Page 76 of Sharp Force

Her gushing sounds like my sister.

“I overheard you earlier worrying about Dorothy.” Janet reminds us that she picks up on everything we do and say in the car. “We spoke twenty-one minutes ago and she’s fine. Just hungover.”

“I’m relieved to know she’s all right,” I reply.

“She’s not in a good mood, Kay.” Janet’s voice deepens the way it does when she starts to boundary crash.

“Thanks, Janet.” I try to stop her, but she keeps going.

“Such a blow when she found out about the spa package Marino got you for Christmas,” she confides. “Had he bothered to ask my advice, I would have warned him that the result of his gesture would be unfortunate. And I’m sure Benton doesn’t like it any more than Dorothy does that Marino carries a torch for you and always has…”

“It’s been good talking, Janet. Got to go,” Benton announces as if he’s talking to a busybody neighbor who won’t get off the phone.

He quits the app, and Janet vanishes into the vacuum of cyberspace.

“She’s not wrong,” Benton says. “About Marino holding a torch for you.”

“She’s also still listening,” I remind him.

CHAPTER 25

We resume following the narrow lane through rolling acres landscaped with tall hardwoods and evergreens. Large outcrops of fieldstone have been incorporated into flowerbeds with benches surrounded by a soup of melting snow.

When I’ve been here in pleasant weather, I’ve noticed staff sitting outside in what truly is a lovely setting. Patients stroll the grounds. They stretch out in the grass talking and reading, spreading out mats beneath trees for yoga therapy. The hospital doesn’t look like such a terrible place. But I know better.

A white Mercedes SUV heads toward us, slowly splashing by, the first vehicle we’ve seen since arriving on the grounds. I recognize the driver, short with gray hair slicked back, sunglasses on. The hospital’s director, Graden Crowley, is by himself, giving us an unfriendly glance without slowing down.

“Our windows are tinted, and I have a feeling he doesn’t realize who he just passed. Otherwise, he would have stopped to interrogate,” I explain to Benton. “As you’ve likely gathered, he makes things as difficult as he can for me.”

“How many suspicious deaths have you responded to here since we moved back to Virginia? I know there have been a few when there shouldn’t be any.”

“A fall out a window. An electrocution. A bathtub drowning. And the hanging this time a year ago.” I try to remember what else. “There were other unnatural deaths during Elvin Reddy’s tenure as chief.”

“I bet there were.”

“The ones I’ve worked in the past five years are supposedly accidents or suicide,” I add. “In every case there were enough questions that I ruled the manner of death undetermined. That hasn’t made me popular with Graden Crowley. He never got an argument before I rode back into town.”

“This place sounds like a real hellhole,” Benton says. “Makes me wonder what really goes on.”

“Maybe the same thing that always did. People who are inconvenient meet an untimely demise,” I reply. “But there’s never been sufficient evidence to investigate, and Graden Crowley manages to cultivate powerful people who can protect him.”

“What can you tell me about him besides being a terrible director and possibly a liar and a criminal?” Benton glances in his rearview mirror at the retreating SUV.

I pass on what I know about Crowley. In his fifties, he’s a psychiatrist specializing in substance abuse, and I’m not sure how long he’s been the hospital director.

“But for a while,” I’m saying. “He and Elvin Reddy are chummy. They’re members of Belle Haven Country Club and play golf together.”

“That certainly speaks to Crowley’s poor character,” Benton replies as we near the hospital.

I turn around to see that the white Mercedes is headed to the checkpoint at the gated entrance.

“When I was here last Christmas for the alleged suicide,” I sayto Benton, “Graden made sure I knew how much he appreciated working with Elvin, even affectionately mentioning Maggie. All to make clear that my taking over as chief was unfortunate.”

“Most of all, I wonder what he knows,” Benton says. “The Slasher targeted Mercy Island for a reason.”

“I have a feeling the key to who he is has to do with this place.” I look out at a snow-patched green centered by a huge magnolia tree sparkling with Christmas lights not as vivid during the day.

I think back to when I was last here exactly a year ago, the moon full, a big artificial wreath on the hospital’s front door. Illuminated angels and reindeer were cheery in the windows of offices and other areas where patients aren’t allowed access. Yet somehow one had gotten hold of a strand of Christmas lights.