“Patience,” Wheeler said. “And so I was faced with the prospect of having to go to work in order to live.” He smiled broadly. “Oh, it is not work itself that appalls me. It is the expenditure of time that the operation involves; time stolen from me and my thoughts. And one has only one lifetime, you know.”
“Sure,” Harry said. “She was fourteen years old.”
Wheeler shrugged. “So finally I came up with the solution to my problem, the only solution. I would go to prison. There I would be fed and clothed, but above all, I would be given the freedom of time for speculative thought.”
Harry had been examining the rifle. “You think they won’t make you work in jail?”
Wheeler smiled. “I have taken the time to investigate thoroughly your enlightened prison system. I will simply refuse to work. I know that no force or intimidation will be used against me. I will be placed in solitary.”
“And you figure that a philosopher can do his thinking on bread and water?” I asked.
Wheeler lit his pipe. “As I said, I took the trouble to investigate. Solitary in this state means just that and nothing more. The meals served are identical to those given the other prisoners, and one is even allowed reading material.” He smiled contentedly. “I think that I shall be supremely happy.”
Harry put down the rifle. “You wanted to go to prison, so you shot somebody to get there? Just like that?”
He frowned. “No. Not just like that. I planned and researched before I acted, and then this morning I went down the path that winds to the lake and waited. I shot the first person to come by. It happened to be this Carol Wisniewski. But it could have been anyone.”
There was silence and his eyes went over us. “Do you think I am insane?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
He glared. “No, I am not insane. On the contrary, I have reached the ultimate in sanity, and that is to realize that nothing is really important except one’s own wishes, one’s own desires, one’s own life.”
“So the life of Carol Wisniewski meant absolutely nothing to you?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Wheeler said. “Nothing at all.” He laughed sharply. “I see that you have no use for me. Perhaps you are thinking that, if nothing else, it could be arranged that I ‘accidentally’ fall down a number of times before I reach the police station environment?”
Harry and I said nothing.
Wheeler pulled a folded piece of paper from a book on the table. “This is a copy of an affidavit from my doctor. It certifies that I am in the best of health and, specifically, that I do not suffer from any bruises, contusions, or broken bones. Would you care to examine it?”
Neither Harry nor I touched the paper.
His eyes went over the objects in the room. “There is really nothing material here that I will miss. In fact, I am rather looking forward to the new leisure required for pure thought. You might say that I am actually engaged in distilling human existence to the length of one book; perhaps even one essay; one sentence.”
“Or one scream?” I asked.
He seemed irritated. “We will not wait for the coffee. You may take me to your police station now.”
My cousin, Harry Wisniewski, pulled the knife out of his pocket.
And I smiled. “Who the hell said we were cops?”
It’s been said that no one is a hundred percent good or bad, that everyone is a combination of both. That must mean that “mean” is not necessarily bad, because Good Old Mom, otherwise known as Felicia Hooks, was just plain mean. One hundred percent mean. A mean woman. Phoebe suspected that by the time she was a few hours old her mother had already decided she didn’t like her very much. Why else would she name her Phoebe, for Pete’s sake?
Felicia didn’t like Phoebe, yet she clung to her like a burr in a spaniel’s ear. Phoebe was her only child, and her husband had disappeared long ago. Good Old Mom seemed to feel like she should get some return for having put up (so to speak) with her daughter all the years she was growing up. Phoebe felt like
“Mom’s not a fragile old woman,” Phoebe told her psychologist one bright afternoon in October as they sat in his cosy little office. “Never had a sick day in her life, and she’s even kind of a young looking sixty-six.
“She was with a traveling carnival for years before she got married and had me. Never remarried after my father hit the road, though — probably because she’s got the personality of a rattlesnake. That’s probably why it took her over thirty years to land a husband in the first place.”
The psychologist cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Comparing Mom to a rattlesnake may not be fair to the rattlesnake,” Phoebe continued. “She’s kept me single, too. What man in his right mind would want me when the package includes a mother-in-law like Felicia Hooks?”
