Experienced it all.
Powerless. You can scream. Yes. And you do. But no one except your murderer will ever hear you again. And even your screams will just bring him more pleasure. Because this time, no one is coming to save you.
The vase is falling.
Shattering on the floor.
She felt her throat clench. She shuddered. Hoped Melice hadn’t seen it.
But the brief flash of satisfaction in his eyes told her that he had.
He brought his hands together in slow-motion applause. “Yeah,” he said. “You get it. Exactly. Just like that. To him, that moment is better than the one when she stops twitching. ‘Cause in the end, after it’s all over, that look in her eyes when she realizes there’s no escape-that moment when hope dies forever-that’s the one he holds on to and savors. That’s what brings him back for more. That look in her eyes.” He licked the edge of his lips and said the next few words as sweetly as a lover whispering across a pillow. “That look in your eyes, Agent Jiang. That look in your eyes.”
Lien-hua let a moment flicker by, used it to bury her thoughts, her feelings. “So, is that your confession?”
“That’s my conjecture.” His eyes slid to the clock on the wall.
“And now I’d like to go to my cell.”
Lien-hua felt the bruise that she’d gotten on her leg yesterday stiffening. She shifted her weight to relieve the pressure, winced a little, and then leaned against the wall again. “Your hand, that must really hurt.” She motioned to the blood-soaked bandages.
“Yeah. And it hurts where you kicked me.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Of course it does.”
“Don’t lie to me, Creighton.”
An extra blink. “My name is Neville.” “Your name is Creighton Prescott Melice. Born September 9, 1977, to Leonard and Isabelle Melice in Wichita, Kansas. You attended George Washington Carver Elementary School. You have two younger brothers named Trenton and Isaac. You began attending the University of Michigan in 1995-do you want me to go on?
I told you when I first came in here that I know who you are.”
Silence. His eyes narrowing.
“Did you kill the eyewitness in DC too? Torture her and then leave her body in the backseat of that car?”
In a sudden burst of rage Melice yanked at the chain fastening his handcuffs to the table. It clanged, but held fast. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with here.”
“Then tell me-what am I dealing with, Creighton?”
He refused to meet her stare.
“You have it, don’t you?” she asked.
“Have what?”
“The device. I know you do. Hunter gave it to you, didn’t he?”
His mouth flattened into a wicked line. “A minute ago I saw you shift your weight, Agent Jiang. Pressure on your hip, maybe?
Or, maybe relaxing the muscles in your leg to get comfortable?
That doesn’t happen to me. No muscular strain, no discomfort, no stress on my joints. None of it. I’ve never been comfortable or uncomfortable in my life. I’ve never screamed. Never cried. Never been hot or cold. Only existed.”
A primeval fire ignited in his eyes, blazed as he went on, “Did they tell you about my sister Mirabelle? Or haven’t they found that out yet? She had CIPA too. And when she was eleven she woke up paralyzed. She’d twisted her spine as she slept, cut off the circulation to her legs and laid like that until the nerves could no longer be repaired. You see, our bodies don’t tell us when to move. So, we don’t roll over when we sleep. I’ve had to train myself to do it.
Mirabelle died in that same bed two years later. As you know, most of us die young. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones. If you choose to look at it like that.”
Lien-hua sensed his motive. Honed in on it. “You dream of pain, don’t you, Creighton? I’ll bet you do. I’ll bet you fantasize about pain, about finally being fully human.”
Nice, Lien-hua.
Very nice.
Melice’s lip quivered, his eyes shifted. He didn’t reply.
“What’s she trying to do in there?” Dunn asked.
“Her job.”
Melice’s voice tensed. “Of course I dream of pain. All my life I’ve been dreaming of pain, hoping to feel this thing that makes people cry and scream and beg for mercy. That’s the only thing I live for: the hope of one day suffering before I die.”
“Baited by hope,” she said. “You’re the little mouse in the corner, aren’t you, Creighton? Shade put you there, didn’t he? And one day he’s going to snatch that hope away.”
Melice held out his arm as far as his handcuffs would allow. “Hurt me. If you can find a way to do it, let me taste what it feels like to suffer. Yes, I dream of pain. Some people call CIPA a painless hell.”
Then he added, “Who wouldn’t dream of leaving that?”
She didn’t move.
“Well, if you can’t think of a way,” he said, “how about I do?”
And then, Creighton Melice lifted his left hand to his mouth, closed his teeth around his little finger, and bit down.
81
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.
