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

third entrance wound, tracking straight toward where the spleen would have been. Another catastrophic injury. Whoever had fired on Karl Pacheco had meant to kill him.
    “Catherine?” said Moore, and she realized she had been silent too long.
    She took a deep breath, inhaling the odor of blood and chilled flesh. By now she was well acquainted with Karl Pacheco’s internal pathology; it was time to confront his face.
    She saw black hair. A narrow face, the nose as sharp as a blade. Flaccid jaw muscles, the mouth gaping. Straight teeth. She focused, at last, on the eyes. Moore had told her almost nothing about this man, just his name and the fact he had been shot by police while resisting arrest.
Are you the Surgeon?
    The eyes, corneas clouded by death, stirred no memory. She studied his face, trying to sense some trace of evil still lingering in Karl Pacheco’s corpse, but she felt nothing. This mortal shell was empty, and no trace of its former inhabitant remained.
    She said, “I don’t know this man,” and she walked out of the room.
    She was already waiting outside by his car when Moore emerged from the building. Her lungs had been fouled by the stench of that autopsy room, and she was taking breaths of scorchingly hot air, as though to wash out the contamination. Though she was now sweating, the chill of that air-conditioned building had settled in her bones, deep as the marrow.
    “Who was Karl Pacheco?” she asked.
    He looked off in the direction of Pilgrim Hospital, listening to the crescendoing wail of an ambulance. “A sexual predator,” he said. “A man who hunted women.”
    “Was he the Surgeon?”
    Moore sighed. “It appears not.”
    “But you thought he might be.”
    “DNA links him to Nina Peyton. Two months ago, he sexually assaulted her. But we have no evidence that connects him to Elena Ortiz or Diana Sterling. Nothing that places him in their lives.”
    “Or in my life.”
    “You’re sure you’ve never seen him?”
    “I’m only sure that I don’t remember him.”
    The sun had baked the car to oven heat, and they stood with the doors open, waiting for the interior to cool. Gazing across the car roof at Moore, she saw how tired he was. Already his shirt was blotted with sweat. A fine way to spend his Saturday afternoon, driving a witness to the morgue. In many respects, cops and doctors led similar lives. They worked long hours, at jobs for which there was no five o’clock whistle. They saw humanity in its darkest, most painful hours. They witnessed nightmares and learned to live with the images.
    And what images did he carry? she wondered as he drove her home. How many victims’ faces, how many murder scenes, were stored like filed photographs in his head? She was only one element of this case, and she wondered about all the other women, living and dead, who had vied for his attention.
    He pulled up in front of her building and turned off the engine. She looked up at her apartment window and was reluctant to step out of the car. To leave his company. They had spent so much time together over the last few days that she had come to rely on his strength and his kindness. Had they met under happier circumstances, his good looks alone would have caught her eye. Now what mattered most to her wasn’t his attractiveness, nor even his intelligence, but what lay in his heart. This was a man she could trust.
    She considered her next words and what those words could lead to. And decided that she didn’t give a damn about the consequences.
    She asked, softly: “Will you come in for a drink?”
    He didn’t answer right away, and she felt her face flush as his silence took on unbearable significance. He was struggling to make a decision; he, too, understood what was happening between them, and was uncertain what to do about it.
    When at last he looked at her and said, “Yes, I’d like to come in,” they both knew that more than a drink was on their minds.
    They walked to the lobby door and his arm came around her. It was little more than a protective gesture, his hand resting casually on her shoulder, but the warmth of his touch, and her response to it, made her fumble with the security keypad. Anticipation made her slow and clumsy. Upstairs, she unlocked her apartment door with shaking hands, and they stepped through, into the delicious coolness of her flat. He paused only long enough to close the door and turn the dead bolts.
    And then he took her in his arms.
    It had been so long