The Surgeon (24 page)

his head. Crowe brought his heel down, hard, slamming the
prisoner's chin against the floor. The man made a choking
sound and began to thrash.
"Let him up!" yelled Rizzoli.
"He won't hold still!"
"Get off him and maybe he'll talk to you!" Rizzoli shoved
Crowe aside. The prisoner rolled onto his back, gasping like
a landed fish.
Crowe yelled, "Where's Pacheco?"
"Don't--don't know--"
"You're in his apartment!"
"Left. He left--"
"When?"
The man began to cough, a deep, violent hacking that
sounded like his lungs were ripping apart. The other cops had
gathered around, staring with undisguised hatred at the
prisoner on the floor. The friend of a cop-killer.
Disgusted, Rizzoli headed up the hall to the bedroom. The
closet door hung open and clothes on the hangers had been
thrown to the floor. The search of the flat had been thorough
and brutish, every door flung open, every possible hiding

and brutish, every door flung open, every possible hiding
place exposed. She pulled on gloves and began going
through dresser drawers, poking through pockets, searching
for a datebook, an address book, anything that could tell her
where Pacheco might have fled.
She looked up as Moore came into the room. "You in
charge of this mess?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Marquette gave the go-ahead. We had
information that Pacheco was in the building."
"Then where is he?" She slammed the drawer shut and
crossed to the bedroom window. It was closed but unlatched.
The fire escape was right outside. She opened the window
and stuck her head out. A squad car was parked in the alley
below, radio chattering, and she saw a patrolman shining his
flashlight into a Dumpster.
She was about to pull her head back in when she felt
something tap her on the back of the scalp, and she heard the
faint clatter of gravel bouncing off the fire escape. Startled,
she looked up. The night sky was awash with city lights, and
the stars were barely visible. She stared for a moment,
scanning the outline of the roof against that anemic black sky,
but nothing moved.
She climbed out the window onto the fire escape and
started up the ladder to the third story. On the next landing she
stopped to check the window of the flat above Pacheco's; the
screen had been nailed in place, and the window was dark.

Again she looked up, toward the roof. Though she saw
nothing, heard nothing from above, the hairs on the back of
her neck were standing up.
"Rizzoli?" Moore called out the window. She didn't answer
but pointed to the roof, a silent signal of her intentions.
She wiped her damp palms on her slacks and quietly
started up the ladder leading to the roof. At the last rung she
paused, took a deep breath, and slowly, slowly raised her
head to peer over the edge.
Beneath the moonless sky, the rooftop was a forest of
shadows. She saw the silhouette of a table and chairs, a
tangle of arching branches. A rooftop garden. She scrambled
over the edge, dropped lightly onto the asphalt shingles, and
drew her weapon. Two steps, and her shoe hit an obstacle,
sent it clattering. She inhaled the pungent scent of geraniums.
Realized she was surrounded by plants in clay pots. An
obstacle course of them at her feet.
Off to her left, something moved.
She strained to make out a human form in that jumble of
shadows. Saw him then, crouching like a black homunculus.
She raised her weapon and commanded: "Freeze!"
She did not see what he already held in his hand. What he

was preparing to hurl at her.
A split second before the garden trowel hit her face, she felt
the air rush toward her, like an evil wind whistling out of the
darkness. The blow slammed into her left cheek with such
force she saw lights explode.
She landed on her knees, a tidal wave of pain roaring up
her synapses, pain so terrible it sucked her breath away.
"Rizzoli?" It was Moore. She hadn't even heard him drop
onto the rooftop.
"I'm okay. I'm okay. . . ." She squinted toward where the
figure had been crouching. It was gone. "He's here," she
whispered. "I want that son of a bitch."
Moore eased into the darkness. She clutched her head,
waiting for the dizziness to pass, cursing her own
carelessness. Fighting to keep her head clear, she staggered
to her feet. Anger was a potent fuel; it steadied her legs,
strengthened her grip on the weapon.
Moore was a few yards to her right; she could just make out
his silhouette, moving past the table and chairs.
She moved left, circling the roof in the opposite direction.
Every throb in her cheek, every poker stab of pain, was a
reminder that she'd screwed up. Not this time. Her gaze
swept the feathery shadows of potted trees and shrubs.

A sudden clatter made her whirl to her right. She heard
running footsteps, saw a shadow dart across the roof, straight
toward her.
Moore yelled, "Freeze! Police!"
The man kept coming.
Rizzoli dropped to a crouch, weapon poised. The throbbing
in her face crescendoed into bursts of agony. All the
humiliation she'd endured, the daily snubs, the insults, the
never-ending torment dished out by the Darren Crowes of the
world, seemed to shrink into a single pinpoint of rage.
This time, bastard, you're mine. Even as the man suddenly
halted before her, even as his arms lifted toward the sky, the
decision was irreversible.
She squeezed the trigger.
The man twitched. Staggered backward.
She fired a second time, a third, and each kick of the
weapon was a satisfying snap against her palm.
"Rizzoli! Cease fire!"
Moore's shout finally penetrated the roaring in her ears.
She froze, her weapon still aimed, her arms taut and aching.

The perp was down, and he was not moving. She
straightened and slowly walked toward the crumpled form.
With each step came the mounting horror of what she'd just
done.
Moore was already kneeling at the man's side, checking for
a pulse. He looked up at her, and although she could not read
his expression on that dark roof, she knew there was
accusation in his gaze.
"He's dead, Rizzoli."
"He was holding something--in his hand--"
"There was nothing."
"I saw it. I know I did!"
"His hands were up in the air."
"Goddamnit, Moore. It was a good shooting! You've got to
back me up on this!"
Other voices suddenly broke in as cops scrambled onto the
roof to join them. Moore and Rizzoli said nothing more to each
other.
Crowe shone his flashlight on the man. Rizzoli caught a
nightmarish glimpse of open eyes, a shirt black with blood.
"Hey, it's Pacheco!" said Crowe. "Who brought him down?"

"Hey, it's Pacheco!" said Crowe. "Who brought him down?"
Rizzoli said, tonelessly, "I did."
Someone gave her a slap on the back. "Girl cop does
okay!"
"Shut up," said Rizzoli. "Just shut up!" She stalked away,
clambered down the fire escape, and retreated numbly to her
car. There she sat, huddled behind the steering wheel, her
pain giving way to nausea. Mentally she kept playing and
replaying the scene on the rooftop. What Pacheco had done,
what she had done. She saw him running again, just a
shadow, flitting toward her. She saw him stop. Yes, stop. She
saw him look at her.
A weapon. Jesus, please, let there be a weapon.
But she had seen no weapon. In that split second before
she'd fired, the image had been seared into her brain. A man,
frozen. A man with hands raised in submission.
Someone knocked on the window. Barry Frost. She rolled
down the glass.
"Marquette's looking for you," he said.
"Okay."
"Something wrong? Rizzoli, you feeling okay?"

"I feel like a truck ran over my face."
Frost leaned in and stared at her swollen cheek. "Wow.
That asshole really had it coming."
That was what Rizzoli wanted to believe, too: that Pacheco
deserved to die. Yes, he did, and she was tormenting herself
for no reason. Wasn't the evidence clear on her face? He had
attacked her. He was a monster, and by shooting him she had
dispensed swift, cheap justice. Elena Ortiz and Nina Peyton
and Diana Sterling would surely applaud. No one mourns the
scum of the world.
She stepped out of the car, feeling better because of
Frost's sympathy. Stronger. She walked toward the building
and saw Marquette standing near the front steps. He was
talking to Moore.
Both men turned to face her as she approached. She
noticed Moore was not meeting her gaze but was focused
elsewhere, avoiding her eyes. He looked sick.
Marquette said, "I need your weapon, Rizzoli."
"I fired in self-defense. The perp attacked me."
"I understand that. But you know the drill."
She looked at Moore. I liked you. I trusted you. She
unbuckled her holster and thrust it at Marquette. "Who's the

fucking enemy here?" she said. "Sometimes I wonder." And
she turned and walked back to the car.
*   *   *
Moore stared into Karl Pacheco's closet and thought: This is
all wrong. On the floor were half a dozen pairs of shoes, size
11, extra wide. On the shelf were dusty sweaters, a shoebox
of old batteries and loose change, and a stack of Penthouse
magazines.
He heard a drawer slide open and turned to look at Frost,
whose gloved hands were rifling through Pacheco's socks
drawer.
"Anything?" asked Moore.
"No scalpels, no chloroform. Not even a roll of duct tape."
"Ding ding ding!" announced Crowe from the bathroom,
and he sauntered out waving a Ziploc bag of plastic vials
containing a brown liquid. "From sunny Mexico, land of
pharmaceutical plenty."
"Roofies?" asked Frost.
Moore glanced at the label, printed in Spanish. "Gamma
hydroxybutyrate. Same effect."
Crowe shook the bag. "At least a hundred date rapes in

here. Pacheco must've had a very busy dick." He laughed.
The sound grated on Moore. He thought of that busy dick
and the damage it had done, not just the physical damage, but
the spiritual destruction. The souls it had cleaved in two. He
remembered what Catherine had told him: that every rape
victim's life was divided into before and after. A sexual assault
turns a woman's world into a bleak and unfamiliar landscape
in which every smile, every bright moment, is tainted with
despair. Weeks ago he might scarcely have registered
Crowe's laughter. Tonight, he heard it only too well, and he
recognized its ugliness.
He went into the living room, where the black man was
being questioned by Detective Sleeper.
"I'm telling you, we were just hanging out," the man said.
"You just hang out with six hundred bucks in your pocket?"
"I like to carry cash, man."
"What'd you come to buy?"
"Nothin'."
"How do you know Pacheco?"
"I just do."

"Oh, a real close friend. What was he selling?"
GHB, thought Moore. The date rape drug. That's what he'd
come to buy. Another busy dick.
He walked out into the night and felt immediately
disoriented by the pulsing lights of the cruisers. Rizzoli's car
was gone. He stared at the empty space and the burden of
what he'd done, what he'd felt compelled to do, suddenly
weighed so heavily on his shoulders that he could not move.
Never in his career had he faced such a terrible choice, and
even though he knew in his heart he'd made the right
decision, he was tormented by it. He tried to reconcile his
respect for Rizzoli with what he had seen her do on the
rooftop. It wasn't too late to retract what he'd said to
Marquette. It had been dark and confusing on the roof; maybe
Rizzoli really thought Pacheco had been holding a weapon.
Maybe she had seen some gesture, some movement, that
Moore had missed. But try as he might, he could not retrieve
any memory that justified her actions. He could not interpret
what he'd witnessed as anything but a cold-blooded
execution.
When he saw her again, she was hunched at her desk,
holding a bag of ice to her cheek. It was after midnight, and he
was in no mood for conversation. But she looked up as he
walked past and her gaze froze him to the spot.
"What did you tell Marquette?" she asked.

"What he wanted to know. How Pacheco ended up dead. I
didn't lie to him."
"You son of a bitch."
"You think I wanted to tell him the truth?"
"You had a choice."
"So did you, up on that roof. You made the wrong one."
"And you never make the wrong choice, do you? You never
make a mistake."
"If I do, I own up to it."
"Oh, yeah. Fucking Saint Thomas."
He moved to her desk and gazed straight down at her.
"You're one of the best cops I've ever worked with. But tonight,
you shot a man in cold blood, and I saw it."
"You didn't have to see it."
"But I did."
"What did we really see up there, Moore? A lot of shadows,
a lot of movement. The separation between a right choice and
a wrong choice is this thin." She held up two fingers, nearly
touching. "And we allow for that. We allow each other the
benefit of the doubt."

"I tried to."
"You didn't try hard enough."
"I won't lie for another cop. Even if she's my friend."
"Let's remember who the fucking bad guys are here. Not
us."
"If we start lying, how do we draw the line between them
and us? Where does it end?"
She took the bag of ice off her face and pointed to her
cheek. One eye was swollen shut and the entire left side of her
face was blown up like a mottled balloon. The brutal
appearance of her injury shocked him. "This is what Pacheco
did to me. Not just a friendly little slap, is it? You talk about
them and us. Which side was he on? I did the world a favor by
blowing him away. No one's going to miss the Surgeon."
"Karl Pacheco was not the Surgeon. You blew away the
wrong man."
She stared at him, her bruised face a lurid Picasso that
was half-grotesque, half-normal. "We had a DNA match! He
was the one--"
"The one who raped Nina Peyton, yes. Nothing about him
matches the Surgeon." He dropped a Hair and Fiber report on

her desk.
"What's this?"
"The microscopic on Pacheco's head hair. Different color,
different curl, different cuticle density from the strand in Elena
Ortiz's wound margin. No evidence of bamboo hair."
She sat motionless, staring at the lab report. "I don't
understand."
"Pacheco raped Nina Peyton. That's all we can say about
him with any certainty."
"Both Sterling and Ortiz were raped--"
"We can't prove Pacheco did it. Now that he's dead, we'll
never know."
She looked up at him, and the uninjured side of her face
was twisted with anger. "It had to be him. Pick three random
women in this city, and what are the chances all of them have
been raped? That's what the Surgeon's managed to do. He's
batted three out of three. If he's not the one raping them, how
does he know which ones to choose, which ones to
slaughter? If it's not Pacheco, then it's a buddy, a partner.
Some fucking vulture feeding off the carrion Pacheco leaves
behind." She thrust the lab report back at him. "Maybe I didn't
shoot the Surgeon. But the man I did shoot was scum.
Everyone seems to forget that fact. Pacheco was scum. Do I