by Tom Clancy
“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 multifaceted 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, and 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?”
“Noooooo!” The scream was so loud that it came right through the inch-thick steel. “Please, no! I don’t know—I 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.
“I DON’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 terror 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.
“ . . . please . . . please. . . ” the whisper carried over the speaker next to Kelly. He brought the pressure back up slowly, stopping this time at one hundred ten feet.
Billy’s face was mottled now, like the rash from some horrible allergy. Some blood vessels had let go just below the surface of the skin, and a big one had ruptured on the surface of the left eye. Soon half of the “white” was red, closer to purple, really, making him look even more like the frightened, vicious animal he was.
“The last question was about how the drugs come in.”
“I don’t know,” he whined.
Kelly
spoke quietly into the microphone. “Billy, there’s something you have to understand. Up until now what’s happened to you, well, it hurts pretty bad, but I haven’t really hurt you yet. I mean, not really hurt you.”
Billy’s eyes went wide. Had he been able to consider things in a dispassionate way, he would have remarked to himself that surely horror must stop somewhere, an observation that would have been both right and wrong.
“Everything that’s happened so far, it’s all things that doctors can fix, okay?” It wasn’t much of a lie on Kelly’s part, and what followed was no lie at all. “The next time we let the air out, Billy, then things will happen that nobody can fix. Blood vessels inside your eyeballs will break open, and you’ll be blind. Other vessels inside your brain will let go, okay? They can’t fix either one. You’ll be blind and you’ll be crazy. But the pain will never go away. The rest of your life, Billy, blind, crazy, and hurt. You’re what? Twenty-five? You have lots more time to live. Forty years, maybe, blind, crazy, crippled. So it’s a good idea to not lie to me, okay?
“Now—how do the drugs come in?”
No pity, Kelly told himself. He would have killed a dog or a cat or a deer in the condition he’d inflicted on this . . . object. But Billy wasn’t a dog or a cat or a deer. He was a human being, after a fashion. Worse than the pimp, worse than the pushers. Had the situation been reversed, Billy would not have felt what he was feeling. He was a person whose universe was very small indeed. It held only one person, himself, surrounded by things whose sole function was to be manipulated for his amusement or profit. Billy was one who enjoyed the infliction of pain, who enjoyed establishing dominance over things whose feelings were nothing of importance, even if they truly existed at all. Somehow he’d never learned that there were other human beings in his universe, people whose right to life and happiness was equal to his own; because of that he had run the unrecognized risk of offending another person whose very existence he had never really acknowledged. He was learning different now, perhaps, though it was a little late. Now he was learning that his future was indeed a lonely universe which he would share not with people, but with pain. Smart enough to see that future, Billy broke. It was obvious on his face. He started talking in a choked and uneven voice, but one which, finally, was completely truthful. It was only about ten years too late, Kelly estimated, looking up from his notes at the relief valve. That ought to have been a pity, and truly it was for many of those who had shared Billy’s rather eccentric universe. Perhaps he’d just never figured it out, Kelly thought, that someone else might treat him the same way in which he treated so many others, smaller and weaker than himself. But that also was too late in coming. Too late for Billy, too late for Pam, and, in a way, too late for Kelly. The world was full of inequities and not replete with justice. It was that simple, wasn’t it? Billy didn’t know that justice might be out there waiting, and there simply hadn’t been enough of it to warn him. And so he had gambled. And so he had lost. And so Kelly would save his pity for others.
“I don’t know . . . I don’t—”
“I warned you, didn’t I?” Kelly opened the valve, bringing him all the way to fifty feet. The retinal blood vessels must have ruptured early. Kelly thought he saw a little red in the pupils, wide as their owner screamed even after his lungs were devoid of air. Knees and feet and elbows drummed against the steel. Kelly let it happen, waiting before he reapplied the air pressure.
“Tell me what you know, Billy, or it just gets worse. Talk fast.”
His voice was that of confession now. The information was somewhat remarkable, but it had to be true. No person like this had the imagination to make it up. The final part of the interrogation lasted for three hours, only once letting the valve hiss, and then only for a second or two. Kelly left and revisited questions to see if the answers changed, but they didn’t. In fact, the renewed question developed yet more information that connected some bits of data to others, formulating an overall picture that became clearer still, and by midnight he was sure that he’d emptied Billy’s mind of all the useful data that it contained.
Kelly was almost captured by humanity when he set his pencils down. If Billy had shown Pam any mercy at all, perhaps he might have acted differently, for his own wounds were, just as Billy had said, only a business matter—more correctly, had been occasioned by his own stupidity, and he could not in good conscience harm a man for taking advantage of his own errors. But Billy had not stopped there. He had tortured a young woman whom Kelly had loved, and for that reason Billy was not a man at all, and did not merit Kelly’s solicitude.
It didn’t matter in any case. The damage had been done, and it progressed at its own speed as tissues torn loose by the barometric trauma wandered about blood vessels, closing them off one at a time. The worst manifestation of this was in Billy’s brain. Soon his sightless eyes proclaimed the madness that they held, and though the final depressurization was a slow and gentle one, what came out of the chamber was not a man—but then, it never had been.
Kelly loosed the retaining bolts on the hatch. He was greeted with a foul stench that he ought to have expected but didn’t. The buildup and release of pressure in Billy’s intestinal tract and bladder had produced predictable effects. He’d have to hose it out later, Kelly thought, pulling Billy out and laying him on the concrete floor. He wondered if he had to chain him to something, but the body at his feet was useless to its owner now, the major joints nearly destroyed, the central nervous system good only to transmit pain. But Billy was still breathing, and that was just fine, Kelly thought, heading off to bed, glad it was over. With luck he would not have to do something like this again. With luck and good medical care, Billy would live for several weeks. If you could call it that.
21
Possibilities
Kelly was actually disturbed by how well he slept. It wasn’t fitting, he worried, that he should have gotten ten hours of uninterrupted sleep after what he’d done to Billy. This was an odd time for his conscience to manifest itself, Kelly said to the face in the mirror as he shaved; also a little late. If a person went around injuring women and dealing drugs, then he should have considered the possible consequences. Kelly wiped his face off. He felt no elation at the pain he’d inflicted—he was sure of that. It had been a matter of gathering necessary information while meting out justice in a particularly fitting and appropriate way. Being able to classify his actions in familiar terms went a long way towards keeping his conscience under control.
He also had to go someplace. After dressing, Kelly got a plastic drop cloth. This went to the after well-deck of his cruiser. He was already packed, and his things went into the main salon.
It would be a trip of several hours, most of it boring and more than half in darkness. Heading south for Point Lookout, Kelly took the time to scan the collection of derelict “ships” near Bloodsworth Island. Built for the First World War. they were an exceedingly motley collection. Some made of timber, others of concrete—which seemed very odd indeed—all of them had survived the world’s first organized submarine campaign, but had not been commercially viable even in the 1920s, when merchant sailors had come a lot cheaper than the tugboat crews who routinely plied the Chesapeake Bay. Kelly went to the flying bridge and while the autopilot handled his southerly course, he examined them through binoculars, because one of them probably held interest. He could discern no movement, however, and saw no boats in the morass that their final resting place had become. That was to be expected, he thought. It wouldn’t be an ongoing industrial enterprise, though it was a clever hiding place for the activity in which Billy had so recently played a part. He altered course to the west. This matter would have to wait. Kelly made a conscious effort to change his thinking. He would soon be a team player, associated again with men like himself. A welcome change, he thought, during which he would have time to consider his tactics for the next phase of his operation.
The officers had merely been briefed on the incident with Mrs. Charles, but
their alert level had been raised by follow-up information on the method by which her assailant had met his end. No additional cautionary words were needed. Two-man patrol cars handled most of them, though some solo cars driven by experienced—or overly confident—officers performed the same function in a way that would have grated on Ryan and Douglas had they seen it. One officer would approach while the other stood back, his hand resting casually on his service revolver. The lead officer would stand the wino up and frisk him, checking for weapons, and often finding knives, but no firearms—anyone in possession of one pawned it for money with which to buy alcohol or, in some cases, drugs. In the first night eleven such people were rousted and identified, with two arrests being made for what the officers deemed an improper attitude. But at the end of the shift, nothing of value had been turned up.
“Okay—I found something out,” Charon said. His car sat in the parking lot outside a supermarket, next to a Cadillac.
“What’s that?”
“They’re looking for a guy disguised as a bum.”
“You kidding me?” Tucker asked with some disgust.
“That’s the word, Henry,” the detective assured him. “They have orders to approach with caution.”
“Shit,” the distributor snorted.
“White, not too tall, forties. He’s pretty strong, and he moves real good when he has to. They’re going soft on the information that’s out, but about the same time he interfered with a yoking, two more pushers turned up dead. I’m betting it’s the same guy who’s been taking pushers out.”
Tucker shook his head. “Rick and Billy, too? It doesn’t make any sense.”
