Tess Gerritsen - The Surgeon

When I think of the Trojan Horse, I am puzzled by the foolishness of Troy’s soldiers. As they wheeled the behemoth into the city, how could they not know the enemy was burrowed within? Why did they bring it within the city walls? Why did they spend that night in revels, clouding their minds in drunken celebration of victory? I like to think I would have known better.

Perhaps it was their impregnable walls that lulled them into complacency. Once the gates are closed, and the barricades are tight, how can the enemy attack? He is shut out, beyond those walls.

No one stops to consider the possibility that the enemy is inside the gates. That he is right there, beside you.

I am thinking of the wooden horse as I stir cream and sugar into my coffee.

I pick up the telephone.

“Surgery office; this is Helen,” the receptionist answers.

“Could I see Dr. Cordell this afternoon?” I ask.

“Is it an emergency?”

“Not really. I’ve got this soft lump on my back. It doesn’t hurt, but I want her to look at it.”

“I could fit you into her schedule in about two weeks.”

“Can’t I see her this afternoon? After her last appointment?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. — what is your name, please?”

“Mr. Troy.”

“Mr. Troy. But Dr. Cordell’s booked until five o’clock, and she’s going right home after that. Two weeks is the best I can do.”

“Never mind then. I’ll try another doctor.”

I hang up. I know now that sometime after five o’clock, she will walk out of her office. She is tired; surely she will drive straight home.

It is now 9:00 A.M. This will be a day of waiting, of anticipation.

For ten bloody years, the Greeks laid siege to Troy. For ten years, they persevered, flinging themselves against the enemy’s walls, as their fortunes rose and fell with the favor of the gods.

I have waited only two years to claim my prize.

It has been long enough.

The secretary in the Emory University Medical School Office of Student Affairs was a Doris Day lookalike, a sunny blonde who’d matured into a gracious southern matron. Winnie Bliss kept a coffeepot brewing by the students’ mail slots and a crystal bowl of butterscotch candies on her desk, and Moore could imagine how a stressed-out medical student might find this room a welcome retreat. Winnie had worked in this office for twenty years, and since she had no children of her own, she’d focused her maternal impulses on the students who visited this office every day to pick up their mail. She fed them cookies, passed along tips about apartment vacancies, counseled them through bad love affairs and failing test scores. And every year, at graduation, she shed tears because 110 of her children were leaving her. All this she told Moore in a soft Georgia accent as she plied him with cookies and poured him coffee, and he believed her. Winnie Bliss was all magnolia and no steel.

“I couldn’t believe it when the Savannah police called me two years ago,” she said, settling gracefully into her chair. “I told them it had to be a mistake. I saw Andrew come into this office every day for his mail, and he was just about the nicest boy you could hope to meet. Polite, never a bad word from that boy’s lips. I make a point of looking people in the eye, Detective Moore, just to let them know I’m really seeing them. And I saw a good boy in Andrew’s eyes.”

A testament, thought Moore, to how easily we are deceived by evil.

“During the four years Capra was a student here, do you remember any close friendships he had?” Moore asked.

“You mean, like a sweetheart?”

“I’m more interested in his male friends. I spoke to his ex-landlady here in Atlanta. She said there was a young man who occasionally visited Capra. She thought he was another medical student.”

Winnie rose to her feet and crossed to the filing cabinet, where she retrieved a computer printout. “This is the class roster for Andrew’s year. There were one hundred ten students in his freshman class. About half of them were men.”

“Did he have any close friends among them?”

She scanned the three pages of names and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just don’t recall anyone on this list being particularly close to him.”

“Are you saying he didn’t have any friends?”

“I’m saying I don’t know of any friends.”

“May I see the list?”

She handed it to him. He went down the page but saw no name except Capra’s that struck him as familiar. “Do you know where all these students are living now?”

“Yes. I update their mailing addresses for the alumni newsletter.”

“Are any of them in the Boston area?”

“Let me check.” She swiveled to face her computer, and her polished pink nails clicked on the keys. Winnie Bliss’s innocence made her seem like a woman from an older, more gracious era, and it struck him as odd to watch her navigating computer files with such skill. “There’s one in Newton, Massachusetts. Is that close to Boston?”

“Yes.” Moore leaned forward, his pulse suddenly quickening. “What’s his name?”

“It’s a she. Latisha Green. Very nice girl. She used to bring me these big bags of pecans. Course, it was really naughty of her, since she knew I was watching my figure, but I think she liked to feed people. It was just her way.”

“Was she married? Did she have a boyfriend?”

“Oh, she has a wonderful husband! Biggest man I ever did see! Six foot five, with this beautiful black skin.”

“Black,” he repeated.

“Yes. Pretty as patent leather.”

Moore sighed and looked back at the list. “And there’s no one else from Capra’s class living near Boston, as far as you know?”

“Not according to my list.” She turned to him. “Oh. You look disappointed.” She said it with a note of distress, as though she felt personally responsible for failing him.

“I’m batting a lot of zeros today,” he admitted.

“Have a candy.”

“Thank you, but no.”

“Watching your weight, too?”

“I don’t have a sweet tooth.”

“Then you are clearly not a southerner, Detective.”

He couldn’t help laughing. Winnie Bliss, with her wide eyes and soft voice, had charmed him, as she surely charmed every student, male and female, who walked into her office. His gaze lifted to the wall behind her, hung with a series of group photographs. “Are those the medical school classes?”

She turned to look at the wall. “I have my husband take one every graduation. It’s not an easy thing, to get those students together. It’s like herding cats, my husband likes to say. But I want that picture, and I make ’em do it. Aren’t they just the nicest group of young people?”

“Which is Andrew Capra’s graduating class?”

“I’ll show you the yearbook. It has the names, too.” She rose and went to a bookcase covered with glass doors. With reverence she removed a slim volume from the shelf and lightly ran her hand across the cover, as though to brush away dust. “This is the year Andrew graduated. It has pictures of all his classmates, and tells you where they were accepted for internship.” She paused, then held out the book to him. “It’s my only copy. So please, if you could just look at it here, and not take it out?”

“I’ll sit right over there in that corner, out of your way. You can keep an eye on me. How about that?”

“Oh, I’m not sayin’ I don’t trust you!”

“Well, you shouldn’t,” he said, and winked. She blushed like a schoolgirl.