“Come on, Mr. Lyon, wide awake now.”
He comes awake only reluctantly, however, and although he hears Quinndell’s voice, Lyon still can’t seem to make his eyes open.
“I’ve already given you an injection that should have you buzzing, but if you’re still groggy I’ll give you another.”
Lyon finds his voice. “No.”
“Excellent. Have you opened your eyes yet? The lights are on solely for your benefit, Mr. Lyon.”
When he does open his eyes he sees that he is in a small room with glass-fronted cabinets around all the walls, stainless steel counters, no windows, and only one door, which is metal and closed.
Trying to move his hands, Lyon discovers he is bound to an examining table that has a wide strip of white paper running down its center. He’s naked and on his back with both ankles and both wrists tied to the table, a rope across his neck too — across his neck and then tied around the table, holding his head down.
Lyon is able to move his head enough that he can see his nakedness, shamed by it, by how weak and white he looks, that bruise on his stomach the only element of color on his skin: his body looking like something harmless brought up from the depths of the ocean, beached and vulnerable.
But then Lyon comes suddenly to life and struggles against the restraints, choking himself when he tries to raise his head higher, twisting back and forth on the table, breaking into a heavy sweat but unable to free himself. Finally he turns a panicked eye in the doctor’s direction.
Looking freshly showered and shaved, Quinndell is wearing dark suit pants and a white shirt, the sleeves turned up to his elbows, the red tie he’s wearing tucked between two buttons of the shirt, his very black hair neatly combed straight back. Those extraordinary blue eyes are glistening with tears, the doctor leaning against one of the stainless steel counters where he has been listening with an amused smile to Lyon’s struggles.
“So — back among the living, are we, Mr. Lyon? Have you convinced yourself yet that you can’t get loose? Good, good. I’ve given this considerable thought and I think I’ll start off with some burns. Not third-degree of course, which would destroy your nerve endings and blunt some of the effect. No, we’ll begin with second-degree burns, similar to a severe sunburn. If necessary, we’ll be here for hours. And the pain you’re going to experience, oh, Mr. Lyon, in this examining room, here where I once cared for children, you and I are going to create a circle of Hell.”
Lyon is wide-eyed. He works his tongue, trying to keep enough spit in his mouth to speak. “What’re you talking about?”
“Why, torture of course. Torturing you in the most excruciating manner possible, bringing the full power of my medical knowledge to bear upon the maximum production of pain, keeping you conscious with drugs, breaking your bones and grinding the shattered ends together, hammering probes into your gums, cutting your penis off, and then of course …” Here Quinndell takes a heavy tablespoon from his pocket and bangs it ominously against the stainless steel counter. “Gouging out your eyes with Mr. Spoon — oh, John, the fun we’re going to have!”
Lyon tries to tell himself that this is all part of an elaborate ruse, that Quinndell can’t possibly be serious, he’s just trying to scare me, but when the doctor approaches, Lyon begins speaking rapidly. “Wait, wait a second, wait, what’s the point, I mean none of this is necessary, you don’t have to …”
Quinndell pauses and then leans back against the counter. “You’re blubbering, Mr. Lyon.” Now the doctor is tapping the bowl of the spoon against his palm. “Though I can appreciate how terribly exposed you must feel, how vulnerable, knowing that whatever I choose to do to you I can indeed do, it’s entirely up to me, for the time we’re in this room together, I am your God.”
“Doctor, listen to me —”
“Oh, now it’s Doctor, is it?”
“You are a doctor, your life is dedicated to alleviating suffering, not causing it.”
This statement seems to astonish Quinndell, who puts his head back, opens his mouth, and shakes his shoulders up and down in that silently derisive laughter. When he finishes, he takes out a handkerchief, wipes his eyes, and asks Lyon, “Would you care to try another tack?”
Lyon answers immediately. “No one’s been hurt yet, not physically. I mean whatever the penalties are for faking those babies’ deaths, arranging illegal adoptions, at least Claire Cept was wrong about your having killed anyone.”
He is still leaning against the counter and when he speaks he does so without any sense of being in a hurry. “The World’s Worst Reporter strikes out again.”
The implications of this panic Lyon. “What do you mean?”
But just then a teakettle whistles, Lyon turning his head as much as the rope across his neck will allow, seeing the kettle on a hot plate just a few feet from where Quinndell is standing.
Slipping the tablespoon back in his pocket, the doctor walks to the hot plate and turns it off, lifting the kettle and approaching the examining table.
Lyon starts twisting back and forth, keeping his eyes on the steaming kettle. “You’re not, God, you wouldn’t …”
“Yes, I am your God and, yes, I would.” Quinndell standing there holding the kettle over Lyon’s midsection. “When Mary was undressing you, she said you have a nasty wound on your stomach. Love bite?”
Lyon begging. “Please don’t do this.”
With his left hand Quinndell is reaching out to find Lyon’s thigh, the doctor’s other hand tipping the kettle.
Lyon arches his back, trying to turn away, seeing the steaming water appear at the kettle’s spout, screaming, “DON’T, GODDAMN IT, PLEASE!”
Quinndell pours the water down the inside of one thigh, instantly blistering the skin, Lyon so shocked by the pain that his body goes into spasms.
Quinndell, meanwhile, speaks in a mocking voice. “I believe this is when you’re supposed to say, ‘You’re mad! Do you hear me, doctor! Mad, I say. Mad!’ ” Then Quinndell, laughing to himself, returns the kettle to the hot plate.
Lyon is groaning through clenched teeth, his scalded thigh on fire with pain. “Oh Jesus,” he cries, “what do you want from me?”
As if waiting for this exact question, Quinndell turns from the hot plate and faces Lyon, the doctor’s glass eyes wet and bulging. “I want that cunt’s granddaughter.”
There’s a hesitant knock at the steel door and Lyon, thinking that the police have arrived, begins screaming for help. Quinndell takes a two-foot length of pipe from a counter, finds his way to the head of the examining table, and quickly raps the pipe right across Lyon’s mouth.
This new injury stuns him into silence, Lyon feeling blood leaking from his front teeth, running down his throat.
“I’ve always wanted to smash one of you sanctimonious television commentators across the mouth,” Quinndell says bitterly, raising the pipe. “Care for another?”
Lyon turns his head to the side and spits blood.
The knocking at the door resumes.
Quinndell unlatches two dead bolts and opens the door to confront Mary. “I know it’s you,” he says, “because I can smell it. What I don’t know is what could possibly convince you to interrupt me in spite of my explicit orders to the contrary. Want to watch, is that it, Mary?”
“Carl called,” she replies in a trembling voice, making a point of not looking past the doctor to see Lyon on the examining table. “Something’s happened out there at that shack but he won’t tell me —”
“Call the imbecile back and inform him that whatever he has discovered he can sit on it until I’m finished here.”
Lyon shouts from the examining table, “Mary! For godssake help me! He’s torturing me!”
Quinndell waits a moment and then asks her, “Would you like to reply to Mr. Lyon?”
She shakes her head, looking down at the floor, whispering a soft “No.”
Quinndell slams the door and relocks it.
Lyon begs him for a painkiller.
“Oh, shut up,” Quindell tells him.
Balling his hands into tight fists, Lyon tries to deal with the pain, tries to convert that pain into anger. “You’re not very bright, do you know that, doctor — not as intelligent as you’d like to think.”
Quinndell is genuinely interested in this. “Why do you say that, Mr. Lyon?”
“Intelligent people don’t have men like Carl working for them. He’ll betray you out of stupidity if nothing else.”
“A keen observation.” Quinndell takes out a linen handkerchief and wipes at his eyes. “But let me ask you a question. If this handkerchief is superior to a Kleenex tissue, more durable and more pleasing to the touch — why then are millions of dollars’ worth of tissue sold each year?”
“You should leave before the police show up.”
“Tissues are useful because they’re disposable.”
“What are you talking about, I don’t understand —”
“Disposability is the key to my entire operation.”
“People care about me, people will be looking for me!”
“Really?” Quinndell walks over to one of the cabinets, opens it, and feels around until he finds a box of Brillo pads, still holding the handkerchief in his other hand.
“What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to scour that burn.”
Lyon believes him. “Oh Jesus, please don’t.”
“Then tell me where Claire’s granddaughter is hiding. She apparently drove your rental car back to the cabin. I sent Mary out there but she wasn’t able to find the woman. No one can ever find her. Your Claire obviously has a hiding place. Where is it?”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Lyon turns his head again to spit out more blood.
“That’s always the question people ask God, isn’t it? Why are you doing this to me?” Quinndell puts the handkerchief away and straightens up. “The key to getting away with murder is to kill people no one cares about. A killer will never be seriously investigated as long as he deals in disposable victims.”
“But you said you didn’t kill any of those babies. And that coffin I dug up tonight was empty. If all you’ve done is arrange illegal adoptions —”
“Don’t be tedious, Mr. Lyon.”
“But I don’t understand. Please give me something for the pain, please.”
Ignoring the request, Quinndell says, “Before I was blinded I was simply interested in accumulating a sufficient amount of money, enough to ensure my comfort, and at the same time I wanted to correct certain imbalances in the way God had distributed children. Does it surprise you that I believe in God? Oh, absolutely, Mr. Lyon. I believe that Claire Cept’s prayers led God to blind me. But once blinded I did not turn into a whimpering, defeated man, no, I popped in my blue eyes and laughed at Him, howling for more, thumbing God in the eye by giving Him all the babies he could handle.”
Lyon groans.
“I arranged twenty illicit adoptions, improving the lives of everyone involved, and my reward was the loss of my eyes. Idiots like Carl are walking around with their eyes but not me, someone who deserves to see the world because I can appreciate it, I can better it. Yet I was one who was blinded. Why? Because I dared to improve upon God’s work.”
As Quinndell talks, Lyon quietly struggles against the ropes holding his ankles and wrists, discovering that the rope around his left wrist is looser than the others. By folding his thumb and pulling hard he is able to move his hand within the rope, not getting free yet but making progress in that direction.
Hoping to keep Quinndell talking, keep him distracted, Lyon asks, “Which of those twenty children did you kill?”
“None of those, you idiot, haven’t you been listening?” Quinndell tosses the box of Brillo pads back into the cabinet. “I think we’ll skip the scouring and move right into bone breaking.” He pats around the counter until he finds the steel pipe. Moving to the foot of the examining table, he slaps the pipe menacingly into his opened left hand. “Two percent of all adoptions fail, public agencies reporting that about a thousand children are returned each year by their adoptive parents. Of course I dealt with wealthy people who were willing to pay for — and accustomed to receiving — the very highest quality of merchandise. Designer children, if you will. And thank God none of those twenty babies whose adoptions I arranged ever had anything wrong with them.
“But I learned of a rich couple who had adopted an infant and then discovered she had Rett’s syndrome. Her brain simply stopped growing and she slowly entered a vegetative state. Another child adopted by a wealthy couple showed signs of being violently disturbed — strangled a kitten when he was three years old. I was told of a couple in the entertainment business, very rich and very liberal, who adopted a baby whose mother had used crack during the pregnancy. The fetal liver can’t metabolize cocaine efficiently and the effect on the fetus in terms of damage to the brain and central nervous system is devastating.”
Lyon continues working desperately to free his left wrist, pulling steadily but quietly enough so that Quinndell won’t hear him, folding his thumb in and turning his hand back and forth, a panic sweat lubricating his efforts, making progress an eighth of an inch at a time.
“So what do these couples do when they adopt damaged children and then find they can’t cope with the consequences? Keep in mind that these are wealthy individuals, people of accomplishment, cultured and pampered, accustomed to getting what they want. They would not tolerate a car that failed to perform properly and yet they were stuck, presumably for the rest of their lives, with these dysfunctional children.
“It occurred to me that in addition to West Virginia supplying the country with natural resources, coal and timber — or in my case before the blinding, with children — West Virginia also accepts what the rest of the country wishes to be rid of, tens of thousands of tons of garbage from Eastern cities entering this state every day, proposals for nuclear waste dumps, our prisons housing out-of-state convicts.
“God blinded me to force me out of the adoption business? Fine, I would simply get into the disposal business. What I was surprised to discover was that there is much more money to be made in disposing of unwanted children than in supplying wanted children. Oh, it’s true. If you think wealthy couples are desperate to adopt, you should see how they act when they want to get rid of a baby, to be free of any sense of ownership or obligation to a baby that after all isn’t really theirs, they simply paid to adopt it and now they’re stuck with the embarrassment, humiliated each time their friends ask, ‘And how is little George, still drooling in the institution?’ ”
When Quinndell stops talking, Lyon also ceases the struggle to free his left wrist, afraid the doctor will hear him. Got to keep him talking. “I can’t believe people really try to return babies.”
“Oh, but they do, Mr. Lyon, they do. You think children are prized in this country? Don’t be naïve. Twelve million American children live in poverty, ten thousand of them dying each year from the effects of that poverty, more than a half a million abused or neglected every year, Mr. Lyon, believe me, I know my market. Children are a commodity, prized only if they are in the correct social and economic strata and if they are free of defects. I admit that relatively few adoptive parents are shameless enough to follow through on their desire to be rid of damaged children, but of course to make my point all I needed was a few.
“I fabricated an offer. Religious families living in the hills of West Virginia would readopt dysfunctional children. It was an offer that certain wealthy couples jumped at, willingly paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to sever all connections, moral and legal, to children who were absolutely useless to them. I told the lawyers that these children would live happily with their new parents, these religious families who were serving God by caring for damaged babies. This made the wealthy couples feel good.
“My offer — Bring me children — became so popular that I discovered I could charge whatever I wished. After all, even a quarter of a million dollars was a bargain compared to the cost of institutionalizing a child for twenty years, not even counting the shame and heartache these dysfunctional children were creating for their upscale parents.
“But of course there were no religious families, I simply took the five babies and placed each of them on a rock in a cave. Returning them to God, do you understand? He could do whatever He wanted with them. Could strike me dead or lead someone to that cave to rescue the children. But, in fact, He did … nothing. I thumbed Him in the eye. My soul may burn in Hell, Mr. Lyon, but here on earth I rule — indulging my appetites, consuming life with both hands, unbowed, untouched by guilt, howling for more.”
The rope is stuck around the widest part of Lyon’s hand and he despairs of ever getting free. He lifts his head a few inches to look at the doctor standing there by his feet. Then Lyon laughs.
Quinndell elevates his chin. “Yes? Something funny, Mr. Lyon?” As he speaks he keeps slapping the pipe in his opened palm.
“No, it’s just that …” He laughs again and then sobs once before catching himself, putting his head back on the examining table to stare up at the tiled ceiling. What a perfect way for me to end up, he thinks — naked and tied to an examining table. All my life I’ve been insulated, nothing ever touched me, and this is the way the scales are balanced, through this banality, lying here being lectured on the supply-and-demand cycles of a baby-based commerce. He laughs again. “This is Hell, being tied down and forced to listen to your stupid fucking ravings.”
Quinndell calmly transfers the pipe to his left hand, turning toward the wall and finding a clipboard hanging there, taking from it a sharpened pencil, and then with his right hand he plunges that pencil into Lyon’s leg, embedding it two inches into the left calf muscle, Lyon screaming and so violently twisting his body that his left hand is wrenched free.
His other wrist, his neck, and both ankles, however, are still bound, preventing him from reaching either Quinndell, standing there at the end of the table, or the pencil that is puncturing Lyon’s flesh, the sudden pain of that new wound making him momentarily forget his scalded thigh and bleeding mouth.
“Any farther comments?” Quinndell asks, the pipe back in his right hand, running that pipe along the top of Lyon’s left foot and letting it rest finally on his shin.
“Take it out!” Lyon screams, his free hand still reaching pitifully for the pencil.
“I believe the two most excruciating forms of pain are facial,” Quinndell lectures, “including the teeth and the eyes, and then of course the bones. Especially this one here.” Quinndell taps the pipe up and down on Lyon’s shinbone. “No flesh to pad the anterior surface of your tibia, lying as it does so vulnerably subcutaneous.”
“Go ahead and kill me, get it over with!”
“Not yet, goodness, not yet,” the doctor says, raising the pipe and then bringing it down with a sharp rap on Lyon’s shin, again causing him to arch his body as if an electrical jolt has been administered.
Quinndell raises the pipe once more. “And now, where is Claire’s granddaughter hiding?”
“I don’t know!”
He smashes the pipe against Lyon’s shin a second time, Lyon crying and cursing, his free hand opening and closing in Quinndell’s direction.
“How about something truly painful?” the doctor asks, turning to a counter where he finds a hypodermic. Holding the needle upward, he taps the syringe several times, pushing the plunger until a stream of clear liquid shoots out the needle’s point. His glass eyes actually seem to be focusing on the syringe.
“This is naloxone, Mr. Lyon. Would you like to hear the effect it’s going to have on you?”
“No — please.”
“Your brain produces enkephalins, which are small peptide —” Quinndell chuckles. “But let’s not get too technical, hmm? The reason morphine and other painkillers work is that they resemble substances that your brain produces on its own, natural opiatelike substances called opioids. Right now for example your brain is flooding itself with these opioids and although you feel pain, it’s nothing compared to the agony you’d be suffering if the opioids weren’t present.” Quinndell pauses, smiling, enjoying himself. “Do you think I’m overly theatrical?”
A fucking scenery chewer, Lyon thinks — but says nothing as he continues staring at the syringe Quinndell is holding.
“Anyway, naloxone blocks the reception of morphine in the brain. One shot of this and a heroin addict under the influence goes into immediate withdrawal. Naloxone, however, also blocks the effect of the natural painkillers produced by your brain. In other words, John, when I inject this into you, within a few minutes whatever pain you are now experiencing will be so dramatically magnified that … well I’m afraid the effect is quite indescribable.”
“You’re going to kill me whether I tell you where Claire’s hiding or not!”
“But if you tell me right now I will immediately give you morphine instead of naloxone. I’ll remove the pencil and put salve on that wound and on your burn. Within five minutes you will be largely pain-free. If you don’t tell me, I’ll spend the next hour or so ruining you. I have a variety of operations in mind, Mr. Lyon, believe me.” Preparing to administer the injection, the doctor steps toward Lyon — but not close enough yet that Lyon can reach him.
“It’s up to you, John. In fact, I might even be convinced to let you live. I’m leaving the country this evening and if I were simply to walk out of here, by the time you got loose and then managed to get the door opened, I’d be long gone. No matter who you told your story to, no matter who believed you, I’d be out of harm’s way.”
Lyon is coughing and crying, still reaching for Quinndell but wanting to believe the doctor’s offer of life too. “Okay, do that, do it! Leave me here and get out of the country. But give me something for the pain before you go, I was dragged into this investigation, it doesn’t mean anything to me, I swear it doesn’t, please.”
“We’re on the right track, John. Killing you is not necessary, honestly it isn’t. I could prepare the morphine right now.”
“Thank you … thank you, Doctor.”
“I told you I was an admirer of yours.” He’s standing less than two feet from Lyon’s reaching hand, still holding that syringe, needle pointing upward. “So what’s it going to be, a shot of this nasty naloxone or a nice soothing injection of morphine?”
“The morphine!”
“Then tell me where Claire’s granddaughter is hiding. You see, she’s a zealot. You might go home and eventually try to forget about all of this but she’ll spend the rest of her life putting curses on me and praying to God for calamities to befall me, just as her grandmother did. I must have her, John, you understand that, don’t you?”
“Claire’s crazy, she can’t hurt you. She was lying in a coffin, that’s how I found her, who’s going to believe anything she says?”
“No one believed her grandmother either but look at the trouble she caused me. The choice is yours, John.”
Lyon wants to grab Quinndell by the throat and choke him to death, but the only way he can do that is if Quinndell comes closer. “We saw her tonight at the cemetery.”
“Saw whom?”
Spook him, Lyon thinks. Get him pissed off enough to rush over here so I can get my hand on him. “Claire’s grandmother.”
The doctor smiles.
“No, we did. It was weird, she was dressed in her nurse’s uniform, standing on her grave, she must still be after you.”
Quinndell is unable to hold on to that yellow smile, the doctor suddenly angry, stepping toward Lyon and reaching to find his upper arm.
Waiting … waiting until Quinndell is well within reach, Lyon keeping the fingers of his left hand outstretched, waiting … then striking, grabbing the doctor by the hair and pulling him close, turning him and getting his arm around Quinndell’s neck, feeling the gristle of Quinndell’s windpipe against his wrist, Lyon squeezing for all he’s worth, squeezing and shaking the doctor, determined not to let up or let go until Quinndell is dead.
The surprise of being attacked causes the doctor to squeeze the syringe’s plunger, the contents shooting upward in a thread-thin line as Quinndell grabs Lyon’s forearm with his free hand, trying desperately to relieve the pressure on his neck.
But Lyon holds on, never more determined than he is now, the muscles of his left arm bulging with the effort, maintaining that death grip, throttling Quinndell.
And it’s working, the doctor’s handsomely chiseled face blood-red and his glass eyes bulging from their sockets, Quinndell unable to breathe or speak, his tongue protruding between those small and discolored teeth.
Lyon is also red-faced with the effort, shaking Quinndell and squeezing all the harder, the blood lust rising in Lyon as the doctor chokes and gags.
Quinndell is manipulating the syringe, turning it around in his hand until he is grasping the barrel of the syringe the way you would a knife handle, stabbing Lyon in the forearm.
Lyon holds on, screaming with pain and rage as he keeps choking the doctor, who pulls the needle out and stabs Lyon a second time, a third, the needle bending but still going in, through Lyon’s flesh and all the way to bone, Quinndell pushing harder and harder, moving the needle around in circles until Lyon is forced to release him, the doctor collapsing to the floor.
Lyon shakes his arm and rubs the hypodermic against the edge of the table until he gets it out, then watches in horror as Quinndell scoots across the floor to sit up against one of the counters, both of his fine hands at his neck, still unable to speak, struggling to take breaths, his beautiful blue eyes leaking blood-tinged tears.
With his left hand Lyon jerks at the rope around his neck, managing to work loose some slack but unable to reach the knot holding that rope. Neither can he free his right hand or either of his ankles. What’s Quinndell going to do to him now?
Still stunned, the doctor finally gets around on his knees, one hand up to the counter, pulling himself to a standing position, his back to Lyon, Quinndell breathing with difficulty, coughing and gagging, spitting up blood.
And when the doctor does turn around, Lyon sees a face beyond horror, a mask of monstrous rage.
Quinndell lurches to a cabinet in the corner of the room and pulls it open. Keeping his back to Lyon, he is forced to choke out his words, making a mockery of the civility with which he normally speaks: “Mr. Lyon …” More choking. “I’d like you to meet Mr. Gigli.”
Then he turns and shows Lyon what he has in his hands.