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

at the end of a long dirt road. It was an old Cape with chipping white paint and a porch that sagged in the middle beneath a burden of stacked firewood.
    Rizzoli sat in her car for a moment, too tired to step out. And too demoralized by what her once-promising career had come down to: sitting alone on this dirt road, contemplating the uselessness of walking up those steps and knocking on that door. Talking to some bewildered woman who just happened to have black hair. She thought of Ed Geiger, another Boston cop who’d also parked his car on a dirt road one day, and had decided, at the age of forty-nine, that it really
was
the end of the road for him. Rizzoli had been the first detective to arrive on the scene. While all the other cops had stood around that car with its blood-splattered windshield, shaking their heads and murmuring sadly about poor Ed, Rizzoli had felt little sympathy for a cop pathetic enough to blow his own brains out.
    It’s so easy,
she thought, suddenly aware of the weapon on her hip. Not her service weapon, which she’d turned over to Marquette, but her own, from home. A gun could be your best friend or your worst enemy. Sometimes both at once.
    But she was no Ed Geiger; she was no loser who’d eat her gun. She turned off the engine and reluctantly stepped out of the car to do her job.
    Rizzoli had lived all her life in the city, and the silence of this place was eerie to her. She climbed the porch steps, and every creak of the wood seemed magnified. Flies buzzed around her head. She knocked on the door, waited. Gave the knob an experimental twist and found it locked. She knocked again, then called out, her voice ringing with startling loudness: “Hello?”
    By now the mosquitoes had found her. She slapped at her face and saw a dark smear of blood on her palm. To hell with country life; at least in the city the bloodsuckers walked on two legs and you could see them coming.
    She gave the door a few more loud knocks, slapped at a few more mosquitoes, then gave up. No one seemed to be home.
    She circled around to the back of the house, scanning for signs of forced entry, but all the windows were shut; all the screens were in place. The windows were too high for an intruder to climb through without a ladder, as the house was built upon a raised stone foundation.
    She turned from the house and surveyed the backyard. There was an old barn and a farm pond, green with scum. A lone mallard drifted dejectedly in the water—probably the reject of his flock. There was no sign of any attempt at a garden—just knee-high weeds and grass and more mosquitoes. A lot of them.
    Tire ruts led to the barn. A swath of grass had been flattened by the recent passage of a car.
    One last place to check.
    She tramped along the track of squashed grass to the barn and hesitated. She had no search warrant, but who was going to know? She’d just take a peek to confirm there was no car inside.
    She grasped the handles and swung open the heavy doors.
    Sunlight streamed in, slicing a wedge through the barn’s gloom, and motes of dust swirled in the abrupt disturbance of air. She stood frozen, staring at the car parked inside.
    It was a yellow Mercedes.
    Icy sweat trickled down her face. So quiet; except for a fly buzzing in the shadows, it was too damn quiet.
    She didn’t remember unsnapping her holster and reaching for her weapon. But suddenly there it was in her hand, as she moved toward the car. She looked in the driver’s window, one quick glance to confirm it was unoccupied. Then a second, longer look, scanning the interior. Her gaze fell on a dark clump lying on the front passenger seat. A wig.
    Where does the hair for most black wigs come from? The Orient.
    The black-haired woman.
    She remembered the hospital surveillance video on the day Nina Peyton was killed. In none of the tapes had they spotted Warren Hoyt arriving on Five West.
    Because he walked onto the surgical ward as a woman, and walked out as a man.
    A scream.
    She spun around to face the house, her heart pounding.
Cordell?
    She was out of the barn like a shot, sprinting through the knee-high grass, straight toward the back door of the house.
    Locked.
    Lungs heaving like bellows, she backed up, eyeing the door, the frame. Kicking open doors had more to do with adrenaline than muscle power. As a rookie cop and the only female on her team, Rizzoli had been the one ordered to kick down a suspect’s door. It was a test, and the other cops expected,