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Molly went right to the stranger in my living room. He scratched her behind the ears, then she curled up at his feet. "Pretty dog. How long have you had her?" I hesitated, thinking at first this question was some kind of a trap. He was a cop, after all. Then I decided that was silly and that he was just trying to be polite. Then I realized his being polite was itself a method of getting me relaxed and accustomed to answering his questions, and that in fact it was part of a trap. "She's my girlfriend's dog." Vance Falconer glanced over at a framed picture propped on a little stand on top of my television. It was a picture of me, looking chubby and pale and my hair standing like it was being blown around in a hurricane, standing behind Amy with my arms wrapped around her, looking over her, her mop of red hair under my chin. She wore sunglasses and a huge smile, I wore the expression of a man worried that a stranger was about to steal my camera. "That your girl?" "Yeah. Amy Sullivan. We're engaged." "She live here?" Get to the point, asshole. I don't have all day. "She's away at school. Learning to be a programmer." "Can I ask what happened to her hand?" The guy was good. Amy's normal right hand was visible in the picture, holding a stuffed elephant I had won her at a carnival game. Her left arm hung down almost out of frame. But if you were observant, down at the very edge of the photo you could see a little sliver of blue sky where the arm ended at the wrist. "She lost it in a car accident when she was a kid." "Did you go to see her last night? Is that where you've been?" "No." "Well, you've been gone all night," Falconer said. "Where you go?" I felt my heart start to thump. Animal reaction to being pushed toward a corner. "A friend's house. What did you do, break in?" "Door was unlocked. I had reason to think you had been the victim of a violent crime so I let myself in." "I'm pretty sure you can't do that, Detective." "I'll give you a phone number where you can call to complain. I have my own entry on the voice mail tree. You probably heard about the incident down at St. Francis. Since this address was the scene of the very last call Franky Burgess took before he went on his shooting rampage, I thought maybe he had started with you. I was worried you may be in here bleeding to death." "That's very kind, thank you. I'll give you a call if this sort of thing happens again. That door you came in works as an exit, too." "A moment of your time, please. You understand we're in the middle of the biggest manhunt this state has ever seen. I don't see a whole lot of chance Franky is still drawing breath but you can imagine why we'd like to find him and put everybody's fears to rest." "Why aren't you out helping them?" "I had to make sure he wasn't here, didn't I?" "Well, you're free to have a look around. I just got home myself." "Thank you, I did. He's not here. But I'm still working on it. Only instead of wandering around the woods and abandoned trailers and empty storefronts of this shitty town, I've decided to work backwards, try to get inside Franky's broken head. Maybe shed some light on this nightmare. He was here last night, though, wasn't he?" "Yeah." "Right before he started shooting and biting people at the hospital. Just minutes before, in fact. About three in the morning, right?" "Yeah." "And was he acting strange at all?" I could feel my face getting hot, the heat radiating up from my jawbone. Maybe you should have said Franky was never here... "No, he wasn't ranting or anything. He didn't say much." "He was responding to a call from a neighbor saying you were making lots of noise and screaming..." "Yeah. I mean, it wasn't all that. There was a thing in my house, it woke me up. Bit me." "A 'thing?'" "Yeah. I think it was a squirrel or a raccoon or something." "Big difference between a squirrel and a raccoon." "It was dark." "Hey, could have been a stray cat. Or a beaver." "I don't know. Anyway. It got in the house somehow and bit me and I freaked out. Neighbor called, Franky came to make sure I was okay." "What happened to the animal?" "Oh. I don't know. Ran outside I guess. I, uh, chased it around." "Is that when you hurt your head there?" He waved a finger toward my forehead. I touched the Band-Aid there. "Oh, yeah. It bit me." "It got close enough to bite your face but you still couldn't see it well enough to know if it was a cat or a beaver?" "I'm sorry, are you investigating the beaver problem in this town or the killing spree at the hospital?" "When officer Burgess left here last night, he seemed normal?" "Yeah, yeah, like I said. Just told me to be careful. He was more worried about me than anything." "And you and your friend John didn't drive Franky to the hospital? Because four witnesses saw you. And your friend even talked to a member of the staff. He said Franky had some kind of seizure." "Oh, right, right. That's right." "But you said he seemed normal when he left." "I mean... he was normal when he walked out. It was out by his car, he started having problems. We loaded him in his car and drove him to the hospital." "Nothing led up to the seizure? No strange behavior? No tics or spasms or words not making sense?" "No, no. He seemed fine. You know, he didn't seem like he was on drugs or anything." "Drugs? Who mentioned drugs?" "Come on, detective. What are you doing?" "People rarely just 'go crazy' Mr. Wong. I mean, it seems like it to us because most of us are self-centered assholes who can't identify another human in pain. But afterward, you look back, we see all the warning signs. Especially if you were there ten seconds before the breakdown." "Okay." "But Franky seemed okay when he was here." "Yeah." "What was in his throat?" I was taken aback. I had been looking around the room, avoiding the detective's eyes. But when he said that, my attention snapped right to him. He noticed. "What do you mean?" "Your friend, John, he told the staff to check Frank's throat." "Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know, when he started having his seizure or whatever, he started grabbing at his throat. Like he was choking." "Had he been eating something?" "No." "Smoking a big cigar, maybe? Got surprised and swallowed it? Maybe he had a wad of chewing tobacco?" "I don't know, I don't know. We were just trying to help." "Why are you lying?" "I'm NOT." I almost screamed it. "Come on. You haven't offered a damned thing. If I'd played it like I didn't know Franky had been here, you'd have let me walk out without saying a word about it. Why?" "I'm just freaked out about this thing, like everybody." "No, you're concealing something. Have you heard of the Leonard Farmhand case?" "No. Wait... was that the guy that was kidnapping women and performing surgery on them in his basement? Up in Chicago?" "That's right. Well, I caught Farmhand. He had an IQ of 175 but I caught him. And do you know why? Because I got in the same room with Farmhand. That's all it took. See, I have an internal bullshit sensor that has yet to be beaten. And every time you open your mouth, Wong, it blinks red." "So you're saying I need a lawyer." "Only if you're guilty."  
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