Surgeon – Chapter Twelve

NOT EDITED

Chapter Twelve

10:02 AM; MINNESOTA, THE SURGEON’S HOUSE, BASEMENT

Cleo looked up as the younger, green-eyed man came down the stairs. He slid a plate under Natalie’s cell door and another under Cleo’s. When their eyes met, he smiled softly. “Hi,” he greeted.

Cleo swallowed roughly as she climbed off the bed. “Hi.”. She crossed the room, wrapping her hands around the cell bars. “Who are you?” she asked.

He tilted his head to the side, debating. After what felt like an eternity, he finally offered up, “Gordon,” as an answer.

“Gordon,” Cleo repeated. “I–I’m…” She licked her lips nervously, recalling that she wasn’t supposed to use her real name around these maniacs. “I’m Lauren.”

Gordon wrapped a hand around hers. “I know.” He stepped back, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I’ll be back down to get your plates. Eat up. You need your strength, especially you, Brooke,” he said, looking over at Natalie. The girl nodded, but she didn’t give a verbal response. Gordon cleared his throat. “I’ll be back soon to collect your plates. Umm… enjoy.”

“Enjoy,” Cleo whispered as he walked back toward the stairs. Once the door at the top closed, she leaned her forehead against the bars, closing her eyes. “Why do you ‘especially’ need your strength?”

“I don’t know. They’ve talked about… things before. Alluded to them, I guess. But I haven’t been able to piece anything together. Whatever it is, after it happens, you’ll probably meet a new Brooke.”

“My God. Don’t say that. You’re not gonna die, Natalie. You’re going to be okay. We are going to be okay.” Cleo waited for a response. When she didn’t get one, she turned toward the wall between them. She wished so desperately that she could see the girl. “Natalie? We’re going to be okay.”

“We’ll see.”

11:25 AM; CHESTERWICK, MOE AND ELLEN LAW’S HOUSE, LIVING ROOM

“I can’t believe I didn’t notice my own son was missing,” Ellen Law whispered.

Jacob offered a sympathetic smile. “I’m so very sorry for your loss, Ellen, Moe. I know it’s so hard not to feel guilty or like you could’ve done more, but your son’s death is not your fault. It never will be. He doesn’t live with you, Ellen. It isn’t your fault that you didn’t know he was missing. You never could’ve known, not this soon,” he said. “Do you remember the last time that you spoke to him?”

“New Year’s eve, I-I guess,” Ellen said. “He, umm… he was going on a date that night. I–I didn’t even think anything of it when he didn’t call to tell me how things went. I just…”

“Ellen, this isn’t your fault,” Jacob repeated. He leaned forward, laying a hand over top of Ellen’s hand. “You have to know that,” he added. Beside him, Bo shifted uncomfortably, uncrossing his legs to cross them the opposite way. “You can ask them anything you want to. I wouldn’t have brought you along if I didn’t want you to help.”

Bo forced himself to nod. “Mrs. Law, I’m sorry to ask, but do you know who your son was going on a date with that evening?”

“Umm… I–I don’t remember her name. I think he texted it to me.” She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and opened up her texts with her son. “Here you go,” she practically whispered, handing her phone over to Bo. He wrote the name out on the notepad sitting on his leg.

Cleo Marshall. That was a start.

2:35 PM; CLINSTONE POLICE DEPARTMENT, LAB

Bo sat down at the table in the lab, opening up his laptop. He ran Cleo Marshall’s name through the system but received no hits on any missing person’s reports. Of course. It was never that easy. He brought up a copy of her license instead. His fingers froze above the mousepad.

Five-foot-eleven. Blonde hair. Green eyes. Born on November second, 1975.

Bo’s brow furrowed as he quickly flipped open his red notebook. He scanned over the information written on Tess Brown’s sticky note.

Five-foot-eleven. Blonde hair. Green eyes. Born on November fifth, 1975.

“Austen.”

Bo looked up at the sound of Jacob’s voice. The detective stood in the doorway, one hand on either side of the doorframe. “Wh-what can I do for you?” Bo asked, mind still reeling from the obvious and undeniable similarities between Tess Brown and Cleo Marshall.

“We have a crime scene. Just you and me,” Jacob said.

“Umm… Yeah. Sure, okay.”

Jacob frowned. “You find somethin’?”

“Maybe. I don’t know yet. It isn’t worth getting into until I do.” He closed the lid of his laptop, shoved it back into his messenger bag. “I’ll fill you in as soon as I know more.”

Jacob nodded. “Sounds like a solid plan. In the meantime, let’s roll.”

2:45 PM; CLINSTONE, JANE BISHOP’S APARTMENT, BEDROOM

Bo held his camera up to his face and snapped a quick picture of the victim. One hand wrapped around the underside of the lens, he held the camera against his chest. “She didn’t put up much of a fight,” he said quietly. He lifted his camera, took one last picture, and held it out to Jacob. “You still want me to be me?” Bo asked.

“Of course. Be you.”

“Then take the camera, please.” Wordlessly, Jacob did. Bo walked to the doorway, hands locked behind his back as his eyes scanned the room. The mess of the room was all one big clue, but the little pieces of that mess—those were each individual clues, individual pieces of the puzzle. If you knew how to jigsaw them back together, you could get a pretty good idea of a victim’s last moments. Of course, it was all just a guess. An educated one, led by clues and observations, but without video footage, it would always be a guess.

“Jane’s doing homework, Intro to Psychology, when she hears a noise,” Bo said, his gaze falling on the open Psychology book on the floor of the room. “She stands up, leaving her phone and earphones on the nightstand,” he said, pointing in the direction of the nightstand. Jacob followed the gesture, his eyes inevitably landing on the cell phone in question. “She walks here, to the doorway. She grabs either side of the doorframe, leans out into the hall,” Bo said, using the first two fingers of his right hand to trace the line of fingerprints on the door jamb, fingerprints he had already dusted and identified as those belonging to the victim, not the killer. “She waits, doesn’t hear anything else, so she turns around and starts to head back for the bed.”

He took a step back, turning to face the bed. “He comes down the hall and grabs her from behind. I assume he chloroformed her, a cloth being placed over her mouth. I won’t know that for sure until I get her into the morgue.” Bo pulled off a glove, scratched at his hairline, pulled the glove back on. “She panics, throws them both back against the bookcase,” he said, tracing a vertical line in the air in the direction of the bookcase and the collapsed shelf, the fourth one from the bottom. “He doesn’t release her, though. He holds on until the chloroform—again, that’s just an assumption—takes hold.

“He pushes the Psychology book to the floor and sets her on the bed.” Bo crossed the room and turned the victim’s head to the side. “See this mark?” Jacob took a small step forward, nodding. “Twenty-six gauge Hypodermic needle, I’d guess half an inch in length. Again, I’ll verify that when I get her to the morgue. I could hazard a guess as to what it was filled with, but I couldn’t give you any solid answers at this moment. I’ll know more with some testing.”

He looked up at Jacob. “Am I freaking you out yet? You said you wanted me to be me, but you look like you might pass out.”

Jacob shook his head quickly. “No, not freaking me out. I’m just taking it all in.” He vaguely waved a hand over the room. “Keep being you.”

Bo offered a terse nod. “Whatever he injected her with was likely to keep her from moving or from coming to as she was being cut into. I should have a better answer by the end of the day, but for now, all I can truly say is that it was probably some time of analgetic or paralytic. Either would’ve done the job he needed it to. Regardless of what it was, she was still alive when both breasts were cut off. The surgical precision of the cuts confirms an inability to struggle, and the lack of evidence of her being bound anywhere also helps lend credence to the analgetic or paralytic theory.”

Jacob’s lips parted for a moment as he struggled to process any real, fully structured sentences. “Bo Austen, you are a fucking genius. I know you don’t wanna hear that, but it’s true.”

“I’m not entirely sure that a load of assumptions about a crime scene makes me a genius.”

“Well-informed assumptions require intellect. Ask how I know.”

One corner of Bo’s mouth curled upward ever so slightly. “Thank you.” He pulled off a glove and scratched the back of his neck. “I say we get her back to the morgue and let me work some more magic there.”

Jacob smiled. “Hell yeah, Austen. Let’s roll.”

---

Enjoying the story? Consider dropping a comment or a like down below!!

---