The Surgeon

The Surgeon
By Tess Gerritsen
Enhanced eBook Edition
Exclusive Sneak Preview from Ice Cold
Read an exciting preview chapter from Tess Gerritsen's Ice Cold,
on sale in hardcover June 29, 2010.
Rizzoli & Isles, In Their Own Words
Who are Jane Rizzoli and Dr. Maura Isles? Find out from the characters
themselves in these exclusive essays written by Tess Gerritsen.
Rizzoli & Isles TV Pilot Script
Can't wait for the new TNT drama based on Tess Gerritsen's Rizzoli & Isles
novels? Read pages from the script for the pilot episode.

Visit the author online at
www.tessgerritsen.com

Also by Tess Gerritsen
Featuring Jane Rizzoli & Maura Isles
THE APPRENTICE
THE SINNER
BODY DOUBLE
VANISH
THE MEPHISTO CLUB
THE BONE GARDEN
THE KEEPSAKE
Other Novels
HARVEST
LIFE SUPPORT
BLOODSTREAM
GRAVITY
And the latest thriller in the Rizzoli & Isles series
ICE COLD

� Jessica Hills

Contents
Also by Tess Gerritsen
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten

Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five

Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Acknowledgments
Epilogue
Excerpt from Ice Cold
Rizzoli & Isles, In Their Own Words
Rizzoli & Isles TV pilot script
Rizzoli & Isles, the TNT new original series
Copyright

Prologue
T oday 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
possibilities, 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 outside 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
One year later
D    etective 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 untamable 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 somewhere 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
bedroom 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 remains 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