What the Dead Know Read Online Free PDF

Instead she muttered, “What room is she in?”
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    THE YOUNG POLICE officer posted outside room 3030 quizzed Kay endlessly, excited to have something to do at last, but finally let her go in. The room was dark, the blinds drawn against the winter-bright sky, and the woman appeared to have fallen asleep in an upright position, her head twisted awkwardly to the side, like a child in a car seat. Her hair was quite short, a dangerous style for anyone without exquisite bone structure. A fashion choice or the result of chemo?
    â€œHi,” the woman said, her eyes opening suddenly. And Kay, who had counseled burn victims and accident victims, women whose faces had been all but vandalized by men, was more unnerved by this woman’s relatively unmarred gaze than anything she had ever seen. There was an almost searing frailty to the woman in bed, and not just the usual shakiness of an accident victim. The woman was a bruise, her skin about as effective as an eggshell in keeping the pain of the world at bay. The fresh cut on her forehead was nothing compared to the wounded eyes.
    â€œI’m Kay Sullivan, one of the social workers on staff here.”
    â€œWhy do I need a social worker?”
    â€œYou don’t, but Dr. Schumeier thought I might be able to help you get an attorney.”
    â€œNo public defenders. I need someone good, someone who can concentrate on me .”
    â€œIt’s true, they do carry heavy caseloads, but they’re still—”
    â€œIt’s not that I don’t admire them, their commitment. It’s just—I need someone independent. Someone not reliant on the government in any fashion. Public defenders get paid by the government in the end. In the end—my father always said—they never forget where their bread is buttered. Government workers. He was one. Once. And he disliked them intensely.”
    Kay couldn’t be sure of the woman’s age. The young doctor had said forty, but she could have been five years younger or older. Too old to be speaking of her father in such reverent tones, at any rate, as if he were an oracle. Most people outgrew that by eighteen. “Yes…” Kay began, trying to find a footing in the conversation.
    â€œIt was an accident. I panicked. I mean, if you knew the things going through my head, how I hadn’t seen that stretch of highway for—How’s the little girl? I saw a little girl. I’ll kill myself if…Well, I don’t even want to say it out loud. I’m poison. Just by existing, I bring pain and death. It’s his curse. I can’t escape it, no matter what I do.”
    Kay suddenly recalled the state fair up at Timonium, the freak-show tent, how at age thirteen she had worked up the nerve to go in, only to find just slightly odd people—fat, tattooed, skinny, big—sitting placidly. Schumeier had her pegged, after all: There was a bit of voyeurism in her mission here, a desire to look, nothing more. But this womanwas talking to her, drawing her in, babbling as if Kay knew, or should know, everything about her. Kay had worked with many clients like this, people who spoke as if they were celebrities, with their every moment of existence documented in tabloids and television shows.
    But at least the woman in the bed seemed to see Kay, which was more than some self-involved clients managed. “Are you from here?”
    â€œYes, all my life. I grew up in Northwest Baltimore.”
    â€œAnd you’re what? Forty-five?”
    Ah, that hurt. Kay was used to, even liked, the version of herself she glimpsed in mirrors and windows, but now she was forced to consider what a stranger saw—the short, squat body, the shoulder-length gray hair that aged her more than anything else. She was in good shape by every internal measure, but it was hard to convey one’s blood-pressure, bone-density, and cholesterol numbers via wardrobe or casual conversation. “Thirty-nine,