The Rook

by Steven James

  “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.

  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 eyew
itness 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.

  “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.

  82

  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.

  83

  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.