Page 22 of Sharp Force (Kay Scarpetta #29)

“Please, God, no.” I groan, turning on the bedside lamp.

“Who is it?” Benton mumbles into his pillow, and I tell him. “Dammit.” He sits up as my phone continues buzzing like a giant insect.

“Good morning, Marino,” I answer, touching the icon for speakerphone. “I have a feeling you’re not calling to wish us bon voyage.” I rub my temples, a bit hungover.

“I’m sorry as hell, Doc,” he says, and I can tell he’s outside near an airport, a jet passing low overhead. “I want to make sure you hear from me what’s going on. Then you can decide what you want to do about it.” He’s keyed up and talking fast.

“What’s happened?” I retrieve my notebook and pen from the bedside drawer.

“The Phantom Slasher just struck again exactly like you were afraid would happen,” he replies. “I almost can’t believe it.”

“Please don’t tell me Dana Diletti…” I start to say.

“Here we were worrying about her all night, but that’s not who he went after. It makes me wonder if siccing the fake ghost on her was to send us down the wrong rabbit hole,” Marino says. “We’re so busy thinking she’s the next to get whacked and meanwhile the Slasher has his sights set elsewhere.”

I jot down the date, December 25. Christmas. Benton plumps pillows behind him, sitting up, listening as he unlocks his phone.

“Two victims here in Alexandria,” Marino goes on.

“The female, a psychiatrist, is dead in bed. The male victim still alive, Zain Willard, twenty-three years old, a grad student at William & Mary. He’s an intern at the White House based on the ID badge and other personal effects I found at the scene. ”

“Willard? As in Senator Calvin Willard who’s running for president?” I ask while Benton scrolls through communications on his phone’s secure messaging app.

“I’m told that’s his uncle, explaining Zain Willard’s cushy gig in the West Wing and why the feds are rolling in. We can expect a shit show. It’s not a good time to be headed out on vacation,” Marino advises as if I’m a slacker.

“What about the female victim?” I turn the page in my notebook. “Do we have a name?”

“Georgine Duvall,” he replies, a chill of disbelief touching me. “The house where it happened belongs to her.”

“I may know who that is.” I look at Benton. “If it’s the same Georgine Duvall, we were acquainted back in Lucy’s UVA days.”

More than acquainted, it drums in my mind. I knew the psychiatrist well.

“Born in Charlottesville, D.O.B. August one, nineteen-sixty-five,” Marino recites. “Her husband, Liam Duvall, died eight years ago, according to what I found on the internet without asking Janet since she’s on my shit list at the moment.”

“It’s the same person based on information I’m getting as we’re talking,” Benton confirms.

“How awful.” I’m stunned. “What makes you so sure it’s the same killer? Let’s start with that.”

“The M.O. included the ghost levitating through the fog, and I saw it for myself this time.” Marino’s voice sounds excited. “Got to admit it’s enough to give you a heart attack.”

“Saw it where?” Benton frowns.

“I was out riding with Fruge,” Marino says. “It’s a long story, but put it this way. After I got home last night, Dorothy was in a bad enough snit that she told me to take a hike. So I did and thought I may as well make myself useful.”

He explains that Blaise Fruge is working through the night, and Marino decided to ride along. She picked him up at his house, and they weren’t far from Mercy Island when the call came in at 3:45 a.m.

“As we rolled up on the scene, Fruge and me saw the fake ghost,” he’s saying. “It crossed the street right in front of us.”

“Are you at the scene now?” I ask him. “It sounds like you’re outdoors near an airport?”

“That’s because I’m about a mile downriver from Washington National, standing in a gazebo on Mercy Island freezing my ass off. It’s stopped sleeting and raining at least. But the fog’s so bad I can’t see across the river.”

“Mercy Island? Oh, God. Of all places,” I reply with growing dismay.

I think about the skeletal remains Cate Kingston showed me as I was leaving the office yesterday.

“Georgine Duvall is on the hospital staff and owns one of the ritzy residences on the grounds,” Marino is saying. “As usual the Slasher knocked out the Wi-Fi, and I had to walk around in the freezing rain until I could find a cell signal.”

“Meanwhile who’s guarding the scene?” I’m writing down the details.

“I’ve got Fruge posted at the front door. She’s keeping everybody out,” Marino says. “Trust me, nobody’s getting anywhere near the body until you say. Or Doc Schlaefer does. Depending on what you decide. I realize you’re not supposed to be working right now.”

“Have you notified him?” I’m sure I know the answer.

“I didn’t wake him up yet, wanted to talk to you once I had an idea what we’re dealing with. If it was me, I wouldn’t want anyone else handling this.”

Marino hopes and expects that I’ll respond to the scene myself instead of the deputy chief covering for me while I’m on vacation. Benton is busy texting, and I can tell he’s been notified about the same case as I would expect.

I watch him in the uneven glow of lamplight, his sharp features accentuated by shadows as he types another message. Looking up, he meets my eyes. He grimly shakes his head, and I know what’s going to happen. Or better yet, what won’t happen.

La scritta è sul muro. I hear my late Italian mother’s voice in my head.

The writing is on the wall, as she used to say, and I know it’s for the best. This is a terrible time to go anywhere, but that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed.

Benton and I have been looking forward to our trip for the better part of a year.

Just like that, it’s another ruined dream, another canceled plan.

“Georgine Duvall was killed in bed, stabbed multiple times, her throat cut.” Marino offers more details that are depressingly familiar.

“It looks like she bled out really fast and was dead or about dead when the Slasher started biting her before pouring bleach everywhere. The same thing we’ve seen in the first three cases. ”

“And the victim who survived, Zain Willard?” I’m taking notes. “What happened to him?”

“He’s sliced up pretty good and in the hospital. But expected to be okay.”

“He and the murdered woman were sleeping together when attacked?” I’m trying to imagine the scenario.

“I’m pretty sure they didn’t have that kind of relationship,” Marino says.

“Based on?”

“For one thing, she’s old enough to be his mother.”

“That doesn’t mean much,” I reply.

“I’m not sure of his persuasion, based on how he looks. If you get my drift.”

“Let’s not make assumptions,” I suggest, and now Benton is writing back and forth with Lucy.

I’m gathering from glimpses of Benton’s texts that Lucy and Tron have arrived on the grounds of Mercy Psychiatric Hospital. They’ll search for the signal jammer that caused the Wi-Fi outage. I imagine them in tactical gear, tracking the invisible with spectrum analyzers and portable antennas.

“The victims were in different rooms on different floors,” Marino continues to explain over speakerphone.

“Zain Willard was ambushed after he heard screaming and came downstairs. The power was out and still is. It was too dark to see anything. He pretended to be dead until he was sure the coast was clear. Or that’s his story. ”

“Any reason to suspect he killed Georgine Duvall and staged it to look like the Slasher?” I ask.

“You know me, everybody’s a suspect,” Marino says as Benton leans closer to my phone.

“Morning, Pete. Benton here,” he says.

“Well, I sure as hell hope it’s you at this hour or the doc’s got some explaining to do,” Marino wisecracks. “I’m surprised you’re still home. I figured you’d be on your way to the Situation Room by now. Or maybe to Langley, the land of spooks and nuts.”

He references the CIA for some odd reason.

“This is four times in the past six months that a health professional has been targeted.” Benton skims through information Lucy is sending him. “What’s significant this time is the location.”

“Our favorite cuckoo’s nest,” Marino says. “Makes me wonder if the Slasher has some personal connection to the place. Maybe a former techie-genius patient.”

“Do we have any idea how the killer accessed the house where this happened?” Benton asks.

“No sign of forcible entry,” Marino says.

“No footprints coming or going by the time we got there except for the cop who entered the house to check on the female victim. She was obviously dead. You could see the bloody trail from when Zain Willard left the house to find a phone signal. But the conditions were bad then and only worse now, everything melting.”

“What about tire tracks?” Benton asks. “The killer had to get to the scene somehow. Unless he was already there.”

“When the first officer arrived at the entrance to the island, there were no tire tracks on the road leading to the house. That’s what he claims.”

“Unless the tire tracks were there and the rain eradicated them,” Benton suggests.

“Weird that you know the murdered psychiatrist, Doc,” Marino says, and I’ve never mentioned Georgine Duvall to him.

At the time, it was none of his business.

“It’s been many years since we last had contact,” I explain. “I didn’t realize she’d moved to Alexandria or that her husband died. Last I knew they were living on a horse farm in Charlottesville.”

“Apparently, she sold the place and moved eight years ago. Her primary residence is now in Yorktown.” It’s Benton saying this. “She uses her home on Mercy Island when she needs to be on site at the hospital. And Zain Willard has stayed there before. Multiple times.”

“How do you know when he’s stayed there? You got a fucking Ouija board or something?” Marino’s voice over speakerphone isn’t gracious about it.

“Georgine Duvall and her house on Mercy Island are listed in his background information. It’s where he stays when he’s working at the White House,” Benton says. “Typically, when William & Mary breaks for the summer and holidays.”

“Do we know what she was doing at the hospital? Possibly, seeing patients?” I inquire. “When did she get there? How long ago?”

I envision the psychiatrist’s strong face and warm dark eyes.

I remember her soothing voice with its lilting Virginia accent, and I’m gripped by guilt.

I didn’t agree with her ideas and methods.

But I liked her. I should have tried to keep in touch.

It was up to me to reach out, and I didn’t because of Lucy.

“When I’ve worked deaths on Mercy Island, I’ve never heard Georgine Duvall mentioned,” I tell Benton and Marino. “I’ve never seen her name on any paperwork, what little I manage to get from the staff.”

“She started there around the time her husband died, according to intel I’m getting from Lucy,” Benton says, and I worry how she’s reacting to the news about her former psychiatrist’s brutal death.

Early in my career, Georgine Duvall directed the mental health services at the University of Virginia. Lucy was a student there, her freshman year a difficult one personally. Tormented by emotions she didn’t understand, she was drinking too much and engaging in reckless behavior.

Intensive and frequent counseling sessions with Georgine went on for months before Lucy quit without explanation. The most I could get out of her was that she no longer found the therapy helpful.

“Was Zain Willard renting a room from Georgine Duvall?” I ask, propped up in bed, writing down the information. “I’m wondering why he was staying with her and had before.”

“All I know is what Zain Willard told the first responding officer.” Marino’s big voice sounds inside the bedroom. “Zain and Georgine Duvall had moved into her house on Mercy Island two weeks ago.”

“Meaning, the Slasher must have been watching and knew her whereabouts,” Benton says. “He’s probably been spying on her with his hologram. Which you claimed to see when you arrived at the scene, Pete?”

“It’s not what I claim,” he cranks. “I saw it, as did other people. Fruge and me were parking when the thing appeared as the ambulance was driving away with Zain Willard.”

“Describe it,” Benton says.

“The same figure in black, his eyes glowing red, exactly what Dana Diletti saw inside her bedroom. He was waving a big knife around, and I almost pulled out my gun. A lot of good it would have done to shoot a damn ghost.”

“I’ll point out that attacking two victims and leaving one of them alive is a deviation from the previous cases,” Benton says. “Those women lived alone. Their bodies weren’t found for several days.”

“My guess is Georgine Duvall was the intended target, and the Slasher didn’t realize more than one person was in the house,” Marino answers. “He was caught off guard.”

“That’s quite an oversight for someone who obsessively stalks and spies.” Benton pushes off the bedcovers.

“Obviously, he’s losing control the same way Bundy did in the end when he went on his rampage in the Florida sorority house.” Marino holds forth as if he’s the profiler.

“There are departures from what we’ve seen in the previous cases.” Benton climbs out of bed. “Considering the details all over the internet, we have to worry about copycats.”

“I don’t believe a copycat did what I just saw.” Marino is getting impatient.

“You’re probably right, but we need to keep an open mind,” Benton says, and now his phone is ringing.

“Hi…” he answers. “Going someplace quiet…”

Stepping inside the bathroom, he shuts the door.