Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Stargate SG1 material. I also do not own any details by the book "The Surgeon" by Tess Gerritsen.
Author's Note: Thank you all for your reviews. Sorry about the delay of the third chapter, been busy with work and my computer has been down recently. I had to cut a few lines short so that this chapter wouldn't be too long winded to read. And thank you all for the reviews. Also... most of this chapter is the extract from the book. So here's Chapter 3. Enjoy.
ONE YEAR LATERDetective Thomas Moore disliked the smell of latex, and as he snapped on the gloves, releasing a puff of talcum, he felt the usual twinge of anticipatory nausea. The odour was linked to the most unpleasant aspect of his job.
He was already garbed up in a surgical gown. He walked into the autopsy room, straight from the heat and he felt the sweat chill on his skin. It was July 12, a humid and hazy Friday afternoon.
He put his paper cap on to catch any stray hairs and pulled paper booties over his shoes, because he had seen what sometimes spilled from the table onto the floor. The blood, clumps of tissue. He was by no means a tidy man, but he had no wish to bring any trace of the autopsy room home on his shoes. He paused for a few seconds outside the door and took a deep breath. Then resigning himself to the ordeal, he pushed into the room.
Dr Ashford Tierney, the ME, and a morgue attendant were assembling instruments on a tray. Across the morgue table stood Jane Rizzoli, also from Boston Homicide Unit. Thirty-three years old, Rizzoli was a small and square jawed woman. She had transferred to Homicide from Vice and Narcotics six months ago. She was the only woman in the homicide unit, and already there were problems between her and another detective with charges of sexual harassment, counter charges of unrelenting bitchiness.
Standing beside her was her partner Barry Frost, a relentlessly cheerful cop whose bland and beardless face made him seem much younger than his thirty years. Frost had worked with Rizzoli for two months now without complaint, the only man in the unit placid enough to endure her foul moods.
As Moore approached the table, Rizzoli said, "We wondered when you'd show up"
"I was on the Marine Turnpike when you beeped me."
"We've been waiting here since five"
"And I'm just starting the internal exam," Dr Tierney said, "so I'd say Detective Moore has arrived just in time." One man coming to the defence of another. He slammed the cabinet door shut. He did not enjoy working with the prickly Jane Rizzoli
"Sorry about your fishing trip," Tierney said to Moore. "It looks like your vacation's cancelled"
"You sure its our boy again?"
"Her name is Elena Ortiz"
Though Moore had been braced for this sight his first glimpse of the victim had an impact of a physical blow. The woman's black hair, matted stiff with blood, stuck out like porcupine quills from a face the colour of blue-veined marble. Her lips were parted, as though frozen in mid utterance. The blood had already been washed off her body and her wounds gaped in purplish rents on the grey canvas of her skin. There were two visible wounds. One was a deep slash across the throat extending from beneath the left ear, transecting the left carotid artery, and laying open the laryngeal cartilage. The coupe de grace. The second slash was low on the abdomen. This wound wasn't meant to kill; it served an entirely different purpose.
Moore swallowed hard. "I see why you called me back from my vacation"
"I'm the lead on this one." Said Rizzoli.
He heard the note of warning in her statement; she was protecting her turf. He understood where she came from, how the constant taunts and scepticism those women cops faced could make them quick to take offence.
"Could you fill me on the circumstances?"
Rizzoli nodded, "The victim was found at nine this morning, in her apartment at Worcester Street, in the South End. She usually gets to work around six a.m. at Celebration Florists, a few blocks from her residence. It's a family business, owned by her parents. When she didn't show up they got worried. Her brother went to check up on her. He found her in her bedroom. Dr. Tierney estimates time of death was somewhere between midnight and four this morning. According to her family, she had no current boyfriend, and no one in her apartment building recalls seeing any male visitors. She's just another hard working Catholic girl."
Moore looked at the victim's wrists. "She was immobilized."
"Yes with Duct Tape on the wrists and ankles. She was found nude. Wearing only a few items of jewellery."
"What jewellery?"
"A necklace. A ring. Ear Studs. The jewellery box was untouched in the bedroom. Robbery wasn't the motive."
Moore looked at the horizontal band of bruises across the victim's hips. "The torso was immobilized as well."
"Duct Tape across the waist and upper thighs. And across her mouth"
Moore released a deep breath. "Jesus." Staring at Elena Ortiz, Moore had a disorientating flashback of another young woman. Another corpse – a blond, with meat-red slashes across her throat and abdomen.
"Diana Sterling", he murmured.
Tierney directed their attention to the wound. "What we have here is a transverse cut. Surgeons call it the Maryland incision. The abdominal wall was incised layer by layer. First the skin, then the superficial fascia, then the muscle and finally the pelvic peritoneum."
"Like Sterling"
"Yes but there are differences"
"What differences?"
On Diana Sterling, there were a few jags in the incision, indicating hesitation or uncertainty. You don't see that here. Notice how cleanly this skin has been incised? There are no jags at all. He did it with absolute confidence. Our unsub is learning. He's improved his technique."
"If it is the same unknown subject" Rizzoli said.
There are other similarities. See the squared off margin at the end of this wound? It indicates the track moves from right to left. Like Sterling. The blade used in this would is a single edged, non-serrated. Like a blade used on Sterling."
"A scalpel?"
"Its consistent with a scalpel. The clean incision tells me there was no twisting of the blade. The victim was either unconscious, or so tightly restrained that she couldn't move. She couldn't cause the blade to divert from its linear path"
Barry Frost looked like he wanted to throw up "Aww jeez please tell me she was dead when he did this"
"I'm afraid this isn't a post mortem wound." Only Tierney's green eyes showed about the surgical mask, and they were angry.
"There was ante-mortem bleeding?" asked Moore.
"Pooling in the pelvic cavity. Which means her heart was still pumping when this… procedure was done."
"Put your hands inside the wound Thomas. I think you know what you are going to find out"
Reluctantly Moore inserted his gloved hand into the wound. The flesh was cool, chilled from the several hours of refrigeration.
"The uterus is missing!" Moore looked at Tierney
The ME nodded "It has been removed"
Moore removed his hand from the wound and stared at the body. Now Rizzoli thrust her gloved hand in, her short fingers straining to explore the cavity.
"Nothing else was removed?" she asked.
"Just the uterus," said Tierney. "He left the bladder and bowel intact."
"What's this thing I'm feeling here? This hard little knot on the left side?" she said.
"It's a suture. He used it to tie off blood vessels."
Rizzoli looked up, startled "This is a surgical knot?"
"Two-oh plain catgut. The same suture we found in Diana Sterling."
"Two-oh plain catgut? Sounds like a – a brand name or something."
"Not a brand name" said Tierney, "Catgut is a type of surgical thread made from intestines of cows or sheep."
"And where would he get this catgut suture?" Rizzoli looked at Moore. "Did you trace a source for Sterling?"
"Its almost impossible to identify a specific source, they are manufactured by a dozen different companies, most of them in Asia. Its still used in a number of foreign hospitals."
"Only foreign hospitals?"
"There are now better alternatives. Catgut doesn't have the strength or the durability of a synthetic sutures. I doubt many surgeons in the US are currently using it." Tierney said.
"Why would the unsub use all that?"
"To maintain his visual field. To control the bleeding long enough so he can see what he's doing. Our unsub is a very neat man"
"How skilful is he? Are we dealing with a doctor? Or a butcher?"
"Clearly he has anatomical knowledge. I have no doubt he has done this before."
Moore turned, startled, as the instruments clattered on the metal tray. The morgue attendant had pushed the tray next to Dr. Tierne, in preparation of the Y Incision. Now the attendant leaned forward as stared into the abdominal wound.
"So what happens to it?" he asked "Once he has whacked out the uterus, what does he do with it?"
"We don't know," said Tierney. "The organs have never been found."
TBC