Page 49 of Sharp Force (Kay Scarpetta #29)
Opening a new folder, I come across another reference to what Georgine is calling the silent treatment. I can’t find any explanation for what she means. I mention this to Benton.
“Most of the time she abbreviates it as ST.” I sip my iced tea.
“I’m seeing the same thing,” he says.
“Do you know what she’s talking about?”
I look over at him seated on the floor in front of a filing cabinet with a drawer open wide. He has a pair of reading glasses perched on the tip of his chiseled nose, and he looks tense, avoiding eye contact.
“I know what it is but not what she meant by it.” He turns a page and seems angry. “It sounds like some type of therapy. She’d advised ST for this or that. The patient engaged in ST or wouldn’t.”
“Possibly silent treatment means the obvious. She would stop responding, be unavailable. In other words, ghosting?” I suggest. “If so, what a terrible thing to do to a patient. Or to anyone.”
Benton abruptly gets up from where he’s been sitting on the floor. He turns his back to me, looking out the window, his hands in his pockets. I can feel his unhappiness like a vibration.
“Benton?” I ask, and he doesn’t answer.
He stares out at the river, the sun smoldering, the shadows longer.
“What is it, Benton?”
I ask him several more times.
“I told you I was looking through the F’s,” he finally says without turning around.
It dawns on me what he means.
“Farinelli. Lucy,” he adds.
“Her notes from when she was a freshman at UVA,” I reply. “It’s occurred to me the records might be in here, assuming they still existed. But I didn’t think it right for us to look at her file or any other patient’s unrelated to why we’re here.”
“I didn’t look for it,” Benton says with an edge, his back to me. “It’s more like it found me. Apparently, she saw Georgine intensely for the better part of her freshman year. Very intensely. It wasn’t the normal doctor-patient relationship.”
“I was aware at the time that it wasn’t normal,” I reply.
“I’m not sure just how abnormal that relationship was. But I can tell you that Georgine Duvall is an ethical nightmare. Of all people for Lucy to get saddled with. Especially at such a vulnerable time for her.”
“I’ve told you about the concerns I had…”
“You never mentioned they might have had a sexual relationship. For God’s sake.”
“Excuse me?” I ask, stunned.
“Lucy was what? All of nineteen?”
“Are you sure? What makes you think that, Benton?”
“I’m reading between the lines.” He watches a tour boat chug by on the river as the sun sets, painting pink and orange over the horizon. “And I don’t think Georgine ever met a boundary she wouldn’t crash.”
“I don’t know if she took things that far. Hopefully, she didn’t. But what they had was emotional and strayed well out of bounds. I certainly knew that much.” I feel terrible.
I look at the file open on the floor where he was sitting. I could pick it up and see for myself what he’s talking about. But I won’t. It wouldn’t be right.
“Saying anything about it to Lucy only made things more strained between us,” I explain.
“Well, I’m sorry as fucking hell that you didn’t ask what I thought back then.” He turns around, facing me, his white hair a nimbus in slanted sunlight.
“Benton, when Lucy was a freshman, you and I weren’t—”
“Not officially.” He won’t let me finish. “But we worked together often, and we had feelings. We just hadn’t done anything about them.”
“That’s not exactly true.”
“Why didn’t you tell me what was going on with Lucy? Why didn’t you ask for my help?”
“You were married then, remember?” I’m trying not to get upset. “Things were difficult enough between us without my pulling you into my family problems.”
“You should have told me Lucy was having trouble.” He won’t let it go. “I could have helped her.”
“You couldn’t have.”
“At the very least I would have told you that Georgine Duvall wasn’t the right fit, for Christ’s sake,” he says hotly.
“All her touchy-feely bullshit, the massive boundary violations, and whatever quackery she divined. Everything was about her own fucking self. Her insatiable need for affirmation and power. To be the most important. To be worshipped and feared. I can’t think of anything worse for Lucy. Or Zain Willard. Or any patient.”
“Lucy must have recognized at least some of what you’re saying. She knew Georgine was bad news, eventually she did,” I reply. “All of this explaining why she quit seeing her without telling me the reason.”
“Georgine had real pathology, Kay.” Benton is incensed by what he’s been reading. “One of these people who needs to be needed at the expense of everything and everyone.”
“Lucy felt ignored by her mother and at the same time over-managed by me, only to find herself ensnared in the same dysfunction with a shrink,” I decide.
Benton sits back down on the floor, picking up the file.
“At least Lucy had the gumption to end the relationship,” I go on. “But knowing her, she was embarrassed about it at the time, explaining why she’s never wanted to discuss it. Now she’s embarrassed again if she has any inkling that we’ve found her file. And I’m sure it’s crossing her mind.”
I envision her demeanor when we left her at the airport. She could scarcely look at me when I asked if she was coming with us. No wonder she refused. Lucy wouldn’t want to be present for this.
“You won’t like what she has to say about us.” Benton flips to another page. “Myself. Marino. And of course, Dorothy. Lucy goes gangbusters after all of us.” Benton looks at me. “But most of all you, Kay.”
“I would expect as much since I’m the one who made her feel over-managed, over-corrected, over-everything.” I sound matter-of-fact while feeling punched in the gut.
Tears touch my eyes and I blink them away.
“Better put your armor on,” Benton says. “It’s not pretty. She was struggling against your influence. And it’s clear she considered me a lightweight spoiled rich boy with a poker up his ass.”
“I’m well aware of her anger back then, and how much she resented me, and I also understand it,” I reply. “What did I know about raising Lucy? Or anybody, really? Maybe at the end of the day I’m no better than Calvin Willard. Someone powerful who always knows best. Someone who can fix everything.”
“We’re both like that, Kay. But we’re nothing like him.”
The late afternoon light is fading as we resume going through Zain’s records.
By the time we’re done it’s dark out, and I check one last thing before we leave.
I have an uneasy hunch about the hanging victim on Mercy Island who was rudely nicknamed Santa Crotch.
It turns out I’m right that he was Georgine’s patient.
Diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic, Samson Digley had been in and out of Mercy Psychiatric Hospital since he was a teenager.
After Georgine was hired eight years ago, she began working with him in person and remotely.
I’m appalled to learn that when he died last Christmas, he was undergoing one of her silent treatments.
“The last time she saw or communicated with him was two weeks before he presumably hanged himself.” I’m relaying all this to Benton, the file open in my lap.
“She took him for a walk on the hospital grounds, ending up on Thirteen Shore Lane so he could borrow the bathroom and look at my Christmas extravaganza as he has so many times in the past…”
“Christ,” Benton says, skimming through a stack of files. “The damage she caused is unfathomable.”
“After her last time with him, she stopped lavishly decorating for Christmas, as we saw for ourselves earlier today,” I reply. “And it’s no wonder.”
In her notes she describes visiting with Samson Digley in her backyard, enjoying the view as it began to snow. She mentions that he was enthralled with her elaborate strands of LEDs woven around tree trunks, the trellises and twinkling in shrubbery.
… SD walked around the garden sparkling like a galaxy of fallen stars. That’s how he described it, she writes.
Bemoaning how bleak his hospital room was, he asked her for a string of lights to cheer it up. And she gave it to him.
The outcome was unfortunate, she wrote the day after his death. I couldn’t possibly have seen this coming. He was doing so well…
“That’s all she has to say about it beyond him showing no indication of being suicidal,” I tell Benton.
“Nothing about feeling bad. She didn’t regret ghosting him or whatever she was doing.” He closes one file, opening another.
“No indication that I’m seeing. But I suspect she was worried her notes would be subpoenaed,” I reply. “And had I known then what I do now? His file would have seen the light of day, that’s for sure. His family would have sued the hospital. And possibly they will once the truth is known.”
“Doesn’t sound like she was the empath or even decent person you remember. In fact, she sounds cold and irresponsible as hell,” Benton decides, and I can tell he’s haunted by Lucy’s file.
“Georgine wasn’t like that when I knew her.” I get up from the sofa. “She was inappropriate, in my opinion. But not blatantly careless and destructive.”
“Something changed her.”
“Maybe her husband’s death, their financial disasters, I don’t know,” I reply. “But I was working her patient’s hanging scene while she was staying at Thirteen Shore Lane, probably with Zain.”
I leave Samson Digley’s file on a table with others I want copied.
“She had to know I was inside his hospital room with Graden Crowley hovering in the doorway,” I add.
“And he never mentioned Georgine, and she didn’t reach out to me even as my office continued going after information.
I intended to call one more time for his records before showing up on Mercy Island with a warrant. ”
“Calvin Willard owned her. She was as controlled as Zain, and it must have sucked away her soul,” Benton says.
The night is breezy and clear, the temperature dropping as we return to the Williamsburg-Jamestown airport. I’ve alerted Lucy that we’re several minutes out, and she’s fired up the Doomsday Bird.
The thundering engines and whumping rotor blades are audible long before we’re parking on the tarmac. I can barely hear myself talk as I thank our FBI driver Hank for his help. I’ve tried several times to reimburse him for lunch, but he won’t hear of it.
Bowing our heads against the helicopter’s fierce wind, Benton and I climb into the rear cabin, pulling the door shut. We fasten our harnesses and put on our headsets.
“Did you find anything useful?” Lucy’s voice sounds over the intercom, and I detect uneasiness.
Of course it’s crossed her thoughts that Georgine Duvall kept a record of their therapeutic sessions. And that Benton and I might see them.
“We went through Zain Willard’s files.” I move the mic closer to my lips. “And yes, it was helpful.”
“I’m sorry he saw her for as long as he did,” Lucy says with surprising resentment.
“So am I,” I reply.
“Any early indications of him having violent tendencies?” Tron’s voice.
“Only toward himself,” Benton answers. “But we did find a repeated reference to an event that occurred in December of his freshman year. Something that Georgine was secretive about. And that suggests to me she was concerned about legal ramifications.”
“She knew how to cover her ass,” Lucy says. “That much she was good at. And controlling the hell out of people when they’re vulnerable. But now’s not the time to get into it.”
“Whatever this event might have been,” I summarize, “Zain’s anxiety and self-harm got exponentially worse.”
“Pulling pitch,” Lucy announces. “And going back to crew only for now. If you need us just buzz.”
“What’s our ETA?” I ask, and neither of them answer.
They can’t hear us, and we can’t hear them. Even so, I’ll be careful what Benton and I talk about. Without warning, Lucy or Tron could switch the intercom to include the back cabin. I want to discuss with Benton what he read in Lucy’s file, but it will have to wait.
She opens the throttles all the way, and soon we’re lifting above the black void of forests. We gain altitude as we fly north, the lights below flickering like tiny flames in trees. I text Marino that we’re on our way back to Dulles. He answers that he’s with Dorothy at Benton’s and my house.
Fabian visited the property earlier, baiting a trap with marshmallows, setting it by the hollowed-out chestnut tree. He caught the injured raccoon in record time and is whisking it away to the wildlife rescue service, where it will be treated for lacerations and infection, Marino informs me.
How is she? I text him about my sister next.
Kind of weird but okay I guess.
Apparently, Dorothy has been busy in my kitchen, and I’m touched by dread. I don’t look forward to what we’ll encounter when we get home. But I sense one of my sister’s emotional storms brewing.
“Benton, no telling what dinner will be like tonight.” I talk through my mic while looking out my window as the moon rises higher.
“All that matters is everybody gets along.” His voice in my headset as we sit in the dark.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” I warn.
A thousand feet below on I-95, traffic is a necklace of lights diamond white and ruby red winding into infinity. Benton is reading more updates on his phone.
“The governor has issued another statement that the public needs to remain on high alert about the Slasher,” he reports. “Just because the police have identified someone of interest doesn’t mean the serial killer has been caught. That’s what she’s pounding the pulpit about.”
“Doing Calvin Willard’s bidding,” I reply.
“It won’t matter,” he says. “The FBI plans to open a grand jury proceeding against Zain, charging him with Georgine’s murder. And there’s nothing the governor can do about it.”
We’re flying over Fredericksburg on the moving map display.
Then Quantico is below our feet, the FBI Academy a cluster of lights surrounded by blackness.
I think back to when I got Lucy a coveted internship there the summer of her senior year at UVA.
It was a treacherous time of reckless behavior and damaging relationships.
I blame Georgine Duvall. Because of her, Lucy avoided therapy or even conversation that might have prevented some of the choices she would make. She was less trusting and more secretive, rarely sharing anything important with me. It’s a miracle she didn’t die.