The Surgeon

Eighteen

Moore had thought the heat in Boston was unbearable; he was unprepared to deal with Savannah. Walking out of the airport late that afternoon was like instant submersion in a hot bath, and he felt as though he were wading through liquid, his limbs sluggish as he proceeded toward the rental car parking lot, where watery air rippled above the macadam. By the time he checked into his hotel room, his shirt was drenched in sweat. He stripped off his clothes, lay down on the bed for just a few minutes’ rest, and ended up sleeping through the afternoon.

When he awakened, it was dark, and he was shivering in the over-cooled room. He sat up on the side of the bed, his head pounding.

He pulled a fresh shirt from his suitcase, got dressed, and left the hotel.

Even at night, the air was like steam, but he drove with his window open, inhaling the damp smells of the South. Though he’d never been to Savannah before, he’d heard of its charm, its fine old homes and wrought-iron benches and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. But tonight he was not on a quest for tourist sites. He was driving to a particular address in the northeast corner of town. It was a pleasant neighborhood of small but tidy homes with front porches and fenced gardens and trees with spreading branches. He found his way to Ronda Street and pulled to a stop in front of the house.

Inside the lights were on, and he could see the blue glow of a TV.

He wondered who lived there now and whether the current occupants knew the history of their house. When they turned off the lights at night and climbed into bed, did they ever think about what had happened in that very room? Lying in the darkness, did they listen for the echoes of terror still reverberating within those walls?

A silhouette moved past the window — a woman’s, slender and long-haired. Very much like Catherine’s.

He saw it now, in his mind’s eye. The young man on the porch, knocking on the front door. The door opening, spilling golden light into the darkness. Catherine standing there, haloed by that light, inviting in the young colleague she knew from the hospital, never suspecting the horrors he had in mind for her.

And the second voice, the second man — where does he come in?

Moore sat for a long time, studying the house, noting the windows and the shrubbery. He stepped out of his car and walked along the sidewalk, to see around the side of the house. The shrubbery was mature and dense, and he could not see past it, into the backyard.

Across the street, a porch light came on.

He turned and saw a stout woman standing at her window, staring at him. She was holding a telephone to her ear.

He got back in his car and drove away. There was one more address he wished to see. It was near the State College, several miles south. He wondered how often Catherine had driven this very road, whether that little pizza shop on the left or that dry-cleaning shop on the right was a place she had frequented. Everywhere he looked, he seemed to see her face, and this disturbed him. It meant he’d allowed his emotions to become entwined in this investigation, and it would serve no one well.

He arrived at the street he’d been looking for. After a few blocks, he stopped at what should have been the address. What he found was merely an empty lot, thick with weeds. He had expected to find a building here, owned by Mrs. Stella Poole, a widow, age fifty-eight. Three years ago, Mrs. Poole had rented out her upstairs apartment to a surgical intern named Andrew Capra, a quiet young man who always paid his rent on time.

He stepped out of his car and stood on the sidewalk where Andrew Capra had surely walked. He gazed up and down the street that had been Capra’s neighborhood. It was only a few blocks from the State College, and he assumed that many of the houses on this street were rented to students — short-term tenants who might not know the story of their infamous neighbor.

A wind stirred the soupy air, and he did not like the smell that arose. It was the damp odor of decay. He looked up at a tree in Andrew Capra’s old front yard and saw a clump of Spanish moss drooping from a branch. He shuddered and thought: Strange fruit, remembering a grotesque Halloween from his childhood, when a neighbor, thinking it a fine display to scare trick-or-treaters, had tied a rope around a scarecrow’s neck and hung it from a tree. Moore’s father had been livid when he saw it. Immediately he’d stormed next door and, ignoring the protests of the neighbor, cut down the scarecrow.

Moore felt the same impulse now, to climb into the tree and yank down that dangling moss.

Instead he returned to his car and drove back to the hotel.

Detective Mark Singer set a carton on the table and clapped dust from his hands. “This is the last one. Took us the weekend to track ’em down, but they’re all here.”

Moore eyed the dozen evidence boxes lined up on the table and said, “I should bring a sleeping bag and just move in.”

Singer laughed. “Might as well, if you expect to get through every piece of paper in those there boxes. Nothin’ leaves the building, okay? Photocopier’s down the hall; just log in your name and agency. Bathroom’s thataway. Most times, there’ll be doughnuts and coffee in the squad room. If you take any doughnuts, the boys’d surely ‘preciate it if you’d slip a few bucks in the jar.” Though all this was said with a smile, Moore heard the underlying message in that soft southern drawl: We have our ground rules, and even you big boys from Boston have to follow them.

Catherine had not liked this cop, and Moore understood why. Singer was younger than he’d expected, not yet forty, a muscular overachiever who would not take kindly to criticism. There can be only one alpha dog in a pack, and for the moment Moore would let Singer be that dog.

“These here four boxes, they hold the investigation control files,” said Singer. “Might want to start with ’em. Cross-index files’re in that box, action files are in this one here.” He walked along the table, slapping boxes as he spoke. “And this has the Atlanta files on Dora Ciccone. It’s just photocopies.”

“Atlanta PD has those originals?”

Singer nodded. “First victim, only one he killed there.”

“Since they’re photocopies, may I take that box out? Review the documents in my hotel?”

“Long as you bring ’em back.” Singer sighed, looking around at the boxes. “Y’know, I’m not sure what you think you’re lookin’ for. Never get a more open-and-shut case. Every one of them, we got Capra’s DNA. We got fiber matches. We got the timeline. Capra’s living in Atlanta, Dora Ciccone gets killed in Atlanta. He moves to Savannah, our ladies here start turning up dead. He was always in the right place, at the right time.”

“I don’t question for a minute that Capra was your man.”

“So why you diggin’ through this now? Some of this stuff is three, four years old.”

Moore heard defensiveness in Singer’s voice and knew diplomacy was key here. Any hint that Singer had made mistakes during the Capra investigation, that he’d missed the vital detail that Capra had a partner, and there’d be no hope of cooperation from the Savannah PD.

Moore chose an answer that would in no way cast blame. “We have a copycat theory,” he said. “Our unsub in Boston appears to be an admirer of Capra’s. He’s reproducing his crimes in painstaking detail.”

“How would he know the details?”

“They may have corresponded while Capra was still alive.”

Singer seemed to relax. Even laughed. “A sick fucker’s fan club, huh? Nice.”

“Since our unsub is intimately familiar with Capra’s work, I need to be, as well.”

Singer waved at the table. “Y’all go for it, then.”

After Singer had left the room, Moore surveyed the labels on the evidence boxes. He opened the one marked: IC #1. The Savannah Investigation Control Files. Inside were three accordion file folders, each pocket filled to capacity. And this was just one of four IC boxes. The first accordion folder contained the occurrence reports for the three Savannah attacks, witness statements, and executed warrants. The second accordion folder held suspects files, criminal record checks, and lab reports. There was enough, just in this first box, to keep him reading all day.

And there were eleven more boxes to go.

He started by reviewing Singer’s final summary. Once again he was struck by how airtight the evidence was against Andrew Capra. There were a total of five attacks on record, four of them fatal. The first victim was Dora Ciccone, killed in Atlanta. One year later, the murders began in Savannah. Three women in one year: Lisa Fox, Ruth Voorhees, and Jennifer Torregrossa.

The killings ended when Capra was shot to death in Catherine Cordell’s bedroom.

In every case, sperm was found in the victim’s vaginal vault and the DNA matched Capra’s. Hair strands left at the Fox and Torregrossa crime scenes matched Capra’s. The first victim, Ciccone, was killed in Atlanta the same year Capra was finishing his final year of medical school in Atlanta’s Emory University.

The murders followed Capra to Savannah.

Every thread of evidence wove neatly into a tight pattern, and the fabric appeared indestructible. But Moore realized he was reading only a case summary, which pulled together the elements in favor of Singer’s conclusions. Contradictory details might be left out. It was these very details, the small but significant inconsistencies, that he hoped to ferret out of these evidence boxes. Somewhere in here, he thought, the Surgeon has left his footprints.

He opened the first accordion folder and began to read.

When he finally rose from his chair three hours later and stretched the kinks from his back, it was already noon and he had barely begun to scale the mountain of paper. He had not caught even a whiff of the Surgeon’s scent. He walked around the table, eyeing the labels on the boxes that had not yet been opened, and spotted one that said: “#12 Fox/Torregrossa/Voorhees/Cordell. Press clippings/Videos/Misc.”

He opened the box and found half a dozen videotapes on top of a thick stack of folders. He took out the video labeled: Capra Residence. It was dated June 16. The day after the attack on Catherine.

He found Singer at his desk, eating a sandwich. A deli special, piled high with roast beef. The desk itself told him much about Singer. It was organized to the nth degree, the stacks of papers lined up with corners squared. A cop who was great with details but probably a pain in the ass to work with.

“Is there a VCR I could use?” said Moore.

“We keep it locked up.”

Moore waited, his next request so obvious he didn’t bother to voice it. With a dramatic sigh, Singer reached into his desk for the keys and stood up. “I guess you want it right now, don’t you?”

From the storage room, Singer took out the cart with the VCR and TV and rolled it into the room where Moore had been working. He plugged in the cords, pressed the power buttons, and grunted in satisfaction when everything came on.

“Thanks,” said Moore. “I’ll probably need it for a few days.”

“You come up with any big-time revelations yet?” There was no mistaking the note of sarcasm in his voice.

“I’m just getting started.”

“I see you got the Capra video.” Singer shook his head. “Man, was there weird shit in that house.”

“I drove past the address last night. There’s only an empty lot.”

“Building burned down ’bout a year ago. After Capra, the landlady couldn’t rent out the upstairs apartment. So she started chargin’ for tours, and believe it or not, she got herself a lot of takers. Y’know, the sick as shit Anne Rice crowd, come to worship at the monster’s den. Hell, landlady herself was somethin’ weird.”

“I’ll need to speak to her.”

“Not unless you can talk to the dead.”

“The fire?”

“Crispy critter.” Singer laughed. “Smokin’ is bad for your health. She sure proved it.”

Moore waited until Singer walked out. Then he inserted the “Capra Residence” tape into the VCR slot.

The first images were exterior, daylight, a view of the front of the house where Capra had lived. Moore recognized the tree in the front yard with the Spanish moss. The house itself was charmless, a two-story box in need of paint. The voice-over of the cameraman gave the date, time, and location. He identified himself as Savannah detective Spiro Pataki. Judging by the quality of daylight, Moore guessed the video had been shot in the early morning. The camera panned the street, and he saw a jogger run past, face turned toward the lens in curiosity. Traffic was heavy (the morning commute hour?) and a few neighbors stood on the sidewalk, staring at the cameraman.

Now the view swung back to the house and approached the front door with handheld jerkiness. Once inside, Detective Pataki briefly panned the first floor, where the landlady, Mrs. Poole, lived. Moore glimpsed faded carpets, dark furniture, an ashtray overflowing with cigarettes. The fatal habit of a future crispy critter. The camera moved up some narrow stairs, and through a door with a heavy dead bolt installed, into the upstairs apartment of Andrew Capra.

Moore felt claustrophobic just looking at it. The second floor had been cut into small rooms, and whoever had done this “renovation” must have gotten a special deal on wood paneling. Every wall was covered in dark veneer. The camera moved up a hallway so narrow it seemed to be burrowing through a tunnel. “Bedroom on the right,” said Pataki on camera, swinging the lens through the doorway to catch a view of a twin bed, neatly made up, a nightstand, a dresser. All the furniture that would fit in that dim little cave.

“Moving toward the rear living area,” said Pataki as the camera jerked once again into the tunnel. It emerged in a larger room where other people stood around, looking grim. Moore spotted Singer by a closet door. Here’s where the action was.

The camera focused on Singer. “This door was padlocked,” Singer said, pointing to the broken lock. “We had to pry off the hinges. Inside we found this.” He opened the closet door and yanked on the light chain.

The camera went briefly out of focus, then abruptly sharpened again, the image filling the screen with startling clarity. It was a black-and-white photograph of a woman’s face, eyes wide and lifeless, the neck slashed so deeply the tracheal cartilage was laid open.

“I believe this is Dora Ciccone,” said Singer. “Okay, focus on this one now.”

The camera moved to the right. Another photograph, another woman.

“These appear to be postmortem photos, taken of four different victims. I believe we are looking at the death images of Dora Ciccone, Lisa Fox, Ruth Voorhees, and Jennifer Torregrossa.”

It was Andrew Capra’s private photo gallery. A retreat in which to relive the pleasure of his slaughters. What Moore found more disturbing than the images themselves was the remaining blank space on the walls, and the little package of thumbtacks sitting on a shelf. Plenty of room for more.

The camera shifted dizzingly out of the closet and was once again in the larger room. Slowly Pataki swung around, capturing on camera a couch, a TV, a desk, a phone. Bookshelves filled with medical textbooks. The camera continued its pan until it came to the kitchen area. It focused on the refrigerator.

Moore leaned closer, his throat suddenly dry. He already knew what that refrigerator contained, yet he found his pulse quickening, his stomach turning in dread, as he saw Singer walk to the refrigerator. Singer paused and looked at the camera.

“This is what we found inside,” he said, and opened the door.