Page 24 of Sharp Force (Kay Scarpetta #29)

I study myself in the mirror over the sink, my hair a mess. Silver at the temples, it’s more cool blond than honey gold and needs trimming. I was looking forward to a hairstylist I like in London, and I text my secretary, asking her to cancel all travel and appointments.

Another homicide that may be the work of the Slasher. Here in Alexandria, I explain to Shannon. Have to postpone travels.

Dear God, how terrible! she answers right away.

The sooner you head to the office the better, I write her back.

I instruct her to make sure security is alerted, and to expect federal agents showing up.

Possibly even members of the intelligence community.

We’ve been visited before during autopsies that, unbeknownst to us, were of interest to the CIA, U.S.

Army Intelligence, the National Security Agency, to name a few.

Usually, the undercover agents claim to be from nongermane government agencies like the Department of Agriculture. Or in this case, the FAA. I don’t go into detail, but my secretary understands, and I tell her to keep me updated.

“How well do you know Zain Willard?” I ask Benton. “You’re in and out of the White House, the Capitol. I assume your paths have crossed.”

“That’s about the extent of it.” He heads to his closet as I walk out of the bathroom. “I’ve seen him there and other places. This nerdy kid who’d rather talk to an AI chatbot or a robot than people. I realize he’s not really a kid. But he seems a lot younger than he is.”

“Where was he when Georgine Duvall was murdered? Are we sure he was upstairs in his room as he claims? Did he really hear her scream?” I pick up a black shirt embroidered with my office logo and K. Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner.

“I’m wondering whether she was capable of screaming. I was going to ask you that,” Benton says as hangers scrape along the clothes rod. “You’ve seen the photographs, I assume.”

“Marino texted a few, and the incisions to the anterior neck would have severed the vocal cords and trachea.” I envision the gory images. “She wasn’t making a sound after that.”

“Then she might have screamed at first when she woke up while being attacked,” Benton supposes.

“Very possibly, as it appears she tried to ward off the blade. She has classic defensive injuries, suggesting the first cuts were to her hands and arms and not her neck,” I explain, pulling on a pair of cargo pants.

“Then Zain may be telling the truth about hearing her scream.”

“If so, it wouldn’t have been for long. Has he offered any helpful details?”

“Not so far.” Benton works his arms through the sleeves of a faded denim shirt. “Maybe he’ll remember more when I talk to him in the hospital later today. And we’ll want you to take a look at him.”

“Willing to help in any way. But I’ll be limited in what I can determine after surgery and other therapeutic interventions. I’ll insist that I’m not alone with him.”

“We have agents posted outside his room, and I’ll be with you,” Benton says.

“Still no weapon recovered, I assume?” I ask.

“Not that I’m aware of. Nor would I expect there to be.” He zips up his jeans. “The knife the Slasher uses has special meaning to him. He brings it with him and leaves with it. I suspect it’s something he’s had a long time.”

“Any chance of an inside job? Is it possible Zain Willard killed Georgine Duvall?” I tuck in my shirt. “More to the point, could he be the Phantom Slasher?”

“Of course, we have to consider that.” Benton finds a belt. “But I have my serious doubts. As I’ve said before, I believe the Slasher is older, more likely in his thirties or forties. I base this on his organizational skills, his meticulous planning and lack of impulsivity.”

“Except it was different this time,” I reply. “He didn’t know how many people were staying in a place he’d targeted. And he didn’t check to make sure Zain was dead. Something seems to have gone off the rails. Marino may be right about that.”

“What I know for a fact is Zain was badly injured,” Benton says. “I don’t believe he’s faking anything. The first officer to arrive at the scene discovered him some distance from the house about to pass out.”

“Hopefully his bloody trail was photographed before the rain started in with a vengeance,” I reply.

“It was.”

“And swabs were taken to confirm the source?”

“Yes.”

“The killer seems to work in the dark,” I point out. “It’s possible he might have accidentally cut himself. We have to make sure none of the blood is his.”

“I believe he’s using night-vision eyewear and can see what he’s doing just fine. If only we could be so lucky that he’d cut himself and bleed somewhere.” Benton hands me his phone. “This is from the first responding officer’s body cam.”

Pressing the arrow for Play, I watch Zain Willard seated cross-legged in a slurry of snow and slush on the sidewalk. A freezing rain smacks down in big slow drops.

He could pass for twelve or thirteen, angelically pretty, his curly blond hair tinted teal blue at the tips. He stares up at the camera with wide shocked eyes, shivering, teeth chattering in a chiaroscuro of streetlights and shadows.

“… Easy does it. Everything’s going to be okay.” The officer is talking while his body camera films. “Try to stay calm. You’re safe now, buddy…”

Zain has on a sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers with no socks. He’s covered with blood that has soaked into the watery slush, turning it the pale red of a cherry snow cone. I notice a thick silver chain around his neck.

“… I’m Don Horace with the Alexandria police. What’s your name?” the officer asks.

“Zain Willard. Did you see it?” His breathing is rapid and shallow, his glassy eyes terrified. “Did you see that thing?” He can barely talk, his voice a shaky whisper.

“What thing?” Officer Horace is young with dark hair and a flat demeanor.

“The ghost! Over there!” Zain points as sirens wail closer. “Floating away from the house, following me!”

“When was this?”

“Right before you got here. The thing was there holding a knife, watching me with a dead face and red eyes!” He points again at the fog in the wan glow of lamps bordering the sidewalk.

“Well, I don’t think a ghost did this to you or killed your friend inside the house…”

“Oh God!” Zain convulses into tears.

“What do you remember about what happened in there, Zain?”

“Oh God. No…!”

“Tell me anything you can while it’s fresh in your memory,” Officer Horace goes on.

“I came downstairs, and it smelled like a swimming pool. It was pitch-dark.” Zain is sobbing.

I continue noticing his teeth. They’re perfectly straight. I seriously doubt they made the irregular bite marks I’ve been seeing in the Slasher cases.

“Then I was hit in the throat and arm. At first, I didn’t know I was cut.”

“Why did you come downstairs to begin with?” the officer asks.

“The screaming.” Zain is getting weaker, swaying as if about to topple over.

“What was she screaming?”

“‘Stop!’ She screamed, ‘Stop…!’” Zain wraps his arms around his knees, rocking back and forth, blood dripping, his face panicked. “She was shrieking for him to stop…!”

“You need to sit still and calm down, okay?” the officer is saying.

Sirens are deafening, pulsing red lights bleary in the overcast.

“The ambulance is here and you’re gonna be fine, Zain. I’ll be right next to you…”

I pause the recording on Benton’s phone, zooming in on the diamond stud in Zain’s blood-smeared right earlobe. Just below it the two shallow incisions appear to be from one stroke angled downward, terminating in the middle of his throat.

I’d estimate the wounds are a total of about five inches long. But it’s impossible to know when there’s nothing in the video I can use as a scale.

“Unlike the deeper incision made straight across when a victim’s throat is cut from behind, the usual scenario.” I’m telling Benton my interpretations as I return his phone. “What I just saw is consistent with his throat being slashed by a right-handed assailant who was facing him.”

I make a backhanded slice in the air as if swinging a sizable blade with my right arm.

“Cutting the throat from the front is consistent with what I’ve seen in the first three victims, and also in photographs of Georgine Duvall,” I continue to explain. “Except the four of them were cut multiple times and with considerable force.”

“Overkill,” Benton replies as we move around the bedroom, getting ready.

“Yes, but not when Zain Willard was injured,” I reply. “What happened to him seems more like a halfhearted attempt by comparison.”

“That’s likely because it wasn’t emotionally driven by sexually violent fantasies.” Benton returns to his closet. “I suspect the Slasher was out of gas by the time he was confronted with a second person in the house. He hadn’t anticipated that for some reason.”

“The question is why? How could that happen?”

“Hopefully, I’ll know more when I walk around the scene.” Benton riffles through neckties.

“Is Zain right- or left-handed?” I retrieve our passports, the French and British currency from the top of my dresser.

“Right-handed it’s been my impression from the times I’ve been around him at the White House and elsewhere,” Benton says. “But I’ll confirm.”

“For the sake of the argument, let’s say he killed Georgine Duvall.” I walk across the bedroom, headed to the gun safe. “Why injure himself after the fact? Why take a risk like that?”

“Possibly as an alibi. Or for sympathy and attention. Those would be the typical reasons someone would self-injure in a case like this.” Benton picks a blue paisley tie that goes with denim.

“The first thing we need to know for a fact is whether Zain could have cut his own throat. Would that have been possible?”

“Based on what I saw in the video, yes. But let me emphasize how difficult and dangerous that would be.” I enter the password on the safe’s push-button keypad.

“In addition to the willpower and tolerance for pain required, one slip of the blade and he could have severed his carotid, bleeding out in minutes.”

I push down on the steel handle, opening the safe’s heavy door. A glimpse of fine timepieces and other jewelry, and I tuck in our passports, the British pounds, the euros.

“He has a gash to his right forearm.” I continue describing what I saw in the photos Marino texted. “Also, cuts to the fingers and palm of his right hand. Depending on the severity of the injuries, he could have suffered permanent damage to ligaments and tendons.”

“And he could have done all that to himself?” Benton is reading something on his phone.

“If he had the stomach for it.” I shut the thick steel door with a loud clank. “But if he did this to himself, he’s lucky to be alive.”

“I’m skimming his background assessment right now,” Benton says. “Zain’s right-handed. Five foot four, one hundred and twenty pounds. He’s small and rather frail, as you just saw in the video.”

“An assailant doesn’t need to be big and strong if he has a knife and his victim is asleep,” I answer.

“I don’t believe it’s him,” Benton says.

“I don’t think he killed Georgine Duvall or anyone else.

But that doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth about what happened this morning.

For one thing, what took him so long to head downstairs after he supposedly heard her scream?

By the time he got there, she likely was dead, and the bleach had been poured. ”

“The same questions are crossing my mind.” I collect my computer-assisted smart ring from the nightstand.

“He took the time to put on clothes. What else was he doing?” Benton asks.

“We need his jeans, sweatshirt, shoes, whatever he had on, including a silver necklace I noticed in the video.”

“I’m told that Officer Horace has taken care of personal effects and other evidence,” Benton says.

“Told by whom?”

“Lucy talked to him.” Benton picks up his badge wallet.

“Never heard of Officer Horace before this morning.”

“Apparently a rookie. But forward-thinking enough to get swabs,” Benton replies.

“Of what?” I ask.

“Any trace evidence or DNA that might have been transferred to Zain. Supposedly when he fell to the floor after being attacked in the dark, the killer almost tripped over him.”

“In other words, they had physical contact, and afterward no bleach was splashed all over either of them. Maybe DNA was transferred and not destroyed for once.” I don’t feel hopeful, but maybe we’ll catch a break.

“This is according to what Horace passed along to Lucy. Apparently, while he rode in the ambulance, he got photographs and swabs in addition to more information,” Benton tells me.

“That was quick thinking since rescue squads and hospitals aren’t in the business of preserving evidence. The killer fled. Then what, according to Officer Horace?” I ask.

“Zain tried nine-one-one, but the Wi-Fi was down. The SOS emergency feature on his phone also was disabled. He had to go outside to find a signal so he could call for help,” Benton says.

“He left the fenced-in property through the front gate, following the sidewalk to where Officer Horace found him.”

“I wonder where Zain was on Valentine’s Day at around three a.m. when Emma Chopra was slashed to death in bed?” I reply.

“Hopefully we’ll get answers when we start interrogating his phone and other electronic devices.”

“What about last May when Ashley Tait was murdered on Mother’s Day?” I open a dresser drawer for a pair of socks. “Where was Zain?”

“He’d already moved into the house on Mercy Island,” Benton says. “He was staying there for the summer.”

“Does he have a car?” I ask, and Benton looks at his phone again, scrolling through information.

“A nineteen-sixty-eight Mercury Cougar,” he answers.