Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

you!”
    “Well, you shouldn’t,” he said, and winked. She blushed like a schoolgirl.
    He took the book over to the corner of the room, where the coffeepot and a plate of cookies were set in the small sitting area. He sank into a worn easy chair and opened the Emory Medical School student yearbook. The noon hour came, and a parade of fresh-faced students in white coats began dropping in to check their mail. Since when had kids become doctors? He could not imagine submitting his middle-aged body to the care of these youngsters. He saw their curious glances, heard Winnie Bliss whisper: “He’s a
homicide
detective, from Boston.” Yes, that decrepit old man sitting in the corner.
    Moore hunched deeper into the chair and focused on the photos. Next to each was the student’s name, hometown, and the internship he or she had been accepted to. When he came to Capra’s photo, he paused. Capra looked straight at the camera, a smiling young man with an earnest gaze, hiding nothing. This was what Moore found most chilling—that predators walked unrecognized among prey.
    Next to Capra’s photo was the name of his residency program.
Surgery, Riverland Medical Center, Savannah, Georgia.
    He wondered who else from Capra’s class had gone to a residency in Savannah, who else had lived in that town while Capra was butchering women. He flipped through the pages, scanning the listings, and found that three other medical students had been accepted into programs in the Savannah area. Two of them were women; the third was an Asian male.
    Yet another blind alley.
    He leaned back, discouraged. The book fell open in his lap, and he saw the medical school dean’s photograph smiling up at him. Beneath it was his printed graduation message: “To heal The World.”
     
    Today, 108 fine young people take the solemn oath that completes a long and difficult journey. This oath, as physician and healer, is not taken lightly, for it is meant to last a lifetime.…
     
    Moore sat up straight and re-read the dean’s statement.
     
    Today, 108 fine young people …
     
    He rose and went to Winnie’s desk. “Mrs. Bliss?”
    “Yes, Detective?”
    “You said that Andrew had one hundred ten students in his freshman class.”
    “We admit one hundred ten every year.”
    “Here, in the dean’s speech, he says one hundred eight graduated. What happened to the other two?”
    Winnie shook her head sadly. “I still haven’t gotten over it, what happened to that poor girl.”
    “Which girl?”
    “Laura Hutchinson. She was working in a clinic down in Haiti. One of our elective courses. The roads there, well, I hear they’re just awful. The truck went into a ditch and turned right over on her.”
    “So it was an accident.”
    “She was riding in the back of the truck. They couldn’t evacuate her for ten hours.”
    “What about the other student? There’s one more who didn’t graduate with the class.”
    Winnie’s gaze fell to her desk, and he could see she was not anxious to talk about this particular topic.
    “Mrs. Bliss?”
    “It happens, every so often,” she said. “A student drops out. We try to help them stay in the program, but you know, some of them
do
have problems with the material.”
    “So this student—what was the name?”
    “Warren Hoyt.”
    “He dropped out?”
    “Yes, you could say that.”
    “Was it an academic problem?”
    “Well …” She looked around, as though seeking help and not finding any. “Perhaps you should talk to one of our professors, Dr. Kahn. He’ll be able to answer your questions.”
    “You don’t know the answer?”
    “It’s something of a … private matter. Dr. Kahn should be the one to tell you.”
    Moore glanced at his watch. He had thought to catch a plane back to Savannah tonight, but it didn’t look like he would make it. “Where do I find Dr. Kahn?”
    “The anatomy lab.”
     
    He could smell the formalin from the hallway. Moore paused outside the door labeled
ANATOMY
, bracing himself for what came next. Though he thought he was prepared, when he stepped through the door he was momentarily stunned by the view. Twenty-eight tables, laid out in four rows, stretched the length of the room. On the tables were corpses in advanced stages of dissection. Unlike the corpses Moore was accustomed to viewing in the Medical Examiner’s lab, these bodies looked artificial, the skin tough as vinyl, the exposed vessels embalmed bright blue or red. Today the students were