Page 107 of Sharp Force

“In her bedroom! It laughed at me and went through the window,” he describes, and I wonder if Georgine saw the same thing.

I can’t imagine her panic had she been awakened by a hand clamping over her mouth. She would have seen the phantom hologram floating by her bed, hissing while waving his knife.

“When I ran out of the house,” Zain goes on, his eyes wide, “the ghost followed me on the sidewalk, laughing…!”

“I think that’s enough.” Calvin Willard steps away from the window, and I can tell he’s unnerved by what he’s hearing.

“What about Robbie?” Benton brings up the robot. “What was he doing during all this?”

“I don’t know.” Zain looks alarmed. “Why? Has he been stolen? No! That’s what I was afraid of! Was he what the intruder was after? Did he take Robbie? He’s very expensive, but more than that, he’spart of my dissertation, my graduate school project… Oh God, oh God.”

“Robbie wasn’t stolen,” Benton says, and Zain seems enormously relieved.

“I said that was enough.” His uncle is waiting by the door to see us out.

But I’m not going anywhere just yet.

CHAPTER 34

Inside my medical kit is the small UV light that looks like a flashlight, and I turn it on, the lens glowing purple. Before the senator can protest further, I’ve put on tinted goggles, painting the light over Zain’s hair.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Calvin Willard exclaims, furious. “I told you that’s enough! I need you to leave now.”

“His hair hasn’t been washed, and it might be the one place we find trace evidence,” I explain. “He says the killer kicked him in the head…”

I don’t let on how startled I am to see a scattering of a powdery substance fluorescing fiery red. I’m not going to tell Zain or his uncle what I’m finding and what it might mean.

“It could be that something was transferred from the killer to Zain.” I return to my medical kit for wooden Q-tips and distilled water.

I begin swabbing dried bloody areas of his hair where the residue fluoresced. Calvin Willard’s face is dark with anger.

“Get out!” he demands.

“This is important,” Benton says. “Chances are it was the Slasher who got inside the house and killed Georgine Duvall, almost killedyour nephew. I’m sure you’d want to help us stop whoever it is. I’m sure you’d want the public knowing how determined you are to find the killer.”

“What if he comes back to finish me off!” Zain exclaims again, his eyes wild.

“We aren’t going to let that happen,” his uncle promises.

“Did you ever use the spare key hidden outside the house?” Benton asks Zain. “A key to the front door that was hidden in a fake rock?”

“It’s easy to lock yourself out,” he says. “I do it a lot. So does Georgine. She did, I mean.”

“Jesus,” Calvin Willard mutters. “Could she be any more obtuse and careless? In some ways I’m not at all surprised this happened. I shouldn’t have been so trusting. I should have seen it coming considering her patients.”

“Do you have reason to think a patient of hers did this?” Benton asks him.

“It’s certainly my first suspicion. I’m betting that will turn out to be the case.”

“When’s the last time Georgine locked herself out?” Benton directs this at Zain.

“She did it several times in the last two weeks,” he says. “She’d used the tunnel to return from the hospital or gym and realized she didn’t have her keys.”

“Had she always been like this?” Benton queries.

“It was much worse lately,” Zain explains as I think of the bottle of clonazepam in her bathroom.

It appears she was taking it possibly for anxiety, and the medication can interfere with short-term memory.