Boundaries

by Wright, T. M.

~ * ~

  "I was protecting her," said Brian Fisher. It was a phrase he’d been practicing ever since his phone call to the police. He wanted to sound as true and as honest as he thought he was.

  "Could we come in, please?" said one of the two detectives at his door. That detective was a middle-aged, balding, overweight man named Fred Collins; his eyes were dark brown, very large, and they bore an almost ludicrous sensitivity, considering his job. He spoke in a tone that was businesslike and reassuring at the same time, but it was clear from his unyielding presence and bearing that he was used to being obeyed. It was just what Brian Fisher thought he needed at that moment—someone to take over, someone to accept and acknowledge his sin and punish him for it so he could get on with the plans he had for himself.

  The other detective said, "You called the station, Mr. Fisher?" That detective was shorter and thinner than Fred Collins, and his bearing was not as strong. He wore a dark blue suit, white shirt, and green tie, and he stood a foot behind Fred Collins. His name was Leo Kenner.

  Brian Fisher said, nodding, "I called the station." He moved to one side and gestured to indicate his apartment. "I made some coffee."

  Collins and Kenner stepped in. Collins said, "No. Thank you. We would like to ask you some questions." He glanced appraisingly about the small room as he spoke. It was neat and scrupulously clean; there was the tang of disinfectant in the air. There were, Collins judged, hundreds of books—most of them hardcover—in three large bookcases made of cinder blocks and lengths of whitish pressboard. Each of these bookcases was at the center of its own beige wall. A large Andrew Wyeth print in a simple frame was displayed on one wall, near a window. The print was of a fence and fields as seen from inside a farmhouse. Collins thought it was static and melancholy. A white, four-drawer kneehole desk stood to the other side of the window. Fisher’s twin bed—a bright, multicolored quilt lay on it—and a small, mahogany chest of drawers were at the opposite end of the room. Lighting—dim—was provided by a brass, gooseneck floor lamp near the left side of the desk. The chair which apparently was used at the desk was beneath the window. Collins thought that Fisher had been sitting, looking out at the park.

  The park, he saw, was alive now with children and their mothers. Collins could even hear them, faintly, through the closed window.

  Brian gestured at the chair and said, "One of you can sit there."

  "We’ll stand," Collins said.

  Brian nodded expressionlessly, went and sat in the chair, looked up, hands clasped over his knees, and said, "I wanted to protect her. She needed that." His small, pale hands worked nervously together. He added, "I loved her." His squeaky, high tenor voice quivered. "And she was suffering."

  Leo Kenner said, his tone brusque and efficient, "You’re talking about Anne Case?"

  Brian nodded vigorously. "Anne, yes."

  Collins and Kenner were standing a few feet in front of Brian. Kenner was to the right of and just behind Collins. He’d shoved his bony hands into his pants pockets and had cocked his head slightly. Collins had crossed his arms at his chest. Together, they formed an impenetrable wall.

  Seeing this pose, Brian said, "I’m not going to go anywhere."

  Collins said, "We’re only here to question you, Mr. Fisher."

  "I killed her," Brian whispered, as if he were anticipating great pain but knew he’d be able to bear up under it. "I killed Anne Case. I’m confessing to that and I want to be punished."

  Leo Kenner said, "Sir, how did you kill Anne Case?"

  Brian’s thin pale lips parted in surprise. He looked from Kenner to Collins then back to Kenner. "You know that, you know that!" he whined. "I don’t have to tell you how I killed her. She’s dead." His hands worked furiously together. Outside, in the little park, a mother called sharply to her child, "Get off of that, now!" Brian lowered his head and looked at his hands. He saw that they were clasping and unclasping; his long thin fingers made the skin on the backs of his hands bright red. He unclasped them, stood abruptly, and faced the window that looked out on the park. "I killed her with a knife," he said. "I stabbed her a great number of times. I don’t know how many times but it was a great number. More than fifty." He swallowed noisily, turned only his head, said to Collins, "That’s right?"

  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.

  THREE

  On 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 inc
redible 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."

  "Mr. Case—"

  "But he’s wrong, Detective. He’s very wrong."

  FOUR

  In the room, there were big, sturdy wooden chairs, and wide, overstuffed couches that nobody ever sat in; there was an empty bookcase, and a floor lamp minus a cord and switch. There were paintings on the wall, too—each a simple wedding of color and line, like an Easter parade seen through dust.

  The room opened onto half a dozen other rooms similarly furnished. There were no doors between the rooms, and no doors at all in the house, not even in the entranceway, or in th
e back, where the kitchen led out to a thousand acres of clover. There were openings for doors, but no doors.

  There were openings for windows, but no glass.

  The house was like many others. It was the way houses were built here, as if planned from a memory that was incomplete.

  People came and went from these houses, but no one claimed ownership of them and no one spent any time in them.

  That was the way things were here, too.

  The house was made of pine and green clapboard put together with common nails. It had two stories and an attic, a front porch, a back porch, and a cellar.

  The creatures that existed in the cellar might, upon a quick glance, have been mistaken for creatures that lived in many cellars. They burrowed into wood and dug holes in the ground. They made noises at night. And if the light was right, their eyes shone. They were creatures of the darkness, and they were as old as humankind. People had created them and people sustained them.

  On occasion, rain came to the area where the house had been built. It pelted the stone tile roof, cascaded over the edge to the ground, soaked in, and was gone. Evaporation did not exist here.

  Sometimes, people danced in the house and around it.

  The people had no names. In this place, no one did.

  ~ * ~

  David filled up his five-year-old Subaru at a Chevron station on Route 96, a couple of miles east of Batavia, and then picked up a hitchhiker who rode with him for a half hour. David often picked up hitchhikers. After college, in the late sixties, he had spent several months hitchhiking across the United States and Canada—"an odyssey of self discovery," he had called it—and he knew what it felt like to wait for hours for a car to stop. The hitchhiker tried to strike up a conversation, but David explained that he was not in the mood for talk, so the hitchhiker fell quiet until David dropped him off just outside Rochester, when he said, "Thanks, enjoy your trip."

  David was driving to Syracuse, New York, 120 miles east of Batavia. He owned a cabin on Oneida Lake. It had been in his family for half a century and it was just barely habitable. It had flooded regularly, had been repaired regularly, and David had recently made plans to have it bulldozed and a new building erected.