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

plaque:
     
    Peter Falco, M.D.
    Catherine Cordell, M.D.
    General and Vascular Surgery.
     
    She stepped into the front office, and the receptionist looked up with an automatic smile of greeting. It froze half-formed on her lips when she saw Catherine’s ashen face and noticed the two strangers who had followed her in.
    “Dr. Cordell? Is something wrong?”
    “We’ll be in my office, Helen. Please hold my calls.”
    “Your first patient’s coming in at ten. Mr. Tsang, follow-up splenectomy—”
    “Cancel it.”
    “But he’s driving all the way from Newbury. He’s probably on his way.”
    “All right, then have him wait. But please, don’t put any calls through.”
    Ignoring Helen’s bewildered look, Catherine headed straight to her office, Moore and Rizzoli following right behind her. Immediately she reached for her white lab coat. It was not hanging on the door hook, where she always kept it. It was only a minor frustration, but added to the turmoil she was already feeling, it was almost more than she could handle. She glanced around the room, searching for the lab coat as though her life depended on it. She spotted it draped over the filing cabinet and felt an irrational sense of relief as she snatched it up and retreated behind her desk. She felt safer there, barricaded behind the gleaming rosewood surface. Safer and in control.
    The room was a carefully ordered place, the way everything in her life was carefully ordered. She had little tolerance for sloppiness, and her files were organized in two neat stacks on the desk. Her books were lined up alphabetically by author on the shelves. Her computer hummed softly, the screen saver building geometric patterns on the monitor. She slipped on the lab coat to cover her bloodstained scrub top. The additional layer of uniform felt like another shield of protection, another barrier against the messy and dangerous vagaries of life.
    Sitting behind her desk, she watched Moore and Rizzoli glance around the room, no doubt taking the measure of its occupant. Was that automatic for police officers, that quick visual survey, the appraisal of the subject’s personality? It made Catherine feel exposed and vulnerable.
    “I realize this is a painful subject for you to revisit,” said Moore as he sat down.
    “You have no idea how painful. It’s been two years. Why has this come up now?”
    “In relation to two unsolved homicides, here in Boston.”
    Catherine frowned. “But I was attacked in Savannah.”
    “Yes, we know. There’s a national crime database called VICAP. When we did a search of VICAP, looking for crimes similar to our homicides here, Andrew Capra’s name came up.”
    Catherine was silent for a moment, absorbing this information. Building the courage to pose the next logical question. She managed to ask it calmly. “What similarities are we talking about?”
    “The manner in which the women were immobilized and controlled. The type of cutting instrument used. The . . .” Moore paused, struggling to phrase his words with the most delicacy possible. “The choice of mutilation,” he finished quietly.
    Catherine gripped the desk with both hands, fighting to contain a sudden surge of nausea. Her gaze dropped to the files stacked so neatly in front of her. She spotted a streak of blue ink staining the sleeve of her lab coat.
No matter how much you try to maintain order in your life, no matter how careful you are to guard against mistakes, against imperfections, there is always some smudge, some flaw, lurking out of sight. Waiting to surprise you.
    “Tell me about them,” she said. “The two women.”
    “We’re not at liberty to reveal very much.”
    “What can you tell me?”
    “No more than what was reported in Sunday’s
Globe
.”
    It took a few seconds for her to process what he had just said. She stiffened in disbelief. “These Boston murders—they’re
recent
?”
    “The last one was early Friday.”
    “So this has nothing to do with Andrew Capra! Nothing to do with me.”
    “There are striking similarities.”
    “Then they’re purely coincidental. They have to be. I thought you were talking about old crimes. Something Capra did years ago. Not last week.” Abruptly she shoved back her chair. “I don’t see how I can help you.”
    “Dr. Cordell, this killer knows details that were never released to the public. He has information about Capra’s attacks that no one outside the Savannah investigation knows.”
    “Then maybe