Michael Palmer - The Last Surgeon

“Come in, it’s open,” he called out as Junie was halfway down the hall.

Chance, perhaps knowing the woman represented no possibility of play, remained in his upside-down-table position.

Junie entered the room, her broad smile fading the moment she saw Nick.

“Goodness, love, I guess I’m just stating the obvious, but you look like hell.”

“Thanks for the compliment. I checked myself in the mirror and thought at worst I looked like heck.”

The nurse spent a moment studying the maps tacked to the walls.

“That’s a lot of walking you’ve done in two days,” she said.

“Say, maybe, just maybe, that’s why my feet are killing me. You know, Junie, truth is I didn’t even consider not being able to find Manny Ferris. It’s all a bit disheartening.”

“It hurts me to see you so discouraged. I admire your dedication to finding out what happened to Umberto, but maybe it’s time to let it rest.”

“The man saved my life. I owe it to him.”

“You owe it to yourself to live your life to the fullest, too.”

“Well, maybe finding Umberto will let me do that.”

“I’m worried you’re chasing ghosts, Nick.”

“What if he’s not a ghost?”

“Then we better find him fast.”

“We?”

Junie nodded and placed a comforting hand on Nick’s shoulder.

“The night you learned about Manny Ferris, I don’t think I’ve seen you so happy in all the time I’ve known you. I don’t want to go on watching you suffer the way you have been. If finding our friend Umberto is going to take you even one step closer to health and happiness, I want to do everything I can to make it happen.”

“Thank you, Junie. You’re doing that. I honestly believe Manny Ferris and Umberto are connected. I’ve searched every street corner, morgue, and veteran’s organization from here to Detroit, but I’m going to keep at it.”

“Well, I know one person we haven’t used who might help you.”

“Oh, and who’s that?”

“Reggie.”

“ Our Reggie? My football buddy Reggie? You-can’t-ride-the-RV-if-you-don’t-finish-your-homework Reggie?”

“The same. I promise that if anyone can help you find your Manny Ferris, he can.”

With each stroke of his spoon-shaped paddle, Franz Koller felt a million and a half richer. What other job could he even think of where he could make so much money for doing something that he loved so much? Whatever this newest windfall of steady business was all about, he’d take it, no questions asked.

Maybe he’d buy another house.

Koller ignored the spray as he powered through three-foot swells, kicked up by a steady offshore breeze. The spray skirt kept the boat from flooding, and practice with the ocean kayak he kept at his estate near Panama City, Florida, had made him expert at steering with the foot-controlled rudder system. He would have preferred to work in less blustery conditions, but the fog, now beginning to blanket the iron-colored sea, provided additional cover he could not resist.

The rolling Chesapeake swells aside, Koller was delighted to be on the hunt again. Executing a non-kill was far more rewarding than executing a lesson plan. He was certified to teach in a number of states under a number of names. In past years, the profession had been tolerable, and occasionally even stimulating. If it weren’t for being such an effective cover with flexible working hours, he wouldn’t spend another minute trying to educate the insipid brats.

Unless Dr. Tightass, as Koller had come to think of the anesthesiologist whose life he was about to terminate, broke with his routine, he would be entering the water at the end of Parker Avenue within the next ten minutes. Koller had put in his own seventeen-foot, carbon-colored Looksha two miles to the south. He had bought the touring kayak in a mammoth sporting goods store outside of Newport, and later that night had slept with the salesgirl who had sold it to him. Life was good.

Rowing the extra mile to intersect the doctor’s track was a precaution the killer had no trouble taking. It was best if the man believed he was alone on the water until the very end. Once the body was recovered, and once the time of death was established, there would be nothing suspicious for anyone to report to the police. Of course, that presumed there would even be a police investigation of any depth. But Koller knew there wouldn’t be. Details and working through minutiae were at the core of the non-kill.

Even with the rough conditions, Koller was barely breathing heavily when he reached the eastern side of the Alexander Ledge Lighthouse. The wonder of adrenaline , he thought. Grabbing hold of the rusted ladder, which ran halfway up the ninety-seven-foot-high granite tower, he checked the time. Despite the chop, he had still made it four minutes faster than the best of his three trial runs.

Details.

In another twenty minutes, anesthesiologist Dr. Thomas Landrew would complete his early morning paddle out to the ledge.

“One mile to dead time, Doc,” Koller said, checking his GPS and savoring the air, which was salty, but not as much so as at the ocean end of the largest estuary in the country.

He had shadowed Landrew for several days, deciding on the best way to dispatch him following the precepts of the non-kill. Early each morning, even when it was raining, Koller watched as the man embarked from the Parker Avenue put-in and paddled out to the lighthouse and back. The physician was fifty-seven, but his body could have been fifteen years younger than that.

The rigidity surrounding the man’s schedule was impressive. He rowed, then left for work at precisely the same time each day, and made a leisurely walkabout of his substantial property each evening when he returned home. The non-kill at its best required using a target’s weakness against him… or her. It was Landrew’s obsessiveness about time that would be his undoing.

Chilly waves crashed against the rocks at the base of the lighthouse. Taking advantage of a brief interlude between swells, Koller reached into his dry bag, resting atop the cockpit tray, to confirm its contents. The two tools he would need were stashed safely inside nylon drawstring bags-a small hammer and a syringe. The latter was kept safe in a protective plastic case, and filled with four hundred milligrams of succinylcholine, or “sux” as many anesthesiologists and emergency specialists referred to the magical drug. Koller removed the needle cap and tapped gently at the base of the syringe, encouraging a tiny crystal drop of death to bead out. He imagined the onset of the paralysis of Landrew’s muscles, especially the thick traps across the shoulder, and those chest muscles that were needed, along with the diaphragm, to breathe. A single shot of the massive dose he had chosen was all it would take to stop every muscle cold. Riding the swells, he rubbed his hands together vigorously, not so much to warm them, but to help contain his exuberance.

Over the sound of wind and waves, Koller heard the classical music Landrew liked to play when he paddled. Mozart-always Mozart. Hidden from view behind the lighthouse, Koller gauged the distance. He waited until the anesthesiologist tapped his paddle against the granite boulders before slipping out through the fog like a mirage.

“Hey there,” Koller called out.

Slightly breathless from his effort, Landrew did a double take, then shut off Mozart.

“I didn’t know anybody else was out here,” he said. “At this hour there seldom is. Where did you put in?”

Koller paddled toward the man’s kayak, keeping the syringe tucked securely under his leg.

“Just a bit south of Parker,” he said. “This is my first time out to the lighthouse. You?”