Page 17 of Sharp Force
“Fruge and I walked through the woods, looking everywhere.” Marino continues giving me the details of what happened at Dana Diletti’s house. “We also checked the cameras outside. Nothing was picked up by them except the phantomlike figure. It would scare the crap out of me if I saw something like that and thought it was real.”
“It’s real enough to be dangerous, assuming what Lucy says is true,” I reply. “The Slasher uses the holograms to transmit images and sound, to stalk and spy. Most likely that’s what he did in Dana Diletti’s case. As best we know, he’s not physically present until he’s ready to break in and murder.”
“Well, he may not have been there in person, but he sure as hell knows where she lives,” Marino says.
“She needs to get out of there right away. It’s foolish if not suicidal for her to stay.”
“I tried to tell her, Doc,” he replies. “And she’s not listening.”
We’ve stopped to make a left turn onto West Braddock Road. Car lights reflecting off snow are confusing, the traffic bumper to bumper. Nobody wants to let us merge, and Marino does it anyway.
“Hold on, Doc!” He guns his truck to a cacophony of blaring horns.
I look out my window at aggressive drivers lacking in holiday cheer. Several give us the finger while mouthing obscenities.
“I have a feeling it’s no coincidence that the Slasher would do something to create an uproar on Christmas Eve,” I resume, snowflakes melting as they hit the windshield. “So far, he’s struck on almost every major holiday this year. Valentine’s Day. Mother’s Day. Halloween.”
“I know I’m not a big-shot profiler like Benton, but what’s going on is obvious.” Marino can’t resist taking a swipe at my husband. “The Slasher wants to ruin things for people. The holidays mean something to him, probably because they were ruined when he was a kid.”
I feel a pinch of regret as I think about my sister. She knows what it’s like to have holidays ruined as a child. I’m more at peace with our past than she is. I realize it wasn’t our parents’ fault that we had no money and few possibilities. Papa didn’t choose cancer when I was five and Dorothy was a toddler.
“When’s the last time you talked to her?” I ask Marino. “This is a hard time of year for her, as you know. I’m worried about Dorothy being home alone right now.”
“A bottle of wine in, and she’s not feeling much pain,” he says, the lights of oncoming traffic shining on his strong profile as he drives.
I see the lines in his face from his love of the sun, and the white stubble that reminds me of salt. When we were first getting started, he was Richmond’s bad boy star detective cutting quite the figure with his comic book square jaw and brawn.
“Christmas wasn’t all that happy when we were growing up,” I’m telling him. “I’ll never forget our mother wringing her hands. I can hear her lamenting in Italian about not being able to pay the bills.”
It broke her spirit that she couldn’t give her two daughters much in the way of treats. There was nothing extra for indulgences, barely enough for essentials. I’d catch Mama crying and praying with her rosary beads when she thought no one was looking.
Nel nome del Padre, e del Figlio, e dello Spirito Santo. Amen.
“Yeah, I know,” Marino says. “Like something out of Dickens is the way Dorothy describes it, the two of you forced to work in the family grocery store when you were little.”
“Not her so much,” I reply. “And I never felt forced.”
By the time I turned ten, Papa was too sick to work at Scarpetta’s, the small market he owned in our Miami neighborhood of mostly Cubans and Italians. Dorothy was supposed to help or at least watch the door, keeping an eye out for customers. Typically, she walked off the job, assuming she showed up at all.
She’d leave me working the cash register, stocking shelves and arranging fresh produce in bins. I can smell the sun-ripened tomatoes, the sweet onions and basil, the braids of garlic and wheels of pungent cheeses. I remember the displays of candy andgum that we wouldn’t think of helping ourselves to unless Papa offered.
“When we were kids, my sister didn’t face what was going on. And in some ways still doesn’t,” I’m saying to Marino as snow mixed with sleet clicks against the windshield.
“It’s not just the usual holiday blues, Doc,” he replies. “And it’s not because I got called out to deal with Dana Diletti and the fake ghost that showed up. Dorothy was already pissed at me before that. More pissed than I’ve seen her in a while. Maybe ever.”
Past the Safeway grocery store, we turn onto Alexandria’s main thoroughfare of King Street, snow crazed in our headlights. Heavy traffic has heated up the road, creating a watery slush that is treacherous in spots. Marino keeps his distance from the hydroplaning truck in front of us.
“Pissed at you about what? Has something happened that I don’t know about?” As I’m saying this, I’m sending Dorothy a text, checking on how she’s doing.
“She’s all worked up because of Janet again.” His resentment is palpable. “I hate to think how much time Dorothy spends in a day talking to her. You know as well as I do it isn’t healthy, and Janet’s managed to create a shit show.”
The Janet he refers to isn’t a living person, not anymore. She’s the AI programming running behind an avatar. Lucy began creating the software in earnest after the real Janet and their adopted son died of COVID five years ago while staying in London. My niece hasn’t forgiven herself for not being with them.
Her way of coping is relentless improvement of the algorithm, the AI Janet an Alexa or Siri gone quantum. It’s easy to forget the Janet we now know has been stitched together from recordingsmade while the real Janet was still among us. The avatar continues evolving, the emotional impact on us indescribable.
“With all due respect to Lucy, I wish Dorothy didn’t have that new AI app on her damn phone,” Marino is saying. “Things were bad enough before.”
CHAPTER 7
