Last Surgeon (9 page)

Second Chance was asleep on the love seat in the study in his favorite position-on his back, with all four spindly legs pointing straight up at the ceiling. Nick had showered, dressed, and shaved, and was ready for the night’s rounds in the RV, but mentally he was still scouring the city streets for Manny Ferris.

Initially, the possible breakthrough in his search for Umberto had dropped his SUD score to a rare two:
A little bit upset, but not noticeable unless you took care to pay attention to your feelings, and then realize, “yes” there is something bothering me.
Now, frustration had pushed his number up to a five.

Posters had been taken down, and maps of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore covered a good portion of the floors and walls of the study. In two days of dedicated searching, he had canvassed all of the most unsavory neighborhoods, back alleys, flophouses, and cardboard villages where Manny Ferris might be found. Dotting his maps were carefully placed color-coded pins, each representing a city street that needed to be searched again. He used a highlighter to trace the miles of pavement he covered, questioning every store clerk, loitering kid, and homeless person along the way.
Nothing.
Ferris was either the most determined hermit in the world or, in the four years since making his big announcement to Matt McBean, he had traveled on.

But to where?

Detective Don Reese had fared no better, even though he had given up his fishing trip to search.

“Manny Ferris is not in D.C.,” was his terse conclusion.

That was when the bounce in Nick’s mood had leveled off and begun to slip. To his dismay, the Department of Veterans Affairs was as tight about disclosing last known addresses of their vets as it was about paying out PTSD benefit claims. They would not even comment on the status of the Marine.

Nick respected the agency’s commitment to safeguarding personal information, given the PR fiasco and millions paid in damages after several highly publicized thefts of classified laptop computers. Even so, to keep vets from finding each other, when friends from combat might be crucial to a soldier’s or sailor’s well-being, seemed irrationally protective.

For some reason, Nick could not shake the feeling that Manny Ferris was alive. In a spiral-bound notebook, he kept a detailed log of every call he made to chief medical examiner offices in major East Coast cities, as well as to morgues in D.C., Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland. There were two instances of recorded death certificates for Manuel Ferris, one for a man in his eighties, the other a nineteen-year-old killed in Iraq. He even paid fifty dollars to a Web site purported to be a favorite among private investigators. The site searched newspaper articles and a multitude of court records, including incarcerations and name changes, but it was wasted effort.

Nick checked the time. He and Junie would be on the road in thirty minutes. He peered out at the pink-and-gold-cast sky, wondering if such sunsets would ever feel anything but empty to him.

The ever-present curse of PTSD was that everything reminded him of something he had lost-his bed of a restful night’s sleep, the sun of his fiancée, the maps on the wall of his missing friend. Feeling another episode of melancholy coming on, Nick closed his eyes and balled his hands into tight fists, but relaxed them when he heard his front door open.

“Come in, it’s open,” he called out as Junie was halfway down the hall.

Chance, perhaps knowing the woman represented no possibility of play, remained in his upside-down-table position.

Junie entered the room, her broad smile fading the moment she saw Nick.

“Goodness, love, I guess I’m just stating the obvious, but you look like hell.”

“Thanks for the compliment. I checked myself in the mirror and thought at worst I looked like heck.”

The nurse spent a moment studying the maps tacked to the walls.

“That’s a lot of walking you’ve done in two days,” she said.

“Say, maybe, just maybe, that’s why my feet are killing me. You know, Junie, truth is I didn’t even consider not being able to find Manny Ferris. It’s all a bit disheartening.”

“It hurts me to see you so discouraged. I admire your dedication to finding out what happened to Umberto, but maybe it’s time to let it rest.”

“The man saved my life. I owe it to him.”

“You owe it to yourself to live your life to the fullest, too.”

“Well, maybe finding Umberto will let me do that.”

“I’m worried you’re chasing ghosts, Nick.”

“What if he’s not a ghost?”

“Then we better find him fast.”

“We?”

Junie nodded and placed a comforting hand on Nick’s shoulder.

“The night you learned about Manny Ferris, I don’t think I’ve seen you so happy in all the time I’ve known you. I don’t want to go on watching you suffer the way you have been. If finding our friend Umberto is going to take you even one step closer to health and happiness, I want to do everything I can to make it happen.”

“Thank you, Junie. You’re doing that. I honestly believe Manny Ferris and Umberto are connected. I’ve searched every street corner, morgue, and veteran’s organization from here to Detroit, but I’m going to keep at it.”

“Well, I know one person we haven’t used who might help you.”

“Oh, and who’s that?”

“Reggie.”

“
Our
Reggie? My football buddy Reggie? You-can’t-ride-the-RV-if-you-don’t-finish-your-homework Reggie?”

“The same. I promise that if anyone can help you find your Manny Ferris, he can.”

With each stroke of his spoon-shaped paddle, Franz Koller felt a million and a half richer. What other job could he even think of where he could make so much money for doing something that he loved so much? Whatever this newest windfall of steady business was all about, he’d take it, no questions asked.

Maybe he’d buy another house.

Koller ignored the spray as he powered through three-foot swells, kicked up by a steady offshore breeze. The spray skirt kept the boat from flooding, and practice with the ocean kayak he kept at his estate near Panama City, Florida, had made him expert at steering with the foot-controlled rudder system. He would have preferred to work in less blustery conditions, but the fog, now beginning to blanket the iron-colored sea, provided additional cover he could not resist.

The rolling Chesapeake swells aside, Koller was delighted to be on the hunt again. Executing a non-kill was far more rewarding than executing a lesson plan. He was certified to teach in a number of states under a number of names. In past years, the profession had been tolerable, and occasionally even stimulating. If it weren’t for being such an effective cover with flexible working hours, he wouldn’t spend another minute trying to educate the insipid brats.

Unless Dr. Tightass, as Koller had come to think of the anesthesiologist whose life he was about to terminate, broke with his routine, he would be entering the water at the end of Parker Avenue within the next ten minutes. Koller had put in his own seventeen-foot, carbon-colored Looksha two miles to the south. He had bought the touring kayak in a mammoth sporting goods store outside of Newport, and later that night had slept with the salesgirl who had sold it to him. Life was good.

Rowing the extra mile to intersect the doctor’s track was a precaution the killer had no trouble taking. It was best if the man believed he was alone on the water until the very end. Once the body was recovered, and once the time of death was established, there would be nothing suspicious for anyone to report to the police. Of course, that presumed there would even be a police investigation of any depth. But Koller knew there wouldn’t be. Details and working through minutiae were at the core of the non-kill.

Even with the rough conditions, Koller was barely breathing heavily when he reached the eastern side of the Alexander Ledge Lighthouse.
The wonder of adrenaline
, he thought. Grabbing hold of the rusted ladder, which ran halfway up the ninety-seven-foot-high granite tower, he checked the time. Despite the chop, he had still made it four minutes faster than the best of his three trial runs.

Details.

In another twenty minutes, anesthesiologist Dr. Thomas Landrew would complete his early morning paddle out to the ledge.

“One mile to dead time, Doc,” Koller said, checking his GPS and savoring the air, which was salty, but not as much so as at the ocean end of the largest estuary in the country.

He had shadowed Landrew for several days, deciding on the best way to dispatch him following the precepts of the non-kill. Early each morning, even when it was raining, Koller watched as the man embarked from the Parker Avenue put-in and paddled out to the lighthouse and back. The physician was fifty-seven, but his body could have been fifteen years younger than that.

The rigidity surrounding the man’s schedule was impressive. He rowed, then left for work at precisely the same time each day, and made a leisurely walkabout of his substantial property each evening when he returned home. The non-kill at its best required using a target’s weakness against him… or her. It was Landrew’s obsessiveness about time that would be his undoing.

Chilly waves crashed against the rocks at the base of the lighthouse. Taking advantage of a brief interlude between swells, Koller reached into his dry bag, resting atop the cockpit tray, to confirm its contents. The two tools he would need were stashed safely inside nylon drawstring bags-a small hammer and a syringe. The latter was kept safe in a protective plastic case, and filled with four hundred milligrams of succinylcholine, or “sux” as many anesthesiologists and emergency specialists referred to the magical drug. Koller removed the needle cap and tapped gently at the base of the syringe, encouraging a tiny crystal drop of death to bead out. He imagined the onset of the paralysis of Landrew’s muscles, especially the thick traps across the shoulder, and those chest muscles that were needed, along with the diaphragm, to breathe. A single shot of the massive dose he had chosen was all it would take to stop every muscle cold. Riding the swells, he rubbed his hands together vigorously, not so much to warm them, but to help contain his exuberance.

Over the sound of wind and waves, Koller heard the classical music Landrew liked to play when he paddled. Mozart-always Mozart. Hidden from view behind the lighthouse, Koller gauged the distance. He waited until the anesthesiologist tapped his paddle against the granite boulders before slipping out through the fog like a mirage.

“Hey there,” Koller called out.

Slightly breathless from his effort, Landrew did a double take, then shut off Mozart.

“I didn’t know anybody else was out here,” he said. “At this hour there seldom is. Where did you put in?”

Koller paddled toward the man’s kayak, keeping the syringe tucked securely under his leg.

“Just a bit south of Parker,” he said. “This is my first time out to the lighthouse. You?”

“Parker. I drop in at Parker every day.”

The doctor sounded curious, but not suspicious, Koller decided.

“Couldn’t have picked a better morning, eh?” the killer replied with a chuckle.

Drenched from ocean spray, Landrew’s silver hair escaped in spots from underneath his REI baseball cap. His distinguished good looks and best-that-money-could-buy gear were, Koller thought, a perfect compliment to his type A personality.

“If you like fog, you’re certainly getting the most out of the experience,” Landrew said, sounding just a bit rushed.

“I certainly am,” Koller agreed. “Mind if I anchor against your boat for just a moment? Mine’s pretty unsteady in these swells and I want to secure my dry bag.”

“I… suppose so.”

Okay, time’s up.

Koller pulled his craft alongside Landrew’s, which was downwind and closer to the lighthouse. The mark, seeming slightly annoyed now, leaned over to help steady the other boat. Oh, how Koller loved it when his mark helped him to make the kill. The lighthouse, as he anticipated, shielded both men from the steady roll of waves, benefiting him with additional stability. The classic Three Dog Night song “Joy to the World” popped into his head and brought an audible chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” Landrew asked.

“This is,” Koller said.

With serpentlike quickness, he tipped his kayak to starboard, giving him the additional inches he needed to reach the base of Landrew’s neck, focusing on a spot next to the spine. In virtually the same motion he drove the needle deep into the man’s trapezius muscle and depressed the plunger, dispensing the sux. He pushed a few feet away and watched with undisguised delight as the nature of the attack registered in his victim’s patrician face. Koller knew that beneath the man’s Patagonia jacket, Landrew’s muscles were already beginning to fasciculate-the individual fibers twitching and wriggling like so much spaghetti.

“What’s wrong?” Koller asked with a grin. “Ocean beauty leave you breathless?”

“Why?” the physician pleaded, fumbling with his paddle but getting nowhere.

“You all ask that same question,” the master of the non-kill replied. “Why is that?”

Then he laughed out loud.

With the sux working its magic, Landrew was motionless inside his kayak. His eyes were alert, though frozen in a horrified stare.

“Hey, fish got your tongue?” Koller asked, and laughed even louder.

Landrew’s body, still upright, began gently moving from side to side, lolled by the waves passing beneath his craft.

“Yes, that’s the effect of your old friend sux,” Koller said. “How many times in the OR have you used it on others? Hundreds? No, no, thousands. I’ll bet you can feel your heart racing in a desperate effort to get oxygen to your brain. Don’t bank on your brain winning that one.”

Landrew’s eyes remained fixed. Koller paddled forward and gripped the gunwale of the man’s boat.

“You’re a world-renowned anesthesiologist, Doctor,” Koller continued, “but I’ll bet I know succinylcholine as well as you do. Rapidly metabolized depolarizing neuromuscular blocker. Onset of action less than one minute. Half-life less than one minute. Breakdown product, succinic acid, won’t be looked for-especially not in a drowning victim. And yes, even if you can’t inhale, water will still get into your lungs passively, just from being submerged for an hour or so. So, who’s the expert? Ah, but there’s more.”

Koller reached into his dry bag and took out the hammer.

“I still needed to figure out how you were going to drown while wearing a life preserver,” he went on. “Want to guess how? Speechless? I understand. Okay, I’ll tell you, just like the police will tell the good widow Landrew. There was an accident, you see. A wave flipped your boat, or maybe you fainted from an irregular heart rhythm. Either way, you fell out of the kayak and tried your best to get back in. But then, gosh darnit, wouldn’t you know the kayak flipped over from a wave and the gunwale came snapping down onto your head. The blow knocked you unconscious. Floating facedown in the water, kept there by your life jacket, your lifeless body came to rest amidst those rocks over there.”

Landrew’s eyes remained open, but Koller knew he was already dead. He removed the REI baseball cap and tapped the hammer against the man’s scalp until blood oozed out from a small gash. With his gloved hand, Koller rubbed blood from the wound against the gunwale of the corpse’s boat, augmenting the smear with strands of hair ripped from Landrew’s scalp. He then loosened the spray skirt before flipping the kayak over, spilling the lifeless body into the sea.

“Nobody does it better,” Koller sang softly. “Makes you feel sad for the rest.”

He watched until the current carried the body and boat against the boulders at the base of the lighthouse.

Then, with several powerful strokes, he turned his kayak west and disappeared into the morning fog.

“Nicely done,” he said to himself.