The Inquisitor: A Novel (28 page)

“I’ll be waiting. And by the way, Geiger, this is a real nice CD rack you got here. Can I put on some music without blowing us up?”

“Feel free, Mr. Hall.”

*   *   *

The line went dead and Dalton clicked off. He put the cell on the cart, picked up his jacket from the bottom shelf, and took a Ruger LCP .380 pistol from one of its pockets.

Watching him, Geiger said, “I’m not going to do anything to you.”

“Strictly precautionary,” Dalton said, his voice without inflection. “I’m going to undo your right wrist, then you do the rest. Don’t begin until I’ve stepped away or I’ll shoot you. Understood?”

“Yes.”

Dalton kept his eyes and gun on Geiger’s face while his free hand found the wrist restraint and popped its clasp open. He took four steps back, snapped his gloves off, and dropped them onto the floor. Geiger noted the precision of Dalton’s movements: he was meticulous to the last gesture, sweatless, unruffled. His gun still had Geiger’s forehead for a target.

“Go ahead,” Dalton said.

Geiger raised his arm. The initial sensation was of extreme lightness, but then, as he reached down, the feeling inverted, and the bone and flesh felt so sodden that his arm might have dragged him out of the chair and down to the floor if he hadn’t been bound at the chest. He undid the chest strap, and his ribs lifted and his lungs swelled like bellows. The air streaming in felt cool and dense.

Dalton chuckled drily. “Geiger, this has been fascinating. When I write my memoirs it will be one of the highlights.”

Geiger reached down and undid the left ankle restraint. “You’re going to write a book?”

“When I retire. I’ve already chosen a title:
Dalton: My Life as a Torturer.
”

Geiger freed his other ankle.

“But not to worry, Geiger, I’ll change your name.” Dalton let out a short
hmmm
of a laugh. “I guess I’ll have to include an author’s note: ‘Some names have been changed to protect the
guilty
.’”

Geiger’s fingers closed on the last binding at his other wrist and he pried it open. He looked up at Dalton, his body suddenly feeling lighter again. “I’m going to stand up now and go into the viewing room to stitch myself up and get some fresh clothes.”

“Go ahead.” Dalton nodded, waving Geiger on with the gun.

Geiger rose from the barber’s chair. His first steps were hesitant, and he held his arms out slightly at the hips for balance. The lower half of him felt newly weighted, as if parts of his insides had come loose and slid below his waist before settling in his legs and feet. The loosely wrapped gauze around his thigh, soaked with blood, began to droop. As he shuffled forward, the gauze came unwound and trailed behind him on the floor.

Dalton followed him through the door and stopped as Geiger opened an armoire at the far end of the viewing room. On one side were shelves of medical supplies, on the other drawers of clothes. Geiger took out packets of absorbable traumatic sutures, a pair of scissors, and rolls of gauze and adhesive. He considered lidocaine spray but decided against it; the wounds were jagged and thus would be tricky to sew up, and the pain would help guide him so that he could achieve a tight stitch.

He pulled pants and a black pullover from a drawer and limped to the couch. He let himself drop back into the cushions, but his mind and body were out of sync, and the back of his head smacked hard into the wall before he finished his descent.

“Ouch,” said Dalton, and lowered the weapon.

Geiger held the needle and thread in front of his nose, and in trying to marry them struggled with a frequent shift between foreground and background, as if his brain were a camera lens searching for a focal point. On his third pass Geiger found the needle’s eye with the suture.

Dalton pulled a bottle of Rémy Martin off the bar and poured some into a glass. Sipping the cognac, he watched Geiger sew first one cut and then another, his stitches like those of a master tailor. He didn’t see Geiger flinch even once—the man had the tolerance of a bull.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Dalton asked.

“My father taught me.”

Geiger had been working at spreading out the pain—taking the waffling burn in his chest, the dull throb in his mouth, and the sharp, barbed pangs in his thigh and sending them throughout his body until the pain was everywhere, making each stab and tug of the needle more a part of a whole rather than an individual assault on his flesh.

“Is he a doctor?”

“A carpenter. Was—he’s dead.”

Geiger pulled the last stitch, snipped it with the scissors, and knotted the end, then sat back and rubbed his palms against the cushions to rid them of his blood. “May I have a drink, please?” he said.

“What can I get you?”

“Anything.”

Dalton put down his cognac, examined the bar’s selection, and poured an inch of vodka into a glass. His gun nosing up, he walked the drink over to Geiger.

“Here you are. Left hand—nice and slow, please.”

Geiger’s eyelids dropped. A long breath blew out of his open mouth. “Give me a second—I’m in a lot of pain.”

“Take your time.”

“You’re very good at what you do, Dalton.”

“Praise from Caesar.”

Geiger’s hand drifted up for the glass. When Dalton’s gaze moved to it, Geiger’s good leg snapped up and smashed into Dalton’s groin. Dalton doubled over, his spectacles falling, and Geiger’s forearm swung into his jaw with such force that two teeth shot out of his mouth. As Dalton went to his knees, Geiger swatted the gun out of his hand. Dalton held there for a moment, swaying, and then toppled over onto his stomach, one cheek to the floor, huffing like a beached fish.

“There was no praise intended,” said Geiger.

Geiger moved carefully off the couch and straddled Dalton, holding Dalton’s left arm high up on his back and pinning the other arm to the floor at the wrist. Geiger’s blow had rattled Dalton’s skull with such intensity that several blood vessels in his right eye had burst, covering it with a spidery hemorrhage.

“Make a fist with your right hand,” Geiger said.

“A fist?” Dalton said, gasping.

“Yes, make a fist.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not going to do this anymore.”

Dalton shook his head. His chest was heaving, but he managed a wolfish grin. “No. I don’t think I will. I want to see Geiger the Great in action. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, you know?”

“Sorry. You’re about a day too late.”

Geiger pushed Dalton’s left arm higher up his back, and Dalton squealed with pain. “Dalton, for most of my life I’ve wondered what it would be like to kill someone. Say no again and you will give me one less thing to wonder about.” He kept cranking Dalton’s arm higher. “Make a fist.” And higher still.
“Do it.”

A muffled syllable signaled concession, and finally Dalton’s right hand curled into a ball against the floor. Geiger made a fist of his own and sent it smashing down on Dalton’s, whose scream nearly drowned out the sound of his fingers breaking. Then Geiger grabbed Dalton’s left hand and swiftly jerked four of the fingers back until the bones snapped. Dalton’s howl was lower this time but longer, and soon it became a rough, growling whir. His hands, resting on the floor with the fingers splayed, looked like two crabs someone had stepped on at the beach.

Geiger got to his feet and fell back onto the couch. He took a deep breath. “Early retirement, Dalton. Teach yourself to type with your toes and you can start writing your memoirs.”

Geiger picked up his pants and pullover and considered the least torturous way to put them on.

19

“That’s it,” said Harry, turning from a window back to the living room. He sighed. “That’s the whole story.”

After Geiger had left, Corley had put out an assortment of finger food, and once Harry and Ezra had gorged themselves, he’d sent Ezra into the bedroom to watch television and then demanded that Harry tell him exactly what was going on or he would call the police. In telling the tale of Ezra, Harry at first tried to skirt the details of what he and Geiger actually did for a living, but early on it became clear that everything would have to come out. It was the first time he had ever told anyone about his work, and the undertow of the loathsome truth pulled at him.

As Harry talked, Lily sat next to him on the couch, her fingers twisting the ends of her hair in a secret ritual. Corley, sitting across from them, seemed lost in a world of his own, his eyes locked on the tightly spun gold-and-blue swirls of the living room’s Oriental rug. In truth, Corley’s eyes saw nothing in the room. His vision was pointed inward at the countless pieces of Geiger’s psychic puzzle.

“Doc?”

Corley was shaken by the revelation about Geiger’s work, and by his blindness to it. Torture. Was this how Geiger’s hidden past had been expressing itself all these years? A tiny, sharp-toothed beast started gnawing at Corley’s insides. Should he have seen it—or at least sensed something?

“Doc?”

Corley looked up. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry this ended up on your doorstep. I really am.”

Corley waved away the apology but then gave Harry a narrow look. “Putting aside, for the moment, what you two have been doing for the past decade—you do realize that this is kidnapping, a serious federal crime?”

“Yeah, but we didn’t kidnap him. We’re the … un-kidnappers.”

Harry took a sip of ginger ale and fisted a burp. He put a piece of sourdough pretzel up to Lily’s lips, but she ignored the offering.

“Eat something,” he said.

“I can’t remember,” she said, her eyes darting from side to side.

“Remember what?”

“There are so many words, and so many different meanings, and they all have to be in the right place. Where’s Harry?” she asked.

Harry gave Corley a quick glance. “Jesus, she said my name.” Then he turned her face to his. “Right here, Lily. Hey, it’s me, Harry.”

Corley got up and came over, crouching in front of her. He studied her eyes’ movements, noting the extended frozen stare that was interrupted by sudden zigs to the left and right.

“You said sometimes she comes out with a lyric as a response to things?” Corley asked.

“Yeah. Sometimes it feels like a connection to something, sometimes not.”

Corley leaned in close to Lily, his face just inches from hers.

“Lily?” he said. Suddenly he smacked his palms together. Harry flinched in surprise, but Lily remained unmoving. “Lily!”

“I want to go,” she said.

“I want to go, too, Lily,” said Corley. “Where shall we go?”

Lily half-sang, half-spoke:
“Way down below the ocean…”

“See?” said Harry. “That could mean something—or nothing. She loved that song, and you just said, ‘Where shall we go?’ It can really make you crazy.”

Corley returned to his chair. “There is something going on inside. Whether it’s reactive, responsive, or random, I don’t know. But there’s a process at work, and at the end of it, she arrives at some kind of decision—for lack of a better word—and she sings.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think it takes superhuman strength to construct and maintain the kinds of walls that keep the horror locked up and the world at bay. Is she on medication?”

“Yeah, I think so, but I don’t know what kind.”

“Well, we’re going to need to keep a close eye on her. What was she like, Harry? Before.”

“A little spacey, but very smart. Funny, too, in a goofy-funny way.” He shook his head ruefully. “And for so many years now, I haven’t been there for her.”

“Harry, you know what someone once said about guilt?”

“What?”

“If a man didn’t feel guilty, he’d probably think it was his fault.”

Harry’s shoulders dipped. “Doc, it’s appreciated, but I don’t need a shrink. I know who I am.”

They eyed each other, Harry’s account of the day’s events once again floating between them, invisible but magnetic.

“He’s been gone a long time, Doc,” Harry said.

Corley glanced at his watch. Almost three hours. Worst-case scenarios were starting to fill his head.

“I’m sure he’s all right,” said Harry, but his lack of confidence in the statement was clear to both of them. Harry tried to grin. “I mean, he’s a big boy, right?”

Corley craved a cigarette. He wondered if he had any regular-strength Marlboros stashed anywhere.

“No, Harry,” he said. “He’s a very
little
boy.”

*   *   *

Geiger, carrying a small gym bag, walked for three blocks before he found a café with an empty booth shadowed enough to obscure his presence. He had taped a two-inch square of gauze over the hole in his cheek, but nothing could hide his stark pallor. There was much to do, but at the moment he needed black coffee and a few minutes to sit in relative solitude. He knew what Corley would say: Don’t let these memories slip away, don’t lock them back up. They’re part of you. Keep them alive and carry them with you.

The waiter put his iced coffee down. “Anything else?”

“No.”

The waiter, a kid of no more than twenty, made no effort to hide his staring at Geiger’s face. “You okay?” he said.

“Yes.”

Geiger heard the hollow chafing in his voice and saw the dubious look in the kid’s eyes.

“Yes,” he said more firmly. “I’m okay.”

The waiter clearly wasn’t convinced, but he wandered off.

Geiger took a long drink from his glass. He had wanted the coffee hot, but he knew that heat would encourage more bleeding from the wounds in his mouth. He swirled the chilled liquid around in his cheeks for twenty or thirty seconds before he swallowed, and then sank back into the booth’s cushions.

He knew that inner scars had given way and old wounds had opened. For years, he’d been vigilant about keeping the outside from getting in. But what he’d really done was seal in the demons that dwelt in his darkest places. Now he was turning inside out, and he didn’t need to summon Corley’s spirit to understand that what had been dead was exhumed and alive again.