“April is the cruelest month.”  Detective Tuttle’s wandering thoughts settled on the line from The Waste Land.  He was seeking protection in poetry against the high-pitched monotone coming at him from the agitated woman on the other side of his desk.  It was a defense he had learned from his high school English teacher, Miss Martin, who was the subject of Bitsy Barnes’s ramblings.  It was April Fool’s Day, and the kooks were out.

Apparently, Bitsy had gone to work for Miss Martin after the retired teacher’s stroke a few years ago.  Although Detective Tuttle thought of himself as a skilled interrogator, he had been unable to move Bitsy along to whatever had brought her to the Elm Grove Police Station.  He had given her his full attention when she began her circuitous tale of her morning at Miss Martin’s house, but there was only so much a mind could take.  The effort to understand her rapid speech with its occasional stutter had exhausted him in the first five minutes of her chatter about fighting her way through the bushes to retrieve the morning paper, the number of times she had called the newspaper office to complain, and how every morning, it was the same thing all over again.  Young people had no respect.

Tuttle raised an eyebrow at the “young people” crack.  Bitsy must be somewhere in her mid-thirties.  Not young, but certainly too young for the “good old days” lament.  That was his complaint.  He glanced down at the cup of coffee growing cold in front of him.  “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.”  He mused over Eliot’s line and mentally thanked Miss Martin again.  She had told him that losing herself in a poem often helped her survive the tedium of long faculty meetings where nothing but nonsense transpired.

Like this nonsense with Bitsy.  He opened his mind for a moment to see where she was in her story.

“Miss Martin said I cooked the egg too long.  She liked it poached, solid white, slight runny yolk, and I said ‘That’s what you got.  I made that.  I made that just like you like it,’ and she said, ‘Twenty-five seconds too long.  Take it back. Fix another one.’  I did that.  I made another one.  I brought it.  She poked it.  Poked it.  The yellow ran.  Yes, it ran.  And she said, ‘It’s a little underdone, but I’ll eat it.’  A good thing, too.  Yes, a good thing.  Because the cat started yowling for his food.  He yowls just like her.  Has to have everything just so.  Just so.”

Detective Tuttle’s brain felt like Eliot’s “patient etherised upon a table.”  He took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on what Bitsy was saying, but his attention was intermittently spirited away by lines of poetry. 

“And she said I didn’t know how to answer the phone and take a proper message.  I been answering the phone and taking messages all these years, and every time, she tells me I forgot something.  The number.  The time.  Who it was.  I couldn’t take it anymore.  I done it.  I killed her.  Yes, sir.  I made her a cup of tea, just like she doesn’t like because it isn’t ever steeped the right amount of time.  ‘But,’ she said, ‘I’ll drink in anyway because a body could die of thirst waiting for you to do it right.’  So I thought, well, you’ll die all right.  I’m not having anyone yell at me ever again.  Not like she did.  Not like Mama did.  So I killed her.  Yes, I killed her.”

“I killed her” broke through Detective Tuttle’s poetic reverie.  His eyes lost their glaze, and he sat up straight, staring at her as she continued her babble. 

“Yes, I did.  I got some of those leaves from the bush, and I made her some tea.  I steeped it good and long.”

“The bush out front?”  Tuttle had mowed Miss Martin’s yard when he was in junior high, and he remembered an oleander bush. 

Bitsy nodded.  “She drank it all.  Every drop.  She fussed about the taste.  ‘Bitter,’ she said.  But she drank lots of different herb teas for her health, so it wasn’t like she knew what any one tea should taste like.  And then she got this awful look on her face and made a noise, and she’s sitting there now on the screened-in porch off the kitchen.  Dead as a doornail.  Yes, she is.  Dead as a doornail.  She won’t be hollerin’ at me no more.  No, she won’t.”

#

Late the next afternoon, Bitsy Barnes was hurrying down Main Street.  They had finally let her go.  Yes, they had.  They said Miss Martin had a stroke.  Bitsy hadn’t killed her, after all.  Detective Tuttle gave her a warning.  He said she filed a false report.  She told him no, she didn’t because Miss Martin drank the tea and then she died.  Bitsy thought she had killed her because she was thinking so hard about how mean Miss Martin always was to her and how she wanted her to die, and then she did, so it was an honest mistake. 

She stopped in front of Fred’s Fresh Food Market.  She went in about once a month to get things for Miss Martin.  Sometimes she saw Fred be mean to one of the girls working there just like he’d been mean to her when she worked for him.  Cleaning the produce and keeping it stocked had been her first job ever.  You’d think someone would be nice to you if it was your first job.  But Fred always yelled at her.  Retard.  That’s what he yelled.  Retard. Maybe she was a little slow, but not as slow as some people thought.  Every day she watched The Nancy Nolan Show on TV.  That’s where she found out that sometimes workers got bosses put in jail for acting like Fred.  But not back when he was mean to her.  That was a long time ago when she was only sixteen.  Nobody cared then.  But they cared now.  If she saw him be mean to someone now, she’d talk to her and tell her to have Fred put in jail.  Putting Fred in jail was one of Bitsy’s favorite fantasies. 

#

It was mid-August, and Bitsy Barnes was in Detective Tuttle’s office again.  This time she got straight to the point.  This time she had killed Elvis.

“Yes, the real Elvis,” she said, rocking slightly in her chair as she talked.  “Not one of those look-alikes.  I mean really him.  It was poison, you know.”

“Poison?”  Tuttle raised an eyebrow.  He had heard some news reports about fans descending on Graceland for the anniversary of Elvis’s death.  Bitsy must have heard them, too. 

“Drugs are poison, you know.  They poison the body.  Anyone will tell you that.   Don’t you know that, Detective Tuttle?”

“I know that, Bitsy.  I also know that when Elvis died, you were still in grade school and living right here in Kansas.  You couldn’t have killed him.”

Bitsy stopped rocking.  Her face went blank for a moment, and then came to life again.  She looked like he had smashed her world.  He guessed he had.  He had heard of people like her: people who confessed to crimes they hadn’t committed.  Something about wanting attention.  That thing with Miss Martin a couple of months ago must have set her off. 

“Look, Bitsy, I guess you honestly might have thought you killed Miss Martin.  You gave her tea and she died.  But if you really believe you killed Elvis, a psychiatrist is going to commit you to a hospital somewhere.  Is that what you want?”

Bitsy sat silently for a moment, her forehead wrinkling.  Finally, she said, “Well, okay.  Okay.  If you’re sure I didn’t do it.  Well, I’ll just go home.” 

She pushed up out of the chair and gave him a last forlorn look before shuffling out of the office.

Tuttle closed the door with a sigh of relief.  It was almost time for his shift to be over, and he didn’t want any false confessions interfering with his plans.  He recalled a line from Prufrock and smiled.  “Let us go and make our visit.”

#

There was a new girl at Fred’s—a young girl like Bitsy had been when she worked there—a girl who didn’t know yet not to be alone in the store with Fred when he was closing.  But sometimes you couldn’t keep away from him at closing.  He could say, “The work isn’t good enough.”  He could say, “Stay and do it again.”  Then when everyone else was gone, he’d get nasty.  Bitsy went in the store to see what Fred was doing.  She was paying for a carrot juice when she heard Fred get mad.  Then he saw her, and he yelled, “Get out of here, Retard.”

She got out.  She waited outside for the new girl.  The new girl was crying when she came out, and she was walking fast.  Bitsy fell in step beside her, walking fast too. “He’s doing a crime,” she said.  “You can send him to jail.  Nancy Nolan said so on her TV show.  She’s said it lots of times.”

But the girl walked faster. 

Bitsy puffed to keep up, but the girl told her to go away.  “I need this job.  I can handle Fred.  Leave me alone.”

Bitsy had to stop.  She was breathing too hard.  The girl was fast, but she wasn’t fast enough to outrun Fred.  Girls who worked for Fred couldn’t outrun him. 

#

It was November, and Bitsy Barnes was back.  She had returned to her meandering means of getting to the point.  Now and then, Detective Tuttle picked up on a word or two of her chatter, something about school or books, and he thought she was stuck on Miss Martin again.  He glanced at the wall clock.  The Waste Land came to mind.  “HURRY UP PLEASE, IT’S TIME.”

Then the words “grassy knoll” penetrated his poetic musings, and he groaned.  Kennedy.  Now, she was confessing to killing JFK. 

“Bitsy, this is even more preposterous than last time.  You weren’t even born when Kennedy was assassinated.  You’ve got to stop this, or I will press charges against you for filing false reports.  Do you want to go to jail?”

“But I’m so sure.  I can see it.  It was a past life.  Everyone’s heard of those.  Haven’t you heard of those?  You have, haven’t you?”

Tuttle nodded, forced to admit he had just to get Bitsy to move on. 

Satisfied, she continued, “I saw this psychic on Nancy Nolan.  Have you seen her show?  It’s a good show.   The psychic told all about how to remember past lives.  I did just what she said, and I remembered.  Yes, I remembered everything.  The shots.  How his body jerked when the bullets hit him.  I remember all that.”

“That’s because of that special on television the other night.  You watched that special, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”  Bitsy examined her hands and picked at the skin around her fingernails.  “I guess I did.  And I dreamed about it.  It was so clear.  It was.  Just like I was there.  Maybe you’re right.  Maybe I didn’t kill him.  And even if I did, it wasn’t in this lifetime, was it?  I guess it doesn’t count if it isn’t in this lifetime.  Is that right?  It doesn’t count if it isn’t in this lifetime?”

“No, Bitsy, it doesn’t count.  So now you can go on home.  No more confessing or I’m going to have to arrest you.  Do you understand?”

“Okay.  But I still think I did it.  But like you said, it was another lifetime, and you can’t do anything about another lifetime.”

“That’s right, Bitsy.  So if next week, or next month, or some other time, you remember that you killed Abe Lincoln or anyone else, and you do the math, and you couldn’t have done it in this lifetime, I don’t want you to come and tell me about it.  Okay?”

“Okay.”

#

Bitsy stood across the street from Fred’s and watched the girl leave in tears again.  Something had to be done.  But that girl wouldn’t do it.  There was no one else to do it.  She wondered if Detective Tuttle would be mad. 

#

Detective Tuttle was putting on his suit jacket when Bitsy entered his office.

“I don’t have time for you this morning, Bitsy.  I have a real murder to investigate.”

“I know.  Fred from the market.  It just happened last night.  And I was born so I could do it.  I remember it.  I remember going to the store and—”

“I said I don’t have time for this, Bitsy.  If you don’t get out of here now, I really will have you arrested.  Don’t you have family somewhere?  Maybe you need to go visit someone.  A long visit.  Maybe that would help you get over this obsession that you kill people.”

“That’s a good idea,” Bitsy said.  “Maybe I will.  I can’t think of a relative, but maybe I can take a trip.  That would be nice.  Maybe see the ocean.  I haven’t ever seen the ocean.  Have you been to the ocean, Detective Tuttle?”

“No,” he replied and ushered her toward the door.  “But I think you should go.  I think you should definitely go.”  He realized he was repeating himself.  Good God!  He was beginning to talk like her.

#

Bitsy sat on the bench outside the bus station, her hand gripping the handle of her suitcase.  She was sorry she’d had to lie to Detective Tuttle about going to the ocean.  He’d been nice to her.  He’d helped her stay out of jail and out of the hospital.  But when he found out she’d told the truth about Fred, he wouldn’t be nice anymore.