Mark Smith - The Inquisitor

“Is this what I’ve made of you? A weeping, useless little boy? Then go. Get out of my sight! Leave the rest to the wolves. I don’t want your face to be the last thing I see.”

The boy felt a surge of hot, viscous blood in his chest, and then an unstoppable force rose up from a dark hole and rushed through every part of his body, making him shake violently.

“I hate you!” he shouted.

His father found the strength to shake his head. “No, you don’t. It takes strength to hate. All my work-for nothing.”

The boy saw the bloody lips move again, but now he could not hear the words above the roar in his ears. For a moment the world went black. It’s the moon, the boy thought; the moon must have fallen down.

Finally he looked again at his father. “Where?” he asked.

His father’s fingertip settled on a point just to the left of his sternum. “Here,” he said, a grim smile pulling at his ruined lips.

The boy placed the knife’s point next to the finger and wrapped both his trembling hands around the hilt. Slowly, he pushed the blade down into his father’s heart.

Geiger’s mind was sent reeling away from the dark forest, defying the vision’s gravity and seeking refuge beyond it. But what came before him was a floating curtain, and then, as the curtain parted, it revealed the long shelf carrying all his session books: the black binders, the hundreds of Joneses, the thousands of pages filled with strategies and methods, reactions and conclusions. Geiger could see the faces of his subjects, he could hear every epithet and plea ever uttered, every sound a human can make in fear or pain. Confronting him was a compendium of the darkest of man’s arts-and a garish portrait of a monster that now, for the first time, he recognized as himself.

A sudden wave of nausea rolled over Geiger, and he began to retch. He hadn’t eaten since the previous day, and dry heaves racked him.

Hall waited until the first wave seemed to pass. “Go back to work, Dalton. Right away-now!”

“Don’t cut me anymore,” Geiger said between gasps. “Please.”

Dalton, Hall, and Ray shared a stunned glance.

“No more pain. Please, no more.”

“Then tell me where the boy is,” Hall commanded.

Another surge of nausea rose up, and the retching consumed him again.

“Jesus Christ, Geiger! Where is the kid?”

“Still at my house,” Geiger sputtered.

Hall felt a hot spike of adrenaline, but he quickly throttled the rush. “You left him alone?”

“Harry needed a doctor. I needed a gun…”

Hall was shaking his head. “Don’t fuck with me, Geiger. That long a trip, you wouldn’t leave him alone.”

Geiger’s head rose, a fine thread of blood-tinged spittle drooping from his lips. “He isn’t alone,” he said.

While the words hung between them, Hall felt a singular sensation: if only for a moment, chaos, chance, and strategy all seemed to be joining hands. “Matheson is with him?” he said. “How?”

Geiger spit out another dollop of blood. “They IM’d-from my house.”

“Does he still have what we want?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what you want.”

“Address?”

“Six eighty-two West One thirty-fourth Street. Tan building.”

“Right. Boarded windows. I saw it.”

“You need the code.”

“What is it?” Hall said, patting his pockets for a pen.

“Seven-three-two-two-three. Easy to remember.” He looked Hall full in the face, his stare cavernous. “It’s ‘peace’ on your phone.”

For a moment, Hall was unable to look away from Geiger. Something was missing from his eyes, something that had been there yesterday. Hall had seen it happen before: the bottom gives way, and the heart of a man drops out of sight like a body through a trapdoor. Hall felt a brief quiver in his gut.

“Clean him up,” he told Dalton. “Stop the bleeding. He stays in the chair till we come back. Come on, Ray.”

They went to the elevator and stepped inside. Hall pushed the gate shut and they descended.

Dalton tried folding the razor back into the sheath, but the dented blade didn’t fit anymore.

“Sorry about your razor.”

He tossed it onto the cart and started wiping Geiger’s wounds with a hand towel and applying pressure. There was a lot of blood.

“You have a talk with your old man?”

Geiger stared back, barely conscious.

“That was very intriguing. But it was a little disappointing at the end, when you came to. I thought you’d take it farther down the line-I was sure you would, actually-which is why I think you may be lying.”

Geiger’s voice was a whisper. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“My job is to make you talk. It’s Hall’s job to figure out whether you’re telling the truth.” He reached back to the cart and picked up a roll of gauze. “If you are lying, then either you’re buying time or they’re walking into something.”

Dalton started wrapping the gauze around Geiger’s mauled thigh, raising the limb every cycle to push the roll under and back up.

“In case they do come back, I’m not going to tape this up-I’ll just tie it off for now. You want some water?”

He looked up. Geiger’s head hung to the side, his eyes shut, a slow drip of scarlet blood creeping from the corners of his lips, down his jaw.

Driving up 134th Street, Hall was pleased to note that Mr. Memz and his sidewalk office were gone. He slowed the Lexus at Geiger’s door-they would need to be as close as possible so they could quickly get Matheson into the car. But there were no empty spaces, so he double-parked with the engine running.

Hall turned to Ray. “How do you feel?”

“I’m all right,” said Ray, nodding. “Face is just kinda numb.”

Hall looked his partner over. “Let’s go.”

They stepped out. Ray headed up the steps as Hall glanced down the alleyway.

“Hold up,” Hall said. “Let me see if there’s a back door.”

He jogged thirty feet to the dumpster at the end of the alley and climbed up. Peering over the top of the wooden fence, he saw the stoop’s overhang and the back door beneath it. He climbed down and walked quickly back to Ray.

“There’s a back entrance. You go in the front, I’ll take the back. When I get to the back door, I’ll call your cell. We stay on the line, and on my signal we punch in all but the last number of the code. When I say, ‘Go,’ we enter the last digit at the same time and go in-guns in hand, but just for show. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“The code is seven-three-two-two-three.”

“Seven-three-two-two-three. All set.”

“We grab him, leave the kid, and go out the front. Okay?”

Ray nodded, and Hall ran down the alley. Back up on the dumpster, he vaulted over the fence and landed in a crouch on the backyard grass. He took out his cell and dialed as he walked up to the back door.

“Ready?” he whispered into his phone.

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Start now.”

Through his cell Hall heard the front door panel’s chirps as Ray began entering the code. He started doing the same on the back door’s panel.

“Okay,” Hall whispered. “Last number. Ready?”

“Yes,” said Ray.

“Go,” said Hall, just as two loud gunshots put him in a one-eighty spin. His gun came out, searching for a target. Then he heard two more shots- Pop! Pop! — and realized that it was a pneumatic tool spitting air bullets at the body shop up the street. Hall pocketed the gun and let out a deep breath mingled with a muttered “Fuck.” Turning back to the panel, he entered the last number but the back door didn’t click open. He jabbed at ‘cancel’ and reentered the code. Nothing.

Hall pressed the phone to his ear. He thought he could hear Ray moving through the house.