She stood beside the gurney, staring at him, testing her conviction, giving herself one last chance to take another course rather than the one to which she had committed earlier. But she had no second thoughts.
“I thought Shenneck and D. J. Michael were the two heads of the snake, but they’re gone and the snake is still alive. I need to know the true power behind these Arcadians of yours, the one who sits on the ultimate throne. I need to know a lot of other things.”
Hendrickson shook his head, no, playing the tough guy who would deny her even in this moment of his extreme peril.
“I could interrogate you like I have others, but you’re as good a liar as the devil himself. I can’t afford to be deceived, sent on some wild-goose chase or into a trap.”
If it might be possible to convey a smirk with one’s mouth concealed, Hendrickson smirked.
“There’s only one way I can trust what you tell me.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“In January, we were still living in our house in Virginia, two months after Nick died. A scary thing happened. I’m at the computer, researching strange suicides. Travis is in his room, playing with LEGO blocks. I don’t realize some sonofabitch used a lock-release gun to get into the house. He’s in my boy’s room with him.”
Hendrickson’s brow was not as smooth as it had been.
“This guy charms Travis with funny stories. Sends him to me to ask what ‘natsat’ means, then ‘milk plus.’ I think it’s some little kid’s game. But they’re words from A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. It had a big effect on me in college, helped me go FBI. Travis comes in again, says Mr. Droog is in his room, so then I get it. In the novel, drug-crazed ultraviolent thugs are called droogs. Travis says Mr. Droog is going to teach him a fun game called rape.”
Hendrickson’s eyes were pale-green pools of venom.
“So I keep Travis close, get my gun, search the house, find no one, just the open back door,” Jane continued. “Just then the phone rings. It’s Mr. Droog. He tells me if I keep investigating Nick’s death and all these suicides, they’ll snatch my boy and ship him off to ISIS or Boko Haram to be used as a sex slave until those savages get tired of passing him around. He says they might even do the same with me, so my son and I will have to witness each other’s abuse and degradation.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath because speaking about this, especially to this man, stirred in her a lust for violence that she dared not indulge.
She looked down on Hendrickson again. “This Mr. Droog had a distinctive mid-tenor voice, certain speech patterns that I told myself I’d never forget. Never. And I haven’t forgotten you, Mr. Droog. When you came fully out of the chloroform, by the time you told me how much you liked to hear pretty girls use big words like hyperbole, I knew you. I knew you.”
She went to the refrigerator and took from it the Medexpress container and brought it to the table. An inset digital display on the face of the carrier read thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, which was the interior temperature, well within the preservation zone for the contents.
From her leather tote, she took a length of rubber tubing to be used as a tourniquet, a foil-wrapped sterile wipe, and a hypodermic syringe.
Through gauze gag and duct tape, Hendrickson made interrogatory sounds that might have been words forming an urgent question.
Jane opened the Medexpress container. The CryoMAX modular cold packs were still largely frozen.
She took from the container three generous ampules of cloudy amber fluid nestled in insulated sleeves, each bearing the same batch number, intended to be injected in the same session. They were some of the samples that she had taken from Bertold Shenneck’s house in Napa County, earlier in the month, when she and an ally invaded the weekend-getaway home of the inventor of the nanomachine control mechanism.
She had wanted the samples as evidence. They were more than evidence now. They were an invaluable tool and a terrible justice.
The sounds Hendrickson produced were no longer interrogatory, but instead exclamatory, a muffled but strenuous protest.
“I do regret this, but there’s no other way with you,” she said. “No other way to get the truth, and I desperately need the truth, Mr. Droog. Fortunately, Shenneck gave me what I need to squeeze the truth out of you.”
He began to thrash in his restraints, rocking the gurney, but there was no escape from the straps.
She waited until he’d exhausted himself, and then she picked up the scissors and began to cut away the right sleeve of his white shirt.
He tried to resist, but was ineffective.
The cut sleeve came away and slithered to the floor.
Gooseflesh stippled his bare arm. His pale forehead glistened with a fine beadwork of sweat.
30
This must not be allowed to happen. This is an outrage. He is who he is, and he is not a candidate for adjustment.
No one has told him that she might have ampules containing control mechanisms. Which means no one knows about them.
It’s known the crazy bitch took money from Shenneck’s safe in the Napa house, and it’s suspected she made off with his research files on flash drives, because he worked when in Napa as well as when in his labs in Menlo Park. But no one knows she’s gotten her hands on ampules containing control mechanisms.
Shenneck wasn’t supposed to have those in such an unsecured location. They should have been stored in Menlo Park. What the hell was the demented asshole thinking? The recklessness, the arrogance, the sheer stupidity! The syphilitic sonofabitch probably meant to use them on his hot wife, Inga, as domineering a witch as ever rode a broom. Maybe he meant to convert her into his personal version of an Aspasia girl.
This is intolerable. Unthinkable. This must not be allowed to happen. He is who he is. He is who he is, and she’s a vulgar pleb, operating out of her league. She’s gotten this far on sheer dumb luck, that’s all.
As she unwraps the hypodermic, it occurs to Booth that perhaps some Arcadians know she’s in possession of control mechanisms but haven’t told him. Depending on what cell you’re in, what position you fill, you’re told only what it’s deemed you need to know. But he thought he knew everything, the ultimate insider. If someone decided that such knowledge was reserved for those above his station…There is no honor anymore. No integrity. Treachery is everywhere. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and ruinous disorders! This can’t be allowed to happen.
31
Jane unwrapped the hypodermic needle. She prepared it and the cannula.
She tied the rubber tube around his biceps and drew it tight. With one fingertip, she palpated the veins in his forearm until she found one suitably prominent.
She tore open the foil packet and used the antiseptic wipe on the injection site.
Sounds of an entirely different character than before issued from Booth Hendrickson, a miserable beseeching noise.
The fingers of his upturned hand were spread and trembling, reaching out as best the strap allowed, much as a penniless and frightened beggar might seek alms.
She met his intense stare, and with his eyes he implored her not to continue, seeking the mercy that he had never extended to anyone.
The muffled cries escaping him now were as pitiable as the whimpers of a gravely injured dog.
Gilberto came to Jane’s side. “I’ll do it. I have training.”
“No. Not you. Not this of all things,” she murmured. “This is only on my shoulders, no one’s but mine.”
As Jane prepared the first big ampule for intravenous infusion, Hendrickson began to cry like a frightened child lost and alone in a dark woods. The woods were his life as he had made it for himself, and the dark was the darkness of a soul so long untended that the wick of it had withered until it couldn’t be lit to bring forth any guiding hope.