Guilty Minds

40

What I’d hoped to find was a file, in a drawer or on a computer, or something else that might clarify who Schmidt was working with or for. All I’d ended up with was a picture of Schmidt and a fishing buddy.

Now he knew someone had broken into his house. He’d know who.

My nerves didn’t stop jangling, and my heartbeat didn’t return to normal, until I reached Connecticut Avenue.

I parked the Suburban in a space on Sixteenth Street and returned to the hotel. I nodded at the doorman and found the bank of elevators. We were on the third floor. My suite was number 322. Dorothy, across the hall, was 323. I touched the keycard to the sensor above the lever handle and it winked green to let me in.

It was close to ten o’clock in the evening, and it had been a long day. I was exhausted. I checked my e-mail to see if anything had come in, but there was nothing that required my immediate attention. The connecting door to Kayla’s room was closed. I had left it open. Maybe she had closed it for privacy. I preferred it left open.

I changed into a T-shirt and a pair of sweats, and then knocked softly on the door, in case she was awake. No answer. I opened the door and peered around. The room was dark but a light in the bathroom was on.

Her bed looked empty. She was probably in the bathroom. I entered her room and knocked on the bathroom door.

The door was slightly ajar, I saw.

“Kayla?” I said.

No answer.

I knocked again, and the door came open an inch or so.

“Kayla?”

Still no answer. Odd. Maybe she wasn’t in the bathroom; she’d gone somewhere, left the room. Exactly what I told her not to do.

Tentatively I pushed the door open, and what I saw next at first didn’t register.

I smelled blood, dark and sweet and metallic. My stomach flipped and my heart began to clatter. I saw Kayla slumped down in what looked like a bathtub filled with blood. Her eyes were open and staring at nothing. Her face was pale, lifeless. Her lips were bluish. Her breasts and abdomen were covered in blood. I took another step and saw one hand curled against her belly, long parallel gashes cut into her wrists, lengthwise. Another couple of gashes at her neck, one that apparently had severed the carotid artery. My eyes were caught by a glint of light. I turned to see, on the bathroom sink, a broken wineglass, the shards scattered across the vanity. One particularly large shard, smeared with blood, twinkled on the edge of the tub. I put a couple of fingers on her neck, next to her windpipe, and felt no pulse, just cold flesh, and I knew it was too late.