"First of all let me just say that this is not going to be easy to explain," Mad Dog said as he put his hands up in a mocking surrender gesture.

Frankie didn't seem quite as concerned about the facts at hand and instead asked the A-Team, "You got any booze in the house? Because that's the only way we're going to be able to get through this story." And she walked past them to find the kitchen and subsequently the liquor cabinet.

"Alright, yes, I was arrested for murder, but I didn't do it," Mad Dog told them.

"Of course not," Face dryly remarked, "Nobody ever does it."

"What about you?" Frankie asked as she reappeared with a bottle of vodka from the kitchen, "Everybody knows about the A-Team, did you really rob the Bank of Hanoi?"

"Point taken," Hannibal told her, "But if he didn't do it, then what's going on?"

"Like I said, it's a long story," Frankie undid the lid on the bottle, swallowed a swig of it and said, "Okay, 3 years ago Murdoch and I met when the local college was participating in a silent film festival."

"In Bakersfield?" Face asked.

"No," Frankie told him, "In my hometown, Cranston, a little place near Bakersfield, about as easy to drive through without noticing as Rhode Island. We're a little town with little to do, especially if you don't have any money, such as ourselves. When the college ran the silent film festival it was one way of getting free entertainment with a live band accompaniment. That was how we met, he was tripping over everybody's feet trying to get a seat and he fell in my lap, quite literally. After that we hit it off and we began to see quite a bit of each other. More often than not though, I wound up going to Bakersfield to see him, that's how this whole mess got started in the first place."

"We're listening," Hannibal told them.

Frankie and Mad Dog glanced at each other uncertainly, she squeezed his shoulder and took the initiative to explain and she told them, "One night when I was staying over, we fell asleep together, I woke up later and saw Murdoch standing over me, covered in blood…he said 'there's a lady downstairs, I think I killed her'. So I got up and we ran down to see what had happened."

"What did happen?" Face asked.

"There was a woman downstairs in the living room, she was dead," Frankie answered matter-of-factly as though it was a common occurrence, "She'd been stabbed I don't know how many times."

"Where was the knife?" Murdock asked.

"On the floor by her body of course and yes it had Murdoch's prints on it," Frankie told them, "We were trying to figure out what had happened when the police came. They busted into the place and dragged him out."

"Who called the police?" Hannibal asked.

"We never found out, some anonymous caller I suppose," Frankie answered bitterly, "They stormed in, grabbed Murdoch, hauled him out in handcuffs, took him to jail."

"Well it's understandable," Face said.

"Sure, except that there was a witness at the house, me," Frankie pointed out, "You can't do what was done to this woman without making some noise, and I've never been a heavy sleeper. There's also the fact that she was plenty bloody, but the stains on the carpeting didn't match the wounds on her body, clearly she had just been dumped there."

"And the knife?" Murdock asked.

"Murdoch was only half coherent at the time, I'm not above thinking that somebody drugged him, makes it easier to put the knife in his hands and get the blood on him," Frankie said.

"That's why you wanted her here to explain," Hannibal realized as he looked at Murdoch, "Because she was the only one lucid in the house that night."

"Well now wait a minute," Face interjected, "Something's not adding up here."

"Only something?" Murdock asked.

Face looked at Frankie and said to her, "If you were there, why didn't you tell what you knew to the police?"

"I tried," Frankie told him, "I tried to stop them when they hauled Murdoch off, one of them beat me in the head and left me on the sidewalk while they took him away. They weren't interested in hearing my side of the story for some reason."

But Hannibal knew that that wasn't the end of it, "You told his lawyer then, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I went to that shyster and I told him what I knew," Frankie recalled, "And he said that it wasn't any good, that he couldn't use any of it at trial."

"Why not?" Face asked, "He didn't believe you?"

"Oh he believed me alright," Frankie nodded, "But he said he couldn't use me."

Hannibal caught on and said, "There's something more here than you're telling us. Some reason why a lawyer would completely toss aside a perfectly good witness that could help clear his client. What is it?"

Frankie and Murdoch glanced at each other again, equally unsure if they should tell what it was. Finally Frankie faced the A-Team and explained, "The night that Murdoch was arrested and I was staying at his house for the night, he was 22 years old and I had just turned 17."

"That'll do it," Face said as if they were just wrapping things up, "They might be able to clear him on the murder charge with her testimony but then they go after him with a statutory charge, and that's an even surer death sentence than a murder conviction."

"That's what his shyster lawyer said," Frankie said, "Said that nobody would believe that nothing was going on between us."

"And of course it wasn't," Hannibal said, half mockingly.

"No it wasn't," Frankie told him, staring daggers at him, "And I don't care if you believe it or not."

"Well what the hell? I'll believe it," Hannibal replied, "After the last couple of days we've had, I'll almost believe anything in fact."

"You go to hell, pal," Frankie spat, "I've got no reason to lie to you, all I've ever done is tell people the truth and all it's ever gotten me is trouble, nobody wants to know what the truth is."

"Well you're in luck," Murdock told them, "Because that just happens to be our specialty, so go on. What happened?"

Frankie exhaled and some of the fight seemed to leave her, "Well anyway that's why his lawyer pushed for an insanity plea, he couldn't present the evidence to clear Murdoch of a murder and he had to do something to keep him from getting convicted. Neither of us wanted that, and I told that lizard that I was going to go to the prosecution and tell him what happened."

"Did you?" Hannibal asked.

"I tried," Frankie answered, "I cornered him on the courthouse steps but just as I started to talk to him, some madman comes out of nowhere and blasts him into Swiss cheese and takes off, leaving me standing there in awe with his blood splattered all over me."

"Now that is one hell of a coincidence," Face noted.

"My thoughts exactly, so once the body was hauled off, I repaid the defense attorney a visit, determined to get some answers out of him. You know how people are bound to say anything when their lives are in the balance and they know it? Well I had that lizard's neck in my hands and he was turning blue, and still he insisted he didn't have anything to do with the assassination, so what could I do? I took his word for it and let him go."

"But that's not the end of it," Hannibal knew.

"No," Frankie answered, "By the time they got a new prosecutor in and got him familiar with all the evidence presented and pushed for the insanity plea, almost a year had passed from the night he was arrested. Then they just shipped him off to Freemont."

"And?" Hannibal asked.

"And," Frankie told him, "It just seemed to me that the prosecution was too happy to accept the insanity plea, I thought they were supposed to fight those tooth and nail. Of course I later found out that prosecutors are usually only too happy to take insanity pleas, it's insanity defenses that they refuse."

"Ah, and there's a difference?" Face asked.

"Apparently," Frankie sighed, "Neither of us had any money that we could get another lawyer with a second opinion on the matter or an appeal. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands."

"Which were?" Hannibal asked.

"I decided to see how easy it would be to get myself committed to one of those crazy hospitals," Frankie said, "It seemed to me they ought to be more willing to take a less violent person than an accused murderer for the next batch in the cracker factory."

"But you weren't committed until two months ago," Murdock recalled.

"That's right," Frankie nodded, "And I had two years' worth of trying to get in there in the first place."

"Two years?" Face repeated in disbelief, "What did you do?"

"What didn't I do?" Frankie replied, "I did everything I could think of to convince people that I was crazy."

"Like what for example?" Murdock asked.

"Everything," Frankie said, "I did all the research I could, I went to the library, read every book they had on mental disease and criminal insanity."

"You read Sybil?"

"Sure I read Sybil and Three Faces of Eve and all of those," Frankie explained, "I exhausted every possibility to pass myself off as crazy. I did everything, nothing worked."

Her voice cracked and disappeared at the last couple of words, it was obvious that it had been an exhausting ordeal for her, and largely for nothing.

"You finally got committed," Hannibal noted.

"Yeah, because I about set myself on fire," Frankie told him, "I spend months creating different personalities who speak different languages and all have different handwriting, I randomly chopped my hair off during art class, I take my clothes off in a public place and jump in the water fountain, I steal cars, I steal anything I can get my hands on, I even beat up my parents after we got in a small disagreement, and me screaming bloody Russian the whole time, and nobody thinks that I could be crazy until I start drinking gasoline and lighting matches. Ooh," she groaned as she recalled, "I was never so sick in my whole life as that night, but that was what finally did it, and for all the trouble I caused, all the laws I broke, it was my parents who had me committed, nothing ever went to court, nothing was ever taken before a judge or a jury, it's unbelievable!"

"Your whole story is unbelievable," Face observed.

Frankie turned back to Mad Dog and said to him, "I told you they wouldn't believe us."

"Don't get ahead of us," Hannibal warned her, "What I don't get is why was Murdoch transferred to the V.A. at the same time you were committed to Freemont? And for that matter, why were either of you put in Freemont here? Don't they have mental hospitals where you come from?"

"Asking the wrong person, his lawyer pushed for it, I don't know why," Frankie said, "And I also don't know why or how they moved him out, I had figured once I got in there, I could help him find a way out."

"How long were you going to stay there?" Hannibal asked.

"The staff got the jump on me," she admitted, "They'd keep me doped up or tied to that bed so I couldn't do anything. I guess they didn't want any repeats of when I went there to visit with Murdoch."

"What did happen anyway?" Hannibal wanted to know.

"I tried sneaking him out one night, the security guards found out," Frankie explained, "They put a stop to that real quick."

"What about your parents?" Face asked, "Didn't you ever tell them what was going on?"

"They wouldn't believe me," Frankie told him, "Even if they did, they wouldn't do anything to help Murdoch, they'd only hear how old he was and condemn him for that, just like his lawyer said everybody in the courtroom would. I did try telling them once, never got anywhere with that. I knew nobody was going to help us so I decided to look into the matter for myself."

"And, anything further to report?" Hannibal asked.

"Not much," Frankie confessed, "Pretty much it's just what I already told you, anything past that is beyond me."

"Alright, so let's try thinking about this logically," Face said to the others, "The police conduct a shoddy investigation and don't even come up with the basic facts which say that the woman who was murdered, was murdered somewhere else and dumped at the house. Why would they do that?"

"Because they're in somebody's pocket, that's why," Frankie told him.

"Whose?" Face asked.

Frankie became very quiet at his question, saying only, "They had to be, it's the only thing that makes sense."

"Right now nothing makes sense," Face replied.

"I'll second that," Murdock said, and addressing the others he added, "And you know how much it takes for me to admit to something like that."

"So what do we do now, Hannibal?" Face asked.

Frankie leaned towards Mad Dog and said to him, "I told you it was a waste of time, I told you they wouldn't help us."

"Don't be too sure of that, Frankie," Hannibal told her, "No doubt it'll be an obstacle getting to the bottom of the whole thing, but I do believe it is possible."

"Alright, how?" she asked.

"That, I'm not sure of yet," he answered, "We'll start to work on it in the morning, in the meantime it's late and I'm sure everybody's tired and just wants to get some rest."

Frankie laughed and said, "Not me, two months I've been getting enough rest to kill a hippopotamus, all those pills and injections, damn sedatives and barbiturates and tranquilizers."

"Exactly what did you do to those people?" Face asked.

"You name it," Frankie said, "Once I was actually in that place I figured there's no nut like a violent nut, and ooh I got them good, the staff at Freemont definitely thinks I'm crazy."

"Of that I have no doubt," Hannibal told her, "However the question remains why once you got transferred in, your boyfriend got shipped over to Los Angeles's V.A., now Murdock has a very interesting theory about that. You insist that Murdoch couldn't have been the one to kill the woman found in his home, alright, suppose whoever did, was worried that somebody might believe his story, so they ordered the lobotomy to silence him permanently?"

"It is definitely possible, Mr. Smith," Frankie said, "Unfortunately I don't know anything that we can do about it. Whoever did it is going to know Frankie's missing and then they're going to find out I'm missing, and the manhunt's going to start again."

"Well, there's no way they could find you here," Hannibal told them, "Now for tonight I suggest we don't worry about it, tomorrow we'll get a fresh start and look into the matter and see what we can come up with. In the meantime tonight there's the matter of what to do with everyone, unfortunately we only have four bedrooms."

"And you don't trust us to stay down here on the couch," Frankie said knowingly.

"I won't say that I don't trust you," Hannibal said.

"But you don't trust us," Murdoch finished for him.

"Alright, here's what we're going to do," Hannibal announced, "Face, you and Mad Dog are going to sleep in your room, and Murdock, you and Frankie can bunk together."

Murdock growled approvingly and said, "A pleasure."

"Murdoch, what did we get ourselves into?" Frankie groaned.

"I still don't see why I can't be with Murdoch tonight," Frankie said as she paced around Murdock's room.

"Hannibal just thinks that we'd all be safer if one of us was with each one of you," Murdock explained as he lined down the center of his bed with bunched up blankets.

"So why did I have to get stuck with you?" Frankie asked.

"Well I think it's more for Face's own good," Murdock explained, "See he's a real…he has a…he's a pig, alright? He gets within 10 feet of a woman and he loses his head."

"He tries anything with me, he'll lose more than that," Frankie told him.

"Na, Face don't work like that," he replied, "He's a conman, he can charm anybody into anything, and that includes women."

"Not me," Frankie insisted, "I haven't gone through everything I have for the last two years to toss M.D. over now."

Murdock went up to her and asked her, "Can I ask you a question? Exactly what was it about this guy that you fell for him?"

"You wouldn't get it," Frankie sneered as she walked away from him.

"Never underestimate crazy people," Murdock told her, "We understand more than people are willing to give us credit for."

Frankie turned and looked back to him and said, "I'll just bet when you were my age you had a new girl on your arm every week and every one of them looking like a centerfold in the making. You look at me, I've never been able to get anywhere on my looks, which is how it ought to be, but that, mixed with my own proneness towards eccentric behavior, has left me alone for most of my teenaged years. Murdoch's the first guy who ever liked me, and he did something for me that nobody else would ever do, or could ever do."

"What's that?" Murdock asked.

"He made me feel smart," Frankie explained, "When you don't have your looks to fall back on you have to resort to your brains, and he was the first person in my whole life who didn't act or treat me like I was an idiot. I can't tell you how high of an honor that is, just as well because you'd never understand it."

"Well now," Murdock put his hand up to get her attention, "I wouldn't quite say that…you know when you get locked up in the mental hospital people don't tend to think you're too bright then either. They think you just sit around all day eating cardboard or yelling at the mailbox, and when you're a pilot like me, when you're the best pilot there is who can fly anything, even things that weren't meant to fly, and everybody acts like the only thing you're good for is eating grapes off the wallpaper, that doesn't do much for your pride either."

Frankie looked at him and asked, "How long have you been locked up?"

"Ten years," he answered.

"How have you not killed somebody yet?" Frankie asked, "Or yourself?"

Murdock pointed to the door and said, "I'm out on leave all the time, that helps, those guys you met downstairs, they know I'm smart, they just think I'm nuts, which I am, but crazy doesn't mean stupid."

"It doesn't mean insane either," Frankie told him, "I've said it for years, I told everybody, I might be crazy, but I'm not insane."

"So why'd you want people to think that you were?" Murdock asked.

"Because nobody would listen to me, nobody was interested in the truth so I had to try another approach," Frankie said, "I had to find a way to make people listen and nothing worked. The defense lawyer didn't care about the truth, the cops didn't care about the truth, the prosecution got blown away before I could tell him the truth."

"Did you try the judge?" Murdock asked.

"You're not listening to me, I tried everything, I told everybody, nobody cared."

Murdock whistled and said, "Whoever this guy is, he must have deep pockets to have everybody in the justice department in them."

"Yeah," Frankie tiredly replied as she squeezed her eyes shut and balled up one hand and rested it against one closed eye. Murdock didn't miss the tear trailing down her cheek, he went over to her and put an arm around her supportively, that was the one thing that sent her over the edge. Frankie collapsed against him sobbing; the pilot had a good idea that this was the first time since M.D. had been arrested that she'd let these emotions boil over instead of the relentless anger and hatred that it seemed she expressed towards everyone. He held her and patted her back comfortingly and let her carry on for a little while to finally get it out, then he spoke softly to her and said, "Hey, take it easy, Frankie, we're going to find out how to get to the bottom of this, you'll see."

"You really think so?" she asked as she pulled away from him.

"We always do," Murdock answered, "Ain't any problem come up yet we couldn't find a solution for, and believe me we've had some biggies."

"But never anything like this," Frankie said.

"No, that's true, but it's not the first time we've ever unraveled and exposed a murder either," Murdock explained, "We always find a way." He saw that she was shaking, almost convulsing and he asked her, "You cold?"

A small shiver gave him the answer, though Frankie insisted as she turned away from him, "I'll survive."

Murdock picked up one of the bunched up blankets from the bed's makeshift partition and draped it around her.

"Thanks," she sheepishly said.

Murdock kissed her on the forehead and said, "Come on, let's go to bed, we'll figure this whole thing out in the morning."

He got her tucked in on one side and went around to the other side and crawled in under the covers. After a few minutes of trying to keep a relative distance, he decided that being in a mental asylum, she'd had enough distance to last her a lifetime, so he moved over towards her side and put his arms around her. Two years without anybody she could trust, anyone she could talk to, and even worse, two months with absolutely no contact with the man she loved. He remembered what Mad Dog had said about her sneaking into Freemont after visiting hours to spend the night, a conjugal visit wasn't much but it was still better than nothing. And likewise, a little platonic contact was also better than nothing.

That was something that in all his years as a mental patient and an observer of human behavior in connection to their psychological profiles, he found that many people often overlooked. Too many people focused on if it was appropriate to get close to other people, physically close, all those questions about what ifs and what was acceptable. Well, he knew too well from personal experience and observation that people who were suffering didn't give a damn about what was ethical or not, they needed to know they weren't alone, they needed to feel another person come in contact with them; that was one reason why he was what others might describe as overly affectionate with most people he came in contact with, as a patient, he didn't have any restrictions on who he could and couldn't kiss or embrace, and as a human he didn't care anyway. Such as was the case here, he knew why Hannibal stuck the two of them together; Face was just liable to forget his position and to forget that Frankie was 'taken', but Murdock could comfort a woman without losing his head over her. And as reinforcement to that fact, he remembered that for all he knew, this woman could be his family, and he intended to treat her as such; that above all else cemented the decision. And Frankie didn't seem to have any objections to it either, at least not for the time being. Murdock felt his eyelids closing and he tucked the crown of Frankie's head under his chin and slowly felt both of them nod off to sleep.

Murdock woke up a short while later when he felt somebody trying to climb over him and saw that Frankie was trying to wrestle her way out from under the tangle of covers.

"What's the matter?" he asked as he pulled back the bedspread to let her out.

"I can't sleep," she said, "I'm going to go downstairs and get something to eat."

Hannibal followed the clattering noises coming from the kitchen downstairs as he made his way down the stairs in the dark. Somebody was up, he didn't know who, but he was certain that one of the prisoners had gotten out of their cells. He got his confirmation when he stood in the doorway to the lighted kitchen and saw Frankie had taken about half of the food out of the refrigerator and seemed to be making her way through a piece of fried chicken, a bologna sandwich, a jar of pickles, a large Polish sausage impaled on a fork, and a bowl of strawberry Jell-o.

"Hungry or suicidal?" he asked.

Frankie bit off another piece of the sausage and asked him, "You ever eat hospital food, Mr. Smith?"

"A few times," he answered.

"Yeah well mental hospital food is far worse, let me tell you that," Frankie said as she downed a swig of Coca-Cola, "Mr. Smith, I need to talk to someone about something."

Hannibal gave the food on the table another glance and asked, "You're not pregnant, are you?"

"Mr. Smith, I've got a problem and I need to talk to someone about it," Frankie said, her tone underlining the seriousness of the matter.

Hannibal could tell it was worse than that. "Alright, so tell me kid, what is it?"

Frankie looked at him and said, "I know who killed that woman, but I can't prove it. I never told anybody the truth about that one because I know they'd never listen, I didn't know it at first but after a few months, it just seemed to all fall into place."

Hannibal was taken aback by this revelation. "Who is it?"

"His name is Richard Masterson, he's a friend of my dad's," Frankie said.