Tess Gerritsen: The Surgeon

She leaned back, wondering if Moore was already chasing down these two transactions. With so many other details to follow up on and all the interviews with Hoyt’s colleagues at the lab, a pair of ATM withdrawals might be way down on the team’s priority list.

She heard footsteps and glanced up with a start, panicked that she’d been caught reading Frost’s papers, but it was only a clerk from the lab who walked into the pod. The clerk gave Rizzoli a smile, dropped a folder on Moore’s desk, and walked out again.

After a moment, Rizzoli rose from her chair and went to Moore’s desk to peek inside the folder. The first page was a report from Hair and Fiber, an analysis of the light brown strands found on Warren Hoyt’s pillow.

Trichorrhexis invaginata, compatible with hair strand found in wound margin of victim Elena Ortiz. Bingo. Confirmation that Hoyt was their man.

She flipped to a second page. This, too, was a report from Hair and Fiber, on a strand found on Hoyt’s bathroom floor. This one did not make sense. This did not fit in.

She closed the folder and walked to the lab.

Erin Volchko was sitting in front of the gammatech prism, shuffling through a series of photomicrographs. As Rizzoli came into the lab, Erin held up a photo and challenged: “Quick! What is it?”

Rizzoli frowned at the black-and-white image of a scaly band. “It’s ugly.”

“Yeah, but what is it?”

“Probably something gross. Like a cockroach leg.”

“It’s a hair from a deer. Cool, isn’t it? It doesn’t look a thing like human hair.”

“Speaking of human hair.” Rizzoli handed her the report that she’d just read. “Can you tell me more about this?”

“From Warren Hoyt’s apartment?”

“Yeah.”

“The short brown hairs on Hoyt’s pillow show Trichorrhexis invaginata . He does appear to be your unsub.”

“No, the other hair. The black strand from his bathroom floor.”

“Let me show you the photo.” Erin reached for a bundle of photomicrographs. She shuffled through them like cards and pulled one from the deck. “This is the hair from the bathroom. You see the numerical scores there?”

Rizzoli looked at the sheet, at Erin’s neat handwriting. A00-B00-C05-D33. “Yeah. Whatever it means.”

“The first two scores, A00 and B00, tell you the strand is straight and black. Under the compound microscope, you can see additional details.” She handed Rizzoli the photo. “Look at the shaft. It’s on the thick side. Notice the cross-sectional shape is nearly round.”

“Meaning?”

“It’s one feature that helps us distinguish between races. A hair shaft from an African subject, for instance, is nearly flat, like a ribbon. Now look at the pigmentation, and you’ll notice it’s very dense. See the thick cuticle? These all point to the same conclusion.” Erin looked at her. “This hair is characteristic of East Asian heritage.”

“What do you mean by East Asian?”

“Chinese or Japanese. The Indian subcontinent. Possibly Native American.”

“Can that be confirmed? Is there enough hair root for DNA tests?”

“Unfortunately, no. It appears to have been clipped, not shed naturally. There’s no follicular tissue on this strand. But I’m confident this hair comes from someone of non-European, non-African descent.”

An Asian woman, thought Rizzoli as she walked back to the homicide unit. How does this come into the case? In the glass-walled corridor leading to the north wing she paused, her tired eyes squinting against the sunlight as she looked out over the neighborhood of Roxbury. Was there a victim whose body they had yet to find? Had Hoyt clipped her hair as a souvenir, the way he’d clipped Catherine Cordell’s?

She turned and was startled to see Moore walk right past her, on his way to the south wing. He might never have acknowledged her presence had she not called out to him.

He stopped and reluctantly turned to face her.

“That long black strand on Hoyt’s bathroom floor,” she said. “The lab says it’s East Asian. There could be a victim we’ve missed.”

“We discussed that possibility.”

“When?”

“This morning, at the meeting.”

“Goddamnit, Moore! Don’t leave me out of the loop!”

His cold silence served to amplify the shrillness of her outburst.

“I want him, too,” she said. Slowly, inexorably, she approached him until she was right in his face. “I want him as much as you do. Let me back in.”

“It’s not my decision. It’s Marquette’s.” He turned to leave.

“Moore?”

Reluctantly he stopped.

“I can’t stand this,” she said. “This feud between us.”

“This isn’t the time to talk about it.”

“Look, I’m sorry . I was pissed off at you about Pacheco. I know it’s a lousy excuse for what I did. For telling Marquette about you and Cordell.”

He turned to her. “Why did you do it?”

“I just told you why. I was pissed off.”

“No, there’s more to it than Pacheco. It’s about Catherine, isn’t it? You’ve disliked her from the very first day. You couldn’t stand the fact—”

“That you were falling in love with her?”

A long silence passed.

When Rizzoli spoke, she could not keep the sarcasm from her voice. “You know, Moore, for all your high-minded talk about respecting women’s minds , admiring women’s abilities , you still fall for the same thing every other man does. Tits and ass.”

He went white with anger. “So you hate her for the way she looks. And you’re pissed at me for falling for it. But you know what, Rizzoli? What man’s going to fall for you, when you don’t even like yourself?”

She stared in bitterness as he walked away. Only weeks ago, she’d thought Moore was the last person on earth who would say something so cruel. His words stung worse than if they’d come from anyone else.

That he might have spoken the truth was something she refused to consider.

Downstairs, passing through the lobby, she paused at the memorial to Boston PD’s fallen cops. The names of the dead were engraved on the wall in chronological order, starting with Ezekiel Hodson in 1854. A vase of flowers sat on the granite floor in tribute. Get yourself killed in the line of duty, and you’re a hero. How simple, how permanent. She didn’t know anything about these men whose names were now immortalized. For all she knew, some of them might have been dirty cops, but death had made their names and reputations untouchable. Standing there, before that wall, she almost envied them.

She walked out to her car. Rooting around in her glove compartment, she found a New England map. She spread it on the seat and eyed her two choices: Nashua, New Hampshire, or Lithia, in western Massachusetts. Warren Hoyt had used ATM’s at both locations. It was down to pure guesswork. A toss of a coin.

She started the car. It was ten-thirty; she didn’t reach the town of Lithia until noon.

Water. It was all Catherine could think about, the cool, clean taste of it streaming into her mouth. She thought of all the fountains from which she had drunk, the stainless-steel oases in the hospital corridors spouting icy water that splashed her lips, her chin. She thought of crushed ice and the way post-op patients would crane their necks and open their parched mouths like baby birds to receive a few precious chips of it.

And she thought of Nina Peyton, bound in a bedroom, knowing she was doomed to die, yet able to think only of her terrible thirst.

This is how he tortures us. How he beats us down. He wants us to beg for water, beg for our lives. He wants complete control. He wants us to acknowledge his power.