From Black Rooms (7 page)

"What made you say that?" she inquired rather than answering Cal ie's question. "Why did you ask if I like it?"

The child's violet gaze shone with something that disturbed Natalie more than accusation: excitement. "

'Cause sometimes I miss it," she admitted softly.

"What do you mean?"

Cal ie took a sudden interest in the carpet, the wal s, the stairs. "I don't know. I feel so...empty sometimes. In here." She put her hands on her smal chest. "I keep out the bad Whos, but no one else comes in, except

Grandma Nora sometimes. It's not like when Daddy

used to come."

Natalie nodded, unable to speak. Even ten years later, the memory of Dan could stil tighten her throat. Cal ie never knew Dan Atwater while he was alive. An F.B.I. profiler, he died in the line of duty while saving Natalie from the Violet Kil er. Yet Cal ie had enjoyed a closer relationship with her father than any ordinary child could ever hope to know in this life. Al through her babyhood, she could fil herself with his love and comfort whenever she wished. Natalie, too, had been able to draw Dan into her mind and body, achieving the total unity of being that most lovers could only dream of.

Then Dan went to the Place Beyond, a region from

which even conduits could not summon the dead. Left alone with her grief, Natalie began to comprehend what life was like for normal people, al locked into their separate flesh, never knowing the incomparable joy of merging completely with a kindred spirit. It was

appropriate that the body consisted of cel s, Natalie mused, for it imprisoned the soul in solitary

confinement.

"It's just me," Cal ie said, echoing her thoughts. "Al the time. That's why I wanted to know if you liked having the Whos inside you. If they made you feel the way Dad did."

Natalie hugged her. "No, baby girl. Not like your dad."

"But you like it, right? If you do, maybe I would, too." Cal ie's voice became brittle, verged on cracking.

"Would you teach me?"

Natalie tightened the embrace, in part to keep from quivering with her own misgivings. "We'l see." Despite the noncommittal response, Natalie knew she would relent, for she could no longer deny the truth. Her daughter would never be merely a girl with violet eyes. She would always be a Violet.

4

Inmate X

AMERICAN AFTERLIFE COMMUNICATIONS

Corps featured four aboveground stories, each

ornamented with the Greco-Roman columns and

pilasters characteristic of the other self-important government buildings in Washington, D.C. In addition to numbers for each of the floors, the control panels of the building's elevators included a B button for the basement. But there was another level below that for which there was no button, only an unmarked slot. To reach that level, one had to possess both the knowledge of the subbasement's existence and the security card to insert in the control panel's slot.

Dr. Carl Pancrit owned such a card and knew how to use it. When the elevator shuddered to a stop at the base of its shaft and parted its doors, he pul ed the card from the slot and stepped into a smal foyer, where a pair of uniformed guards flanked the entrance to the world's smal est and most specialized prison, which had been meticulously tailored for its sole inmate. Each guard carried only two nonlethal weapons--a stun gun and a tranquilizer pistol--for the prisoner they watched was Evan Markham, the Violet Kil er, and he was far more dangerous dead than alive. If his spirit ever got loose, he could potential y inhabit any living Violet.

One of the two officers rose from her desk to check Pancrit's I.D. Her lank brown hair was pul ed in a tight ponytail, and she had the chapped lips and husk-dry voice of a chain-smoker. The engraved name tag pinned to her shirt said RYAN. "Please remove anything that could be used as weapon or a means of suicide, Mr. Pancrit."

She held out a large plastic tray. He emptied his pockets into the receptacle--coins, keys, wal et, a Montblanc pen. "That's Dr. Pancrit."

"Yes, sir. The coat, belt, and tie, too, please." He peeled off his blazer and accessories with a wry look. "You sure you don't want my Jockeys, as wel ?

I've heard some cons hang themselves with their

underwear."

If the sarcasm offended Ryan, she didn't let it show.

"Sorry, sir. Regulations."

The second guard folded the clothes and set them on the desk beside the tray and a half-eaten lunch of burger and fries that Pancrit had interrupted with his arrival. Ryan then indicated the flat-screen, ful -color monitor on the wal behind her. "I'l get him secured before we let you in."

On the monitor, Pancrit surveyed the four split-screen shots of the cel 's security cameras. They included an overhead view of the room, which resembled those for the patients at the White Sands facility in its absolute simplicity and innocuousness. Not a single sharp edge or hard surface existed in the enclosure of soft vinyl and contoured plastic. Even the spigots for shower and basin were smooth, featureless bumps that lacked

valves to turn them off and on. The prisoner washed himself only when his captors al owed.

The only furnishing aside from the toilet and a mattress pad was a vinyl-upholstered chair in the center of the floor. One might have mistaken it for an ordinary recliner if not for the padded manacles on its foot-and armrests, claws open like the pincers of a crab.

A figure in bright red pajamas stained the cel 's sterile white interior like a blood spot seeping through a bandage. The uniform--the only clothing the prisoner was permitted to wear--bore no number or any other form of identification; everyone here knew who he was. Crouched on al fours between the chair and the bed, the man performed push-ups with manic rapidity.

Pancrit could not see the prisoner's face in any of the camera angles, only the long, scraggly black hair that brushed the floor every time his chest dipped to touch the vinyl padding.

Her eyes intent upon the inmate, Ryan craned the

gooseneck microphone mounted beside the monitor

toward her mouth and thumbed the TALK switch on it.

"Markham! You got company."

Although the speaker system blasted her voice into the room, the cel 's occupant did not heed her. If anything, he only quickened the pace of his exercise.

Ryan obviously expected his recalcitrance, for she kept hold of the mic and cranked up its volume. "Take a
seat, Markham! Before we come in and put you there."
The prisoner got to his feet and stared straight into one of the dark plastic bubbles that covered the cel 's camera lenses. The shadows that accumulated beneath the overhang of his heavy brows made his eyes appear bottomless and empty. For the first time, Pancrit wondered about the wisdom of striking a deal with this nutcase. If Simon McCord hadn't commanded such

loyalty from the rank-and-file of the NAACC's

membership, Pancrit could have used a Corps conduit for his purposes. But McCord, a messianic mentor to his fel ow Violets, was a religious fanatic who believed only God could create conduits, and he would use al his power and influence to stop Project Persephone if he ever learned its purpose. Carl Pancrit needed a conduit who had been excommunicated from McCord's Violet

enclave. An outcast, a pariah.

Like the Violet Kil er.

According to the staff hired to maintain a round-theclock suicide watch on the prisoner, Markham had only spoken one word during the ten years of his

incarceration: Boo. After considerable research, Pancrit learned that this was Markham's pet name for his

former flame, Natalie Lindstrom. Therein lay Pancrit's principal bargaining chip. While Lindstrom had

rebuffed his offer of employment, she might yet prove of use to him, for she had once been Evan Markham's lover. Of his ten victims, Lindstrom was the only Violet he could not bring himself to kil --the one he had permitted to capture him and turn him over to the police. Pancrit counted on both the love and the hate Markham had for Lindstrom in his negotiations with the madman.

As the Violet Kil er peered into the camera, he

scratched at the foot-long beard he'd grown in the years since the guards had refused to take the risk of shaving him. With a languid, unhurried air, he sank into the cel 's chair and placed his bare ankles and wrists in the open manacles. The cuffs snapped shut, and on the electronic panel beside the monitor, a red light winked off as a green one came on.

Stepping back from the microphone, Ryan nodded to her heavyset male partner, whose name badge identified him as WILLIS. He hefted himself off his folding chair, pul ed out a round key on a chain attached to his belt, and stuck it into a circular hole in a metal plate on the wal beside him. When Wil is signaled his readiness, Ryan inserted her own key into a wal plate on the opposite side of the room. The system required them to turn their keys simultaneously--an extra security measure that prevented a single individual from

opening the cel 's entrance.

Ryan pointed to the corridor's metal portal as it slid open. "The inner door won't open til this one closes. The cel wil shut automatical y twenty seconds after you've entered the room." She paused to give him the obligatory disclaimer. "Containment is our first priority. If anything goes wrong, we might not be able to get you out."

Pancrit stiffened in apprehension. "I know." He did not permit himself to consider al the

implications of dying inside this prison as he proceeded into the brief passageway that served as a buffer zone between the cel and the reception area. Pancrit knew that the sleek white plastic of the wal s hid layer upon layer of metal and insulation, designed to keep the electromagnetic energy of Markham's soul from

escaping the facility in the event he should ever succeed in kil ing himself. Indeed, the threat of spending eternity ricocheting off the wal s of this soul cage was probably the only reason Markham hadn't simply

starved himself long ago.

Or perhaps he still has some unfinished business in the
outside world, Pancrit mused as the door behind him
hissed closed with the suction of an airtight seal. A moment later, the door ahead of him slid away to reveal the red figure clamped into the chair at the cel 's center. The prisoner did not move, and the depth of shadow in the man's eye sockets made it impossible for Pancrit to tel whether Markham even noticed him. Only when he entered the room and heard the door

whoosh shut behind him did Pancrit see that the

inmate's violet irises tracked his every motion with feline intensity.

"Good morning, Evan." Pancrit put his hands on his knees and squatted until they were face-to-face, looking for signs of comprehension. "I'm Dr. Pancrit. I want to help you. I want us to help each other."

Blanched by lack of sunlight, Markham's pal id

complexion became almost translucent beneath the cold fluorescent lights, blue veins showing through the thin skin of his forehead. He might have been mistaken for a cunning waxwork if not for the glow of those narrowed eyes.

Pancrit straightened and cast a casual glance around the cel . "Are they treating you wel ? The food leaves something to be desired, I'm sure."

He nodded toward a plastic tray that sat by the door, upon which rested a pair of plastic bowls filmed with the residue of dried tomato soup and chocolate pudding. Markham, he knew, had once attempted to pierce his own jugular vein with the tine of a plastic fork. When his jailers stopped giving him forks, he tried to choke himself with the bowl of a plastic spoon. Now they had ceased giving him utensils altogether, forcing him to eat with his fingers.

The prisoner failed to respond to Pancrit. If anything, the visitor's presence seemed to bore him.

So much for small talk, Pancrit decided. "I know you
want to get out of here, Evan. I can make it happen." Markham's expression did not change, but his violet gaze fol owed Pancrit as the doctor idly paced the room.

"I know you're not a sociopath, Evan. The mutilation, the disembowelments, the eyes ripped from their

sockets--that was al for show, to throw the police off your trail. You wanted the cops to believe it was the work of a sadist, because then they wouldn't suspect your true motive. Those Violets were your friends, and you wanted to end their pain. Isn't that so?" He circled around behind the chair. Although

Markham's head didn't move, Pancrit imagined the

Violet's eyebal s twisting backward like owls' heads, as if to stare at the doctor through the back of his skul . Pancrit glanced at the clamps on Markham's wrists to make sure they were secure, then squeezed the

prisoner's shoulders in fraternity. "Like you, I've devoted my life to giving people peace. That's why I need you. If my work succeeds, you and your friends wil never have to suffer again. Wouldn't you like that, Evan?" Here, he bent close to Markham's ear, observing his reaction. "Wouldn't you like to end Natalie's suffering?"

The inmate peered at him, unblinking and seemingly unmoved, but beneath his hand, Pancrit felt Markham's shoulder muscles tense.

The doctor smiled and sauntered back around in front of the chair, stil gauging the effect of his words. "I visited Ms. Lindstrom a few weeks ago, actual y. Or should I cal her 'Boo'? Very pretty. So's her daughter, from what I hear--" Pancrit smacked his temple in mock consternation. "Gosh, that's right! You probably haven't heard. She had a kid with that FBI guy...what was his name? You know it better than I do." Markham's nostrils flared, and the blue Y of a vein rose on his forehead.

"Oh, yeah! Atwater, wasn't it? Not like it matters now--he's out of the picture. Natalie and her girl are on their own now." The doctor shook his head. "A shame, real y. Won't be long before they're both slaves to the Corps, like the rest of your kind. But that's what you get for having such a rare and valuable gift, eh?" Pancrit bent until his forehead nearly touched

Markham's, until he stared straight into the kil er's eyes. "Of course, if everyone had that gift, they wouldn't need you, would they? You could go off and do whatever you wanted, truly free for the first time in your life. How's that for a trade, Evan? You give me your gift, I give you your freedom." He paused, cocked his head for a reply. "Do we have a deal?" From the thicket of his beard, Markham's tongue