The Surgeon

Thirteen

Rizzoli stared across the crime scene tape, into Nina Peyton’s hospital room. Spurted arterial blood had dried in a celebratory pattern of tossed streamers. She continued down the corridor to the supply room, where the cop’s body had been found. This doorway, too, was crisscrossed by crime scene tape. Inside was a thicket of IV poles, shelves holding bedpans and basins, and boxes of gloves, all of it zigzagged by blood. One of their own had died in this room, and for every cop in the Boston PD the hunt for the Surgeon was now deeply, intensely personal.

She turned to the patrolman standing nearby. “Where’s Detective Moore?”

“Down in Administration. They’re looking at the hospital surveillance tapes.”

Rizzoli glanced up and down the hall but spotted no security cameras. They would have no video footage of this corridor.

Downstairs she slipped into the conference room where Moore and two nurses were reviewing the surveillance tapes. No one glanced her way; they were all focused on the TV monitor, where the tape was playing.

The camera was aimed at the 5 West elevators. On the video, the elevator door opened. Moore froze the image.

“There,” he said. “This is the first group to come off the elevator after the code was called. I count eleven passengers, and they all get off in a rush.”

“That’s what you’d expect in a Code Blue,” said the charge nurse. “An announcement goes over the hospital speaker system. Anyone who’s available is expected to respond.”

“Take a good look at these faces,” said Moore. “Do you recognize everyone? Is there anyone who shouldn’t be there?”

“I can’t see all the faces. They step off in one group.”

“How about you, Sharon?” Moore asked the second nurse.

Sharon leaned toward the monitor. “These three here, they’re nurses. And the two young men, at the side, they’re medical students. I recognize that third man there—” She pointed to the top of the screen. “An orderly. The others look familiar, but I don’t know their names.”

“Okay,” said Moore, weariness in his voice. “Let’s watch the rest. Then we’ll look at the stairwell camera.”

Rizzoli moved closer until she stood right behind the charge nurse.

On the screen, the images backed up, and the elevator door slid shut. Moore pressed Play and the door opened again. Eleven people stepped out, moving like a multilegged organism in their hurry to reach the code. Rizzoli saw urgency in their faces, and even without sound the sense of crisis was obvious. That knot of people vanished to the left of the screen. The elevator door closed. A moment passed, and the door re-opened, discharging another gush of personnel. Rizzoli counted thirteen passengers. So far a total of twenty-four people had arrived on the floor in under three minutes — and that was just by elevator. How many more had arrived by the stairwell? Rizzoli watched with growing amazement. The timing had been flawless. Calling a Code Blue was like setting off a stampede. With dozens of personnel from all over the hospital converging on 5 West, anyone wearing a white coat could slip in unnoticed. The unsub would no doubt stand in the back of the elevator, behind everyone else. He would be careful to keep another person between him and the camera. They were up against someone who knew exactly how a hospital functioned.

She watched the second group of elevator passengers move off the screen. Two of the faces had remained hidden throughout.

Now Moore switched tapes, and the view changed. They were looking at the stairwell door. For a moment nothing happened. Then the door swung open, and a man in a white coat came barreling through.

“I know him. That’s Mark Noble, one of the interns,” said Sharon.

Rizzoli took out her spiral notebook and jotted down the name.

The door flew open again, and two women emerged, both in white uniforms.

“That’s Veronica Tam,” said the charge nurse, pointing to the shorter of the pair. “She works on Five West. She was on break when the code was called.”

“And the other woman?”

“I don’t know. You can’t see her face very well.”

Rizzoli wrote down:

10:48, stairwell camera:

Veronica Tam, nurse, 5 West.

Unknown female, black hair, lab coat.

A total of seven people came through the stairwell door. The nurses recognized five of them. So far Rizzoli had counted thirty-one people who’d arrived by either elevator or stairwell. Add to that the personnel already at work on the floor, and they were dealing with at least forty people with access to 5 West.

“Now watch what happens as people leave during and after the code,” said Moore. “This time they’re not rushing. Maybe you can pick up a few more faces and names.” He fast-forwarded. At the bottom of the screen, the time display advanced eight minutes. The code was still in progress, but already unneeded personnel were beginning to drift away from the ward. The camera caught only their backs as they walked to the stairwell door. First, two male medical students, followed a moment later by a third unidentified man, departing alone. Then there was a long pause, which Moore fast-forwarded through. Next a group of four men exited together into the stairwell. The time was 11:14. By then the code had officially ended, and Herman Gwadowski had been declared dead.

Moore switched tapes. Once again, they were watching the elevator.

By the time they’d run through the tapes again, Rizzoli had jotted down three pages of notes, tallying the number of arrivals during the code. Thirteen men and seventeen women had responded to the emergency. Now Rizzoli counted how many were seen leaving after the code ended.

The numbers did not add up.

At last Moore pressed Stop, and the screen went blank. They had been staring at the video for over an hour, and the two nurses looked shell-shocked.

Cutting through the silence, Rizzoli’s voice seemed to startle them both. “Do you have any male employees working on Five West during your shift?” she asked.

The charge nurse focused on Rizzoli. She seemed surprised that another cop had somehow slipped into the room without her realizing it. “There’s a male nurse who comes on at three. But I have no men during day shift.”

“And no men were working on Five West at the time the code was called?”

“There might have been surgical residents on the floor. But no male nurses.”

“Which residents? Do you remember?”

“They’re always in and out, making rounds. I don’t keep track of them. We have our own work to do.” The nurse looked at Moore. “We really need to get back to the floor.”

Moore nodded. “You can go. Thank you.”

Rizzoli waited until the two nurses had left the room. Then she said to Moore, “The Surgeon was already on the ward. Before the code was even called. Wasn’t he?”

Moore rose to his feet and went to the VCR. She could see anger in his body language, the way he jerked the tape out of the machine, the way he shoved in the second tape.

“Thirteen men arrived on Five West. And fourteen men left. There’s an extra man. He had to be there the whole time.”

Moore pressed Play. The stairwell tape began rolling again.

“Damn it, Moore. Crowe was in charge of arranging protection. And now we’ve lost our only witness.”

Still he said nothing but stared at the screen, watching the by-now familiar figures appear and disappear through the stairwell door.

“This unsub walks through walls,” she said. “He hides in thin air. They had nine nurses working on that floor, and none of them realized he was there. He was with them the whole goddamn time.”

“That’s one possibility.”

“So how did he get to that cop? Why would any cop let himself be talked into leaving the patient’s door? Stepping into a supply room?”

“It would have to be someone he was familiar with. Or someone who posed no threat.”

And in the excitement of a code, with everyone scrambling to save a life, it would be natural for a hospital employee to turn to the one guy who’s just standing there in the hallway — the cop. Natural to ask that cop to help you with something in the supply room.

Moore pressed Pause. “There,” he said softly. “I think that’s our man.”

Rizzoli stared at the screen. It was the lone man who’d walked out the stairwell door early in the code. They could see only his back. He wore a white coat and an O.R. cap. A narrow swath of trimmed brown hair was visible beneath the cap. He had a slender build, his shoulders not at all impressive, his whole posture stooped forward like a walking question mark.

“This is the only place we see him,” said Moore. “I couldn’t spot him in the elevator footage. And I don’t see him coming up through this stairwell door. But he leaves this way. See how he pushes the door open with his hip, never touching it with his hands? I’m betting he left no prints anywhere. He’s too careful. And see how he hunches over, as though he knows he’s on camera. He knows we’re looking for him.”

“We got any ID?”

“None of the nurses can name him.”

“Shit, he was on their floor.”

“So were a lot of other people. Everyone was focused on saving Herman Gwadowski. Everyone except him.”

Rizzoli approached the video screen, her gaze frozen on that lone figure framed in the white hallway. Though she could not see his face, she felt as chilled as though she were looking into the eyes of evil. Are you the Surgeon?

“No one remembers seeing him,” said Moore. “No one remembers riding up with him in the elevator. Yet there he is. A ghost, who appears and vanishes at will.”

“He left eight minutes after the code started,” said Rizzoli, looking at the time on the screen. “There were two medical students who walked out right before him.”

“Yes, I spoke to them. They had to get to a lecture at eleven. That’s why they left the code early. They didn’t notice our man follow them into the stairwell.”

“So we have no witnesses at all.”

“Just this camera.”

She was still focused on the time. Eight minutes into the code. Eight minutes was a long time. She tried to choreograph it in her head. Walk up to the cop: ten seconds. Talk him into following you a few feet up the hallway, into the supply room: thirty seconds. Cut his throat: ten seconds. Walk out, shut the door, enter Nina Peyton’s room: fifteen seconds. Dispatch the second victim, walk out: thirty seconds. That added up to two minutes, tops. That still left six minutes. What did he use that extra time for? To clean up? There was a lot of blood; he may well have been splattered with it.

He’d had plenty of time to work with. The nurse’s aide did not discover Nina’s body until ten minutes after the man on that video screen walked out the stairwell door. By then, he could have been a mile away, in his car.

Such perfect timing. This unsub moves with the accuracy of a Swiss watch.

Abruptly she sat up straight, the realization zinging through her like a bolt of electricity. “He knew. Jesus, Moore, he knew there’d be a Code Blue.” She looked at him and saw, by his calm reaction, that he had already reached that conclusion. “Did Mr. Gwadowski have any visitors?”

“The son. But the nurse was in the room the whole time. And she was there when the patient coded.”

“What happened just prior to the code?”

“She changed the IV bag. We’ve sent the bag for analysis.”

Rizzoli looked back at the video screen, where the image of the man in a white coat remained frozen in mid-stride. “This makes no sense. Why would he take such a risk?”

“This was a mop-up job, to get rid of a loose end — the witness.”

“But what did Nina Peyton actually witness? She saw a masked face. He knew she couldn’t identify him. He knew she posed almost no danger. Yet he went to a lot of trouble to kill her. He exposed himself to capture. What does he gain by it?”

“Satisfaction. He finally finished his kill.”

“But he could have finished it at her house. Moore, he let Nina Peyton live that night. Which means he planned to end it this way.”

“In the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“To what purpose?”

“I don’t know. But I find it interesting that of all the patients on that ward, it was Herman Gwadowski he chose as his diversion. A patient of Catherine Cordell’s.”

Moore’s beeper went off. As he took the call Rizzoli turned her attention back to the monitor. She pressed Play and watched the man in the white coat approach the door. He tilted his hip to hit the door’s opening bar and stepped into the stairwell. Not once did he allow any part of his face to be visible on camera. She hit Rewind, viewed the sequence again. This time, as his hip rotated slightly, she saw it: the bulge under his white coat. It was on his right side, at the level of his waist. What was he concealing there? A change of clothes? His murder kit?

She heard Moore say into the phone: “Don’t touch it! Leave it right where it is. I’m on my way.”

As he disconnected, Rizzoli asked: “Who’s that?”

“It’s Catherine,” said Moore. “Our boy’s just sent her another message.”

“It came up in interdepartmental mail,” said Catherine. “As soon as I saw the envelope, I knew it was from him.”

Rizzoli watched as Moore pulled on a pair of gloves — a useless precaution, she thought, since the Surgeon had never left his prints on any evidence. It was a large brown envelope with a string-and-button closure. On the top blank line was printed in blue ink: “To Catherine Cordell. Birthday greetings from A.C.”

Andrew Capra, thought Rizzoli.

“You didn’t open it?” asked Moore.

“No. I put it right down, on my desk. And I called you.”

“Good girl.”

Rizzoli thought his response was condescending, but Catherine clearly didn’t take it that way, and she flashed him a tense smile. Something passed between Moore and Catherine. A look, a warm current, that Rizzoli registered with a twinge of painful jealousy. It’s gone further than I realized between these two.

“It feels empty,” he said. With gloved hands, he unwound the string clasp. Rizzoli slid a sheet of plain white paper on the countertop to catch the contents. He lifted the flap and turned the envelope upside down.

Silky red-brown strands slid out and lay in a gleaming clump on the sheet of paper.

A chill shot up Rizzoli’s spine. “It looks like human hair.”

“Oh god. Oh god….”

Rizzoli turned and saw Catherine backing away in horror. Rizzoli stared at Catherine’s hair, then looked back at the strands that had fallen from the envelope. It’s hers. The hair is Cordell’s.

“Catherine.” Moore spoke softly, soothingly. “It may not be yours at all.”

She looked at him in panic. “What if it is? How did he—”

“Do you keep a hairbrush in your O.R. locker? Your office?”

“Moore,” said Rizzoli. “Check out these strands. They weren’t pulled off a hairbrush. The root ends have been cut.” She turned to Catherine. “Who last cut your hair, Dr. Cordell?”

Slowly Catherine approached the countertop and regarded the clipped strands as though staring at a poisonous viper. “I know when he did it,” she said softly. “I remember.”

“When?”

“It was that night…” She looked at Rizzoli with a stunned expression. “In Savannah.”

Rizzoli hung up the phone and looked at Moore. “Detective Singer confirms it. A clump of her hair was cut.”

“Why didn’t that appear in Singer’s report?”

“Cordell didn’t notice it until the second day of her hospitalization, when she looked in a mirror. Since Capra was dead, and no hair was found at the crime scene, Singer assumed the hair was cut by hospital personnel. Maybe during emergency treatment. Cordell’s face was pretty bruised up, remember? The E.R. may have snipped away some hair to clean her scalp.”

“Did Singer ever confirm it was someone in the hospital who cut it?”

Rizzoli tossed down her pencil and sighed. “No. He never followed up.”

“He just left it at that? Never mentioned it in his report because it didn’t make sense.”

“Well, it doesn’t make sense! Why weren’t the clippings found at the scene, along with Capra’s body?”

“Catherine doesn’t remember a large part of that night. The Rohypnol wiped out a significant chunk of her memory. Capra may have left the house. Returned later.”

“Okay. Here’s the biggest question of all. Capra’s dead. How did this souvenir end up in the Surgeon’s hands?”

For this, Moore had no answer. Two killers, one alive, one dead. What bound these two monsters to each other? The link between them was more than merely psychic energy; it had now taken on a physical dimension. Something they could actually see and touch.

He looked down at the two evidence bags. One was labeled: Unknown hair clippings. The second bag contained a sample of Catherine’s hair for comparison. He himself had snipped the coppery strands and had placed them into the Ziploc bag. Such hair would indeed make a tempting souvenir. Hair was so very personal. A woman wears it, sleeps with it. It carries fragrance and color and texture. A woman’s very essence. No wonder Catherine had been horrified to learn that a man she did not know possessed such an intimate part of her. To know that he had stroked it, sniffed it, acquainting himself like a lover with her scent.

By now, the Surgeon knows her scent well.

It was nearly midnight, but her lights were on. Through the closed curtains, he saw her silhouette glide past, and he knew she was awake.

Moore walked over to the parked cruiser and bent to talk to the two patrolmen inside. “Anything to report?”

“She hasn’t stepped outta the building since she got home. Doing a lot of pacing. Looks like she’s in for a restless night.”

“I’m going in to talk to her,” said Moore, and turned to cross the street.

“Staying all night?”

Moore halted. Turned stiffly to look at the cop. “Excuse me?”

“Are you staying all night? ’Cause if you are, we’ll pass it along to the next team. Just to let ’em know it’s one of ours upstairs with her.”

Moore swallowed back his anger. The patrolman’s question had been a reasonable one, so why had he been so quick to take offense?

Because I know how it must look, to be walking in her door at midnight. I know what must be going through their heads. It’s the same thing that’s going through my head.

The instant he stepped into her apartment, he saw the question in her eyes, and he answered with a grim nod. “I’m afraid the lab confirmed it. It was your hair he sent.”

She accepted the news in stunned silence.

In the kitchen, a kettle whistled. She turned and walked out of the room.

As he locked the door, his gaze lingered on the shiny new dead bolt. How insubstantial even tempered steel seemed, against an opponent who could walk through walls. He followed her into the kitchen and watched her turn off the heat to the squealing kettle. She fumbled with a box of tea bags, gave a startled gasp as they spilled out and scattered across the countertop. Such a minor mishap, yet it seemed to be the crushing blow. All at once she sagged against the counter, hands clenched, white knuckles against white tiles. She was fighting not to cry, not to fall apart before his eyes, and she was losing the battle. He saw her draw in a deep breath. Saw her shoulders knot up, her whole body straining to stifle the sob.

He could stand to watch this no longer. He went to her, pulled her against him. Held her as she shook in his embrace. All day he had thought about holding her, had longed for it. He had not wanted it to be like this, with her driven by fear into his arms. He wanted to be more than a safe haven, a reliable man to turn to.

But that was exactly what she needed now. So he wrapped himself around her, shielding her from the terrors of the night.

“Why is this happening again?” she whispered.

“I don’t know, Catherine.”

“It’s Capra—”

“No. He’s dead.” He cupped her wet face, made her look at him. “Andrew Capra is dead.”

Staring back at him, she went very still in his arms. “Then why has the Surgeon chosen me?”

“If anyone knows the answer, it’s you.”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe not on a conscious level. But you yourself told me you don’t remember everything that happened in Savannah. You don’t remember firing the second shot. You don’t remember who cut your hair, or when. What else don’t you remember?”

She shook her head. Then blinked, startled, at the sound of his beeper.

Why can’t they leave me alone? He crossed to the phone on the kitchen wall to answer the page.

Rizzoli’s voice greeted him with what sounded like an accusation. “You’re at her place.”

“Good guess.”

“No, caller ID. It’s midnight. Have you thought about what you’re doing?”

He said, irritably, “Why did you page me?”

“Is she listening?”

He watched Catherine walk out of the kitchen. Without her, the room suddenly seemed empty. Bled of any interest. “No,” he said.

“I’ve been thinking about the hair clipping. You know, there’s one more explanation for how she got it.”

“And that would be?”

“She sent it to herself.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“And I can’t believe it never even crossed your mind.”

“What would be the motive?”

“The same motive that makes men walk in off the street and confess to murders they never committed. Look at all the attention she’s getting! Your attention. It’s midnight, and you’re right there, fussing over her. I’m not saying the Surgeon hasn’t been stalking her. But this hair thing makes me step back and say whoa. It’s time to look at what else might be going on. How did the Surgeon get that hair? Did Capra give it to him two years ago? How could he do that when he’s lying dead on her bedroom floor? You saw the inconsistencies between her statement and Capra’s autopsy report. We both know she didn’t tell the whole truth.”

“That statement was coaxed out of her by Detective Singer.”

“You think he fed her the story?”

“Think of the pressure Singer was under. Four murders. Everyone screaming for an arrest. And he had a nice, neat solution: the perp is dead, shot by his intended victim. Catherine closed the case for him, even if he had to put the words in her mouth.” Moore paused. “We need to know what really happened that night in Savannah.”

“She’s the only one who was there. And she claims she doesn’t remember it all.”

Moore looked up as Catherine came back into the room. “Not yet.”