reports. You’re not gonna like this. The metal pipes, computer in the back room, cameras, the whole freakin’ place is clean. No prints from this psycho, just a few partials on the keyboard, but they’re not Melice’s. We ran ‘em through AFIS and got nothing.”
Why didn’t that surprise me.
“The criminalists are at his condo now,” Ralph continued. “But so far, zilch.”
A thought wandered past me. The idea seemed utterly unlikely but still possible. “Maybe it wasn’t him,” I said softly.
“What?” said Dunn.
“Maybe he was just passing through, he heard the shots that Lien-hua and I fired, and came running to see if anyone was hurt.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” he said.
“Let’s just be careful what we assume,” I said. “Things aren’t always what they appear.”
“I don’t buy it,” Dunn said. “Melice told Lien-hua he was batting. 875 and now he’s telling her all about what it’s like to kill women.” “I’m with Dunn on this one, Pat,” said Ralph. “I think this is our man. But let’s see what else the criminalists turn up.”
My phone trembled, and when I checked it, I saw a text message from the airline notifying me that Tessa’s flight had been delayed.
Since I was the one who’d booked the ticket, they were using my phone number rather than hers. Her flight had been scheduled to leave over ninety minutes ago and just now they were sending me the message. How helpful.
I shook my head. Then I left a quick voice mail for my parents, letting them know to check the flight schedule first, before leaving for the airport, and then as I was pocketing my phone again, I noticed that Melice was scratching at a moist wound beneath the bandages on his left hand. “Did you two see that?” I asked Dunn.
“What?” asked Ralph.
“Why do you think he’s picking at his hand like that?”
Dunn pretended to be seriously thinking about it, but his sarcasm was evident. “I don’t know… let’s see… because it itches?”
“I’m growing tired of your attitude, Detective,” I said, and I was ready to say a lot more, but before I could, Ralph asked me,
“What’re you thinking, Pat? About the scratching?”
“Margaret said people with CIPA can only feel pressure and texture, right?”
“That’s right,” Ralph said.
“Well, do they itch?”
He was silent for a moment. “I don’t know.” He looked at Melice through the mirror. “It looks like it.”
“We need to find out,” I said, leaning toward the glass. “I want to know for sure why he’s scratching that hand.”
“What’s wrong with you, Bowers?” grumbled Dunn. “Maybe this… maybe that… we can’t be sure about this… you have boatloads of evidence staring you in the face and you question everything.”
“Thank you,” I said. Ralph stepped around the table. “I’ll get someone to check on that itching thing.”
I stared through the glass. “I’ll be right here.”
Lien-hua felt a prick of warm sweat beneath her arm. The room was hot, too hot. The police had probably cranked up the heat to make Melice uncomfortable, without even realizing that he didn’t feel either heat or cold. She could sense droplets of warm moisture forming just above her eyebrows, and she hoped he didn’t see it as a sign that he was getting to her.
“And then,” Melice went on, “after he meets her, he finds a way to get alone with her-maybe coffee, maybe dinner, maybe a hotel room. Who knows. And then it either happens or it doesn’t, and he’s prepared either way.”
“How does he get them into his car?”
“Maybe he just asks them, maybe he forces them. I’d say he likes it better when the women climb in by their own choice.”
Flowers. She thought of flowers in full bloom.
“So it’s her fault if she gets hurt?”
Petals, bruised and withered. Lying dry and brittle on the table.
“You see? Your problem, Agent Jiang, is that you’re thinking like a profiler and not like a killer. It’s never about those things-fault or guilt or shame. It’s about control. Everything’s about control.” He rolled the cigarette between his fingers. “How do you think a handful of hijackers took over those planes full of people on 9/11?”
“They threatened the people onboard. Threatened to hurt them if they didn’t comply.” She knew that wasn’t the reason, of course, but she wanted to see how he’d respond.
“There. You see? You don’t understand people as well as you think you do. The hijackers didn’t threaten the passengers, they reassured them.”
“How do you know?” “Because they were successful.” He paused long enough to scratch at his hand. “The way to control the frightened is to give them hope. So that’s what your killer would do. My father was in the army, and one of his drill instructors used to say, ‘Always leave your enemy an escape route. Never corner him. Even a mouse will fight fiercely when it’s trapped in a corner.’”
He laughed at this; maybe he was mocking the saying. It was hard for her to tell.
“Your killer would know this,” Melice continued. “He’d know that allowing people an escape route is the best way to corner them for good. Lead them along slowly, baiting them with hope, until at last they’re in the position where they think the corner is safe.
Then, you snatch all hope away. To the killer, that moment would be the best one of all. Just like it was for those hijackers when they slammed into the buildings.”
As Melice talked about baiting people with hope, I could see he’d let down some of his guard. Lien-hua probably knew this would happen. She’d gotten him talking about the things he loved most-abducting, overpowering, and killing young women. He was opening up. Enjoying the spotlight.
I heard Dunn flipping through some papers.
“His dad wasn’t in the army,” he said. “He’s playing her.”
“No,” I said. “I think she’s playing him.”
80
As disgusting as Melice made her feel, Lien-hua couldn’t help but agree with much of what he said. He understood people, their motives, how to crawl past their defenses and take advantage of them.
After less than an hour alone with him she could see he was an expert at it.
“So,” Melice said. “The woman makes the choice, and then he takes that choice and twists it around her, overpowering her with her own mistakes. Seeing the look in a woman’s face when she realizes she can’t escape, will never escape, and that she could have avoided this but that she brought it all on herself by trusting someone she never should have trusted… well, that’s the most delicious moment of all.” And then he added, “To a killer.”
Lien-hua tried to distance herself from Melice’s chilling words.
Tried to step back into clinical objectivity, but she was a human being. She was a woman, just like the women he’d lured in and tortured and murdered. And because of her work as a profiler, always trying to see the world through the eyes of others, she could imagine with disturbing clarity what it must have been like for those women.
She felt it all as if it were happening to her: the deep and final death of hope as the cold handcuffs closed around her wrists, the ropes tightened around her ankles, the gag smothered her screams.
And then, the moment when you realize you’re not going to get away. That no matter how hard you struggle you’ll never be able to break these chains, escape from these bindings, keep your head above the rising water. She felt it all.
