Page 4 of Sharp Force (Kay Scarpetta #29)

“I ’m just getting started on Jane Doe, and she’s definitely a homicide.” Cate Kingston continues to fill me in.

“We have no idea about her identity?” I ask.

“None.”

“Maybe forensic genealogical DNA will show a relationship with someone in an ancestral database.” I can only hope.

“As you know, samples from every Mercy Island case were sent to the lab in Massachusetts months ago,” Cate reminds me with a note of frustration.

“We should have had the results long before now. But truth be told, I’ve not checked in a while.

I’ll give them a call before I leave to see if there’s any news. ”

“Was her grave marked?”

“Just a block of granite carved with the number thirty-three,” she says. “It correlates with a seventy-eight-year-old male patient who died in eighteen-ninety from consumption. I’m waiting on his DNA too.”

“And these remains certainly aren’t male. Or from someone that old.” I’m looking at them on the paper-covered table.

“It would appear the young woman was buried, and the marker was removed from the man’s grave and placed on top of hers,” Cate theorizes.

“Oh boy. I don’t like the implication.”

“Exactly. The murdered female isn’t accounted for in the cemetery records I’ve been reviewing. She didn’t exist.” Cate picks up a rib, showing me a cut in the medial end.

Putting on gloves, I find a magnifying lens, making out the clean edges left by a sharp blade.

“Looks like she was stabbed in the chest,” I tell her.

“And she has a cut to the left ulna,” Cate goes on.

“Possibly from holding up her arm defensively.”

“Also, two cuts to her skull.”

She picks it up, toothless, the empty eye sockets staring.

“This one on the left side of the mandible. The other on the right side of the forehead.” She shows me. “A lot of her ribs and other bones are missing, scattered by the backhoe. Likely, she had many more injuries. Someone really did a number on her.”

“All this should have been noticed at the time of the disinterment. But as we’ve been finding with the other bones you’ve examined, nobody bothered to look.” I think again of the former chief medical examiner Elvin Reddy.

When unidentified bodies or bones were found during his twenty-year tenure, he didn’t bring in the appropriate experts unless it suited him. He wasn’t interested in who the victims were or their stories beyond any political or financial implications.

Cate picks up a femur stained by clay and in better shape than I’d expect. I take it from her, feeling the weight of it, noting the relatively smooth surface. The marrow is mostly gone, and I find it perplexing that there’s any left at all.

“The sharp force injuries were to green bone,” Cate says. “She was alive or barely dead when she sustained them.”

“And we know carbon dating won’t work.” I return the femur to her. “The bones aren’t old enough for that.”

“We can do nitrogen and protein analysis,” she suggests. “It might give us further information on how long she’d been buried. Assuming genealogical DNA doesn’t give us the answer.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and can reconnect her with descendants, anyone she might be related to,” I reply.

“It sure would be nice if we could get our hands on old hospital records, assuming she was a patient on Mercy Island,” Cate says.

“Forget it.” I take off my gloves. “I can’t even get them to give us records when a patient dies now. We’re lucky they provided a list of who’s buried in the cemetery and supposedly why.”

“Well, some family out there knows this lady disappeared, never to be found.” She stares down at the bones. “What’s going to happen when this becomes public, Doctor Scarpetta? Doesn’t matter how long ago it happened; the hospital’s reputation will be in the toilet.”

“It already is if you ask me,” I reply. “It’s probably best we keep this quiet until you’ve finished your examination. And we get the genealogical DNA results.”

“Oh dear. That’s going to be hard,” she says, a shadow crossing her face.

She’s already talked.

“Who knows besides me?” I ask.

“Maggie Cutbush has an idea,” Cate says after a pause.

“How did that happen?” I don’t let my outrage register.

“When she was here earlier today dropping off Christmas presents,” Cate explains. “The big tins of popcorn for us and the labs.”

Apparently, Maggie stopped by to wish Cate a happy holiday, noticing the skeletal remains on her table. But that’s not why my former secretary showed up. As usual, she was on the prowl, looking to stick her nose where it doesn’t belong. Most times when that happens, someone has put her up to it.

“She said she’d heard a rumor that I was finding something interesting,” Cate explains.

“A rumor from whom?”

“I don’t know,” she replies. “But she said the Department of Emergency Prevention must be kept updated about cases going on in the medical examiner system. For demographic and epidemiological reasons. She kept reminding me it’s the law.”

“Yes, that’s what she tells everyone,” I reply. “Governor Dare in her infinite wisdom created the Department of Emergency Prevention and appointed Maggie Cutbush and Elvin Reddy to run what’s nothing more than a pork barrel bureaucracy if I ever saw one. But don’t quote me.”

“I understand.” Cate looks worried.

“We have to live with their useless agency,” I add. “But we don’t cooperate when it interferes with our patients. I don’t care how long they’ve been dead. The investigation comes first.”

“Oh dear,” Cate again says.

“How much did you tell Maggie?”

“Pretty much what I told you.”

“I’m sure she was quite interested,” I reply blandly as I think, Dear God.

“She wanted to know how many other Mercy Island patients from long ago appear to have died violently.”

“Does anybody else have a clue what we’ve started finding?” I ask, and she hesitates again.

“Well, Bose Flagler always wants to know what I’m working on. I figure since he’s the commonwealth’s attorney, he has a right to know…” Cate looks at me. “I hope I didn’t create a mess, Doctor Scarpetta.”

“There isn’t much you can do when it’s Flagler,” I reply. “But Maggie’s another story.”

“How am I supposed to handle it when she shows up claiming her department has a right to information about whatever I’m working on?”

“Refer her to me. We have a long history.” A most unpleasant one, but I’m not going to say that either. “Have a Merry Christmas, Cate. Stay safe.”

“You too.” She cranks up the CD player’s volume as I leave.

A waltz is playing now, fading in a minor key.

I round a bend in the corridor, the EXIT sign ahead glowing red. Pushing through the metal fire door, I begin watching the Dana Diletti video that Wyatt emailed.

The TV journalist is scantily clad in stretchy workout shorts, a sports bra and socks that flaunt her stunning beauty when wearing no makeup or much else. She explains that she was on the Nordic Track in her bedroom late afternoon when the Phantom Slasher’s hologram levitated through a window.

“… Passing through the glass like it was air without triggering the alarm or anything else. I had earbuds in, listening to tunes when it happened…” she’s saying.

I’ve paused on the stairs to watch as she paces in her living room gaudy with Christmas baubles and lights. She passes a lighted showcase displaying her many broadcasting awards, including several Emmys.

“… I had no forewarning at all, making it all the more shocking…”

Glowing in the background like a nuclear power plant is a tall aluminum Christmas tree that looks spun of silvery glass. It’s over-decorated with ornaments and lights, brightly wrapped presents piled underneath.

“… Suddenly this horrible ghost was right in front of me…”

She strolls by electric candles and caroling figurines on the mantel. An illuminated Santa and his reindeer appear to be flying off a shelf.

“… Enough to give someone a heart attack, let me tell you…”

An elaborate nativity scene centers the mirrored-top coffee table, and a mobile of dancing elves twirls from the ceiling. Multiple poinsettias are placed about, probably artificial like everything else.

“… So, now we’re getting an idea what the Slasher’s victims experienced before he broke in, butchering them in their own beds…”

As she’s saying this, I think how foolish. It almost seems she’s goading the violent psychopath, daring him to show up and do to her what he’s done to others.

“… Just watch. I swear this is real…”

She plays the recording she made with her phone, the phantomlike hologram outfitted in a black frock coat and hat from an earlier century.

Waving a big Bowie knife, he hovers in front of her, his face chalky white, his eyes neon red.

He moves his mouth, repeatedly hissing “death becomes you,” his teeth vampirish.

Dana Diletti goes on to mention Blaise Fruge and Pete Marino responding to her house. As I suspected, the TV news star is giving validity to her story by including them in the narrative as if my office and the Alexandria Police Department are working closely with her.

“… I’m cooperating fully with officials, and they’re encouraging me to relocate. But that’s not happening, folks…” Dana is saying when my phone starts ringing, my niece calling.

“I’m in the stairwell and might lose you,” I tell Lucy right off. “As soon as I clean up, I’m heading home. Where are you?”

“Quantico inside the OTD,” she says in my earpiece. “Had planned on heading out long before now, but no bueno.”

Since Lucy started working for the FBI, she spends much of her time at their training academy and labs in Quantico. Her office is inside a top-secret area of the Operational Technology Division, the OTD as we refer to it.

“I won’t be home for a while either,” I tell her as I climb the stairs. “Have to clean up first. Then I’ve got a quick stop to make along the way.”

“You shouldn’t be stopping anywhere. The snow’s already sticking, the wind gusting at more than thirty knots. Not to mention we have a serial killer on the loose who’s playing games with us, doing everything he can to cause a public panic.”

“I need to deliver something to a family. A mother and two little kids.” I tell her which case.

“Not a good idea for you to drop off anything. We’re talking about complete strangers,” she disapproves. “At least take Marino with you.”

“He’s busy and not here,” I reply, and Lucy is just as stubborn as I am. “I’m hoping you’re still on for dinner with Benton and me.”

“It’s not looking good,” she says.

“I was afraid that might be the case with all that’s going on.” I don’t let on how disappointed I am. “It worries me that your mom is home alone. She left me a message a few hours ago, saying she didn’t want to join us and stay over.”

“I just talked to her before calling you, and she’s well into the Chablis, watching an old movie.”

“After my errand I can stop and pick her up?” I again offer, my feet quietly scuffing on the concrete steps. “Are we sure we can’t change her mind?”

“She doesn’t want to venture out in the bad weather.” Lucy repeats what Dorothy told me in a voice mail. “She’s worn out from all her social media influencing and podcasting, yada-yada-yada.”

“That’s not the real reason,” I reply.

“I suspect she and Marino have been having their usual fireworks. Not the fun kind,” Lucy adds.

“I just watched the video of the Slasher’s hologram that Dana Diletti claims to have recorded inside her bedroom.” I unlock the heavy metal door opening onto the second floor. “Benton says you think it’s credible.”

“It is,” Lucy says as I follow the corridor, my corner office at the far end of it.

“Are we sure it’s not some sort of publicity stunt on her part as usual, her way of inserting herself into the drama?”

“It’s not looking like that’s the case this time,” Lucy explains. “We’re doing forensics on the video that’s now all over the internet thanks to her. People are freaking out as you’d expect, which is a shame. Causing more of a panic doesn’t help anything.”

“We both know she doesn’t give a damn who she hurts,” I remark, the staff offices I pass empty and dark.