Girl Missing - By Tess Gerritsen

AN INTRODUCTIONFROM THE AUTHOR

Years before I built my reputation as a thriller writer, I had another life – as a romantic suspense author. Fans of my crime novels may be surprised to learn that I launched my career by writing stories in which romance shared equal billing with murder, where characters struggle with both fear and sexual tension. At the time, I was working as a doctor in a hospital, a job in which I saw far too much pain and heartbreak at work. At the end of the day, I drew comfort from reading – and writing – romance novels.

But over the course of writing nine of those novels, I found that the thriller elements began to dominate my plots. I was evolving into a crime writer, and in Girl Missing (first published in 1994 under the title Peggy Sue Got Murdered), that evolution is well underway. Yes, it’s a romance. But it’s also a crime novel, featuring a female medical examiner who must track down the cause of an epidemic of mysterious deaths. I consider it my ‘bridge’ novel, a moment in time when I was poised to step from one genre into the next.

Recently updated for today’s readers, Girl Missing will give you a glimpse of the thriller writer I would one day become. I hope you enjoy the look back!

Tess Gerritsen

May 2009

1

An hour before her shift started, an hour before she was even supposed to be there, they rolled the first corpse through the door.

Up until that moment, Kat Novak’s day had been going better than usual. Her car had started on the first turn of the key. Traffic had been sparse on Telegraph, and she’d hit all the green lights. She’d managed to slip into her office at five to seven, and for the next hour she could lounge guiltlessly at her desk with a jelly doughnut and today’s edition of the Albion Herald. She made a point of skipping the obituaries. Chances were she already knew all about them.

Then a gurney with a black body bag rolled past her doorway. Oh Lord, she thought. In about thirty seconds, Clark was going to knock at her door, asking for favors. With a sense of dread, Kat listened to the gurney wheels grind down the hall. She heard the autopsy room doors whisk open and shut, heard the distant rumble of male voices. She counted ten seconds, fifteen. And there it was, just as she’d anticipated: the sound of Clark’s Reeboks squeaking across the linoleum floor.

He appeared in her doorway. ‘Morning, Kat,’ he said.

She sighed. ‘Good morning, Clark.’

‘Can you believe it? They just wheeled one in.’

‘Yeah, the nerve of them.’

‘It’s already seven ten,’ he said. A note of pleading crept into his voice. ‘If you could just do me this favor . . .’

‘But I’m not here.’ She licked a dollop of raspberry jelly from her fingers. ‘Until eight o’clock, I’m nothing more than a figment of your imagination.’

‘I don’t have time to process this one. Beth’s got the kids packed and ready to take off, and here I am, stuck with another Jane Doe. Have a heart.’

‘This is the third time this month.’

‘But I’ve got a family. They expect me to spend time with them. You’re a free agent.’

‘Right. I’m a divorcee, not a temp.’

Clark shuffled into her office and leaned his ample behind against her desk. ‘Just this once. Beth and I, we’re having problems, you know, and I want this vacation to start off right. I’ll return the favor sometime. I promise.’

Sighing, Kat folded up the Herald. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘What’ve you got?’

Clark was already pulling off his white coat, visibly shifting to vacation mode. ‘Jane Doe. No obvious trauma. Another body-fluid special. Sykes and Ratchet are in there with her.’

‘They bring her in?’

‘Yeah. So you’ll have a decent police report to work with.’

Kat rose to her feet and brushed powdered sugar off her scrub pants. ‘You owe me,’ she said, as they headed into the hall.

‘I know, I know.’ He stopped at his office and grabbed his jacket – a fly-fisherman’s version, complete with a zillion pockets with little feathers poking out.

‘Leave a few trout for the rest of us.’

He grinned and gave her a salute. ‘Into the wilds of Maine I go,’ he said, heading for the elevator. ‘See you next week.’

Feeling resigned, Kat pushed open the door to the autopsy room and went in.

The body, still sealed in its black bag, lay on the slab. Lieutenant Lou Sykes and Sergeant Vince