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

gun under her bed. I don’t think she’d forget.” He looked at Singer. “Maybe someone walked
out
that kitchen door.”
    “There were only two people in that house. Cordell and Capra.”
    Moore considered what he should say next. Whether he had more to gain or lose if he was perfectly forthright.
    By now Singer knew where this conversation was headed. “You’re sayin’ Capra had a partner.”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s a mighty big conclusion to draw from one unlocked chain.”
    Moore took a breath. “There’s more. The night Catherine Cordell was attacked, she heard another voice in her house. A man, speaking to Capra.”
    “She never told me that.”
    “It came out during a forensic hypnosis session.”
    Singer burst out laughing. “Did you get a psychic to back that up? ’Cause then I’d really be convinced.”
    “It explains why the Surgeon knows so much about Capra’s technique. The two men were partners. And the Surgeon is carrying on the legacy, to the point of stalking their only surviving victim.”
    “The world’s full of women. Why focus on her?”
    “Unfinished business.”
    “Yeah, well, I got a better theory.” Singer rose from his chair. “Cordell forgot to lock the chain on her kitchen door. Your boy in Boston is copying what he read in the newspapers. And your forensic hypnotist pulled up a false memory.” Shaking his head, he started toward the door. Tossed back a sarcastic parting shot: “Let me know when you catch the
real
killer.”
    Moore allowed the exchange to bother him only briefly. He knew Singer was defending his own work on the case, and he could not blame him for being skeptical. He was beginning to wonder about his own instincts. He had come all the way to Savannah to either prove or disprove the partner theory, and thus far he had nothing to back it up.
    He focused his attention on the TV screen and pressed Play.
    The camera left the kitchen, advanced up the hallway. A pause to look into the bathroom—pink towels, a shower curtain with multicolored fish. Moore’s hands were sweating. He dreaded watching what came next, but he could not tear his gaze from the screen. The camera turned from the bathroom and continued up the hallway, past a framed watercolor of pink peonies hanging on the wall. On the wood floor, bloody shoeprints had been smeared and tracked over by the first officers on the scene and later by frantic paramedics. What was left was a confusing abstract in red. A doorway loomed ahead, the view jiggling in an unsteady hand.
    Now the camera moved into the bedroom.
    Moore felt his stomach turn, not because what he was staring at was any more shocking than other crime scenes he had witnessed. No, this horror was deeply visceral because he knew, and cared deeply about, the woman who had suffered here. He had studied the still photos of this room, but they did not convey the same lurid quality as this video. Even though Catherine was not in the frame—by this time she had already been taken to the hospital—the evidence of her ordeal shouted at him from the TV screen. He saw the nylon cord, which had bound her wrists and ankles, still attached to the four bedposts. He saw surgical instruments—a scalpel and retractors—left on the nightstand. He saw all this and the impact was so powerful that he actually swayed back in his chair, as though shoved by a fist.
    When the camera lens shifted, at last, to Andrew Capra’s body lying on the floor, he felt barely a twitch of emotion; he was already numbed by what he’d seen seconds earlier. Capra’s abdominal wound had bled profusely, and a large pool had collected beneath his torso. The second bullet, into his eye, had inflicted the fatal wound. He remembered the five-minute gap between the two gunshots. The image he saw reinforced that timeline. Judging by the amount of pooling, Capra had lain alive and bleeding for at least a few minutes.
    The videotape came to an end.
    He stared at the blank screen, then stirred from his paralysis and turned off the VCR. He felt too drained to rise from the chair. When at last he did, it was only to escape this place. He picked up the box containing the photocopied documents from the Atlanta investigation. Since these papers were not originals but copies of documents on file in Atlanta, he could review them elsewhere.
    Back in his hotel, he showered, ate a room-service hamburger and fries. Gave himself an hour with the TV to decompress. But the whole time he sat