Page 87 of Sharp Force
Grabbing her jacket, Fruge leaves in a huff. Marino shuts the door behind her, and we put on new coveralls, booties, face masks, gloves. Collecting my scene case and extra PPE, we enter the living room, the sharply pungent smell of bleach intensifying.
“I asked Crowley about the convicted offenders sometimeslocked up in the forensic unit,” Marino says as I look around at the big windows and high ceiling. “I wanted to know how many are here now. And if anybody we should be concerned about attended the Christmas party last night and maybe wandered off.”
“Or maybe someone dangerous was recently discharged?” I suggest.
“That too.”
“Graden’s not going to tell us the truth.”
“Of course, he said nobody was missing last night,” Marino verifies. “But he wasn’t at liberty to release information about patients.”
As I walk around on sticky mats, I remember the living room well. Only it was unfurnished when Benton and I saw it with the Realtor. Now it appears thoughtlessly put together, nothing much inside.
A blue fabric sofa has wood-veneer end tables with water rings on them. A tan leather recliner is stained in spots, crumbs on the cushion. The small Persian rug under the glass coffee table is an inexpensive reproduction. It doesn’t appear to have been vacuumed in recent memory.
“An escaped patient doesn’t make sense, though,” I’m saying to Marino. “How would it explain the hologram you saw? Not just anybody could pull that off.”
“If we’re talking about a patient being the Slasher, it could be someone hospitalized here before but not now or even recently. Or the more likely story? Someone who lives here on and off.” He’s pointing the finger at Zain Willard again.
I wander to the bookcase between windows, maybe a dozen old volumes missing their dust jackets. J. R. R. Tolkien. George Orwell.C. S. Lewis. Ralph Waldo Emerson. I slide outA Dream of John Ballby Victorian socialist William Morris.
Ex Libris Georgine Duvall,reads the bookplate in the front cover. Scrawled under it in her loopy handwriting,Society gets the criminals it deserves,and I photograph it with my phone.
“That mean something to you?” Marino asks.
I tell him it sounds like something she would quote. I know that’s what she believed, her empathy outrunning her common sense and good judgment. Ultimately, that must have something to do with why Lucy stopped seeing her.
“I found it the height of irony that Georgine was idealistic and anti-capitalism while living on a multimillion-dollar horse farm. Not to mention the priceless things they collected,” I explain. “She and her husband seemed like genuinely good people. But hopelessly idealistic.”
“Sound like fucking phonies to me,” Marino snorts.
“They meant no harm.” As I’m saying this, I still believe it. “But they were wrongheaded and naïve. Most of all, too trusting.”
“A good way to get murdered,” he says.
“And cause damage to people you’re convinced you’re helping.” I’m thinking of Lucy again.
I notice tiny holes in plaster suggesting something once hung on the bare living room walls. I tell Marino that when I knew Georgine and her husband, they had a formidable art collection. Several Andy Warhols and Picassos. A few horse paintings by George Stubbs, dogs by Landseer. A Monet or two.
“They loved to show off their collection to visitors. I was sure they’d get burglarized,” I recall.
“Glad they weren’t capitalists,” Marino says snidely.
A TV is on a stand in a corner, and there are a few floor lamps,shiny brass with white pleated shades. The furnishings aren’t much better than I’d expect in a dorm room.
The small artificial Christmas tree in a corner looks like one you’d buy in a grocery store. It’s scantily hung with shiny ball ornaments, and a few strands of lights that aren’t turned on. I find it odd there are no other decorations. It doesn’t seem this was Georgine’s favorite time of year anymore.
It seems she came here to escape the holidays if anything. The house doesn’t appear to have been cleaned in quite a while, and that’s not like her either. The fireplace is thick with gray ashes that have blown onto the hearth and floor. I notice dust bunnies under an end table, and cobwebs high in a corner.
“I sure would like to know what was going on with her,” I comment while continuing to look around. “Because everything I’m seeing is out of character. Not that we were close. But I knew her well enough.”
I can’t imagine Georgine would furnish her Mercy Island pied-à-terre so spartanly, nothing matching or tasteful. I have no sense that she ever lived here. I don’t know why she would buy the former chapel to begin with. But perhaps she thoughtfully decorated it at first, filling it with lovely furniture, hanging art on the walls.
“Does she have an office in the house?” I ask Marino. “Any sign of any paperwork, anything like that?”
“Nope,” he says. “Just a computer tablet on the desk in her bedroom. Her phone is there too, and I didn’t touch them, will leave that for Lucy and Tron.”
“What about filing cabinets?”
