The Surgeon r-1 Read online

  “Do you know where Frost is?” asked Moore.

  Rizzoli glanced up, startled, to see him standing beside her desk. “No, I don’t.”

  “He hasn’t been around?”

  “I don’t keep the boy on a leash.”

  There was a pause. Then he asked, “What’s this?”

  “Ortiz crime scene photos.”

  “No. The thing in the bottle.”

  She looked up again and saw a frown on his face. “What does it look like? It’s a fucking tampon. Someone around here has a real sophisticated sense of humor.” She glanced pointedly at Darren Crowe, who suppressed a snicker and turned away.

  “I’ll take care of this,” Moore said and picked up the bottle.

  “Hey. Hey! ” she snapped. “Goddamnit, Moore. Forget it!”

  He walked into Lieutenant Marquette’s office. Through the glass partition she saw Moore set the bottle with the tampon on Marquette’s desk. Marquette turned and stared in Rizzoli’s direction.

  Here we go again. Now they’ll be saying the bitch can’t take a practical joke.

  She grabbed her purse, gathered up the photos, and walked out of the unit.

  She was already at the elevators when Moore called out: “Rizzoli?”

  “Don’t fight my fucking battles for me, okay?” she snapped.

  “You weren’t fighting. You were just sitting there with that… thing on your desk.”

  “Tampon. Can you say the word nice and loud?”

  “Why are you angry with me? I’m trying to stick up for you.”

  “Look, Saint Thomas, this is how it works in the real world for women. I file a complaint, I’m the one who gets the shaft. A note goes in my personnel record. Does not play well with boys. If I complain again, my reputation’s sealed. Rizzoli the whiner. Rizzoli the wuss.”

  “You’re letting them win if you don’t complain.”

  “I tried it your way. It doesn’t work. So don’t do me any favors, okay?” She slung her purse over her shoulder and stepped onto the elevator.

  The instant the door closed between them, she wanted to take back those words. Moore didn’t deserve such a rebuke. He had always been polite, always the gentleman, and in her anger she had flung the unit’s nickname for him in his face. Saint Thomas. The cop who never stepped over the line, never swore, never lost his cool.

  And then there were the sad circumstances of his personal life. Two years ago, his wife, Mary, had collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage. For six months she’d hung on in the twilight zone of a coma, but until the day she actually died Moore had refused to give up hope that she’d recover. Even now, a year and a half after Mary’s death, he did not seem to accept it. He still wore his wedding ring, still kept her photo on his desk. Rizzoli had watched the marriages of too many other cops disintegrate, had watched the changing gallery of women’s photos on her colleagues’ desks. On Moore’s desk, the image of Mary remained, her smiling face a permanent fixture.

  Saint Thomas? Rizzoli gave a cynical shake of the head. If there were any real saints in the world, they sure as hell wouldn’t be cops.

  One wanted him to live, the other wanted him to die, and both claimed to love him more. The son and daughter of Herman Gwadowski faced each other across their father’s bed, and neither was willing to give in.

  “You weren’t the one who had to take care of Dad,” Marilyn said. “I cooked his meals. I cleaned his house. I took him to the doctor every month. When did you even visit him? You always had better things to do.”

  “I live in L.A., for god’s sake,” snapped Ivan. “I have a business.”

  “You could have flown out once a year. How hard was that?”

  “Well, I’m here now.”

  “Oh, right. Mr. Big Shot swoops in to save the day. You couldn’t be bothered to visit before. But now you want everything done.”

  “I can’t believe you’d just let him go.”

  “I don’t want him to suffer anymore.”

  “Or maybe you just want him to stop draining his bank account.”

  Every muscle in Marilyn’s face snapped taut. “You bastard.”

  Catherine could listen no more, and she cut in: “This isn’t the place to be discussing it. Please, can you both step out of the room?”

  For a moment, brother and sister eyed each other in hostile silence, as though just the act of being the first to leave was a surrender. Then Ivan stalked out, an intimidating figure in a tailored suit. His sister, Marilyn, looking every bit the tired suburban housewife she was, gave her father’s hand a squeeze and followed her brother.

  In the hallway, Catherine laid out the grim facts.

  “Your father has been in a coma since the accident. His kidneys are now failing. Because of his long-term diabetes, they were already impaired, and the trauma made things worse.”

  “How much was due to surgery?” asked Ivan. “The anesthetic you gave him?”

  Catherine suppressed her rising temper and said, evenly: “He was unconscious when he came in. Anesthesia was not a factor. But tissue damage puts a strain on kidneys, and his are shutting down. Plus, he has a diagnosis of prostate cancer that’s already spread to his bones. Even if he does wake up, those problems remain.”

  “You want us to give up, don’t you?” said Ivan.

  “I simply want you to rethink his code status. If his heart should stop, we don’t have to resuscitate him. We can let him go peacefully.”

  “You mean, just let him die.”

  “Yes.”

  Ivan gave a snort. “Let me tell you something about my dad. He’s not a quitter. And neither am I.”

  “For god’s sake, Ivan, this isn’t about winning or losing!” said Marilyn. “It’s about when to let go.”

  “And you’re so quick to do that, aren’t you?” he said, turning to face her. “The first sign of difficulty, little Marilyn always gives up and lets Daddy bail her out. Well, he never bailed me out.”

  Tears glistened in Marilyn’s eyes. “It’s not about Dad, is it? It’s about you having to win.”

  “No, it’s about giving him a fighting chance.” Ivan looked at Catherine. “I want everything done for my father. I hope that’s absolutely clear.”

  Marilyn wiped tears from her face as she watched her brother walk away. “How can he say he loves him, when he never came to see him?” She looked at Catherine. “I don’t want my dad resuscitated. Can you put that in the chart?”

  This was the sort of ethical dilemma every doctor dreaded. Although Catherine sided with Marilyn, the brother’s last words had carried a definite threat.

  She said, “I can’t change the order until you and your brother agree on this.”

  “He’ll never agree. You heard him.”

  “Then you’ll have to talk to him some more. Convince him.”

  “You’re afraid he’ll sue, aren’t you? That’s why you won’t change the order.”

  “I know he’s angry.”

  Sadly Marilyn nodded. “That’s how he wins. It’s how he always wins.”

  I can stitch a body back together again, thought Catherine. But I cannot mend this broken family.

  The pain and hostility of that meeting still clung to her when she walked out of the hospital a half hour later. It was Friday afternoon and a free weekend stretched ahead, yet as she drove out of the medical center parking garage she felt no sense of liberation. It was even hotter today than yesterday, in the nineties, and she looked forward to the coolness of her apartment, to sitting down with an iced tea and the TV tuned to The Discovery Channel.

  She was waiting at the first intersection for the light to turn green when her gaze drifted to the name of the cross street. Worcester.

  It was the street where Elena Ortiz had lived. The victim’s address had been mentioned in the Boston Globe article, which Catherine had finally felt compelled to read.

  The light changed. On impulse, she turned onto Worcester Street. She’d never had reason to drive this way before,
but something drew her onward. The morbid need to see where the killer had struck and to see the building where her own personal nightmare had come to life for another woman. Her hands were damp, and she could feel her pulse quickening as she watched the numbers on the buildings climb.

  At Elena Ortiz’s address, she pulled over to the curb.

  There was nothing distinctive about this edifice, nothing that shouted to her of terror and death. She saw just another three-story brick building.

  She stepped out of her car and stared at the windows of the upper floors. Which apartment had been Elena’s? The one with the striped curtains? Or the one with the jungle of hanging plants? She approached the front entrance and looked at the tenant names. There were six apartments; Apartment 2A’s tenant name was blank. Already Elena had been erased, the victim purged from the ranks of the living. No one wanted to be reminded of death.

  According to the Globe, the killer had gained access by way of a fire escape. Backing up onto the sidewalk, Catherine spotted the steel lattice snaking up the alley side of the building. She took a few steps into the gloom of the alley, then abruptly halted. The back of her neck was prickling. She turned to look at the street and saw a truck rattle by, a woman jogging. A couple getting into their car. Nothing that should make her feel threatened, yet she could not ignore the silent shouts of panic.

  She returned to her car, locked the doors, and sat clutching the steering wheel, repeating to herself: “Nothing is wrong. Nothing is wrong.” As cold air blasted from the car vent, she felt her pulse gradually slow. At last, with a sigh, she leaned back.

  Her gaze turned, once again, to Elena Ortiz’s apartment building.

  Only then did she focus on the car, parked in the alley. On the license plate mounted on its rear bumper.

  POSEY5.

  In an instant she was fumbling through her purse for the detective’s business card. With shaking hands she dialed his number on her car phone.

  He answered with a businesslike, “Detective Moore.”

  “This is Catherine Cordell,” she said. “You came to see me a few days ago.”

  “Yes, Dr. Cordell?”

  “Did Elena Ortiz drive a green Honda?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I need to know her license number.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand—”

  “Just tell me!” Her sharp command startled him. There was a long silence on the line.

  “Let me check,” he said. In the background she heard men talking, phones ringing. He came back on the line.

  “It’s a vanity plate,” he said. “I believe it refers to the family’s flower business.”

  “POSEY FIVE,” she whispered.

  A pause. “Yes,” he said, his voice strangely quiet. Alert.

  “When you spoke to me, the other day, you asked if I knew Elena Ortiz.”

  “And you said you didn’t.”

  Catherine released a shuddering breath. “I was wrong.”

  Six

  She was pacing inside the E.R., her face pale and tense, her coppery hair a tangled mane about her shoulders. She looked at Moore as he stepped into the waiting area.

  “Was I right?” she said.

  He nodded. “Posey Five was her Internet screen name. We checked her computer. Now tell me how you knew this.”

  She glanced around the bustling E.R. and said: “Let’s go into one of the call rooms.”

  The room she took him to was a dark little cave, windowless, furnished with only a bed, a chair, and a desk. For an exhausted doctor whose single goal is sleep, the room would be perfectly sufficient. But as the door swung shut, Moore was acutely aware of how small the space was, and he wondered if the forced intimacy made her as uncomfortable as it did him. They both glanced around for places to sit. At last she settled on the bed, and he took the chair.

  “I never actually met Elena,” said Catherine. “I didn’t even know that was her name. We belonged to the same Internet chat room. You know what a chat room is?”

  “It’s a way to have a live conversation on the computer.”

  “Yes. A group of people who are online at the same time can meet over the Internet. This is a private room, only for women. You have to know all the right keywords to get into it. And all you see on the computer are screen names. No real names or faces, so we can all stay anonymous. It lets us feel safe enough to share our secrets.” She paused. “You’ve never used one?”

  “Talking to faceless strangers doesn’t much appeal to me, I’m afraid.”

  “Sometimes,” she said softly, “a faceless stranger is the only person you can talk to.”

  He heard the depth of pain in that statement and could think of nothing to say.

  After a moment, she took a deep breath and focused not on him but on her hands, folded in her lap. “We meet once a week, on Wednesday nights at nine o’clock. I enter by going on-line, clicking the chat-room icon, and typing in first PTSD, and then: womanhelp. And I’m in. I communicate with other women by typing messages and sending them through the Internet. Our words appear onscreen, where we can all see them.”

  “PTSD? I take it that stands for—”

  “Post-traumatic stress disorder. A nice clinical term for what the women in that room are suffering.”

  “What trauma are we talking about?”

  She raised her head and looked straight at him. “Rape.”

  The word seemed to hang between them for a moment, the very sound of it charging the air. One brutal syllable with the impact of a physical blow.

  “And you go there because of Andrew Capra,” he said gently. “What he did to you.”

  Her gaze faltered, dropped away. “Yes,” she whispered. Once again she was looking at her hands. Moore watched her, his anger building over what had happened to Catherine. What Capra had ripped from her soul. He wondered what she was like before the attack. Warmer, friendlier? Or had she always been so insulated from human contact, like a bloom encased in frost?

  She drew herself straighter and forged ahead. “So that’s where I met Elena Ortiz. I didn’t know her real name, of course. I saw only her screen name, Posey Five.”

  “How many women are in this chat room?”

  “It varies from week to week. Some of them drop out. A few new names appear. On any night, there can be anywhere from three to a dozen of us.”

  “How did you learn about it?”

  “From a brochure for rape victims. It’s given out at women’s clinics and hospitals around the city.”

  “So these women in the chat room, they’re all from the Boston area?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Posey Five, was she a regular visitor?”

  “She was there, off and on, over the last two months. She didn’t say much, but I’d see her name on the screen and I knew she was there.”

  “Did she talk about her rape?”

  “No. She just listened. We’d type hellos to her. And she’d acknowledge the greetings. But she wouldn’t talk about herself. It’s as if she was afraid to. Or just too ashamed to say anything.”

  “So you don’t know that she was raped.”

  “I know she was.”

  “How?”

  “Because Elena Ortiz was treated in this emergency room.”

  He stared at her. “You found her record?”

  She nodded. “It occurred to me that she might have needed medical treatment after the attack. This is the closest hospital to her address. I checked our hospital computer. It has the name of every patient seen in this E.R. Her name was there.” She stood up. “I’ll show you her record.”

  He followed her out of the call room and back into the E.R. It was a Friday evening, and the casualties were rolling in the door. The TGIF-er, clumsy with booze, clutching an ice bag to his battered face. The impatient teenager who’d lost his race with a yellow light. The Friday night army of the bruised and bloodied, stumbling in from the night. Pilgrim Medical Center was one of the busiest E.R.’s i
n Boston, and Moore felt as though he was walking through the heart of chaos as he dodged nurses and gurneys and stepped over a fresh splash of blood.

  Catherine led him into the E.R. records room, a closet-sized space with wall-to-wall shelves containing three-ring binders.

  “This is where they temporarily store the enounter forms,” said Catherine. She pulled down the binder labeled: May 7–May 14. “Every time a patient is seen in the E.R., a form is generated. It’s usually only a page long, and it contains the doctor’s note, and the treatment instructions.”

  “There’s no chart made up for each patient?”

  “If it’s just a single E.R. visit, then no hospital chart is ever put together. The only record is the encounter form. These eventually get moved to the hospital’s medical records room, where they’re scanned and stored on disk.” She opened the May 7–May 14 binder. “Here it is.”

  He stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. The scent of her hair momentarily distracted him, and he had to force himself to focus on the page. The visit was dated May 9, 1:00 A.M. The patient’s name, address, and billing information were typed at the top; the rest of the form was handwritten in ink. Medical shorthand, he thought, as he struggled to decipher the words and could make out only the first paragraph, which had been written by the nurse:

  22-year-old Hispanic female, sexually assaulted two hours ago. No allergies, no meds. BP 105/70, P 100, T. 99.

  The rest of the page was indecipherable.

  “You’ll have to translate for me,” he said.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him, and their faces were suddenly so close he felt his breath catch.

  “You can’t read it?” she asked.

  “I can read tire tracks and blood splatters. This I can’t read.”

  “It’s Ken Kimball’s handwriting. I recognize his signature.”

  “I don’t even recognize it as English.”

  “To another doctor, it’s perfectly legible. You just have to know the code.”

  “They teach you that in medical school?”

  “Along with the secret handshake and the decoder ring instructions.”