Under the Knife

by Tess Gerritsen

  “Still need skull X-rays. I’ll open him up tonight, check the lungs for water. That’ll tell us if he drowned.” She took another bite of apple. “But that’s after I finish my dinner. In the meantime—” swiveling around, she grabbed a cardboard box from a shelf and tossed it down on the desk “—his personal effects.”

  Methodically she took out the items, each one sealed in its own plastic bag. “Plastic comb, black, pocket-size… cigarettes, Winston, half empty…matchbook, unlabeled… man’s wallet, brown vinyl, containing fourteen dollars… various ID cards…” She reached in for the last item. “And these.” The set of keys clattered on the desk. Attached was a plastic tag with gaudy red lettering: The Victory Hotel.

  Kate picked up the key ring. “The Victory Hotel,” she murmured. “Is that where he was living?”

  Pokie nodded. “We checked it out. What a dive. Rats crawling all over the place. We know he was there Saturday night. But that’s the last time he was seen. Alive, anyway.”

  Slowly Kate laid the keys down and stared at the mockingly bright lettering. She thought about the face in the mirror, about the torment in those eyes. And as she gazed at the sad and meager pile of belongings, an unexpected wave of sorrow welled up in her, sorrow for a man’s shattered dreams. Who were you, Charlie Decker? she wondered. Madman? Murderer? Here were the bits and pieces of his life, and they were all so ordinary.

  Pokie gave her a grin. “Well, it’s over, Doc. Our man’s dead. Looks like you can go home.”

  She glanced at David, but he was staring off in another direction. “Yes,” she said in a weary voice. “Now I can go home.”

  * * *

  WHO WERE YOU, Charlie Decker?

  That refrain played over and over in her head as she sat in the darkness of David’s car and watched the streetlights flash by. Who were you? She thought of all the ways he’d suffered, all the pain he’d felt, that man without a voice. Like everyone else, he’d been a victim.

  And now he was a convenient corpse.

  “It’s too easy, David,” she said softly.

  He glanced at her through the gloom of the car. “What is?”

  “The way it’s all turned out. Too simple, too neat…” She stared off into the darkness, remembering the reflection of Charlie Decker’s face in the mirror. “My God. I saw it in his eyes,” she whispered. “It was right there, staring at me, only I was too panicked to recognize it.”

  “What?”

  “The fear. He was terrified. He must have known something, something awful. And it killed him. Just like it killed the others….”

  “You’re saying he was a victim? Then why did he threaten you? Why did he make that call to the cottage?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t a threat….” She looked up with sudden comprehension. “Maybe he was warning me. About someone else.”

  “But the evidence—”

  “What evidence? A few fingerprints on a doorknob? A corpse with a psychiatric record?”

  “And a witness. You saw him in Ann’s apartment.”

  “What if he was the real witness? A man in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She watched their headlights slash the darkness. “Four people, David. And the only thing that linked them together was a dead woman. If I only knew why Jenny Brook was so important.”

  “Unfortunately, dead men don’t talk.”

  Maybe they do. “The Victory Hotel,” she said suddenly. “Where is it?”

  “Kate, the man’s dead. The answers died with him. Let’s just forget it.”

  “But there’s still a chance—”

  “You heard Pokie. The case is closed.”

  “Not for me, it isn’t.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Kate! Don’t turn this into an obsession!” Gripping the steering wheel, he forced out an agitated breath. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “Look, I know how much it means to you, clearing your name. But in the long run, it may not be worth the fight. If vindication’s what you’re after, I’m afraid you won’t get it. Not in the courtroom, anyway.”

  “You can’t be sure what a jury will think.”

  “Second-guessing juries is part of my job. I’ve made a good living, cashing in on doctors’ mistakes. And I’ve done it in a town where a lot of lawyers can barely pay their rent. I’m not any smarter than the other guy, I just pick my cases well. And when I do, I’m not afraid to get down and get dirty. By the time I’m finished, the defendant’s scarred for life.”

  “Lovely profession you’re in.”

  “I’m telling you this because I don’t want it to happen to you. That’s why I think you should settle out of court. Let the matter die quietly. Discreetly. Before your name gets dragged through the mud.”

  “Is that how they do it in the prosecutor’s office? ‘Plead guilty and we’ll make you a deal’?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with a settlement.”

  “Would you settle? If you were me?”

  There was a long pause. “Yes. I would.”

  “Then we must be very different.” Stubbornly she gazed ahead at the highway. “Because I can’t let this die. Not without a fight.”

  “Then you’re going to lose.” It was more than an opinion; it was a pronouncement, as final as the thud of a judge’s gavel in the courtroom.

  “And I suppose lawyers don’t take on losing battles, do they?”

  “Not this lawyer.”

  “Funny. Doctors take them on all the time. Try arguing with a stroke. Or cancer. We don’t make bargains with the enemy.”

  “And that’s exactly how I make my living,” he retorted. “On the arrogance of doctors!”

  It was a vicious blow; he regretted it the instant he said it. But she was headed for trouble, and he had to stop her before she got hurt. Still, he hadn’t expected such brutal words to pop out. It was one more reminder of how high the barriers were between them.

  They drove the rest of the way in silence. A cloud of gloom filled the space of the car. They both seemed to sense that things were coming to an end; he guessed it had been inevitable from the start. Already he could feel her pulling away.

  Back at his house, they drifted toward the bedroom like a pair of strangers. When she pulled down her suitcase and started to pack, he said simply, “Leave it for the morning,” and shoved it back in the closet. That was all. He couldn’t bring himself to say he wanted her to stay, needed her to stay. He just shut the closet door.

  Then he turned to her. Slowly he removed his jacket and tossed it on the chair. He went to her, took her face in his hands and kissed her. Her lips felt chilled. He took her in his arms and held her, warmed her.

  They made love, of course. One last time. He was there and she was there and the bed was there. Love among the ruins. No, not love. Desire. Need. Something entirely different, all-consuming yet wholly unsatisfying.

  And afterward he lay beside her in the darkness, listening to her breathing. She slept deeply, the unarousable slumber of exhaustion. He should be sleeping, too. But he couldn’t. He was too busy thinking about all the reasons he shouldn’t fall in love.

  He didn’t like being in love. It left him far too vulnerable. Since Noah’s death, he’d avoided feeling much of anything. At times he’d felt like a robot. He’d functioned on automatic pilot, breathing and eating out of necessity, smiling only when it was expected. When Linda finally left him, he’d hardly noticed; their divorce was a mere drop in an ocean of pain. He guessed he’d loved her, but it wasn’t the same total, unconditional love he’d felt for his son. For David, love was quantified by how much he suffered by its loss.

  And now here was this woman, lying beside him. He studied the dark pool of her hair against the pillow, the glow of her face. He tried to think of the last time there’d been a woman in his bed. It had been a long time ago, a blonde. But he couldn’t even dredge up her name. That’s how little she’d meant to him.

  But Kate? He’d remember her name, all right. He’d remember this moment, the way she slep
t, curled up like a tired kitten, the way her very presence seemed to warm the darkness. He’d remember.

  He rose from the bed and wandered into the hall. Some strange yearning pulled him toward Noah’s room. He went inside and stood for a moment, bathed in the window’s moonlight. For so long he’d avoided this room. He’d hated the sight of that unoccupied bed. He’d always remembered how it used to be, tiptoeing in to watch his son sleep. Noah, by some strange instinct, always seemed to choose that moment to awaken. And in the darkness, they’d murmur their ritual conversation.

  Is that you, Daddy?

  Yes, Noah, it’s me. Go back to sleep.

  Hug first. Please.

  Good night. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

  David sat down on the bed, listening to the echoes of the past, remembering how much it had hurt to love.

  At last he went back to Kate’s bed, crawled in beside her and fell asleep.

  He woke up before dawn. In the shower he purposefully washed off all traces of their lovemaking. He felt renewed. He dressed for work, donning each item of clothing as if it was a piece of armor to shield him from the world. Alone in the kitchen, he had a cup of coffee.

  Now that Decker was dead, there was no reason for Kate to stay. David had done his moral duty; he’d played the white knight and kept her safe. It had been clear from the start that none of this was for keeps. He’d never led her on. His conscience was clear. Now it was time for her to go home; and they both knew it. Perhaps her leaving was all for the better. A few days, a few weeks apart, might give him a saner perspective. Maybe he’d decide this was all a case of temporary, hormonal madness.

  Or maybe he was only kidding himself.

  He worried about all the things that could happen to her if she kept on digging into Charlie Decker’s past. He also knew she would keep on digging. Last night he hadn’t told her the truth: that he thought she was right, that there was more to this case than a madman’s vengeance. Four people were dead; he didn’t want her to be the fifth.

  He got up and rinsed his cup. Then he went back to the bedroom. There he sat at the foot of the bed—a safe distance—and watched her sleep. Such a beautiful, stubborn, maddeningly independent woman. He used to think he liked independent women. Now he wasn’t so sure. He almost wished Decker was still alive, just so Kate would go on needing him. How incredibly selfish.

  Then he decided she did still need him. They’d shared two nights of passion. For that he owed her one last favor.

  He nudged her gently. “Kate?”

  Slowly she opened her eyes and looked at him. Those sleepy green eyes. He wanted so badly to kiss her but decided it was better if he didn’t.

  “The Victory Hotel,” he said. “Do you still want to go?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MRS. TUBBS, THE manager of the Victory Hotel, was a toad-like woman with two pale slits for eyes. Despite the heat, she was wearing a ratty gray sweater over her flowered dress. Through a hole in her sock poked an enormously swollen big toe. “Charlie?” she asked, cautiously peering at David and Kate through her half-open door. “Yeah, he lived here.”

  In the room behind her, a TV game show blared and a man yelled, “You retard! I coulda guessed that one!”

  The woman turned and yelled: “Ebbie! Turn that thing down! Can’t you see I’m talkin’ to someone?” She looked back at David and Kate. “Charlie don’t live here no more. Got hisself killed. Po-lice already come by.”

  “If it’s all right, we’d like to see his room,” said Kate.

  “What for?”

  “We’re looking for information.”

  “You from the po-lice?”

  “No, but—”

  “Can’t let you up there without a warrant. Po-lice give me too much trouble already. Gettin’ everyone in the building all nervous. ’Sides, I got orders. No one goes up.” Her tone implied that someone very high, perhaps even God Himself, had issued those orders. To emphasize the point, she started to close the door. She looked outraged when David stopped it with a well-placed hand.

  “Seems to me you could use a new sweater, Mrs. Tubbs,” David remarked quietly.

  The door swung open a fraction of an inch. Mrs. Tubbs’s pale eyes peered at him through the crack. “I could use a lot of new things,” she grunted. From the apartment came a man’s loud and enthusiastic burp. “New husband, mostly.”

  “Afraid I can’t help you there.”

  “No one can, ’cept maybe the good Lord.”

  “Who works His magic in unexpected ways.” David’s smile was dazzling; Mrs. Tubbs stared, waiting for the proffered miracle to occur.

  David produced it in the form of two twenty-dollar bills, which he slipped discreetly into her fat hands.

  She looked down at the money. “Hotel owner’ll kill me if he finds out.”

  “He won’t.”

  “Don’t pay me nearly enough to manage this here trash heap. Plus I’m s’posed to pay off the city inspector.” David slipped her another twenty. “But you ain’t no inspector, right?” She wadded up the bills and stuffed them into the dark and bottomless recess of her bosom. “No inspector I seen ever come dressed like you.” Shuffling out into the hall, she closed the door on Ebbie and the TV. In her stockinged feet, she led David and Kate toward the staircase. It was a climb of only one flight, but for her each step seemed to be agony. By the time she reached the top, she was wheezing like an accordion. A brown carpet—or had it once been mustard yellow?—stretched out into the dim hallway. She stopped before room 203 and fumbled for the keys.

  “Charlie was here ’bout a month,” she gasped out, a few words at a time. “Real quiet. Caused no—no trouble, not like some—some of them others….”

  At the other end of the hall, a door suddenly opened and two small faces peered out.

  “Charlie come back?” the little girl called.

  “I already told you,” Mrs. Tubbs said. “Charlie gone and left for good.”

  “But when’s he comin’ back?”

  “You kids deaf or somethin’? How come you ain’t in school?”

  “Gabe’s sick,” explained the girl. As if to confirm the fact, little Gabe swiped his hand across his snotty nose.

  “Where’s your ma?”

  The girl shrugged. “Out workin’.”

  “Yeah. Leaves you two brats here to burn down the place.”

  The children shook their heads solemnly. “She took away our matches,” replied Gabe.

  Mrs. Tubbs got the door unlocked. “There y’are,” she said and pushed it open.

  As the room swung into view, something small and brown rustled across the floor and into the shadows. The mingled odors of cigarette smoke and grease hung in the gloom. Pinpoints of light glittered through a tattered curtain. Mrs. Tubbs went over and shoved the curtain aside. Sunshine splashed in through the grimy window.

  “Go ’head, have a look ’round,” she said, planting herself in a corner. “But don’t take nothin’.”

  It was easy to see why a visit by the city inspector might cause her alarm. A baited rattrap, temporarily unoccupied, lay poised near a trash can. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling, its wires nakedly exposed. On a one-burner hot plate sat a frying pan coated with a thick layer of congealed fat. Except for the one window, there was no ventilation and any cooking would have made the air swirl with grease.

  Kate’s gaze took in the miserable surroundings: the rumpled bed, the ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, the card table littered with loose scraps of paper. She frowned at one of the pages, covered with scribblings.

  Eight was great

  Nine was fine,

  And now you’re ten years old.

  Happy Birthday, Jocelyn,

  The best will yet unfold!

  “Who’s Jocelyn?” she asked.

  “That brat in 210. Mother’s never around to watch ’em. Always out workin’. Or so she calls it. Kids just ’bout burned the place down last month. Woulda throwed ’em all out
, ’cept they always pay me in cash.”

  “Just how much is the rent?” David asked.

  “Four hundred bucks.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Hey, we got us a good location. Close to the bus lines. Free water ’n ’lectricity.” At that instant, a cockroach chose to scuttle across the floor. “And we take pets.”

  Kate looked up from the pile of papers. “What was he like, Mrs. Tubbs?”

  “Charlie?” She shrugged. “What’s to say? Kept to his-self. Never made no noise. Never blasted the radio like some of these no-accounts. Never complained ’bout nothin’ far as I remember. Hell, we hardly knew he was here. Yeah, a real good tenant.”

  By those standards, the ideal tenant would have been a corpse.

  Mrs. Tubbs settled into a chair and watched as they searched the room. Their inspection revealed a few wrinkled shirts hanging in the closet, a dozen cans of Campbell’s soup neatly stacked in the cabinet under the sink, some laundered socks and men’s underwear in the dresser drawer. It was a meager collection of belongings; they held few clues to the personality of their owner.

  At last Kate wandered to the window and looked down at a glass-littered street. Beyond a chain-link fence there was a condemned building with walls that sagged outward, as though a giant had stepped on it. A grim view of the world, this panorama of broken bottles and abandoned cars and drunks lolling on the sidewalk. This was a dead end, the sort of place you landed when you could fall no farther.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. There was one place lower you could fall: the grave.

  “Kate?” said David. He’d been rummaging in the nightstand. “Prescription pills,” he said, holding up a bottle. “Haldol, prescribed by Dr. Nemechek. State hospital.”

  “That’s his psychiatrist.”

  “And look. I also found this.” He held out a small, framed photograph.

  The instant Kate saw the face, she knew who the woman was. She took the picture and studied it by the window’s light. It was only a snapshot in time, a single image captured on a sheet of photographic paper, but the young woman who’d smiled into the camera’s lens had the glow of eternity in her eyes. They were rich brown eyes, full of laughter, narrowed slightly in the sunlight. Behind her, a brassy sky met the turquoise blue of the sea. A strand of dark hair had blown across her face and clung almost wistfully to the curve of her cheek. She was wearing a simple white bathing suit; and though she’d struck a purposely sexy pose, kneeling there in the sand, there was a sweet gawkiness about her, like a child playing grown-up in her mother’s clothes.