want to know why.”

“He’s the only one who can answer that.”

“You have no idea?”

“How could I? I don’t even know who he is.”

“He was in your house with Andrew Capra. If what you said under hypnosis is true.”

“Andrew was the only one I saw that night. Andrew’s the only one…” She stopped. “Maybe I’m not his real obsession, Detective. Have you thought about that? Maybe Andrew is.”

Rizzoli frowned, struck by that statement. Catherine suddenly realized that she had hit on the truth. The center of the Surgeon’s universe was not her but Andrew Capra. The man he emulated, perhaps even worshiped. The partner Catherine had wrenched from him.

She glanced up as her name was called over the hospital address system.

“Dr. Cordell, STAT, E.R. Dr. Cordell, STAT, E.R.”

God, will they never leave me alone?

She punched the Down button for the elevator.

“Dr. Cordell?”

“I don’t have time for any of your questions. I have patients to see.”

“When will you have the time?”

The door slid open and Catherine stepped in, the weary soldier called back to the front lines. “My night’s just begun.”

By their blood will I know them.

I survey the racks of test tubes the way one lusts over chocolates in a box, wondering which will be tastiest. Our blood is as unique as we are, and my naked eye discerns varying shades of red, from bright cardinal to black cherry. I am familiar with what gives us this broad palette of colors; I know the red is from hemoglobin, in varying states of oxygenation. It is chemistry, nothing more, but ah, such chemistry has the power to shock, to horrify. We are all moved by the sight of blood.

Even though I see it every day, it never fails to thrill me.

I look over the racks with a hungry gaze. The tubes have come from all over the greater Boston area, funneled in from doctors’ offices and clinics and the hospital next door. We are the largest diagnostic lab in the city. Anywhere in Boston, should you open your arm to the phlebotomist’s needle, the chances are your blood will find its way here. To me.

I log in the first rack of specimens. On each tube is a label with the patient’s name, the doctor’s name, and the date. Next to the rack is the bundle of accompanying requisition forms. It is the forms I reach for, and I flip through them, scanning the names.

Halfway through the stack, I stop. I am looking at a requisition for Karen Sobel, age twenty-five, who lives at 7536 Clark Road in Brookline. She is Caucasian and unmarried. All this I know because it appears on the form, along with her Social Security number and employer’s name and insurance carrier.

The doctor has requested two blood tests: an HIV screen, and a VDRL, for syphilis.

On the line for diagnosis, the doctor has written: “Sexual assault.”

In the rack, I find the tube containing Karen Sobel’s blood. It is a deep and somber red, the blood of a wounded beast. I hold it in my hand, and as it warms to my touch, I see her, feel her, this woman named Karen. Broken and stumbling. Waiting to be claimed.

Then I hear a voice that startles me, and I look up.

Catherine Cordell has just walked into my lab.

She is standing so close, I can almost reach out and touch her. I am stunned to see her here, especially at this remote hour between darkness and dawn. Seldom do any physicians venture into our basement world, and to see her now is an unexpected thrill, as arresting as the vision of Persephone descending into Hades.

I wonder what has brought her. Then I see her hand several tubes of straw-colored fluid to the technician at the next bench, and hear the words “pleural effusion,” and I understand why she has deigned to visit us. Like many physicians, she does not trust the hospital couriers with certain precious body fluids, and she has personally carried the tubes down the tunnel that connects Pilgrim Hospital with the Interpath Labs building.

I watch her walk away. She passes right by my bench. Her shoulders sag, and she sways, her legs wobbly, as though she is struggling through deep mud. Fatigue and the fluorescent lights make her skin look like little more than a milky wash over the fine bones of her face. She vanishes out the door, never knowing that I’ve been watching her.

I look down at Karen Sobel’s tube, which I am still holding, and suddenly the blood seems dull and lifeless. A prey not even worth the hunt. Not when compared to what has just walked past me.

I can still smell Catherine’s scent.

I log onto the computer, and under “doctor’s name” I type: “C. Cordell.” On the screen appear all the lab tests she has ordered in the last twenty-four hours. I see that she has been in the hospital since 10:00 P.M. It is now 5:30 A.M., and a Friday. She faces a whole clinic day ahead of her.

My workday is now coming to an end.

When I step out of the building, it is 7:00 A.M., and the morning sunlight slices straight into my eyes. Already the day is warm. I walk to the medical center parking garage, take the elevator to the fifth level, and head along the row of cars to stall # 541, where her car is parked. It is a lemon-yellow Mercedes, this year’s model. She keeps it sparkling clean.

I take the key ring from my pocket, the ring I have been guarding for two weeks now, and slip one of the keys into her trunk lock.

The trunk pops open.

I glance inside and spot the trunk release lever, an excellent safety feature to prevent children from being accidentally locked inside.

Another car growls up the garage ramp. I quickly close the Mercedes trunk and walk away.

For ten brutal years, the Trojan War waged on. The virgin blood of Iphigenia that was spilled upon the altar at Aulis had sped the thousand Greek ships on a fair wind toward Troy, but a swift victory did not await the Greeks, for on Olympus the gods were divided. On Troy’s side stood Aphrodite and Ares, Apollo and Artemis. On the Greek side stood Hera and Athena and Poseidon. Victory fluttered from one side to the other and back again, as fickle as the breezes. Heroes slew and were slain, and the poet Virgil says the earth streamed with blood.

In the end, it was not force but cunning that brought Troy to her knees. On the dawn of Troy’s last day, her soldiers awakened to the sight of a great wooden horse, abandoned at her scaean gates.