More Twisted

really.”
    “No?”
    Phelan swung the chain against the table and kept looking over the captain with that odd gaze of his. Boyle was uncomfortable. Prisoners swore at him all the time. Occasionally they spit at him and some had even attacked him. But Phelan slipped that curious expression on his face—what the hell was it?—and adjusted his smile. He kept studying Boyle.
    “That’s a weird sound, ain’t it, Captain? The chain. Hey, you like horror films?”
    “Some. Not the gory ones.”
    Three ringing taps. Phelan laughed. “Good sound effect for a Stephen King movie, don’tcha think? Or Clive Barker. Chains at night.”
    “How ’bout if we go through the facts again? What happened. Might refresh your memory.”
    “You mean my confession? Why not? Haven’t seen it since the trial.”
    “I don’t have the video. How ’bout if I just read the transcript?”
    “I’m all ears.”

    “On September 13 you were in the town of Granville. You were riding a stolen Honda Nighthawk motorcycle.”
    “That’s right.”
    Boyle lowered his head and in his best jury-pleasing baritone read from the transcript, “ ‘I was riding around just, you know, seeing what was there. And I heard they had this fair or festival or something, and I kept hearing this music when I cut back the throttle. And I followed it to this park in the middle of town.
    “ ‘There was pony rides and all kinds of food and crafts and stuff like that. Okay, so I park the bike and go looking at what they got. Only it was boring, so I walked off along this little river and before I went too far it went into this forest and I seen a flash of white or color or something I don’t remember. And I went closer and there was this woman sitting on a log, looking at the river. I remember her from town. She worked in some charity store downtown. You know, where they donate stuff and sell it and the money goes to a hospital or something. I thought her name was Anne or Annie or Anna or something.’ ”
    Anna Devereaux . . . .
    “ ‘She was having a cigarette, like she’d snuck off to have one, like she’d promised everybody she wasn’t going to but had to have one. The first thing she did when she heard me come up was drop the cigarette on the ground and crush it out. Without even looking at me first. Then she did and looked pretty freaked. I say, “Hey.” She nodded and said something I couldn’t hear and looked at her watch, like she had someplace she really had to be. Right. She started to walk away. And when she passed me I hit her hard in the neck and she fell down. Then I sat on her and grabbed this scarf she was wearing and pulled it real tight and I squeezed until she stopped moving, then I still kept squeezing. The cloth felt good on my wrists. I got off her, found the cigarette. It was still burning. She didn’t crush it out. I finished it and walked back to the fair. I got a snow cone. It was cherry. And got on my bike and left.
    “ ‘Anyway, what it is, I killed her. I took that pretty blue scarf in my hands and killed her with it. And there’s nothing else I have to say.’ ”
    Boyle’d heard similar words hundreds of times. He now felt something he hadn’t for years. An icy shiver down his spine.
    “So that’s about it, James?”
    “Yeah. That’s all true. Every word.”
    “I’ve been through the confession with a magnifying glass, I’ve been through your statements to the detectives, I watched that interview, you know, the one you did with that TV reporter . . .”
    “She was a fox.”
    “But you never said a word about motive.”
    The ringing again. The waist chain, swinging like a pendulum against the metal table leg.
    “Why’d you kill her, James?” Boyle whispered.
    Phelan shook his head. “I don’t exactly . . . . It’s all muddy.”
    “You must’ve thought about it some.”
    Phelan laughed. “Hell, I thought about it tons. I spent days talking it over with that friend of mine.”
    “Who? Your biker buddy?”
    Phelan shrugged. “Maybe.”
    “What was his name again?”
    Phelan smiled.
    It was known that while Phelan was generally a loner, he had several friends who ran with a tough crowd. In particular, witnesses reported seeing him in the company of a biker who’d hid Phelan after the Devereaux murder. The man’s identity never came to light. Boyle wanted him on aiding and abetting but was too focused on collaring Phelan himself to spend time on an accessory.
    Phelan