The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen
He opened the first accordion folder and began to read.
When he finally rose from his chair three hours later and stretched the kinks from his back, it was already noon and he had barely begun to scale the mountain of paper. He had not caught even a whiff of the Surgeon’s scent. He walked around the table, eyeing the labels on the boxes that had not yet been opened, and spotted one that said: “#12 Fox/Torregrossa/Voorhees/Cordell. Press clippings/Videos/Misc.”
He opened the box and found half a dozen videotapes on top of a thick stack of folders. He took out the video labeled: Capra Residence. It was dated June 16. The day after the attack on Catherine.
He found Singer at his desk, eating a sandwich. A deli special, piled high with roast beef. The desk itself told him much about Singer. It was organized to the nth degree, the stacks of papers lined up with corners squared. A cop who was great with details but probably a pain in the ass to work with.
“Is there a VCR I could use?” said Moore.
“We keep it locked up.”
Moore waited, his next request so obvious he didn’t bother to voice it. With a dramatic sigh, Singer reached into his desk for the keys and stood up. “I guess you want it right now, don’t you?”
From the storage room, Singer took out the cart with the VCR and TV and rolled it into the room where Moore had been working. He plugged in the cords, pressed the power buttons, and grunted in satisfaction when everything came on.
“Thanks,” said Moore. “I’ll probably need it for a few days.”
“You come up with any big-time revelations yet?” There was no mistaking the note of sarcasm in his voice.
“I’m just getting started.”
“I see you got the Capra video.” Singer shook his head. “Man, was there weird shit in that house.”
“I drove past the address last night. There’s only an empty lot.”
“Building burned down ’bout a year ago. After Capra, the landlady couldn’t rent out the upstairs apartment. So she started chargin’ for tours, and believe it or not, she got herself a lot of takers. Y’know, the sick as shit Anne Rice crowd, come to worship at the monster’s den. Hell, landlady herself was somethin’ weird.”
“I’ll need to speak to her.”
“Not unless you can talk to the dead.”
“The fire?”
“Crispy critter.” Singer laughed. “Smokin’ is bad for your health. She sure proved it.”
Moore waited until Singer walked out. Then he inserted the “Capra Residence” tape into the VCR slot.
The first images were exterior, daylight, a view of the front of the house where Capra had lived. Moore recognized the tree in the front yard with the Spanish moss. The house itself was charmless, a two-story box in need of paint. The voice-over of the cameraman gave the date, time, and location. He identified himself as Savannah detective Spiro Pataki. Judging by the quality of daylight, Moore guessed the video had been shot in the early morning. The camera panned the street, and he saw a jogger run past, face turned toward the lens in curiosity. Traffic was heavy (the morning commute hour?) and a few neighbors stood on the sidewalk, staring at the cameraman.
Now the view swung back to the house and approached the front door with handheld jerkiness. Once inside, Detective Pataki briefly panned the first floor, where the landlady, Mrs. Poole, lived. Moore glimpsed faded carpets, dark furniture, an ashtray overflowing with cigarettes. The fatal habit of a future crispy critter. The camera moved up some narrow stairs, and through a door with a heavy dead bolt installed, into the upstairs apartment of Andrew Capra.
Moore felt claustrophobic just looking at it. The second floor had been cut into small rooms, and whoever had done this “renovation” must have gotten a special deal on wood paneling. Every wall was covered in dark veneer. The camera moved up a hallway so narrow it seemed to be burrowing through a tunnel. “Bedroom on the right,” said Pataki on camera, swinging the lens through the doorway to catch a view of a twin bed, neatly made up, a nightstand, a dresser. All the furniture that would fit in that dim little cave.
“Moving toward the rear living area,” said Pataki as the camera jerked once again into the tunnel. It emerged in a larger room where other people stood around, looking grim. Moore spotted Singer by a closet door. Here’s where the action was.
The camera focused on Singer. “This door was padlocked,” Singer said, pointing to the broken lock. “We had to pry off the hinges. Inside we found this.” He opened the closet door and yanked on the light chain.
The camera went briefly out of focus, then abruptly sharpened again, the image filling the screen with startling clarity. It was a black-and-white photograph of a woman’s face, eyes wide and lifeless, the neck slashed so deeply the tracheal cartilage was laid open.
“I believe this is Dora Ciccone,” said Singer. “Okay, focus on this one now.”
The camera moved to the right. Another photograph, another woman.
“These appear to be postmortem photos, taken of four different victims. I believe we are looking at the death images of Dora Ciccone, Lisa Fox, Ruth Voorhees, and Jennifer Torregrossa.”
It was Andrew Capra’s private photo gallery. A retreat in which to relive the pleasure of his slaughters. What Moore found more disturbing than the images themselves was the remaining blank space on the walls, and the little package of thumbtacks sitting on a shelf. Plenty of room for more.
The camera shifted dizzingly out of the closet and was once again in the larger room. Slowly Pataki swung around, capturing on camera a couch, a TV, a desk, a phone. Bookshelves filled with medical textbooks. The camera continued its pan until it came to the kitchen area. It focused on the refrigerator.
Moore leaned closer, his throat suddenly dry. He already knew what that refrigerator contained, yet he found his pulse quickening, his stomach turning in dread, as he saw Singer walk to the refrigerator. Singer paused and looked at the camera.
“This is what we found inside,” he said, and opened the door.
nineteen
He took a walk around the block, and this time he scarcely noticed the heat, he was so chilled by the images on that videotape. He felt relieved just to be out of the conference room, which was now intimately associated with horror. Savannah itself, with its syrupy air and its soft green light, made him uneasy. The city of Boston had sharp edges and jarring voices, every building, every scowling face, in harsh focus. In Boston, you knew you were alive, if only because you were so irritated. Here, nothing seemed in focus. He saw Savannah as though through gauze, a city of genteel smiles and sleepy voices, and he wondered what darkness lay hidden from view.
When he returned to the squad room, he found Singer typing at a laptop. “Hold on,” said Singer, and he hit Spellcheck. God forbid there be any misspellings in his reports. Satisfied, he looked at Moore. “Yeah?”
“Did you ever find Capra’s address book?”
“What address book?”
“Most people keep a personal address book near their telephone. I didn’t see one in the video of his apartment, and I didn’t find one on your property list.”
“You’re talking over two years ago. If it wasn’t on our list, then he didn’t have one.”
“Or it was removed from his apartment before you got there.”
“What’re you fishing for? I thought you came to study Capra’s technique, not solve the case again.”
“I’m interested in Capra’s friends. Everyone who knew him well.”
“Hell, no one did. We interviewed the doctors and nurses he worked with. His landlady, the neighbors. I drove out to Atlanta to talk to his aunt. His only living relative.”
“Yes, I read the interviews.”
“Then you know he had ’em all fooled. I kept hearing the same comments: ‘Compassionate doctor! Such a polite young man!’ ” Singer snorted.
“They had no idea who Capra really was.”
Singer swiveled back to his laptop. “Hell, no one ever knows who the mo
Time to view the last videotape. Moore had put this one off till the very end, because he had not been ready to deal with the images. He had managed to watch the others with detachment, taking notes as he studied the bedrooms of Lisa Fox and Jennifer Torregrossa and Ruth Voorhees. He had viewed, again and again, the pattern of blood splatters, the knots in the nylon cord around the victims’ wrists, the glaze of death in their eyes. He could look at the tapes with a minimum of emotion because he did not know these women and he heard no echo of their voices in his memory. He was focused not on the victims but on the malevolent presence that had passed through their rooms. He ejected the tape of the Voorhees crime scene and set it on the table. Reluctantly he picked up the remaining tape. On the label was the date, the case number, and the words: “Catherine Cordell Residence.”
He thought about putting it off, waiting until tomorrow morning, when he’d be fresh. It was now nine o’clock, and he had been in this room all day. He held the tape, weighing what to do.
It was a moment before he realized Singer was standing in the doorway, watching him.
“Man. You’re still here,” said Singer.
“I’ve got a lot to go over.”
“You watched all the tapes?”
“All except this one.”
Singer glanced at the label. “Cordell.”
“Yeah.”
“Go ahead; play it. Maybe I can fill in a few details.”
Moore inserted it into the VCR slot and pressed Play.
They were looking at the front of Catherine’s house. Nighttime. The porch was lit up and the lights all on inside. On audio, he heard the videographer give the date and time—2:00 A.M.—and his name. Again, it was Spiro Pataki, who seemed to be everyone’s favorite cameraman. Moore heard a lot of background noise—voices, the fading wail of a siren. Pataki did his routine pan of the surroundings, and Moore saw a grim gathering of neighbors staring over crime scene tape, their faces illuminated by the lights of several police cruisers parked on the street. This surprised him, knowing the hour of night. It must have been a considerable disturbance to awaken so many neighbors.
Pataki turned back to the house and approached the front door.
“Gunshots,” said Singer. “That’s the initial report we got. The woman across the street heard the first shot, then a long pause, and then a second shot. She called nine-one-one. First officer on the scene was there in seven minutes. Ambulance was called two minutes later.”
Moore remembered the woman across the street, staring at him through her window.
“I read the neighbor’s statement,” said Moore. “She said she didn’t see anyone come out the front door of the house.”
“That’s right. Just heard the two shots. She got out of bed after the first one, looked out the window. Then, maybe five minutes later, she heard the second gunshot.”
Five minutes, thought Moore. What accounted for the gap?
On the screen, the camera entered the front door and was now just inside the house. Moore saw a closet, the door opened to reveal a few coats on hangers, an umbrella, a vacuum cleaner. The view shifted now, sweeping around to show the living room. On the coffee table next to the couch sat two drinking glasses, one of them still containing what looked like beer.
“Cordell invited him inside,” said Singer. “They had a few drinks. She went to the bathroom, came back, finished her beer. Within an hour the Rohypnol took effect.”
The couch was peach-colored, with a subtle floral design woven into the fabric. Moore did not see Catherine as a floral-fabric kind of woman, but there it was. Flowers on the curtains, on the cushions in the end chair. Color. In Savannah, she had lived with lots of color. He imagined her sitting on that couch with Andrew Capra, listening sympathetically to his concerns about work, as the Rohypnol slowly passed from her stomach into her bloodstream. As the drug’s molecules swirled their way toward her brain. As Capra’s voice began to fade away.
They were moving into the kitchen now, the camera making a sweep of the house, recording every room as they’d found it at two o’clock on that Saturday morning. In the kitchen sink sat a single water glass.
Suddenly Moore leaned forward. “That glass—you have DNA analysis on the saliva?”
“Why would we?”
“You don’t know who drank from it?”
“There were only two people in the house when the first officer responded. Capra and Cordell.”
“Two glasses were on the coffee table. Who drank from this third glass?”
“Hell, it could’ve been in that kitchen sink all day. It was not relevant to the situation we found.”
The cameraman finished his sweep of the kitchen and now turned up the hallway.
Moore grabbed the remote control and pressed Rewind. He backed up the tape to the beginning of the kitchen segment.
“What?” said Singer.
Moore didn’t answer. He leaned closer, watching the images play once again on the screen. The refrigerator, dotted with bright magnets in the shapes of fruits. The flour and sugar canisters on the kitchen counter. The sink, with the single water glass. Then the camera swept past the kitchen door, toward the hallway.
Moore hit Rewind again.
“What are you looking at?” Singer asked.
The tape was back at the water glass. The camera started its pan toward the hallway. Moore hit Pause. “This,” he said. “The kitchen door. Where does it lead?”
“Uh—the backyard. Opens to a lawn.”
“And what’s beyond that backyard?”
“Adjoining yard. Another row of houses.”
“Did you talk to the owner of that adjoining yard? Did he or she hear the gunshots?”
“What difference does it make?”
Moore rose and went to the monitor. “The kitchen door,” he said, tapping on the screen. “There’s a chain. It isn’t fastened.”
Singer paused. “But the door’s locked. See the position of the knob button?”
“Right. It’s the kind of button you can push on your way out, locking the door behind you.”
“And your point is?”
“Why would she push that button but not fasten the chain? People who lock up for the night do it all at once. They press in the button, slide in the chain. She left out that second step.”
“Maybe she just forgot.”
“There’d been three women murdered in Savannah. She was worried enough to keep a gun under her bed. I don’t think she’d forget.” He looked at Singer. “Maybe someone walked out that kitchen door.”
“There were only two people in that house. Cordell and Capra.”
Moore considered what he should say next. Whether he had more to gain or lose if he was perfectly forthright.
By now Singer knew where this conversation was headed. “You’re sayin’ Capra had a partner.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a mighty big conclusion to draw from one unlocked chain.”
Moore took a breath. “There’s more. The night Catherine Cordell was attacked, she heard another voice in her house. A man, speaking to Capra.”
“She never told me that.”
“It came out during a forensic hypnosis session.”
Singer burst out laughing. “Did you get a psychic to back that up? ’Cause then I’d really be convinced.”
“It explains why the Surgeon knows so much about Capra’s technique. The two men were partners. And the Surgeon is carrying on the legacy, to the point of stalking their only surviving victim.”
“The world’s full of women. Why focus on her?”
“Unfinished business.”
“Yeah, well, I got a better theory.” Singer rose from his chair. “Cordell forgot to lock the chain on her kitchen door. Your boy in Boston is copying what he read in the newspapers. And your forensic hypnotist pulled up a false memory.” Shaking his head, he started toward the door. Tossed back a sarcastic parting shot: “Let me know when you catch the rea
Moore allowed the exchange to bother him only briefly. He knew Singer was defending his own work on the case, and he could not blame him for being skeptical. He was beginning to wonder about his own instincts. He had come all the way to Savannah to either prove or disprove the partner theory, and thus far he had nothing to back it up.
He focused his attention on the TV screen and pressed Play.
The camera left the kitchen, advanced up the hallway. A pause to look into the bathroom—pink towels, a shower curtain with multicolored fish. Moore’s hands were sweating. He dreaded watching what came next, but he could not tear his gaze from the screen. The camera turned from the bathroom and continued up the hallway, past a framed watercolor of pink peonies hanging on the wall. On the wood floor, bloody shoeprints had been smeared and tracked over by the first officers on the scene and later by frantic paramedics. What was left was a confusing abstract in red. A doorway loomed ahead, the view jiggling in an unsteady hand.
Now the camera moved into the bedroom.
Moore felt his stomach turn, not because what he was staring at was any more shocking than other crime scenes he had witnessed. No, this horror was deeply visceral because he knew, and cared deeply about, the woman who had suffered here. He had studied the still photos of this room, but they did not convey the same lurid quality as this video. Even though Catherine was not in the frame—by this time she had already been taken to the hospital—the evidence of her ordeal shouted at him from the TV screen. He saw the nylon cord, which had bound her wrists and ankles, still attached to the four bedposts. He saw surgical instruments—a scalpel and retractors—left on the nightstand. He saw all this and the impact was so powerful that he actually swayed back in his chair, as though shoved by a fist.
When the camera lens shifted, at last, to Andrew Capra’s body lying on the floor, he felt barely a twitch of emotion; he was already numbed by what he’d seen seconds earlier. Capra’s abdominal wound had bled profusely, and a large pool had collected beneath his torso. The second bullet, into his eye, had inflicted the fatal wound. He remembered the five-minute gap between the two gunshots. The image he saw reinforced that timeline. Judging by the amount of pooling, Capra had lain alive and bleeding for at least a few minutes.