by David Martin
When he does open his eyes he sees that he is in a small room with glass-fronted cabinets around all the walls, stainless steel counters, no windows, and only one door, which is metal and closed.
Trying to move his hands, Lyon discovers he is bound to an examining table that has a wide strip of white paper running down its center. He’s naked and on his back with both ankles and both wrists tied to the table, a rope across his neck too — across his neck and then tied around the table, holding his head down.
Lyon is able to move his head enough that he can see his nakedness, shamed by it, by how weak and white he looks, that bruise on his stomach the only element of color on his skin: his body looking like something harmless brought up from the depths of the ocean, beached and vulnerable.
But then Lyon comes suddenly to life and struggles against the restraints, choking himself when he tries to raise his head higher, twisting back and forth on the table, breaking into a heavy sweat but unable to free himself. Finally he turns a panicked eye in the doctor’s direction.
Looking freshly showered and shaved, Quinndell is wearing dark suit pants and a white shirt, the sleeves turned up to his elbows, the red tie he’s wearing tucked between two buttons of the shirt, his very black hair neatly combed straight back. Those extraordinary blue eyes are glistening with tears, the doctor leaning against one of the stainless steel counters where he has been listening with an amused smile to Lyon’s struggles.
“So — back among the living, are we, Mr. Lyon? Have you convinced yourself yet that you can’t get loose? Good, good. I’ve given this considerable thought and I think I’ll start off with some burns. Not third-degree of course, which would destroy your nerve endings and blunt some of the effect. No, we’ll begin with second-degree burns, similar to a severe sunburn. If necessary, we’ll be here for hours. And the pain you’re going to experience, oh, Mr. Lyon, in this examining room, here where I once cared for children, you and I are going to create a circle of Hell.”
Lyon is wide-eyed. He works his tongue, trying to keep enough spit in his mouth to speak. “What’re you talking about?”
“Why, torture of course. Torturing you in the most excruciating manner possible, bringing the full power of my medical knowledge to bear upon the maximum production of pain, keeping you conscious with drugs, breaking your bones and grinding the shattered ends together, hammering probes into your gums, cutting your penis off, and then of course …” Here Quinndell takes a heavy tablespoon from his pocket and bangs it ominously against the stainless steel counter. “Gouging out your eyes with Mr. Spoon — oh, John, the fun we’re going to have!”
Lyon tries to tell himself that this is all part of an elaborate ruse, that Quinndell can’t possibly be serious, he’s just trying to scare me, but when the doctor approaches, Lyon begins speaking rapidly. “Wait, wait a second, wait, what’s the point, I mean none of this is necessary, you don’t have to …”
Quinndell pauses and then leans back against the counter. “You’re blubbering, Mr. Lyon.” Now the doctor is tapping the bowl of the spoon against his palm. “Though I can appreciate how terribly exposed you must feel, how vulnerable, knowing that whatever I choose to do to you I can indeed do, it’s entirely up to me, for the time we’re in this room together, I am your God.”
“Doctor, listen to me —”
“Oh, now it’s Doctor, is it?”
“You are a doctor, your life is dedicated to alleviating suffering, not causing it.”
This statement seems to astonish Quinndell, who puts his head back, opens his mouth, and shakes his shoulders up and down in that silently derisive laughter. When he finishes, he takes out a handkerchief, wipes his eyes, and asks Lyon, “Would you care to try another tack?”
Lyon answers immediately. “No one’s been hurt yet, not physically. I mean whatever the penalties are for faking those babies’ deaths, arranging illegal adoptions, at least Claire Cept was wrong about your having killed anyone.”
He is still leaning against the counter and when he speaks he does so without any sense of being in a hurry. “The World’s Worst Reporter strikes out again.”
The implications of this panic Lyon. “What do you mean?”
But just then a teakettle whistles, Lyon turning his head as much as the rope across his neck will allow, seeing the kettle on a hot plate just a few feet from where Quinndell is standing.
Slipping the tablespoon back in his pocket, the doctor walks to the hot plate and turns it off, lifting the kettle and approaching the examining table.
Lyon starts twisting back and forth, keeping his eyes on the steaming kettle. “You’re not, God, you wouldn’t …”
“Yes, I am your God and, yes, I would.” Quinndell standing there holding the kettle over Lyon’s midsection. “When Mary was undressing you, she said you have a nasty wound on your stomach. Love bite?”
Lyon begging. “Please don’t do this.”
With his left hand Quinndell is reaching out to find Lyon’s thigh, the doctor’s other hand tipping the kettle.
Lyon arches his back, trying to turn away, seeing the steaming water appear at the kettle’s spout, screaming, “DON’T, GODDAMN IT, PLEASE!”
Quinndell pours the water down the inside of one thigh, instantly blistering the skin, Lyon so shocked by the pain that his body goes into spasms.
Quinndell, meanwhile, speaks in a mocking voice. “I believe this is when you’re supposed to say, ‘You’re mad! Do you hear me, doctor! Mad, I say. Mad!’ ” Then Quinndell, laughing to himself, returns the kettle to the hot plate.
Lyon is groaning through clenched teeth, his scalded thigh on fire with pain. “Oh Jesus,” he cries, “what do you want from me?”
As if waiting for this exact question, Quinndell turns from the hot plate and faces Lyon, the doctor’s glass eyes wet and bulging. “I want that cunt’s granddaughter.”
There’s a hesitant knock at the steel door and Lyon, thinking that the police have arrived, begins screaming for help. Quinndell takes a two-foot length of pipe from a counter, finds his way to the head of the examining table, and quickly raps the pipe right across Lyon’s mouth.
This new injury stuns him into silence, Lyon feeling blood leaking from his front teeth, running down his throat.
“I’ve always wanted to smash one of you sanctimonious television commentators across the mouth,” Quinndell says bitterly, raising the pipe. “Care for another?”
Lyon turns his head to the side and spits blood.
The knocking at the door resumes.
Quinndell unlatches two dead bolts and opens the door to confront Mary. “I know it’s you,” he says, “because I can smell it. What I don’t know is what could possibly convince you to interrupt me in spite of my explicit orders to the contrary. Want to watch, is that it, Mary?”
“Carl called,” she replies in a trembling voice, making a point of not looking past the doctor to see Lyon on the examining table. “Something’s happened out there at that shack but he won’t tell me —”
“Call the imbecile back and inform him that whatever he has discovered he can sit on it until I’m finished here.”
Lyon shouts from the examining table, “Mary! For godssake help me! He’s torturing me!”
Quinndell waits a moment and then asks her, “Would you like to reply to Mr. Lyon?”
She shakes her head, looking down at the floor, whispering a soft “No.”
Quinndell slams the door and relocks it.
Lyon begs him for a painkiller.
“Oh, shut up,” Quindell tells him.
Balling his hands into tight fists, Lyon tries to deal with the pain, tries to convert that pain into anger. “You’re not very bright, do you know that, doctor — not as intelligent as you’d like to think.”
Quinndell is genuinely interested in this. “Why do you say that, Mr. Lyon?”
“Intelligent people don’t have men like Carl working for them. He’ll betray you out of stupidity if nothing else.”
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“A keen observation.” Quinndell takes out a linen handkerchief and wipes at his eyes. “But let me ask you a question. If this handkerchief is superior to a Kleenex tissue, more durable and more pleasing to the touch — why then are millions of dollars’ worth of tissue sold each year?”
“You should leave before the police show up.”
“Tissues are useful because they’re disposable.”
“What are you talking about, I don’t understand —”
“Disposability is the key to my entire operation.”
“People care about me, people will be looking for me!”
“Really?” Quinndell walks over to one of the cabinets, opens it, and feels around until he finds a box of Brillo pads, still holding the handkerchief in his other hand.
“What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to scour that burn.”
Lyon believes him. “Oh Jesus, please don’t.”
“Then tell me where Claire’s granddaughter is hiding. She apparently drove your rental car back to the cabin. I sent Mary out there but she wasn’t able to find the woman. No one can ever find her. Your Claire obviously has a hiding place. Where is it?”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Lyon turns his head again to spit out more blood.
“That’s always the question people ask God, isn’t it? Why are you doing this to me?” Quinndell puts the handkerchief away and straightens up. “The key to getting away with murder is to kill people no one cares about. A killer will never be seriously investigated as long as he deals in disposable victims.”
“But you said you didn’t kill any of those babies. And that coffin I dug up tonight was empty. If all you’ve done is arrange illegal adoptions —”
“Don’t be tedious, Mr. Lyon.”
“But I don’t understand. Please give me something for the pain, please.”
Ignoring the request, Quinndell says, “Before I was blinded I was simply interested in accumulating a sufficient amount of money, enough to ensure my comfort, and at the same time I wanted to correct certain imbalances in the way God had distributed children. Does it surprise you that I believe in God? Oh, absolutely, Mr. Lyon. I believe that Claire Cept’s prayers led God to blind me. But once blinded I did not turn into a whimpering, defeated man, no, I popped in my blue eyes and laughed at Him, howling for more, thumbing God in the eye by giving Him all the babies he could handle.”
Lyon groans.
“I arranged twenty illicit adoptions, improving the lives of everyone involved, and my reward was the loss of my eyes. Idiots like Carl are walking around with their eyes but not me, someone who deserves to see the world because I can appreciate it, I can better it. Yet I was one who was blinded. Why? Because I dared to improve upon God’s work.”
As Quinndell talks, Lyon quietly struggles against the ropes holding his ankles and wrists, discovering that the rope around his left wrist is looser than the others. By folding his thumb and pulling hard he is able to move his hand within the rope, not getting free yet but making progress in that direction.
Hoping to keep Quinndell talking, keep him distracted, Lyon asks, “Which of those twenty children did you kill?”
“None of those, you idiot, haven’t you been listening?” Quinndell tosses the box of Brillo pads back into the cabinet. “I think we’ll skip the scouring and move right into bone breaking.” He pats around the counter until he finds the steel pipe. Moving to the foot of the examining table, he slaps the pipe menacingly into his opened left hand. “Two percent of all adoptions fail, public agencies reporting that about a thousand children are returned each year by their adoptive parents. Of course I dealt with wealthy people who were willing to pay for — and accustomed to receiving — the very highest quality of merchandise. Designer children, if you will. And thank God none of those twenty babies whose adoptions I arranged ever had anything wrong with them.
“But I learned of a rich couple who had adopted an infant and then discovered she had Rett’s syndrome. Her brain simply stopped growing and she slowly entered a vegetative state. Another child adopted by a wealthy couple showed signs of being violently disturbed — strangled a kitten when he was three years old. I was told of a couple in the entertainment business, very rich and very liberal, who adopted a baby whose mother had used crack during the pregnancy. The fetal liver can’t metabolize cocaine efficiently and the effect on the fetus in terms of damage to the brain and central nervous system is devastating.”
Lyon continues working desperately to free his left wrist, pulling steadily but quietly enough so that Quinndell won’t hear him, folding his thumb in and turning his hand back and forth, a panic sweat lubricating his efforts, making progress an eighth of an inch at a time.
“So what do these couples do when they adopt damaged children and then find they can’t cope with the consequences? Keep in mind that these are wealthy individuals, people of accomplishment, cultured and pampered, accustomed to getting what they want. They would not tolerate a car that failed to perform properly and yet they were stuck, presumably for the rest of their lives, with these dysfunctional children.
“It occurred to me that in addition to West Virginia supplying the country with natural resources, coal and timber — or in my case before the blinding, with children — West Virginia also accepts what the rest of the country wishes to be rid of, tens of thousands of tons of garbage from Eastern cities entering this state every day, proposals for nuclear waste dumps, our prisons housing out-of-state convicts.
“God blinded me to force me out of the adoption business? Fine, I would simply get into the disposal business. What I was surprised to discover was that there is much more money to be made in disposing of unwanted children than in supplying wanted children. Oh, it’s true. If you think wealthy couples are desperate to adopt, you should see how they act when they want to get rid of a baby, to be free of any sense of ownership or obligation to a baby that after all isn’t really theirs, they simply paid to adopt it and now they’re stuck with the embarrassment, humiliated each time their friends ask, ‘And how is little George, still drooling in the institution?’ ”
When Quinndell stops talking, Lyon also ceases the struggle to free his left wrist, afraid the doctor will hear him. Got to keep him talking. “I can’t believe people really try to return babies.”
“Oh, but they do, Mr. Lyon, they do. You think children are prized in this country? Don’t be naïve. Twelve million American children live in poverty, ten thousand of them dying each year from the effects of that poverty, more than a half a million abused or neglected every year, Mr. Lyon, believe me, I know my market. Children are a commodity, prized only if they are in the correct social and economic strata and if they are free of defects. I admit that relatively few adoptive parents are shameless enough to follow through on their desire to be rid of damaged children, but of course to make my point all I needed was a few.
“I fabricated an offer. Religious families living in the hills of West Virginia would readopt dysfunctional children. It was an offer that certain wealthy couples jumped at, willingly paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to sever all connections, moral and legal, to children who were absolutely useless to them. I told the lawyers that these children would live happily with their new parents, these religious families who were serving God by caring for damaged babies. This made the wealthy couples feel good.
“My offer — Bring me children — became so popular that I discovered I could charge whatever I wished. After all, even a quarter of a million dollars was a bargain compared to the cost of institutionalizing a child for twenty years, not even counting the shame and heartache these dysfunctional children were creating for their upscale parents.
“But of course there were no religious families, I simply took the five babies and placed each of them on a rock in a cave. Returning them to God, do you understand? He could do whatever He wanted with them. Could strike me dead or lead someone to that cave to rescue the children. But,
in fact, He did … nothing. I thumbed Him in the eye. My soul may burn in Hell, Mr. Lyon, but here on earth I rule — indulging my appetites, consuming life with both hands, unbowed, untouched by guilt, howling for more.”
The rope is stuck around the widest part of Lyon’s hand and he despairs of ever getting free. He lifts his head a few inches to look at the doctor standing there by his feet. Then Lyon laughs.
Quinndell elevates his chin. “Yes? Something funny, Mr. Lyon?” As he speaks he keeps slapping the pipe in his opened palm.
“No, it’s just that …” He laughs again and then sobs once before catching himself, putting his head back on the examining table to stare up at the tiled ceiling. What a perfect way for me to end up, he thinks — naked and tied to an examining table. All my life I’ve been insulated, nothing ever touched me, and this is the way the scales are balanced, through this banality, lying here being lectured on the supply-and-demand cycles of a baby-based commerce. He laughs again. “This is Hell, being tied down and forced to listen to your stupid fucking ravings.”
Quinndell calmly transfers the pipe to his left hand, turning toward the wall and finding a clipboard hanging there, taking from it a sharpened pencil, and then with his right hand he plunges that pencil into Lyon’s leg, embedding it two inches into the left calf muscle, Lyon screaming and so violently twisting his body that his left hand is wrenched free.
His other wrist, his neck, and both ankles, however, are still bound, preventing him from reaching either Quinndell, standing there at the end of the table, or the pencil that is puncturing Lyon’s flesh, the sudden pain of that new wound making him momentarily forget his scalded thigh and bleeding mouth.
“Any farther comments?” Quinndell asks, the pipe back in his right hand, running that pipe along the top of Lyon’s left foot and letting it rest finally on his shin.
“Take it out!” Lyon screams, his free hand still reaching pitifully for the pencil.
“I believe the two most excruciating forms of pain are facial,” Quinndell lectures, “including the teeth and the eyes, and then of course the bones. Especially this one here.” Quinndell taps the pipe up and down on Lyon’s shinbone. “No flesh to pad the anterior surface of your tibia, lying as it does so vulnerably subcutaneous.”