The Surgeon Read Free

said, "There are now better alternatives. Catgut
doesn't have the strength or durability of synthetic sutures. I
doubt many surgeons in the U.S. are currently using it."
"Why would our unsub use it at all?"
"To maintain his visual field. To control the bleeding long
enough so he can see what he's doing. Our unsub is a very
neat man."
Rizzoli pulled her hand from the wound. In her gloved palm
was cupped a tiny clot of blood, like a bright red bead. "How
skillful is he? Are we dealing with a doctor? Or a butcher?"
"Clearly he has anatomical knowledge," said Tierney. "I
have no doubt he's done this before."
Moore took a step backward from the table, recoiling from
the thought of what Elena Ortiz must have suffered, yet unable
to keep the images at bay. The aftermath lay right in front of
him, staring with open eyes.
He turned, startled, as instruments clattered on the metal
tray. The morgue attendant had pushed the tray next to Dr.
Tierney, in preparation for the Y-incision. Now the attendant
leaned forward and stared into the abdominal wound.
"So what happens to it?" he asked. "Once he whacks out
the uterus, what does he do with it?"
"We don't know," said Tierney. "The organs have never
been found."
two

     M oore stood on the sidewalk in the South End
neighborhood where Elena Ortiz had died. Once this had
been a street of tired rooming houses, a shabby backwater
neighborhood separated by railroad tracks from the more
desirable northern half of Boston. But a growing city is a
ravening creature, always in search of new land, and railroad
tracks are no barrier to the hungry gaze of developers. A new
generation of Bostonians had discovered the South End, and
the old rooming houses were gradually being converted to
apartment buildings.
Elena Ortiz lived in just such a building. Though the views
from her second-story apartment were uninspiring--her
windows faced a Laundromat across the street--the building
did offer a treasured amenity rarely found in the city of Boston:
tenant parking, crammed into the adjacent alley.
Moore walked down that alley now, scanning the windows in
the apartments above, wondering who at that moment was
looking down at him. Nothing moved behind the windows'
glassy eyes. The tenants facing this alley had already been
interviewed; none had offered any useful information.
He stopped beneath Elena Ortiz's bathroom window and
stared up at the fire escape leading to it. The ladder was
pulled up and latched in the retracted position. On the night
Elena Ortiz died, a tenant's car had been parked just beneath
the fire escape. Size 8 1/2 shoe prints were later found on the
car's roof. The unsub had used it as a stepping-stone to reach
the fire escape.
He saw that the bathroom window was shut. It had not been
shut the night she met her killer.
He left the alley, circled back to the front entrance, and let
himself into the building.
Police tape hung in limp streamers across Elena Ortiz's
apartment door. He unlocked the door and fingerprint powder
rubbed off like soot on his hand. The loose tape slithered
across his shoulders as he stepped into the apartment.
The living room was as he remembered it from his walk-
through the day before, with Rizzoli. It had been an unpleasant
visit, simmering with undercurrents of rivalry. The Ortiz case
had started off with Rizzoli as lead, and she was insecure
enough to feel threatened by anyone challenging her authority,
especially an older male cop. Though they were now on the
same team, a team that had since expanded to five
detectives, Moore felt like a trespasser on her turf, and he'd
been careful to couch his suggestions in the most diplomatic
terms. He had no wish to engage in a battle of egos, yet a
battle was what it had become. Yesterday he'd tried to focus
on this crime scene, but her resentment kept pricking his
bubble of concentration.
Only now, alone, could he completely focus his attention on
the apartment where Elena Ortiz had died. In the living room
he