The Surgeon Read Free Page A

saw mismatched furniture arranged around a wicker coffee
table. A desktop computer in the corner. A beige rug
patterned with leafy vines and pink flowers. Since the murder,
nothing had been moved, nothing altered, according to
Rizzoli. The last light of day was fading in the window, but he
did not turn on the lights. He stood for a long time, not even
moving his head, waiting for complete stillness to fall across
the room. This was the first chance he'd had to visit the scene
alone, the first time he'd stood in this room undistracted by the
voices, the faces, of the living. He imagined the molecules of
air, briefly stirred by his entry, now slowing, drifting. He wanted
the room to speak to him.
He felt nothing. No sense of evil, no lingering tremors of
terror.
The unsub had not come in through the door. Nor had he
gone wandering through his newly claimed kingdom of death.
He had focused all his time, all his attention, on the bedroom.
Moore walked slowly past the tiny kitchen and started up
the hallway. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to
bristle. At the first doorway he paused and stared into the
bathroom. He turned on the light.

Thursday is a warm night. It is so warm that all across the
city, windows are left open to catch every stray breeze, every
cool breath of air. You crouch on the fire escape, sweating in
your dark clothes, staring into this bathroom. There is no
sound; the woman is asleep in the bedroom. She has to be
up early for her job at the florist's, and at this hour her sleep
cycle is passing into its deepest, most unarousable phase.
She doesn't hear the scratch of your putty knife as you
pry open the screen.
Moore looked at the wallpaper, adorned with tiny red
rosebuds. A woman's pattern, nothing a man would choose. In
every way this was a woman's bathroom, from the strawberry-
scented shampoo, to the box of Tampax under the sink, to the
medicine cabinet crammed with cosmetics. An aqua-eye-
shadow kind of gal.

You climb in the window and fibers of your navy-blue shirt
     ,
catch on the frame. Polyester. Your sneakers, size 8 1/ 2,
leave prints coming in on the white linoleum floor. There are
traces of sand, mixed with crystals of gypsum. A typical mix
picked up from walking the city of Boston.
Maybe you pause, listening in the darkness. Inhaling the
sweet foreignness of a woman's space. Or maybe you waste
no time but proceed straight to your goal.
The bedroom.
The air seemed fouler, thicker, as he followed in the
intruder's footsteps. It was more than just an imagined sense
of evil; it was the smell.
He came to the bedroom door. By now the hairs on the
back of his neck were standing straight out. He already knew
what he would see inside the room; he thought he was
prepared for it. Yet when he turned on the lights, the horror
assailed him once again, as it had the first time he'd seen this
room.
The blood was now over two days old. The cleaning service
had not yet come in. But even with their detergents and steam
cleaners and cans of white paint, they could never fully erase
what had happened here, because the air itself was
permanently imprinted with terror.

You step through the doorway, into this room. The curtains
are thin, only an unlined cotton print, and light from the
street lamps shines through the fabric, onto the bed. Onto
the sleeping woman. Surely you must linger a moment,
studying her. Considering with pleasure the task that lies
ahead. Because it is pleasurable for you, isn't it? You are
growing more and more excited. The thrill moves through
your bloodstream like a drug, awakening every nerve, until
even your fingertips are pulsing with anticipation.
Elena Ortiz did not have time to scream. Or, if she did, no
one heard her. Not the family in the unit next door, nor the
couple below.
The intruder brought his tools with him. Duct tape. A rag
soaked in chloroform. A collection of surgical instruments. He
had come fully prepared.
The ordeal would have lasted well over