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

they’re photocopies, may I take that box out? Review the documents in my hotel?”
    “Long as you bring ’em back.” Singer sighed, looking around at the boxes. “Y’know, I’m not sure what you think you’re lookin’ for. Never get a more open-and-shut case. Every one of them, we got Capra’s DNA. We got fiber matches. We got the timeline. Capra’s living in Atlanta, Dora Ciccone gets killed in Atlanta. He moves to Savannah, our ladies here start turning up dead. He was always in the right place, at the right time.”
    “I don’t question for a minute that Capra was your man.”
    “So why you diggin’ through this now? Some of this stuff is three, four years old.”
    Moore heard defensiveness in Singer’s voice and knew diplomacy was key here. Any hint that Singer had made mistakes during the Capra investigation, that he’d missed the vital detail that Capra had a partner, and there’d be no hope of cooperation from the Savannah PD.
    Moore chose an answer that would in no way cast blame. “We have a copycat theory,” he said. “Our unsub in Boston appears to be an admirer of Capra’s. He’s reproducing his crimes in painstaking detail.”
    “How would he know the details?”
    “They may have corresponded while Capra was still alive.”
    Singer seemed to relax. Even laughed. “A sick fucker’s fan club, huh? Nice.”
    “Since our unsub is intimately familiar with Capra’s work, I need to be, as well.”
    Singer waved at the table. “Y’all go for it, then.”
    After Singer had left the room, Moore surveyed the labels on the evidence boxes. He opened the one marked:
IC #1
. The Savannah Investigation Control Files. Inside were three accordion file folders, each pocket filled to capacity. And this was just one of four IC boxes. The first accordion folder contained the occurrence reports for the three Savannah attacks, witness statements, and executed warrants. The second accordion folder held suspects files, criminal record checks, and lab reports. There was enough, just in this first box, to keep him reading all day.
    And there were eleven more boxes to go.
    He started by reviewing Singer’s final summary. Once again he was struck by how airtight the evidence was against Andrew Capra. There were a total of five attacks on record, four of them fatal. The first victim was Dora Ciccone, killed in Atlanta. One year later, the murders began in Savannah. Three women in one year: Lisa Fox, Ruth Voorhees, and Jennifer Torregrossa.
    The killings ended when Capra was shot to death in Catherine Cordell’s bedroom.
    In every case, sperm was found in the victim’s vaginal vault and the DNA matched Capra’s. Hair strands left at the Fox and Torregrossa crime scenes matched Capra’s. The first victim, Ciccone, was killed in Atlanta the same year Capra was finishing his final year of medical school in Atlanta’s Emory University.
    The murders followed Capra to Savannah.
    Every thread of evidence wove neatly into a tight pattern, and the fabric appeared indestructible. But Moore realized he was reading only a case summary, which pulled together the elements in favor of Singer’s conclusions. Contradictory details might be left out. It was these very details, the small but significant inconsistencies, that he hoped to ferret out of these evidence boxes. Somewhere in here, he thought, the Surgeon has left his footprints.
    He opened the first accordion folder and began to read.
    When he finally rose from his chair three hours later and stretched the kinks from his back, it was already noon and he had barely begun to scale the mountain of paper. He had not caught even a whiff of the Surgeon’s scent. He walked around the table, eyeing the labels on the boxes that had not yet been opened, and spotted one that said: “#12 Fox/Torregrossa/Voorhees/Cordell. Press clippings/Videos/Misc.”
    He opened the box and found half a dozen videotapes on top of a thick stack of folders. He took out the video labeled:
Capra Residence.
It was dated June 16. The day after the attack on Catherine.
    He found Singer at his desk, eating a sandwich. A deli special, piled high with roast beef. The desk itself told him much about Singer. It was organized to the nth degree, the stacks of papers lined up with corners squared. A cop who was great with details but probably a pain in the ass to work with.
    “Is there a VCR I could use?” said Moore.
    “We keep it locked up.”
    Moore waited, his next request so obvious he