The Inquisitor: A Novel (27 page)

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.

“Ray, talk to me. You inside?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t open my door. There must be a shutoff in the system after one door accepts the code.”

“Well, stop trying. There’s nobody here except a goddamn one-eyed cat.”

“What?” Hall’s temples began throbbing. “You check everywhere?”

“There are only two inside doors. Closet and bathroom. That’s it. Nobody’s fucking home!”

Hall turned and leaned back against the door. It struck him that Geiger had a very nice backyard, and that no one would ever suspect that the house had one—which was very much Geiger. In lying, Geiger had been buying time, and every minute bought was a minute Hall lost. Hall would have to call Dalton and tell him to start in again—he had no other play—but he was beginning to think that Geiger would never talk, and Matheson would win the game, and then there would be hell to pay.

He ended the call with Ray and tapped in Dalton’s number.

“Yes?” Dalton’s voice said.

“Put him on. Put me on speaker, so you can both hear.”

*   *   *

Dalton knew voices. He could read them like a surgeon reads an X-ray, and he was surprised to hear more temperate resignation than fury or resolve in Hall’s words. It was the voice of someone who had become deeply weary of his task, its tone as flat as a mortician’s.

Geiger’s head was at half-mast, a rose-hued bubble at the center of his lips. When Dalton tapped him on the shoulder and he stirred, the bubble popped.

“It’s for you,” said Dalton. He pushed the speaker button and held the cell phone to Geiger’s ear.

“Yes,” Geiger said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

“Dalton is going to go back to work now,” Hall said.

Geiger said nothing. Dalton raised one eyebrow, then pulled a new pair of gloves from his pants pocket.

“Geiger,” Hall continued, “I need to know that you understand what I just said.”

“I understand what you said. Where are you?”

A corrosive chuckle leaked into the session room from Dalton’s cell phone. “Where
am
I?”

*   *   *

Standing on Geiger’s back stoop, Hall answered his own question: “We’re at your place, but there’s no one here except your cat.” He strolled down into the yard. He wished now that he’d had that Scotch. “Okay. So you bought Harry and the kid some time. I get it.”

“No, Mr. Hall. I don’t think you do.”

A new smoothness in Geiger’s tone surprised Hall, and then he flinched at the sound of Ray’s fist hammering the inside of the back door.

“Hey!” Ray called. “I can’t get out!”

“You’re locked in, Mr. Hall.”

Ray pounded the door again. “Hear me, Richie? The doors won’t open! The fucking code doesn’t work!”

Hall sighed. Another nail in their coffin. “And we need the exit code to get out,” he said.

“That’s right, Mr. Hall.”

Hall watched two squirrels race halfway down the tree, each chasing the other, round and round. Clearly neither wanted to catch the other—it was the chase that gave them pleasure.

“How many times have you entered the code to try and get out?” Geiger asked.

Hall’s mind almost ticked past the obvious—“You’re locked in, Mr. Hall”—and then made a U-turn. Geiger thinks he has
all three of us
trapped inside the house, Hall thought. Score one for the bad guys.

“Can I ask why?” said Hall.

“Because you can’t leave without putting in the exit code—and if you enter an incorrect code twice, the system becomes armed.”

“Armed,” Hall said. “Go on.”

“There are twenty directional explosive charges behind the drywall, Mr. Hall. If you enter an incorrect exit code a third time, they will detonate—and the house will implode.”

“Implode? Like those old casinos in Vegas?”

“Yes. And Mr. Hall—it’s best you don’t try to remove the window bars, either.”

“Right,” Hall said, looking back toward the house. “Geiger, hold on a sec.” Hall muted the cell. “Ray!” he shouted. “How many times did you enter the code?”

“To get out? Uh … twice!”

“Well, don’t touch the security panel again! You got that?”

“Why?” Ray called.

“Just don’t! Don’t touch
anything
!”

Hall sat down with his back against the tree. He took out a cigarette and flicked his lighter. But instead of lighting up, he just stared at the flame. He had to start shifting his focus, put on a new lens. If they didn’t get Matheson, he would need to have a way out, because there would be no going back for a sit-down with the man to explain his failure. There would be no favors to call in, and no helping hands, either. That meant Ray and Mitch would be on their own, too. But they’d never been the Three Musketeers, anyway—there’d been no buying into the “all for one and one for all” crap. If need be, Mitch would drive the bus while Ray threw him under it.

Hall lit his cigarette and punched Geiger back up on the cell. “Okay. So you’ve got three fuckups locked in your house.” He allowed himself a sliver of a private grin. “What now?”

“Dalton releases me, and when I’m safely away I’ll call you back and give you the exit code.”

“How about you give me the code now, and when we get out I tell Dalton to let you go?”

“I like my idea better, Mr. Hall.”

Ray began banging on the back door and shouting again.

“Hey, Richie! What the hell is going on?”

Hall rolled his eyes. “Geiger, give me a minute, okay?”

“Sure.”

Hall muted the cell and walked across the yard and back up the stoop. “Ray,” he called through the door, “we’ve got a problem here. The house is one big bomb!”

“What?”
Ray said. “Well, maybe we oughta, y’know, call somebody!”

“Yeah? Tell me who we should call and I’ll give them a ring. Want me to call the fire department? Or how about the cops?”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m dealing with this, Ray—just hang on for a few minutes.”

Hall sat back down against the door. With a thumb and forefinger, he pressed on his eyes so firmly that he saw white phantoms crawling on the insides of his lids. When had he slept last—thirty-six hours ago? Probably more.

Something brushed against his arm, and Hall opened his eyes to see a cat coming out the pet door. The cat glanced at him—Hall saw that it was missing an eye—and then walked into the yard.

The encounter gave Hall an idea. “Ray,” he called. “Tell me something about the inside of the place.”

“Huh?”

“Tell me about something in Geiger’s house that caught your eye.”

“Well, he’s got a great CD rack. Custom-made.”

Hall brought the phone back up and turned the mute off.

“Okay, Geiger,” he said, “your way. Dalton—you there?”

“Yes,” said Dalton.

“Let him go.”

“I heard you, Mr. Hall—but just repeat it one more time so we’re clear.”

“Let Geiger go. Release him.”

“All right.”

“How long before we get the code, Geiger?”

“About half an hour,” Geiger answered. “Fifteen minutes to stitch up my thigh and get out of here, and another fifteen minutes after I leave.”