When the time came, he would again summon a seizure, send them into a panic, and let chaos be his savior.
But not yet.
The two officers who guarded him stiffened when the detective Lennon entered the room. They stepped back as he approached and sat on the edge of the bed next to him. Dark circles underscored his eyes.
“Edwin Paynter,” Lennon said.
He kept his mouth shut and returned his gaze to the ceiling.
“The girl’s fine,” Lennon said. “She’s being discharged right now. The lady you were keeping upstairs, she’ll be all right too. I’m sure you’re glad to hear that.”
If Paynter concentrated, he could make out shapes in the pattern of the ceiling tiles. Heads, arms, legs, human and animal figures capering in white and gray.
“You’re going to face quite a list of charges,” Lennon said. “Abduction, probably, or false imprisonment at best. Assault. Then there’s the man with a few holes in his gut, you’ll have to answer for him. You might argue self-defense, say he was an intruder, but that won’t hold up.”
Paynter held his breath when he picked out a face directly above. A kind and loving face, eyes staring back down at him. He smiled back.
“But there’s something I’m especially curious about,” Lennon said. “Those teeth that were found. Where did they come from?”
Paynter turned his attention back to the detective.
“And what’s underneath the concrete floor in that cellar?”
The face in the ceiling whispered something, a prompt. Paynter repeated it.
“The Lord will be my judge,” he said.
Lennon smiled, stretching the bandage on his chin. “Eventually,” he said. “Before that, you’ve got the courts to deal with.”
A nurse rolled a tea trolley past the room, its rattles and clanks forming vowels and consonants. Paynter spoke them word for word.
“I’ll never see a courtroom,” he said. “The Lord won’t allow it.”
“The Lord has no say in the matter.”
Paynter snorted. The pain in his temple pulsed with his laughter. All around him, the hospital whispered, God’s word delivered to him on every draft.
“The Angel of the Lord will set me free,” he said. “Just as Peter was freed from prison, so will I be freed.”
Lennon asked, “You don’t think the Angel of the Lord has better things to do at Christmas?”
Paynter felt the smile fade from his lips. “It’s a foolish man who mocks the Lord,” he said. “Or his messenger.”
“Is that what you are?” Lennon asked. “His messenger?”
Paynter looked back to the ceiling. “There’s no name for what I am,” he said.
73
FRESH SNOW SETTLED on the Audi’s windshield as Lennon parked outside the apartment building in Stranmillis. The girl, Galya, had said little as he drove. She stared out the window, her face blank, his coat wrapped tight around her.
“Here we are,” he said.
Galya did not reply.
Lennon got out and walked around the car to the trunk. He opened it and pulled out the foldable transit wheelchair the hospital had provided on loan. It took only a few seconds to open and lock its frame, then lower the footrests. Its small wheels left tracks in the snow as he brought it around to the passenger side.
He opened the door, and Galya looked up at him for a few seconds, as if she were unsure of where she was. She took his hand when he offered it, and winced as she stood. He guided her into the chair, supporting her as she sat down. She weighed hardly anything.
On the journey here, Lennon had thought about the women whose company he had paid for. How many times over the last few years? Scores, maybe, even if he had resisted the urge for the last six months. He had always felt shame during and afterward, but it had never stopped him. They were willing to take his money, he told himself, they had not been coerced. They got paid while he scratched the itch. Nobody got hurt. Nobody suffered.
As far as Lennon knew, none of the girls had been trafficked. Some of them were foreign, of course, with delicate features and Slavic accents. But in his mind, they were free women. He would never go with a girl who’d been forced into it.
But how could he be sure?
He forced himself to stop thinking about it as he wheeled Galya through the entrance and into the lift. The silence lingered as they ascended. He watched her reflection in the lift’s polished walls. Her eyes focused on something many miles away.
Lennon had dealt with enough assault victims to know they were not the same people they had once been. Their lives had been split in two, the Before Person, and the After Person. Anything that had ever mattered to the Before Person no longer existed for the After Person.
He wondered what the Before Galya had looked like. He wondered if the After Galya would ever fill that hollowness in her countenance.
The elevator pinged as they reached Susan’s floor, and the doors slid open. Susan waited for them in her doorway. She smiled at Galya, but not at Lennon.
“Thanks for this,” he said as he wheeled Galya through the door.
Susan did not answer. She led them through to the living room where wrapped presents where stacked beneath the Christmas tree, the silvery paper reflecting the blinking lights. A moment of panic gripped Lennon. “Did you … ?”
“Yes,” Susan said. “I sneaked up to your place when they went to bed. I wrapped them for you too.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“I didn’t do it for you,” Susan said. “I did it for Ellen.”
“All the same, thank—”
“Jack,” she said, looking him hard in the eye. “Stop talking.”
She crouched down by Galya. “Now, sweetheart, what can I get you? Something hot to drink? Tea? Coffee? How about some toast?”
“Yes,” Galya said, her voice small like a bird’s.
“Okay,” Susan said. She stroked Galya’s hand and stood.
Lennon pretended not to notice that Susan had offered him nothing. He wheeled Galya to the seats. After she allowed him to help her onto the sofa, he found himself unsure what to do next. Eventually, he gave in to his own fatigue and settled into an armchair. He let his head fall back on the cushions and closed his eyes.
What seemed like an instant later, the sound of a cup and plate being set on the coffee table jarred him awake. He lifted his head to see Galya reach for a steaming mug of tea. Susan set another in front of him.
“Not that you deserve it,” she said.
She did not return Lennon’s smile.
He took the mug from the table and sipped the hot, sweet tea, felt the warmth in his throat and chest as he swallowed. Susan disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared carrying a bundle of clothes. She set them on the couch beside Galya.
“They’ll be a little big for you,” she said, “but they’re warm. Better than those hospital things, anyway.”
Galya returned her mug to the coffee table and placed a hand on the pile of clothing. Lennon smelled the comforting scent of warmed fabric softener and had a sudden memory of being a boy in his mother’s house, pulling on socks fresh from the hotpress on a cold morning. He smiled and curled his toes at the remembered sensation.
Then Galya crumbled before his eyes, and he felt his smile dissolve.
One moment she sat, her hand on the bundle of clothes, the next she seemed to fold in two, her shoulders
