Mark Smith - The Inquisitor

“I’m here-at JFK.”

“Are you using a pay phone?”

“Yes. Let me speak to my son.”

“In a minute, but first you’re going to talk to someone who will give you directions. You need to rent a car. We’re at a house in Cold Spring, New York.”

Geiger handed the phone to Harry.

“Hi,” he said, “this is Harry.” He took Corley’s directions out of his pocket. “Here’s where you’re going. Got a pen?”

Geiger reached the top step and rested for a moment. The front door opened and the boy stood before him, gazing at him with a quizzical expression.

“That’s your mother on the phone, Ezra. Go talk to her.”

Ezra was silent for a moment. “They beat you up trying to get you to tell them where I was, didn’t they?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t tell them.”

“No.”

“What did they do to you?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

“Okay.” Ezra gave him a last look and then went down the steps.

Geiger entered the house. Beyond the foyer, a long hall ran straight to a back door; off to the right, a stairway led to the second floor. The living room, immediately to the left, had a high unfinished-wood ceiling and was dominated by a hearth of uncut stone that took up half a wall. Lily stood before it, her fingers tracing the crooked lines of fitted rock.

“It’s a great big puzzle,” she said.

Geiger moved into the room and sat down on an overstuffed couch. He had often stared at the photograph of this house in Corley’s office and wondered what its interior looked like. He leaned over, reached past the edge of an old Persian rug, and ran a fingertip across the wide-plank floor. Old pine. The wood needed oil; linseed would be best, with a touch of tung. He sank back in the cushions. He could hear Ezra outside, walking the porch with a fresh step, talking to his mother on the phone.

“No, Mom,” the boy said. “No first name. Just Geiger.”

Harry hobbled in and handed Geiger a glass full of ice cubes, then sat down beside him with a groan. He glanced at Geiger’s pants; the fabric against his thigh glistened.

“Thank you,” said Geiger, and sucked a few cubes into his mouth.

“So who worked you over?”

“Dalton.”

Harry cocked his head. “Dalton?”

“Yes. It was his farewell performance.”

“Meaning what?”

“I broke all his fingers.”

“Jesus…”

Harry marveled at the speed with which violence had invaded their private world. Torn flesh and shattered bone were becoming commonplace.

“Harry, we need to find out if there’s a TV and DVD player here.”

“Why?”

“Just have a look around, okay?”

“Will do.”

Cold Spring’s Main Street slid down a hill to its end at a railed stone promenade. For decades, the owners of many of the street’s elegant two- and three-story buildings had faithfully kept the nineteenth-century architectural pedigrees of their properties intact. The colorful brick facades and wrought-iron railings that fronted the town’s galleries, bistros, and antiques stores looked almost painterly in the twilight, and the sidewalks were thick with people, all of them heading downhill toward the water for the July Fourth festivities.

Hall and Mitch sat in the Lexus, parked at the top of the hill across from the village green.

“So what’s it gonna be, boss?” Mitch said.

Hall magnified the satellite map on his laptop’s screen and put his finger to it.

“Here’s where we are, and here’s Corley’s place. Once it starts getting dark, we go north about six blocks and then turn left here, on River Lane. After about half a mile, we pull into the woods and go on foot from there. Looks like a walk of about a quarter of a mile.”

“Then?”

“We split up, here, at the tree line.”

“And?”

Hall sat back. “We go in front and back, and then see what happens.”

“Go in with the house lights on or wait till they’re off?”

The questions were all relevant, but Hall knew Mitch was doing more than asking. He was measuring response time, poking for soft spots. Hall glanced at Mitch’s flat, impassive face. Over the years more than a few people had made him for a classic ex-jock, a plain can-do guy, but Hall knew better. Mitch was as introspective as a copperhead, but he had a knack for the quick read and an uncanny memory for crucial details about everyone he had ever dealt with. In the past, that had always made him a valuable asset. Now it made him dangerous.

“Lights on,” Hall said. “No reason to walk into walls.”

“Okay.”

“There’s Harry, the kid, the sister-and Geiger.”

“A lot of people,” said Mitch.

Hall turned the laptop off. “That’s why we make the big bucks, right?”

Harry discovered the machines in the first-floor guest bedroom, across the hall from the living room. They sat under a sheet atop a dresser-a twenty-three-inch Samsung monitor and a JVC disc player.

“Found ’em,” he called out, pulling the sheets off the other furniture in the room. “In here.”

Geiger limped in, put the gym bag on the four-poster bed, and sat down in the wicker rocking chair beside it. He ignored the steady thudding in his carved-up leg.

“Lock the door, Harry.”

Harry did so and then pushed the power buttons on the two machines. He turned to Geiger. “Feel free to tell me what’s going on anytime you like. Just jump right in.”

“In my bag. The envelope.”

Harry reached in and pulled out the package. “This?”

“Yes. Matheson gave it to me.”

“And how the fuck did-”

“I met him this afternoon,” Geiger interrupted, “after finishing with Dalton. Questions later, Harry. Let’s just do this.”

“Okay, all right.”

From the envelope, Harry took out five jewel cases, all carrying shiny black minidiscs.

“These are what this has all been about?” He took the minidisc out of the case marked “1” and held it up. “Doesn’t look like a de Kooning, does it? CD or DVD?”

“Let’s find out.”

Harry slid the disk into the JVC’s slot, hit “play,” and took a seat on the edge of the bed.

The blackness on the screen shifted and a razor-thin silver line appeared at the bottom. The lower right corner displayed the running time and a date: “2/16/2004.”

Harry pointed. “The silver line at the bottom? That’s a digital lock. The disk can’t be copied without decoding.”

A man’s voice spoke with a thick Middle Eastern accent in a barely audible whisper. “Video twenty-seven. February sixteen, two thousand four.”

The monitor bloomed with an image of a brightly lit, windowless room, shot from a camera placed in a high corner.

“Well, it’s not a greatest hits album,” said Harry. He pointed at the screen again. “See how the edges of the feed are irregular? Hidden camera-it’s wedged in somewhere behind the walls.”

A metallic clattering came from offscreen, an uneven but rhythmic rotation of sound. Geiger leaned forward.

Two men with buzz cuts, wearing standard-issue khakis, came into view wheeling a rickety gurney to the center of the room. Lying on it, strapped to the rails at the ankles and wrists, dressed only in soiled boxers, was a tightly muscled bearded man in his thirties, swathed in a coat of sweat. His face was stamped with a rash of purple welts and blood-encrusted cuts, as were his chest and upper arms. The harsh lighting played up the dark hues of the inflicted damage.

“Jesus,” said Harry, “what is this?”

A man in a short-sleeved white shirt and khaki shorts walked into the frame and stepped up to the gurney. He stroked his manicured goatee for a few moments, then tapped the fettered man on the shoulder and spoke in flat, slightly nasal English. He was obviously American; to Harry, the accent sounded midwestern, farm belt.