'Prince, not you.'
''Tis I.'
'They tell me you killed Priscilla Fox.'
'They?'
'Look, Prince-'
'Please, call me-'
'Okay, Gerald.'
'— Ishmael.'
He was growing tiresome, but I tried again. 'Prince. They want to charge you with Murder One.'
' They? Always, they. Third-person plural, a way of distancing yourself from the bureaucratic horror, eh, Biff? They need someone don't they? Three women dead, they need a fall guy to take the rap, that's how they speak, isn't it? They, dear God how I adore that word, it's so…so Kafkaesque. Tell me, Biff, in The Trial, do you think K. represents innocent mankind forced to vindicate himself in a totally alienated world without really knowing why, or is he guilty of something? Is he a part of the faulty world, deserving of his death? I prefer the former view, one of total desperation, rather than the hope for salvation through a higher law.'
'No more, Prince. Save it for your students or the guys in the psycho ward. If you want, call a lawyer. They get paid by the hour to listen to bullshit.'
Then there was silence, and finally, barely above a whisper, he said, 'I want to tell you something very important that's been weighing heavily on my mind.'
'You want to confess?'
'I want to do Long Days Journey into Night. I want to play Edmund again. I thought you would understand.'
I gave him no sympathy. 'You're too old for the part.'
'Of course the critics would say so, but what feeling I could bring to it now. Poor sickly Edmund, racked by consumption, drinking whiskey with his miserly father over the game of cards, telling him of his travels as a seaman. Do you remember?'
'No.'
Suddenly his voice became youthful, thickened slightly by drink but perfect for the part. ''It was a great mistake, my being born a man. I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death!''
'Is that it, Prince, are you in love with death?'
I heard his labored breathing along with the static. 'That is for me to know and you to find out.'
'But Edmund was speaking of his own death. He wasn't a killer.'
'Nor am I,' he said softly.
'Did you talk on the computer with Priscilla Fox the night she was killed?'
'I spoke with Fortyish-'
'Forty Something.'
'— Who, I must say, was both amusing and intelligent. Your friend Roderick tells me she's been slain and that her name is Petula-'
'Priscilla!'
'Precisely.'
'Priscilla Fox! She's dead. Did you-'
' Absolve, Domini, ' he chanted, ' aminas omnium fidelium de-functorum ab omni vinculo delictorum.'
'Prince!'
' Et gratia tua illis succurrente… '
'Prince, stop it!'
'I was born a Catholic, you know.'
'Prince, you're confusing illusion and reality. That isn't you. It's George chanting the Requiem Mass for his dead son in Virginia Woolf. '
'Is it, now?'
'Yes, but there was no son! He was imaginary, invented by George and Martha. Priscilla Fox was real.'
'Not to me.'
Then he put a tune to it, a nursery-rhyme tune, and six thousand miles away, ice water dripped into my veins. 'Who's afraid of Pris-cilla Fox, Pris-cilla Fox, Pris-cilla Fox?'
There was no reaching him. He had sailed into a foggy sea and didn't want to make port. Filled with self- knowledge and self-loathing. He knew he'd never again play the Old Vic or romance women under the Maine pines. Maybe he had a death wish, too. But was he a killer?
'Who's afraid of Pris-cilla Fox, early in the morning…?' The singsong voice grew weaker, and I heard the phone clank as if it had fallen from his hand. Rodriguez came on and told me Prince was asleep in his chair and that he'd be placed in a special cell and put under a suicide watch. I told him that was fine and I'd see him as soon as I could get home.
'Sure thing, Jake, but Nick's got Metro Homicide, the forensics boys, and the ME's office all working overtime. They'll nail this fruitcake to all three homicides faster than shit through a goose.'
They, I thought, then realizing…I was one of Them.
CHAPTER 25
Charlie Riggs was eating Hershey's Kisses and reading the latest report on figuring time of death by calculating the age of maggot larvae in body cavities. Forensic entomology, he called it, thumbing pages, sucking his chocolate, smacking his lips, occasionally hm-hmming and making notes in the margin.
Alex Rodriguez was reading the Miami Journal, shaking his head. He looked up at me. 'Your lousy paper got suckered on the so-called Cocaine Baby case. Everybody knows that's an old hoax perpetrated by bored customs agents. Never been a dead baby stuffed with cocaine come through the airport. Been stuffed turkeys, been stuffed yams, even been statues of the Virgin Mary stuffed with the white lady. But never been a dead baby.'
Nick Fox wasn't reading anything. He paced in front of his desk, his face growing red, his right hand slicing the air as he cut off Rodriguez and made a point. 'Jakie, Jakie, you got a classic case of the hind-tit syndrome. The guy who doesn't crack the case always thinks the guy who did got the wrong man. Am I right, Rod?'
' Verdad,' Rodriguez responded, on cue.
'See.' Fox gloated. They were beating me up like tag-team wrestlers. Nick Fox turned to Dr. Pamela Maxson, who sat quiet and saintly in a chair by the window. 'There's probably even a fancy psychological term for it, right, Dr. Maxson?'
'The denial defense mechanism,' Pam Maxson said.
Rodriguez chimed in, 'It's like this, Jake. It hurts your pride to be wrong. Like getting kicked in your machismo.'
Pamela Maxson smiled coyly. 'Castration anxiety,' she said.
I stared stupidly at her. 'You're on their side, too?'
'With a dash of persecutory complex,' she added for good measure.
Nick Fox stopped pacing and looked down at me, a bully asking if I'd had enough.
I hadn't. I get paid to argue. 'Look, Prince knew you were tapping the Compu-Mate calls. I'd already shown him his Equus rantings. He's not stupid. Why would he kill someone he's just chatted with? He'd have to be crazy to-'
Sometimes I say too much. Nick Fox smiled his cat-to-the-canary smile. It shut me up. 'Jakie, face it. Your nutty professor is the guy. I'll bet even Doc Riggs agrees.'
I turned to Charlie. He was muttering to himself. 'Never paid much attention to blowfly larvae. They lay their
