Surgeon – Chapter Twenty-Six

NOT EDITED

Chapter Twenty-Six

12:45 PM; CLINSTONE, THE JOHNSON HOUSEHOLD, LIVING ROOM

“Whatcha thinking?” Jacob asked, tilting his head to the side.

“That the younger guy killed one girl this morning, and the older guy killed two people an hour ago,” he said. “Besides that, I’m still working out how this went.”

“We don’t have to know exactly how it happened. We never really do unless there’s footage, you know? I just have to know how they died and when they died.”

“I know that. But… I have to know how it happened. It’ll drive me insane otherwise,” Bo said. “Okay, Surgeon peeks in through the living room window, sees that Marion and Mike are asleep in their chairs, an old movie playing on TV. He comes in through the patio door, sneaks up behind Mike, Hypodermic to the neck. Mike wakes up and shoves Surgeon back before he can press the plunger down.”

“So… Mike wasn’t injected with etorphine on the first try?” Jacob asked.

Bo shook his head. “No, there’s more than one puncture mark on his neck,” he said, touching all three marks on Mike’s neck with his gloved fingers. “Mike stands up with enough force to knock his chair over,” Bo said, nudging the arm chair with the toe of his shoe. “The commotion wakes Marion up, and she runs out of the room. Mike and Surgeon fight and Surgeon goes through the glass coffee table. Mike doesn’t have the wounds to have been the one to go through it. Just like his fingerprint, his blood’s not in the system. Mike’s winded, so Surgeon gets him in the neck again. Mike fights him off and runs into the kitchen to retrieve a knife.

“Surgeon follows him—he’s bleeding, as you can see,” Bo said, tracing an invisible line over the blood drops on the carpeted floor. “Mike has a knife by the time Surgeon gets in here,” he said, stepping into the kitchen. Jacob followed, gaze focused on the blood trail as he stepped over it. “Mike gets one good swipe in on Surgeon before the etorphine is successfully injected into his neck. Adrenaline keeps him from going down right away. Surgeon grabs the knife and drives it into Mike’s abdomen. Mike hits the ground, back against the counter, and bleeds out in three or four minutes.

“Surgeon walks down the hall and finds Marion in the closet.” Bo stepped into the bedroom, peered into the closet. By all the clothes and hangers she’s pulled down in here, she grabbed ahold of everything and anything she could to try and keep him from pulling her out. He chloroforms Marion near the closet and carries her back to the bed. He draws her blood, inner arm. I’ll find out how many pints back in the morgue. He injects her with etorphine and removes a two inch square above her lip and onto her cheek.”

He tossed an open wallet to Jacob. “It’s a beauty mark. That’s what he removed. Natalie Lambert, whoever Surgeon wants her to be, is supposed to have a beauty mark.”

“Your ability to walk through a scene like that amazes me every single time,” Jacob said.

“It’s not me. It’s the blood. You just… You have to let the blood talk to you, and if you do that, you can piece together anything,” he said softly.

2:05 PM; CLINSTONE POLICE DEPARTMENT, MORGUE

“Mike Johnson. Seventh found victim. Time of death, around eleven o’clock this morning. Drugged with etorphine, killed by blood loss. Abdominal wound caused by a fully serrated, four and three-quarter inch full tang point steak knife,” Bo said. “Marion Johnson. Eighth found victim. Time of death, roughly eleven-forty AM. Chloroformed, two pints of O-negative blood taken, drugged with etorphine. Beauty mark above lip removed with a number ten scalpel.”

Jacob nodded. “Breasts, brows, beauty mark…” With the items ticked off on his first three fingers, he raised an eyebrow in Bo’s direction. “What’s left?”

Bo leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. “Lips, ears, nose,” he said. “Unless Natalie’s nose needed to be substantiously larger than it is, I imagine he surgically ‘fixed’ her nose. If it needed to be smaller or straighter or more angular, it would’ve been easier to do by chiseling and carving rather than… slicing and dicing and implanting,” he said quietly. “Cleo Marshall, however, has a very dainty nose, and I guarantee you that in the next few days, someone is going to lose a nose to replace Cleo’s current one.”

“Ah… lovely,” Jacob said quietly.

“Right.” Bo cleared his throat. “Do you think you could get me the nine-one-one call for the Johnson scene?”

“You betcha. Can I ask why?” Jacob asked.

“I checked the Johnson’s home phone for prints, just to see, and… I found nothing. It had been wiped clean. Your average person isn’t going to wipe down their phone, especially the part that doesn’t touch their face.” The corner of Bo’s mouth scrunched up. “I think the Surgeon called it in, and if I can just hear his voice…”

“You want to memorize it,” Jacob said.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, kid, I’ll get it for you.”

Bo had given up on reminding Jacob he was not the young college student he appeared to be. Instead, he took the compliment. He didn’t get many that weren’t about his brain, anyway. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” Jacob cleared his throat. “You want a coffee refill?”

Bo shook his head. “I don’t drink coffee after noon.”

“All righty. I’ll go talk to dispatch. Be back in a few.”

2:57 PM; CLINSTONE, ROSE ANDERSON’S APARTMENT, BEDROOM

“Rose Anderson, twenty-one years old,” Bo said quietly, snapping a picture of the side of Rose’s head. “Ears removed, couple extra centimeters of skin removed around the base of each ear.” Pressing a knee to the side of the mattress, he leaned across Rose’s body to get a picture of the other side of her head.

“So… the next victim will be missing her lips?” Jacob asked.

“That would be my assumption.” Bo dropped his foot back the ground, wrapping a hand around the lens of his camera as he looked around the room. “He was able to sneak up on her without any troubles. There are no signs of struggle.”

“And ‘he’ would be the younger one in this case?” Jacob asked.

“Correct.” Bo picked up the cell phone on the nightstand, dropping his hand from his camera. It thudded dully against his chest before settling in its place. He pressed the home button and tilted it down until the light in the room reflected on the screen.

“Whatcha doing?”

“Cracking her passcode. One. Four. Six. Zero,” he said quietly. He tilted the phone back toward himself, using his thumb to try the first combination. One-zero-four-six. The screen unlocked and took him to the home screen, a picture of Rose and a boy, presumably her boyfriend.

“One try?” Jacob asked. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Bo snorted. “Practice, Jake. Lots of practice.” And a hell of a lot of luck, but for theatrics, Bo chose to keep that one to himself. He opened up her phone application and scrolled over to the recent calls section. “Nine-one-one was the last number she called, and I guarantee you that she wasn’t the one that called it in.”

“Which means we might just have both of their voices on record,” Jacob said.

Bo cracked an extremely faint smile. “Bingo.”

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