Page 71 of Sharp Force

Two-lane with ornamental stone towers, the bridge connecting the mainland of Virginia to Mercy Island was built in the early 1800s.In French,pitiémeans pity or mercy, and long ago it wasn’t only the desperately ill who crossed over to the island, most never to return.

Countless people were exiled there as punishment. It was a way of solving a problem. Reasons for committal in the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth included mental illness or the accusation of it. Also, political beliefs, epilepsy, syphilis, domestic trouble, immorality.

Even laziness and reading too many novels could send people away for the rest of their days. Most treatments were ineffective and a horror. Ice baths. Bloodlettings with leeches. Exorcisms. Insulin and other shock therapies. Holes cut into skulls to reduce brain pressure or release evil spirits.

They were notorious for performing lobotomies by inserting a needle through an eye socket to destroy brain tissue in the frontal lobe.

Where are you?Marino is texting, and I tell him.

He goes on to warn that a drone is flying over 13 Shore Lane.

Dana Diletti,he writes, and it’s to be expected.

In the past few years, she’s routinely utilized drones when filming outdoors, as do most television and film productions. It’s easier than a helicopter and a fraction of the price.

I was in the driveway and the f*cking thing would have given me a haircut if I had any,Marino adds.

The Potomac is ruffled and leaden in hazy sunlight, no water taxis or sailboats out this early on Christmas morning. I can see the runways of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport several miles upriver, the roar of low-flying jets constant as they take off and land.

A checkpoint has been set up at the entrance of the bridge. Fouruniformed Alexandria police officers in winter gear are standing sentry, all traffic blocked by barricades and police cars. Benton stops the car, rolling down his window.

“Merry Christmas.” He shows his credentials to a female police sergeant who appears to be about my age.

“I’ve had merrier ones,” she says, in ballistic gear, an MP5 submachine gun on a sling across her chest.

Her hair is cropped short, her face masked by aviator sunglasses. I remember the spate of freckles across her cheeks, and her thick figure and broad shoulders. I’ve encountered her before at several death scenes and inside the courthouse on King Street.

“Who you got riding shotgun?” she asks Benton while staring at me.

I can tell she knows who I am. But she’s doing her job.

“Doctor Scarpetta,” he says as I dig out my wallet, holding up my chief medical examiner’s shield.

“I thought I recognized you,” she says with a smile that seems genuine.

“How are things going?” Benton asks her.

“Now that the word is out, we’ve got a lot more people trying to cross the bridge,” she replies. “Just before you rolled up, we turned away at least a dozen rubberneckers who saw Dana Diletti running her mouth on TV. I expect it to get worse, and two drones are zipping around so far. Nothing I’d like better than to blast them out of the air with a shotgun. But no can do.”

“What makes you think there’s more than one?” Benton asks her. “And are we sure whose they are?”

“Definitely Dana Diletti’s. I’ve been watching her live coverage on my phone to see what she’s showing her TV audience. It’s obvious that her crew is flying a drone at the murder scene. Another oneis monitoring people coming and going here on the bridge. In fact, there it is again.”

The sergeant points behind us, and we can see a quadcopter sailing in our direction like a flying black spider carrying a video camera attached to a gimbal. The drone abruptly halts into a wobbly hover above the checkpoint.

“This is what I’m talking about.” She scowls up at it.

I can hear the thing whining like a giant mosquito as it descends, now maybe twenty feet overhead. Rocking in the wind, it hangs in the air blatantly filming us.

“Where’s the person at the controls?” Benton asks the sergeant.

She stares off at Mercy Island, a dark green gash surrounded by water, the hospital peeking above trees on the other side of the bridge. Dana Diletti’s TV crew uses the checkpoint at the entrance to launch the drones, and police aren’t allowed to stop them, the sergeant explains.

“I’ve been told the inside of the TV van looks like NASA,” she continues. “All these control panels and stuff.”

The drone whines louder, aggressively dipping lower as if the pilot is listening and giving us the finger.

“Like I said, it’s nothing that a shotgun wouldn’t fix,” the sergeant says.