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

night. Across the city, women would sleep with windows left open to the night’s fickle breezes. The night’s evils.
    He stopped and turned toward the hospital. He could see the bright red “ER” light, glowing like a beacon. A symbol of hope and healing.
    Is that your hunting ground? The very place where women go to be healed?
    An ambulance glided in from the night, lights flashing. He thought of all the people who might pass through an E.R. in the course of a day. EMT’s, doctors, orderlies, janitors.
    And cops.
It was a possibility he never wanted to consider, yet it was one he could never dismiss. The profession of law enforcement holds a strange allure for those who hunt other human beings. The gun, the badge, are heady symbols of domination. And what greater control could one exercise than the power to torment, to kill? For such a hunter, the world is a vast plain teeming with prey.
    All one has to do is choose.
     
    There were babies everywhere. Rizzoli stood in a kitchen that smelled like sour milk and talcum powder as she waited for Anna Garcia to finish wiping apple juice from the floor. One toddler was clinging to Anna’s leg; a second was pulling pot lids out of a kitchen cabinet and clanging them together like cymbals. An infant was in a high chair, smiling through a mask of creamed spinach. And on the floor, a baby with a bad case of cradle cap was crawling around on a treasure hunt for anything dangerous to put in his greedy little mouth. Rizzoli did not care for babies, and it made her nervous to be surrounded by them. She felt like Indiana Jones in the snake pit.
    “They’re not all mine,” Anna was quick to explain as she limped over to the sink, the toddler hanging on like a ball and chain. She wrung out the dirty sponge and rinsed her hands. “Only this one’s mine.” She pointed to the baby on her leg. “That one with the pots, and the one in the high chair, they belong to my sister Lupe. And the one crawling around, I baby-sit him for my cousin. As long as I’m home with mine, I thought I might as well watch a few more.”
    Yeah, what’s another smack on the head? thought Rizzoli. But the funny thing was, Anna did not look unhappy. In fact, she scarcely seemed to notice the human ball and chain or the clang-clang of the pots slamming against the floor. In a situation that would give Rizzoli a nervous breakdown, Anna had the serene look of a woman who is exactly where she wants to be. Rizzoli wondered if this was what Elena Ortiz would have been like one day, had she lived. A mama in her kitchen, happily wiping up juice and drool. Anna looked very much like the photos of her younger sister, just a little plumper. And when she turned toward Rizzoli, the kitchen light shining directly on her forehead, Rizzoli had the chilling sensation that she was staring at the same face that had looked up at her from the autopsy table.
    “With these little guys around, it takes me forever to do the smallest thing,” said Anna. She picked up the toddler hanging on her leg and propped him expertly on one hip. “Now, let me see. You came for the necklace. Let me get the jewelry box.” She walked out of the kitchen, and Rizzoli felt a moment of panic, left alone with three babies. A sticky hand landed on her ankle and she looked down to see the crawler chewing on her pant cuff. She shook him off and quickly put a safe distance between her and that gummy mouth.
    “Here it is,” said Anna, returning with the box, which she set on the kitchen table. “We didn’t want to leave it in her apartment, not with all those strangers going in and out cleaning the place. So my brothers thought I should keep the box until the family decides what to do with the jewelry.” She lifted the lid, and a melody began to tinkle. “Somewhere My Love.” Anna seemed momentarily stunned by the music. She sat very still, her eyes filling with tears.
    “Mrs. Garcia?”
    Anna swallowed. “I’m sorry. My husband must have wound it up. I wasn’t expecting to hear . . .”
    The melody slowed to a few last sweet notes and stopped. In silence Anna gazed down at the jewelry, her head bent in mourning. With sad reluctance she opened one of the velvet-lined compartments and withdrew the necklace.
    Rizzoli could feel her heartbeat quickening as she took the necklace from Anna. It was as she’d remembered it when she’d seen it around Elena’s neck in the morgue, a tiny lock and key dangling from a fine gold chain. She