I would come to learn about the scar on her face, later, as well, for the person who put that scar there, and the other one that she wore less obviously deep within her, set her on the course that brought her to the Western State Hospital with questions that were soon to become very unpopular.
One of the things I learned in my maddest years was that one could be in a room, with walls and barred windows and locks on the doors, surrounded by other crazy people, or even stuffed into an isolation cell all alone, but that really wasn't the room one was in at all. The real room that one occupied was constructed by memory, by relationships, by events, by all sorts of unseen forces. Sometimes delusions. Sometimes hallucinations. Sometimes desires. Sometimes dreams and hopes, or ambition. Sometimes anger. That was what was important: to always recognize where the real walls were.
And that was the case then, as we sat in Gulp-a-pill's office.
I looked out the apartment window and saw that it was late. The daylight had fled, replaced by the thickness of the small-town night. I have several clocks in my apartment, all provided by my sisters, who, for some reason I have yet to be able to ascertain, seem to think that I have a near constant and deeply pressing need to always know what time it is. I thought to myself, the words are the only time I need now, so I took a break, smoking a cigarette, and collecting all the clocks from the apartment and unplugging them from the walls, or removing the batteries that ran them, so that they were all stopped. I noticed that they were all paused at more or less the same moment ten after ten, eleven after ten, thirteen after ten. I picked each clock up and changed both the hour and the minute hands on each, so that there was no longer even a semblance of consistency. Each was stopped at a different moment. This accomplished, I laughed out loud. It was as if I had seized time and freed myself from its constraints.
I remembered how Lucy had sat forward, fixing first Peter, then me, then Peter again with a withering, humorless gaze. I suppose, at first, she meant to impress us with her singleness of purpose. Perhaps she had thought that was how one dealt with crazy folks in a decisive manner, more or less like one would with a wayward puppy. She demanded, 'I want to know everything about what you saw the other night.'
Peter the Fireman hesitated before replying.
'Perhaps you might first tell us, Miss Jones, precisely why you are interested in our recollections? After all, we both made statements to the local police.'
'Why am I interested in the case?' she said briskly. 'There are some details that were brought to my attention shortly after the body was discovered, and after a phone call or two to the local authorities, I felt it of some importance to personally check them out.'
'But that says nothing,' Peter replied, with a small, dismissive gesture of his own. He sat forward on his seat, bending toward the young woman. 'You want to know what we saw, but both C-Bird and I are already nursing bruises from our first encounter with hospital security and the local homicide cops. I suspect we are both fortunate not to be stuffed in some isolation cell at the county jail, having been erroneously accused of a serious crime. So before we agree to help you, why don't you tell us once again why you are so interested in a bit more detail, please.'
Dr. Gulptilil had a slightly shocked look on his face, as if the notion that a patient might question someone sane was somehow against the rules. 'Peter,' he said stiffly, 'Miss Jones is a prosecuting attorney in Suffolk County. And I think she should be the one asking the questions.'
The Fireman nodded. 'I knew I'd seen you before,' he said quietly to the young woman. 'In a courtroom, probably.'
She looked at him for a moment or two before she answered. 'Sitting across from you, once, for a couple of court sessions. I saw you testify, in the Anderson fire case, maybe two years ago. I was still an assistant handling misdemeanors and DUI's. They wanted some of us to see you get cross-examined.'
Peter smiled. 'I recall that I held up pretty well,' he said. 'I was the one who found where the torch had set the fire. It was pretty clever, you know. Fixing an electrical outlet next to where the flammable material was stored in the warehouse, so that their own product pushed the fire. It took some planning. But then, that's what a good arsonist is all about: planning. It's part of the thrill for them, the construction of the fire. It's how the good one's really get off.'
'That's why they had us come watch,' Lucy said. 'Because they thought you were on your way to becoming the best arson investigator on the Boston force. But things didn't work out, did they?'
'Oh,' Peter said, smiling a little more widely, as if there was some joke in what Lucy Jones had said, but Francis hadn't heard. 'One could argue that they have, indeed. It really just depends on how you see things. Like justice and what's right and all that. But, really, now my story isn't why you're here, is it Miss Jones?'
'No. The nurse-trainee's murder is.'
Peter stared at Lucy Jones. He glanced over toward Francis, then to Big Black and Little Black, who hung in the back of the room, then finally at Gulp-a-pill, who was sitting a bit uneasily in his seat behind his desk. 'Now why,' Peter said slowly, turning back to Francis, 'why, C-Bird, would a prosecuting attorney from Boston drop everything she was doing and drive all the way out to the Western State Hospital, to ask questions of a couple of crazy folks about a death that happened well outside her jurisdiction, where a man has already been arrested and charged? Something about that death must have piqued her interest, C-Bird. But what? What could have caused Miss Jones to rush out here so urgently and ask to speak with a couple of Looney Tunes?
Francis looked over at Lucy Jones, whose eyes had centered on Peter the Fireman with a mingled look of intrigue and a recognition that Francis couldn't quite name. After a long moment, she turned to Francis and with a small grin that was skewed slightly in the direction of the scar on her face, asked, 'Well, Mister Petrel… can you answer that question?'
Francis thought for a moment. In his imagination, he pictured Short Blond just as they found her. Then he said, 'The body.'
Lucy smiled. 'Yes indeed. Mister Petrel… may I call you Francis?'
Francis nodded.
'Then what about the body?'
'Something about it was special.'
'Something about it might have been special,' Lucy Jones continued. She looked over at Peter the Fireman. 'Do you want to jump in here, now?'
'No,' Peter said, crossing his arms in front of him. 'C-Bird is doing just fine. Let him continue.'
She looked back over at Francis. 'And so…?'
Leaning back for an instant, then, just as swiftly pushing himself back forward, Francis thought about what she might be driving at. Images flooded him, of Short Blond, over and over, the way her body was twisted in death, and the manner in which her clothes were arranged. He realized that it was all a puzzle, and a part of it was the beautiful woman sitting across from him. 'The missing joints on her hand,' Francis said abruptly.
Lucy nodded and leaned forward. 'Tell me about that hand,' she said. 'What did it look like to you.'
Doctor Gulptilil stepped in suddenly. 'The police took photographs, Miss Jones. Surely you can inspect those. I fail to see what it is…' But his complaint dissipated, as the woman made a gesture for Francis to continue.
'They looked like someone, the killer, ha i removed them,' Francis said.
Lucy nodded. 'Now, can you tell me why the man accused, what's his name…'
'Lanky,' Peter the Fireman said. His own voice had gained a deeper, more solid tone.
'Yes… why this man Lanky, whom you both knew, might have done that?'
'No. No reason.'
'You can think of no reason why he might have marked the young woman in that fashion? Nothing he might have said beforehand? Or the way he'd been behaving. I understand he'd been quite agitated…'
'No,' Francis said. 'Nothing about the way Short Blond died fits with what I know of
