Patricia Cornwell - Red Mist

“Your father worked here at some point?”

“No, he never did.” She smiles ironically. “I can’t imagine my father overseeing two thousand women. He would have been a bit bored with that, although some of them are a whole lot worse than the men. He was sort of like Arnold Palmer giving advice about golf-course design, no one better, depending on your vision, and he was progressive. A number of correctional institutions called upon him for advice. Angola, for example, has a rodeo stadium, a newspaper, and a radio station. Some of the inmates are celebrated rodeo riders and experts in leather, metal, and woodworking design that they’re allowed to sell for their own profit.” She doesn’t say all this as if she necessarily thinks it’s a good thing. “My worry about these cases you have up north is did they get everyone involved?”

“One would hope.”

“At least we know for sure Dawn Kincaid is locked up, and I hope she stays locked up. Killing innocent people for no good reason,” the warden says. “I hear she’s got mental problems because of stress. Imagine that. What about the stress she’s caused?”

Some months ago, Dawn Kincaid was transferred to Butler State Hospital, where doctors will determine whether she is competent to stand trial. Ploys. Malingering. Let the games begin. Or as my chief investigator, Pete Marino, puts it, she got caught and caught a case of the crazies.

“Hard to imagine she was all on her own when she was coming up with ways to sabotage and destroy innocent lives, but the worst is that poor little boy.” Tara is talking about what is none of her business, and I have no choice but to let her. “Killing a helpless child who was playing in his backyard while his parents were right there inside the house? There’s no forgiveness for harming a child or an animal,” she says, as if harming an adult might be acceptable.

“I was wondering if it would be all right for Kathleen to keep the photograph.” I don’t verify or refute her information. “I thought she might like to have it.”

“I suppose I can’t see any harm in it.” But she doesn’t seem sure, and when she reaches across her desk to hand the photograph back to me, I catch what is in her eyes.

She’s thinking, Why would you give her a picture of him? Indirectly, Kathleen Lawler is the reason Jack Fielding is dead. No, not indirectly, I think, as anger simmers. She had sex with an underage boy, and the child they produced grew up to be Dawn Kincaid, his killer. That’s about as direct as anything needs to get.

“I don’t know what Kathleen has seen that’s recent,” I offer as an explanation, returning the photograph to its envelope. “It’s an image I choose to remember him by, the way he was in better times.”

I can’t imagine Kathleen looking at this photograph and not opening up to me. We’ll see who manipulates whom.

“I don’t know how much you were told about why I moved her into protective custody,” Tara says.

“I simply know that she has been.” My answer is intentionally vague.

“Mr. Brazzo didn’t explain?” She seems dubious as she folds her hands on top of her tidy square oak desk.

Leonard Brazzo is a criminal trial lawyer, and the reason I need one is that when Dawn Kincaid’s attempt on my life goes to trial, I don’t intend to entrust my welfare to some overworked or green assistant U.S. attorney. I have no doubt the team of lawyers who have taken her on pro bono will make my being attacked inside my own garage somehow excusable. They’ll claim it was my fault she ambushed me from behind in the pitch dark. I’m alive because I was bizarrely lucky, and as I sit inside Tara Grimm’s ivy-infested office, it bothers me more than I care to admit that I’m really not responsible for saving myself.

“As I understand it, she’s been moved into protective custody for her own safety,” I reply, as I envision the level-four-A camouflage vest with its inserted Kevlar-ceramic plates. I remember the body armor’s tough nylon texture, the new smell of it, and its weight as I draped it over my shoulder inside my dark, frigid garage that night after retrieving it from the backseat of the SUV.

“Seems like my moving her to Bravo Pod might have made you hesitant about what you might be walking into down here in Savannah,” Tara comments. “Seems like you might not be inclined to seek out anything unsafe after what you’ve been through.”

I envision the blizzard of intense white specks as small as pollen on the MRI scan of the first victim Dawn Kincaid stabbed with an injection knife. Bright white particles densely concentrated around a buttonhole wound and blasted deep inside the organs and soft tissue structures of the chest. Like a bomb going off internally. If she’d finished what she’d started when she came after me with that same weapon, I would have been dead before I hit the ground.

“Not that I understand why you were wearing body armor at your own house.” The warden probes because she can.

I don’t offer that part of my job with the Department of Defense is medical intelligence, and that General Briggs wanted my opinion of the latest level of body armor developed for female troops. I happen to know for a fact that the vest can stop a steel blade. Luck, dumb luck, and I remember being shocked by what I saw in the mirror after it was over. My red-tinted face. My red-tinted hair. For an instant I smell the iron smell and hear the hissing red mist as it landed warmly, wetly, all over me inside my cold, dark garage.

“I understand the dog was out there in the garage with you when it happened, if what’s been in the news is true. How is Sock?” I hear the warden say, as I look down at my hands. My clean hands with their functional unpolished short squared nails. I take a deep breath and concentrate on any odors in the room. No iron bloody smell, just the hint of Tara Grimm’s perfume. Estée Lauder. Youth-Dew.

“He’s doing quite well.” I focus on her again and wonder if I missed something. How did we get on the subject of a rescued greyhound?

“So you still have him?” She looks steadily at me.

“Yes, I do.”

“I’m glad to hear it. He’s a very good dog. But they all are. Just as sweet as they can be, and I know Kathleen didn’t want to give him up to just anyone and is hoping she’ll get him back when she’s out.”

“When she’s out?” I ask.

“Dawn adopted Sock because Kathleen didn’t want anyone else to have him, she loved that dog so much,” Tara says. “Good to animals, I’ll give her credit for that, at least, and knowing all this should have alerted you that the two of them have a connection, an alliance. Kathleen and Dawn, even though Kathleen will lead you to think otherwise, as you’re about to find out. Since I’ve been the warden here, Dawn’s been a fairly frequent visitor, coming to see her mother three or four times a year, making deposits in her commissary account. Of course, that’s stopped. The two wrote to each other, but the police took those letters, although it doesn’t prevent the two of them from communicating now, one inmate writing another. You probably know all that.”

“I’d have no reason to.”

“Kathleen lies about it now that Dawn’s in trouble. Doesn’t want any guilt by association when it comes to someone who might be in a position to help her. You, for example. Or a prominent lawyer. Kathleen will say what she thinks is to her advantage.”

“What do you mean ‘when she gets out’?” I repeat.

“You know, everybody’s wrongly convicted this day and age,” she says.

“I didn’t realize there’s any suggestion Kathleen Lawler might have been.”

“She won’t get Sock back unless he lives to be a very old dog,” Tara Grimm says, as if she’ll make sure of it. “I’m glad you’re keeping him. I’d hate for one of the rescues we train here to be homeless again or end up in the wrong hands.”