Boundaries (3 page)

Collins couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement so he asked, "Do you believe that it is?"

"Yes," Brian said, and turned his head again.

The voice of the woman in the park called, "I told you to get off that!" It was followed by an obscenity.

Brian said, nodding, "It’s summer."

"It’s only spring," said Leo Kenner.

"What difference is the month?" Brian asked. Detective Collins asked, "You said you stabbed Anne Case fifty times, Mr. Fisher?"

Brian said, "I want to be punished. I killed Anne and I want to be punished. I want to die and be with her and tell her . . . " He looked pathetically at the two detectives. He shook his head in confusion. "I want the death penalty for this."

Collins glanced questioningly at Kenner.

Kenner said, "At present, Mr. Fisher, there is no death penalty in New York State."

Fisher looked as if he had been struck a physical blow.

Collins said to him, "I’d like you to come down to the station with us, sir."

"I’m being arrested?"

"We’d like to question you further."

Without turning his head, Brian said, "No. That’s not good enough. I want you to arrest me." He spoke in a low, tight monotone. "I want you to arrest me and punish me. It’s what I deserve. I killed Anne Case. I stabbed her fifty times, a great number of times. Her blood spilled all over me. I loved her." He turned his head, then. "I was trying to protect her. You have to kill me." He turned back, looked out the window again. Another obscenity drifted up from the park. Brian went on, "It’s summer. She liked summer."

"Could you get your jacket, sir," Collins suggested.

"It’s too warm for a jacket."

"It’s spring," said Leo Kenner.

Collins said, “Brian Fisher, I am arresting you for the murder of Anne Case. It is my duty to inform you—"

Brian threw himself through the closed window. He landed facedown at the edge of the park, three stories below.

O
n the way to St. Jerome’s Hospital in Batavia, Brian Fisher said these words to no one in particular: "Somewhere to be." Then he smiled as if at something very pleasant, and added, "With Anne." He said nothing else, nor did he smile again in this life.

He lived for twenty-nine minutes after he hit the ground, long enough for those tending to him to put him on an operating table at St. Jerome’s, start an IV of lactate of Ringer’s solution, and hook up a heart monitor and EEG. Soon after that, the heart monitor and the EEG
flatlined
, and the surgeon in charge declared that Brian Fisher was dead.

~ * ~

"It begins," said David Case, "at one end of what appears to be a very long tunnel. The tunnel widens; there’s a light at the end of it. The tunnel widens, or it
appears
to—and that could simply be an illusion; you’re going up into the tunnel and so it appears to widen as your perspective changes." He pushed himself away from the desk, stood, went around to the front of the desk and sat on it with his hands palm-down on its front edges and his feet on the floor. Karen Duffy decided that he was trying hard to look casual, but he didn’t look at all casual, she thought. He looked like a man on the verge of a scream and she wanted to interrupt him, wanted to have him get them all something to drink, or tell him she had to use the bathroom, anything to get him to stop the flow of words that were so clearly causing him such agony. But she said nothing because she was fascinated by what he was saying.

He went on, his eyes on hers, "And that’s important. Perspective is important. Because it appears"—he gave her a wistful smile—"to stay the same. There is up and down and sideways. There’s warmth, cold. The need to blink. Hunger. There’s even the occasional itch to scratch. It’s really an incredible approximation of this life. And I think"—he tapped the side of his head—"that it all comes from in here. I think it’s a way of comforting ourselves that we have not really left the earth behind. Sort of like the phantom arm. You’ve heard of that?"

"Yes," Karen said.

David nodded. "An arm gets amputated and for a couple of weeks it still hurts—even though it’s not there, it still hurts. It’s the same sort of thing when you’re going through that tunnel, leaving the earth behind. Who wants to do that? Who wants to leave the earth behind? No one. I certainly didn’t. So we devise this clever lie that says we’re still whole, that we, indeed, still have the need to blink and the need to eat, and that we still can feel warmth and cold." His grip on the edge of the desk tightened. He shook his head. "It’s sort of the ultimate rationalization. Our poor disembodied . . . "—he paused—"souls want so badly to stay
earthbound
. Christ, that’s where our security and comfort lies."

Christian Grieg said, "You could be very wrong, David."

David shrugged. "I could be. Sure. But I don’t think I am, Christian. I was
there
, remember."

"You make it sound like . . . like it’s just a trip to Cleveland, David. And even if that’s all it was—think about it—even if that’s all it was, if it was just a damned bus trip to Cleveland; you get on the bus in . . . wherever, and you ride through the night, you arrive at the bus station the next morning, and you look out the windows of the bus. What do you see? Cleveland? No, you see the bus station."

"Don’t minimize my experience, Christian." David’s voice trembled on the verge of anger, surprising Karen.

But Christian was not going to be deterred. "You see the damned
bus station
, David. You see a parking area and a bunch of smelly buses and you see people coming and going. Then the bus that
you’re still on
goes back to wherever it came from and you proclaim to the world that you have seen Cleveland and are now an expert on it."

"I went over to the other side!" David’s words were clipped, harsh, angry. "I saw what was there. I experienced it. And I came back!" He closed his eyes, clearly surprised at his outburst. He sighed.

Christian said, "And you want to go there again, don’t you?"

David shook his head slowly. "I know that Anne is there. And I know that I love her and I miss her—" He stopped, lifted his head. His jaw quivered. He was about to weep. "But I don’t know anything," he stammered, and shook his head again. "All I really know . . . dammit, all I really know is that she’s at the morgue, she’s on a slab . . . she’s in the
cooler
at the morgue and I don’t know anything other than that." He closed his eyes. He whimpered, "My God, I wish I knew more. I wish to heaven that I knew more and that I could find her."

~ * ~

Detective Kenner said to Fred Collins, "I think he did it. I think he was telling us the truth."

Collins was skeptical. "So he came close on the number of stab wounds. He guessed." Collins had been typing his report on Brian Fisher’s suicide. He stopped and looked questioningly at Kenner. "Leo, this ribbon’s no good. You want to change it for me?"

Kenner sighed, got up, went around his desk and lifted the cover on Collins’ ancient Remington Rand. "You’ve got the mechanical sense of a banana, Fred."

Collins shrugged. "I know."

"Uh-huh. Well, why don’t you watch me do it this time, so next time you can do it yourself."

"Sure," Collins said, but his mind was elsewhere. "Like I said, Fisher guessed. He
guessed
. I mean, he could read, like everyone else." Collins was referring to the fact that the
Batavia Daily Sun
had used the phrase "multiple stab wounds" to describe the cause of Anne Case’s death. "So he guessed. And he wasn’t right on the mark, was he? I mean, he said he stabbed her fifty times and she was really stabbed sixty-three times, right?"

Kenner shook his head. "That doesn’t mean anything, Fred. You don’t really believe that a killer is going to stop and
count
the number of times he stabs someone, do you? Of course he isn’t. He’s acting under a compulsion. He’s in a frenzy. I remember a case from a couple of years ago—some kid high on PCP stabbed his little brother thirty times, but when we asked the kid about it, he said, ‘Yeah, I stabbed him three times.’ And the kid
believed
it, Fred. Hell, if you stab someone
once
, that’s memorable; you stab him again, it’s a little less memorable. And if you go on from there, over and over again, it becomes a blur, like trying to count the number of thrusts you make during an orgasm. It’s the same thing. It’s compulsion. It’s frenzy. Hell, you’re out of your head, you don’t know what you’re doing." He took the ribbon from Fred’s typewriter. He shrugged. "Maybe you know what you’re doing, Fred. Sure you do. But there’s no way you can stop yourself from doing it."

Collins said, "That’s still a long way from proving that Fisher was guilty."

Kenner opened the top right-hand drawer of Collins’ desk, got a new ribbon from it, and tossed the old one into the metal wastebasket near his desk. "His confession means something, Fred. It really does." He stooped over and began putting the new ribbon in Collins’ typewriter. "Now watch me here, okay? I don’t want to have to do this for you again."

~ * ~

Two hours later, David got a phone call from Detective Collins. Christian Grieg and Karen Duffy had left an hour earlier and David was preparing a light supper.

Detective Collins said, "Mr. Case, I have something to tell you."

"Yes?"

"Today a man named Brian Fisher committed suicide."

"My God," David breathed.

"Did you know him?"

"Yes."

"Was he your sister’s lover?"

"I can’t . . . Yes." He paused. "He was her lover."

"Mr. Case, Brian Fisher confessed to me that he murdered your sister."

David said nothing.

Detective Collins coaxed, "Did you hear what I said to you, Mr. Case?"

Still, David said nothing.

"Are you all right, sir?"

David whispered, "He murdered her?" His voice was low and harsh.

"I’m sorry," said Detective Collins. "I didn’t understand what you said."

David said, "Brian Fisher told you that he murdered Anne?" His tone was tight with anger.

"Sir, I would like to speak with you in person about this. Could you come here, to the station? Do you know where it is?"

"Dammit," David shouted, "answer my question. Did you say that Brian Fisher
murdered
my sister?"

"What I said, Mr. Case, was that he confessed to your sister’s murder. You should know, however, that a confession in and of itself—"

"Where is he now?"

"As I told you, he took his own life. This afternoon. At his house near Austin Park."

"I know that he committed suicide, Detective. That’s not what I asked. I asked where he is."

Detective Collins said after a moment, "Perhaps I’d better come over there, Mr. Case."

"Please answer my question," David insisted.

"Sir, Mr. Fisher’s body is at the county medical examiner’s office—"

"And
that
isn’t what I asked, either. I want to know where
he
is. Not where his body is. It’s very simple. Where is Brian Fisher?"

"Sir, could you please stay there. I’m going to come over."

David said, "Because I’ll tell you where he is, Detective. He’s free. He’s escaped responsibility for his crime. He thinks he’s gotten off to where no one can touch him."