Tess Gerritsen - The Surgeon

“Impossible. I’m already home.”

“Yes, I told him you were off for the weekend. But he said this is the last day he’ll be in town. He wants to see you before he visits his attorney.”

An attorney?

Catherine sagged against the kitchen counter. God, she had no strength to deal with this. Not now. Not when she was so tired she could barely think straight.

“Dr. Cordell?”

“Did Mr. Gwadowski say when he wants to meet?”

“He said he’ll wait in the hospital cafeteria until six.”

“Thank you.” Catherine hung up and stared numbly at the gleaming kitchen tiles. How meticulous she was about keeping those tiles clean! But no matter how hard she scrubbed or how thoroughly she organized every aspect of her life, she could not anticipate the Ivan Gwadowskis of the world.

She picked up her purse and car keys and once again left the sanctuary of her apartment.

In the elevator she glanced at her watch and was alarmed to see it was already 5:45. She would not make it to the hospital in time, and Mr. Gwadowski would assume she’d stood him up.

The instant she slid into the Mercedes, she picked up the car phone and called the Pilgrim operator.

“This is Dr. Cordell again. I need to reach Mr. Gwadowski to let him know I’ll be late. Do you know which extension he was calling from?”

“Let me check the phone log…. Here it is. It wasn’t a hospital extension.”

“A cell phone, then?”

There was a pause. “Well, this is strange.”

“What is?”

“He was calling from the number you’re using now.”

Catherine went still, fear blasting like a cold wind up her spine. My car. The call was made from my car.

“Dr. Cordell?”

She saw him then, rising like a cobra in the rearview mirror. She took a breath to scream, and her throat burned with the fumes of chloroform.

The receiver dropped from her hand.

Jerry Sleeper was waiting for him at the curb outside airport baggage claim. Moore threw his carry-on into the backseat, stepped into the car, and yanked the door shut with a slam.

“Have you found her?” was the first question Moore asked.

“Not yet,” said Sleeper as he pulled away from the curb. “Her Mercedes has vanished, and there’s no evidence of any disturbance in her apartment. Whatever happened, it was fast, and it was in or near her vehicle. Peter Falco was the last one to see her, around five-fifteen in the hospital garage. About a half hour later, the Pilgrim operator paged Cordell and spoke to her on the phone. Cordell called back again from her car. That conversation was abruptly cut off. The operator claims it was the son of Herman Gwadowski who called in the original page.”

“Confirmation?”

“Ivan Gwadowski was on a plane to California at twelve noon. He didn’t make that call.”

They did not need to say who had called in the page. They both knew. Moore stared in agitation at the row of taillights, strung as densely as bright red beads in the night.

He’s had her since 6:00 P.M. What has he done to her in those four hours?

“I want to see where Warren Hoyt lives,” said Moore.

“We’re headed there now. We know he got off his shift at Interpath Labs around seven A.M. this morning. At ten A.M., he called his supervisor to say he had a family emergency and wouldn’t be back at work for at least a week. No one’s seen him since. Not at his apartment, not at the lab.”

“And the family emergency?”

“He has no family. His only aunt died in February.”

The row of taillights blurred into a streak of red. Moore blinked and turned his gaze so that Sleeper would not see his tears.

Warren Hoyt lived in the North End, a quaint maze of narrow streets and redbrick buildings that made up the oldest neighborhood in Boston. It was considered a safe part of town, thanks to the watchful eyes of the local Italian population, who owned many of the businesses. Here, on a street where tourists and residents alike walked with little fear of crime, a monster had lived.

Hoyt’s apartment was on the third floor of a brick walk-up. Hours before, the team had combed the place for evidence, and when Moore stepped inside and saw the sparse furnishings, the nearly bare shelves, he felt he was standing in a room that had already been swept clean of its soul. That he’d find nothing left of whoever — whatever — Warren Hoyt might be.

Dr. Zucker emerged from the bedroom and said to Moore, “There’s something wrong here.”

“Is Hoyt our unsub or not?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do we have?” Moore looked at Crowe, who had met them at the door.

“We’ve got a bingo on shoe size. Eight and a half, matches the footprints from the Ortiz crime scene. We’ve got several hair strands from the pillow — short, light brown. Also looks like a match. Plus we found a long black hair on the bathroom floor. Shoulder-length.”

Moore frowned. “There was a woman here?”

“Maybe a friend.”

“Or another victim,” said Zucker. “Someone we don’t know about yet.”

“I spoke to the landlady, who lives downstairs,” said Crowe. “She last saw Hoyt this morning, coming home from work. She has no idea where he is now. Bet you can guess what she has to say about him. Good tenant. Quiet man, never any trouble. ”

Moore looked at Zucker. “What did you mean when you said there’s something wrong here?”

“There’s no murder kit. No tools. His car’s parked right outside, and there’s no kit in there, either.” Zucker gestured to the nearly empty living room. “This apartment looks barely lived in. There are only a few items in the refrigerator. The bathroom has soap, a toothbrush, and a razor. It’s like a hotel room. A place to sleep, nothing more. It’s not where he keeps his fantasies alive.”

“This is where he lives,” said Crowe. “His mail comes here. His clothes are here.”

“But this place is missing the most important thing of all,” Zucker said. “His trophies. There are no trophies here.”

A feeling of dread had seeped into Moore’s bones. Zucker was right. The Surgeon had carved an anatomical trophy out of each of his victims; he would keep them around to remind him of his kills. To tide him over between hunts.

“We’re not looking at the whole picture,” said Zucker. He turned to Moore. “I need to see where Warren Hoyt worked. I need to see the lab.”

Barry Frost sat down at the computer keyboard and typed in the patient’s name: Nina Peyton. A new screen appeared, filled with data.

“This terminal is his fishing hole,” said Frost. “This is where he finds his victims.”

Moore stared at the monitor, startled by what he saw. Elsewhere in the lab, machines whirred and phones rang and medical technicians processed their clattering racks of blood tubes. Here, in this antiseptic world of stainless steel and white coats, a world devoted to the healing sciences, the Surgeon had quietly hunted for prey. At this computer terminal, he could call up the names of every woman whose blood or body fluids had been processed at Interpath Labs.

“This is the primary diagnostic lab in the city,” said Frost. “Get your blood drawn at any doctor’s office or any outpatient clinic in Boston, and the chances are, that blood will come right here to be analyzed.”

Right here, to Warren Hoyt.

“He had her home address,” said Moore, scanning the information on Nina Peyton. “Her employer’s name. Her age and marital status—”

“And her diagnosis,” said Zucker. He pointed to two words on the screen: sexual assault . “This is exactly what the Surgeon hunts for. It’s what turns him on. Emotionally damaged women. Women marked by sexual violence.”