Gray Matter
Page 29
Then he was lying on the floor with a fluttery feeling on his chest, as though a huge moth were flapping gently against him. The pain was fading, must have happened a long time ago…
A triumphant voice erupted in his mind, and he was just aware enough to know who it was. That damned Armor woman.
Got you, you prick, she said.
CHAPTER 30
PJ GOT RESTLESS IN the hospital on the second day, so Thomas brought in her laptop computer and the two of them played computer games for hours. She was at a disadvantage because her right arm was bound tightly where the knife wound was, so she had to play left-handed. Schultz came by with a cheerful house plant in an atrocious china dinosaur planter, a couple of magazines, and best of all, meatball sandwiches, chips, and Cokes for everyone.
After a small parade of other visitors left, including Mike Wolf, who held her hand and patted wisps of hair back into place; and Schultz, who took Thomas back to his friend Winston’s house, PJ was finally alone with her thoughts. A feeling had been growing in the back of her mind, and it coalesced into a decision. She would not have a skin graft to cover the crude slicing on her back. Pauley Mac hadn’t actually stripped away any of her skin by the time she called on Sheila, so the wounds would close and heal, with substantial scarring. It wouldn’t be right for her to be unscathed by the experience she had just been through, while Sheila and the other victims lost everything.
She also sensed a change in herself. She had become strongly motivated in her new career of criminal investigation via computer, but now there was a depth to it that hadn’t been there before. She knew that she carried the same pain and caring for those lost ones, the innocent victims, that she had seen clearly in Schultz’s face and that came through so clearly in his gruff voice, once you knew what to listen for.
She had been marked with the arrogant strokes of a sociopath’s knife, and her life would never be the same.
In a way, Sheila’s concern and friendship had reached out to PJ after Sheila’s own death, making Pauley Mac hesitate long enough for Schultz to arrive.
As a psychologist, she knew that the turmoil inside Pauley Mac’s brain is what actually saved her.
As a woman, she would prefer to attribute it to the last act of a caring friend.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1996 by Shirley Kennett
cover design by Kathleen Lynch
978-1-4532-8682-1
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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