“So give me a name.”

“No.”

“I’m trying to be gentle with you, Otto. I feel like I understand you now. You’re a bad guy, but not the kind of bad guy I thought you were. A lot of the other cops in here don’t have the delicate sensibility that I have. They aren’t as . . . subtle . . . with their technique. It would be best for you if you just told me, Otto. I mean that.”

“What are they going to do to me?” I say, framing my face demonstratively with my hands. My hair is shaved off where the stitches snake around my skull. My mouth has fewer teeth than it’s accustomed to. My face is a red-purple blancmange of beaten tissue. “Ruin my august profile?”

“If you don’t—”

“I’ll sign any statement you want, Nunes. I’ll say I’m the Zodiac Killer. I’ll say I killed Biggie. I’ll say I killed the electric fucking car if you want me to. I’ll say anything. But I’m not saying that.”

Nunes clicks off the tape recorder.

“Otto, it’s not humanly possible to be this dumb. Why are you doing it?”

I look her in the eye. My face hurts. My mouth hurts. My leg hurts. My heart doesn’t know what it feels.

“Detective,” I say, “I am far dumber than you could ever understand.”

I am escorted to a holding cell that smells of mold, sweat, ammonia, sickness, unisex despair. It gets pink outside the window, then bright, then, sometime later, dark again. I don’t sleep and I don’t close my eyes. That’s where memories are. Instead I stare at a brick in the wall. It’s a fascinating brick. Some cop comes in and makes a joke about me wanting to marry that brick but he gives up on getting a response. Later he brings in some buddies and they all laugh and point at me, staring away. To them I’m a circus animal, but they’re not sure if they want to give me a peanut or a taser.

When it’s bright again Nunes shows up with a large manila folder under her arm.

“We received an interesting care package last night from a concerned samaritan. I’d like you to give it a look with us.”

She leads me into a room with a TV and presses play on a VCR. On the screen I see the image of myself holding a gun on Charlie as she approaches the mannequin with the Cincinnati cord. The on-screen Otto yanks his hand away but shoots her anyway. He tries to resuscitate her but instead gets his ass kicked over every square inch of the room. Eventually he shoots himself in the leg and then there’s Charlie ripping her mask off to stanch the blood and administering antidote while chanting, “Forgive me forgive me forgive me.”

“What do you make of that?”