19
I got home to a message from Detective McKnight. Gordon Pryne had been arrested.
I called the number he’d left on my machine.
“Detective. This is Dylan Foster.”
“We bagged him.”
“Where was he?”
“Caligula. Owner called us.”
“Why would he go back there, knowing you guys were looking for him?”
“He was stoned. Crystal meth.”
“Not a lifestyle that lends itself to intelligent, goal-directed decisions,” I said.
“No, ma’am.”
“Where is he now?”
“Interrogation. Detective Jackson is in with him. I stepped out to take your call.”
“How’s the questioning going?”
“Interrogation. You interrogate suspects. You question witnesses. He’s a suspect.”
“Okay. How’s the interrogation going?”
“We’re just getting started.”
“Is he coming off the meth?”
“I think he’s down already. He seems okay.”
“He hadn’t before I stepped out. You think he will?”
“Depends on how much he used. And when. I’d bet on it with him. He’s so volatile. They tend to be criers.”
“You have experience with meth?”
“Some. I did a rotation on a drug rehab unit during my internship.” I checked my watch. It was eight thirty. “Detective, is there any way I could come down and watch the interrogation? I mean, is that allowed?”
“Not really.”
“Maybe I could offer some insight,” I said. “I’d like to see what he has to say.”
He paused for a long, excruciating minute. “I’ll send a squad car over. You at home?”
“Yep.”
“Fifteen minutes?”
“I’ll be ready.”
This journey wasn’t nearly as precarious as my cab ride had been. Chalk that up to a sober driver, I guess.
The officer who drove me had Detective McKnight paged as we drove into an underground garage. I thought we were near police headquarters, but had lost my bearings in the canyons of downtown Dallas. We got out of the car, slammed the doors to the cruiser, and waited by a steel door marked “Restricted. Identification required.” McKnight arrived a few minutes later, swiped a card into a slot, and led me into the secure area.
Dallas County Central Intake is a compendium of wretched depravity. Within its blue and yellow walls are specimens of every imaginable malignant mutation of the human soul. Prostitutes, pimps, drug addicts and their dealers, murderers, rapists, child molesters, thieves, burglars, small-time crooks, petty criminals, drunks—every suspect in every arrestable crime in Dallas County passes through these doors, in various stages on the continuum of repentance. From defiant to pathetic. DCCI has them all.
A half dozen dejected men were seated just inside these doors, in neat rows of metal folding chairs, like school children. They each wore white coveralls and bright orange Keds—the kind without laces.
I raised my eyebrows at McKnight with the silent question.
“Trustees,” he said.
“Doing what?”
“Waiting for vomit to clean up. Whatever.”
I pointed to the lines of men and women taking off their shoes as they waited behind a white line for processing.
“And the shoes?”
“Shoe laces are weapons in here,” McKnight said.
I thought back to my brief but unfortunate incarceration in Chicago’s Cook County Jail. They’d let me keep my shoes. Thank God for simple dignities:
I followed McKnight through a series of card-swipes and locked doors, down hallways shiny with putty-colored linoleum, until we arrived at Interrogation Room Three. He opened the door and we were in a bare little room furnished with a single table with a monitor on it.
We stood and watched the monitor as Jackson talked to Gordon Pryne. A uniformed cop stood between them both and the exit.
I leaned in and peered at the small screen.
Pryne was cuffed at the wrists, with a chain that tied his cuffs into a D-ring in the floor. He was agitated, twitching with anger, each word from his accuser landing on him like a stone. He squirmed and fidgeted, bending to accommodate the cuffs and running his shaking fingers through that wild snatch of hair.
“What do you think?” McKnight said.
“He’s not off the meth yet. I’d say he’s about to blow. One way or another. See his hands, how they’re shaking? And look how pale he’s gotten, just since we’ve been standing here. He’s starting to get clammy, to go kind of gray. You can see the sweat stains starting here,” I pointed at the screen, “around his collar. And under his arms.”
Pryne’s chains rattled as he began shuffling his feet rhythmically.
“When we step inside,” McKnight said, “we’ll be behind a one-way mirror in a room next to the interrogation unit. Then I’ll step into the room, leaving you behind the mirror. He can’t see or hear you. He won’t even know you’re there. The room is pretty soundproof. But I’d advise you to turn off your cell phone or pager and to be as quiet as you can. Don’t scoot your chair or anything if you can help it.”
I nodded and turned my cell phone off.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded again and followed McKnight into the room. Three other men were watching the interrogation. McKnight nodded to them and pointed me to a chair. Then he swiped his card again and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. It locked with a crisp click.
Pryne looked up and tensed. He sniffed the air. He dropped his voice, narrowing his eyes to slits.
“Get her out of here,” he said.
I felt my chest tighten.
“No one in here but us, Gordon,” Jackson said. “Just you and us and your guilty conscience.”
Pryne pulled against cuffs and screamed at McKnight, “Get her out of here!”
I saw a quick glance pass between Jackson and McKnight. I could feel the other men behind the mirror looking at me.
“Who are you talking about, Gordon?” McKnight asked.
Pryne fought against his chains again, drawing blood on his wrist, and threw his head back convulsively. Jackson and McKnight both leapt backward. Pryne shoved the table, which tipped over and crashed onto the linoleum.
A sound filled the room. Something feral and desolate and primeval. We all stood, riveted, as we realized collectively what it was. Gordon Pryne was howling.
Profane screams were punctuated by the cracked syllables of words in a language I didn’t recognize. He threw his head back again, knocking himself to the floor as his chair flew backwards. He struggled to his feet and leapt at the end of his chain, a mad, rabid yard dog. He lunged toward the mirror and looked me straight in the eye.
I flinched and took a step backward.
He screamed and lunged again at the mirror, slamming himself against his chain. Deep red stains began to spread at his wrists.
The man next to me touched my elbow and escorted me out.
He was a cop, I think, judging from his empty holster and the respectful brown suit he wore. He didn’t introduce himself, just said, “Wait here,” and went back in.
I found myself alone in the outer room, the fluorescent lighting buzzing in my ears. My legs were trembling and I was cold and dizzy. My heartbeat was loud and fast in my ears, my face hot, and I couldn’t stop shivering. There were no chairs in the room—only the table with the lone monitor—so I crossed my arms and sank to the floor, my back to the wall, and put my head down on my knees.
I huddled there for a minute or so, my head down, breathing. In and out, I told myself. In and out.
I could hear Pryne’s shrieks, tinny now through the monitor. He seemed far away, though in fact I’d only increased the cushion between us by a few feet and one locked door. The distance didn’t seem nearly enough.
I closed my eyes instinctively to pray, my head still down, breathing, though the words wouldn’t come.
The screaming stopped abruptly.
Pryne had collapsed and lay motionless on the floor. Jackson and McKnight were leaning over him.
I stood and walked to the monitor.
“He’s conscious,” McKnight said. Then shouting to Pryne, “Can you hear me? Gordon?”
Pryne balled himself up and began to weep, his body heaving with each tormented sob. He began babbling, this time in English. I leaned in, straining to hear the words.
“Why can’t they leave me alone?” he said. “No, no, no. Leave me alone.”
The man in the brown suit entered the room and said something to Jackson and McKnight. They left the interrogation room and came to find me.
“Parkland’s coming,” Jackson said to me, without a hello. “Need to bring a stretcher through here.”
“Should I…?”
“If you could wait,” McKnight said. “We’ll have someone drop you back at headquarters. Couple of blocks from here. We’ll be about fifteen minutes or so.”
He opened the door to the hallway and stopped a uniformed cop walking by.
“Take Dr. Foster back to HQ and put her in the conference room on 5. And get her a cup of coffee or something, will ya?”
I rode with the cop, parked myself in the conference room, and declined the coffee, which infused the entire area with a burnt, acrid smell—like it had been sitting there cooking on that credenza for days. I waited alone at the large oval conference table, until McKnight and Jackson appeared.
They helped themselves to coffee and sat down at the table.
“What do you make of that?” Jackson said. “He got the DTs or something?”
I shrugged. “You mean delirium tremens. Maybe. He’s not a drinker, though, is he? You know anything about his alcohol habits?”
“Uses everything else on the street,” McKnight said. “Assume he drinks. Would that explain it?”
“I guess if he’d stopped drinking a few days ago, just cold turkey, maybe. But that wouldn’t explain the…personal nature of his behavior. He seemed to be responding to me. Literally to me. It happened the minute I stepped behind the mirror. I don’t know how else to interpret ‘Get her out of here.’ And the fact that he looked me straight in the eye and lunged at the mirror.”
Jackson was shaking his head emphatically. “Gordon Pryne had no way of knowing you were in that room. No way. I didn’t even know you were back there. I just knew McKnight stepped out a couple of times and came back in. That’s it. Pryne had no access to that information. Zero.”
“Not through the regular channels, anyway,” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” McKnight asked.
“Look, just…throw away all your logic for a minute. Everything you know to be true about the normal rules and regulations of the planet.”
They looked at one another and then at me.
“What’s your gut feeling? What did you see in that room? You were standing right there.” I waited. “Didn’t you feel it?”
They were silent for a minute. The air in the room began to smell of sweat and tension.
“Evil,” McKnight said at last.
“Yeah,” Jackson said reluctantly. “That’s it. Evil.”
“Okay. So you guys, between you, have done how many interviews over your years on the force?”
“Hundreds,” Jackson said.
“At least,” McKnight said.
“Have you ever felt that before?” I asked.
They both considered the question, looking down at their stained coffee cups.
“No,” Jackson said at last. It felt almost like an admission, he was so reluctant to say it.
McKnight nodded in agreement. He put his cup down and crossed his arms.
“I seen some very bad things,” Jackson was saying. “Some very bad things. Heard some terrible stories. What people can do to one another. You have no idea. But that…that evil thing. I never seen that before. Never felt that.”
“I think we’re dealing with something here that’s…beyond Gordon Pryne,” I said. “Something outside the bounds of…I don’t know…what you might consider normal reality. The ugly things people do to each other, as you say, that’s people doing it, right? Ugly, sick people, but people. But this thing, this thing that Gordon Pryne just showed us…that’s something else, I think. Something else entirely.”
“What?” McKnight asked. “What is it exactly?”
“I’m not sure it’s quantifiable in any exact sense. I think it might be—”
“You mean, like paranormal. Supernatural,” McKnight said.
“Something like that. Otherworldly, maybe. That might be a way to think about it.”
“How do you know that?” McKnight asked. “I mean, how could that possibly be true?”
“I don’t know. And if I hadn’t seen it myself, I would never have considered it as a possibility. I mean, the guy is just a serial offender, right? Just another in the long line of violent, angry people who shuffle through here, one after another. But didn’t you feel like you were watching something—”
“Like that Exorcist movie,” Jackson said. “It was like that.”
“Is it possible he’s just crazy?” McKnight asked. “Just crazy and loony and out of his mind from all the drugs and whatever other garbage he puts into himself?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Do you really think that’s what it is?”
McKnight shook his head, kicked the conference table and shoved his chair back.
“Anyone recognize the language he was talking?” Jackson asked. “Dr. Foster?”
“No. I’ve never heard anything like it before.”
McKnight got up and filled his coffee cup again, then put the cup down without drinking anything and paced the room.
Finally, he looked up at me. “What do we do now? I mean, what would you recommend?”
I shrugged. “Are they sedating him or something?”
“Probably,” Jackson said. “They should call us here in a minute and let us know.”
“They’re restraining him, I hope,” I said.
“Absolutely,” Jackson said.
“Do you guys have a chaplain?” I asked.
They looked at one another and shrugged. “Martinez,” Jackson said at last. “I think his name is Martinez.”
“You think I could talk to him?” I asked.
“We’ll try to find him,” Jackson said. He nodded and McKnight left the room. Jackson excused himself after an awkward moment, leaving me sitting there alone again.
I got up and turned the coffee pot off, then picked up the carafe in one hand and the rest of the machine in the other and walked down the hall, looking for a kitchen. I found one a few doors down and emptied the coffee into the sink. I peeled the wet filter away from the grimy plastic and threw it away, then searched the cabinets for something to scrub with. I found some crummy, industrial paper towels and a bottle of store-brand dish soap. Not my preferred weapons of choice, but sometimes you have to make do in a pinch.
I turned on the hot water, holding my fingers under the stream until I was satisfied with the temperature, and started scrubbing.