The Surgeon

Twenty-three

He’s going to keep her alive for a while,” said Dr. Zucker. “The way he kept Nina Peyton alive for a whole day. He is now in complete control of the situation. He can take all the time he wants.”

A shudder went through Rizzoli as she considered what that meant, All the time he wants. She considered how many tender nerve endings the human body possessed and wondered how much pain must be endured before Death took pity. She looked across the conference room and saw Moore drop his head into his hands. He looked sick, exhausted. It was after midnight, and the faces she saw around the conference table looked sallow and discouraged. Rizzoli stood outside that circle, her back sagging against the wall. The invisible woman, whom no one acknowledged, allowed to listen in but not participate. Restricted to administrative duty, deprived of her service weapon, she was now little more than an observer in a case that she knew better than anyone at this table.

Moore’s gaze lifted in her direction, but he looked straight through her, not at her. As though he didn’t want to look at her.

Dr. Zucker summarized what they’d learned about Warren Hoyt. The Surgeon.

“He’s been working toward this one goal for a long time,” said Zucker. “Now that he’s attained it, he’s going to prolong the pleasure as long as possible.”

“Then Cordell’s always been his goal?” said Frost. “The other victims — they were just for practice?”

“No, they gave him pleasure as well. They tided him over, helped him release sexual tension while he worked toward this prize. In any hunt, the predator’s excitement is most intense when he’s stalking the most difficult of prey. And Cordell was probably the one woman he could not easily reach. She was always on alert, always careful about security. She barricaded herself behind locks and alarm systems. She avoided close relationships. She seldom went out at night, except to work at the hospital. She was the most challenging prey he could pursue, and the one he wanted most. He made his hunt even more difficult by letting her know she was prey. He used terror as part of the game. He wanted her to feel him closing in. The other women were just the buildup. Cordell was the main event.”

“Is,” said Moore, his voice tight with rage. “She’s not dead yet.”

The room suddenly hushed, all eyes averted from Moore.

Zucker nodded, icy calm unbroken. “Thank you for correcting me.”

Marquette said, “You’ve read his background files?”

“Yes,” said Zucker. “Warren was an only child. Apparently an adored child, born in Houston. Father was a rocket scientist — I kid you not. His mother came from an old oil family. Both of them are dead now. So Warren was blessed with smart genes and family money. There’s no record of criminal behavior as a child. No arrests, no traffic tickets, nothing that raised a red flag. Except for that one incident in medical school, in the anatomy lab, I find no warning signs. No clues that tell me he was destined to be a predator. By all accounts, he was a perfectly normal boy. Polite and reliable.”

“Average,” said Moore softly. “Ordinary.”

Zucker nodded. “This is a boy who never stood out, never alarmed anyone. This is the most frightening killer of all, because there’s no pathology, no psychiatric diagnosis. He’s like Ted Bundy. Intelligent, organized, and, on the surface, quite functional. But he has one personality quirk: he enjoys torturing women. This is someone you might work with every day. And you’d never suspect that when he’s looking at you, smiling at you, he’s thinking about some new and creative way to rip out your guts.”

Shuddering at Zucker’s hiss of a voice, Rizzoli looked around the room. What he’s saying is true. I see Barry Frost every day. He seems like a nice guy. Happily married. Never in a foul mood. But I have no idea what he’s really thinking.

Frost caught her gaze, and he reddened.

Zucker continued. “After the incident in medical school, Hoyt was forced to withdraw. He entered a med tech training program, and followed Andrew Capra to Savannah. It appears their partnership lasted several years. Airline and credit card records indicate they often traveled together. To Greece and Italy. To Mexico, where they both volunteered at a rural clinic. It was an alliance of two hunters. Blood brothers who shared the same violent fantasies.”

“The catgut suture,” said Rizzoli.

Zucker gave her a puzzled look. “What?”

“In third world countries, they still use catgut in surgery. That’s how he got his supply.”

Marquette nodded. “She could be right.”

I am right, thought Rizzoli, prickling with resentment.

“When Cordell killed Andrew Capra,” said Zucker, “she destroyed the perfect killing team. She took away the one person Hoyt felt closest to. And that’s why she became his ultimate goal. His ultimate victim.”

“If Hoyt was in the house that night Capra died, why didn’t he kill her then?” asked Marquette.

“I don’t know. There’s a lot about that night in Savannah that only Warren Hoyt knows. What we do know is that he moved to Boston two years ago, shortly after Catherine Cordell came here. Within a year, Diana Sterling was dead.”

At last Moore spoke, his voice haunted. “How do we find him?”

“You can keep his apartment under surveillance, but I don’t think he’ll be returning there soon. It’s not his lair. That’s not where he indulges his fantasies.” Zucker sat back, eyes unfocused. Channeling what he knew about Warren Hoyt into words and images. “His real lair will be a place he keeps separate from his day-to-day life. A place he retreats to in anonymity, possibly quite distant from his apartment. It may not be rented under his real name.”

“You rent a place, you have to pay for it,” said Frost. “We follow the money.”

Zucker nodded. “You’ll know it’s his lair when you find it, because his trophies will be there. The souvenirs he took from his kills. It’s possible he’s even prepared this lair as a place to eventually bring his victims. The ultimate torture chamber. It’s a place where privacy is assured, where he won’t be interrupted. A stand-alone building. Or an apartment that’s well insulated for sound.”

So no one can hear Cordell screaming, thought Rizzoli.

“In this place, he can become the creature he truly is. He can feel relaxed and uninhibited. He’s never left semen at any of the crime scenes, which tells me he’s able to delay sexual gratification until he’s in a safe place. This lair is that place. He probably visits it from time to time, to re-experience the thrill of the slaughter. To sustain himself between kills.” Zucker looked around the room. “That’s where he’s taken Catherine Cordell.”

The Greeks call it dere, which refers to the front of the neck, or the throat, and it is the most beautiful, the most vulnerable, part of a woman’s anatomy. In the throat pulses life and breath, and beneath the milky white skin of Iphigenia, blue veins would have throbbed at the point of her father’s knife. As Iphigenia lay stretched upon the altar, did Agamemnon pause to admire the delicate lines of his daughter’s neck? Or did he study the landmarks, to choose the most efficient point at which his blade should pierce her skin? Though anguished by this sacrifice, at the instant his knife sank in, did he not feel just the slightest frisson in his loins, a jolt of sexual pleasure as he thrust his blade into her flesh?

Even the ancient Greeks, with their hideous tales of parents devouring offspring and sons coupling with mothers, do not mention such details of depravity. They did not need to; it is one of those secret truths we all understand without benefit of words. Of those warriors who stood with stony expressions and hearts hardened against a maiden’s screams, of those who watched as Iphigenia was stripped naked, and her swan neck was bared to the knife, how many of those soldiers felt the unexpected heat of pleasure flood their groins? Felt their cocks harden?

How many would ever again look at a woman’s throat, and not feel the urge to cut it?

Her throat is as pale as Iphigenia’s must have been. She has protected herself from the sun, as every redhead should, and there are only a few freckles marring the alabaster translucence of her skin. These two years, she has kept her neck flawless for me. I appreciate that.

I have waited patiently for her to regain consciousness. I know she is now awake and aware of me, because her pulse has quickened. I touch her throat, at the hollow just above the breastbone, and she takes in a sharp breath. She does not release it as I stroke up the side of her neck, tracing the course of her carotid artery. Her pulse throbs, heaving the skin with rhythmic quakes. I feel the gloss of her sweat beneath my finger. It has bloomed like mist on her skin, and her face glows with its sheen. As I stroke up to the angle of her jaw, she finally releases her breath; it comes out in a whimper, muffled by the tape over her mouth. This is not like my Catherine to whimper. The others were stupid gazelles, but Catherine is a tigress, the only one who ever struck back and drew blood.

She opens her eyes and looks at me, and I see that she understands. I have finally won. She, the worthiest of them all, is conquered.

I lay out my instruments. They make a pleasant clang as I set them on the metal tray by the bed. I feel her watching me, and know her gaze is drawn to the sharp reflection off stainless steel. She knows what each one is for, as she has certainly used such instruments many times. The retractor is to spread apart the edges of an incision. The hemostat is to clamp tissues and blood vessels. And the scalpel — well, we both know what a scalpel is used for.

I set the tray near her head, so she can see, and contemplate, what comes next. I don’t have to say a word; the glitter of the instruments says everything.

I touch her naked belly and her abdominal muscles snap tight. It is a virgin belly, without any scars marring its flat surface. The blade will part her skin like butter.

I pick up the scalpel, and press its tip to her abdomen. She gasps in a breath and her eyes go wide.

Once, I saw a photograph of a zebra just as a lion’s fangs have sunk into its throat, and the zebra’s eyes are rolled back in mortal terror. It is an image I will never forget. That is the look I see now, in Catherine’s eyes.

Oh god, oh god, oh god.

Catherine’s breaths roared in and out of her lungs as she felt the scalpel tip prick her skin. Drenched in sweat, she closed her eyes, dreading the pain that was about to come. A sob caught in her throat, a cry to the heavens for mercy, even for a quick death, but not this. Not the slicing of flesh.

Then the scalpel lifted away.

She opened her eyes and looked into his face. So ordinary, so forgettable. A man she might have seen a dozen times and never registered. Yet he knew her. He had hovered on the edges of her world, had placed her at the bright center of his universe, while he circled around her, unseen in the darkness.

And I never knew he was there.

He set the scalpel down on the tray. And smiling, he said, “Not yet.”

Only when he’d walked out of the room did she know the torment was postponed, and she gave a sharp gasp of relief.

So this was his game. Prolong the terror, prolong the pleasure. For now he would keep her alive, giving her time to contemplate what came next.

Every minute alive is another minute to escape.

The effect of the chloroform had dissipated, and she was fully alert, her mind racing on the potent fuel of panic. She was lying spreadeagled on a steel-framed bed. Her clothes had been stripped off; her wrists and ankles were bound to the bedframe with duct tape. Though she yanked and strained against the bindings until her muscles quivered from exhaustion, she could not free herself. Four years ago, in Savannah, Capra had used nylon cord to bind her wrists, and she had managed to slip one hand free; the Surgeon would not repeat that mistake.

Drenched with sweat, too tired to keep struggling, she focused on her surroundings.

A single bare lightbulb hung above the bed. The scent of earth and dank stone told her she was in a cellar. Turning her head, she could make out, just beyond the circle of light, the cobbled surface of the stone foundation.

Footsteps creaked overhead, and she heard chair legs scrape. A wooden floor. An old house. Upstairs, a TV went on. She could not remember how she had arrived in this room or how long the drive had taken. They might be miles away from Boston, in a place where no one would think to look.

The gleam of the tray drew her gaze. She stared at the array of instruments, neatly laid out for the procedure to come. Countless times she herself had wielded such instruments, had thought of them as tools of healing. With scalpels and clamps she had excised cancers and bullets, had stanched the hemorrhage from ruptured arteries and drained chest cavities drowning in blood. Now she stared at the tools she had used to save lives and saw the instruments of her own death. He had put them close to the bed, so she could study them and contemplate the razor edge of the scalpel, the steel teeth of the hemostats.

Don’t panic. Think. Think.

She closed her eyes. Fear was like a living thing, wrapping its tentacles around her throat.

You beat them before. You can do it again.

She felt a drop of perspiration slide down her breast, into the sweat-soaked mattress. There was a way out. There had to be a way out, a way to fight back. The alternative was too terrible to contemplate.

Opening her eyes, she stared at the lightbulb overhead and focused her scalpel-sharp mind on what to do next. She remembered what Moore had told her: that the Surgeon fed on terror. He attacked women who were damaged, who were victims. Women to whom he felt superior.

He will not kill me until he has conquered me.

She drew in a deep breath, understanding now what game had to be played. Fight the fear. Welcome the rage. Show him that no matter what he does to you, you cannot be defeated.

Even in death.