The Surgeon (26 page)

neat brick building of the Medical Examiner's office, her
hands broke out in a sweat.
He parked in the lot behind the building, next to a white van
with the words "Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Office of
the Medical Examiner" printed on the side. She did not want
to leave the car, and only when he came around to open her
door did she finally step out.
"Are you ready for this?" he asked.
"I'm not looking forward to it," she admitted. "But let's get it
over with."
Though she had viewed dozens of autopsies, she was not
fully prepared for the smell of blood and ruptured intestines
that hit her as they walked into the lab. For the first time in her
medical career, she thought she would be sick at the sight of a
body.
An older gentleman, eyes protected by a plastic face
shield, turned to look at them. She recognized the M.E., Dr.
Ashford Tierney, whom she had met at a forensic pathology
conference six months before. A trauma surgeon's failures
were often the very subjects who ended up on Dr. Tierney's
autopsy table, and she had last spoken to him only a month
ago, regarding the disturbing circumstances surrounding a
child's death from a ruptured spleen.
Dr. Tierney's gentle smile contrasted jarringly with the

blood-streaked rubber gloves he was wearing. "Dr. Cordell,
it's good to see you again." He paused, as the irony of that
statement struck him. "Though it could be under more
pleasant circumstances."
"You've already started cutting," Moore noted in dismay.
"Lieutenant Marquette wants immediate answers," said
Tierney. "Every police shooting, the press is at his throat."
"But I called ahead to arrange this viewing."
"Dr. Cordell's seen autopsies before. This is nothing new
for her. Just let me finish this excision, and she can take a look
at the face."
Tierney turned his attention to the abdomen. With the
scalpel, he finished slicing free the small bowel, pulled out
loops of intestine, and dropped them into a steel basin. Then
he stepped away from the table and nodded to Moore. "Go
ahead."
Moore touched Catherine's arm. Reluctantly she
approached the corpse. At first she focused on the gaping
incision. An open abdomen was familiar territory, the organs
impersonal landmarks, lumps of tissue that could belong to
any stranger. Organs held no emotional significance, carried
no personal stamp of identity. She could study them with the
cool eye of a professional, and so she did, noting that the
stomach and pancreas and liver were still in situ, waiting to be

removed in a single bloc. The Y-incision, extending from the
neck to the pubis, revealed both the chest and the abdominal
cavity. The heart and lungs had already been excised, leaving
the thorax an empty bowl. Visible in the chest wall were two
bullet wounds, one entry just above the left nipple, the other a
few ribs beneath it. Both bullets would have entered the
thorax, piercing either heart or lung. In the left upper abdomen
was yet a third entrance wound, tracking straight toward
where the spleen would have been. Another catastrophic
injury. Whoever had fired on Karl Pacheco had meant to kill
him.
"Catherine?" said Moore, and she realized she had been
silent too long.
She took a deep breath, inhaling the odor of blood and
chilled flesh. By now she was well acquainted with Karl
Pacheco's internal pathology; it was time to confront his face.
She saw black hair. A narrow face, the nose as sharp as a
blade. Flaccid jaw muscles, the mouth gaping. Straight teeth.
She focused, at last, on the eyes. Moore had told her almost
nothing about this man, just his name and the fact he had
been shot by police while resisting arrest. Are you the
Surgeon?
The eyes, corneas clouded by death, stirred no memory.
She studied his face, trying to sense some trace of evil still
lingering in Karl Pacheco's corpse, but she felt nothing. This

mortal shell was empty, and no trace of its former inhabitant
remained.
She said, "I don't know this man," and she walked out of the
room.
She was already waiting outside by his car when Moore
emerged from the building. Her lungs had been fouled by the
stench of that autopsy room, and she was taking breaths of
scorchingly hot air, as though to wash out the contamination.
Though she was now sweating, the chill of that air-conditioned
building had settled in her bones, deep as the marrow.
"Who was Karl Pacheco?" she asked.
He looked off in the direction of Pilgrim Hospital, listening
to the crescendoing wail of an ambulance. "A sexual
predator," he said. "A man who hunted women."
"Was he the Surgeon?"
Moore sighed. "It appears not."
"But you thought he might be."
"DNA links him to Nina Peyton. Two months ago, he
sexually assaulted her. But we have no evidence that connects
him to Elena Ortiz or Diana Sterling. Nothing that places him
in their lives."

"Or in my life."
"You're sure you've never seen him?"
"I'm only sure that I don't remember him."
The sun had baked the car to oven heat, and they stood
with the doors open, waiting for the interior to cool. Gazing
across the car roof at Moore, she saw how tired he was.
Already his shirt was blotted with sweat. A fine way to spend
his Saturday afternoon, driving a witness to the morgue. In
many respects, cops and doctors led similar lives. They
worked long hours, at jobs for which there was no five o'clock
whistle. They saw humanity in its darkest, most painful hours.
They witnessed nightmares and learned to live with the
images.
And what images did he carry? she wondered as he drove
her home. How many victims' faces, how many murder
scenes, were stored like filed photographs in his head? She
was only one element of this case, and she wondered about
all the other women, living and dead, who had vied for his
attention.
He pulled up in front of her building and turned off the
engine. She looked up at her apartment window and was
reluctant to step out of the car. To leave his company. They
had spent so much time together over the last few days that
she had come to rely on his strength and his kindness. Had
they met under happier circumstances, his good looks alone

would have caught her eye. Now what mattered most to her
wasn't his attractiveness, nor even his intelligence, but what
lay in his heart. This was a man she could trust.
She considered her next words and what those words could
lead to. And decided that she didn't give a damn about the
consequences.
She asked, softly: "Will you come in for a drink?"
He didn't answer right away, and she felt her face flush as
his silence took on unbearable significance. He was
struggling to make a decision; he, too, understood what was
happening between them, and was uncertain what to do about
it.
When at last he looked at her and said, "Yes, I'd like to
come in," they both knew that more than a drink was on their
minds.
They walked to the lobby door and his arm came around
her. It was little more than a protective gesture, his hand
resting casually on her shoulder, but the warmth of his touch,
and her response to it, made her fumble with the security
keypad. Anticipation made her slow and clumsy. Upstairs, she
unlocked her apartment door with shaking hands, and they
stepped through, into the delicious coolness of her flat. He
paused only long enough to close the door and turn the dead
bolts.

And then he took her in his arms.
It had been so long since she'd let herself be held. Once,
the thought of a man's hands on her body had filled her with
panic. But in Moore's embrace, panic was the last thing on
her mind. She responded to his kisses with a need that
surprised them both. She'd been deprived of love so long that
she'd lost all sense of hunger. Only now, as every part of her
came alive, did she remember what desire felt like, and her
lips sought his with the eagerness of a starved woman. She
was the one who tugged him up the hall toward the bedroom,
kissing all the way. She was the one who unbuttoned his shirt
and unfastened his belt buckle. He knew, somehow he knew,
that he could not be the aggressor for it would frighten her.
That for this, their first time, she must lead the way. But he
could not hide his arousal, and she felt it as she opened the
zipper, as his trousers slipped off.
He reached for the buttons on her blouse and stopped, his
gaze searching hers. The look she gave him, the sound of her
quickening breath, left no doubt that this was what she
wanted. The blouse slowly parted, and slid off her shoulders.
The bra whispered to the floor. He did it with it with utmost
gentleness, not a stripping away of her defenses, but a
welcome release. A liberation. She closed her eyes and
sighed with pleasure as he bent to kiss her breast. Not an
assault, but an act of reverence.
And so, for the first time in two years, did Catherine allow a

man to make love to her. No thoughts of Andrew Capra
intruded as she and Moore lay together on the bed. No
flashes of panic, no frightening memories, returned as they
shed the last of their clothes, as the weight of him pressed her
into the mattress. What another man had done to her was an
act so brutal it held no connection to this moment, to this body
she inhabited. Violence is not sex, and sex is not love. Love
was what she felt as Moore entered her, his hands cupping
her face, his gaze on hers. She had forgotten what pleasure a
man could give, and she lost herself in the moment,
experiencing joy as though for the very first time.
It was dark when she awakened in his arms. She felt him
stir and heard him ask: "What time is it?"
"Eight-fifteen."
"Wow." He gave a dazed laugh and rolled onto his back. "I
can't believe we slept all afternoon. I guess it caught up with
me."
"You haven't been getting much sleep, either."
"Who needs sleep?"
"Spoken like a doctor."
"Something we have in common," he said, and his hand
slowly traced her body. "We've both been deprived too
long. . . ."

They lay still for a moment. Then he asked softly: "How was
it?"
"Are you asking me how good a lover are you?"
"No. I meant, how was it for you. Having me touch you."
She smiled. "It was good."
"I didn't do anything wrong? I didn't scare you?"
"You make me feel safe. That's what I need, most of all. To
feel safe. I think you're the only man who ever understood that.
The only man I've been able to trust."
"Some men are worth trusting."
"Yes, but which ones? I never know."
"You won't know until push comes to shove. He'll be the one
still standing beside you."
"Then I guess I never found him. I've heard other women say
that as soon as you tell a man what happened to you, as soon
as you use the word rape, the men back away. As though
we're damaged goods. Men don't want to hear about it. They
prefer silence to confession. But the silence spreads. It takes
over, until you can't talk about anything at all. All of life
becomes a taboo subject."

"No one can live that way."
"It's the only way other people can stand to be around us. If
we keep our silence. But even when I don't talk about it, it's
there."
He kissed her, and that simple act was more intimate than
any act of love could be, because it came on the heels of
confession.
"Will you stay with me tonight?" she whispered.
His breath was warm in her hair. "If you'll let me take you to
dinner."
"Oh. I completely forgot about eating."
"There's the difference between men and women. A man
never forgets to eat."
Smiling, she sat up. "You make us drinks, then. I'll feed you."
He mixed two martinis, and they sipped as she tossed a
salad, slid steaks under the broiler. Masculine food, she
thought with amusement. Red meat for the new man in her life.
The act of cooking had never seemed as pleasurable as it
was tonight, Moore smiling as he handed her the salt and
pepper shakers, her head buzzing from the gin. Nor could she
remember the last time food had tasted so good. It was as if
she'd just emerged from a sealed bottle and was

experiencing the full vibrancy of tastes and smells for the very
first time.
They ate at the kitchen table and sipped wine. Her kitchen,
with its white tiles and white cabinets, suddenly seemed bright
with color. The ruby wine, the crisp green lettuce, the blue-
checked cloth napkins. And Moore sitting across from her.
She had once thought him colorless, like all the other
featureless men who walk past you on a city street, outlines
sketched on a flat canvas. Only now did she really see him,
the warm ruddiness of his skin, the web of laugh lines around
his eyes. All the charming imperfections of a face well lived in.
We have all night, she thought, and the prospect of what lay
ahead brought a smile to her lips. She rose, and held her
hand out to him.
*   *   *
Dr. Zucker stopped the videotape of Dr. Polochek's session
and turned to Moore and Marquette. "It could be a false
memory. Cordell has conjured up a second voice that didn't
exist. You see, that's the problem with hypnosis. Memory is a
fluid thing. It can be altered, rewritten to match expectations.
She went into that session believing Capra had a partner.
And presto, the memory's there! A second voice. A second
man in the house." Zucker shook his head. "It's not reliable."
"It's not just her memory that supports a second perp," said
Moore. "Our unsub sent hair clippings that could only have

been collected in Savannah."
"She says the hair was taken in Savannah," Marquette
pointed out.
"You don't believe her, either?"
"The lieutenant raises a valid point," said Zucker. "We're
dealing with an emotionally fragile woman here. Even two
years after the attack, she may not be entirely stable."
"She's a trauma surgeon."
"Yes, and she functions fine in the workplace. But she is
damaged. You know that. The attack has left its mark."
Moore fell silent, thinking about the first day he'd met
Catherine. How her movements were precise, controlled. A
different person from the carefree girl who had appeared
during the hypnosis session, the young Catherine basking in
the sunlight of her grandparents' dock. And last night, that
joyous young Catherine had re-emerged in his arms. She had
been there all along, trapped inside that brittle shell, waiting to
be released.
"So what do we make of this hypnosis session?" asked
Marquette.
Zucker said, "I'm not saying she doesn't believe it. Doesn't
remember it vividly. It's like telling a child there was an