The Gingerbreadman looked embarrassed and stared at his feet.
“Alan is too kind,” he said at last in a low voice, “but what he neglects to tell you is that even though this is a hospital and not a prison, it is a confusion in words only. I will never be released despite the good doctor’s work, because punishment and incarceration are but aspects of the penal system. We live in a society that values revenge, revenge for the victims and their families. It is for their sake that I must remain here.”
He lowered his cherry eyes and sighed, giving off another whiff of ginger. They all sensed that the interview was at an end, said their good-byes and filed away. Dr. Vômer was the first to say anything, when they were safely out of earshot.
“I think I speak for all of us when I say how remarkable your rehabilitation of the Gingerbreadman has been,” he began. “Perhaps you would like to give the keynote speech at LoopyCon next year?”
The other delegates nodded their agreement, and Mandible tried to look abashed and surprised by this sudden honor. He allowed himself a brief twinge of pride. Next year LoopyCon would echo with the praises of the Mandible technique for treatment of violent serial offenders. It would be a short leap, he thought, from there to having his name indelibly linked to the other great names of psychology: Freud, Jung, Skinner, Chumley—Mandible! He shivered as he thought of it.
The Gingerbreadman had returned to his roses after the small party left. He looked about him to make sure no one was watching, then cupped his hands around a small flower just coming to life. After thirty seconds or so, he took his hands away and smiled to himself. The small rose had undergone a transformation within his hands. Where before it had been alive and beautiful, now it was withered and brown. Dead, dried and decayed, rotten as the evil soul of the Gingerbreadman.
4. The Robert Southey
First (and only) bear relocation: Mr. and Mrs. Edward Bruin, 1977. With the passing of the 1962 Animal (anthropomorphic) Equality Bill, all talking animals won the right not to be exploited or hunted and instead live in the designated safe haven of Berkshire, England. Bears were fully expected to take up residence in small cottages in the middle of woods and eat porridge in a state of blissful quasi-human solitude, but they didn’t. Most bears instead preferred to remain urbane city dwellers and shunned the notion of foraging in the countryside. Ursine elders deplore the situation but secretly admit that Reading’s proliferating coffee shops, theaters and shopping opportunities are not without their attractions.
Jack was being driven through Reading by Mary and was studying that morning’s copy of The Mole with a frown etched deeply on his brow. Despite the success of the Scissor-man capture six weeks earlier, and the Humpty triumph four months before that, a few well-publicized failings had set them back to the pre-Scissor/Humpty days of thankless obscurity but, annoyingly, without the obscurity.
“How’s it looking?” asked Mary.
“Not exactly favorable,” replied Jack, showing her a newspaper that sported the banner headline DOUBLE DEVOURING SHOCKS READING.
“I thought that was one of the better ones,” commented Mary, holding up a copy of the Reading Daily Trumpet which had NCD OVERSIGHT: WOLF EATS TWO emblazoned in large type across the front page. The Reading Daily Eyestrain had been no better, with RED-CLOAKED TOT IN SWALLOWING DRAMA. But The Toad had been the most scathing, under a headline that read JACK SPRATT: INCOMPETENT BONEHEAD? and went on to list several well-argued reasons as to why he was.
“The Toad?” asked Mary. “Must be our old friend Josh Hatchett.”
“Who else?”
Josh Hatchett was one of the Nursery Crime Division’s more outspoken critics. He called himself “the loyal opposition” whenever they met, but to Jack and Mary he was more simply “that troublemaker.” It was he alone who had raised several questions over the ethical use of children as bait during the Scissor-man capture. The fallout from that hadn’t been comfortable, and Jack had received an official reprimand.
Jack shook his head sadly as he read. The Riding-Hood investigation had admittedly gone a little off the rails, and okay, a few people had been eaten. The critical spotlight of the press had been swung brightly in Jack’s direction, and the hard-won prestige of the Humpty affair and everything else negated in less time than it takes to say “What big eyes you have.” Jack sighed. The press had lauded him to the skies and now looked set to condemn him with equal enthusiasm. Mary shifted down a gear as Jack threw the newspaper onto the backseat.
“Our friend Hatchett isn’t being very helpful, is he?” commented Mary.
“That’s putting it mildly. What does he expect? The NCD isn’t governed by the same rules as conventional police work—if it were, there’d be no need for us.”
“It’s all about readership and power, Jack,” observed Mary.
“They want the readers to know that they can break heroes just as easily as they can make them.”
“It’s not as though it’s even current news,” grumbled Jack.
“How long’s it been since the wolf gig? A month?”
“A week.”
“Right—a quarter of a month, then.” He thought for a moment.
“Speaking of which—heard anything about Red Riding-Hood and her grandmother?”
“Still catatonic. Fixed features, glazed eyes, no visible signs of mental activity. Post-traumatic stress, the doctors say—not surprising, being swallowed whole like that.”
“It wasn’t a pretty sight,” agreed Jack, shuddering at the thought.
“What about you?” asked Mary. “What did the quacks say when you saw them?”
“A completely clean bill of health.”
“You didn’t go, did you?”
“No. Listen, I’m fine.”
“I thought Superintendent Briggs said—”
“Never mind what Briggs said. I’m NCD. I can handle this kind of surreal weirdness. Okay, so we screwed up a bit and a few people got swallowed. I mean, it’s not as though they’re dead, right?”
“‘We screwed up a bit’?”
“Okay, I screwed up a bit. I just got sidetracked by the suppressed sexual overtones regarding predatory wolves and a little girl in a red cape lost in the forest. So I missed a few opportunities.”
Mary was silent. She had some opinions on the subject but decided to keep herself to herself. If she’d been there, she knew, things might have been different.
Instead she said, “I still think you ought to go and see the counselors. Delayed shock can be dangerous. My cousin Raymond was in line at a bank when armed robbers ran in. Very stressful. He thought he was fine, but less then two hours later he was stone-cold dead.”
“Of shock?”
“No. He got hit by a truck crossing the road.”
Jack thought for a moment. “I’ll see the quacks next week. Did I tell you our request for extra funding has been refused?”
“It figures. What about increased manpower?”
“The same. It’s you, me and Ash unless we get a big show on.”
“Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
Jack said nothing, but Mary was right. Despite the trammeling they had received in the past few weeks, the division’s record through the years had been sound. The closing down of Rumpelstiltskin’s straw-into-gold dens, the Cock Robin murder inquiry, arresting notorious serial wife killer Bluebeard, the detaining of the “emperor’s clothes” confidence tricksters, the capture of the Gingerbreadman and the Scissor-man, the Humpty murder inquiry—it had all been good, solid, unconventional police work. Good and solid—until the Riding-Hood debacle. There had been other repercussions from the case that he hadn’t told Mary about. The Most Worshipful Guild of Detectives had withdrawn its offer for him to join on the grounds of “suitability issues.” It was good and bad news. He didn’t want to join their stupid guild, but he liked their asking.