“There are two reasons to torture a person. One is sadism—the torturer enjoys inflicting pain. Two is the, well, practical purpose. Extracting information. This particular type of torture suggests the latter. The killer only damaged three fingernails and took one tooth. I probably shouldn’t say ‘only’—they are still terrible things to do—but the point is that he did not do more, which would argue against sadism as the motive.” And now Gray is openly gaping at me. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?” “It … does. What was that term you used? Sad … ism? Related to the Marquis de Sade, I presume?”
