Page 38 of Sharp Force (Kay Scarpetta #29)

I open the dishwasher. Inside are three champagne glasses, several plates and bowls, the silverware holder full. Dishes have been rinsed but not washed.

“Why three glasses?” I ask. “Maybe somebody was drinking with Georgine and Zain last night?”

“Somebody like Graden Crowley?” Marino takes photographs of the wine rack. “Maybe when he brought her home, he came inside for a while. Maybe the champagne is from him.”

“That’s crossing my mind.”

Inside what I suspect was once a china closet is a stackable washer and dryer. Both are filled with what appears to be Zain’s clothing. He was home last night while Georgine was attending the hospital’s Christmas party. Yet he couldn’t empty the dryer and start another load of wash.

“I have little doubt that Zain was accustomed to people picking up after him,” I comment as I leave the kitchen for the dining room.

There’s not so much as a chair inside, a metal plate over the opening in the ceiling for a light fixture. Heavy damask draperies are drawn across the windows. Around a corner is a hallway, and midway down is the curved oak staircase leading up to the second and third floors.

The first open doorway is the main bedroom, the lights out. The wooden blinds are closed inside, the sharp, pungent odor of bleach slamming into my senses. It’s overwhelming through my surgical mask. I change my gloves and booties, putting on a plastic face shield.

“I realize the power was out when you first got here, everything dark.” I stand in the doorway looking in at the shape of the body on top of the bed. “But do we know if the light switch was on or off?”

“If was off,” Marino says.

I flip up the switch, the bedroom illuminated, and I wouldn’t recognize Georgine Duvall, bloody and riddled with gaping wounds. Her eyes and mouth are barely open, her mutilated face solid red.

“The same thing we’ve seen before, and the killer’s got to be wearing night-vision glasses of some sort,” Marino says as we peer in from the doorway. “Otherwise, he couldn’t see what he was doing.”

“Frenzied.” I describe my first impression.

“My guess is when she stopped moving, he started in with the biting. He poured bleach to destroy the DNA.”

“Perhaps he was doing all this when he heard someone coming downstairs,” I suggest.

I know instantly by the large amount of coagulating blood on the hallway runner and spattered on the whitewashed wall that this is where Zain was injured.

“It appears he was ambushed as he reached the bottom of the stairs in the dark,” I tell Marino.

“Unless he inflicted the injuries on himself.”

“Either way, it happened here. And if he really was attacked by the Slasher, it’s believable Zain didn’t know what hit him,” I reply. “I don’t doubt that it would have taken him a moment to realize he was bleeding.”

“His story is that he fell to the floor and played dead.” Marino sets down my scene case. “That’s what he told Officer Horace.”

“It would seem the killer didn’t bother checking,” I reply. “Just as he didn’t check to make sure how many people were staying in the house.”

Across from the bedroom is a bathroom. I step inside, turning on the light, remembering the white subway tile floor, the white porcelain pedestal sink and mirrored medicine cabinet. The cast iron clawfoot tub and shower are combined, a Wedgwood-blue curtain pushed back on either side.

“I’m not seeing any blood or sign that it was cleaned up in here,” I tell Marino. “It doesn’t look like Zain Willard came in here after he was cut.”

“My impression, too,” Marino says as he crouches by my open scene case in the hallway. “And I sprayed with Bluestar and didn’t get anything significant.”

The chemical reagent causes invisible blood to fluoresce. When people clean up a scene, it’s not possible to remove every trace of blood. It lights up between tiles and floorboards. Swipe marks from towels and mops become visible. Blood is a tattletale. It doesn’t forgive or forget.

“I would expect Zain might have stepped inside the bathroom to check on his injuries,” I comment. “Except with the power off, I suppose he couldn’t see. Unless he thought to turn on his cell phone’s flashlight.”

“Or maybe he didn’t go in there to look because he already knew about his injuries. If he did it to himself.” Marino comes back to that every time.

“Or he was in a panic. Desperate to get out of the house and call for help.” I’ve opened the medicine cabinet.

Inside is a bottle of face cleanser, a tube of toothpaste.

The toothbrush is in a glass on the sink, and the cosmetic bag must be Georgine’s.

Marino watches as I remove a square plastic box with a palette of eye shadows.

Eyeliner pencils and mascara. Lipstick. Concealer and face powder. None of it is expensive.

I inspect a tube of ointment, triamcinolone for itching and swelling. Georgine Duvall’s name is on the label, the prescription filled a week ago, as was a bottle of clonazepam.

“Sounds like she was suffering from anxiety,” I tell Marino. “I’m wondering if this could be related to her carrying pepper spray on her keychain.”

Returning to the hallway, I’m mindful not to step on blackish stains, the coagulating blood thick like drying tar on the pale blue and gray hall runner.

“Right over there is where something fluoresced.” Marino points to an area of carpet that doesn’t look bloody.

“Somebody tracked something on the rug, and it showed up this bright cherry red in UV light like I told you earlier. Otherwise, you can’t see it.

Whatever the stuff is, it’s invisible to the naked eye. ”

“The problem is, we don’t know how long the residue has been here,” I reply. “Or on the chair inside the bedroom that you mentioned. And it doesn’t appear anyone cleans very often.”

“But if the source is something inside the house, how come it doesn’t show up anywhere else?” Marino says.

“You walked through the house with the UV light?”

“You know me, Doc. No leaf left unturned.”

“When Clark Givens gets here with the Raman, we’ll see if we can figure out what the residue might be,” I reply.

“What we can know for a fact is Zain was cut right here on this bloody part of the rug,” Marino says. “After that, he made his way outside to where Officer Horace found him.”

I take a photograph of a bloody handprint on the hallway wall. It appears Zain might have lost his balance, maybe when he fell to the floor. Drops on the carpet runner and oak flooring verify his story.

At some point after he was injured, he was upright and walking away from here, through the dining room, the living room, and out of the house.

I look through the doorway at the butchered body tangled in bedcovers. Marino has placed more sticky mats on the floor. He continues to assure me that he took photographs and swabs first thing when he and Fruge got here during the early morning hours.

“It was pitch-dark inside the house at that time, as you can imagine with the power out. The killer wouldn’t have been able to see anything without a flashlight or night-vision goggles,” Marino explains as we swap out shoe covers again.

We stuff soiled ones into the biohazard bag we brought with us from the foyer.

Changing my gloves, I retrieve a long chemical thermometer and a disposable scalpel from my scene case.

Beneath the acrid stench of bleach, I detect the putrid-sweet odor of blood breaking down, the early stages of decomposition getting started.

I move aside a bloody sheet and duvet, a pair of blood-soaked pajamas in a heap on the foot of the bed. I pick up the top, then the bottoms for a better look at the slits and slashes from the knife. Areas of sparing show the satiny fabric is pale blue before it turned dark red.

“You’ve got photographs of all this?” I ask.

“Out the wazoo,” Marino says. “And video.”

He hands me a plastic ruler, and the largest buttonhole-like perforations from multiple stabs are two inches long.

“The knife is single edge,” I tell him as he makes notes. “The blade is a maximum of two inches wide, tapering to a narrow point.”

I know this because defects in the fabric and flesh are smaller where the blade barely penetrated before striking bone and cartilage. Her ribs and hips. Her sternum and skull. She obviously was wearing the pajamas when the killer attacked. After the fact, he cut them off her.

“By the looks of things, the sharp force injuries were made by a knife that’s consistent with the one used in the three earlier cases,” I tell Marino.

“The measurements are the same so far. We should be able to find tool marks in cartilage and bone for comparison. All indications point to the Slasher again. I think he did this.”

“Which looks really bad for Zain Willard,” Marino says. “But then, you know what I think. The spoiled punk’s a closet psycho.”

“There are dozens of stab wounds.” I describe what I’m seeing. “More than there were in the other three cases. I’m sensing a stronger emotional response, making me wonder if he had a connection to Georgine Duvall.”

“It’s like he hated her,” Marino says, and I know who he’s thinking about.

“I think it’s a fair statement that the Slasher hates everyone he hacks to death,” I answer. “Most of all, he hates what they represent.”

“All of them are health workers,” Marino replies. “He goes after people like that for some reason that probably goes back to his childhood.”

“Zain’s mother is a pediatrician,” I tell him.

“Bingo,” Marino says. “That totally fits. Maybe when Zain was coming along, his mom spent all her time with her patients. Maybe he felt she had other kids in her life who were more important than him.”

“We have no idea if that was the case.”

“And she probably ended up working on holidays.” He continues to script what sounds more like his own story of growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey.

His father was a drunk and largely absent. Marino’s mother taught in the local elementary school and was overwhelmed on every front. He spent a lot of time on the street fending for himself. I imagine his holidays weren’t Hallmark happy.

The body is warm through my gloves as I make a small incision over the lower left abdomen.

I insert the thermometer, gently pushing it all the way into the liver to get a core temperature.

It will be more accurate than what Marino recorded with infrared, and I set a second thermometer on top of the dresser.

“She looks like she worked out, was in good shape for her age.” He stares at the carnage on the bed. “I bet she used the fitness center here.”

“Regularly, I’d hazard a guess,” I reply. “Making it easy for someone to see her coming and going. I assume she would have walked there. It’s not far from here.”

Lean with good muscle tone, Georgine has the build of a gym enthusiast, and always did, I explain.

“When I’d see her in Charlottesville, she often mentioned exercising and playing sports,” I add. “I remember the Duvalls had an indoor swimming pool, a workout room. They were physically active, big outdoor enthusiasts.”

I envision the photograph on her driver’s license, her face attractive in a handsome way, almost regal.

I can’t tell that now. The killer slashed open the forehead and scalp, lopping off the tip of the nose and part of an ear.

I survey the damage, the wounds more frenzied and vicious than in the previous three cases.

I note multiple slits in the sheets where the killer missed the body entirely, stabbing and slashing the mattress, even nicking the wooden headboard and a bedpost.

“She was moving around a lot,” I say to Marino as he takes notes. “She struggled with him. More than we’ve seen in the other cases, and those were frenzied enough.”

I grip the left arm by the wrist, lifting it, and rigor mortis is in the early stages. She’s relatively limber, and I examine cuts and stab wounds that are deep and savage. Two fingers of her left hand are barely attached. Her right palm is cut to the bone, blood oozing as I manipulate the body.

“She made multiple attempts at warding off the blade.” I continue describing what I see. “She fought like hell until she couldn’t anymore.”

I wonder if the Slasher watched Georgine sleep for a while. Did he stand by the bed with night-vision glasses on, and what a power rush that must have been. I imagine him fantasizing, getting more worked up before starting in with the knife.

“Some things we may never know,” I’m saying to Marino. “But she tried to defend herself, and it would make sense that she screamed.”

“Unless he’d already cut her throat, and she couldn’t.”

“She has too many defensive injuries to her arms and hands for me to think the cuts to her throat were first.” I pick up the thermometer from the foot of the bed.

The room temperature is sixty-nine degrees, I report, and Marino writes it down in his small spiral notepad, the kind you can buy in a drugstore.

“It was a little less than that when I got here,” he says. “Because of the power being out.”

“There was an obvious sequence of events.” I tell him what I’m assessing.

The killer attacked her, and she likely screamed until her vocal cords, her windpipe and strap muscles were severed, one of the gashes almost to her spine.

“When she wasn’t thrashing anymore, he cut her pajamas off and started biting,” I go on. “The last thing he would have done before leaving is pour the bleach.”

“No way Zain came down the stairs the minute he heard her scream,” Marino decides. “Or the bleach wouldn’t have been poured yet. And he claims he smelled it. He said it smelled like a swimming pool.”

I think of the video made by Officer Horace’s body camera. I couldn’t tell by looking if Zain had bleach on him, but I assume not.

“Otherwise, his skin would have been burning. His eyes would have been bothered by the fumes,” I explain. “There also doesn’t appear to be bleach in the hallway where he was cut and claims to have played dead.”

“Makes sense he wouldn’t have bleach on him,” Marino says. “If he’s the Slasher he sure as hell wasn’t going to pour it on himself.”