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

always predict when you’ll run out of cash. ATM withdrawals were often unplanned or spontaneous transactions.
    She flipped through the bank records, searching for every ATM use, and jotted them down on a separate piece of paper. Most were cash withdrawals from locations near Hoyt’s residence or the medical center, areas within his normal field of activity. It was the unusual she was searching for, the transactions that didn’t fit his pattern.
    She found two of them. One at a bank in Nashua, New Hampshire, on June 26. The other was at an ATM in Hobb’s FoodMart in Lithia, Massachusetts, on May 13.
    She leaned back, wondering if Moore was already chasing down these two transactions. With so many other details to follow up on and all the interviews with Hoyt’s colleagues at the lab, a pair of ATM withdrawals might be way down on the team’s priority list.
    She heard footsteps and glanced up with a start, panicked that she’d been caught reading Frost’s papers, but it was only a clerk from the lab who walked into the pod. The clerk gave Rizzoli a smile, dropped a folder on Moore’s desk, and walked out again.
    After a moment, Rizzoli rose from her chair and went to Moore’s desk to peek inside the folder. The first page was a report from Hair and Fiber, an analysis of the light brown strands found on Warren Hoyt’s pillow.
    Trichorrhexis invaginata, compatible with hair strand found in wound margin of victim Elena Ortiz.
Bingo. Confirmation that Hoyt was their man.
    She flipped to a second page. This, too, was a report from Hair and Fiber, on a strand found on Hoyt’s bathroom floor. This one did not make sense. This did not fit in.
    She closed the folder and walked to the lab.
     
    Erin Volchko was sitting in front of the gammatech prism, shuffling through a series of photomicrographs. As Rizzoli came into the lab, Erin held up a photo and challenged: “Quick! What is it?”
    Rizzoli frowned at the black-and-white image of a scaly band. “It’s ugly.”
    “Yeah, but what
is
it?”
    “Probably something gross. Like a cockroach leg.”
    “It’s a hair from a deer. Cool, isn’t it? It doesn’t look a thing like human hair.”
    “Speaking of human hair.” Rizzoli handed her the report that she’d just read. “Can you tell me more about this?”
    “From Warren Hoyt’s apartment?”
    “Yeah.”
    “The short brown hairs on Hoyt’s pillow show
Trichorrhexis invaginata
. He does appear to be your unsub.”
    “No, the other hair. The black strand from his bathroom floor.”
    “Let me show you the photo.” Erin reached for a bundle of photomicrographs. She shuffled through them like cards and pulled one from the deck. “This is the hair from the bathroom. You see the numerical scores there?”
    Rizzoli looked at the sheet, at Erin’s neat handwriting.
A00-B00-C05-D33.
“Yeah. Whatever it means.”
    “The first two scores, A00 and B00, tell you the strand is straight and black. Under the compound microscope, you can see additional details.” She handed Rizzoli the photo. “Look at the shaft. It’s on the thick side. Notice the cross-sectional shape is nearly round.”
    “Meaning?”
    “It’s one feature that helps us distinguish between races. A hair shaft from an African subject, for instance, is nearly flat, like a ribbon. Now look at the pigmentation, and you’ll notice it’s very dense. See the thick cuticle? These all point to the same conclusion.” Erin looked at her. “This hair is characteristic of East Asian heritage.”
    “What do you mean by East Asian?”
    “Chinese or Japanese. The Indian subcontinent. Possibly Native American.”
    “Can that be confirmed? Is there enough hair root for DNA tests?”
    “Unfortunately, no. It appears to have been clipped, not shed naturally. There’s no follicular tissue on this strand. But I’m confident this hair comes from someone of non-European, non-African descent.”
    An Asian woman, thought Rizzoli as she walked back to the homicide unit. How does this come into the case? In the glass-walled corridor leading to the north wing she paused, her tired eyes squinting against the sunlight as she looked out over the neighborhood of Roxbury. Was there a victim whose body they had yet to find? Had Hoyt clipped her hair as a souvenir, the way he’d clipped Catherine Cordell’s?
    She turned and was startled to see Moore walk right past her, on his way to the south wing. He might never have acknowledged her presence had she not