The Rook (36 page)

I sent my chair sprawling across the floor as I rushed to the door, beating Dunn into the hallway.

Then, around the corner to room 411.

Two officers stood sentry outside the interrogation room. “Open the door,” I said.

Confused looks.

“Now!” At last one of the officers, a brawny man with a pockmarked face, pulled out a key, fumbled with the lock, and as soon as the door was open, I pushed past them both. Lien-hua had slipped off one of her socks and wrapped it around Melice’s left hand to stop the bleeding. Quick reaction time. Very quick. “Are you OK?”

I asked her.

“Yes.”

Dunn crashed into the room. Stared at the glistening blood splattered across the floor. “Look at this mess.” Then, before I could stop him, Dunn grabbed Melice by the hair, wrenched his head back, and slammed his face against the table. Then Dunn leaned close and sneered. “Too bad you can’t sue me, scumbag.”

“Back away, Detective,” I said.

He glared at me, then at Melice.

“Back away.”

At last he did, slowly, and muttered to the two men who’d been guarding the door, “Get this piece of garbage out of here. Take him to the infirmary.”

Melice, his face bloodied, just stared at him. “Sorry, Detective. Nice try, but I didn’t feel a thing. Kind of a letdown, huh? When you want to hurt someone that badly and you just can’t do it?”

“Just wait,” said Dunn. “Your day is coming.”

One of the officers who’d been standing guard unlocked Melice’s cuffs from the table and dragged him to his feet. The other officer gingerly picked something up from the table. “They might be able to reattach this,” he said.

Dunn’s eyes fell on the garbage can in the corner of the room.

“Give me that.”

I could see where this was going. “No,” I said to the officer.

“Take it along. Give it to the doctor, see what he can do.”

Dunn’s anger flared at me. “If he wanted to keep his finger, he wouldn’t have bitten it off.”

“Go on,” I told the officers. “Take care of that guy.”

They manhandled Melice toward the door, and Dunn slammed his foot into the steel leg of the table and stormed past them out of the room.

I put my hand on Lien-hua’s shoulder. “You sure you’re OK?”

She nodded.

As the officers led Melice into the hallway, I heard a scuffle and saw him wrestle against them for a moment, then spin from their grip. I ran over to help restrain him, but by the time I got there, they’d already been able to grab him and were pulling him back into the hall. “One last question, Lien-hua,” Melice called as they dragged him away. “Do you feel like a victim yet?”

“Sorry,” she said calmly. “Not yet.”

“Give it time,” he called, his words echoing down the hallway.

“You will.”

Then the door swung shut and their footsteps began to recede down the corridor.

I glanced at her to see her reaction. The gears in her mind seemed to be turning. She narrowed her eyes and mouthed several different
words as she stared at the gray table now splayed with fresh streaks of Melice’s blood. “Give me a couple minutes, OK? I just need a chance to think.”

Once again I wanted to stay with her, but her words from earlier echoed in my head:
“You push things too far. It builds walls, OK?

Don’t do it. Not to me.”

“Sure,” I said, and stepped into the hallway where I saw Dunn having words with the officers taking Melice to the infirmary. And a few thoughts of my own began to form in my head.

All during the interrogation, Lien-hua had known that Melice was trying to get to her. And although she didn’t want to admit it to herself, he’d succeeded—at least a little. Killers know how to play mind games, and they’re usually better psychoanalysts than the doctors the state hires to analyze them. Lien-hua just didn’t like considering the possibility that Melice was better than her.

She took one more look around the room, then picked up her recorder and notepad and flipped to the last page of her notes.

For the most part, she’d been watching Melice as she took notes, and had hardly looked down at the paper. And, while it was true she’d scribbled a few words on the page, that’s not what caught her attention. Instead, in the center of the page, surrounded by a clutter of cryptic words and shorthand phrases, Lien-hua had sketched a picture. Without even realizing it, she’d drawn a scissors snipping off the head of a chrysanthemum.

She held the notepad against her chest and went to join Pat.

Creighton found that it wasn’t easy to walk with his feet shackled together and his hands cuffed in front of him, and he stumbled a little as the two cops led him into the elevator. Well, at least he wouldn’t have to put up with the restraints for long. He’d be free soon, in just a few minutes, as a matter of fact. And when he died later tonight it would be worth losing the finger. It would be worth everything.

He discarded Lien-hua Jiang’s sock in the elevator and watched the blood from his hand drip and form bright patterns on the tiled floor.

His little meeting with her had gone well. Yes, very well.

Despite the fact that the feds had somehow found out his real identity, things had still ended the way Shade had planned.

The elevator clanged to a stop, the doors slid open, and the three men began their long walk to the room at the end of the hall.

Creighton could tell he’d shaken something loose inside of Special Agent Lien-hua Jiang. And he liked that very much. It brought him a tingle, a promise, a cool inviting shiver. He’d brushed up against that secret little something hidden in her past, deep in her psyche. And touching her pain in that way tasted sweet to him.

Sweet and strong.

The lotus flower had begun to unfold, just as Shade said it would.

Lien-hua had tried to hide it, they always do, but you can see it in their eyes. Eyes never betray you. Inside of every woman lives a
needy little girl wanting to feel pretty, loved, secure. Expose her to her imperfections, toy with her desire to feel loved, rattle her sense of security, and you bring that needy little girl to the surface.

And during the investigation, Agent Jiang’s eyes had told him how fragile the girl inside of her was, and of course, Creighton already knew why. Actually it was one of the reasons Shade had chosen him.

Probably the main one.

They reached the infirmary door and one of the cops grunted for Creighton to stop. So he did.

Creighton Prescott Melice stood still and submissive between the two men he was about to kill.

Tessa had never been on a motorcycle before, and with the wind whipping through her hair, it really did feel like she was flying.

After spending the last hour or so driving up the coast with her arms snugged around Riker’s waist, everything felt right in the world.

And now that they’d stopped to watch the sun set, she climbed off the motorcycle and followed him toward the beach. To a special place he knew.

She was with a guy.

She was on her own.

And there was no way for Patrick to check up on her.

She was a raven spreading her wings, and it felt so, so good.

Tessa walked with Riker to a deserted section of beach, and there, on a dry spot of sand near a flat gray boulder, they sat down together to watch the sun sink into the sea. Tessa wanted to lean against Riker, to let his strength support her, but she resisted and just sat close instead. “So,” she said. “Did you ever figure out Lachlan’s puzzle?”

He patted his pocket. “Got my answer right here.”

“Let’s see it.”

He tugged out two sheets of paper—his sheet as well as the yellowed sheet she’d written her answer on. “So, remember, there’s two guys,” he said. “If the first guy gives one stack of his money to the second guy, then he ends up with half of the second guy’s amount, but if the second guy gives the first guy one of his piles, then they have the same amount.” “Unfold the paper,” said Tessa. “See what I wrote.”

Riker spread it across his hand. “Five and seven.”

“Right,” she said. “If the guy with five stacks gives the other guy one, they’ll have four and eight, and if the guy with seven gives the first guy one of his stacks, they both have six.”

“And you figured that out on the spot?”

On the horizon, scalloped clouds growing dark, welcoming the night.

“Yeah.” She was a little embarrassed, because admitting that she’d figured out the puzzle so quickly made Riker seem kind of dumb. “Let’s see your answer. What did you write?”

The sun was melting lower and lower, a small slice of melon against the base of the sky.

Riker held up the paper, but as Tessa reached for it, he pulled it away. She reached again, and he rolled onto his back. She leaned across him to grab it, and finally, when their faces were only a few inches apart, he let go. “Unfold it,” he said softly. Tessa caught the scent of his inviting cologne mixing with the wild ocean air.

The sun was a sliver …

She flattened the crinkled paper against his chest and read what he’d written: “You.” Her heart trembled.

… and then the sun was a dot …

“That’s my answer,” he said. “You are.” Tessa felt wanted, loved.

… and then the sun was gone, swallowed by the waves.

She lay by his side until the night’s cool fingers closed around them, then Riker took Tessa’s arm and helped her to her feet. “Let’s go. There’s still a lot I want to show you tonight.”

When Lien-hua and I returned to the conference room to meet with Margaret and debrief Melice’s interrogation, we found her sitting at the head of the expansive table waiting for us. Even before we could pull out our chairs, Margaret said, “Agent Jiang, talk to me about this man.” Her voice was unusually cool and reserved. After what had just happened in the interrogation room, her even tone surprised me. “From a profiler’s perspective, what are we looking at?”

“It’s the perfect storm,” Lien-hua replied as we took our seats.

“A psychopath with CIPA. He feels no pain in his body and he feels no pain in his heart. Here is a man who has never felt discomfort or guilt or shame or suffering of any kind—either mental or physical.” As she spoke, I thought of the astronomical odds against a psychopath also having CIPA, but then I remembered Tessa’s comments about the way Dupin approached his case: as impossible as it seems, it did occur, so it must be possible.

Lien-hua went on, “Psychopaths don’t feel either empathy or compassion and never develop close enough relationships to feel heartache. Instead, they just look at other people as objects to be used and then discarded when they no longer enjoy them. Often they become addicted to controlling people, and when they get obsessed with something, their obsession can go on for decades.”

I took Lien-hua’s words to heart and wondered what it would be like to live, as Melice put it, in a “painless hell.” How different would that be from a “joyless heaven”? Maybe no different at all. “What about the interrogation?” asked Margaret. “The things he told you?”

“A classic example of ‘semantic aphasia,’” Lien-hua said. “That is, using the words that your listeners want to hear. It’s a way of manipulating people. Career criminals are experts at it. They only care about getting their way, exerting power. So it’s tough to say how much of what he said could be taken as a confession. I’d need to talk with him more. But I can say this much—he knows the mind of a killer. And he likes fantasizing about death.”

“Or maybe,” I said, “he just likes watching people do the one thing he can’t do—suffer at the hands of others.”

Then Margaret folded her arms and looked back and forth from Lien-hua to me. “Now,” she said coolly. “Tell me what you two know about Project Rukh.”

What? Where did that question come from?

“Project Rukh?” I said. “What do you know about Project Rukh?”

“I’m the one asking the questions, Dr. Bowers,” Margaret said in a clipped voice. “Kindly address them or refrain from participating in the conversation.”

OK.

A moment earlier I might have considered mentioning that I’d found the device, but since she was acting so Margarety, I decided to keep that information to myself for the time being. The device was safe, and until I knew more, it seemed like a good idea to keep its location a secret, so instead, I told her the sketchy facts that I’d discovered about Cassandra’s shark research, Dr. Osbourne’s neuromorphic engineering studies, and the possible connection to MEG technology.

“There is a device,” she said. “Do you know anything about a device?”

“Shade mentioned something,” I answered. “I believe it was from Building B-14, but I don’t know what it’s used for. Do you?”

“Was it destroyed in the fire?”

“If you don’t mind me asking, Margaret—”

“I do mind you asking.”

Lien-hua held out her palms. “Help us out here, Margaret. What are we looking at?”

Margaret folded her hands, looked at her watch, and then to my
utter amazement, spoke with stark candor. “Most of what I was told is classified, of course, and eyes only for people above your pay grade, but, since I believe this may bear some relevancy to the case, I can tell you that Drake Enterprises was contracted to design a device that would use electromagnetic imagery to find bodies in rubble or in buildings where thermal imaging can’t reach.”

Electromagnetic sensory location, just like sharks do with buried
fish.

Remembering the radiation warnings on the device and the trace radioactive isotopes found in Hunter’s apartment, I said, “Does it use radiation? Radioactive isotopes?”

Margaret’s eyes became inquisitive. Maybe suspicious. “It does.

Cesium-137. It’s found in certain medical devices and gauges that are used to treat cancer, but it’s also used to measure the thickness of materials—metal, stone, even paper. That’s what helps the device ‘see through’”—her tone of voice laid quotation marks around the last two words—”matter to find the electromagnetic signals.”

“Wait.” It was Lien-hua. “It can see through buildings?”

“It can’t exactly see through matter,” Margaret explained, “but it can sense the location of the electromagnetic impulses of muscle twitches and brain activity of people who are buried in rubble.”

“It makes sense,” I said. “Remember? Sharks can locate prey buried in the sand. Thermal imaging is similar, but this would simply register magnetic or electric impulses rather than heat. By using neuromorphic engineering it could be possible to replicate the sixth sense of sharks.”

Margaret’s impatient sigh was her way of asking for another turn to speak. “I was told that the purpose of Project Rukh was to develop a device that could be used to find terrorists in caves, miners in cave-ins, skiers in avalanches, and so on. After the towers fell on September 11 and the government had to resort to tapping on metal pipes to search for survivors, they began looking for more efficient ways of finding survivors in wreckage or debris.” I weighed what she was saying with the facts of the case. The pieces just weren’t adding up here. “No, that’s not big enough,” I said. “It has to be something more. It has to have another use.”

Margaret leaned forward. “Dr. Bowers, it may surprise you to hear me say this, but in this case, I agree with you wholeheartedly.”

Just then, a knock at the door. Ralph.

“Come in, Agent Hawkins,” Margaret said. “And close the door behind you.”