Charlie lay on his back lengthwise atop the conference room table, his wrists and ankles bungeed to its legs. He’d been stripped to his boxer shorts. Most of his skin was covered in goose bumps, and not because he was cold. It was a reaction to the telephone on the chair to his left, a rotary device that could well have been in the complex since the ’40s. The cord was plugged into the wall, not at a phone jack but at an electrical outlet. In place of the usual coil and handset was a rubber wire that hissed subtly, like an asp. The ghoul in the lab coat they called Dr. Cranch loomed over Charlie and dipped the copper mouth of the wire toward his face.
“This will deliver a near-lethal amount of electrical current,” Cranch said to Drummond, who was handcuffed to the chair at the foot of the table.
“A placebo is used as a control in drug experiments,” Drummond said, the fifth time he’d done so since Charlie was brought in, each time with greater distress.
“Sir, we need to hear about Placebo, the operation,” Cranch said, “or, more specifically, whom you’ve told about it.” Repetition had progressively deadened his delivery.
“I just don’t know what else I can tell you.” Drummond sighed.
Charlie wondered whether his rescue effort possibly could have made things any worse than they were now.
“Just a light spray,” Cranch said to Dewart, who sat to Charlie’s right.
Dewart gave a gentle pull at the trigger of a plastic plant mister. The water was warm, yet the droplets caused Charlie’s bare legs to shiver. Cranch touched the copper tip of the wire to Charlie’s right thigh briefly, as if he were testing the ink in a pen. The tip emitted a buzz no louder than a gnat.
Charlie shot straight into the air. If not for the restraints, it seemed, he would have hit the ceiling. Hot, maddening pain filled his blood vessels, and his body began to convulse. It felt like muscles and tendons were being ripped from bones. An involuntary wail rose from deep within him, unlike any sound he would have imagined he could make, or that any animal could.
A velvety blackness materialized around him. A cool and comfy refuge. Unconsciousness. He welcomed it.
Before he could settle in, his spine cracked back onto the tabletop, and he was again in the fierce glare of fluorescent lights. All his joints felt like they’d been dislocated. He tried to breathe. He retched, then inhaled air hot and heavy with the smell of his own burned flesh. His body settled, but a thrum continued inside his temples. Bells rang in his ears. The worst was the stinging in his eyes. Some sort of lingering electrical current?
Cranch and Dewart looked at Drummond, presumably for his reaction. He stared at his shoes as if he sought to avoid seeing his son suffer.
“Please, just talk to Mr. Cleamons,” Drummond begged Cranch. “I have his home number in my office.”
Cranch looked to Dewart. “Cleamons?”
Dewart shrugged. “We’ll find out.” He gestured at the two-way mirror: Make a phone call.
Charlie knew who Cleamons was but didn’t see how mentioning it would do any good-even if he could move his mouth. Also, they would know soon enough. Lionel Cleamons had been Perriman’s district sales manager. He dropped dead one afternoon in his office more than a decade ago.