Page 129 of Sharp Force
“I’m going to take you to court for everything you’ve got!” Duke Mansoni screams. “I want a lawyer!”
Peanut has gotten quiet, watching through glass. Maybe it’s my imagination, but he seems happy.
A Week Later
It’s New Year’s Eve and the first time all of us have been together since Christmas. We’ve demolished my lasagna and garlic bread. The Greek salad included an onion and a cucumber salvaged from Peanut’s pillage of the greenhouse.
The private research lab he and his cohorts escaped from does work for the federal government, some of it top secret. I’ve driven past Primal Biodynamics countless times while running errands, the bland two-story precast building barely meriting a second glance.
Behind it in the woods is a caged obstacle course for Peanut, Jane and Kong. A hybrid chimpanzee, howler monkey and orangutan, they’re what the researchers call a chimonkeytan. The peculiar-looking creatures are highly intelligent, specially trained and equipped with neural implants.
In addition to biological engineering, Primal Biodynamics is involved in unusual technologies such as orblike drones that can project holograms capable of spying. One of them disappeared from the lab a year and a half ago, a signal jammer used to disable the security system.
“It was assumed the Russians were to blame.” Lucy gives us the latest as we listen around the dining room table. “The heisthappened not long after Duke Mansoni started working there. His colleagues never suspected him. They found him difficult and noncollaborative, never imagining the rest of the story.”
When the police searched his house last week, they found bottles of lab-grade bleach, boxes of gloves and PPE, also a 3-D printer and sets of acrylic vampire teeth. In his basement was an elaborate control room for piloting the stolen orb drone Mansoni kept docked there.
“Its capabilities include identifying surveillance cameras, motion sensors, even satellites,” Lucy explains. “He would deploy the drone to his victims’ homes, mapping routes that would ensure his white van wasn’t detected near his murders. He’d calculate the best ways to enter and exit undetected while gathering intel about his quarry.”
“But he sent his drone here and Kay saw those awful bright red orbs on the driveway. Right here on this property.” Dorothy taps the table with her index finger. “And that must mean he intended to kill Kay next. Or maybe me!” it occurs to her. “As often as I’m here, I could have been the target.”
“He was spying for sure,” Lucy replies. “And he would have been very aware of Aunt Kay because she’s the medical examiner in his murders.”
She goes on to tell us that ten years ago, Duke Mansoni was in graduate school, and briefly interned on Mercy Island. The hospital used to have a lab that conducted studies on animals to better understand the neurobiology of various mental illnesses and treatments. He was there for several months as part of his doctoral program.
“Doesn’t seem like people looked into him very carefully,” Marino says, reaching for a cookie that’s the product of what Dorothy grows in my greenhouse.
“He had no criminal record, and lied on his applications,fabricating letters of recommendation, that sort of thing.” Benton sets down his fork on his whistle-clean dessert plate.
“Nobody really knew him,” Lucy adds. “He didn’t date or have friends. There was no threat of someone coming to his house and seeing three-D-printed teeth or a weird drone shaped like an orb. Or videos of his victims and the phantom hologram playing nonstop on data walls.”
He’s been charged with the murder of Georgine Duvall, his fate sealed by the DNA under her fingernails. Tool marks on the blade of his Bowie knife match those in the four Phantom Slasher homicides. The same weapon was used to kill Susan Villani nine years ago.
In a way, Peanut deserves the credit for locking the psychopath behind bars. It wouldn’t have happened this quickly or possibly at all had the chimonkeytan not helped himself to my greenhouse. The day he escaped, Duke Mansoni was working at the lab when Peanut pitched a hellacious tantrum.
He tore into the drum of dietary supplement. Somehow in the chaos, the chimonkeytans made a getaway, two of them recaptured quickly. But not Peanut, who had managed to rip off his GPS tracker collar.
“My heated greenhouse would have been attractive to him, and he might have been drawn by Dorothy’s UV light glowing purple.” I finish my dessert, very pleased with how the tiramisu turned out.
Soaking the lady fingers in Godiva liqueur this time, I was generous with the mascarpone and heavy whipped cream, adding fresh shaved dark chocolate on top.
“We’ll never know for sure why he ended up here,” I explain. “Except it’s close to where he escaped from, and nobody was on the property at the time. The greenhouse door is easily unlocked andopened by anything with opposable thumbs, a smorgasbord awaiting inside.”
“That’s what I think, too.” Dorothy makes a big production of pointing at her empty champagne glass. “But I wish he hadn’t upended my gorgeous cannabis plants. It’s been a real chorerepottingthem, no pun intended.”
She sparkles in a Roman candle onesie, a tiara of winking yellow LEDs on her head. They sway and bounce like rubbery antennas whenever she moves.
“But I don’t understand the purpose of a chimonkeytan to begin with,” she declares, her tongue thickened by libations. “Unless they’re supposed to scale buildings, hijack planes and take out the enemy likeMission: Impossible.”
“Not as far-fetched as you might think,” Lucy replies, and she looks like a kid in her jeans and fisherman’s knit sweater.
For an instant in candlelight, she’s the teenager Georgine Duvall counseled in Charlottesville. I feel a pang that’s bittersweet while wondering where time goes. For me, Lucy will forever be precocious and young.
“The goal is to engineer a cross between an intelligent animal and a drone, creating a hybrid that can be controlled remotely,” she’s saying as Merlin slinks into the dining room. “Explaining why Janet didn’t recognize Peanut’s vocalizations on our property. The research is classified and chimonkeytans aren’t in any existing database.”
“My favorite thing,” Marino gloats. “When Janet has to sayI don’t know.”
“Those poor creatures. I can just imagine the way Duke Mansoni bullied and disrespected them. How could Georgine Duvallnot sense he was trouble?” Dorothy points at her empty glass again. “Not that she was ever my cup of tea. But she wasn’t stupid.”
