The Surgeon r-1 Page 10

  “You haven’t told him about Savannah?” asked Moore.

  “No. I could never bring myself to tell him.” Rape is a subject too intimate, too shameful, to talk about. Even with someone who cares about you.

  She asked: “Who is the woman in the picture?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know who sent it, either.”

  The chair creaked as he stood up. She felt his hand on her shoulder, his warmth penetrating the green silk. She had not changed clothes and was still dressed up, glossied up for the evening. The whole idea of stepping out on the town now struck her as pitiful. What had she been thinking? That she could go back to being like everyone else? That she could be whole again?

  “Catherine,” he said. “You need to talk to me about this photo.”

  His fingers tightened on her shoulder, and she was suddenly aware that he’d called her by her first name. He was standing close enough for her to feel his breath warm her hair, yet she did not feel threatened. Any other man’s touch would have seemed like an invasion, but Moore’s was genuinely comforting.

  She nodded. “I’ll try.”

  He pulled up another chair and they both sat down in front of the computer. She forced herself to focus on the photograph.

  The woman had curly hair, splayed out like corkscrews on the pillow. Her lips were sealed beneath a silvery strip of duct tape, but her eyes were open and aware, the retinas reflecting bloodred in the camera’s flash. The photograph showed her from the waist up. She was bound to the bed, and she was nude.

  “Do you recognize her?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Is there anything about this photo that strikes you as familiar? The room, the furniture?”

  “No. But…”

  “What?”

  “He did it to me, too,” she whispered. “Andrew Capra took photos of me. Tied to my bed…” She swallowed, humiliation washing over her, as though it were her own body so intimately exposed to Moore’s gaze. She found herself crossing her arms over her chest, to shield her breasts from further violation.

  “This file was transmitted at seven fifty-five P.M. And the sender’s name, SavvyDoc — do you recognize it?”

  “No.” She focused again on the woman, who stared back with bright red pupils. “She’s awake. She knows what he’s about to do. He waits for that. He wants you to be awake, to feel the pain. You have to be awake, or he won’t enjoy it….” Although she was talking about Andrew Capra, she had somehow slipped into the present tense, as though Capra were still alive.

  “How would he know your e-mail address?”

  “I don’t even know who he is.”

  “He sent this to you, Catherine. He knows what happened to you in Savannah. Is there anyone you can think of who might do this?”

  Only one, she thought. But he’s dead. Andrew Capra is dead.

  Moore’s cell phone rang. She almost jumped out of her chair. “Jesus,” she said, her heart pounding, and sank back again.

  He flipped open the phone. “Yes, I’m with her now….” He listened for a moment and suddenly looked at Catherine. The way he was staring alarmed her.

  “What is it?” asked Catherine.

  “It’s Detective Rizzoli. She says she traced the source of the e-mail.”

  “Who sent it?”

  “You did.”

  He might as well have slapped her in the face. She could only shake her head, too shocked to respond.

  “The name ‘SavvyDoc’ was created this evening, using your America Online account,” he said.

  “But I keep two separate accounts. One is for my personal use—”

  “And the other?”

  “For my office staff, to use during…” She paused. “The office. He used the computer in my office.”

  Moore lifted the cell phone to his ear. “You got that, Rizzoli?” A pause, then: “We’ll meet you there.”

  Detective Rizzoli was waiting for them right outside Catherine’s medical suite. A small group had already gathered in the hallway — a building security guard, two police officers, and several men in plainclothes. Detectives, Catherine assumed.

  “We’ve searched the office,” said Rizzoli. “He’s long gone.”

  “Then he was definitely here?” said Moore.

  “Both computers are turned on. The name SavvyDoc is still on the America Online sign-on screen.”

  “How did he gain entry?”

  “The door doesn’t appear to be forced. There’s a housekeeping service under contract to clean these offices, so there are a number of passkeys floating around. Plus there are the employees who work in this suite.”

  “We have a billing clerk, a receptionist, and two clinic assistants,” said Catherine.

  “And there’s you and Dr. Falco.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that makes six more keys that could’ve been lost or borrowed,” was Rizzoli’s brusque reaction. Catherine did not care for this woman, and she wondered if the feeling was mutual.

  Rizzoli gestured toward the suite. “Okay, let’s take you through the rooms, Dr. Cordell, and see if anything’s missing. Just don’t touch anything, okay? Not the door, not the computers. We’ll be dusting them for prints.”

  Catherine looked at Moore, who placed a reassuring arm around her shoulder. They stepped into her suite.

  She spared only a brief glance around the patient waiting room, then went into the receptionist’s area, where the office staff worked. The billing computer was on. The A drive was empty; the intruder had not left any floppy disks behind.

  With a pen, Moore tapped the computer mouse to inactivate the screen saver, and the AOL sign-on window appeared. “SavvyDoc” was still in the “selected name” box.

  “Does anything in this room look different to you?” asked Rizzoli.

  Catherine shook her head.

  “Okay. Let’s go in your office.”

  Her heart was pounding faster as she walked up the hallway, past the two exam rooms. She stepped into her office. Instantly her gaze shot to the ceiling. With a gasp, she jerked backward, almost colliding with Moore. He caught her in his arms and held her steady.

  “That’s where we found it,” said Rizzoli, pointing to the stethoscope dangling from the overhead light. “Just hanging there. I take it that’s not where you left it.”

  Catherine shook her head. She said, her voice muted by shock: “He’s been in here before.”

  Rizzoli’s gaze sharpened on hers. “When?”

  “The last few days. I’ve been finding things missing. Or moved around.”

  “What things?”

  “The stethoscope. My lab coat.”

  “Look around the room,” said Moore, gently coaxing her forward. “Has anything else changed?”

  She scanned the bookshelves, the desk, the filing cabinet. This was her private space, and she’d organized every inch of it. She knew where things should be and where they should not be.

  “The computer’s on,” she said. “I always turn it off when I leave for the day.”

  Rizzoli tapped on the mouse, and the AOL screen appeared, with Catherine’s screen name, “CCord,” in the sign-on box.

  “This is how he got your e-mail address,” said Rizzoli. “All he had to do was turn on your computer.”

  She stared at the keyboard. You typed on these keys. You sat in my chair.

  Moore’s voice gave her a start.

  “Is anything missing?” he asked. “It’s likely to be something small, something very personal.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s his pattern.”

  So it had happened to the other women, she thought. The other victims.

  “It might be something you’d wear,” said Moore. “Something you alone would use. A piece of jewelry. A comb, a key chain.”

  “Oh god.” Immediately she reached down to yank open the top desk drawer.

  “Hey!” said R
izzoli. “I said not to touch anything.”

  But Catherine was already thrusting her hand into the drawer, frantically searching among the pens and pencils. “It’s not here.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “I keep a spare key ring in my desk.”

  “Which keys are on it?”

  “An extra key to my car. To my hospital locker…” She paused, and her throat was suddenly dry. “If he’s been in my locker during the day, then he’s had access to my purse.” She looked up at Moore. “To my house keys.”

  The techs were already dusting for prints when Moore returned to the medical suite.

  “Tucked her in bed, did you?” said Rizzoli.

  “She’s going to sleep in the E.R. call room. I don’t want her going home until it’s secure.”

  “You gonna personally change all her locks?”

  He frowned, reading her expression. Not liking what he saw there. “You have a problem?”

  “She’s a nice-looking woman.”

  I know where this is headed, he thought, and gave a tired sigh.

  “A little damaged. A little vulnerable,” said Rizzoli. “Jeez, it makes a guy want to rush right in and protect her.”

  “Isn’t that our job?”

  “Is that all it is, a job?”

  “I’m not going to talk about this,” he said, and walked out of the suite.

  Rizzoli followed him into the hallway like a bulldog snapping at his heels. “She’s at the center of this case, Moore. We don’t know if she’s being straight with us. Please don’t tell me you’re getting involved with her.”

  “I’m not involved.”

  “I’m not blind.”

  “What do you see, exactly?”

  “I see the way you look at her. I see the way she looks at you. I see a cop who’s losing his objectivity.” She paused. “A cop who’s going to get hurt.”

  Had she raised her voice, had she said it with hostility, he might have responded in kind. But she had said those last words quietly, and he could not muster the necessary outrage to fight back.

  “I wouldn’t say this to just anyone,” said Rizzoli. “But I think you’re one of the good guys. If you were Crowe, or some other asshole, I’d say sure, go get your heart reamed out, I don’t give a shit. But I don’t want to see it happen to you.”

  They regarded each other for a moment. And Moore felt a twinge of shame that he could not look past Rizzoli’s plainness. No matter how much he admired her quick mind, her unceasing drive to succeed, he would always focus on her utterly average face and her shapeless pantsuits. In some ways he was no better than Darren Crowe, no better than the jerks who stuffed tampons in her water bottle. He did not deserve her admiration.

  They heard the sound of a throat being cleared and turned to see the crime scene tech standing in the doorway.

  “No prints,” he said. “I dusted both computers. The keyboards, the mice, the disk drives. They’ve all been wiped clean.”

  Rizzoli’s cell phone rang. As she flipped it open, she muttered: “What did we expect? We’re not dealing with a moron.”

  “What about the doors?” asked Moore.

  “There’s a few partials,” said the tech. “But with all the traffic that probably comes in and out of here — patients, staff — we’re not going to be able to ID anything.”

  “Hey, Moore,” said Rizzoli, and she clapped her cell phone shut. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “Headquarters. Brody says he’s gonna show us the miracle of pixels.”

  “I put the image file on the Photoshop program,” said Sean Brody. “The file takes up three megabytes, which means it’s got lots of detail. No fuzzy pics for this perp. He sent a quality image, right down to the victim’s eyelashes.”

  Brody was the BPD’s techno-wiz, a pasty-faced youngster of twenty-three who now slouched in front of the computer screen, his hand practically grafted to the mouse. Moore, Rizzoli, Frost, and Crowe stood behind him, all gazing over his shoulder at the monitor. Brody had an irritating laugh, like a jackal’s, and he gave little chortles of delight as he manipulated the image on the screen.

  “This is the full-frame photo,” said Brody. “Vic tied to the bed. Awake, eyes open, bad case of red eye from the flash. Looks like duct tape on her mouth. Now see, down here in the left-hand corner of the pic, there’s the edge of the nightstand. You can see an alarm clock sitting on top of two books. Zoom in, and see the time?”

  “Two twenty,” said Rizzoli.

  “Right. Now the question is, A.M. or P.M.? Let’s go up to the top of the photo, where you see a corner of the window. The curtain’s closed, but you can just make out this little chink here, where the edges of the fabric don’t quite meet. There’s no sunlight coming through. If the time on that clock is correct, this photo was taken at two-twenty A.M.”

  “Yeah, but which day?” said Rizzoli. “This could have been last night or last year. Hell, we don’t even know if the Surgeon’s the guy who snapped this pic.”

  Brody tossed her an annoyed glance. “I’m not done yet.”

  “Okay, what else?”

  “Let’s just slide lower down the image. Check out the woman’s right wrist. It’s got duct tape obscuring it. But see that dark little blotch there? What do you suppose that is?” He pointed and clicked, and the detail got larger.

  “Still doesn’t look like anything,” said Crowe.

  “Okay, we’ll zoom in again.” He clicked once more. The dark lump took on a recognizable shape.

  “Jesus,” said Rizzoli. “It looks like a tiny horse. That’s Elena Ortiz’s charm bracelet!”

  Brody glanced back at her with a grin. “Am I good or what?”

  “It’s him,” said Rizzoli. “It’s the Surgeon.”

  Moore said, “Go back to the nightstand.”

  Brody clicked back to the full frame and moved the arrow to the lower left corner. “What do you want to look at?”

  “We’ve got the clock telling us it’s two-twenty. And then there’s those two books under the clock. Look at their spines. See how that top book jacket reflects light?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That has a clear plastic cover protecting it.”

  “Okay…” said Brody, clearly not understanding where this was headed.

  “Zoom in on the top spine,” said Moore. “See if we can read that book title.”

  Brody pointed and clicked.

  “Looks like two words,” said Rizzoli. “I see the word the.”

  Brody clicked again, zooming in closer.

  “The second word begins with an S,” said Moore. “And look at this.” He tapped on the screen. “See this little white square here, at the base of the spine?”

  “I know what you’re getting at!” Rizzoli said, her voice suddenly excited. “The title. Come on; we need the goddamn title!”

  Brody pointed and clicked one last time.

  Moore stared at the screen, at the second word on the book’s spine. Abruptly he turned and reached for the telephone.

  “What am I missing?” asked Crowe.

  “The title of the book is The Sparrow,” said Moore, punching in “O.” “And that little square on the spine — I’m betting that’s a call number.”

  “It’s a library book,” said Rizzoli.

  A voice came on the line. “Operator.”

  “This is Detective Thomas Moore, Boston PD. I need an emergency contact number for the Boston Public Library.”

  * * *

  “Jesuits in space,” said Frost, sitting in the backseat. “That’s what the book’s about.”

  They were speeding down Centre Street, Moore at the wheel, emergency lights flashing. Two cruisers were leading the way.

  “My wife belongs to this reading group, see,” said Frost. “I remember her talking about The Sparrow.”

  “So it’s science fiction?” asked Rizzoli.

  “Naw, it’s more like deep religious stuff. What’s the nature of God?
That kind of thing.”

  “Then I don’t need to read it,” said Rizzoli. “I know all the answers. I’m Catholic.”

  Moore glanced at the cross street and said, “We’re close.”

  The address they sought was in Jamaica Plain, a west Boston neighborhood tucked between Franklin Park and the bordering town of Brookline. The woman’s name was Nina Peyton. A week ago, she had borrowed a copy of The Sparrow from the library’s Jamaica Plain branch. Of all the patrons in the greater Boston area who had checked out copies of the book, Nina Peyton was the only one who, at 2:00 A.M., was not answering her telephone.

  “This is it,” said Moore, as the cruiser just ahead of them turned right onto Eliot Street. He followed suit and, a block later, pulled up behind it.

  The cruiser’s dome light shot surreal flashes of blue into the night as Moore, Rizzoli, and Frost stepped through the front gate and approached the house. Inside, one faint light glowed.

  Moore shot a look at Frost, who nodded and circled toward the rear of the building.

  Rizzoli knocked on the front door and called out: “Police!”

  They waited a few seconds.

  Again Rizzoli knocked, harder. “Ms. Peyton, this is the police! Open the door!”

  There was a three-beat pause. Suddenly Frost’s voice crackled over their com units: “There’s a screen pried off the back window!”

  Moore and Rizzoli exchanged glances, and without a word the decision was made.

  With the butt of his flashlight, Moore smashed the glass panel next to the front door, reached inside, and slid open the bolt.

  Rizzoli was first into the house, moving in a semicrouch, her weapon sweeping an arc. Moore was right behind her, adrenaline pulsing as he registered a quick succession of images. Wood floor. An open closet. Kitchen straight ahead, living room to the right. A single lamp glowing on an end table.

  “The bedroom,” said Rizzoli.

  “Go.”

  They started up the hallway, Rizzoli taking the lead, her head swiveling left and right as they passed a bathroom, a spare bedroom, both empty. The door at the end of the hall was slightly ajar; they could not see past it, into the dark bedroom beyond.

  Hands slick on his weapon, heart thudding, Moore edged toward the door. Gave it a nudge with his foot.

  The smell of blood, hot and foul, washed over him. He found the light switch and flicked it on. Even before the image hit his retinas, he knew what he would see. Yet he was not fully prepared for the horror.