The Surgeon: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel: With Bonus Content

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 focusing on the heads, teasing apart the muscles of the face. There were four students assigned to each corpse, and the room was abuzz with voices reading aloud to one another from textbooks, trading questions, offering advice. If not for the ghastly subjects on the table, these students might be factory workers, laboring over mechanical parts.
    A young woman glanced up curiously at Moore, the business-suited stranger who had wandered into their room. “Are you looking for someone?” she asked, her scalpel poised to slice into a corpse’s cheek.
    “Dr. Kahn.”
    “He’s at the other end of the room. See that big guy with the white beard?”
    “I see him, thank you.” He continued down the row of tables, his gaze inexorably drawn to each cadaver as he passed. The woman with wasted limbs like shriveled sticks on the steel table. The black man, skin splayed open to reveal the thick muscles of his thigh. At the end of the row, a group of students listened attentively to a Santa Claus lookalike who was pointing out the delicate fibers of the facial nerve.
    “Dr. Kahn?” said Moore.
    Kahn glanced up, and all semblance to Santa Claus vanished. This man had dark, intense eyes, without a trace of humor. “Yes?”
    “I’m Detective Moore. Mrs. Bliss in Student Affairs sent me.”
    Kahn straightened, and suddenly Moore was looking up at a mountain of a man. The scalpel looked incongruously delicate in his huge hand. He set the instrument down, stripped off his gloves. As he turned to wash his hands in a sink, Moore saw that Kahn’s white hair was tied back in a ponytail.
    “So what’s this all about?” asked Kahn, reaching for a paper towel.
    “I have a few questions about a freshman medical student you taught here seven years ago. Warren Hoyt.”
    Kahn’s back was turned, but Moore could see the massive arm freeze over the sink, dripping water. Then Kahn yanked the paper towel from the dispenser and silently dried his hands.
    “Do you remember him?” asked Moore.
    “Yes.”
    “Remember him well?”
    “He was a memorable student.”
    “Care to tell me more?”
    “Not really.” Kahn tossed the crumpled paper towel in the trash can.
    “This is a criminal investigation, Dr. Kahn.”
    By now, several students were staring at them. The word
criminal
had drawn their attention.
    “Let’s go into my office.”
    Moore followed him into an adjoining room. Through a glass partition, they had a view of the lab and all twenty-eight tables. A village of corpses.
    Kahn closed the door and turned to him. “Why are you asking about Warren? What’s he done?”
    “Nothing to our knowledge. I just need to know about his relationship with Andrew Capra.”
    “Andrew Capra?” Kahn snorted. “Our most famous graduate. Now there’s something a medical school loves to be known for. Teaching psychos how to slice and dice.”
    “Did you think Capra was crazy?”
    “I’m not sure there is a psychiatric diagnosis for men like Capra.”
    “What was your impression of him, then?”
    “I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Andrew struck me as perfectly normal.”
    A description that seemed more chilling every time Moore heard it.
    “What about Warren Hoyt?”
    “Why do you ask about Warren?”
    “I need to know if he and Capra were friends.”
    Kahn thought it over. “I don’t know. I can’t tell you what happens outside this lab. All I see is what goes on in that room. Students struggling to cram an enormous amount of information into their overworked brains. Not all of them are able to deal with the stress.”
    “Is that what hapened to Warren? Is that why he withdrew from medical school?”
    Kahn turned toward the glass partition and gazed into the anatomy lab. “Do you ever wonder where cadavers come from?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “How medical schools get them? How they end up on those tables out there, to be cut open?”
    “I assume people will their own bodies to the school.”
    “Exactly. Every one of those cadavers was a human being who made a profoundly generous decision. They willed their bodies to us. Rather than spend eternity in some rosewood coffin, they chose to do something useful with their remains. They are teaching