"I can see it," Francis answered quietly.

Peter looked slightly perplexed, and more than a little doubtful. "Okay," he said. "What do you see?"

"How it happened. More or less."

"Keep going, C-Bird," Peter said, lowering his voice a little.

"The bedsheet. The one that was fastened into the noose…"

"Yes?"

"Cleo's bed was intact. Sheets still on it."

Peter said nothing.

"The thumb…"

The Fireman nodded encouragingly.

"The thumb wasn't dropped directly downward. It was like it had been moved a couple of feet. And if Cleo had sliced it off herself, well, there should have been something scissors or a knife or something right there. But there wasn't. And if it had been cut somewhere else, well, then there would have been blood. Maybe a trail of blood, leading out into the stairwell. But there wasn't. Just the single pool beneath her body."

Francis took another deep breath, and then whispered again: "I can see it."

Peter was a little openmouthed, about to ask the obvious question, when Little Black hovered up to where they were sitting. He pointed an index finger at Peter, jabbing the air, interrupting the conversation abruptly. "You're up," he said. "The big doc says for you to come over right now."

Peter seemed to waver between questioning Francis more closely and the impatience that Little Black seemed to have just at the edge of his voice. So, what he did say was, "C-Bird, just keep your opinions to yourself until I get back, okay?"

Francis started to respond, but Peter leaned forward and added, "Don't let anyone around here think you're any crazier than you already are. Just wait for me, okay?"

The point Peter was making made some sense, and Francis nodded. Peter deposited his tray over by the cleaning station and dutifully followed the attendant out the door. For a moment or two, Francis remained at his seat, alone in the midst of the dining area. There was a constancy of noise the clatter of plates and utensils, some laughter, some shouts, and one person singing off-key an unrecognizable tune that just didn't quite match up with the distant sound of a radio playing from back in the cooking area. The usual morning, he thought. But when he rose, unable to mouth another forkful of French toast, he saw that Mister Evil was standing in the corner eyeing him carefully. And, as he crossed the room, he had the sensation that there were other eyes watching him as well. For a moment, he wanted to turn, to see if he could spot the people tracking his path, but then he decided not to. He wasn't at all sure that he wanted to know who might or might not be taking notice of his movement around the dining hall. He wondered for a moment, as well, whether Cleo's death had prevented something from happening. He picked up his pace and started moving more swiftly, because it occurred to him that it might have been his own murder that had been planned for that night past, and interrupted only by another opportunity presenting itself.

When Peter, accompanied by Little Black, entered Doctor Gulptilil's waiting room, he could hear the high-pitched noise of the psychiatrist's voice, raised in frustration and barely restrained anger coming from the inner office. The attendant had only handcuffed him, having left the leg shackles off on this trip across the hospital grounds, so that Peter was, at least in his own mind, only a partial prisoner. Miss Luscious was behind her desk, but she only glanced in Peter's direction as he came through the door, gesturing with a nod of her head toward the waiting bench. Peter strained to hear precisely what Gulp-a-pill was so upset about because he thought that a compliant medical director was one far more likely to help him than a furious one. After a second, he realized that the object of the doctor's wrath was Lucy, and this startled him.

His first instinct was to rise, and burst into the doctor's office.

He reined this urge in, taking a deep breath.

Then he heard, penetrating right through the thick wall and wood of the door, "Miss Jones, I am holding you personally responsible for all the disruption here at the hospital. Who knows what other patients might be in jeopardy due to your actions!"

The hell with it, Peter said to himself, and he rose abruptly, and crossed the room before either Little Black or Miss Luscious were able to react.

"Hey!" the buxom secretary said, "You can't…"

"Sure I can," said Peter, reaching for the door handle with both his handcuffed hands.

"Mister Moses!" Miss Luscious cried.

But the wiry black attendant moved languidly, almost nonchalantly, as if Peter bursting into Doctor Gulptilil's office was just about the most routine thing in the world.

Gulp-a-pill looked up red-faced and startled. Lucy was sitting in the inquisition's seat in front of his desk, a little pale, but icy, as well, as if she had adorned herself with some hardened casing and his words, no matter how enraged were simply rebounding off of her skin. She remained expressionless, as Peter tumbled through the doorway, trailed by Little Black.

The medical director took a deep breath, regaining some composure, stared coldly across the room and said, "Peter, I will be with you in a moment. Please wait outside. Mister Moses, if you will "

But Peter interrupted. "It's as much my fault as anyone's," he said.

Doctor Gulptilil was in mid wave dismissing him, but he stopped, leaving his hand in the air. "Fault?" he said. "And how so, Peter?"

"I've concurred with every step she's taken so far. And clearly, to smoke out this killer here, some extraordinary steps must be involved. I've urged that from the start, so I'm as much to blame for any disruption."

Doctor Gulptilil hesitated, then said, "You ascribe much power to your choices, Peter."

This oblique statement left Peter a little befuddled. He inhaled sharply and said, "It is a simple fact of any criminal investigation that at some point dramatic steps must be taken to force the target to act in a way that will isolate him, and make him vulnerable." This sounded, to Peter's ears, smug and sophomoric, and, he understood, wasn't actually all that true, but, he guessed, at least it was something to say right in that moment and he said it with enough conviction to make it at least seem to be true.

Gulptilil rocked back in his seat, taking a breath, pausing. Both Lucy and Peter looked over at him, and both thought more or less the same thing: What made the doctor a curiously dangerous person was his capacity to step back from outrage, insult, anger, or whatever passion was knocking so eagerly to emerge, and settle instead, into a quiet, observant mode. It unsettled Lucy, for she was more comfortable seeing people act out their rages, even if she was unwilling to do the same. Peter thought this a formidable capacity. It seemed to him that every conversation anyone had with the psychiatrist was really a little more like playing a hand of high stakes poker, where Gulptilil held most of the chips, and anyone sitting across from the doctor was betting money they didn't have. It seemed to both of them as if the doctor was calculating in his head. Little Black reached out and seized Peter by the arm, to pull him back into the waiting room, but now, abruptly, the doctor seemed to change his mind. "Ah, Mister Moses," he said, his voice returning to normal, the anger that had penetrated the walls dissolving rapidly. "Perhaps that won't be necessary, after all. Actually, come in, Peter."

He motioned to another chair.

"Vulnerable, you say?"

"Yes," Peter replied. What else, he thought, could he say?

"More vulnerable, say, than Miss Jones has rendered herself with this childishly transparent attempt to mimic the physical characteristics of the victims that she is interested in?"

"It is difficult to say," Peter responded.