Page 42 of Sharp Force (Kay Scarpetta #29)

We walk through the orthopedic unit and I’m aware of rooms occupied by patients, most of them with visitors. I hear people talking, televisions playing. Someone is sobbing, and I catch glimpses of limbs in bandages and casts. A young woman wears a metal halo brace for a fractured neck.

Zain’s room is in a corner, two Secret Service agents sitting outside the closed door.

“Is he still in there?” Benton asks right off about Calvin Willard.

“Sure is,” one of the agents says.

“Any problems?” Benton tucks his phone in a pocket.

“He’s not the easiest to deal with.” The other agent lowers his voice. “He smiles. But he’s not smiling inside, if you know what I mean.”

“I’ve been around him before,” Benton replies.

He opens the door, and we enter a room with a view of parking lots. The foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains are a bruised rolling haze on the faraway horizon, the sun bright, the room painted in light. For hospital accommodations, Zain’s are luxurious. A bathroom, a couch.

Benton and I take off our coats, placing them on a chair with my briefcase and medical kit. I introduce us and the senator doesn’t react. His back is to us as he stands by the window looking at his phone. He doesn’t want us here. I feel it like radiation.

“Good morning,” I say to Zain.

“I’ve had better.”

He’s sitting up in bed tethered to IV lines, his neck and left arm thick with gauze. I don’t know how I’m going to examine him. I’m not sure what I’ll be able to see.

“We’ve met before,” Zain says to Benton. “But not you.” He looks at me as if pleased that I’m here. “Benton’s probably told you that he and I are acquainted.”

I’ve noticed right away that Zain has dried blood in his hair. I’m careful not to stare.

“Yes, we’ve been around each other many times over the years,” Benton says, and Calvin Willard turns away from the window, staring at us. “At the White House and other places. I’m very sorry about all this, Zain.”

“You need to make this quick. As you can see, Zain’s been through a lot and is exhausted.” The senator says this to me, his strong-featured face ashen.

Tall and lanky, he’s in a dark blue warm-up suit and snow boots. A shock of slate-gray hair is combed over to hide his baldness.

“We’re going to need a few minutes alone with your nephew, Senator,” Benton says.

“Not happening in a million years. Our attorney is on his way here, and you need to wait outside until he arrives.”

“It’s okay.” Zain’s blue eyes are laser focused on me, and he sounds sedated. “I’ve got nothing to hide. I’m a victim. I don’t need a lawyer. What’s most important is catching the monster who did this before he does it again to someone else.”

“Yes, you do need a lawyer, son.” His uncle’s demeanor softens when he looks at him. “I don’t think you understand what can happen. You’ve never understood it.”

“I know exactly what can happen, and I’ve got nothing to hide. Because I didn’t do anything wrong,” Zain insists. “We need to do everything we can to help catch the Slasher. I don’t want him and his ghost coming back to finish me off.”

“We won’t let that happen,” his uncle promises. “Nobody’s going to hurt you again. I’ll make sure of it.”

A spike of anger, and Calvin Willard fixes his attention on Benton as if I’m not in the room.

“The house on Mercy Island has an alarm system,” the senator says. “How the hell could she let something like this happen? How did someone just walk into the house? How did she let someone follow her there?”

He’s talking about Georgine Duvall and doesn’t seem the least bit sorry that she’s dead. I sense his hostility and resentment as Benton explains that the Phantom Slasher uses a signal jammer when he shows up to murder.

“It wasn’t her fault or Zain’s that the alarm system wasn’t working,” Benton says.

“I always worried about her judgment. It wasn’t that long ago I stopped by, and the front door was unlocked, the alarm off.” The senator continues blaming the victim.

“If you’d give us a few minutes?” Benton says. “Maybe wait outside the room?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” the senator replies, sitting down on the brown Naugahyde sofa.

I pull on a pair of gloves as the door opens, and a young man in surgical scrubs walks in with paperwork. He introduces himself as Zain’s surgeon, and he looks sleep-deprived and harried.

“Which one of you is Doctor Scarpetta?” he asks.

“That would be me.” I assume he might have concluded that since I have a medical kit and am wearing gloves.

“The notes you’ve requested.” He hands me a file folder without much in it. “But I can give you the upshot on his injuries.”

The surgeon explains that Zain suffered two cutting wounds to the front of his throat, one approximately two inches long, the other closer to three, requiring a total of twenty-four stitches.

He was extremely lucky that the wounds are “relatively superficial,” missing any major blood vessels in the neck.

I think of the silver necklace Reba O’Leary mentioned. It would explain the two incisions. They’re from a single stroke interrupted by the knife hitting the chain Zain was wearing.

“Three millimeters more, and the blade would have cut his carotid,” the surgeon explains.

“I understand he needed a transfusion?” I ask.

“He bled most heavily from the cut to his left arm,” the surgeon tells me. “His radial artery was severed, and that’s the reason for most of the blood loss. Not his neck, although it would have bled heavily.”

He explains that he repaired the artery with an anastomosis, suturing the vessel end to end like a straw that’s been cut in half.

It doesn’t appear that Zain suffered any nerve damage.

He’s expected to have a complete recovery.

The biggest risk now is infection, and he’s on an antibiotic prophylactically.

“He’ll have a few scars he can brag about.” The surgeon gives his patient a weary smile. “You’ve got my surgical notes.” He says this to me. “Let me know if you have questions.”

Then he’s gone, the door shutting.

“What is it exactly that you plan to do?” Calvin Willard stares at me with distrusting gray eyes.

“We have questions,” Benton answers before I have the chance. “And Doctor Scarpetta wants to take a look at him.”

“He’s bandaged like a mummy. What do you expect to see?” the senator says to me.

“It’s okay, Uncle Calvin.” Zain seems unfazed, inching his way up straighter in bed.

He seems to be enjoying the attention.

“I want to check him for any other injuries—” I start to explain.

“You don’t have to tell them a damn thing, son,” his uncle interrupts. “I can order them to leave right now.”

“That just makes me look guilty,” Zain counters. “I didn’t do anything. Why would I do something like that to Georgine? Why would I hurt her?”

His eyes well with tears, his voice trembling.

“She was like a mother to me. Why would I do this to myself?” He holds up his bandaged arm and touches his swathed neck.

“When did Georgine go to bed last night?” Benton asks him.

“I think it was getting close to midnight when she turned in.”

“And you, Zain?”

“Around the same time.”

“Were the two of you getting along before turning in for the night?” Benton asks.

“We always got along. And if you’re implying that I might have reason to hurt her?”

“I’m not implying anything,” Benton says. “But would you have had a reason, Zain?”

“Why would I?” He stares at Benton.

“Okay, this needs to stop,” Calvin says, getting up from the sofa, staring at us in disgust as he moves in front of the window.

“The more you answer my questions with questions, the less you’re helping yourself,” Benton tells his nephew.

“That’s enough!” the senator warns while typing on his phone.

“It’s okay, Uncle Calvin. They need my help.”

“I’d like to take a look at you, Zain.” I open the file folder the surgeon gave me, glancing at the diagrams of his injuries before they were treated.

Zain throws back the sheet with his good arm, his slender legs scattered with blond hair that’s almost transparent. Self-conscious, he tugs down the johnnie. But not before I see the pale linear scars on his upper thighs.

“Tell us what happened.” Benton pulls a chair close to the bed, sitting down.

I’m noticing more of the fine pale scars on the underside of Zain’s right arm. He has them on his ankles, and Benton sees them, too. I think of the double-sided razor blades in the cabinet of the third-floor bathroom inside Georgine’s house.

“I was home all night,” Zain says.

“Alone?” Benton asks.

“Georgine had gone to a party at the hospital and was home around nine.”

“Do you mind opening your johnnie?” I say to him. “Just to the waist.”

He does, and the pale linear scars are on his abdomen. There are numerous healed burns near his navel.

“How did she get home?” Benton asks. “The weather was pretty bad by then.”

“Graden Crowley walked her home.”

“In the snow?” Benton frowns. “The house is a pretty good hike from the hospital in weather like that.”

“They weren’t outside,” Zain says. “They used the tunnel.”

He verifies that Georgine routinely left the house through the basement door, taking the tunnel back and forth to the hospital. She used the tunnel to work out in the fitness center. Zain explains that it has an indoor lap pool, and she liked to swim.

“Did it every day,” he says as I continue checking him. “It’s one of the things she likes best about staying on Mercy Island. She didn’t have to drive anywhere to work out in the gym.”

“What about you?” Benton asks. “Did you take the tunnel to get around?”

“Never.” He shakes his head as I check a bruise on his upper left forehead. “I find the tunnel creepy. And I’m not into the gym. Too boring.”

“I hear you have a vintage Cougar?” Benton says. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it parked at the White House.”

“I’m careful where I drive it.” Zain stares out the window.

“It was his father’s car.” The senator speaks up. “He died when Zain was fourteen.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I reply.