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Chapters (36)
  1. Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta
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“There was no one. I got there and the lights were out. Her door was unlocked. I ran inside calling out her name. And found her in the bathroom. The light was on in there, as if he wanted me to be shocked. You can’t see that light from where I parked because the bathroom’s in the back. I removed the flex-cuffs with scissors from the kitchen. That’s when I cut my thumb. Just a small cut, not sure how it happened, but I was grabbing for the scissors, and the block of knives fell over, and one of them must have nicked me, so I wrapped a paper towel around my thumb and ran out to my car and threw my coat inside. I sat with her on the bathroom floor and ripped my shirt and hurt myself. There’s blood on my shirt. I called the police.”

“The flashlight? You hit yourself with it?”

“I found it in the kitchen drawer. I wiped it off and left it on the living room floor. Near the door.”

“Why did you bother to wipe it off if your fingerprints and DNA are all over her house and all over her body?”

“So I could tell the police the intruder was wearing gloves. That would corroborate my story. The gloves wiped off any prints on the flashlight. Leather gloves, I told them.”

“And the scissors from the kitchen? What did you do with those after you cut off the flex-cuff?”

His face twitched, and she could almost see him re-creating that scene, and he began to breathe hard, rocking back and forth.

His voice wavered when he said, “Her hands were this awful deep bluish red. Her fingernails were blue. I rubbed her wrists and her hands to get the circulation going. I tried to rub the grooves away, these deep grooves.”

“Do you remember what you did with the scissors?”

“That flex-cuff was so tight. It had to hurt. I left the scissors on the bathroom floor.”

“When did you decide to injure yourself because, as you just told me, it was the only way to get me here?”

“I was on the bathroom floor with her. I knew I’d be blamed. I knew if I got to your husband, I could get to you. I had to get to you. I trust you, and you’re the only one who cared about her.”

“I didn’t know her.”

“Don’t lie to me!” he screamed.

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Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta

12

Shrew had resumed drinking Maker’s Mark, the same thing the Boss drank. She poured herself a tumbler full, on the rocks, the same way the Boss drank it.