The Surgeon (31 page)

clean.
I take the key ring from my pocket, the ring I have been
guarding for two weeks now and slip one of the keys into her
,
trunk lock.
The trunk pops open.
I glance inside and spot the trunk release lever, an
excellent safety feature to prevent children from being
accidentally locked inside.
Another car growls up the garage ramp. I quickly close
the Mercedes trunk and walk away.
For ten brutal years, the Trojan War waged on. The virgin
blood of Iphigenia that was spilled upon the altar at Aulis
had sped the thousand Greek ships on a fair wind toward
Troy, but a swift victory did not await the Greeks, for on
Olympus the gods were divided. On Troy's side stood
Aphrodite and Ares, Apollo and Artemis. On the Greek side
stood Hera and Athena and Poseidon. Victory fluttered from
one side to the other and back again, as fickle as the
breezes. Heroes slew and were slain, and the poet Virgil
says the earth streamed with blood.
In the end, it was not force but cunning that brought Troy to

her knees. On the dawn of Troy's last day, her soldiers
awakened to the sight of a great wooden horse, abandoned
at her scaean gates.
When I think of the Trojan Horse, I am puzzled by the
foolishness of Troy's soldiers. As they wheeled the
behemoth into the city, how could they not know the enemy
was burrowed within? Why did they bring it within the city
walls? Why did they spend that night in revels, clouding
their minds in drunken celebration of victory? I like to think I
would have known better.
Perhaps it was their impregnable walls that lulled them
into complacency. Once the gates are closed, and the
barricades are tight, how can the enemy attack? He is shut
out, beyond those walls.
No one stops to consider the possibility that the enemy is
inside the gates. That he is right there, beside you.
I am thinking of the wooden horse as I stir cream and
sugar into my coffee.
I pick up the telephone.
"Surgery office; this is Helen," the receptionist answers.
"Could I see Dr. Cordell this afternoon?" I ask.

"Is it an emergency?"
"Not really. I've got this soft lump on my back. It doesn't
hurt, but I want her to look at it."
"I could fit you into her schedule in about two weeks."
"Can't I see her this afternoon? After her last
appointment?"
"I'm sorry, Mr.--what is your name, please?"
"Mr. Troy."
"Mr. Troy. But Dr. Cordell's booked until five o'clock, and
she's going right home after that. Two weeks is the best I can
do."
"Never mind then. I'll try another doctor."
I hang up. I know now that sometime after five o'clock, she
will walk out of her office. She is tired; surely she will drive
straight home.
It is now 9:00 A.M. This will be a day of waiting, of
anticipation.
For ten bloody years, the Greeks laid siege to Troy. For
ten years, they persevered, flinging themselves against the

enemy's walls, as their fortunes rose and fell with the favor of
the gods.
I have waited only two years to claim my prize.
It has been long enough.

twenty-one
T   he secretary in the Emory University Medical
School Office of Student Affairs was a Doris Day lookalike, a
sunny blonde who'd matured into a gracious southern matron.
Winnie Bliss kept a coffeepot brewing by the students' mail
slots and a crystal bowl of butterscotch candies on her desk,
and Moore could imagine how a stressed-out medical student
might find this room a welcome retreat. Winnie had worked in
this office for twenty years, and since she had no children of
her own, she'd focused her maternal impulses on the students
who visited this office every day to pick up their mail. She fed

them cookies, passed along tips about apartment vacancies,
counseled them through bad love affairs and failing test
scores. And every year, at graduation, she shed tears
because 110 of her children were leaving her. All this she told
Moore in a soft Georgia accent as she plied him with cookies
and poured him coffee, and he believed her. Winnie Bliss was
all magnolia and no steel.
"I couldn't believe it when the Savannah police called me
two years ago," she said, settling gracefully into her chair. "I
told them it had to be a mistake. I saw Andrew come into this
office every day for his mail, and he was just about the nicest
boy you could hope to meet. Polite, never a bad word from
that boy's lips. I make a point of looking people in the eye,
Detective Moore, just to let them know I'm really seeing them.
And I saw a good boy in Andrew's eyes."
A testament, thought Moore, to how easily we are deceived
by evil.
"During the four years Capra was a student here, do you
remember any close friendships he had?" Moore asked.
"You mean, like a sweetheart?"
"I'm more interested in his male friends. I spoke to his ex-
landlady here in Atlanta. She said there was a young man who
occasionally visited Capra. She thought he was another
medical student."

Winnie rose to her feet and crossed to the filing cabinet,
where she retrieved a computer printout. "This is the class
roster for Andrew's year. There were one hundred ten students
in his freshman class. About half of them were men."
"Did he have any close friends among them?"
She scanned the three pages of names and shook her
head. "I'm sorry. I just don't recall anyone on this list being
particularly close to him."
"Are you saying he didn't have any friends?"
"I'm saying I don't know of any friends."
"May I see the list?"
She handed it to him. He went down the page but saw no
name except Capra's that struck him as familiar. "Do you
know where all these students are living now?"
"Yes. I update their mailing addresses for the alumni
newsletter."
"Are any of them in the Boston area?"
"Let me check." She swiveled to face her computer, and her
polished pink nails clicked on the keys. Winnie Bliss's
innocence made her seem like a woman from an older, more
gracious era, and it struck him as odd to watch her navigating

computer files with such skill. "There's one in Newton,
Massachusetts. Is that close to Boston?"
"Yes." Moore leaned forward, his pulse suddenly
quickening. "What's his name?"
"It's a she. Latisha Green. Very nice girl. She used to bring
me these big bags of pecans. Course, it was really naughty of
her, since she knew I was watching my figure, but I think she
liked to feed people. It was just her way."
"Was she married? Did she have a boyfriend?"
"Oh, she has a wonderful husband! Biggest man I ever did
see! Six foot five, with this beautiful black skin."
"Black," he repeated.
"Yes. Pretty as patent leather."
Moore sighed and looked back at the list. "And there's no
one else from Capra's class living near Boston, as far as you
know?"
"Not according to my list." She turned to him. "Oh. You look
disappointed." She said it with a note of distress, as though
she felt personally responsible for failing him.
"I'm batting a lot of zeros today," he admitted.

"Have a candy."
"Thank you, but no."
"Watching your weight, too?"
"I don't have a sweet tooth."
"Then you are clearly not a southerner, Detective."
He couldn't help laughing. Winnie Bliss, with her wide eyes
and soft voice, had charmed him, as she surely charmed
every student, male and female, who walked into her office.
His gaze lifted to the wall behind her, hung with a series of
group photographs. "Are those the medical school classes?"
She turned to look at the wall. "I have my husband take one
every graduation. It's not an easy thing, to get those students
together. It's like herding cats, my husband likes to say. But I
want that picture, and I make 'em do it. Aren't they just the
nicest group of young people?"
"Which is Andrew Capra's graduating class?"
"I'll show you the yearbook. It has the names, too." She rose
and went to a bookcase covered with glass doors. With
reverence she removed a slim volume from the shelf and
lightly ran her hand across the cover, as though to brush away
dust. "This is the year Andrew graduated. It has pictures of all
his classmates, and tells you where they were accepted for

internship." She paused, then held out the book to him. "It's my
only copy. So please, if you could just look at it here, and not
take it out?"
"I'll sit right over there in that corner, out of your way. You can
keep an eye on me. How about that?"
"Oh, I'm not sayin' I don't trust you!"
"Well, you shouldn't," he said, and winked. She blushed like
a schoolgirl.
He took the book over to the corner of the room, where the
coffeepot and a plate of cookies were set in the small sitting
area. He sank into a worn easy chair and opened the Emory
Medical School student yearbook. The noon hour came, and a
parade of fresh-faced students in white coats began dropping
in to check their mail. Since when had kids become doctors?
He could not imagine submitting his middle-aged body to the
care of these youngsters. He saw their curious glances, heard
Winnie Bliss whisper: "He's a homicide detective, from
Boston." Yes, that decrepit old man sitting in the corner.
Moore hunched deeper into the chair and focused on the
photos. Next to each was the student's name, hometown, and
the internship he or she had been accepted to. When he
came to Capra's photo, he paused. Capra looked straight at
the camera, a smiling young man with an earnest gaze, hiding
nothing. This was what Moore found most chilling--that
predators walked unrecognized among prey.

Next to Capra's photo was the name of his residency
program. Surgery, Riverland Medical Center, Savannah,
Georgia.
He wondered who else from Capra's class had gone to a
residency in Savannah, who else had lived in that town while
Capra was butchering women. He flipped through the pages,
scanning the listings, and found that three other medical
students had been accepted into programs in the Savannah
area. Two of them were women; the third was an Asian male.
Yet another blind alley.
He leaned back, discouraged. The book fell open in his lap,
and he saw the medical school dean's photograph smiling up
at him. Beneath it was his printed graduation message: "To
heal The World."
Today, 108 fine young people take the solemn oath that
completes a long and difficult journey. This oath, as
physician and healer, is not taken lightly, for it is meant to
last a lifetime. . . .
Moore sat up straight and re-read the dean's statement.

Today, 108 fine young people . . .
He rose and went to Winnie's desk. "Mrs. Bliss?"
"Yes, Detective?"
"You said that Andrew had one hundred ten students in his
freshman class."
"We admit one hundred ten every year."
"Here, in the dean's speech, he says one hundred eight
graduated. What happened to the other two?"
Winnie shook her head sadly. "I still haven't gotten over it,
what happened to that poor girl."
"Which girl?"
"Laura Hutchinson. She was working in a clinic down in
Haiti. One of our elective courses. The roads there, well, I hear
they're just awful. The truck went into a ditch and turned right
over on her."
"So it was an accident."
"She was riding in the back of the truck. They couldn't

evacuate her for ten hours."
"What about the other student? There's one more who
didn't graduate with the class."
Winnie's gaze fell to her desk, and he could see she was
not anxious to talk about this particular topic.
"Mrs. Bliss?"
"It happens, every so often," she said. "A student drops out.
We try to help them stay in the program, but you know, some
of them do have problems with the material."
"So this student--what was the name?"
"Warren Hoyt."
"He dropped out?"
"Yes, you could say that."
"Was it an academic problem?"
"Well . . ." She looked around, as though seeking help and
not finding any. "Perhaps you should talk to one of our
professors, Dr. Kahn. He'll be able to answer your questions."
"You don't know the answer?"
"It's something of a . . . private matter. Dr. Kahn should be

the one to tell you."
Moore glanced at his watch. He had thought to catch a
plane back to Savannah tonight, but it didn't look like he would
make it. "Where do I find Dr. Kahn?"
"The anatomy lab."
He could smell the formalin from the hallway. Moore paused
outside the door labeled ANATOMY , bracing himself for what
came next. Though he thought he was prepared, when he
stepped through the door he was momentarily stunned by the
view. Twenty-eight tables, laid out in four rows, stretched the
length of the room. On the tables were corpses in advanced
stages of dissection. Unlike the corpses Moore was
accustomed to viewing in the Medical Examiner's lab, these
bodies looked artificial, the skin tough as vinyl, the exposed
vessels embalmed bright blue or red. Today the students were
focusing on the heads, teasing apart the muscles of the face.
There were four students assigned to each corpse, and the
room was abuzz with voices reading aloud to one another
from textbooks, trading questions, offering advice. If not for the
ghastly subjects on the table, these students might be factory
workers, laboring over mechanical parts.
A young woman glanced up curiously at Moore, the
business-suited stranger who had wandered into their room.
"Are you looking for someone?" she asked, her scalpel

poised to slice into a corpse's cheek.
"Dr. Kahn."
"He's at the other end of the room. See that big guy with the
white beard?"
"I see him, thank you." He continued down the row of tables,
his gaze inexorably drawn to each cadaver as he passed. The
woman with wasted limbs like shriveled sticks on the steel
table. The black man, skin splayed open to reveal the thick
muscles of his thigh. At the end of the row, a group of students
listened attentively to a Santa Claus lookalike who was
pointing out the delicate fibers of the facial nerve.
"Dr. Kahn?" said Moore.
Kahn glanced up, and all semblance to Santa Claus
vanished. This man had dark, intense eyes, without a trace of
humor. "Yes?"
"I'm Detective Moore. Mrs. Bliss in Student Affairs sent me."
Kahn straightened, and suddenly Moore was looking up at
a mountain of a man. The scalpel looked incongruously
delicate in his huge hand. He set the instrument down,
stripped off his gloves. As he turned to wash his hands in a
sink, Moore saw that Kahn's white hair was tied back in a
ponytail.

"So what's this all about?" asked Kahn, reaching for a
paper towel.
"I have a few questions about a freshman medical student
you taught here seven years ago. Warren Hoyt."
Kahn's back was turned, but Moore could see the massive
arm freeze over the sink, dripping water. Then Kahn yanked
the paper towel from the dispenser and silently dried his
hands.
"Do you remember him?" asked Moore.
"Yes."
"Remember him well?"
"He was a memorable student."
"Care to tell me more?"
"Not really." Kahn tossed the crumpled paper towel in the
trash can.
"This is a criminal investigation, Dr. Kahn."
By now, several students were staring at them. The word
criminal had drawn their attention.
"Let's go into my office."

Moore followed him into an adjoining room. Through a
glass partition, they had a view of the lab and all twenty-eight
tables. A village of corpses.
Kahn closed the door and turned to him. "Why are you
asking about Warren? What's he done?"
"Nothing to our knowledge. I just need to know about his
relationship with Andrew Capra."
"Andrew Capra?" Kahn snorted. "Our most famous
graduate. Now there's something a medical school loves to
be known for. Teaching psychos how to slice and dice."
"Did you think Capra was crazy?"
"I'm not sure there is a psychiatric diagnosis for men like
Capra."
"What was your impression of him, then?"
"I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Andrew struck me as
perfectly normal."
A description that seemed more chilling every time Moore
heard it.
"What about Warren Hoyt?"
"Why do you ask about Warren?"

"I need to know if he and Capra were friends."
Kahn thought it over. "I don't know. I can't tell you what
happens outside this lab. All I see is what goes on in that
room. Students struggling to cram an enormous amount of
information into their overworked brains. Not all of them are
able to deal with the stress."
"Is that what hapened to Warren? Is that why he withdrew
from medical school?"
Kahn turned toward the glass partition and gazed into the
anatomy lab. "Do you ever wonder where cadavers come
from?"
"Excuse me?"
"How medical schools get them? How they end up on those
tables out there, to be cut open?"
"I assume people will their own bodies to the school."
"Exactly. Every one of those cadavers was a human being
who made a profoundly generous decision. They willed their
bodies to us. Rather than spend eternity in some rosewood
coffin, they chose to do something useful with their remains.
They are teaching our next generation of healers. It can't be
done without real cadavers. Students need to see, in three
dimensions, all the variations of the human body. They need to
explore, with a scalpel, the branches of the carotid artery, the

muscles of the face. Yes, you can learn some of it on a
computer, but it's not the same thing as actually cutting open
the skin. Teasing out a delicate nerve. For that, you need a
human being. You need people with the generosity and the
grace to surrender the most personal part of themselves
--their own bodies. I consider every one of those cadavers
out there to have been an extraordinary person. I treat them as
such, and I expect my students to honor them as well. There's
no joking or horsing around in that room. They are to treat the
bodies, and all body parts, with respect. When the dissections
are completed, the remains are cremated and disposed of
with dignity." He turned to look at Moore. "That's the way it is in
my lab."
"How does this relate to Warren Hoyt?"
"It has everything to do with him."
"The reason he withdrew?"
"Yes." He turned back to the window.
Moore waited, his gaze on the professor's broad back,
allowing him the time to form the right words.
"Dissection," said Kahn, "is a lengthy process. Some
students can't complete the assignments during scheduled
class hours. Some of them need extra time to review
complicated anatomy. So I allow them access to the lab at all
hours. They each have a key to this building, and they can