“What is that?”
“It is in the hands of a man who has already died once. Who no longer exists on this earth we share. Why don’t you consider the implications of that existential event for a moment or two.”
Dr. Lewis paused, eyeing the gun. After a moment, he smiled.
“Ricky, what you say is interesting. But I know you. I know the inner you. You were on my couch four times a week for nearly four years. Every fear. Every doubt. Every hope. Every dream. Every aspiration. Every anxiety. I know you as well as you know yourself, and probably much better, and I know you are not a killer despite all your posturing. You are merely a deeply troubled man who made some extremely poor choices in his life. I doubt homicide will prove to be another.”
Ricky shook his head. “The man you knew as Doctor Frederick Starks was on your couch. But he’s dead and gone and you don’t know me. Not the new me. Not in the slightest.”
Then he fired the pistol.
The single shot echoed in the small room, deafening him for a moment. The bullet tore through the air above Dr. Lewis’s head, slapping into a bookcase directly behind him. Ricky saw a thick medical tome, spine out, suddenly shred, as it absorbed the shot. It was a work on abnormal psychology, a detail that almost brought Ricky to laughter.
Dr. Lewis paled, staggered, rocked momentarily side to side, then gasped out loud.
He steadied himself carefully. “My God,” he blurted. Ricky could see something in the man’s eyes that wasn’t precisely fear, but more a sense of astonishment, as if something utterly unexpected had taken place. “I did not think-” he started.
Ricky cut him off with a small wave of the pistol. “A dog taught me how to do that.”
Dr. Lewis rotated slightly in his seat and inspected the location where the bullet had landed. He burst out a half laugh, half gasp, then shook his head. “Quite a shot, Ricky,” he said slowly. “A remarkable shot. Closer to the truth than my head. You might want to keep what I said in mind over the next few moments.”
Ricky eyed the old physician. “Stop being so obtuse,” he said briskly. “We were going to talk about answers. Remarkable how a weapon like this helps focus one on the issues at hand. Think of all those hours with all those patients, myself included, doctor. All those lies and distractions and tangents and thick systems of delusions and detours. All that painstaking time spent in sorting out truths. Who would have thought that things could be uncomplicated so quickly by a device such as this. A little bit like Alexander and the Gordian knot, don’t you think, doctor?”
Dr. Lewis seemed to have regained his composure. Rapidly his countenance changed, and he was now staring at Ricky with a narrow, angry gaze, as if he could still impose some control over the situation. Ricky ignored all the look implied, then, much as he had nearly a year earlier, he arranged an armchair in front of the old doctor.
“If not you,” Ricky asked coldly, “then who is Rumplestiltskin?”
“You know, do you not?”
“Enlighten me.”
“The eldest child of your onetime patient. The woman you failed to help.”
“That I discovered on my own. Keep going.”
Dr. Lewis shrugged. “My adopted child.”
“This I learned earlier tonight. And the two others?”
“His younger brother and sister. You know them as Merlin and Virgil. Of course they have other names.”
“Adopted, as well?”
“Yes. We took all three in. First as foster children, through the state of New York. Then I arranged for my cousins in New Jersey to front for us in an adoption. It was really pathetically simple outwitting the bureaucracy, which, I am sure you have already learned, did not really care all that much anyway what happened to the three children.”
“So, they carry your name? You discarded Tyson and gave them your own?”
“No.” The old man shook his head. “Not so fortunate, Ricky. They are not in any phone book listing under Lewis. They were reinvented completely. Different names for each. Different identities. Different designs. Different schools. Different education and different treatment. But brothers and sister at heart, where it is important. That you know.”
“Why? Why the elaborate scheme to cover up their past? Why didn’t you…”
“My wife was already ill, and we were beyond the age guidelines for the state. My cousins were convenient. And for a fee, willing to help. Help and forget.”
“Sure,” Ricky replied sarcastically. “And their little accident? A domestic dispute?”
Dr. Lewis shook his head. “A coincidence,” he said.
Ricky wasn’t sure he believed that. He couldn’t resist one small dig: “Freud said there are no accidents.”
Dr. Lewis nodded. “True. But there is a difference between wishing and acting.”
“Really? I think you’re wrong there. But never mind. Why them? Why those three children?”
The old psychoanalyst shrugged again. “Conceit. Arrogance. Egotism.”
“Those are just words, doctor.”
“Yes, but they explain much. Tell me Ricky: A killer… a truly remorseless, murderous psychopath… is this someone created by their environment? Or are they born to it, some infinitesimal little screwup in the gene pool? Which is it, Ricky?”
“Environment. That’s what we’re taught. Any analyst would say the same. The genetic guys might disagree, though. But we are a product of where we come from, psychologically.”
“And I would agree. So, I took in a child-and his two siblings-who was a laboratory rat for evil. Abandoned by birth father. Rejected by his other relatives. Never given any semblance of stability. Exposed to all sorts of sexual perversities. Beaten endlessly by any series of his mother’s sociopathic boyfriends, who eventually saw his own mother kill herself in poverty and despair, helpless to save the only person he trusted in the world. A formula for evil, would you not agree?”
“Yes.”
“And I thought I could take that child and reverse all that weight of wrong. I helped set up the system where he would be cut off from his terrifying past. Then I thought I could turn him into a productive member of society. That was my arrogance, Ricky.”
“And you couldn’t?”
“No. But I did engender loyalty, curiously enough. And perhaps an odd sort of affection. It is a terrible and yet truly fascinating thing, Ricky, to be loved and respected by a man devoted to death. And that is what you have in Rumplestiltskin. He is a professional. A consummate killer. One equipped with as fine an education as I could provide. Exeter. Harvard. Columbia Law. Also a short stint in the military for a little extra training. You know what the curious aspect of all this is, Ricky?”
“Tell me.”
“His job is not that different from ours. People come to him with problems. They pay him well for solutions. The patient who arrives on our couch is desperate to rid himself of some burden. So are his clients. His means is just, well, more immediate than ours. But hardly less intimate.”
Ricky found himself breathing hard. Dr. Lewis shook his head.
“And, you know what else, Ricky, other than being extremely wealthy, do you know what other quality he has?”
“What?”
“He is relentless.”
The old psychoanalyst sighed and added, “But perhaps you have seen that already? How he waited years, preparing himself, and then singled out and pursued everyone who ever did his mother harm, and destroyed them, just as surely as they destroyed her. I suppose, in an odd way, you should find it touching. A son’s love. A mother’s legacy. Was he wrong to do that, Ricky? To punish all those people who systematically or ignorantly ruined her life? Who left her adrift with three small needy children in the harshest of worlds? I do not exactly think so, Ricky. Not at all. Why even the most irritating politicians opine endlessly how we live in a society that shirks responsibility. Is not revenge merely accepting one’s debts and cloaking them in a different solution? The people he has singled out truly deserved punishment. They-like you-ignored someone who pleaded for help. That is what is wrong with our profession, Ricky. Sometimes we want to explain so much, when the real answer lies in one of those…” The doctor gestured at the weapon in Ricky’s hand.