Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page B

from soldiers in Afghanistan who witnessed a comrade being blown up by an IED. There one minute. A red mist the
     next. When Dawn Kincaid’s hand slipped down the razor-sharp blade of that injection knife as it was hissing out compressed
     carbon dioxide gas at eight hundred pounds per square inch, I was airbrushed with her blood, and I feel stained by it in places
     I can’t reach. I don’t correct Kathleen Lawler or offer the smallest fact, because I know when I’m being goaded and lied to,
     maybe taunted, and my thoughts continue to go back to what Tara Grimm warned. Kathleen would feign a disconnection from her daughter when in fact the two of them are
     close.
    “You seem to have a lot of details,” I remark instead. “I’m sure the two of you have kept in touch.”
    “No way in hell. I’m not about to keep in touch,” Kathleen says, shaking her head. “There’s nothing good that would come of
     it with all the trouble she’s in. What I don’t need is any more trouble. What I know I found out from the news. We have supervised
     access to the Internet in the computer lab, and a selection of periodicals and newspapers in the library. I was working in
     the library before they moved me here.”
    “That sounds like a good place for you.”
    “Warden Grimm doesn’t think you rehabilitate people by depriving them of information so they live in a news vacuum,” she says,
     as if the warden might be listening. “If we don’t know what’s going on in the world, how can we ever live in it again? Of
     course, this isn’t rehab.” She indicates Bravo Pod. “This is a warehouse, a graveyard, a place to rot.” She doesn’t seem to
     care who might be listening now. “What is it you want to know from me? You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something. Doesn’t matter who asked first, supposedly. That was lawyers, anyway.” Kathleen stares at me like a snake about to strike. “I don’t believe you’re simply being nice.”
    “I’m wondering when you finally met your daughter for the first time,” I reply.
    “She was born April eighteenth, 1979, and the first time I met her she’d just turned twenty-three.” Kathleen begins to recite
     the history as if she’s scripted it in advance, and there’s a chill around her now, less of an attempt to be friendly. “I remember it wasn’t long after Nine-Eleven. January of 2002, and she said the
     terrorist attack was partly why she wanted to find me. That and the death of those people in California who she ended up with
     after getting passed around like a hot potato. Life is short. Dawn said that a number of times when she was with me the first
     time we met, and that she’d been thinking about me for as long as she could remember, wondering who I was and what I looked
     like.
    “She said she realized she couldn’t have peace until she found her real mother,” Kathleen continues. “So she found me. Right
     here at GPFW, but not for the offense I’m currently serving time for. Drug-related charges back then. I was out for a while
     again and then back in again and feeling really low about it, about as much in despair as I’d ever been, because it was so
     damn hopeless and unfair. If you don’t have money for lawyers or aren’t notorious for doing something really horrible, nobody
     cares. You get warehoused, and here I was warehoused again and one day out of the blue, I’ll never forget my surprise, I get
     a request that a young lady named Dawn Kincaid wants to come all the way from California to visit me.”
    “Did you know that was the name of the daughter you gave up for adoption?” I’m no longer careful what I ask.
    “I had no idea. Of course, I assumed whoever adopts a baby would give it whatever name they decide on. I guess the first family
     who took Dawn were the Kincaids, whoever they were.”
    “Did you name her Dawn, or did they?”
    “Of course I didn’t name her. Like I said, never held her, never saw her. I was