Rizzoli & Isles [01] The Surgeon

by Tess Gerritsen

  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.

  Epilogue

  It is cold in my cell. Outside, the harsh winds of February are blowing and I am told it has once again begun to snow. I sit on my cot, a blanket draped over my shoulders, and remember how the delicious heat had enveloped us like a cloak on the day we walked the streets of Livadia. To the north of that Greek town, there are two springs which were known in ancient times as Lethe and Mnemosyne. Forgetfulness and Memory. We drank from both springs, you and I, and then we fell asleep in the dappled shade of an olive grove.

  I think of this now, because I do not like this cold. It makes my skin dry and cracked, and I cannot slather on enough cream to counter winter’s effects. It is only the lovely memory of heat, of you and me walking in Livadia, the sunbaked stones warming our sandals, that comforts me now.

  The days go slowly here. I am alone in my cell, shielded from the other inmates by my notoriety. Only the psychiatrists talk to me, but they are losing interest, because I can offer them no thrilling glimpse of pathology. As a child I tortured no animals, set no fires, and I never wet my bed. I attended church. I was polite to my elders.

  I wore sunscreen.

  I am as sane as they are, and they know this.

  It is only my fantasies that set me apart, my fantasies that have led me to this cold cell, in this cold city, where the wind blows white with snow.

  As I hug the blanket to my shoulders, it’s hard to believe there are places in the world where golden bodies lie glistening with sweat on warm sand, and beach umbrellas flutter in the breeze. But that is just the sort of place where she has gone.

  I reach under the mattress and take out the scrap which I have torn from today’s cast-off newspaper, which the guard so kindly slipped me for a price.

  It is a wedding announcement. At 3:00 P.M. on February 15, Dr. Catherine Cordell was married to Thomas Moore.

  The bride was given away by her father, Col. Robert Cordell. She wore an ivory beaded gown with an Empire waist. The groom wore black.

  A reception followed at the Copley Plaza Hotel in the Back Bay. After a lengthy honeymoon in the Caribbean, the couple will reside in Boston.

  I fold up the scrap of newspaper and slip it under my mattress, where it will be safe.

  A lengthy honeymoon in the Caribbean.

  She is there now.

  I see her, lying with eyes closed on the beach, bits of sand sparkling on her skin. Her hair is like red silk splayed across the towel. She drowses in the heat, her arms boneless and relaxed.

  And then, in the next instant, she jerks awake. Her eyes snap wide open, and her heart is pounding. Fear bathes her in cold sweat.

  She is thinking of me. Just as I am thinking of her.

  We are forever linked, as intimately as two lovers. She feels the tendrils of my fantasies, winding around her. She can never break the bindings.

  In my cell, the lights go out; the long night begins, with its echoes of men asleep in cages. Their snores and coughs and breathing. Their mumblings as they dream. But as the night falls quiet, it is not Catherine Cordell I think of, but you. You, who are the source of my deepest pain.

  For this, I would drink deeply from the spring of Lethe, the spring of forgetfulness, just to wipe clean the memory of our last night in Savannah. The last night I saw you alive.

  The images float before me now, forcing themselves before my retinas, as I stare into the darkness of my cell.

  I am looking down at your shoulders, and admiring how your skin gleams so much darker against hers, how the muscles of your back contract as you thrust into her again and again. I watch you take her that night, the way you took the others before her. And when you are done, and have spilled your seed inside her, you look at me and smile.

  And you say: “There, now. She’s ready for you.”

  But the drug has not yet worn off, and when I press the blade to her belly, she barely flinches.

  No pain, no pleasure.

  “We have all night,” you say. “Just wait.”

  My throat is dry, so we go into the kitchen, where I fill a glass of water. The night has just begun, and my hands shake with excitement. The thought of what comes next has engorged me, and as I sip the water, I remind myself to prolong the pleasure. We have all night, and we want to make it last.

  See one, do one, teach one, you tell me. Tonight, you’ve promised, the scalpel is mine.

  But I am thirsty, and so I lag behind in the kitchen, while you return to see if she is awake yet. I am still standing by the sink when the gun goes off.

  Here time freezes. I remember the silence that followed. The ticking of the kitchen clock. The sound of my own heart pounding in my ears. I am listening, straining to hear your footsteps. To hear you tell me it is time to leave, and quickly. I am afraid to move.

  At last I force myself to walk down the hall, into her bedroom. I stop in the doorway.

  It takes a moment for me to comprehend the horror.

  She lies with her body draped over the side of the bed, struggling to pull herself back onto the mattress. A gun has fallen from her hand. I cross to the bed, grasp a surgical retractor from the nightstand, and slam it against her temple. She falls still.

  I turn and focus on you.

  Your eyes are open, and you lie on your back, staring up at me. A pool of blood spreads around you. Your lips move, but I can’t hear any words. You do not move your legs, and I realize the bullet has damaged your spinal cord. Again you try to speak, and this time I understand what you are telling me:

  Do it. Finish it.

  You are not talking about her, but about yourself.

  I shake my head, appalled by what you ask me to do. I cannot. Please don’t expect me to do this! I stand trapped between your desperate request and my panic to flee.

  Do it now, your eyes plead with me. Before they come.

  I look at your legs, splayed out and useless. I consider the horrors that lie ahead for you, should you live. I could spare you all of this.

  Please.

  I look at the w
oman. She doesn’t move, doesn’t register my presence. I would like to wrench her hair back, to bare her neck and sink the blade deep in her throat, for what she has done to you. But they must find her alive. Only if she is alive will I be able to walk away, unpursued.

  My hands are sweating inside the latex gloves, and when I pick up the gun it feels clumsy, foreign in my grasp.

  I stand at the edge of the pool of blood, looking down at you. I think of that magical evening, when we wandered the Temple of Artemis. It was misty, and in the gathering dusk I caught fleeting glimpses of you, walking among the trees. Suddenly you stopped, and smiled at me through the twilight. And our gazes seemed to meet across the great divide that stretches between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

  I am looking across that divide now, and I feel your gaze on mine.

  This is all for you, Andrew, I think. I do this for you.

  I see gratitude in your eyes. It is there even as I raise the gun in my shaking hands. Even as I pull the trigger.

  Your blood flicks against my face, warm as tears.

  I turn to the woman who still sprawls senseless over the side of the bed. I place the gun by her hand. I grasp her hair, and with the scalpel, I slice off a lock near the nape of her neck, where its absence will not be noticed. With this lock, I will remember her. By its scent will I remember her fear, as heady as the smell of blood. It will tide me over until I meet her again.

  I walk out the back door, into the night.

  I no longer possess that precious lock of hair. But I do not need it now, because I know her scent as well as I know my own. I know the taste of her blood. I know the silken glaze of sweat on her skin. All this do I carry in my dreams, where pleasure shrieks like a woman and walks with bloody footprints. Not all souvenirs can be held in one’s hand, or fondled with a touch. Some we can only store in that deepest part of our brains, our reptilian core, from which we have all sprung.

  That part inside us all which so many of us would deny.

  I have never denied it. I acknowledge my essential nature; I embrace it. I am as God created me, as God created us all.

  As the lamb is blessed, so is the lion.

  So is the hunter.

  Read on for an exciting preview

  of Tess Gerritsen’s next thrilling novel

  featuring Maura Isles and Jane Rizzoli

  THE SILENT GIRL

  ONE

  SAN FRANCISCO

  ALL DAY, I HAVE BEEN WATCHING THE GIRL. She gives no indication that she’s aware of me, although my rental car is within view of the street corner where she and the other teenagers have gathered this afternoon, doing whatever bored kids do to pass the time. She looks younger than the others, but perhaps it’s because she’s Asian and petite at seventeen, just a wisp of a girl. Her black hair is cropped as short as a boy’s, and her blue jeans are ragged and torn. Not a fashion statement, I think, but a result of hard use and life on the streets. She puffs on a cigarette and exhales a cloud of smoke with the nonchalance of a street thug, an attitude that doesn’t match her pale face and delicate Chinese features. She is pretty enough to attract the hungry stares of two men who pass by. The girl notices their gazes and looks straight back at them, unafraid. It’s easy to be fearless when danger is merely an abstract concept. Faced with a real threat, how would this girl react? I wonder. Would she fight or would she crumble? I want to know, but I have yet to see her put to the test.

  As evening falls, the teenagers on the corner begin to disband. First one and then another wanders away. In San Francisco, even summer nights are chilly, and those who remain huddle together in their sweaters and jackets, lighting one another’s cigarettes, savoring the ephemeral heat of the flame. But cold and hunger eventually disperse the last of them, leaving only the girl, who has nowhere to go. She waves to her departing friends, and for a while lingers alone, as though waiting for someone. At last, with a shrug, she leaves the corner and walks in my direction, her hands thrust in her pockets. As she passes my car, she doesn’t even glance at me, but looks straight ahead, her gaze focused and fierce, as if she’s mentally churning over some dilemma. Perhaps she’s thinking about where she’s going to scavenge dinner tonight. Or perhaps it’s something more consequential. Her future. Her survival.

  She’s probably unaware that two men are following her.

  Seconds after she walks past my car, I spot the men emerging from an alley. I recognize them; it’s the same pair who had stared at her earlier. As they move past my car, trailing her, one of the men looks at me through the windshield. It’s just a quick glance to assess whether I am a threat. What he sees does not concern him in the least, and he and his companion keep walking. They move like the confident predators they are, stalking much weaker prey who cannot possibly fight them off.

  I step out of my car and follow them. Just as they are following the girl.

  She heads deep into the neighborhood south of Market Street, where too many buildings stand abandoned, where the sidewalks seem paved with broken bottles. The girl betrays no fear, no hesitation, as if this is familiar territory for her. Not once does she glance back, which tells me she is either foolhardy or clueless about the world and what it can do to girls like her. The men following her don’t glance back either. Even if they did, which I do not allow, they would see nothing to fear. No one ever does.

  A block ahead, the girl turns right, vanishing through a doorway.

  I slip into the shadows and watch what happens next. The two men pause outside the building that the girl has entered, conferring over strategy. Then they too step inside.

  From the sidewalk, I look up at the boarded-over windows. It is a vacant warehouse posted with a NO TRESPASSING notice. The door hangs ajar. I slip inside, into gloom so thick that I pause to let my eyes adjust as I rely on my other senses to take in what I cannot yet see. I hear the floor creaking. I smell burning candle wax. I see the faint glow of a doorway to my left. Pausing outside it, I peer into the room beyond.

  The girl kneels before a makeshift table, her face lit by one flickering candle. Around her are signs of temporary habitation: a sleeping bag, tins of food, and a small camp stove. She is struggling with a balky can opener and is unaware of the two men closing in from behind.

  Just as I draw in a breath to shout a warning, the girl whirls around to face the trespassers. All she has in her hand is the can opener, a meager weapon against two larger men.

  “This is my home,” she says. “Get out.”

  I had been prepared to intervene. Instead I pause where I am to watch what happens next. To see what the girl is made of.

  One of the men laughs. “We’re just visiting, honey.”

  “Did I invite you?”

  “You look like you could use the company.”

  “You look like you could use a brain.”

  This, I think, is not a wise way to handle the situation. Now their lust is mingled with anger, a dangerous combination. Yet the girl stands perfectly still, perfectly calm, brandishing that pitiful kitchen utensil. As the men lunge, I am already on the balls of my feet, ready to spring.

  The girl springs first. One leap and her foot thuds straight into the first man’s sternum. It’s an inelegant but effective blow and he staggers, gripping his chest as if he cannot breathe. Before the second man can react, she is already spinning toward him, and she slams the can opener against the side of his head. He howls and backs away.

  This has turned interesting.

  The first man has recovered and rushes at her, slamming her so hard that they both go sprawling onto the floor. She kicks and punches, and her fist cracks into his jaw. But fury has inured him to pain, and with a roar he rolls on top of her, immobilizing her with his weight.

  Now the second man jumps back in. Grabbing her wrists, he pins them against the floor. Here is where youth and inexperience have landed her, in a calamity that she cannot possibly escape. As fierce as she is, the girl is green and untrained, and the inevitable is
about to happen. Already the first man has unzipped her jeans and he yanks them down, past her skinny hips. His arousal is evident, his trousers bulging. Never is a man more vulnerable to attack.

  He doesn’t hear me coming. One moment he’s unzipping his fly. The next, he’s on the floor, his jaw shattered, loose teeth spilling from his mouth.

  The second man barely has time to release the girl’s hands and jump up, but he’s not quick enough. I am the tiger and he is only a lumbering buffalo, stupid and helpless against my strike. With a shriek he drops to the ground, and judging by the grotesque angle of his arm, his bone has been snapped in two.

  I grab the girl and yank her to her feet. “Are you unhurt?”

  She zips up her jeans and stares at me. “Who the hell are you?”

  “That’s for later. Now we go!” I bark.

  “How did you do that? How did you bring them down so fast?”

  “Do you want to learn?”

  “Yes!”

  I look at the two men groaning and writhing at our feet. “Then here is the first lesson: Know when to run.” I give her a shove toward the door. “That time would be now.”

  I watch her eat. For such a small girl, she has the appetite of a wolf, and she devours three chicken tacos, a lake of refried beans, and a large glass of Coca-Cola. Mexican food was what she wanted, so we sit in a cafe where mariachi music plays and the walls are adorned with gaudy paintings of dancing señoritas. Though the girl’s features are Chinese, she is clearly American, from her cropped hair to her tattered jeans. A crude and feral creature who noisily slurps up the last of her Coke and crunches loudly on the ice cubes.