Last Surgeon Read Online Free PDF Page A

something. It had been two weeks since the last contract. How long would he be made to wait?
    He recalled with fondness the nurse from Charlotte, whom he had studied and then manipulated to ingest a lethal overdose of sleeping pills, complete with a handwritten suicide note.
    Nicely done.
    You call, Franz Koller delivers. The CSI goofs would have given up searching for clues in the nurse’s death before the first commercial. Koller heard the growing restlessness behind him and knew he was ignoring the class. Screw them. They were lucky he didn’t go out to the local poison gas store for some sarin.
    Sleepers and a suicide note. The woman was a magnificent non-kill-more intense than screwing a hundred Rebecca Woodorfs would have been. Belle Coates, first in her class at nursing school, fluent in three languages, was so exquisitely sexy, lying there naked, helpless, and utterly outmaneuvered, slipping away in the lukewarm water of her bathtub. Just watching her breathing slow and her head slip beneath the surface had given him a fearsome erection. He never even had to touch her. Sex was all about control, and how much more control could there be than-
    The classroom door opened and closed.
    Rebecca Woodorf returned from the bathroom, less shy and more confident.
    “You have some TP stuck on your shoe,” Koller said casually as she passed.
    The girl reddened, quickly glanced behind to see, then stared in confusion at her teacher.
    “Just kidding,” Koller said. “Gotcha.”
    This time, the laughter from her classmates was directed at her. Koller did nothing to stifle it. The girl’s shoulders sank under the humiliation as she scuffled back to her desk.
    Fun, fun, fun ’til her daddy takes the T-bird away
, Koller sang to himself.
    He sent a portly boy named Sommers to pass out a quiz left for them by their teacher. They were all quiet now, busily scribbling in their booklets, answering questions a sixth-grader should have known.
    Ten minutes more… ten min-
    His cell phone began ringing. The tone was AC/DC’s famous guitar riff from “Back in Black.” The students recognized the song immediately and looked up at Koller with surprise and reverence. Mr. Robert Greene was hip-the coolest chemistry teacher around.
    Their delight did not come close to Koller’s.
    “Who is it, Greene?” one of the class toughs called out. “One of your biker babes?”
    “I wouldn’t be caught dead on a motorcycle, Harcourt,” Koller said, flashing back to the contract on a surgeon from Chicago who rode his gleaming Harley into oblivion.
    The bolts supporting the front and rear calipers, carefully modified by the master of the non-kill, disconnected simultaneously at the top of a long 10 percent grade on the interstate. Under the best of circumstances, investigators would probably never have spotted the modification. In the case of Lewis Leonard, M.D., a tractor-trailer saw to it that there was no modification left to detect.
    Nicely done.
    “So what’s the call all about?” Harcourt asked far too loudly.
    “It’s nothing,” Koller said, bursting to tell the truth to the arrogant little shits, but knowing he wouldn’t. “Just an alert that an art dealer I like to buy things from has posted an item for bid on eBay. I get notified whenever he lists something new.”
    “What are you buying, a blow-up?”
    “Ever hear of sarin, Stankowsky?”
    “What?”
    “Nothing.”
    “What is it, then? What are you buying?”
    Koller glanced up at the clock. Four minutes before last bell.
    “Want to see?” he asked.
    Anything but chemistry.
    The class begged him in unison.
    He clicked a link in his e-mail and opened up an eBay product description and photo. Then he passed his cell phone around, allowing each student a chance to see the wooden desk lamp shaped like an old sailing ship that was now open for bids starting at $0.99.
    “That’s a piece of crap,” one student exclaimed. “Wal-Mart wouldn’t carry it.”
    There were