Free The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen

labeled
Sterling
, the other
Ortiz
. He produced a dozen photographs, which he spread out on the table. Images of the two women when they were alive, some dating all the way back to childhood.
    “You haven’t seen some of these photos. I asked their families to provide them, just to give us a sense of the history of these women. Look at their faces. Study who they were as people. Why did the unsub choose
them
? Where did he see them? What was it about them that caught his eye? A laugh? A smile? The way they walked down a city street?”
    He began to read from a typewritten sheet.
    “Diana Sterling, thirty years old. Blond hair, blue eyes. Five foot seven, one hundred twenty-five pounds. Occupation: travel agent. Workplace: Newbury Street. Residence: Marlborough Street in the Back Bay. A graduate of Smith College. Her parents are both attorneys, who live in a two-million-dollar home in Connecticut. Boyfriends: none at the time of her death.”
    He put that sheet of paper down, picked up another.
    “Elena Ortiz, twenty-two years old. Hispanic. Black hair, brown eyes. Five foot two, one hundred four pounds. Occupation: retail clerk in her family’s floral business in the South End. Residence: an apartment in the South End. Education: high school graduate. Has lived all her life in Boston. Boyfriends: none at the time of her death.”
    He looked up. “Two women who lived in the same city but moved in different universes. They shopped at different stores, ate at different restaurants, and had no friends in common. How does our unsub find them?
Where
does he find them? Not only are they different from each other; they’re different from the usual sex crime victim. Most perps attack the vulnerable members of society. Prostitutes or hitchhikers. Like any hunting carnivore, they stalk the animal who’s at the edge of the herd. So why choose these two?” Zucker shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    Rizzoli looked at the photos on the table, and an image of Diana Sterling caught her eye. It showed a beaming young woman, the brand-new Smith College grad in her cap and gown. The golden girl. What would it be like to be a golden girl? Rizzoli wondered. She had no idea. She’d grown up the scorned sister of two strappingly handsome brothers, the desperate little tomboy who only wanted to be one of the gang. Surely Diana Sterling, with her aristocratic cheekbones and her swan neck, had never known what it was like to be shut out, excluded. She’d never known what it was like to be ignored.
    Rizzoli’s gaze paused on the gold pendant dangling around Diana’s throat. She picked up the photo and took a closer look. Pulse accelerating, she glanced around the room to see if any of the other cops had registered what she had just noticed, but no one was looking at her or the photos; they were focused on Dr. Zucker.
    He had unfurled a map of Boston. Overlaid on the grid of city streets were two shaded areas, one encompassing the Back Bay, the other limited to the South End.
    “These are the known activity spaces for our two victims. The neighborhoods they lived in and worked in. All of us tend to conduct our day-to-day lives in familiar areas. There’s a saying among geographic profilers:
Where we go depends upon what we know, and what we know depends on where we go.
This is true for both victims and perps. You can see, from this map, the separate worlds in which these two women lived. There’s no overlap. No common anchor point or node in which their lives intersected. This is what puzzles me most. It’s key to the investigation. What is the link between Sterling and Ortiz?”
    Rizzoli’s gaze dropped back to the photo. To the gold pendant dangling at Diana’s throat.
I could be wrong. I can’t say anything, not until I’m certain, or it’ll be one more thing Darren Crowe will use to ridicule me.
    “You’re aware there’s another twist to this case?” said Moore. “Dr. Catherine Cordell.”
    Zucker nodded. “The