Page 54 of Sharp Force (Kay Scarpetta #29)

It’s New Year’s Eve and the first time all of us have been together since Christmas. We’ve demolished my lasagna and garlic bread. The Greek salad included an onion and a cucumber salvaged from Peanut’s pillage of the greenhouse.

The private research lab he and his cohorts escaped from does work for the federal government, some of it top secret. I’ve driven past Primal Biodynamics countless times while running errands, the bland two-story precast building barely meriting a second glance.

Behind it in the woods is a caged obstacle course for Peanut, Jane and Kong. A hybrid chimpanzee, howler monkey and orangutan, they’re what the researchers call a chimonkeytan. The peculiar-looking creatures are highly intelligent, specially trained and equipped with neural implants.

In addition to biological engineering, Primal Biodynamics is involved in unusual technologies such as orblike drones that can project holograms capable of spying. One of them disappeared from the lab a year and a half ago, a signal jammer used to disable the security system.

“It was assumed the Russians were to blame.” Lucy gives us the latest as we listen around the dining room table.

“The heist happened not long after Duke Mansoni started working there. His colleagues never suspected him. They found him difficult and noncollaborative, never imagining the rest of the story.”

When the police searched his house last week, they found bottles of lab-grade bleach, boxes of gloves and PPE, also a 3-D printer and sets of acrylic vampire teeth. In his basement was an elaborate control room for piloting the stolen orb drone Mansoni kept docked there.

“Its capabilities include identifying surveillance cameras, motion sensors, even satellites,” Lucy explains.

“He would deploy the drone to his victims’ homes, mapping routes that would ensure his white van wasn’t detected near his murders.

He’d calculate the best ways to enter and exit undetected while gathering intel about his quarry. ”

“But he sent his drone here and Kay saw those awful bright red orbs on the driveway. Right here on this property.” Dorothy taps the table with her index finger. “And that must mean he intended to kill Kay next. Or maybe me!” it occurs to her. “As often as I’m here, I could have been the target.”

“He was spying for sure,” Lucy replies. “And he would have been very aware of Aunt Kay because she’s the medical examiner in his murders.”

She goes on to tell us that ten years ago, Duke Mansoni was in graduate school, and briefly interned on Mercy Island.

The hospital used to have a lab that conducted studies on animals to better understand the neurobiology of various mental illnesses and treatments.

He was there for several months as part of his doctoral program.

“Doesn’t seem like people looked into him very carefully,” Marino says, reaching for a cookie that’s the product of what Dorothy grows in my greenhouse.

“He had no criminal record, and lied on his applications, fabricating letters of recommendation, that sort of thing.” Benton sets down his fork on his whistle-clean dessert plate.

“Nobody really knew him,” Lucy adds. “He didn’t date or have friends. There was no threat of someone coming to his house and seeing three-D-printed teeth or a weird drone shaped like an orb. Or videos of his victims and the phantom hologram playing nonstop on data walls.”

He’s been charged with the murder of Georgine Duvall, his fate sealed by the DNA under her fingernails. Tool marks on the blade of his Bowie knife match those in the four Phantom Slasher homicides. The same weapon was used to kill Susan Villani nine years ago.

In a way, Peanut deserves the credit for locking the psychopath behind bars. It wouldn’t have happened this quickly or possibly at all had the chimonkeytan not helped himself to my greenhouse. The day he escaped, Duke Mansoni was working at the lab when Peanut pitched a hellacious tantrum.

He tore into the drum of dietary supplement. Somehow in the chaos, the chimonkeytans made a getaway, two of them recaptured quickly. But not Peanut, who had managed to rip off his GPS tracker collar.

“My heated greenhouse would have been attractive to him, and he might have been drawn by Dorothy’s UV light glowing purple.” I finish my dessert, very pleased with how the tiramisu turned out.

Soaking the lady fingers in Godiva liqueur this time, I was generous with the mascarpone and heavy whipped cream, adding fresh shaved dark chocolate on top.

“We’ll never know for sure why he ended up here,” I explain. “Except it’s close to where he escaped from, and nobody was on the property at the time. The greenhouse door is easily unlocked and opened by anything with opposable thumbs, a smorgasbord awaiting inside.”

“That’s what I think, too.” Dorothy makes a big production of pointing at her empty champagne glass. “But I wish he hadn’t upended my gorgeous cannabis plants. It’s been a real chore repotting them, no pun intended.”

She sparkles in a Roman candle onesie, a tiara of winking yellow LEDs on her head. They sway and bounce like rubbery antennas whenever she moves.

“But I don’t understand the purpose of a chimonkeytan to begin with,” she declares, her tongue thickened by libations. “Unless they’re supposed to scale buildings, hijack planes and take out the enemy like Mission: Impossible.”

“Not as far-fetched as you might think,” Lucy replies, and she looks like a kid in her jeans and fisherman’s knit sweater.

For an instant in candlelight, she’s the teenager Georgine Duvall counseled in Charlottesville. I feel a pang that’s bittersweet while wondering where time goes. For me, Lucy will forever be precocious and young.

“The goal is to engineer a cross between an intelligent animal and a drone, creating a hybrid that can be controlled remotely,” she’s saying as Merlin slinks into the dining room.

“Explaining why Janet didn’t recognize Peanut’s vocalizations on our property.

The research is classified and chimonkeytans aren’t in any existing database. ”

“My favorite thing,” Marino gloats. “When Janet has to say I don’t know.”

“Those poor creatures. I can just imagine the way Duke Mansoni bullied and disrespected them. How could Georgine Duvall not sense he was trouble?” Dorothy points at her empty glass again. “Not that she was ever my cup of tea. But she wasn’t stupid.”

“Duke Mansoni had his schtick down to an art form.” Lucy pulls the ice bucket closer as I lean down, picking up Merlin, placing him in my lap.

“I guess he fooled Georgine just like she fooled everybody else,” Dorothy snipes as Merlin nuzzles me and purrs. “That’s called karma.”

Lucy lifts out the dripping bottle, a rosé champagne with a delicate pinot noir patina.

“Thanks, darling,” Dorothy coos as Lucy tops her off. “Don’t be stingy. That’s it… All the way, baby, as I like to say,” she adds salaciously.

“It was always the same scenario,” Benton explains. “Mansoni would make offensive comments at work. His colleagues at Primal Biodynamics gave him the usual ultimatum. Either go talk to a professional or some sensitivity group or be fired.”

“He probably googled area mental health workers and it was Georgine’s bad luck that he landed on her,” Lucy says as if talking about someone she never knew. “And Mansoni was familiar with Mercy Island.”

“When he Zoomed with Georgine this past December second, that was it,” Benton says. “One time only and he’d fulfilled his obligation to the lab. And now Georgine was on his radar.”

“I’ve been reading a lot about crisis counseling,” Dorothy pontificates. “And no one really knows why these monsters pick their victims. Most of all, you have to ask who was the Slasher really savaging? I’m betting his mother. We always get blamed for everything.”

“We know that Mansoni was raised by a series of foster families. They described him as extremely bright but unmanageable,” Benton says. “The foster mother he lived with the longest is in Atlanta, and I talked to her yesterday. She’s a hospice nurse—”

“Well, no bloody wonder!” Dorothy interrupts. “How can you compete with people who are dying? The wretched little orphan never had a chance!”

“Mansoni lived with her for three years, and she finally had to give him up when he was fourteen,” Benton explains. “He was bullying other kids in school and experimenting on animals he’d capture or buy in pet stores.”

“Everything added up to creating the perfect storm,” Lucy replies. “He caused disruption wherever he went, rarely staying in the same job longer than two years.”

The FBI has been getting phone calls from therapists in areas where Mansoni once lived. They report similar stories. He’d cause trouble at the workplace and see someone for a session or two. Unbeknownst to his therapists, they were facing a violent predator.

Benton believes Mansoni cruised area mental health facilities, hospitals, veterinarian clinics and zoos.

He was obsessed with women in caretaking professions and would visit their graves to relive his malignant fantasies.

The FBI has only begun connecting his DNA to unsolved rapes and murders in every place he’s ever frequented.

“There’s no telling how many people he victimized,” Lucy is saying.

“Including Rowdy O’Leary, which is why I’m calling him a homicide,” I add.

I’ve signed him out as a cardiac arrest due to emotional trauma, and as far as I’m concerned Duke Mansoni is responsible. If he deployed the shapeshifting orb drone from his house to Mercy Island, it would fly right over the pier where Rowdy was fishing the night he died.

Lucy has discovered that the drone’s electronic signature was detected in that area around the time Rowdy ended up in the water. I imagine him fishing, drinking beer when he saw something bizarrely creepy floating overhead.

“Maybe the orb. Or maybe the red-eyed ghost, and he shot at it,” I explain. “That was enough to send him into cardiac arrest.”

“Well, it’s Zain’s fault too.” Dorothy pounds the table like Judge Judy. “Let’s not forget the chain of events he started when he ran poor Rowdy down and kept on going.”

“Nothing is going to happen to him unless he confesses. And that will never happen,” Benton predicts.

“We could go after him anyway,” Marino offers.

“There’s no evidence left, no case to make,” Benton answers. “Calvin Willard had the vintage Cougar trucked away for repairs. He used Trad Whalen to help cover up what really happened, and nobody’s going to talk.”

“Well, both of them should go to jail for putting that hacking device on our car.” I push back my chair.

“I’m not done with them yet,” Benton promises, and we get up from the table.

In one minute, it will be midnight, and we gather close, holding up our glasses.

“A toast.” Benton looks at each of us. “To justice.”

We drink to that.

“And may the Phantom Slasher burn in hell where he belongs,” Lucy says.

“Thank God,” Dorothy slurs. “People can feel safe in their own beds again.”

“You get rid of one serial killer,” Marino singsongs, “only to have another to take his place.”

“Let’s hope he’s convicted and locked up forever,” Benton says. “He might get the death penalty, as vile as his crimes are.”

“A jury’s gonna hate him,” Marino predicts. “Just the way he treated Peanut is enough to sway them.”

“To Peanut!” Dorothy raises her glass again.

“To family. And to making things right.” It’s my turn.

“And to forgiveness.” Benton looks at me. “We all make mistakes.”

“Hell yeah we do! And I’m ready to make a few more!” Dorothy declares. “I’ll drink to that.”

“You’d drink to anything.” Marino rubs the back of her neck. “Happy New Year.” He kisses her.

“Oh, you know how much we love each other, you lunkhead.” She clings to him.

“Yeah, I know.”

“I was just giving Benton a taste of what he’s missing.” She kisses Marino hard.

“Don’t do it again. Not with him, I mean,” he tells her.

Benton and I kiss, holding each other close. Then everybody’s hugging and happy as fireworks pop and crackle in Old Town.