When She Was Bad

Dr. Cogan had stationed herself between Lilith and the exit.

“Your turn,” said Lilith.

“Funny thing, I don’t seem to-”

Lilith charged, drove her lowered shoulder into the doctor’s midsection, knocking her backward and sending her purse flying. The girl hit the breaker bar with both hands, crashed through to daylight, and ran straight into what felt like a wall of meat.

“Going somewhere?” said the man called Pender, wrapping his arms around her and, in one impossibly smooth, tango-like move, grabbing her wrists, spinning her around, and forcing her arms behind her back. Lilith kicked backward at his shins; he wrenched her wrists upward, just high enough for the pain to immobilize her.

Squirming, almost weeping with frustration, she swore at him like a biker’s bitch as Dr. Cogan came stumbling out into the glare with her jacket twisted sideways and her blouse hiked out from her skirt. “Nice catch,” she told Pender grimly, fumbling around in her purse and taking out a hypodermic syringe.

“Just a-whoa there, easy honey-just a hunch. As Quasimodo once said.” Pender had of course circled the building as soon as they’d arrived, and mentally noted all the potential exits.

Lily watched in horror as the doctor held the syringe up to the sky and tapped it a few times with a tapered, reddish-orange fingernail. “What’s that for?”

“Just something to calm you down.”

She was behind Lilith now, pushing up the sleeve of Lilith’s T-shirt and swabbing her tricep with an antiseptic towelette. A pinch, a needle prick. The sky darkened and the macadam opened beneath Lilith. She felt herself falling, falling, through bottomless space like Alice through the rabbit hole, until the darkness closed in overhead and swallowed her up.

7

The room that housed Ulysses Maxwell seemed unremarkable at first glance. Pale blue walls; dark blue carpet; white acoustic ceiling; single bed with a cheerful yellow comforter, open-shelved dresser, bookcase and TV/VCR hutch of blond wood; and in the corner a computer station and a low-backed, ergonomic desk chair-it all looked normal enough to Lyssy, who had little basis for comparison.

But there were no sharp edges anywhere. The walls met each other in smoothly rounded curves, the closet and adjoining bathroom were doorless alcoves, the furniture was all rounded at the corners, and with the exception of the desk chair it was all bolted to the floor. The only lights were set behind opaque panels in the ceiling and the panes in the sealed window overlooking the arboretum were made of two sheets of unbreakable glass sandwiching a layer of fine steel mesh.

What really gave the game away, though, was the smooth-faced, Starship Enterprise-looking door. Made of padded reinforced steel, it opened with a pneumatic whoosh, sliding sideways into the wall when a valid security code had been entered into a keypad, then closed and locked automatically as soon as the doorway had been cleared.

Still wearing his chinos and green corduroy shirt-he had half a dozen similar shirts, all in solid colors-Lyssy was at his computer playing chess when he heard the door slide open behind him. “Be right with you,” he said without turning around, then placed the cursor on his queen, clicked and held down the left button on the mouse, slid the queen up to KB-3, released the button, and sat back grinning as the word CHECKMATE! flashed across the screen, accompanied by an explosion of pixeled tickertape and a tinny fanfare.

“Better luck next time,” Lyssy said cheerfully as he logged off and swiveled his chair around. “Oh, hi, Dr. Al. Long time no see.” Humor: less than an hour had passed since the meeting with Dr. Trotman. “How about a game?”

“I’m not sure my, ah, ego can stand another butt-whipping this morning,” said Corder, who’d taught Lyssy how to play chess only a year ago. With an IQ that tested nearly off the charts, the pupil had quickly outstripped the teacher; it had been a little over six months since the psychiatrist had earned better than a draw against his patient.

“Another?” By now, Lyssy was almost preternaturally alert to his doctor’s every nuance, gesture, and mannerism; for him, as for a one-master dog, it was a survival skill.

“In a manner of speaking.” Corder sat down heavily on the edge of Lyssy’s bed. With his gingery hair and his round-lensed tortoise-shell eyeglasses, he reminded Lyssy of an orange cat named Garfield in a picture book Dr. Al had given him when he was a child-or, more accurately, when his mental age was still that of a child. “How do you feel the meeting with Dr. Trotman went?”

“I don’t think she likes me much.”

“Yes, well, I’m sure it’s nothing personal. Did she tell you by any chance why she wanted to meet with you?”

“She didn’t have to,” said Lyssy. “I’ve been around here long enough to know when somebody’s doing a psychiatric evaluation.”

“Right with Eversharp,” said Corder. “Dr. Trotman has been asked by the court to give an opinion as to whether you’re competent to stand trial for some of the, ah, the things that happened before you came here.”

“Oh, crum,” said Lyssy-swearing was not one of the skills he’d learned from his beloved psychiatrist/father figure.

“Come on over here.” Corder beckoned to Lyssy with a plump forefinger. Lyssy limped across the room and sat down next to him; the doctor draped his arm companionably around his patient’s shoulders. “I’ve been walking a narrow tightrope lately, Lyss, as far as how much to tell you about all the legal machinations going on behind the scenes. On the one hand, I didn’t want to worry you prematurely; on the other hand, I don’t want you to be blindsided, either.”

The arm tightened around Lyssy’s shoulders. He shrugged out from under it, crossed over to the small window, and put his nose against the glass so he could make out the arboretum through the steel mesh.

Not surprisingly, this little pocket park with its bright ground flowers and dramatic contrasts of light and shade had become Lyssy’s favorite place in his admittedly circumscribed world. Here he had practiced walking hour after hour, rain or shine-he’d have worn his stump raw if they’d have let him-until by now he knew every flower, bird, and squirrel, every meander of the gravel path, every sharp-scented, rough-barked pine, every board of the Japanese footbridge, and every stone in the cement-banked brook as well as he knew his own room. “How long do I have?” he asked eventually.

“Hard to say,” replied Corder. “I spoke to O’Hare this morning.” F. Frank O’Hare, slick, expensive, and media-savvy, was Lyssy’s defense attorney. “He says they’ll probably issue an arrest warrant in Umpqua County as soon as Dr. Trotman turns in her report. If she finds you competent to stand trial, of course, but nobody realistically sees her going any other way.

“Once that happens, some officers will arrive here to take you into custody and drive you down to Umpqua City. You’ll be held in the county jail before and during the trial. O’Hare says they’ll probably be housing you in a private cell, so that’s, ah, something, anyway.”

“If you’re trying to cheer me up, Dr. Al, that’s just not going to cut it.”

“Now don’t give up hope yet,” said Corder, partly to alleviate his own sense of guilt-on some level he must have known that he’d only been fattening the calf for slaughter these last few years. “O’Hare and his team are preparing a vigorous psychiatric defense-he thinks you stand an excellent chance of avoiding the death penalty.”

“At least in Oregon.” Lyssy understood perfectly well that if he didn’t get the death penalty here, they’d ship him down to California to try him for however many murders he was supposed to have committed there.

“If you’d like, I could give you some medication to help you deal with any anxiety you might be experiencing.” Corder glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry, Lyss, I have a new patient to meet. It’s almost lunchtime-do you want me to get you a psych tech to escort you down to the dining hall?”

“I’m not very hungry,” said Lyssy through clenched teeth.

“I understand. Look, Lyssy, it’s okay to be upset. This is a lousy rotten deal you’re getting, it’s okay to be