The Surgeon (37 page)

stronger. The air thick and damp. Silent, so silent; still as
death. The loudest sound was her own breath, rushing in and
out of her lungs.
She swung the beam in an arc, almost screamed when her
reflection flashed right back at her. She stood with weapon
aimed, her heart hammering, as she saw what it was that
reflected the light.
Glass jars. Large apothecary jars, lined up on a shelf. She
did not need to look at the objects floating inside to know what
those jars contained.
His souvenirs.
There were six jars, each one labeled with a name. More
victims than they ever knew.
The last one was empty, but the name was already written
on the label, the container ready and waiting for its prize. The
best prize of all.
Catherine Cordell.
Rizzoli swung around, her Maglite zigzagging around the
cellar, flitting past massive posts and foundation stones, and
coming to an abrupt halt on the far corner. Something black
was splashed on the wall.
Blood.

She shifted the beam, and it fell directly on Cordell's body,
wrists and ankles bound with duct tape to the bed. Blood
glistened, fresh and wet, on her flank. On one white thigh was
a single crimson handprint where the Surgeon had pressed
his glove onto her flesh, as though to leave his mark. The tray
of surgical instruments was still there by the bed, a torturer's
assortment of tools.
Oh god. I was so close to saving you. . . .
Sick with rage, she moved the beam of her light up the
length of Cordell's blood-splashed torso until it stopped at the
neck. There was no gaping wound, no coup de grace.
The light suddenly wavered. No, not the light; Cordell's
chest had moved!
She's still breathing.
Rizzoli ripped the duct tape off Cordell's mouth and felt
warm breath against her hand. Saw Cordell's eyelids flutter.
Yes!
Felt a burst of triumph yet at the same time a niggling sense
that something was terribly wrong. No time to think about it.
She had to get Cordell out of here.
Holding the Maglite between her teeth, she swiftly cut both
Cordell's wrists free and felt for a pulse. She found one

--weak, but definitely present.
Still, she could not shake the sense that something was
wrong. Even as she started to cut the tape binding Cordell's
right ankle, even as she reached toward the left ankle, the
alarms were going off in her head. And then she knew why.
That scream. She'd heard Cordell's scream all the way
from the barn.
But she'd found Cordell's mouth covered with tape.
He took it off. He wanted her to scream. He wanted me to
hear it.
A trap.
Instantly her hand went for her gun, which she'd laid on the
bed. She never reached it.
The two-by-four slammed into her temple, a blow so hard it
sent her sprawling facedown on the packed earthen floor. She
struggled to rise to her hands and knees.
The two-by-four came whistling at her again, whacked into
her side. She heard ribs crack, and the breath whooshed out
of her. She rolled onto her back, the pain so terrible she could
not draw air into her lungs.
A light came on, a single bulb swaying far overhead.

He stood above her, his face a black oval beneath the cone
of light. The Surgeon, eyeing his new prize.
She rolled onto her uninjured side and tried to push herself
off the ground.
He kicked her arm out from under her and she collapsed
onto her back again, the impact jarring her broken ribs. She
gave a cry of agony and could not move. Even as he stepped
closer. Even as she saw the two-by-four looming over her
head.
His boot came down on her wrist, crushing it against the
ground.
She screamed.
He reached toward the instrument tray and picked up one
of the scalpels.
No. God, no.
He dropped to a crouch, his boot still holding down her
wrist, and raised the scalpel. Brought it down in a merciless
arc toward her open hand.
A shriek this time, as steel penetrated her flesh and pierced
straight through to the earthen floor, skewering her hand to the
ground.

He picked up another scalpel from the tray. Grabbed her
right hand and pulled, extending her right arm. He stamped his
boot down, pinning her wrist. Again he raised the scalpel.
Again, he brought it down, stabbing through flesh and earth.
This time, her scream was weaker. Defeated.
He rose and stood gazing at her for a moment, the way a
collector admires the bright new butterfly he has just pinned to
the board.
He went to the instrument tray and picked up a third scalpel.
With both her arms stretched out, her hands staked to the
ground, Rizzoli could only watch and wait for the final act. He
walked around behind her and crouched down. Grasped the
hair at the crown of her head and yanked it backward, hard,
extending her neck. She was staring straight up at him, and
still his face was little more than a dark oval. A black hole,
devouring all light. She could feel her carotids bounding at her
throat, pulsing with each beat of her heart. Blood was life
itself, flowing through her arteries and veins. She wondered
how long she would stay conscious after the blade did its
work. Whether death would be a gradual fadeout to black.
She saw its inevitability. All her life she had been a fighter, all
her life she had raged against defeat, but in this she was
conquered. Her throat lay bare, her neck arched backward.
She saw the gleam of the blade and closed her eyes as he
touched it to her skin.
Lord, let it be quick.

Lord, let it be quick.
She heard him take a preparatory breath, felt his grip
suddenly tighten on her hair.
The blast of the gun shocked her.
Her eyelids flew open. He was still crouched above her, but
he was no longer gripping her hair. The scalpel fell from his
hand. Something warm dribbled onto her face. Blood.
Not hers, but his.
He toppled backward and vanished from her line of vision.
Already resigned to her own death, now Rizzoli lay stunned
by the prospect that she would live. She struggled to take in a
host of details at once. She saw the lightbulb swaying like a
bright moon on a string. On the wall, shadows moved. Turning
her head, she saw Catherine Cordell's arm drop weakly back
to the bed.
Saw the gun slide from Cordell's hand and thud to the floor.
In the distance, a siren wailed.

twenty-seven
R   izzoli was sitting up in her hospital bed, glowering
at the TV. Bandages encased her hands so thoroughly they
looked like boxing gloves. A large bald spot had been shaved
on the side of her head, where the doctors had stitched up a
scalp laceration. She fussed with the TV remote, and at first
she did not notice Moore standing in the doorway. Then he
knocked. When she turned and looked at him he saw, just for
an instant, a glimmer of vulnerability. Then her usual defenses
sprang back into place and she was the old Rizzoli, her gaze
wary as he walked into the room and took the chair by her

bed.
On the TV whined the annoying background theme of a
soap opera.
"Can you turn off that crap?" she blurted in frustration and
gestured to the remote control with one bandaged paw. "I
can't press the buttons. They expect me to use my goddamn
nose or something."
He took the remote and pressed the Off button.
"Thank you," she huffed. And winced from the pain of three
broken ribs.
With the TV off, a long silence stretched between them.
Through the open doorway, they heard a doctor's name
paged and the rattle of the meal cart wheeling down the hall.
"They taking good care of you out here?" he asked.
"It's okay, for a hick hospital. Probably better than being in
the city."
While both Catherine and Hoyt had been airlifted to Pilgrim
Medical Center in Boston due to their more serious injuries,
Rizzoli had been brought by ambulance to this small regional
hospital. Despite its distance from the city, just about every
detective in the Boston Homicide Unit had already made the
pilgrimage here to visit Rizzoli.

And they'd all brought flowers. Moore's bouquet of roses
was almost lost among the many arrangements displayed on
the tray tables and the nightstand, even on the floor.
"Wow," he said. "You've picked up a lot of admirers."
"Yeah. Can you believe it? Even Crowe sent flowers. Those
lilies over there. I think he's trying to tell me something.
Doesn't it look like a funeral arrangement? See those nice
orchids here? Frost brought those in. Hell, I should've sent
him flowers for saving my ass."
It was Frost who'd called the state police for assistance.
When Rizzoli failed to answer his pages, he'd contacted Dean
Hobbs at the FoodMart to track down her whereabouts and
learned she'd driven out to the Sturdee Farm to talk to a
black-haired woman.
Rizzoli continued her inventory of the flower arrangements.
"That huge vase with those tropical things came from Elena
Ortiz's family. The carnations are from Marquette, the
cheapskate. And Sleeper's wife brought in that hibiscus plant.
"
Moore shook his head in amazement. "You remember all
that?"
"Yeah, well, nobody ever sends me flowers. So I'm
committing this moment to memory."

Again he caught a glimpse of vulnerability shining through
her brave mask. And he saw something else that he had never
noticed before, a luminosity in her dark eyes. She was
bruised, bandaged, and sporting an ugly bald patch on her
head. But once you overlooked the flaws of her face, the
square jaw, the boxy forehead, you saw that Jane Rizzoli had
beautiful eyes.
"I just spoke to Frost. He's over at Pilgrim," said Moore. "He
says Warren Hoyt is going to recover."
She said nothing.
"They removed the breathing tube from Hoyt's throat this
morning. He's still got another tube in his chest, because of a
collapsed lung. But he's breathing on his own."
"Is he awake?"
"Yes."
"Talking?"
"Not to us. To his attorney."
"God, if I'd had the chance to finish off that son of a bitch--"
"You wouldn't have done it."
"You don't think so?"

"I think you're too good a cop to make that mistake again."
She looked him straight in the eye. "You'll never know."
And neither will you. We never know until the beast of
opportunity is staring us in the face.
"I just thought you should know that," he said, and rose to
leave.
"Hey, Moore."
"Yes?"
"You didn't say anything about Cordell."
He had, in fact, purposely avoided bringing up the subject
of Catherine. She was the main source of conflict between
Rizzoli and him, the unhealed wound that had crippled their
partnership.
"I hear she's doing okay," said Rizzoli.
"She came through surgery fine."
"Did he--did Hoyt--"
"No. He never completed the excision. You arrived before
he could do it."
She leaned back, looking relieved.

"I'm going to Pilgrim to see her now," he said.
"And what happens next?"
"Next, we get you back to work so you can start answering
your own damn phone."
"No, I mean, what happens between you and Cordell?"
He paused, and his gaze shifted to the window, where
sunlight spilled over the vase of lilies, turning the petals aglow.
"I don't know."
"Marquette still giving you grief about it?"
"He warned me not to get involved. And he's right. I
shouldn't have. But I couldn't help myself. It makes me wonder
if . . ."
"You're not Saint Thomas after all?"
He gave a sad laugh and nodded.
"There's nothing as boring as perfection, Moore."
He sighed. "There are choices to make. Hard ones."
"The important choices are always tough."
He mulled it over for a moment. "Maybe it's not my choice

at all," he said, "but hers."
As he walked to the door, Rizzoli called out: "When you see
Cordell, tell her something for me, willya?"
"What shall I say?"
"Next time, aim higher."
*   *   *
I don't know what happens next.
He drove east toward Boston with his window open, and
the air blowing in felt cooler than it had in weeks. A Canadian
front had rolled in during the night, and on this crisp morning
the city smelled clean, almost pure. He thought of Mary, his
own sweet Mary, and of all the ties that would forever bind him
to her. Twenty years of marriage, with all its countless
memories. The whispers late at night, the private jokes, the
history. Yes, the history. A marriage is made up of such little
things as burned suppers and midnight swims, yet it's those
little things that bind two lives into one. They had been young
together, and together they had grown into middle age. No
woman but Mary could own his past.
It was his future that lay unclaimed.
I don't know what will happen next. But I do know what
would make me happy. And I think I could make her happy

as well. At this time in our lives, could we ask for any greater
blessing?
With each mile he drove, he shed another layer of
uncertainty. When at last he stepped out of his car at Pilgrim
Hospital, he could walk with the sure step of a man who knows
he has made the right decision.
He rode the elevator to the fifth floor, checked in at the
nursing station, and walked down the long hall to Room 523.
He knocked softly and stepped inside.
Peter Falco was sitting at Catherine's bedside.
This room, like Rizzoli's, smelled of flowers. The morning
light flooded Catherine's window, bathing the bed and its
occupant in a golden glow. She was asleep. An IV bottle hung
over her bed, and the saline glistened like liquid diamonds as
it dripped into the line.
Moore stood across from Falco, and for a long time the two
men did not speak.
Falco leaned over to kiss Catherine's forehead. Then he
stood up, and his gaze met Moore's. "Take care of her."
"I will."
"And I'll hold you to it," Falco said, and walked out of the
room.

Moore took his place in the chair at Catherine's side and
reached for her hand. Reverently he pressed it to his lips.
Said again, softly: "I will."
Thomas Moore was a man who kept his promises; he
would keep this one as well.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a very special thanks to:
Bruce Blake and Detective Wayne R. Rock of the
Boston Police Department, and to Chris Michalakes,
M.D., for their technical assistance.
Jane Berkey, Don Cleary, and Andrea Cirillo for their
helpful comments on the first draft.
My editor, Linda Marrow, for gently pointing the way.
My guardian angel, Meg Ruley. (Every writer needs a
Meg Ruley!)
And to my husband, Jacob. Always, to Jacob.