Faustus Encircled

December 16, 1953

"Why'd you do it?" he asked again, leaning over me, over the steel table and its garnish of pictures. His face was flushed, his composure shattered. I had broken him. Now to play.

"Why not?" I replied with a shrug, leaned back in my chair, and took in the view: these rooms were made to intimidate-cold stone walls, no windows, save the plexiglass window on the door. Dim yellow light pulsed from a flickering bare light bulb overhead.

"You confessed to strangling thirteen people."

"Twelve, actually." I smiled, paused, savored his confused look for a moment. "Jessica Patterson killed herself, and she did it with a knife," I offered finally, lifting my shackled hands in a sort of shrug.

"At your insistence."

I shrugged and laughed. "I may have offered some select...advice. She wanted to die. They all did."

"Where did you bury them?"

"Who?"

"The women you killed. Do I really need to go over the names again, Doctor?"

I smiled. "Please do."

My interrogator pulled a chair from the table, its heavy metal legs scraping freakishly on the concrete. He sat down forcefully and began jabbing his finger at the pictures spread out on the table. "Freida Ludlow." Jab. "Patricia Macon." Jab. "Sally Xiang." Jab. His voice rose; he recited: "Leah Preznan!" Jab. "Anna Chandler, Mandy Carson, Christina Eddings!" Jab, jab, jab. "Donna and Diana Quinn-they were kids, for fuck's sake!" he screamed, dashing the pictures in my face with a sweep of his hand. He sank back into his seat, arms crossed, staring at me, fire in his eyes; he would strangle me if he could. I smiled to myself. The law protected the guilty.

"You forgot Michelle Jenkins, Celeste Burroughs, and-what was her name...ah, yes! Carrie Mills," I replied slowly, watching him squirm in his building rage. He danced on my strings, a wood-limbed marionette. "And sweet Jessica, of course."

He shook his head at me, breathed out a slow sigh. "Why?"

My smile infuriated him. He wanted to hit me or maybe shoot me. Vigilante justice appealed to him, because he knew the judicial system would allow me to slip away. I watched his eyes, watched the growling embers of his anger burn holes through him. He was drumming his fingernails on the tabletop-rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat. Vengeful desire gave way to job security: he breathed slower, gathered his composure, leaned forward, drawing a picture of one of the girls to him.

"Let's start again, Doctor. When did you first meet Ms. Xiang?"

"January 3^rd, 1953. 2:16 p.m. She was sixteen minutes late."

"She was the first one you killed?"

"Yes."

"Where did you meet?"

"At my office. She had an appointment. As I said, she was late."

"What did you discuss?"

"I'm not obligated to tell you that, Detective Foster." I smiled as he delivered the expected snarl. "Patient-doctor confidentiality and all that."

"Your license has been revoked, Doctor."

I shrugged, and leaned forward, the jingling of my chains bouncing off the walls. "So? I am a physician, honor-bound to protect my patient's interests. Your legislations are irrelevant."

"Tell me what you discussed with her, you pompous son of the bitch!" he shouted, knocking back his seat and leaping to his feet again. His spittle splattered on my face. I laughed.

"Have you ever read Marlowe, Detective?"

"What?"

"Christopher Marlowe. He was a contemporary of Shakespeare."

"I don't see what this has to do with why you murdered those women."

"If you'll hear me out, I'll explain," I replied, leaning back in my seat. "Are you familiar with Dr. Faustus?"

"Sold his soul to the devil for power."

"Intelligence, actually. Faustus was a genius, but even he lacked the ability to cure the entire world of disease. Faustus sought greater knowledge, so that he might aid the world."

"'For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' Matthew 16:26," the investigator said softly, his anger fading again.

"You're a man of religion?" I asked, lifting my eyebrows.

"I'm going to ask you again: why did you kill them?"

I smiled. "Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris."

"What is that, Greek?"

"Latin."

"What's it mean?"

"I thought you had read Faustus?"

"In high school. Answer the question."

I chuckled to myself, leaned back in my seat, and smiled at him. Agitation crept back into his posture and he began to drum on the table again: rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat. The chair screeched against the floor again, and he walked to a smaller desk against the wall, picked up a newspaper, returned, and tossed it in front of me.

"They're calling you Doctor Death, you know."

"How alliterative." I smirked. "I love the media." My face stared back at me, a cheerful visage in newsprint grey, little numbers emblazoned across the bottom edge of the photo. DOCTOR DEATH BEHIND BARS stretched across the page. "Helen used to read the paper to me."

"Helen?"

"My wife, Detective, dead three years past. Cancer," I replied eyes still on the paper.

"Is that why you killed all those women? Because your wife died?"

"'Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. Her lips suck forth my soul, see where it flies? Come, Helen, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, and all is dross that is not Helena,'" I recited, smiling to myself. "Faustus. Act Five." I shook my head and lifted my gaze to him. "My wife lived a good life, Detective. We enjoyed our time together. I killed those girls for a reason far more intricate than mere grief. Can you find it?"

He regarded my words in silence, and I grinned again. He paced around the room once, sat down, drummed his fingers-rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-stood up again. Finally, he spoke.

"The Quinn sisters. Why them?"

I glanced up at him. "Why not?"

"They were younger than your other victims. All the others were thirty."

"So observant," I replied, laughing as his face twisted into that familiar snarl. "Do you like circles, Detective Foster?"

"What kind of question is that?" he snapped.

"One worth contemplating, if you were the kind of man to do such a thing. Aren't detectives supposed to be good at solving riddles?"

"You're playing with me."

I laughed again. "So observant."

Foster made a sound in his throat like a growl, and he rubbed his stubble-covered chin, watching me like a wary cat. "You killed Sally Xiang in January. Freida Ludlow in February. Michelle Jenkins in March, and one more each month from there, until the Quinn sisters in October."

"Jessica killed herself in May," I offered, baiting him. My marionette danced for it.

"What's important about May?"

"What's important about motive?"

"Stop dancing around the questions, Doctor."

"Or you'll do what? Kill me?" I replied. The corner of his eye twitched. I basked in his slow contemplation of the suggestion. His eyes glazed a bit. "Are you related to Edison Foster, the architect?" I asked.

My interrogator blinked, stared at me a moment, his mouth moving soundlessly before he willed words to it. "That's irrelevant."

"It is a comfort to the unfortunate to have had companions in woe."

"What?"

"You wanted me to answer your question," I offered, smiling. Frustration painted his face in flushed-red cheeks.

"I hope you burn in Hell," he muttered.

"Which circle?"

"Again with the circles!"

I laughed and glanced down at the pictures of some of my girls.

"Where are they buried?"

"I've already told you everything you need to figure that out, Detective."

"I'm sick of your games, your allusions, your circles, your riddles, your fucking smiles!" he shouted, slamming his fist into the tabletop.

"And yet, you lack the capacity to understand the simplest truths. Thus continues our endless waltz."

He fell silent, staring at me, eyes unblinking.

"The waltz is a circle-dance," he said finally.

"Very good, Detective."

"Why circles?"

"To see if they can be broken."

"A broken circle is not a circle," he sighed, slumped back into his seat, took out a cigarette from his pocket. He lit it and took a drag, then exhaled a cloud of smoke into the air. The yellow light danced among the vapors, swirling like little eddies in a gaseous lake. "Tell me about May."

"What would you like to know?"

"You say Jessica Patterson killed herself. You convinced her to do it, but she killed herself. You like to strangle your victims, but you wouldn't strangle her. Why?"

I smiled. "You tell me."

"You killed once a month. That makes it a ritual. So what was sacred about May?"

"Sacred?"

"You wouldn't touch her."

"I'm impressed, Detective. You progress in leaps and bounds. Caution, Icarus, lest ye brush the sun with thy wings."

"How many circles are there in Hell, Doctor?"

I laughed. "Nine, but that's Dante."

"What haven't you told me?" he said, extinguishing his cigarette on the steel tabletop.

"What haven't you asked, Detective?" I replied, leaning forward and pressing my fingers together, following him with my eyes. He paced around the room restlessly for a few moments, then returned to the table, leaned over it.

"Why did you do it?"

I sighed and slumped back into my seat. "And you were doing so well."

"Why did you kill those women?"

"You already know that."

"Tell me! I must know!" He leapt to his feet, leaning across the table to grab my jumpsuit in his fists, hauling me to my feet. His breath tasted of nicotine and tar.

"'Tell me Faustus, shall I have thy soul?'"

"Go to Hell."

"'Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it. Think'st thou that I, that saw the face of God and tasted the eternal joys of heaven, am not tormented with ten thousand hells in being deprived of everlasting bliss?'"

He shoved me back into my seat; it rocked back, scraping on the floor. He made to leave, hand on the doorknob, back to me, but he paused. Silence filled moments marked with clock-ticks.

"How did Marlowe die?" he asked finally, softly, almost a whisper.

"Stabbed. With a dagger. In May."

"He killed himself?"

"He was murdered."

Foster turned to face me. "He died in 1593, didn't he? 360 years ago. Eleven women, each thirty years old. Three-thirty. The Quinn sisters, fifteen each. Three-sixty. Circles." I smiled at him. Cogs turned in his eyes, puzzle-pieces dropped into place.

"Very good, Detective."

"They're at Ashingway Park, aren't they?"

"What makes you say that?" I replied, but I grinned. He had it.

"My brother designed it. The walkways form nine concentric circles around the fountain."

I laughed, leaned back, and grinned. "You've no further use for me, then."

"You're going to the chair, Doctor."

"Sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras. Yes, yes, it pleases me to go into the dark."

Foster shook his head, crossing his arms. "You want to die."

"I have been immortalized, Detective. I will never die."

"Then why?

I regarded my marionette silently, tracing a circle on the tabletop with my finger. "Because, Detective," I said, lifting my eyes to him. I smiled. "Mephistophilis would have me sign my contract in blood."