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.”
84
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.”
85
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.”
86
As Ralph entered and shut the door, Margaret said, “I believe that Building B-14 was burned down to mask the robbery of the device that Drake Enterprises was contracted to develop.”
“Terrorists?” asked Ralph.
