The Surgeon

by Tess Gerritsen

  I look down at Karen Sobel’s tube, which I am still holding, and suddenly the blood seems dull and lifeless. A prey not even worth the hunt. Not when compared to what has just walked past me.

  I can still smell Catherine’s scent.

  I log onto the computer, and under “doctor’s name” I type: “C. Cordell.” On the screen appear all the lab tests she has ordered in the last twenty-four hours. I see that she has been in the hospital since 10:00 P.M. It is now 5:30 A.M., and a Friday. She faces a whole clinic day ahead of her.

  My workday is now coming to an end.

  When I step out of the building, it is 7:00 A.M., and the morning sunlight slices straight into my eyes. Already the day is warm. I walk to the medical center parking garage, take the elevator to the fifth level, and head along the row of cars to stall # 541, where her car is parked. It is a lemon-yellow Mercedes, this year’s model. She keeps it sparkling 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

  The 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 silentl
y 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?”