Under The Knife. Tess Gerritsen

swung around and scanned the street behind her. An old man was shuffling down the sidewalk. A couple was pushing a baby in a stroller. Gaudy shirts fluttered on an outdoor clothing rack. Nothing out of the ordinary. Or so it seemed….

      The light changed to green. She dashed across the street and didn’t stop running until she’d reached her apartment.

      She began to pack. As she threw her belongings into a suitcase, she was still debating her next move. The plane to San Francisco would take off at midnight; her brother would put her up for a while, no questions asked. He was good that way. He understood that everyone had a secret, everyone was running away from something.

      It doesn’t have to be this way, a stray voice whispered in her head. You could go to the police….

       And tell them what? The truth about Jenny Brook? Do I tear apart an innocent life?

      She began to pace the apartment, thinking, fretting. As she walked past the living-room mirror, she caught sight of her own reflection, her blond hair in disarray, her eyes smudged with mascara. She hardly recognized herself; fear had transformed her face into a stranger’s.

      It only takes a single phone call, a confession. A secret, once revealed, is no longer dangerous….

      She reached for the telephone. With unsteady hands she dialed Kate Chesne’s home phone number. Her heart sank when, after four rings, a recording answered, followed by the message beep.

      She cleared the fear from her throat. “This is Ann Richter,” she said. “Please, I have to talk to you. It’s about Ellen. I know why she died.”

      Then she hung up and waited for the phone to ring.

      * * *

      IT WAS HOURS before Kate heard the message.

      After she left the pier that afternoon, she drove aimlessly for a while, avoiding the inevitable return to her empty house. It was Friday night. T.G.I.F. She decided to treat herself to an evening out. So she had supper alone at a trendy little seaside grill where everyone but her seemed to be having a grand old time. The steak she ordered was utterly tasteless and the chocolate mousse so cloying she could barely force it down her throat. She left an extravagant tip, almost as an apology for her lack of appetite.

      Next she tried a movie. She found herself wedged between a fidgety eight-year-old boy on one side and a young couple passionately making out on the other.

      She walked out halfway through the film. She never did remember the title—only that it was a comedy, and she hadn’t laughed once.

      By the time she got home, it was ten o’clock. She was half undressed and sitting listlessly on her bed when she noticed that the telephone message light was blinking. She let the messages play back as she wandered over to the closet.

      “Hello, Dr. Chesne, this is Four East calling to tell you Mr. Berg’s blood sugar is ninety-eight…. Hello, this is June from Dr. Avery’s office. Don’t forget the Quality Assurance meeting on Tuesday at four…. Hi, this is Windward Realty. Give us a call back. We have a listing we think you’d like to see….”

      She was hanging up her skirt when the last message played back.

      “This is Ann Richter. Please, I have to talk to you. It’s about Ellen. I know why she died….”

      There was the click of the phone hanging up, and then a soft whir as the tape automatically rewound. Kate scrambled back to the recorder and pressed the replay button. Her heart was racing as she listened again to the agonizingly slow sequence of messages.

      “It’s about Ellen. I know why she died….”

      Kate grabbed the phone book from her nightstand. Ann’s address and phone number were listed; her line was busy. Again and again Kate dialed but she heard only the drone of the busy signal.

      She slammed down the receiver and knew immediately what she had to do next.

      She hurried back to the closet and yanked the skirt from its hanger. Quickly, feverishly, she began to dress.

      * * *

      THE TRAFFIC HEADING into Waikiki was bumper-to-bumper.

      As usual, the streets were crowded with a bizarre mix of tourists and off-duty soldiers and street people, all of them moving in the surreal glow of city lights. Palm trees cast their spindly shadows against the buildings. An otherwise distinguished-looking gentleman was flaunting his white legs and Bermuda shorts. Waikiki was where one came to see the ridiculous, the outrageous. But tonight, Kate found the view through her car window frightening—all those faces, drained of color under the glow of streetlamps, and the soldiers, lounging drunkenly in nightclub doorways. A wild-eyed evangelist stood on the corner, waving a Bible as he shouted “The end of the world is near!”

      As she pulled up at a red light, he turned and stared at her and for an instant she thought she saw, in his burning eyes, a message meant only for her. The light turned green. She sent the car lurching through the intersection. His shout faded away.

      She was still jittery ten minutes later when she climbed the steps to Ann’s apartment building. As she reached the door, a young couple exited, allowing Kate to slip into the lobby.

      It took a moment for the elevator to arrive. Leaning back against the wall, she forced herself to breathe deeply and let the silence of the building calm her nerves. By the time she finally stepped into the elevator, her heart had stopped its wild hammering. The doors slid closed. The elevator whined upward. She felt a strange sense of unreality as she watched the lights flash in succession: three, four, five. Except for a faint hydraulic hum, the ride was silent.

      On the seventh floor, the doors slid open.

      The corridor was deserted. A dull green carpet stretched out before her. As she walked toward number 710, she had the strange sensation that she was moving in a dream, that none of this was real—not the flocked wallpaper or the door looming at the end of the corridor. Only as she reached it did she see it was slightly ajar. “Ann?” she called out.

      There was no answer.

      She gave the door a little shove. Slowly it swung open and she froze, taking in, but not immediately comprehending, the scene before her: the toppled chair, the scattered magazines, the bright red splatters on the wall. Then her gaze followed the trail of crimson as it zigzagged across the beige carpet, leading inexorably toward its source: Ann’s body, lying facedown in a lake of blood.

      Beeps issued faintly from a telephone receiver dangling off an end table. The cold, electronic tone was like an alarm, screaming at her to move, to take action. But she remained paralyzed; her whole body seemed stricken by some merciful numbness.

      The first wave of dizziness swept over her. She crouched down, clutching the doorframe for support. All her medical training, all those years of working around blood, couldn’t prevent this totally visceral response. Through the drumbeat of her own heart she became aware of another sound, harsh and irregular. Breathing. But it wasn’t hers.

      Someone else was in the room.

      A flicker of movement drew her gaze across to the living room mirror. Only then did she see the man’s reflection. He was cowering behind a cabinet, not ten feet away.

      They spotted each other in the mirror at the same instant. In that split second, as the reflection of his eyes met hers, she imagined she saw, in those hollows, the darkness beckoning to her. An abyss from which there was no escape.

      He opened his mouth as if to speak but no words came out, only an unearthly hiss, like a viper’s warning just before it strikes.

      She lurched wildly to her feet. The room spun past her eyes with excruciating slowness as she turned to flee. The corridor stretched out endlessly before her. She heard her own scream echo off the walls; the sound was as unreal as the image of the hallway flying past.

      The stairwell door lay at the other end. It was her only feasible escape route. There was no time to wait for elevators.