Page 65 of Dirty Valentine
My phone buzzed as I was suturing the Y-incision.
“It’s Jack,” I said, seeing his name on the screen.I put him on speaker since my hands were occupied.
“How’s it going?”Jack’s voice sounded tired.
“Just finishing up.Found injection site, and some strange fibers on her hands.You?”
“Blackwood’s alibi is solid.Traffic cameras confirm he was home until he left for the mill.He got there a few minutes before we did.And Patricia Whitman’s DNA doesn’t match the blood at Victoria Mills’s house.”
“So we’re back to square one?”I asked.
“Not quite.Judith Hughes is stable enough to talk.Can you meet me at the hospital?”
“Give me twenty minutes.”
* * *
King George County Hospital squatted against the evening sky like a monument to human frailty, its windows glowing yellow against the pewter clouds.The parking lot had become a shallow lake, each lamppost reflected in the standing water like drowning suns.Jack waited in the lobby, water still dripping from his jacket, creating small puddles around his boots that the janitor eyed with weary resignation.
“Third floor,” he said.“Psychiatric wing.They’ve got a deputy posted.”
The elevator ride was silent except for the mechanical hum and the ghost of classical music piped through speakers that had given up on quality decades ago.When we reached room 312, Deputy Rodriguez nodded from his chair outside, a paperback novel folded open on his lap—one of those true crime books that always got the details wrong.
“She’s awake.Pretty anxious though.”
The room beyond the door felt smaller than it was, shadows pooling in corners despite the bedside lamp’s valiant effort.Judith Hughes looked nothing like her photo—the confident grad student researching Colonial property transfers had been replaced by something hollow and haunted.She sat propped against pillows that seemed to swallow her, arms wrapped around herself as if she could hold her pieces together through will alone.Scratches covered her arms like desperate calligraphy, telling the story of her flight through woods that had hidden her but couldn’t protect her.
“Ms.Hughes,” Jack said gently.“I’m Sheriff Lawson.This is Dr.Graves.We found you in the barn.”
Her eyes tracked to us, but they weren’t quite focused—like she was seeing through us to something else entirely.“You found me,” she whispered.“Or maybe you were meant to find me.I can’t tell anymore what’s real and what she wants me to see.”
“Who?”Jack asked, leaning forward slightly.
“Bridget.”The name came out like a prayer and a curse combined.“She’s been in my dreams for weeks.Showing me things.The stones crying blood.The earth opening up beneath the courthouse.My ancestors’ sins written in fire across the sky.”She laughed, a broken sound that made my skin crawl.“But that’s crazy, isn’t it?That’s what I kept telling myself.Even when things started moving in my apartment.”
“Your apartment?”I asked gently, taking the chair near her bed.
“I haven’t lived in the family house since…” Her voice cracked.“Since my parents died.But several weeks ago, I started getting letters.Old paper, like parchment.It reeked of herbs, like rosemary or something—so strong it made my head spin.”Her fingers twisted in the hospital sheets.“It said the house was calling me home.That I needed to face what my family had done.I threw it away, but then I found it on my pillow that same night.Then in my car.Then under my coffee cup at work.”
“How long did you get the letters?”he asked.
“Almost every day.There was one in my apartment on Monday night when I came home from class.I didn’t even open it.I threw it away.They always said the same things.”
“You had dinner with Thomas Whitman on Monday night?”Jack asked.
She turned her head slightly so she was looking out the single window in her hospital room, the rain pouring down the glass like tears.
“Professor Whitman was one of my undergrad professors at KGU, and he gave me a recommendation for the master’s program at Georgetown.He was obsessed with the founding families in this area.He liked to talk about how his ancestors and mine had probably shared drinks at Dorothy Roy’s Tavern in Port Royal.He always asked questions about my family, wanted to know if I remembered any history or had any records my parents had left me.”
“So that wasn’t the first time you’d met for dinner?”I asked her.
Her voice was sleepy and monotone, her eyes barely blinking.“We’d get together on and off.Whenever the mood struck him or he’d found some thread in his research.”
“You had a sexual relationship?”I pressed.
“Like I said, off and on.”
“Walk me through Monday night when he came for dinner,” Jack said.
