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 eyewitness 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.