'Somebody cut his fuckin' heart out,' Charon exaggerated. 'One of your girls there, too?'
'Doris,' Henry confirmed with a nod. 'Left the money... why?'
'It could have been a robbery that went wrong somehow, but I don't know what would have screwed that up. Ju-Ju and Bandanna were both robbed - hell, maybe those cases are unrelated. Maybe what happened last night was, well, something else.'
'Like what?'
'Like maybe a direct attack on your organization, Henry,' Charon answered patiently. 'Who do you know who would want to do that? You don't have to be a cop to understand motive, right?' Part of him - a large part, in fact - enjoyed having the upper hand on Tucker, however briefly. 'How much does Billy know?'
'A lot - shit, I just started taking him to -' Tucker stopped.
'That's okay. I don't need to know and I don't want to know. But somebody else does, and you'd better think about that.' A little late, Mark Charon was beginning to appreciate how closely his well-being was associated with that of Henry Tucker.
'Why not at least make it look like a robbery?' Tucker demanded, eyes locked unseeingly on the screen.
'Somebody's sending you a message, Henry. Not taking the money is a sign of contempt. Who do you know who doesn't need money?'
The screams were getting louder. Billy had just taken another excursion to sixty feet, staying there for a couple of minutes. It was useful to be able to watch his face. Kelly saw him claw at his ears when both tympanic membranes ruptured, not a second apart. Then his eyes and sinuses had been affected. It would be attacking his teeth, too, if he had any cavities - which he probably did, Kelly thought, but he didn't want to hurt him too much, not yet.
'Billy,' he said, after restoring the pressure and eliminating most of the pain. 'I'm not sure I believe that one.'
'You motherfucker!' the person inside the chamber screamed at the microphone. 'I fixed her, you know? I watched your little babydoll die with Henry's dick in her, slinging her cunt for him, and I seen you cry like a fucking baby about it, you fucking pussy!'
Kelly made sure his face was at the window when his hand opened the release valve again, bringing Billy back to eighty feet, just enough for a good taste. There would be bleeding in the major joints now, because the nitrogen bubbles tended to collect there for one reason or another, and the instinctive reaction of decompression sickness was to curl up in a ball, from which had come the original name for the malady, 'the bends.' But Billy couldn't fold up inside the chamber, much as he tried to. His central nervous system was being affected now, too, the gossamer fibers being squeezed, and the pain was multi-faceted now, crushing aches in the joints and extremities, and searing, fiery threads throughout his body. Nerve spasms started as the tiny electrical fibers rebelled against what was happening to them, and his body jerked randomly as though being stung with electric shocks. The neurological involvement was a little disquieting this early on. That was enough for now. Kelly restored the pressure, watching the spasms slow down.
'Now, Billy, do you know how it was for Pam?' he asked, just to remind himself, really.
'Hurts.' He was crying now. He'd gotten his arms up, his hands were over his face, but for all that he couldn't conceal his agony.
'Billy,' Kelly said patiently. 'You see how it works? If I think you're lying, it hurts. If I don't like what you say, it hurts. You want me to hurt you some more?'
'Jesus- no, please!' The hands came away, and their eyes weren't so much as eighteen inches apart.
'Let's try to be a little bit more polite, okay?'
'... sorry...'
'I'm sorry, too, Billy, but you have to do what I tell you, okay?' He got a nod. Kelly reached for a glass of water. He checked the interlocks on the pass-through system before opening the door and setting the glass inside. 'Okay, if you open the door next to your head, you can have something to drink.'
Billy did as he was told and was soon sipping water through a straw.
'Now let's get back to business, okay? Tell me more about Henry. Where does he live?'
'I don't know,' he gasped.
'Wrong answer!' Kelly snarled.
'Please, no! I don't know, we meet at a place off Route 40, he doesn't let us know where -'
'You have to do better than that or the elevator goes back to the sixth floor. Ready?'
'Nooooo!' The scream was so loud that it came right through the inch-thick steel. 'Please, no! I don't know - 1 really don't.'
'Billy, I don't have much reason to be nice to you,' Kelly reminded him. 'You killed Pam, remember? You tortured her to death. You got your rocks off using pliers on her. How many hours, Billy, how long did you and your friends work on her? Ten? Twelve? Hell, Billy, we've only been talking for seven hours. You're telling me you've worked for this guy for almost two years and you don't even know where he lives? I have trouble believing that. Going up,' Kelly announced in a mechanical voice, reaching for the valve. All he had to do was crack it. The first hiss of pressurized air bore with it such terror that Billy was screaming before any real pain had a chance to start.
'IDON'T FUCKING KNOOOOOOOOOWWW!'
Damn! What if he doesn't?
Well, Kelly thought, it doesn't hurt to be sure. He brought him up just a little, just to eighty-five feet, enough to renew old pains without spreading the effects any further. Fear of pain was now as bad as the real thing, Kelly thought, and if he went too far, pain could become its own narcotic. No, this man was a coward who had often enjoyed inflicting pain and tenor on others, and if he discovered that pain, however dreadful, could be survived, then he might actually find courage in himself. That was a risk Kelly was unwilling to run, however remote it might be. He closed the release valve again and brought the pressure back up, this time to one hundred ten feet, the better to attenuate the pain and increase the narcosis.
'My God,' Sarah breathed. She hadn't seen the postmortem photos of Pam, and her only question on the matter had been discouraged by her husband, a warning which she'd heeded.
Doris was nude, and disturbingly passive. The best thing that could be said for her was that Sandy had helped her bathe. Sam had his bag open, passing over his stethoscope. Her heart rate was over ninety, strong enough but too rapid for a girl her age. Blood pressure was also elevated. Temperature was normal. Sandy moved in, drawing four 5-cc test tubes of blood which would be analyzed at the hospital lab.
'Who does this sort of thing?' Sarah whispered to herself. There were numerous marks on her breasts, a fading bruise to her right cheek, and other, more recent edemas on her abdomen and legs. Sam checked her eyes for pupillary response, which was positive - except for the total absence of reaction.
'The same people who killed Pam,' the surgeon replied quietly.
'Pam?' Doris asked. 'You knew her? How?'
'The man who brought you here,' Sandy said. 'He's the one -'
'The one Billy killed?'
'Yes,' Sam answered, then realized how foolish it might sound to an outside listener.
'I just know the phone number,' Billy said, drunkenly now from the high partial-pressure of nitrogen gas, and his release from pain was helping him to be much more compliant.
'Give it to me,' Kelly ordered. Billy did as he was told and Kelly wrote it down. He had two full pages of penciled notes now. Names, addresses, a few phone numbers. Seemingly very little, but far more than he'd had only twenty-four hours before.
'How do the drugs come in?'
Billy's head turned away from the window. 'Don't know...'
'We have to do better than that.' Hissssssssssssss...
Again Billy screamed, and this time Kelly let it happen, watching the depth-gauge needle rotate to seventy-five feet. Billy started gagging. His lung function was impaired now, and the choking coughs merely amplified the pain that now filled every cubic inch of his racked body. His whole body felt like a balloon, or more properly a collection of them, large and small, all trying to explode, all pressing on others, and he could feel that some were stronger and some weaker than others, and the weaker ones were those at the most important places inside him. His eyes were hurting now, seeming to expand beyond their sockets, and the way in which his paranasal sinuses were also expanding only made it worse, as though his face would detach from the rest of his skull; his hands flew there, desperately trying to hold it in place. The pain was beyond anything he had ever felt and beyond anything he had ever inflicted. His legs were bent as much as the steel cylinder allowed, and his kneecaps seemed to dig grooves into the steel, so hard they pressed against it. He was able to move his arms, and those twisted and turned about his chest, seeking relief, but only generating more pain as he struggled to hold his eyes in the sockets. He was unable even to scream now. Time stopped for Billy and became eternity. There was no light, no darkness, no sound or silence. All of reality was pain.