The letters are drawn in a slanting, messy scrawl across pale skin in what looks like sharpie. How the fuck did I miss this? And why? Why would anyone have done that? My name? On my patient? In my hospital? Oh my god.
“It’s relatively fresh,” Bochowitz tells me. “Usually sweat or natural sloughing of the dermis means that things like this fade fairly quickly, but the ink on Nannette is still prominent, which means it happened very recently.”
“Was there…” I swallow, feeling bile rise at the back of my throat. “Was there anything else?”
Bochowitz’s mouth pulls to the side; he scratches at a tuft of hair on the side of his head. “Aside from the remarkably personal tag marking the victim as your personal property? No. No, so far I haven’t located any other clue as to why Nannette was targeted for this attack. Or anything to really confirm that it was an attack. I just saw the ink and thought I’d better tell you first, before I showed anyone else.”
I close my eyes, trying to get my head around this. A woman. A random woman off the street, dying. My head pounds as I consider the life of this woman. Her fiancé in Florida who still doesn’t know she’s dead; the children they might have had together; the career Nannette worked so hard for; whether she has parents who will be grief stricken by her death. I’m hit with each new thought like a succession of bombs going off inside my head. I know it with a sickening surety: her death is linked to my relationship with Zeth. It has to be. I never had any bodies addressed to me before I started spending time with him, that’s for sure. I draw as much air into my lungs as possible. “Have you passed this onto the cops yet?” I ask.
“Our systems are linked. I’ll have to go down and submit my findings now. There’s a lot of people waiting on this information, Sloane. I doubt it will be long before they come looking for you.”
I nod, eyes still closed.
“They’re going to want to question you, you realize?”
“I know.” I take in another deep breath. Open my eyes. Bochowitz’s face has softened with worry now. He reaches out and places his hand on my shoulder.
“It’s amazing what goings-on can be gleaned from my lowly basement vantage point,” he says softly. “I may be out of sight, Sloane, but I tend to see a lot of things. And I tend to hear a lot of things, too. You’ve been absent, but you’ve also been troubled. I have no idea what complications may be affecting your life, dear girl, but there are further complications on the horizon. I hope…” He sighs, sounding faintly regretful. As though everything is already lost. “I hope that you’re ready. And I hope that you are safe.”
Poor Bochowitz. I want to tell him I am, that everything is okay, but honestly, at this point, the last thing I’m feeling is safe.
“I don’t think I want to see Dr. Newan anymore.”
Lacey is sitting on the sofa, teasing a piece of thread between her fingers in a cat’s cradle. She’s insisted on having the television on all morning, even though she’s not watching it, while I’ve been pacing the warehouse, trying and failing to prevent myself from feeling like an increasingly stressed animal trapped in a motherfucking cage. A cage that’s my own admittedly very comfortable home, but still. I want out.
“I thought you liked Newan?” I scratch at the stubble on my jaw, carefully stretching out my body. I’m sore—not only my fucking stomach where I was stabbed, but everywhere else, too. Moping around in bed sounds mighty appealing right now, but I know my body and I know what it needs: it needs to be challenged in order to heal. I’ve been still for too long. I’m used to working out every day. To pushing my body to the limits. Being wracked with a fever and on my back for four days has royally fucked me over.
Lacey holds up her cat’s cradle to me, the thread manipulated around her fingers and thumbs, and looks at me expectantly. I pull my eyebrows together, glaring down at the thing. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” she replies. She has that look on her face; the stubborn one that lets me know I can either acquiesce to her demand, or I can deal with the consequences. And I can’t be fucked dealing with a Lacey that’s been pushed over the edge this morning. I huff, pinching the taut lines and folding them around and under, pushing up so that the thread transfers to my hands in a new pattern.
A childlike surprise takes over her features. “How do you know how to do that?” she asks, laughing.
I consider telling her to mind her own damn business, but then I figure what’s the point. “My mother liked to do it with me,” I tell her. Her smile fades.
“You remember her?”
“I remember her,” I confirm. “Imperfectly. I remember small bits and pieces of her. Like this.” I offer out the cat’s cradle to her so she can take her turn at manipulating the pattern. “But those bits and pieces don’t make up a whole person.”