Page 130 of Sharp Force

“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 Slasherreallysavaging? 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 MercyIsland, 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.”