Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

a vein!”
    “Use the CVP.”
    “Stand back!”
    Everyone stepped away as the paddles discharged.
    Catherine watched the monitor, hoping that the jolt of shock-induced paralysis would jump-start the heart. Instead, the tracing collapsed to barely a ripple.
    Another bolus of epinephrine slithered into the CVP line.
    The intern, flushed and sweating, resumed pumping on the chest. A fresh pair of hands took over the ambu-bag, squeezing air into the lungs, but it was like trying to blow life into a dried-out husk. Already Catherine could hear the change in the voices around her, the tone of urgency gone, the words flat and automatic. It was merely an exercise now, with defeat inevitable. She looked around the room, at the dozen or more people crowded around the bed, and saw that the decision was obvious to them all. They were just waiting for her word.
    She gave it. “Let’s call the code,” she said. “Eleven thirteen.”
    In silence, everyone stepped back and regarded the object of their defeat, Herman Gwadowski, who lay cooling in a tangle of wires and IV tubing. A nurse turned off the EKG monitor, and the oscilloscope went blank.
    “What about a pacemaker?”
    Catherine, in the midst of signing the code sheet, turned and saw that the patient’s son had stepped into the room. “There’s nothing left to save,” she said. “I’m sorry. We couldn’t get his heart beating again.”
    “Don’t they use pacemakers for that?”
    “We did everything we could—”
    “All you did was shock him.”
    All?
She looked around the room, at the evidence of their efforts, the used syringes and drug vials and crumpled packaging. The medical debris left behind after every battle. The others in the room were all watching, waiting to see how she would handle this.
    She set down the clipboard she’d been writing on, angry words already forming on her lips. She never got the chance to say them. Instead she spun toward the door.
    Somewhere on the ward, a woman was shrieking.
    In an instant Catherine was out of the room, the nurses right behind her. Sprinting around the corner, she spotted an aide standing in the hallway, sobbing and pointing toward Nina’s room. The chair outside the room was vacant.
    There should be a policeman here. Where is he?
    Catherine pushed open the door and froze.
    Blood was the first thing she saw, bright ribbons of it streaming down the wall. Then she looked at her patient, sprawled facedown on the floor. Nina had fallen halfway between the bed and the door, as though she had managed to stagger a few steps before collapsing. Her IV was disconnected and a stream of saline dribbled from the open tube onto the floor, where it formed a clear pool next to the larger pool of red.
    He was here. The Surgeon was here.
    Though every instinct screamed at her to back away, to flee, she forced herself to step forward, to drop to her knees beside Nina. Blood soaked through her scrub pants, and it was still warm. She rolled the body onto its back.
    One look at the white face, the staring eyes, and she knew Nina was already gone.
Only moments ago I heard your heart beating.
    Slowly emerging from her daze, Catherine looked up and saw a circle of frightened faces. “The policeman,” she said. “Where is the policeman?”
    “We don’t know—”
    She rose unsteadily to her feet, and the others backed away to let her pass. Heedless of the fact she was tracking blood, she walked out of the room, her gaze darting wildly up and down the hallway.
    “Oh my god,” a nurse said.
    At the far end of the corridor, a dark line was creeping across the floor. Blood. It was trickling out from beneath the supply room door.
     

thirteen
    R izzoli stared across the crime scene tape, into Nina Peyton’s hospital room. Spurted arterial blood had dried in a celebratory pattern of tossed streamers. She continued down the corridor to the supply room, where the cop’s body had been found. This doorway, too, was crisscrossed by crime scene tape. Inside was a thicket of IV poles, shelves holding bedpans and basins, and boxes of gloves, all of it zigzagged by blood. One of their own had died in this room, and for every cop in the Boston PD the hunt for the Surgeon was now deeply, intensely personal.
    She turned to the patrolman standing nearby. “Where’s Detective Moore?”
    “Down in Administration. They’re looking at the hospital surveillance tapes.”
    Rizzoli glanced up and down the hall but spotted no security cameras.