Page 26 of Sharp Force (Kay Scarpetta #29)

Most mornings we eat at the café table overlooking the birdfeeders and garden. There’s no time for that now, and it’s still dark out, the shades down. Our breakfast will be to-go. But first things first.

I open a cupboard for Merlin’s grain-free wet food made from whitefish. Emptying the can into his bowl, I set it on the mat near the fireplace. He begins wolfing it down, looking up anxiously every other second as text messages land on my phone.

In the car heading to the office, Shannon informs me.

Please make sure Dr. Schlaefer knows that I’m on my way to the scene, I write her back. He’s to get the decomp room ready and start when the body arrives.

Next, I hear from Fabian. The van is gassed up and loaded.

Any special requests before I boogie? he writes.

Two body pouches. One heavy-duty, one standard, both white, I text him.

Already taken care of. Except they’re black.

Have to be white. Trace evidence shows up better, I answer.

Got it.

And I need the medical kit I keep in my office credenza, I add.

The one for living patients?

Yes, I answer.

An update from DNA examiner Clark Givens lets me know that he’ll pack the laser scanner needed for 3-D mapping the bloodstain evidence.

“What’s your pleasure?” Benton opens the refrigerator. “Cream cheese, fig preserves? How about butter? Shall we splurge?”

“May as well,” I tell him. “God only knows when we’ll have time to eat again.”

It’s now almost six-fifteen. My headache is better but not gone, my eyes scratchy from too little sleep. I can tell that Benton isn’t feeling much better as he places two multigrain bagels on a cutting board, finding the bread knife.

Checking on the weather, I peek behind the curtain over the sink, and it’s pitch-black out, distant thunder rumbling. The thermometer on the windowsill reads forty degrees Fahrenheit, the backyard socked in by fog.

Trees and foliage are dark shapes moving in the wind, lightning flickering through clouds as my phone begins to vibrate on the countertop.

“Hi,” I answer Lucy’s call. “How’s it going?”

“Leaving Mercy Island. I was just in the admissions area of the hospital.” Her voice sounds over speakerphone, and I can tell she’s in the car.

“Merry Christmas, Lucy.” Benton is slicing bagels in half.

“I’m sorry about your trip.”

“So are we,” I answer. “What’s the latest?”

“I’m trying to get info about patients on the forensic unit, among other things,” she tells us. “Most important is accessing recordings from the security cameras, but it’s not looking good.”

“The cameras have always been an issue when I’ve responded to deaths there.” I’m filling the coffee machine’s reservoirs with water and almond milk. “It’s deliberate. Very much to their advantage when nothing is recording.”

“There aren’t many cameras for a place this size, all of them in areas that aren’t helpful,” Lucy replies. “Such as the staff parking lot. And the loading dock where deliveries are made. Some are offline. Including the ones at the entrance of the island.”

“Par for the course.” I open the tin of coffee beans. “They’ve had so many scandals, the staff is experienced at obstruction. They make sure there’s as little record as possible. Then when something bad happens, they dig deeper into protect mode. They lie. They obfuscate.”

“The director is stonewalling, citing HIPAA this and HIPAA that,” Lucy replies.

“Graden Crowley must be beside himself.” I pour the Jamaican coffee beans into the machine, smelling the rich aroma. “The hospital’s blighted past is about to be made public by Dana Diletti. And now the Slasher has just murdered a psychiatrist there.”

“Lucy, when’s the last time you and Georgine Duvall had contact?” Benton places the bagels inside the toaster oven.

“My freshman year at UVA.” Her voice has cooled over the phone.

“Were you aware that she’s good friends with Calvin Willard?” He watches the bagels as if they won’t toast otherwise.

“I’d have no reason to be aware,” she answers. “But I’m not surprised, and it makes me wonder what’s gone on inside Thirteen Shore Lane. Who might have been in and out of the house besides Zain Willard? What was the killer seeing when he was spying?”

“Spying with the drone Marino was asked about by two men allegedly from the CIA?” I inquire.

“Based on what I’ve been hearing, Marino looked suspicious as hell trespassing in someone’s gazebo,” Lucy says. “And we know what he’s like when confronted.”

“The agents involved probably wondered if he was the killer.” Benton takes the lids off tubs of butter and cream cheese. “And I can see why it might have crossed their minds.”

“Bottom line, around the time of the attack a drone was detected intermittently in the area,” Lucy says.

“Benton says a drone has been used in the other murders,” I reply.

“And we don’t want the killer knowing we’re aware of that,” she says.

“Then you best remind Marino not to be talking about it to anyone but us,” Benton says.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Lucy goes on to explain that transmissions are picked up whenever the Slasher overrides the autonomous function, entering commands that divert the drone from operating as programmed.

“When that occurs, a signal is transmitted in the four-fifty-megahertz range,” Lucy describes. “The same bandwidth as the walkie-talkies a lot of emergency medical techs use.”

“Adding to the confusion at a crime scene.” I marvel at the ingeniousness of it. “You might assume the signals detected are from the rescue squads.”

Lucy says that the drone in question isn’t the typical quadcopter.

It’s a Hoberman sphere about the size of a medicine ball and equipped with Keyence AI sensors.

Propelled by thrust vectoring nozzles, the orb has scissorlike joints that can fold into different shapes and sizes.

It’s stable in stormy weather and able to maneuver in zero visibility.

“Got to go. Just pulling up to HRT,” Lucy tells us.

She’s in Quantico at the FBI Academy’s Hostage Rescue Team. Hangared there is the beast of a helicopter called the Doomsday Bird that she pilots for the Department of Homeland Security.

“See you later. Be careful out there,” she adds as I cover to-go cups with plastic lids.

Benton and I put on our jackets. He arms the security system and opens the door, shutting it behind us. The warning beeps pierce the gloom, then abruptly stop. I listen for the strange animal sounds I heard last night, but everything is quiet.

The overcast has begun to brighten along the dark horizon, a sharp wind gusting but not as powerfully.

Lightning veins the sky, thunder mumbling as the storm retreats out to sea like a warring armada.

Benton carries my scene case across the back porch, the deep snow melted by heavy rain and rising temperatures.

We make our way down steep steps, water dripping from trees, the fog thick and cold. Lights blink on as we follow the footpath leading to the driveway. Benton pulls out the scene case’s retracted handle, the wheels loud like a drum roll over pavers, the slush several inches deep in spots.

I think of what Janet said about screams and hoots made by an animal not found in any database.

I’m waiting for the startling vocalizations again, but all is still.

I see things that aren’t there, shadows shapeshifting, and it’s imagined.

Lightning strobes like a camera flash going off, illuminating the garden and greenhouse, and I can barely make out the purple glow of Dorothy’s UV light.

When Benton and I reach the former carriage house, he opens the wooden doors, vanishing in the inky blackness.

The Tesla’s electric engine is quiet as he drives out, and I close the carriage house doors, locking them.

I settle into the passenger’s seat, headlights painting over huge magnolias dense with rubbery leaves.

Tall hardwood trees arch bare branches over us like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral as we pass the guest cottage, our headlights illuminating pavers and woods. I look up at turbid clouds, halfway expecting the red-eyed ghost to appear. Or maybe an orb-shaped drone that makes no sound.

At the end of the driveway Benton eases to a stop, and we wait for the heavy metal gate to lurch along its track.

We’ve been having trouble with it getting stuck.

Often it ends up half open or half shut, depending on how you look at it.

As we’re sitting here, our every detail is detected by multiple AI-assisted cameras and sensors.

Software is conducting facial and voice recognition, capturing our vehicle type and license tag while detecting any electronic devices we have. Information is constantly analyzed and uploaded in real time.

WTF? Marino is texting me now.

He explains that he’s inside the bedroom where Georgine Duvall was murdered, going over it with forensic lights.

I open photographs he’s taken with a filter in the UV spectrum, startled by what I see.

Bloody smudges on a hallway runner fluoresce a neon fiery red as if made with luminescent poster paint.

WTF is right, I text Marino as Benton pulls away from the gate limping shut behind us. Wonder what’s lighting up?

Got no idea. But nothing like this was at the other three Slasher scenes, Marino replies, sending another photograph.

This one is of a wingchair in a corner of the bedroom, an area of the seat cushion glowing the same electric red.

I pass along to Benton what’s going on as I send DNA scientist Clark Givens another message.

Before he heads to Mercy Island, I need him to grab a handheld Raman spectrometer from the trace evidence lab.

“Hopefully, it can help me identify the composition of whatever’s reacting to UV light, causing the fluorescence,” I explain to Benton as he turns left on Prince Street. “Assuming it’s the Slasher again, he likely doesn’t realize he left a trace of something that he carried to the scene this time.”

Digging into our breakfast bag, I pull out the bagels, unwrapping them.

“He must have had this residue on the bottom of his feet, and also on whatever he set down on the bedroom chair.” Benton takes a bite of his bagel. “God, that’s good, if I do say so myself.”

“We know he has a murder kit.” I dig in, the cream cheese and figs a delicious combination.

“Some type of tote bag.” Benton wipes his hands with a napkin. “He has gloves, possibly other PPE, bleach, the knife that he’s attached to, whatever else he brings with him and then carries away after the fact.”

“Maybe the tote bag is the source of a residue that’s not visible in normal light,” I suggest. “Maybe it’s been transferred from where he lives or works.”

We drive through our historic neighborhood, most old homes Georgian or Victorian and immaculately preserved.

Lights are starting to come on in the windows, people getting up to enjoy a holiday breakfast and open presents.

The charcoal-gray sky brightens by degrees as if on a rheostat, the rising sun a chalky smudge.

Traffic is steady, doesn’t matter that it’s Christmas, and I think of the killer getting around.

No matter the holiday or time, there are always people on the roads this close to Washington, D.C.

The Slasher may do much of his stalking with a drone and holographic technologies.

But he shows up in person to break in and murder.

“He’s getting to and from the victims’ neighborhoods somehow. I keep wondering how he’s doing that,” I’m saying to Benton. “If we include this morning, he’s struck four times in four different locations within a ten-mile radius. I should say at least four times. We don’t really know.”

“More than meets the eye, because he’s not new at this.

The pacing of the attacks, his ability to create havoc while evading the police, tells me he’s experienced.

” Benton repeats what he’s been saying all along.

“I suspect he’s committed criminal acts over the years that haven’t been connected, but this is different.

He’s hitting his stride. On a violent bender and craving the attention. ”

“While getting around undetected somehow.” I go back to that.

“I’m surprised there are no reports of a vehicle seen in the areas where the victims lived.

I would think software algorithms would pick up on a suspicious car at certain hours.

We know there are security cameras all over the place. And satellites.”

“Satellites using radar and AI can see through overcast,” Benton replies. “But obviously, they aren’t sweeping every inch of the planet. They’re oriented to cover certain locations of interest to the government.”

“Do you think the Slasher has a way of knowing what areas are under surveillance by cameras, even satellites, and those that aren’t?” It’s an awful thought.

“I’ve begun to suspect as much,” Benton says. “This is a violent sexual psychopath who appears relatively normal on the surface. He knows how to avoid being seen. It’s not anyone typical.”