Page 63 of Sharp Force
I begin checking various news feeds on my phone, disappointed by what I find but expecting as much.
“Well, that’s too bad but par for the course,” I say to Benton. “The media knows what’s happened, and it’s going viral.”
“I’m not surprised.” He sips his coffee as I read the headlines out loud.
Slasher Strikes Again.
Phantom Slasher Terrorizes Alexandria.
Serial Killer Targets Mercy Island.
Couple Butchered Near Mental Hospital…
“Christ. The public will be buying out the gun stores again.” Benton’s eyes are on traffic and the mirrors.
“We can’t seem to keep anything quiet for longer than five minutes,” I tell him as Lucy answers me that her mother is fine.
Just hungover and grumpy,Lucy reports.
“Not to mention, nothing much is reported accurately. Not even close,” I’m saying to Benton.
It’s increasingly common for reporters and social media influencers to find out about a case before we reach the scene. This never happened in the early years of our careers. What ensues is an avalanche of unsubstantiated wild tales endlessly replicated and accepted as gospel.
Details that might be accurate often provide information we don’t want the offender having. The worry is that a first responder is the leak. Possibly someone who works for a rescue squad or the local police, and I click open the link of a live video news feed.
“… We can’t see it from here. But where the horrific attack occurred is in a remote wooded area overlooking the Potomac River,”Dana Diletti is saying.“Why did the Slasher choose Mercy Island? How did he come and go without leaving a trace? And does he have a connection to the hospital, possibly a former patient?”
Tall and beautiful, she looks like a Paris model in a red trench coat and Russian Cossack fur hat. She seems energetic, no worse for the wear after last night’s scare. The Slasher sent the hologram through her window and hours later murdered someone else.
She shows no sign of being shocked or frightened, not a hint of sadness for the latest victims. Positioned near the entrance gate to the hospital grounds, she broadcasts live while police ensure no one unauthorized enters the island.
In the background the six-story Tudor-style hospital hulks ancient and haunted. The rising sun glints on mullioned windows, the stucco a dingy insipid yellow.
“It’s way back there.” Dana Diletti dramatically swings her arm, pointing a gloved hand like a referee. “On the river’s edge at the back of the hospital, originally built in the early eighteen-thirties. In those days, it was known as Mercy Lunatic Asylum, and it doesn’t sound like it was merciful based on what I’ve been finding out…”
Her tone turns ominous as she moves closer to the barricaded entrance, her crew scurrying after her.
“Old murders you’re going to hear about later during a special report I’m working on,” she’s saying. “And now this. We’ve got our Eye in the Sky covering the investigation live to show you where it happened…”
I mute the sound.
“I’m assuming any drones flying around the scene right now aren’t what was detected earlier,” I say to Benton. “That’s not what has the CIA’s knickers in a knot?”
“No, it isn’t.” He takes a right at the history museum, formidable and columned like the Greek Parthenon. “What was detected earlier is the orb Lucy described.”
“And no one’s ever spotted it?” I find myself looking up at the sky, the sun pale like a fish scale in the lifting grayness.
“We haven’t, and it’s not been captured on camera that we know of. We see the holograms, the projections, but not what’s making them,” Benton explains with an edge of frustration.
“Yet we somehow know what it looks like. An orb.”
“From radar and other sensors, we know the shape,” he says, and I turn on the volume of my phone again.
“… Originally it was the hospital chapel, and imagine the stories it could tell, most of them terribly sad, I’m betting.” Dana Diletti’s voice sounds from the Tesla’s speakers. “Three-bedroom with a library and wine cellar, assessed at almost two million dollars…”
We’re shown aerial images of 13 Shore Lane as the low sun touches the hazy Potomac running along the back of the fenced-in property. The house is three-story stucco and timber with a fieldstone portico and bright red front door.
The place looks the same as I remember, except for the police vehicles parked on the slushy street, and the Christmas lights entwining shrubbery.
