CHAPTER 11 Like This?I am, if you will forgive the cliché, what is known as a bit of an odd duck. That is if by “odd duck” one means “educated sleuth.” To be sure, I have achieved my fair share of peccadilloes; to wit: the incident with the aquatic waterfowl when I was five, the unfortunate fascination with that actress at age twelve, nearly every day of my second senior year in high school, and finally, an episode I refer to as “The Mortification Beneath the Train Bridge.” However, none of these should be held against me. The world is filled with brilliant, if difficult, men. Walter Bishop. C. Auguste Dupin. Hercule Poirot. Not that I, poor little Jefferson Jefferson from Fredericksburg, VA, ever aspired to be placed among such august company as Auguste et al, but would that I could! But
