Page 5 of Sharp Force

Wyatt’s forehead is sweating, his eyes miserable. I’m used to the stench. He isn’t and never will be.

“Has Fabian come in yet?” I ask with long sweeps of the needle and twine.

“He’s with Faye.” Wyatt stares at the ceiling.

Firearms examiner Faye Hanaday typically works late whenever Fabian does. They stay in the on-call room, tiny but cozy with a sofa bed, a TV, a kitchenette.

“Please let him know I saw the mouse again.” I pick up the skull cap.

Fitting it back in place, I line up the notch I made with the Stryker saw.

“Okay.” Wyatt has closed the door most of the way, peering through the gap.

“Why don’t you go upstairs, relax and have a coffee?” I suggest. “No need for you to be down here right now. I’ll deal with the funeral home.”

“Thank you, Chief. Merry Christmas.” He can’t leave fast enough.

A half hour later, Rowdy O’Leary’s double-pouched remains have been driven away in the Peace Brothers hearse. The vehicle bay door clanks shut as I return to the intake area with its wall of shiny steel cooler and freezer doors.

Pulling off my PPE, I drop it into the biohazard trash near the floor scale. The security office is empty behind bulletproof glass, and I imagine Wyatt upstairs somewhere. He’s been working here for more than twenty years. As much as he dislikes the morgue, I’ve never understood why he stays.

My sneakers are quiet on the white tile floor as I follow the corridor, noticing speckles of dried blood that nobody bothered mopping up. Pale green cinder block walls are chipped and scuffed, the ceiling water-stained. Walking past the CT scanner and x-ray rooms, I unlock my phone to check on my husband.

“On my way out of here shortly,” I tell him when he answers. “Where are you?”

“Just leaving the CIA finally. No surprise that traffic’s a nightmare on Four-Ninety-Five,” Benton replies, and I can hear loud engines and horns blaring in the background.

A forensic psychologist for the U.S. Secret Service, he’s been in meetings much of the day at the Central Intelligence Agency. Their Langley headquarters is some twenty miles from where we live. In this part of the world, that can take forever.

“I was tied up longer than expected. We’ve been looking at the video Dana Diletti posted all over the internet,” Benton is saying.

“What’s the CIA’s interest?” I ask.

“The technology the Slasher’s using. It’s over-the-top sophisticated. They’re concerned about who might have the wherewithal to use holograms for spying.”

“As are the rest of us.”

“The worry is it’s someone with an intelligence background,” Benton says.

“Maybe one of their own who washed out of the Agency and went rogue,” I suggest.

“Or former military special ops,” Benton proposes. “Or a sophisticated software designer who works with sensitive technologies.”

“I’m about to watch Dana Diletti’s video.” I walk past the locker room, nobody inside. “Do we think it’s a hoax?”

“Lucy’s been analyzing it, says it looks genuine.”

My niece is a cyber special agent and technical expert for the FBI. Like Benton and me, she’s been on the Phantom Slasher task force since the serial killer first struck ten months ago during the early hours of Valentine’s Day. The victim was a psychiatric nurse living alone not far from here in Annandale.

A CCTV camera captured a ghostly figure in old-fashioned black clothing floating along the street in front of her house. The same holographic projection was observed early in the morning on Mother’s Day when a social worker was slashed to death in Fairfax. Then it happened again two months ago on Halloween, the victim a diversity counselor in Arlington.

Weeks before their brutal deaths, the women had complained of feeling watched. They reported peculiar things going on. Area dogs would start barking frantically after midnight. Something would knock on a window, but nothing was there. They claimed to hear a voice and eerie music softly playing with no apparent source of it.

“The storm front’s moving in from the northwest, so it’s alreadystarted snowing here at a pretty good clip,” Benton is saying over the phone. “Roads are getting slick, people having accidents, and you can imagine the traffic. I think I’ve moved three feet in the last fifteen minutes. You may get home before I do.”

“I’m afraid there won’t be time to make lasagna and everything else I’d planned.” I walk past the dark windows of the histology lab. “Hope you won’t mind if we keep it simple.”

“Whatever you make is always delicious. And we can stay up as late as we want,” Benton says. “All we’ve got to do tomorrow is show up at the airport.”