Tess Gerritsen: The Surgeon

His souvenirs.

There were six jars, each one labeled with a name. More victims than they ever knew.

The last one was empty, but the name was already written on the label, the container ready and waiting for its prize. The best prize of all.

Catherine Cordell.

Rizzoli swung around, her Maglite zigzagging around the cellar, flitting past massive posts and foundation stones, and coming to an abrupt halt on the far corner. Something black was splashed on the wall.

Blood.

She shifted the beam, and it fell directly on Cordell’s body, wrists and ankles bound with duct tape to the bed. Blood glistened, fresh and wet, on her flank. On one white thigh was a single crimson handprint where the Surgeon had pressed his glove onto her flesh, as though to leave his mark. The tray of surgical instruments was still there by the bed, a torturer’s assortment of tools.

Oh god. I was so close to saving you….

Sick with rage, she moved the beam of her light up the length of Cordell’s blood-splashed torso until it stopped at the neck. There was no gaping wound, no coup de grace.

The light suddenly wavered. No, not the light; Cordell’s chest had moved!

She’s still breathing.

Rizzoli ripped the duct tape off Cordell’s mouth and felt warm breath against her hand. Saw Cordell’s eyelids flutter.

Yes!

Felt a burst of triumph yet at the same time a niggling sense that something was terribly wrong. No time to think about it. She had to get Cordell out of here.

Holding the Maglite between her teeth, she swiftly cut both Cordell’s wrists free and felt for a pulse. She found one — weak, but definitely present.

Still, she could not shake the sense that something was wrong. Even as she started to cut the tape binding Cordell’s right ankle, even as she reached toward the left ankle, the alarms were going off in her head. And then she knew why.

That scream. She’d heard Cordell’s scream all the way from the barn.

But she’d found Cordell’s mouth covered with tape.

He took it off. He wanted her to scream. He wanted me to hear it.

A trap.

Instantly her hand went for her gun, which she’d laid on the bed. She never reached it.

The two-by-four slammed into her temple, a blow so hard it sent her sprawling facedown on the packed earthen floor. She struggled to rise to her hands and knees.

The two-by-four came whistling at her again, whacked into her side. She heard ribs crack, and the breath whooshed out of her. She rolled onto her back, the pain so terrible she could not draw air into her lungs.

A light came on, a single bulb swaying far overhead.

He stood above her, his face a black oval beneath the cone of light. The Surgeon, eyeing his new prize.

She rolled onto her uninjured side and tried to push herself off the ground.

He kicked her arm out from under her and she collapsed onto her back again, the impact jarring her broken ribs. She gave a cry of agony and could not move. Even as he stepped closer. Even as she saw the two-by-four looming over her head.

His boot came down on her wrist, crushing it against the ground.

She screamed.

He reached toward the instrument tray and picked up one of the scalpels.

No. God, no.

He dropped to a crouch, his boot still holding down her wrist, and raised the scalpel. Brought it down in a merciless arc toward her open hand.

A shriek this time, as steel penetrated her flesh and pierced straight through to the earthen floor, skewering her hand to the ground.

He picked up another scalpel from the tray. Grabbed her right hand and pulled, extending her right arm. He stamped his boot down, pinning her wrist. Again he raised the scalpel. Again, he brought it down, stabbing through flesh and earth.

This time, her scream was weaker. Defeated.

He rose and stood gazing at her for a moment, the way a collector admires the bright new butterfly he has just pinned to the board.

He went to the instrument tray and picked up a third scalpel. With both her arms stretched out, her hands staked to the ground, Rizzoli could only watch and wait for the final act. He walked around behind her and crouched down. Grasped the hair at the crown of her head and yanked it backward, hard, extending her neck. She was staring straight up at him, and still his face was little more than a dark oval. A black hole, devouring all light. She could feel her carotids bounding at her throat, pulsing with each beat of her heart. Blood was life itself, flowing through her arteries and veins. She wondered how long she would stay conscious after the blade did its work. Whether death would be a gradual fadeout to black. She saw its inevitability. All her life she had been a fighter, all her life she had raged against defeat, but in this she was conquered. Her throat lay bare, her neck arched backward. She saw the gleam of the blade and closed her eyes as he touched it to her skin.

Lord, let it be quick.

She heard him take a preparatory breath, felt his grip suddenly tighten on her hair.

The blast of the gun shocked her.

Her eyelids flew open. He was still crouched above her, but he was no longer gripping her hair. The scalpel fell from his hand. Something warm dribbled onto her face. Blood.

Not hers, but his.

He toppled backward and vanished from her line of vision.

Already resigned to her own death, now Rizzoli lay stunned by the prospect that she would live. She struggled to take in a host of details at once. She saw the lightbulb swaying like a bright moon on a string. On the wall, shadows moved. Turning her head, she saw Catherine Cordell’s arm drop weakly back to the bed.

Saw the gun slide from Cordell’s hand and thud to the floor.

In the distance, a siren wailed.

Rizzoli was sitting up in her hospital bed, glowering at the TV. Bandages encased her hands so thoroughly they looked like boxing gloves. A large bald spot had been shaved on the side of her head, where the doctors had stitched up a scalp laceration. She fussed with the TV remote, and at first she did not notice Moore standing in the doorway. Then he knocked. When she turned and looked at him he saw, just for an instant, a glimmer of vulnerability. Then her usual defenses sprang back into place and she was the old Rizzoli, her gaze wary as he walked into the room and took the chair by her bed.

On the TV whined the annoying background theme of a soap opera.

“Can you turn off that crap?” she blurted in frustration and gestured to the remote control with one bandaged paw. “I can’t press the buttons. They expect me to use my goddamn nose or something.”

He took the remote and pressed the Off button.

“ Thank you,” she huffed. And winced from the pain of three broken ribs.

With the TV off, a long silence stretched between them. Through the open doorway, they heard a doctor’s name paged and the rattle of the meal cart wheeling down the hall.

“They taking good care of you out here?” he asked.

“It’s okay, for a hick hospital. Probably better than being in the city.”

While both Catherine and Hoyt had been airlifted to Pilgrim Medical Center in Boston due to their more serious injuries, Rizzoli had been brought by ambulance to this small regional hospital. Despite its distance from the city, just about every detective in the Boston Homicide Unit had already made the pilgrimage here to visit Rizzoli.

And they’d all brought flowers. Moore’s bouquet of roses was almost lost among the many arrangements displayed on the tray tables and the nightstand, even on the floor.

“Wow,” he said. “You’ve picked up a lot of admirers.”