John Doe Read Online Free PDF Page B

behind her. “How are you?” she asked. “I was so worried. We were all worried.”
    “I’m fine, Louise.” Maura calmly booted up her computer, as if this day were like any other. A day to inspect the wounds of others, not her own.
    “Are you, really?” Louise had worked for the ME’s office for so long that Maura could not imagine a time when the woman would not be here to greet her every morning, cheerfully fetching her coffee. In an office that dealt every day with tragedy, Louise was always ready with a kind word, a comforting smile. But Maura wanted no sympathy from her today.
    “I need Christopher Scanlon’s autopsy report,” she said.
    That request startled Louise. “That’s … the man …”
    “I know who he is. Could you get it for me?”
    “Yes, of course.” Louise opened the door to leave, then glanced back at Maura. “If you need to talk, if you need anything at all, you know I’m here.”
    No doubt Louise thought Maura needed a hug, a shoulder to cry on. But what Maura needed most was information. Anything that would help her reconstruct what had happened during the hours she could not remember. For all I know, I killed a man that night .
    She already knew a great deal about Christopher Scanlon. She knew he’d been arrested twice, accused both times by women who told eerily similar stories. Scanlon had met them in crowded settings and offered to refresh their drinks. Both Kitty O’Brien and Sarah Shapiro woke up hours later in their own homes, with no memory of what had happened. In both cases, the charges were dropped.
    Kitty O’Brien never recovered from the emotional trauma. Months later, she committed suicide, a heartbreaking end to the case.
    No, not quite the end.
    She found an online news article about Kitty’s father, Harry O’Brien, who’d threatened to kill Scanlon. In the photograph, she saw the bottomless grief in Harry’s face, the sunken eyes haunted by loss. That image so transfixed her that she barely noticed when Louise laid Scanlon’s autopsy report on her desk and quietly exited again.
    Harry O’Brien. Why does your face seem familiar?
    She opened the report and read the description of Scanlon’s injuries. Dr. Bristol counted fifteen stab wounds in all, of various depths, in the chest and back. She turned to the conclusions and was startled by Bristol’s statement:
    Based on varying width and depth of wounds, it appears that at least two separate blades were used .
    A frenzied attack. Two different knives.
    As far as she knew, the murder weapons had not been found. Her own treasured set of chefs’ knives had been confiscated by Boston PD, and were now being analyzed in the crime lab. Could she have done it? Plunged a blade again and again in Scanlon’s chest and back? She knew that under the influence of the drug Ambien, patients had been known to drive, to eat, to behave in purposeful ways that made them appear fully conscious, yet awaken with no memory of what they had done. Drugged with Rohypnol, could she have performed similarly automatic tasks? Or had some monster from her id, released from her darkest subconscious, emerged to take control?
    Maybe I am not so different from my mother after all .
    Shaken by the possibility, she closed her eyes, hunting for the flimsiest strand of a memory. Glimpsed lights, heard a voice, distant as an echo. But nothing solid, nothing she could grasp and hold on to.
    If I killed him, would I recognize the place where it happened?
    She barely murmured a goodbye to Louise as she walked out, and once again felt her colleagues watching her, perhaps wondering if she could have done it. Even she didn’t know the answer.
    It was a warm summer evening, and when she arrived at Olmsted Park, she saw joggers dutifully running along the riverway and couples lolling on the bank of Leverett Pond. She followed the path along the Muddy River, toward the location where the body had been found, according to the autopsy report. It wasn’t