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.