Excerpt
Excerpt
The Surgeon
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PROLOGUE
Today they will find her body.
I know how it will happen. I can picture, quite vividly, the
sequence of events that will lead to the discovery. By nine
o'clock, those snooty ladies at the Kendall and Lord Travel Agency
will be sitting at their desks, their elegantly manicured fingers
tapping at computer keyboards, booking a Mediterranean cruise for
Mrs. Smith, a ski vacation at Klosters for Mr. Jones. And for Mr.
and Mrs. Brown, something different this year, something exotic,
perhaps Chiang Mai or Madagascar, but nothing too rugged; oh no,
adventure must, above all, be comfortable. That is the motto at
Kendall and Lord: "Comfortable adventures." It is a busy agency,
and the phone rings often.
It will not take long for the ladies to notice that Diana is not at
her desk.
One of them will call Diana's Back Bay residence, but the phone
will ring, unanswered. Maybe Diana is in the shower and can't hear
it. Or she has already left for work but is running late. A dozen
perfectly benign possibilities will run through the caller's mind.
But as the day wears on, and repeated calls go unanswered, other,
more disturbing pos-sibilities, will come to mind.
I expect it's the building superintendent who will let Diana's
coworker into the apartment. I see him nervously rattling his keys
as he says, "You're her friend, right? You sure she won't mind?
'Cause I'm gonna have to tell her I let you in."
They walk into the apartment, and the coworker calls out: "Diana?
Are you home?" They start up the hall, past the elegantly framed
travel posters, the superintendent right behind her, watching that
she doesn't steal anything.
Then he looks through the doorway, into the bedroom. He sees Diana
Sterling, and he is no longer worried about something as
inconsequential as theft. He wants only to get out of that
apartment before he throws up.
I would like to be there when the police arrive, but I am not
stupid. I know they will study every car that creeps by, every face
that stares from the gathering of spectators on the street. They
know my urge to return is strong. Even now, as I sit in Starbucks,
watching the day brighten out-side the window, I feel that room
calling me back. But I am like Ulysses, safely lashed to my ship's
mast, yearning for the sirens' song. I will not dash myself against
the rocks. I will not make that mistake.
Instead I sit and drink my coffee while outside, the city of Boston
comes awake. I stir three teaspoons of sugar into my cup; I like my
coffee sweet. I like everything to be just so. To be perfect.
A siren screams in the distance, calling to me. I feel like Ulysses
straining against the ropes, but they hold fast.
Today they will find her body.
Today they will know we are back.
One year later
Detective Thomas Moore disliked the smell of latex, and as he
snapped on the gloves, releasing a puff of talcum, he felt the
usual twinge of anticipatory nausea. The odor was linked to the
most unpleasant aspects of his job, and like one of Pavlov's dogs,
trained to salivate on cue, he'd come to associate that rubbery
scent with the inevitable accompaniment of blood and body fluids.
An olfactory warning to brace himself.
And so he did, as he stood outside the autopsy room. He had walked
in straight from the heat, and already sweat was chilling on his
skin. It was July 12, a humid and hazy Friday afternoon. Across the
city of Boston, air conditioners rattled and dripped, and tempers
were flaring. On the Tobin Bridge, cars would already be backed up,
fleeing north to the cool forests of Maine. But Moore would not be
among them. He had been called back from his vacation, to view a
horror he had no wish to confront.
He was already garbed in a surgical gown, which he'd pulled from
the morgue linen cart. Now he put on a paper cap to catch stray
hairs and pulled paper booties over his shoes, because he had seen
what sometimes spilled from the table onto the floor. The blood,
the clumps of tissue. He was by no means a tidy man, but he had no
wish to bring any trace of the autopsy room home on his shoes. He
paused for a few seconds outside the door and took a deep breath.
Then, resigning himself to the ordeal, he pushed into the
room.
The draped corpse lay on the table--a woman, by the shape of it.
Moore avoided looking too long at the victim and focused instead on
the living people in the room. Dr. Ashford Tierney, the Medical
Examiner, and a morgue attendant were assembling instruments on a
tray. Across the table from Moore stood Jane Rizzoli, also from the
Boston Homicide Unit. Thirty-three years old, Rizzoli was a small
and square-jawed woman. Her untam-able curls were hidden beneath
the paper O.R. cap, and without her black hair to soften her
features, her face seemed to be all hard angles, her dark eyes
probing and intense. She had transferred to Homicide from Vice and
Narcotics six months ago. She was the only woman in the homicide
unit, and already there had been problems between her and another
detective, charges of sexual harassment, countercharges of
unrelenting bitchiness. Moore was not sure he liked Rizzoli, or she
him. So far they had kept their interactions strictly business, and
he thought she preferred it that way.
Standing beside Rizzoli was her partner, Barry Frost, a
relentlessly cheerful cop whose bland and beardless face made him
seem much younger than his thirty years. Frost had worked with
Rizzoli for two months now without complaint, the only man in the
unit placid enough to endure her foul moods.
As Moore approached the table, Rizzoli said, "We wondered when
you'd show up."
"I was on the Maine Turnpike when you beeped me."
"We've been waiting here since five."
"And I'm just starting the internal exam," Dr. Tierney said.
"So I'd say Detective Moore got here right on time." One man coming
to the defense of another. He slammed the cabinet door shut,
setting off a reverberating clang. It was one of the rare occasions
he allowed his irritation to show. Dr. Tierney was a native
Georgian, a courtly gentleman who believed ladies should behave
like ladies. He did not enjoy working with the prickly Jane
Rizzoli.
The morgue attendant wheeled a tray of instruments to the table,
and his gaze briefly met Moore's with a look of, Can you believe
this bitch?
"Sorry about your fishing trip," Tierney said to Moore. "It looks
like your vacation's canceled."
"You're sure it's our boy again?"
In answer, Tierney reached for the drape and pulled it back,
revealing the corpse. "Her name is Elena Ortiz."
Though Moore had been braced for this sight, his first glimpse of
the victim had the impact of a physical blow. The woman's black
hair, matted stiff with blood, stuck out like porcupine quills from
a face the color of blue-veined marble. Her lips were parted, as
though frozen in mid-utterance. The blood had already been washed
off the body, and her wounds gaped in purplish rents on the gray
canvas of skin. There were two visible wounds. One was a deep slash
across the throat, extending from beneath the left ear, transecting
the left carotid artery, and laying open the laryngeal cartilage.
The coup de grace. The second slash was low on the abdomen. This
wound had not been meant to kill; it had served an entirely
different purpose.
Moore swallowed hard. "I see why you called me back from
vacation."
"I'm the lead on this one," said Rizzoli.
He heard the note of warning in her statement; she was protecting
her turf. He understood where it came from, how the constant taunts
and skepticism that women cops faced could make them quick to take
offense. In truth he had no wish to challenge her. They would have
to work together on this, and it was too early in the game to be
battling for dominance. He was careful to maintain a respectful
tone. "Could you fill me in on the circumstances?"
Rizzoli gave a curt nod. "The victim was found at nine this
morning, in her apartment on Worcester Street, in the South End.
She usually gets to work around six A.M. at Celebration Florists, a
few blocks from her residence. It's a family business, owned by her
parents. When she didn't show up, they got worried. Her brother
went to check on her. He found her in the bedroom. Dr. Tierney
estimates the time of death was some-where between midnight and
four this morning. According to the family, she had no current
boyfriend, and no one in her apartment building recalls seeing any
male visitors. She's just a hardworking Catholic girl."
Moore looked at the victim's wrists. "She was immobilized."
"Yes. Duct tape on the wrists and ankles. She was found nude.
Wearing only a few items of jewelry."
"What jewelry?"
"A necklace. A ring. Ear studs. The jewelry box in the bed-room was
untouched. Robbery was not the motive."
Moore looked at the horizontal band of bruising across the victim's
hips. "The torso was immobilized as well."
"Duct tape across the waist and the upper thighs. And across her
mouth."
Moore released a deep breath. "Jesus." Staring at Elena Ortiz,
Moore had a disorienting flash of another young woman. Another
corpse--a blonde, with meat-red slashes across her throat and
abdomen.
"Diana Sterling," he murmured.
"I've already pulled Sterling's autopsy report," said
Tierney.
"In case you need to review it."
But Moore did not; the Sterling case, on which he had been lead
detective, had never strayed far from his mind.
A year ago, thirty-year-old Diana Sterling, an employee at the
Kendall and Lord Travel Agency, had been discovered nude and
strapped to her bed with duct tape. Her throat and lower abdomen
were slashed. The murder remained unsolved.
Dr. Tierney directed the exam light onto Elena Ortiz's abdomen. The
blood had been rinsed off earlier, and the edges of the incision
were a pale pink.
"Trace evidence?" asked Moore.
"We picked off a few fibers before we washed her off. And there was
a strand of hair, adhering to the wound margin."
Moore looked up with sudden interest. "The victim's?"
"Much shorter. A light brown."
Elena Ortiz's hair was black.
Rizzoli said, "We've already requested hair samples from everyone
who came into contact with the body."
Tierney directed their attention to the wound. "What we have here
is a transverse cut. Surgeons call this a Maylard incision. The
abdominal wall was incised layer by layer. First the skin, then the
superficial fascia, then the muscle, and finally the pelvic
peritoneum."
"Like Sterling," said Moore.
"Yes. Like Sterling. But there are differences."
"What differences?"
"On Diana Sterling, there were a few jags in the incision,
indicating hesitation, or uncertainty. You don't see that here.
Notice how cleanly this skin has been incised? There are no jags at
all. He did this with absolute confidence." Tierney's gaze met
Moore's. "Our unsub is learning. He's improved his
technique."
"If it's the same unknown subject," Rizzoli said.
"There are other similarities. See the squared-off margin at this
end of the wound? It indicates the track moves from right to left.
Like Sterling. The blade used in this wound is single-edged,
nonserrated. Like the blade used on Sterling."
"A scalpel?"
"It's consistent with a scalpel. The clean incision tells me there
was no twisting of the blade. The victim was either unconscious, or
so tightly restrained she couldn't move, couldn't struggle. She
couldn't cause the blade to divert from its linear path."
Barry Frost looked like he wanted to throw up. "Aw, jeez. Please
tell me she was already dead when he did this."
"I'm afraid this is not a postmortem wound." Only Tierney's green
eyes showed above the surgical mask, and they were angry.
"There was antemortem bleeding?" asked Moore.
"Pooling in the pelvic cavity. Which means her heart was still
pumping. She was still alive when this . . . procedure was
done."
Moore looked at the wrists, encircled by bruises. There were
similar bruises around both ankles, and a band of petechiae--
pinpoint skin hemorrhages--stretched across her hips. Elena Ortiz
had struggled against her bonds.
"There's other evidence she was alive during the cutting," said
Tierney. "Put your hand inside the wound, Thomas. I think you know
what you're going to find."
Reluctantly Moore inserted his gloved hand into the wound. The
flesh was cool, chilled from several hours of refrigeration. It
reminded him of how it felt to thrust his hand into a turkey
carcass and root around for the package of giblets. He reached in
up to his wrist, his fingers exploring the margins of the wound. It
was an intimate violation, this burrowing into the most private
part of a woman's anatomy. He avoided looking at Elena Ortiz's
face. It was the only way he could regard her mortal re-mains with
detachment, the only way he could focus on the cold mechanics of
what had been done to her body.
"The uterus is missing." Moore looked at Tierney.
The M.E. nodded. "It's been removed."
Moore withdrew his hand from the body and stared down at the wound,
gaping like an open mouth. Now Rizzoli thrust her gloved hand in,
her short fingers straining to explore the cavity.
"Nothing else was removed?" she asked.
"Just the uterus," said Tierney. "He left the bladder and bowel
intact."
"What's this thing I'm feeling here? This hard little knot, on the
left side," she said.
"It's suture. He used it to tie off blood vessels."
Rizzoli looked up, startled. "This is a surgical knot?"
"Two-oh plain catgut," ventured Moore, looking at Tierney for
confirmation.
Tierney nodded. "The same suture we found in Diana Sterling."
"Two-oh catgut?" asked Frost in a weak voice. He had retreated from
the table and now stood in a corner of the room, ready to bolt for
the sink. "Is that like a--a brand name or something?"
"Not a brand name," said Tierney. "Catgut is a type of surgical
thread made from the intestines of cows or sheep."
"So why do they call it catgut?" asked Rizzoli.
"It goes back to the Middle Ages, when gut strings were used on
musical instruments. The musicians referred to their instruments as
their kit, and the strings were called kitgut. The word eventually
became catgut. In surgery, this sort of suture is used to sew
together deep layers of connective tissue. The body eventually
breaks down the suture material and absorbs it."
"And where would he get this catgut suture?" Rizzoli looked at
Moore. "Did you trace a source for it on Sterling?"
"It's almost impossible to identify a specific source," said Moore.
"Catgut suture's manufactured by a dozen different companies, most
of them in Asia. It's still used in a number of foreign
hospitals."
"Only foreign hospitals?"
Tierney said, "There are now better alternatives. Catgut doesn't
have the strength or durability of synthetic sutures. I doubt many
surgeons in the U.S. are currently using it."
"Why would our unsub use it at all?"
"To maintain his visual field. To control the bleeding long enough
so he can see what he's doing. Our unsub is a very neat man."
Rizzoli pulled her hand from the wound. In her gloved palm was
cupped a tiny clot of blood, like a bright red bead. "How skillful
is he? Are we dealing with a doctor? Or a butcher?"
"Clearly he has anatomical knowledge," said Tierney. "I have no
doubt he's done this before."
Moore took a step backward from the table, recoiling from the
thought of what Elena Ortiz must have suffered, yet unable to keep
the images at bay. The aftermath lay right in front of him, staring
with open eyes.
He turned, startled, as instruments clattered on the metal tray.
The morgue attendant had pushed the tray next to Dr. Tierney, in
preparation for the Y-incision. Now the attendant leaned forward
and stared into the abdominal wound.
"So what happens to it?" he asked. "Once he whacks out the uterus,
what does he do with it?"
"We don't know," said Tierney. "The organs have never been
found."
Excerpted from THE SURGEON © Copyright 2001 by Tess
Gerritsen. Reprinted with permission by Ballantine, an imprint of
Random House. All rights reserved.
