Vista City

Long Arms...

(1995)

By

Jay P. Hailey

K.A Strickland

and

The Vista City Players

 

The dead woman was young, blond and pretty. Angelo looked at the dressing room carefully, drinking in the scene. He was storing detail he might not notice until later, if ever. She had been shot in the chest from close range. Blue eyes filmed over in death stared blankly at the ceiling. Angelo found himself wondering who she was and what she had been like. Not with any great force. A homicide detective couldn't afford to identify that closely with the victim.

"I will be damned." Clevon Jones, a detective from the VCPD Homicide department said. "Four goddamned arms."

Angelo nodded absently. "Yep. We'll need prints from all four of them."

"Doesn't that creep you out Angelo?" Jones asked. "I mean, four goddamned arms!"

Angelo shrugged "She's been murdered. It's our job to find out who did it and bring them in."

Jones shook his head. "Yeah, but, four goddamned arms. Gives me the creeps."

Angelo sighed. The young woman was a little strange but there was no reason to let it throw you.

-*-

"Okay Mrs. Arnold, please tell me everything that happened." Sonja said.

Betty Arnold was a statuesque black woman, who'd managed to age gracefully. Her fallen face and red eyes really ruined the effect this morning. She took a deep breath and said. "I went back in the back to check on her about 2:30 and found her... shot. I ran over here to the phone and called for the paramedics. Then I went back to see if I could help her until the paramedics arrived. But it was too late." She shuddered visibly.

Sonja understood. Even after four years with the VCPD, she still hated to touch dead bodies. "Okay. Was there anyone you can think of who would want her dead?"

"Not really." Betty said. "She was a real sweet girl. Everyone who could get past the arms loved her."

"Were there any death threats?" Sonja asked.

"Not specifically, no, but there were a few people who just couldn't handle the idea of a girl with four arms. I just asked them to leave. This place doesn't attract people with strong racist tendencies." Betty said.

"You were sort of taking a risk by hiring a four armed person weren't you?"

"Honey, I played the chitlin' circuit in early sixties. There were places we couldn't go, restaurants would serve us cold left overs out a window and we had to stand around and eat in the alley. Back then we might as well have had four arms. This place was my answer to that. I brought around all the people from the old days. We play the good old music. We eat the good food right here in the main dining room, and we come and go through the front door. The only person we didn't let in here was Jim Crow. Anyone who couldn't handle that never came back to see the Marlene sing in the first place." Betty explained.

"Hmmm. Was there anyone here who knew Marlene before she came to sing here?" Sonja asked.

"No. Whatever was happening in Georgia, Marlene left it behind her when she came out here." Betty said.

"How did you hear of her?"

"Once upon a time John Goldberg was my agent. Actually he was the agent for our singing group, once we left our original agent. He called me up and said he had a girl with a sweet voice who needed someplace to work while he tried to set something up for her. He reminded me of the time we got on the TV because the producer didn't know that we were black until the last minute." Betty explained. "He said it was a deal like that and asked if I could help out. I said sure. Once you get a break, you have to turn it around. God has been kind to me and so I help out where I can."

"So she was singing here until John Goldberg could get her a break?" Sonja asked.

Betty shook her head. "That was the theory but there were a couple of problems that looked like show stoppers."

"Like what?"

"Well, Marlene sang jazz, blues and soul. She was a voice and a good one. Now count how many jazz stations are on the air in Vista City. The type of music that Marlene sang isn't big market stuff anymore. John was working on getting her studio jobs. Singing jingles for commercials, back up singing for bigger name artists, maybe some stuff that she wasn't used to singing like that alternative or some country. Marlene could have done that and was willing. However, John was mostly retired and was having to rebuild his contacts. He said he was running into heavy resistance. No one wants to take a chance on an unknown element when they have all the good singers in the world waiting tables in LA."

"Ah. So..." Sonja prompted.

"She was sort of stuck here. She might have gotten a break next weekend or she might have been singing here for fifteen years before she decided to give it up. I've seen it happen both ways." Betty said sadly.

"Did she have any friends here in town?" Sonja asked.

"Myself and the musicians, a couple of people who came in and really enjoyed her singing. Outside of the club she didn't connect real well. She was sort of reluctant to move around Vista City freely." Betty said. "She was too used to hiding away."

"Did Marlene have enemies?" Sonja asked.

"No. About the worst there was Freddy Rios." Betty said.

"Tell me about Freddy." Sonja tried not to pounce.

"He likes to be called Fast Freddy. He was a small time thug until he went to jail. Now he wants to be a legit sleaze in the worst way. He decided that he would be a show business agent and picked Marlene as his first client. She said no. He kept coming back and trying." Betty said. Her eyes widened. "I saw him go back into Marlene's room about closing time. Oh no! Freddy's a sleaze but I don't think he'd try to kill Marlene. But I saw him go back there. Oh, Freddy."

"Do you know what Freddy was in jail for?" Sonja asked.

"Drug possession and assault, I think." Betty said sadly. "You're going to pin this on him, aren't you."

Sonja sighed. "You can trust Angelo to see that the truth will come out."

Betty nodded. "That's what Jim says. He also tells me that you get all the weird cases. Is this a weird case?"

Sonja nodded. "Not only does the victim have four arms, but you're the wife of our night shift supervisor. There might be a conflict of interest, so they called us in."

Betty shook her head. "I hope that you can find out who did it, but it's not going to bring Marlene back."

Sonja looked grim. "It never does. Nevertheless, our job is to get the guy before he does it again. Maybe we can keep someone else from getting killed."

-*-

Angelo and Sonja stood in the alley behind "The Soul Attraction". They looked carefully at their surroundings. Behind them, the forensics team fussed with the back door to the nightclub.

"The way I read it, the perp entered and exited through the back door. There was a rock jammed in there to keep the lock from engaging. The door wasn't locked, but Mrs. Arnold thought that it was. The way the parking lot wraps around a car could have slid in and out and not been noticed." Angelo walked through the events of the murder in his mind.

Sonja considered the rock disdainfully. It was a cute trick but an amateur one. Sonja could have wandered in and out of the place and made Angelo at least work for the clues.

Angelo bent down and examined the black top of the parking lot. It was beginning to fade and age. Cracks were appearing. There was dirt from an adjacent empty lot spread around the parking lot, but not enough to hold a tire print. Angelo reluctantly concluded that the parking lot had little or nothing to tell him.

"Hey." Sonja pointed. "I may have found a witness."

Angelo looked up. Across the empty lot and the four-lane boulevard there was a gas station. The sign on the gas station said "Open 24 hours". Angelo could see directly into the armored cashier's booth. Angelo plotted it out. To move directly out of the parking lot, a car would have to drive diagonally across the point of view of the cashier and the turn onto Valley Boulevard and drive passed the gas station to get to the freeway and make a getaway.

Now all they needed was an observant gas station attendant and they might be in luck.

"Very nice." Angelo commented.

-*-

David Johnson was half asleep but warmed to the subject immediately. "There were two cars out back of the nightclub after closing. One of them was a lime green 1977 Chevy Monte Carlo. It was in sad condition. It was a beater. Could be reconditioned but probably never will be. California plates, but I couldn't read 'em."

"The other was a sweet car. A 1963 Ford Fairlane hot-rod. Jacked up in the back, mag wheels, polished chrome everywhere. I don't think it was local. I know most of the collectibles in the region and I didn't recognize it. It didn't have California plates. I am embarrassed to admit that I didn't recognize what state the plates were from. It sure was a sweet car, though. Fire engine red with a white top."

Angelo blinked a couple of times. "Are you certain about that?"

Sonja almost snickered.

"Detective, I had three customers after midnight last night. If I wasn't a car watcher, I'd go nuts in that place all night long." Johnson said. "Besides. I am something of an aficionado of the automobile as an art form."

"Would you be willing to testify to this in a court of law?" Sonja asked.

"Yep." Johnson grabbed out a pad of paper and scribbled notes about what he had seen to himself. "Now I'll be able to remember it longer. What's the date again?"

-*-

Outside of Johnson's apartment Sonja and Angelo stopped to exchange impressions.

"Whoosh!" Sonja said. "You don't find a witness like that every day."

"I'd have kissed him full on the lips but that would have gotten us sued." Angelo said. "That's about the best witness of that type I have ever had."

"What do you mean gotten us sued? You're the one overcome by emotion." Sonja said.

"Now we go ask the DMV what sort of car that Fast Freddy has registered in his name." Angelo said.

-*-

The finger prints from the crime scene were back from the lab. One set matched an individual with a criminal record, one Frederick J. Rios, of Vista City. Another set matched Betty M. Arnold, the owner of the club. She had a criminal record in Mississippi for incitement to riot. The conviction was in 1957. Four other sets did not match.

Scott Ashby, the Captain of the VCPD's Special Investigation Squad was running the prints through the net, trying to ID them. He had few tasks on his desk, so helping with the detail work on an on-going murder examination was a good way to keep busy. The other two sets were not on record anywhere that the stretching octopus of networked computers could reach.

"Captain Ashby, line two." The intercom said.

Ashby picked up the phone and hit the right button. "Ashby, Special Investigations." He answered.

"Hello, Captain. My name is Taylor Dane. We met in Panama in 1989." The voice on the other end said.

Scott cast his mind back to Panama in 1989. It was a weird mission to try and isolate Manuel Noriega from some of his more "interesting" allies. Flying California Air National Guard F-16s they were actually agents of a top-secret government agency. The man calling himself Taylor Dane was their briefing officer, describing targets and locations that were bombed under cover of the war effort.

"Well, Mr. Taylor. It's nice to hear from you again. How may we help you?" Scott said casually.

"I am currently employed by the Department of Unusual Phenomena." Taylor said.

Scott smiled faintly "Is that what they're calling it these days?"

"In some cases. Now Captain, I'm told you have a murder case working." The government agent said.

"Actually we have several." Ashby said.

"The one you're checking finger prints on right now."

"Ah." Ashby said. "The victim is tentatively identified as Marlene Summers of Four Corners, Georgia."

"You understand that this is a matter of interest to us." Taylor said.

"It's an open murder investigation, Sir. The law and community interest in this case is clear." Scott said. He was getting ready to fight. The "Department" rarely made these sorts of calls unless they were trying to hush something up.

"Well, Captain, we can confirm the identity of your victim. We'd appreciate it if you'd work with the Four Corners authorities in this matter and act with all due discretion." Taylor said in businesslike fashion.

"Define 'due discretion'." Scott spoke perhaps a little more harshly than he intended.

Taylor was silent for a moment. "This may be hard for you to grasp, Captain, but this department and this government owes the people of Four Corners. We're trying to ensure that they are free to live their lives without undue interruption or controversy. We'd like you to cooperate with the local Four Corners Authorities in this matter."

"So you're calling me to ask me to be quiet and professional as if I were a real law enforcement officer." Scott said.

Taylor sounded embarrassed. "Well, yeah. That and to confirm the identity of the victim. Those prints are not going to be found in any normal files. We have a flag set up to alert us if anyone goes poking around in records that are Four Corners' business."

Scott said. "Okay, so you can confirm that the victim is indeed Marlene Summers of Four Corners Georgia?"

"Yes. I confirm that. Actually two sets of the prints are her." Taylor said. "Set number one and set number three as you scanned them."

"How about the other two?" Scott asked.

"Sorry. We don't have any files on those." Taylor said.

"Would you tell me if you did?"

"It's in our interest to solve this murder as quickly and as quietly as possible, Captain. I tell you so three times." Taylor said.

Scott sighed it was an old code to verify authenticity. "I hear you three times, Mr. Taylor."

"Thank you. Please take down this number." Taylor read off a number with a Georgia area code.

Scott read the number back to make sure it was correct. "Whose number is this?"

"That's Jim Mosley, the Mayor of Four Corners. Call him and update him, please. Cooperate in every way with him." Taylor said. "Keep this as quiet as possible, please."

"Listen, Mr. Taylor. This is an ongoing murder investigation. Maybe the victim was from Four Corners but the murder happened here in my turf. I will cooperate as much as possible but in the end we will find the murderer, arrest him, take him to court and testify to the truth of the evidence we uncover. I don't care who we find at the center of this. I will not allow a murder to go by if I can help it. A judge, a jury and some lawyers are going to have to deal with the fact that the victim of this crime happened to have four arms. That's all there is to it. I won't deliberately involve the press or try to turn this into a circus, but my first priority is the truth."

"If that's your attitude, then you can count on the full support of this office, Captain. I just wanted to avoid another 'trial-of-the-century' like that O.J. thing." Taylor said.

"Why? Was that one of ours?" Scott asked, confused.

"Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. Will there be a post mortem?" Taylor asked.

"In a murder case? Are you joking?"

"Who's doing the autopsy?" Taylor asked.

"Dr. Monique Le Beau." Scott answered. That should soothe Taylor a bit.

It did. "She's one of ours isn't she?"

"Actually she's a Canadian Officer, but in the same line of work." Scott replied.

"That explains why she doesn't appear in the file for the SIS." Taylor said. I'll have to fix that. Anyway, I know that you have a long day ahead of you so I'll let you go now." Taylor ended the conversation.

"One more thing. I need a contact number for you, in case I need to take advantage of our acquaintance myself." Scott said.

Taylor sighed. "I scratch your back, you'll scratch mine? Okay. Here's the number." Taylor read off a Washington DC telephone number to Scott.

"Thanks. Hopefully I won't be calling anytime soon." Scott said.

"Good luck Captain. Keep your head down."

"You too, Mr. Taylor." Scott hung up the phone.

-*-

Jim Mosley wandered in from lunch. He did so with no great sense of urgency. He was the mayor of the town of Four Corners, and so was stuck in a half way area of being able to waste time with shameless abandon and at the same time always being on call. Some people wanted Jim to pull banker's hours as if being the mayor was like any other job, but it wasn't. Jim always put in all the time necessary to cover the basic administration tasks that being mayor required. He just did it according his own schedule. Otherwise he wandered around as though on patrol. Jim was most recently Sheriff of Four Corners and the one thing he liked about the job was being in contact with most of the people in town and knowing what was going on. As Mayor, Jim did his best to keep that sort of contact happening with the town.

Mosley's executive assistant was a young man on his way up in the world, working his way through law school. Eventually he'd become one of the lawyers that Four Corners leaned on. Then he'd probably run for office, mayor, or sheriff or city council. Ricky Wheeler always was fresh scrubbed, well groomed and dressed to the nines. This was no mean feat when all the people who could build four armed formal clothing in town could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and they were booked solid much of the time.

"Jim, there's a call for you on line one. He says his name is Scott Ashby from the Vista City Police department. He's holding now." Ricky said.

"I'll take it in my office." Jim said. "Do you have any idea where Vista City is?"

"GeosNetwork says it's in Northern California, Sir." Ricky replied promptly.

"Thanks."

Jim went into his office (He still thought of it as Mike Conner's Office even after two years.) And eased himself into the executives chair. Mosley was a big man, one of the biggest in town. It made clothing and furniture even harder to fit than it was normally. Jim didn't mind. As Sheriff being 6'4" and 280 lbs. had saved him from a number of brawls.

He hit the button and picked up the receiver. "Mosley here."

"Mister Mayor, my name is Scott Ashby, I work for the Vista City Police Department." The voice was soft and calm, and had a flat lack of accent. It could be from anywhere that wasn't too specific.

"How can I help you, Detective?" Mosley asked.

"I'm sorry Sir. Do you know Marlene Summers?" Scott said.

"Marlene? How is she? She's not in trouble is she?" Mosley didn't know Marlene too directly. She was a generation younger than he was. He could identify her by sight, knew her vaguely as one of the high school kids when he was just getting started as Sheriff.

"I'm terribly Sorry, Mr. Mosley, it's my duty to inform you that there has been an incident." Ashby said. "Marlene has been killed."

Mosley nodded for a second. "Tell me what happened."

"Ms. Summers was shot and fatally injured at approximately 2 o'clock this morning. Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene at 2:35. We're investigating it as a murder, Sir." Scott said.

"Do you have any suspects?" Mosley asked.

"We're working on a couple of leads now. We should know more soon. Dane Taylor called me and asked me to offer you all cooperation." Scott said.

Mosley grimaced. "May I have your telephone number please, Detective?"

"Um. It's Captain, actually." Scott read off his number.

"Okay Captain. I have it. I'm going to talk to some of my people, and then I'll call you back. I'm thinking about sending someone around to consult on the case. Do you mind?" Mosley said.

"No, Sir. We'll cooperate fully." Scott said.

"Okay. I'll notify the next of kin, talk to my people and call you back." Mosley decided.

"Yes, Sir. Thank you Mr. Mosley."

Mosley hung up the phone.

-*-

Karla Morgan was the Sheriff of Four Corners and Jackson County. Of course Four Corners and its industries dominated the county. There were only a few small villages in the county besides Four Corners.

Most of what Karla had to deal with was routine domestic stuff. Bar brawls. Petty theft. Handing out speeding tickets. Anyone else would have felt it a waste of a law degree and a degree in criminal forensics. Karla didn't realize it but the tactical training demanded of Deputies in the Four Corners Sheriff's department made her a reasonably competent soldier, too. Karla didn't see any of it as wasted. She was defending the social order of her community from enemies both outside and inside. She was keeping Four Corners as calm and well adjusted for her son as it had been for her.

Karla took her job very seriously and was happy to do it. She was also happy that Jim Mosley had named her to replace him when he had been elected Mayor after the death of Mike Conners. Some people worried that the athletic but normally proportioned Karla would not be able to replace Mosley in the big man's job. She didn't. She changed to job to fit her. Just as Mosley thought she would.

Therefore, when Mosley appeared in the Sheriff's office, Karla was surprised. He generally left her to do her job her way.

Mosley said "Karla, I need to speak with you, privately."

Karla nodded to Crenfield and Jones, her deputies that day and said "We'll be right out." She gestured Mosley into her office and followed him in, shutting the door behind.

"Karla, are you willing to take a trip?" Mosley asked.

"Sure." Karla didn't see the need for secrecy. She had been to Atlanta several times both before and after The Secret of Four Corners was brought out. There had never been any serious problems.

"Let me explain. Do you remember Marlene Summers?" Mosley asked.

"Uh huh. The singer. I have her CD's. She left here a year ago." Karla said. She was curious. People didn't leave Four Corners too often. Marlene had simply picked up and left one day. No one knew where she went or what she was doing.

"She was killed this morning." Mosley said.

"Oh, hell." Karla said

"She was in some small town in northern California, called Vista City. The police out there say they're working on a couple of leads, but..." Mosley shrugged. "They'd say that anyway."

"You want me to go out there and..."

"I want you to make sure that this is handled properly. Marlene was one of us. I want to make sure, if possible, that justice is served." Mosley said.

"How long will I be out there?" Karla asked.

"You know as well as I do that if the case isn't solved in the first two weeks it probably never will be. So call that the limit." Mosley replied. "I wouldn't want to keep you away from Danny longer than necessary."

Karla nodded. "Okay, Jim. I'm on it."

Mosley handed Karla a credit card. "Here's your expense account. I'll drive you into Atlanta to catch the plane as soon as you're ready."

Karla took it. "Right, well, I had better get ready."

"I'll talk to you in a couple of hours." Mosley said.

-*-

Police Chief Arbuckle always reminded Scott of the movie "Patton". He wore a variation of the blue Vista City Police Officer's uniform. It had more braid on it than the commander of the entire air war in Viet Nam. As near as Scott could figure, the uniform claimed that Chief Arbuckle was a Field Marshal for Napoleon. Arbuckle especially liked it when the VCPD officers called him "Chief." When he bothered to drop by the VCPD headquarters he expected strict obedience.

Arbuckle strode into Scott's office like a Field Marshal inspecting his troops. Scott resisted the urge to snap to attention. Instead he put down the plastic transparencies of the finger prints from the Marlene Summers case, And sat up straight in what he hoped was a civilian-like gesture of respect.

"Good afternoon, Captain Ashby." Arbuckle said.

"Good Afternoon, Chief Arbuckle." Scott replied. "What may I help you with today?"

"I'm told you're working on an odd murder case, today. One of those four armed mutants from down south got killed, is that correct?" Arbuckle had just been briefed on the case and so the details, while unclear, were fresh in his mind.

"Yes, Sir. That's the basics of the situation."

"Well, that's why we established the Special Investigations Squad, isn't it? This is right up your alley." Arbuckle announced.

Scott wondered if the Chief had deluded himself into thinking the SIS was his idea in the first place. "Yes Sir, Chief. This is right up our alley."

"Do you have any idea why this mutant girl was in Vista City to begin with?" Arbuckle was near the point and was preparing to fall on it.

"Apparently she was working as a singer at 'The Soul Attraction' night club, Chief." Scott said.

"Yes, yes, but why Vista City? Why here and not in 'Frisco? Why not LA? Why here in particular?" Arbuckle asked.

"Well Sir, if my preliminary reports from Angelo and Sonja are accurate then Ms. Summers was at 'The Soul Attraction' because that was the best place that would have her." Scott wondered where Arbuckle was heading with this.

"Who? Oh, the victim, yes, well. You have Angelo and Sonja on this one eh? They're about your best team for solving murders aren't they?" Arbuckle asked, "But they aren't the most... politically reliable."

"Well, Sir, Detective Mancuso is active in local politics." Scott deliberately missed the point. Actually it wasn't the best way to distract the Chief. While both Scott and the Chief were Republicans, Angelo and his family were active in the Democratic Party.

"That's part of the problem. Ashby, can I be frank with you?" Arbuckle said.

"I'd prefer it if you were, Chief." Scott said truthfully.

"Angelo and Sonja are a good team. For any ordinary case I'd be glad to see them on it. However, they have a nasty tendency to follow a narrow definition of the truth, and ignore the destructive side effects of what they're doing. There is a bigger picture to consider here and I'm afraid that they won't think of us. You and me. The people who have to follow behind and pick up the pieces." Arbuckle said. "Remember the Danner affair? That was mess. And me standing around with my dick in my hands. That may have cost me the '96 Mayor's race, Ashby."

"I'm afraid that I don't follow you precisely, Sir." Scott said.

"The simple fact of the matter is that the public doesn't like the four armed mutants. Their public numbers are in the toilet. No one knows what to think of them. If we're seen to be in bed with them, then it could hurt me politically. Now I'm all for justice and all that, Ashby, don't get me wrong. I'm just asking you to handle this case quietly. Your job is, frankly, to be a fire wall between me and the politically untenable cases like this. Now I know that Mancuso could give a rat's ass about my chances in the 2000 elections, but that's why you're in this office. Am I speaking clearly enough?" Arbuckle grabbed his belt buckle and struck a tough pose. "Those people that Angelo is associated with are always looking for another minority to get all weepy about. They could use this thing and leave me with egg on my face again."

"I understand, Sir. Since I have no political aspirations, perhaps I could publicly take responsibility for this if it comes up. If things go sour, then you can deny knowledge of what I'm doing." Scott suggested.

"Well, that's okay as far as it goes, Captain, but if that goes too far I look like I'm out of touch with my department. There's a narrow line for us to tread there. Too far either way, and I take the bath politically." Arbuckle scratched his chin in a well practiced "thoughtful" expression. "But I like it. You're handling this case with the autonomy that a trained investigator needs to perform his job. I like it. We'll go with that one."

"Yes, Sir." Scott said with a perfectly straight face.

"Don't let me down, Ashby. You know as Mayor I would be in a good position to help you out from time to time." Arbuckle said. "Right well, I'll give you your autonomy, Captain. Please report through Assistant Chief Moody."

"Yes, Sir." Scott stood up as the Chief barreled out of the SIS squad room but the Chief didn't notice. No doubt he was late to his next law enforcement seminar or fund raising event.

Scott idly wondered if the Chief's pearl handled pistol was even loaded.

-*-

Danny was ten years old. Karla thought he was handsome, smart, cute, and lovable. He was her son. His skin was tan and had a hint of sandiness to it, as did his hair. His eyes were a beautiful sea green.

"Are you sure I can't come with you?" Danny asked for the fourth time.

"This is a business trip. We'll go on a special trip just for you, me and Uncle Jake later on." Karla temporized.

"At this rate I'll never get out of Four Corners!" Danny griped.

Karla carefully failed to say how much she hoped this was true. In Four Corners she felt safe and in control. She felt like she could keep Danny safe there. In the outside world she would be on terra incognita. Unknown ground. The outside world killed Marlene Summers. Karla had the sneaking suspicion that the outside world would chew up and spit out any other four armed person it found out there for too long.

There were things that were more important to Karla than where she was standing. Marlene was one of her people. If someone killed Marlene and got away with it, then it might occur to them to go and find another four armed person to kill. Who ever it was had to be stopped early and stopped hard. Karla realized that she considered the four armed natives of four corners her jurisdiction where ever they were.

Although it was not a terribly valid thought in a legal sense, it made sense to Karla. It wasn't like the two armed police were going to work very hard at protecting the four armed people.

Karla finished packing. She had no idea what to expect in the outer world, and so she was packed more for a camping trip than a stay in another city. Just to be on the safe side she packed a couple of her "business" suits in case she had to pursue the perp into any board rooms or four star restaurants.

Danny was practically wriggling like a puppy. The idea of his mother going away into the outer world excited him and worried him both at the same time. He had no idea what to do with the emotion. "Bring me back something!" It was standard ritual when Karla went to Atlanta.

"Of course." She breezed. "Don't I always?"

She picked up her duffel and then went to the restroom to check her make up. The idea that decorating herself to face a hostile world was silly occurred to her. She told the idea to shut up and rationalized correctly that her make up represented a form of psychological armor.

She was as ready as she would ever be. Karla slung her duffel and her hanging suit case together and draped them over her shoulder. The hanging suitcase for her business wear was new. It was Karla's first long term trip out of Four Corners since her short stint at the University of Georgia. That was where she got Danny, and her first lesson about how cruel the two armed people could be. Danny's father had talked to her, wooed her, romanced her, cumulating in a single sexual encounter.

The next day the young man dropped Karla like a bad habit. He went around the school bragging that he had "bagged the mutie".

Karla didn't even clearly remember his name any more. Part of the reason that she loved Danny so well was that he was as good a result as the whole experience was bad. Moreover, he had lasted almost thirty times as long so far.

Karla went into the living room where she found her brother lounging on the couch. Danny was next to him, lounged in a similar position. Karla smiled and held in a chuckle. She could have done worse for a male role model for Danny than her brother. She knew that she was up for a long stint as Jake's nanny once he found the right woman and settled down. Karla didn't mind. Jake had come through for her like a champ. It would probably take the rest of her life to pay him back for that.

"I really don't like the idea of you going off on this thing alone." Jake Morgan said. He had a very deep voice. James Earl Jones deep. He used his deep voice to good effect whenever possible. He was the DJ for the local radio station.

"If you follow this whole train of thought to its logical conclusion you wind up with Four Corners moving in on Vista City. That would be fun to try and organize." Karla said. She sounded gruff.

"Danny, why don't you give me and your mom a few minutes of privacy, okay?" Jake said.

Danny made a big show of rolling his eyes before stomping out of the room and up the stairs to his room. He banged the door to his room open and then shut. Then the overly loud sound of "The Family Mark" came blasting downstairs. Danny only once tried to get revenge on Karla and Jake for having private business by playing a CD they hated too loud. Even Danny in full snit couldn't stand Marilyn Manson for that long. So he compromised by blasting music he liked better than any other.

"If the shorts killed Marlene, what makes you think they'll stop with her?" Jake said challengingly.

"If they killed Marlene and are bent on killing me, what makes you think having another target is going to make any difference? And you know I hate that term." Karla came back.

"They're shorts. Get over it." Jake said bitterly.

"Sure thing, Boy." Karla said just as angrily. "Would you like me to bring you back some fried chicken and some water melon?"

"Goddam it, Karla that's not fair!"

"It's just as fair as calling people you don't even know shorts!" Karla yelled.

"They're all short two arms." Jake said, rationalizing.

"And our skin is a deep, dark brown, and the root word in Negro is Spanish for black. That still doesn't make it right!"

"And killing Marlene is right!"

"I'm going to get the son of a bitch that got Marlene, you can bet on that." Karla growled.

"If they'll let you." Jake sneered.

"How about we find out if anyone else if having this fight before we go to war?" Karla said.

"What the hell does that mean?" Jake sounded confused.

"It means that we should make certain that the outside is really out to get us before we turn turtle."

"I think that Danny is good proof. Did you forget what they did to us when the news broke? Don't you remember Mayor Conners?" Jake challenged.

"Either way. Risking one person is smarter than risking two. Or three. Or twelve." Karla said.

"Except when it's my sister you're talking about risking." Jake said quietly.

"Thank you. At last we're getting to the truth."

"I don't want to have to tell Danny that you're not coming back. I don't want to have to go it alone." Jake said.

"You're not alone. You have mom, dad, Danny, and Elizabeth." Karla counted off. "I can't even tell you how many others will chip in if you needed help. But you won't need it because I am coming back."

"I don't know how serious Elizabeth really is. " Jake temporized. "And that doesn't matter. I just don't want to lose you."

"Jake, hello! I'm your sister! You're dangerously close to making an ugly stereotype about Georgia seem true." Karla laughed.

"Well yeah," Jake smirked. "Except that I can still outrun you."

Karla punched Jake in the shoulder fairly hard. He laughed and rubbed at his shoulder.

"Okay, so I'm a little weird about it. I have a stable, happy setup here. I'm afraid some damned short is going to take you away from me and Danny." Jake admitted.

"While I'm gone I want you to discuss this with Elizabeth. I bet the reason she's holding back is because you and I act more like a married couple than brother and sister. I bet she doesn't know exactly where you and I stand and doesn't want to step on our toes."

"And you'd be just as happy..." Jake started.

"Yes! I'd be just as happy getting you out of my hair for a while. Between being the Sheriff and living with you it's like I'm wearing a huge 'unavailable' sign on my back. I'd like to get rid of that before we have to worry about who Danny's dating, too." Karla said.

"Okay. I'll talk to her about it." Jake said.

"If you don't work something out with somebody, then I'm going to have to kick you out of here. Once you wander around town with a dejected look and chef boyardee spilled down your t-shirt, women will get the message that you're not involved with anyone." Karla threatened.

"Is that how you women tell?" Jake asked with a concerned look.

"Oh, please!" Karla laughed. "You men think you're so slick."

"You can't kick me out anyway." Jake smugly said. "This is my house."

"We'll just see about that when I get back." Karla said dangerously. "But I am going. Someone has to do it, and I'm the Sheriff."

"Maybe we can see about that when you get back, too." Jake grumbled.

"Probably not. I'm doing what I want to do." Karla said.

Jake sighed. This was an old discussion. "You're going, and there's nothing I can do to talk you out of it, right?"

"Who said I got all the brains in the family?" Karla grinned.

Jake shrugged. "Okay. Just take care of yourself. Danny and I need you, right?"

Karla rolled her eyes. "I only had one kid! Hell, you're older than I am!"

"Just promise me you'll be careful." Jake said seriously.

Karla nodded. "I promise. I have no intention of leaving Danny to be poisoned by your ways."

"Good!" Jake said.

"Now I have to go and say good bye to Danny." Karla said.

-*-

Scott hung up the phone and looked around the SIS squad room to see who was available. There was Terry Parkinson, Crystal McNamara and Rebecca Stevens.

"Rebecca. How do you feel about a road trip?" Scott asked.

"I thought you were married, Scott." Rebecca replied sounding surprised.

"Ha ha.." Scott laughed, "Not like that. I need to drive into San Francisco to pick up a VIP. Would you like to accompany me?"

"Oh. You want me along to protect you and the VIP from the consequences of your actions?" Rebecca said.

Scott smiled a faint smile. "Something like that."

Rebecca rose and grabbed her coat. "Okay. Can we stop at Mr. Kumikura's on the way out of town?"

Scott shrugged. "I thought we'd find someplace in the city."

"Oh. Have it your way." Rebecca said.

"Terry, you have the desk until change of shift. Crystal?"

"Yes, oh, mighty boss man?"

"Behave!" Scott said. Crystal was just over 25 but seemed somewhat younger. It was the result of a finely tuned sense of priorities that rated almost nothing as worth getting worked up over.

"I have to!" She harumphed. "Terry's a married man too!"

-*-

The address for Freddie Rios led to the southern section of Vista City. It was an older residential neighborhood. As Angelo and Sonja drove through, they could hear occasional snatches of loud Hispanic music, and smell things cooking.

As they approached the listed address they could see a green 1977 Monte Carlo looking forlorn on the street in front of a wood framed house.

They parked and got out. They could smell more cooking coming from inside the house. It smelled interesting to Sonja but Angelo's mouth was almost watering.

They walked up to the house, and noted dozens of small details to the house that spoke of someone living there for years. From the lawn turning brown in the sun to the way the porch was arranged for sitting and visiting, this was a comfortable and well lived in house.

Angelo knocked on the door.

Soon the door was opened by a middle aged Hispanic woman who was almost as broad as the door. "Can I help you?" she said with a thick accent.

"I am Angelo Mancuso and this is Sonja Traveler. We're from the Vista City Police Department." Angelo introduced. On cue both Angelo and Sonja flashed their badges. They were unaware of their timing. They had been practicing for a couple of years at that point.

"Oh." The woman seemed crestfallen. "What is this about?"

"Is Frederick J. Rios here? We'd like to ask him a few questions."

"[Freddie!] The woman screamed back into the house in Spanish. [Get your ass out here! You have some explaining to do!]

"What? What is it?" They could hear Freddie yell from inside.

"Policia!" Mrs. Rios yelled.

A few moments later, Freddie came into view. Sonja was immediately comfortable with Freddie. He reminded her somewhat of her brothers. He was a thin man with dark hair and a feeble moustache growing on his upper lip. "Hey," He said suspiciously. "What's up?"

"Would you step out here and speak with us, Mr. Rios?" Angelo said.

"Naw, I'd rather not." Freddie said.

His mother slapped him firmly across the back of the head. "[You cooperate with the Police or I'll beat your eyes out!]" She shrieked "[What have you done now!?]"

"Maaaaamaaaa!" Freddie whined.

She slapped him again.

Freddie ducked out onto the porch to escape the lighting quick slapping hand of his mother. Angelo and Sonja didn't blame him.

"Where were you at 2 am this morning?" Angelo asked him.

"Huh?" Freddie was still watching for a slap from his mother. "I was consulting with my client."

"[You tell the police the truth!]" Mrs. Rios shrieked.

"I am telling the truth!" Freddie cried. "Look, I was at 'The Soul Attraction'. It's a night club up on Valley next to the Freeway, right? I was there talkin' to Marlene Summers. She's like one of them four armed people from down South, you know? Anyway, I am representing her talent to various venues around the region." Freddie spoke proudly "You should hear her sing, man, like an angel!"

"[What in the hell are you talking about!?]" Mrs. Rios yelled. "[Explain this to me!]"

"[The singing angel I told you about Mama. The one I am trying to find singing jobs for.]" Freddie said.

"[Huh!]" Mrs. Rios said derisively "[You're no good at finding work for yourself, how are you going to find work for this singing angel?]"

"[You just wait. She's good. All we need is one break and we're going places.]"

"Mr. Rios, I have some bad news." Angelo said.

"What? My parole officer said that it was okay for me to be an agent! I cleared it with him first!" Freddie was outraged.

"I'm sorry Mr. Rios, but Marlene was killed last night, right about the time you went to see her." Angelo said.

Freddie looked at Angelo stunned. "No shit?" Then he grew angry. "Sonofabich!" He stomped back and forth across the porch, "Sonofabich! She could a made me a lot of money! All legit! All above board! When I find the Puto that whacked her I'm gonna..."

Then he caught a clue. He stared up at Angelo "That's what this is about, isn't it!? You're going to burn me for whacking Marlene, aren't you!"

"[What do you mean? What are you talking about?]" Mrs. Rios had a healthy shriek. Sonja was willing to bet she could keep it up all night.

"[They're going to put me in jail for killing the Angel, Momma.]" Freddie said bitterly

"Aiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeee!" Mrs. Rios screamed.

Angelo watched to see if he was going to have to call the paramedics. Sonja pretended to watch Mrs. Rios, but kept the corner of her eye on Freddie. Sure enough as soon as both officers looked committed to Mrs. Rios, Freddie broke for daylight.

Sonja casually kicked out behind her and tripped Freddie. As soon as Angelo caught the motion, he was spinning and whipping out his gun. Freddie bounced down the steps from the porch and onto the front yard. He popped up painfully and was preparing to set a new record for the 500 meters when Angelo said very quietly. "Don't make me shoot you, Freddie."

Mrs. Rios bombed out of the screen door shrieking "Don' shoot my Baby!" Sonja intercepted her and there was a scuffle.

Angelo sidled down the stairs keeping Freddie sighted with his pistol. "Face down Freddie. You know the drill."

Freddie, frozen by a moment's hesitation, knew that running was a lost cause. He climbed down onto his belly.

Neighbors came out onto their front yards to watch the commotion.

Mrs. Rios seemed violently angry with everyone. She tried to move passed Sonja to slap Angelo, Freddie, the neighbors and everyone else. She screamed in a mix of Spanish and English that the police were going to haul her baby away and kill him, all the while cursing out Freddie for going back to his old ways and begging God for mercy on her and her family. Some deep instinct told her that slapping Sonja would get her slapped right back and so managed to avoid that.

Arresting Freddie turned into a circus as the neighbors clustered closer and began to add their own comments to the mess.

Eventually Angelo and Sonja escaped with Freddie, but without being forced to arrest Mrs. Rios.

-*-

The ride on the plane was a new and different kind of hell for Karla. She wished now that she had packed her web belt and equipment away in her luggage, but it was far too late for that now. The belt dug into her kidney. It didn't hurt so much, But Karla could swear that she felt her kidney beginning to shut down and poison her body.

She wasn't used to sitting still for hours on end and that was difficult. Her legs and butt cried out to just move a little bit. It was hopeless, however. The plane was a large tube with seats jammed into it in a sightly less efficient manner than the average city bus. Despite the cries from her lower body Karla didn't move. There was no place to move to.

Karla read the cheesy magazine that was left in the pocket of the seat ahead by some crazed sadist. Who else would think of placing a magazine that was actually painfully boring in the only place that was worse? Karla's choice was to either read the magazine and twitch, or stare off into space until she went nuts and forced the rest of the plane's passengers to kill her out of mercy.

What was worse was that even with the cheesy magazine there was still nothing for her second pair of hands to do. She clasped the lower set together until they became sweaty and distracting. She switched hands every so often, but stopped when she realized that she was experimenting, trying to see how many different ways she hold the same magazine with combinations of her hands.

Worst by far was the tension in the atmosphere of the airplane. People stared as she came aboard in something like shock and horror. No one said anything but there seemed a distinctly unhealthy reticence in the air. After about thirty minutes Karla recognized the feeling but couldn't do a damned thing about it. The people in the airplane weren't sure if her mutation was contagious. They couldn't really put the feeling into words but they tended to lean away from her and attempted to breathe shallowly when they remembered to.

A few whispered conversations with flight attendants grew quite animated but both sides were loath to let Karla know what the discussion was about.

Several people merely stared, curious and yet unsure of what to do with it.

During one conversation between people several rows ahead of her, Karla could see the woman shoot angry glances at her and whisper forcefully at her partner. The man seemed at best unimpressed but that didn't stop his partner from making her point.

"It's just not right!" The woman said bluntly. Then, realizing she had spoken audibly she blushed and stared hatefully at Karla before turning around and ignoring the whole mess for the rest of the flight.

Karla wanted to leap to her feet and ask the woman what the problem was. Wasn't Karla people? Wasn't Karla allowed to fly on their little planes or clutter up their little world? Why not, just for having the correct number of arms?

Karla had to forcefully abandon that train of thought. Getting angry and shrieking at the passengers could serve no useful purpose at all. So Karla resolutely dug into her deadly dull cheesy magazine and forced herself to read one more article about retirement in Sun City Arizona.

-*-

The jet from Atlanta rolled up to the gate right on time. Rebecca and Scott were lounging patiently outside of the gate waiting. So was airport security. They allowed police officers on duty to carry weapons in locked boxes passed the check points, but they resented it and spared no effort to let the officers know this.

Scott wondered if Sheriff Morgan would have four arms and what that would be like. Not too much though. He was a professional and resolved to act like it.

Sheriff Morgan came off the plane. She was a coffee colored woman about half a shade lighter than Rebecca. She was trim, had an athletic figure and was wearing dark brown trousers and a light brown shirt in a standard police uniform pattern. There were patches of the American Flag and the Four Corners Sheriff's department on her upper arms. She had a shiny eight pointed star. She had a web belt with standard police officer equipment on it. She also had a pistol holstered. She was wearing a hat that wasn't quite a brownie hat, but was hard to describe as anything else. She was wearing polarized wraparound shades. She had a laptop computer slung over her shoulder in a professional carrying case.

She was less than an inch shorter than Scott at about 5' 9-1/2".

Scott stepped forward and said "Sheriff Morgan?"

Morgan stopped and looked. What she saw was a man in late middle age with distinguished silver hair, a generic dark blue suit and a Mickey Mouse tie. He was trim and contained in a way that Morgan found hard to put a finger on exactly.

The other one was a shorter black woman with a light weight off white jacket and lavender slacks. The woman's right arm was stiff and hung oddly. The hand that showed was silver and looked mechanical.

"I am Sheriff Karla Morgan, Four Corners." She introduced. She had a rolling southern lilt to her voice.

"I'm Captain Ashby and this is Detective Rebecca Stevens." He said. He didn't offer to shake hands. Neither did the woman.

"Pleased." Karla lied smoothly.

"Let's go check out your luggage, and then we'll talk about dinner." Scott said. "Are you hungry, Sheriff?"

Karla walked brusquely on towards the baggage claim. "Not really. What can you tell me about the murder of Marlene?"

Scott and Rebecca exchanged a look and then hurried off to catch up with the Sheriff.

-*-

They managed to get food without a fist fight ensuing. Rebecca used her cell phone to call the order ahead, and the matre'd met them out on the curb outside the restaurant with their orders ready to go. They swooped up, paid by credit card and left, hardly slowing down. Karla grudged the time.

"You left your detectives investigating the case alone?" Karla asked.

"Sheriff, Angelo Mancuso has been a homicide detective for almost fifteen years now. You won't find anyone better." Scott said. "I'm sure he has things well in hand."

-*-

Mrs. Rios screamed her final scream of defiance as the forensics crew entered the house. Several uniforms were on hand to control the crowd and the unruly Hispanic mother.

Sonja grimaced as the crowd began to make ugly noises. "How much do want to bet that the gun isn't in there?"

Angelo wasn't listening. "We do it by the book, Sonja. Gut feelings are not admissible in court." A half empty beer bottle crashed at their feet. "But I'd have to say I agree with you."

-*-

"Do you have any suspects?" Karla asked.

"Yes, we do." Rebecca said around a mouthful of Mongolian beef.

"How solid is the case?" Karla pressed.

"We don't know. Mancuso and Traveler were going to bring the suspect in when we left to come and get you." Scott said.

"Hmmm." Karla lapsed into thoughtful silence.

-*-

"I didn't do nothing!" Freddie shouted.

"Really, Detective! How are these rail-roading tactics going to go? Are you going to pull out a rubber hose and start beating my client right here? Would you be so kind as to wait until I can get a video camera?" Freddie's public defense lawyer was unexpectedly competent and hadn't let The VCPD get away with anything.

Secretly, Angelo liked that. If he could win a prosecution against the guy, then he knew it would stick. There was just one gaping hole in his case. "Where's the weapon Freddie?"

"I don't know because I didn't DO NOTHING!" Freddie screamed.

The door opened and Sonja came in with a piece of paper. She looked grim. She handed the paper to Angelo.

Angelo read it. There was no evidence of powder burns or residue anywhere they had looked on Freddie. On the hair next to the scalp, under the fingernails in every invasive place Angelo could think of to look. Either Freddie had received a crash course in forensics, or worse, he hadn't been there when the gun was fired.

Angelo quirked his lips. "Not a damned thing. Are you sure?"

Sonja nodded grimly.

"Let's run the series again. This time let's look also for soap and other evidence that he cleaned the evidence off." Angelo said.

"What?" The Defense lawyer yelled. "Evidence that he cleaned off evidence? That'll never stand up in court and you know it!"

"It won't show nothing anyway! I didn't do it!" Freddie pitched in.

"I'm not looking for positive evidence counselor, I'm looking for negative evidence." Angelo said.

"What?"

"I figure that if the roots of his hair show the usual grime and sweat but no parafin residue, then we have to lean away from the theory that he did it." Angelo said.

"You're going to take evidence to try and clear my client?" The Defense lawyer was clearly confused.

"No." Angelo said sharply . "I am taking evidence to establish the truth. Whether it clears your client or not is no concern of mine. I am after the truth, nothing more."

"How long have you been a cop!?" The Defense lawyer demanded.

-*-

"May I ask you a question?" Karla asked Rebecca.

"Um... Sure. I reserve the right not to answer, unless I'm under oath." Rebecca said.

Karla nodded. "What's with your arm?" Karla gestured towards Rebecca's silver right arm.

Rebecca smiled ruefully. "It's a prosthetic." She held it up. "I lost my original arm about five years ago in an assassination attempt."

"I've never seen a prosthetic limb like that before." Karla said eyeing it closely.

"It's experimental." Rebecca said. "Full production ought to start next year if everything goes well."

"And you're still working as a Police Officer?" Karla asked.

"We sort of back doored Rebecca into the department." Scott answered. "She was supposed to be a technical services and training officer. We just treated her like an active duty officer from the get go. By the time the brass noticed, it was too late to undo it."

Karla eyes Scott. "But she's..."

"Handicapped? Crippled?" Rebecca supplied helpfully.

"Well, yes." Karla hated to admit it. Her brain popped up with the comment that Rebecca was shorter of arms than most people, but Karla restrained herself.

Scott smiled a bit and said. "Well, it's not like we're going to let little things get in the way of talent, after all."

"Gee, thanks!" Rebecca grinned. "A real compliment."

"Oh, sure!" Scott came back. "After all without you, who'd tell us where all the best Chinese restaurants are?"

"A girl's got to have a hobby." Rebecca sniffed. "My turn, Sheriff."

"I stipulate the same conditions."

"You're on. Why are wearing those shades?"

Karla pulled off the wrap around sunglasses and squinted at Rebecca until her pupils contracted. The setting sun was painfully bright.

Rebecca peered carefully at her eyes. "You have two pupils."

Karla nodded.

"Are you hiding them or are your eyes twice as sensitive?" Rebecca asked

"A bit of both." Karla slipped the glasses back on. "We wear them most of the time in daylight back home. We always wear them away from Four Corners. Some sh... normal people find our double pupils disturbing. We're also finding that our old timers are suffering cataracts much more than the normal average. It seems that the double pupil lets in twice the sunlight and twice the number of UV rays."

"And that leads to double the damage to the retina and the rest of the eye." Scott surmised. "You must have excellent night vision."

"Yes. We have a natural form of light intensification." Karla said. "But it's not worth going blind over."

"Guess not." Rebecca said.

-*-

The sun was well down by the time the big maroon Crown Victoria pulled into the VCPD HQ.

"Look, you've had a long flight." Scott said. "Are you sure you don't want to rest up before you go digging into this?"

Karla shook her head. "I have a job to do, Captain. I intend to see it through."

Scott shook his head. "Your job is to help us ascertain the truth, here, Sheriff. I don't want you messing up a case that my officers have well in hand."

"If they have it well in hand then I'll stand back and let them go. But I have learned that in matters that involve people from Four Corners, it usually works out best for people from Four Corners to settle it." Karla said. She opened the back door and crawled out of the car. "Will we be using this one later on?"

"Yes. This car is for my personal use." Ashby said.

"Good, then I'll leave my duffel there." She turned and walked into the station.

"Hold on, hold on!" Rebecca had to scurry to catch up with her. "This place is actually four different buildings tied together with a maze. Let me show you."

"Thanks." Karla managed.

-*-

The old squad room looked like something out of a history book. A single large room with south facing windows, offices along one side and ancient holding cages on the other side. One cell was filled with boxes and a profusion of old office equipment. The other cell had a small Hispanic man locked into it.

There were three people sitting around in various states of dishevelment. Rebecca, Karla and Scott came in through the carport entrance.

Angelo stood up. His tie was undone and there were sweat stains in the arm pits of his shirt. He looked somewhat ragged. He was the same height as Scott, but looked like an accountant or a computer programmer pulling an all nighter rather than a police detective.

Sonja stood up too. She looked tired and frazzled, but her clothing didn't show it. She was wearing jeans, low topped chamois boots and a billowy peasants blouse. She also had a vest with various Native American patterns embroidered in it. She also had on too much jewelry to be considered really "professional".

"This is Sheriff Karla Morgan of Four Corners." Scott introduced. "Sheriff may I present Angelo Mancuso and Sonja Traveler.

"Hello." Sonja said.

"Pleased to meet you." Angelo agreed.

They surprised Karla by offering to shake hands without hesitation.

"Excuse me." A tired man in a pin striped double breasted business suit stood up. "I am Charles Handley, Mr. Rios' counsel. Isn't this a little bit out of your jurisdiction, Sheriff?"

"It was one of my people that got killed, Counselor. That makes it my jurisdiction." Karla said coldly.

"Well that and the fact that we invited her in to consult with us on the case." Scott said calmly.

"It appears that your case against my client has run into a problem, Captain." Handley said.

"What's that?" Scott said. His blandness masked irritation. This wasn't what he wanted to hear first thing in the door.

"Well to be technical, there's good reason to believe that Mr. Rios hasn't fired a gun in the last twenty-four hours." Angelo said.

"How do you come by that conclusion?" Karla asked sharply. They were in her area of specialty now.

"A microscopic examination of hair follicles shows no residue of gun fire and it hasn't been washed in more than 24 hours." Angelo said.

"Shut up!" Freddie yelled. "I am clean!"

Handley said "Be quiet and maybe you'll sleep in your own bed tonight."

"Not if I have anything to say about it." Karla said. "That doesn't prove anything. He might have been wearing a hat or some sort of head covering."

Angelo shook his head. "No witness mentioned anything like that. For it to stick you'll have to show me the hat. Besides we have dick for motive."

"That's right!" Freddie chimed in "You have your dick for a motive!"

"Do we have to discuss this in the same room with the perpetrator?" Karla asked.

"Alleged perpetrator," corrected Handley.

"And his idiot lawyer?" Karla demanded.

Scott said "Rebecca why don't you escort the prisoner to an interrogation room?"

Rebecca unlocked the ancient holding cell and escorted Rios and Handley out of the old squad room.

"What do you mean you have no motive?" Karla asked.

Angelo sighed. "It's nothing I can take to court, but then there's nothing about this case that is."

"Please explain this to me."

Sonja smirked while Angelo explained Fast Freddie Rios. "Rios went up for possession and assault in '94. That gives him a criminal record and puts him on probation."

"That makes him sound good for it." Karla said.

"That's what we thought." Sonja said. "That's why we went to him right off the bat."

"But in questioning, Freddie said repeatedly that he was trying to go straight. According to him, he was after Marlene to hire him as her agent." Angelo explained.

"Huh? Her agent?" Karla said confused.

"Now, Marlene refused, but Freddie was stubborn. He tried to line up jobs for her anyway. He figured that he would really prove his qualifications for the job if he was able to lay a good paying gig in front of Marlene." Angelo said.

"But Marlene refused and so he killed her." Karla decided.

"Why would he do that?" Sonja asked.

"It doesn't track. He wants to be legit, he wants to represent Marlene and thinks he can make some money doing so. Killing her not only wipes out his chance to be legit, and his potential golden goose, but also gets him sent back to jail for some serious time. Nothing about Freddie Rios suggests he'd do that." Angelo said.

"We're still gathering evidence, but I suspect that we'll wind up eliminating Freddie as a suspect." Sonja said.

"I don't believe this!" Karla yelled. "You have an excellent suspect and you're making excuses for him!"

Angelo spoke softly. "Maybe Freddie Rios is a good candidate. We could probably burn him for it with a little work, but I am not here to find a good suspect and then convict him. I am here to discover the truth. If Freddie did kill her then we'll put him away. If someone else did it, then it's not fair to the real perp, Freddie or Marlene to send Freddie up for it."

"Of course Freddie did it." Karla said. "Wasn't his car seen leaving the club at about the right time? Wasn't he seen going back into the area of the dressing room at about the right time? He was seen to have arguments and conflict with Marlene? The answer to all these is yes. That makes Freddy the best suspect."

"There was a second car seen leaving at about the same time. There is a gap in the time line of ten minutes or more in there. That's a long time in a single shot murder like that." Angelo said. "And we don't have the murder weapon."

"Of course he got rid of the weapon!" Karla said.

"Without the weapon we just don't have much of a case." Sonja said. "You're tired. So are we. Let's call it a night and come back at this thing fresh tomorrow."

"You go ahead." Karla said. She stretched waving all four of her arms in tight circles. "I would like to question the suspect, myself."

Angelo and Sonja hesitated uncomfortably.

"Go ahead and go home for tonight." Scott said. "I'll stay here with the Sheriff."

"Alright." Sonja said dubiously.

"Scott, just move thoughtfully on this one, okay? Hasty action could blow the whole shooting match." Angelo said. He was conscious of the fact that Scott was not as experienced at murder investigations as he. "Maybe I should stay."

Scott shook his head "I want you to be rested for tomorrow." He shot a meaningful look at Sheriff Morgan's back.

Angelo nodded reluctantly. "Okay. See you in the morning."

"I'll call my wife and let her know that I'll be running late and then we'll go talk to Freddy." Scott picked up the phone.

-*-

"Why did you kill her, Freddie?" Karla asked. She felt like a wrung out dish rag, but she wasn't going to let the matter go. One the one hand she was glad that Angelo and Sonja had spent the afternoon questioning Freddie. It softened him up nicely. On the other hand she felt like she had been softened up pretty nicely herself by a very long day including a multi-hour airplane flight.

"I didn't kill her." Freddie said sullenly.

"Yes you did and I'm going to prove it." Karla said.

"When you get near a fact, let me know, alright Sheriff?" Handley said. His jacket was off and his tie was loose around his neck.

"Where did you hide the weapon, Freddie?"

"Up your ass."

Karla grimaced "We'll stay here until you tell me the truth, Freddie. I'm good to go."

"You mean that you're going to keep me here until I confess." Freddie said.

"It's the same thing."

"It is not!" Freddie yelled. "I didn't kill Marlene!"

"You mean the freak, don't you Freddie, the monster with the four arms?" Karla snarled.

"You're the monster with four arms! Marlene was sweet!" Freddie yelled "She wasn't nothing like you!"

"You're right!" Karla bellowed. "She was a lonely, frightened person far away from home, an easy target for you! I'm here to put you away for it! I'm here to bring the truth home and put it on your head!"

"You're just here to burn me so you can go home and show the people where you come from that you're tough!" Freddie screeched. "Well you can tell those bastards in Georgia that Marlene got away from them! She told me a little about it and about how she had to get away! Well she got away! Now you're going to arrest me and show all those guys back there that you're bad news, well go ahead! You don't care about the truth, you don't care about what really happened! All you care about is sending some poor little Mexican away! Breaking his momma's heart! But you don't care do you, Ms. Four-Armed-Sheriff- Lady?" Freddie broke into tears, and slumped down in his seat.

Karla leaned over the table, braced on her upper pair of arms. Her lower pair was crossed over her abdomen. "You killed her because she was a freak who wouldn't let you play your little games with her life."

"Sheriff, one more word and I'll sue you blind." Handley said. He returned Karla's glare with a smug smile. "I'll let you destroy your own case all you want, but when it gets into abuse then you're just putting money in our pockets."

Karla stood up straight and was about to tear into the lawyer when the one way mirror rapped sharply.

Scott stood and stretched. Something about it looked off to Karla, but she figured that it was because he had only two arms. "I think that's enough for tonight."

"No." Karla said firmly.

"Yes." Scott said just as firmly. "This interrogation is over."

Karla locked eyes with Scott and saw that his self possession was unmoved. It occurred to her that picking her fights was really better tactics. "Alright. I'm done for tonight."

"Will you sign release forms for my client?" Handley asked.

"No." Scott said. "We'll settle this tomorrow and the decide whether to hold Mr. Rios over for trial."

Handley sighed and rolled his eyes.

"What the hell, it's just one night out of my life, isn't it?" Freddie sneered.

-*-

They left the interrogation room to find a tall, handsome man in a distinguished business suit waiting for them.

"Uh. Mr. Mayor." Scott said. Uncomfortably Scott straightened his tie. "Sheriff Morgan, may I introduce His Honor, Mayor John McKenna."

"Your Honor." Karla said.

"Pleased, Sheriff." McKenna smiled with warmth and shook her hand firmly. "Captain, may I speak to you privately?"

"Oh, yes, Sir. Let's go to my office." Scott lead them through the maze of the VCPD HQ back to the original Squad room, now used by the SIS.

Karla went over to the coffee pot and poured herself some truly unhealthy looking brew.

Scott and Mayor McKenna went into Scott's office. Scott gestured the Mayor towards the most comfortable chair, the one behind his desk.

McKenna took a seat on the other side of Scott's desk. "Please update me on this case, Captain."

Scott sat down and explained the case in rough detail to the Mayor.

McKenna nodded and paid attention carefully. "So the Hispanic boy, Rios appears to be a good suspect, right?"

"No, Sir. We can't be sure right now, but it seems like the evidence won't hold up on him." Scott said.

"So who's the next suspect?" McKenna asked.

"We don't have a second suspect yet." Scott said.

"Well, Captain I have advanced information from the local television news services. They've discovered this story and they're going to run with it tomorrow." McKenna said.

Scott sighed and nodded, "Great."

"Now I want you to prepare to present a professional face to the press, so I'm giving you warning. I want to see you wrap this up quickly. The longer the press spotlight is on us, the more chances there are for a disaster to come and find us on screen." McKenna said.

"We're pursuing the matter with all due diligence, Sir." Scott said.

"Good. Good. I like that. Now wrap this up and get the four armed people out of town and back to Georgia where they belong." McKenna said. "Okay?"

"Yes, Sir." Scott said.

"Good. Now, I'll let you get back to work." McKenna said. "Thanks, Captain for the good work."

"Yes, Sir." Scott said. In some dark corner of his soul he wanted to strangle Mayor McKenna. However, Scott was a professional and the urge found no expression.

McKenna stood up and grabbed Scott's hand, shaking it firmly. Then he strode out of the office and spoke earnestly to Karla.

"Sheriff, please convey to your people the sincere condolences of the people of Vista City about this tragedy. We offer our unstinting emotional support for you during this time." McKenna said.

"Thank you, Your Honor." Karla said smoothly.

After the Mayor was gone, Scott sat heavily down at one of the desks and rested his head on his left arm.

"I only have one more thing that I have to do before we call it a night." Karla said.

Scott picked himself up. "What's that?

"Where is Marlene's body?"

Scott took a deep breath. "Probably at Vista City General." Scott looked at his watch "Dr. Le Beau is probably finished with the autopsy already."

Karla stared at him in horror "The WHAT!?"

-*-

Vista City General Hospital was an over built piece of 1950's architecture. It rose eleven stories over downtown Vista City and tried to contain every thing a hospital could ever be in one building. Consequently it was only rarely more than half occupied. It has some of the best medical and pathological labs outside of San Francisco and Sacramento. VC General had plenty of room, after all.

Karla bombed into the ground floor entrance and was half way across the emergency room when Scott caught up with her. "This way." He said guiding her towards a door way. The door way opened onto stairs down.

Karla stormed into the basement and walked through old concrete and tile corridors with a purposeful stride.

In a nearby lab lights were on and people were moving around. Karla made a direct line towards the lab. She pushed through the door and was confronted by scene out of her nightmares.

Marlene's body lay half disassembled on a table in the middle of the room. Jars and sample containers held bits and pieces of Marlene's organs. A huge electro-mechanical donut stood off to the side of the room. Karla barely recognized a CT scanner, and magnetic resonance imager and several other advanced scanners lining the walls.

Voices were calling out arcane medical lingo.

"Is that blood work back, yet?"

"I need a another run across the lymphatic system."

"Look at the DSF levels in the blood stream."

"Can we tell that the trauma didn't alter them?"

On screens all over, Karla could see a four armed skeleton whirling in a simulation. It stopped at every cardinal point and a white line extended from off screen into its chest.

"WHAT IN THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!?!" Karla screamed.

Most of the scientists jumped in surprise. One woman with thick, black hair tied into a long braid behind her whirled with a pistol in her hand.

Scott managed to get himself between Karla and woman with the gun. "Calm down. It's okay." he said into the stunned silence. The dark haired woman raised her weapon to high port.

"The hell it's okay!" Karla snarled. "I want to know who gave these people permission to play Frankenstein!"

"This woman was the victim of a murder." The dark haired woman said with a lilting accent. "We are authorized by the law to search for all relevant scientific data relating to the case."

"Sheriff Karla Morgan, of Four Corners, may I introduce Dr. Monique Le Beau? Dr. Le Beau, Sheriff Morgan."

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance." Dr. Le Beau said politely. She slipped her gun back into an almost invisible holster at her belt.

"Who gave you permission to chop Marlene Summers up like that?" Karla said. She felt sick to her stomach.

"Ms. Summers will not mind. But you might if I must treat you." Dr. Le Beau said coldly.

"I'd rather die than let you get your hooks into me." Karla said angrily.

"This woman had two hearts, Sheriff Morgan. If she had arrived to my emergency room alive I would have had to attempt CPR. I would have failed because her internal physiology is so different from a normal human's. If I am to treat a four armed person who is still alive, knowledge is critical. Perhaps you consider my work disrespectful or undignified, but Marlene Summers has been of great help to me, should I be called on to treat a still living person with the four arms." Dr. Le Beau explained.

"None of this was necessary! We have all this data at home! You didn't have to vivisect Marlene!" Karla cried.

"Do you think that I did not look first?" Dr. Le Beau shot back "Perhaps when you return to your Four Corners you'll discuss with the hospital there how willing they are to share this data. No 'vivisection' was done. Marlene was well beyond my help when she arrived this morning."

"Dr. Le Beau, do you have the forensics on the gun shot?" Scott asked.

"Yes, Scott. I have finished this." She turned to her desk and typed a few commands on her computer keyboard. The screens around the room blanked. Then a simulation of Marlene's dressing room at 'The Soul Attraction' came up. Karla's face grew grim at the sight of a two armed mannequin overlaid with the four armed skeleton.

"The victim was standing inside the room nearly at the center. She was about 1.1, 1.2 meters away from the door way. There was one shot from a .45 caliber weapon. The bullet matches the .45 ACP style of ammunition. It penetrated her chest and lodged in the left side heart as you see." The animated mannequin fell like a sack of potatoes " She suffered extreme trauma and shock. She was dead less than five minutes later." Dr. Le Beau said. "The shooter was standing inside the door way. He or she shot Ms. Summers almost straight on through the upper thoracic cavity. He was approximately 2 meters tall, give or take ten centimeters, and fired from the right hand. There was no other sign of injury, struggle or assault."

"Thanks. Do you have the bullet?" Scott asked.

"I have completed an examination of the bullet. I have taken photographs. If you can locate and fire the murder weapon, then a ballistics expert should be able to identify it." Dr. Le Beau reported.

"Can you prepare Marlene for travel?" Karla asked.

"Yes. We will be able to ship her remains to the undertaker of your choice." Dr. Le Beau said.

"Get her ready. I'll be flying her back home soon." Karla said quietly.

"Yes, Sheriff Morgan. Of course. Would you please tell me where I might be able to obtain data on treating people such as yourself when you are injured or ill?" Dr. Le Beau asked.

Karla took a deep shuddering breath. The smell of the autopsy room crawled into her face. "Call Murdock Memorial Hospital. Ask to speak with Doctor Anthony Dozier. Explain... Explain...." Karla's stomach rebelled. Fortunately there was a handy sink.

"Thank you." Dr. Le Beau said quietly.

"You know, sometimes this damned place makes me feel the same way." Scott said to Le Beau.

She looked at him sadly. 'Sometimes it does that to me as well."

-*-

On the way out of the hospital, Scott spoke quietly to Karla. "That scared the hell out of you, didn't it?"

Karla glared at him. "When I was growing up, we were all told that if The Secret got out then that," she nodded back towards the autopsy room, "would happen to all of us."

"You were told that people from outside would dissect you for your secrets." Scott said. "Sounds like a scary way to grow up."

Karla nodded. "I guess so. I don't have anything else to compare it with."

"Well if it's any help to you, you're not alone." Scott said.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Karla asked.

"My right arm is like Rebecca's. A cybernetic implant." Scott said. "That's why I didn't offer to shake hands when we first met."

"Huh?"

"The skin is latex. It's a dead give away." Scott said. "I was a secret prototype twenty years ago. I had to keep the secret all the time. If anyone found out, I could expect to wind up in a place just like that, getting cut to small ribbons to find out what made my cybernetics work. I know what a burden keeping a secret like that can be and I know how corrosive the fear can be."

Karla shook her head. "Thanks. However, I am not here to identify with you or make friends. I am here to find out who killed Marlene and bring him in."

Scott nodded. "Okay. Well I think it's time for you to go get into your hotel room, and get some sleep. You looked sort of gray in there. I was afraid you'd faint on me. Let's come back at it tomorrow when we're both in better shape."

Karla nodded. "Okay."

"And one more thing to chew on as we go."

The arrived at the maroon Crown Victoria. "What's that?" Karla asked.

"Freddie Rios is five feet six inches tall and is left handed."

Karla grimaced. "Tomorrow."

Scott grinned. "Tomorrow."

-*-

The Red Sheep Inn was a generic motel. Among that class it was actually fairly nice but there was little to give it character. Karla walked in carrying her own bags. Scott offered to carry them, but Karla only wanted to get checked in and get into bed as quickly as possible.

She walked up to the desk. A young man was there reading a comic book.

"Ahem!" Karla said.

The young man looked up and froze.

"I'd like to check in, please." Karla said dryly.

"Uh...uh...Oh, wow!" The young man gushed. "Wow, you know I never thought I'd get a chance to meet one of you people! Wow! This is so cool!"

"Thank you. Do you have any rooms?" Karla said patiently.

"Oh! Oh yes! Yes, Um! ... Here!" The young man's name tag said "Drop Dead. My name Is Ralph."

Ralph fumbled out a key, spilling two more and handed it reverently to Karla. "That's room 401. Our Presidential suite." He breathed.

Karla took the key and thought about it. "Would you like me to pay for the room, Ralph?"

Ralph boggled at her for a moment. "Huh!? Oh, yes! I'm sorry. Duh! Heh heh. Yes please." He blushed to the tips of his ears and looked particularly stupid. If Karla had known Ralph from a hole in the ground she might have thought it cute. Ralph was just amazed that one of the mysterious mutants was in his motel. Karla could have been Gengis Kahn for all he knew or cared. That somehow made it almost as bad as if Ralph had refused to serve her in the first place.

Karla dug out the credit card Jim Mosley had given her 17 hours ago. She handed it to the clerk.

Ralph fumbled it into the credit card machine and imprinted it without really looking at it. He handed the card and the receipt to Karla without a hint of awareness.

"So...." Ralph made a heroic effort to sound casual "you're from... Four Corners. Is that right?"

Karla signed the receipt "Gengis Khan" and put on her best stupid look. "Four Corners? Never heard of it."

The young man ripped out the yellow copy of the receipt and handed it to her without reading the signature. "Oh! Ha ha! Riggggghhht. Nope. Never heard of it! Uh huh! Right! And you aren't here, right?" Ralph winked at her.

She nodded gravely. "National Security, Ralph. Say nothing if you value your freedom."

He boggled again. "Oh! Ah, no! I mean yes! Ahhhh."

"Shhh...." Karla picked up the key and her duffel "You saw and heard nothing. Right?"

"No ma'am!" Ralph went to attention.

Karla sighed and walked towards the elevators.

"Sleep well. See you tomorrow." Scott said.

"Ugh." Karla replied grumpily.

-*-

Karla unpacked enough to make it possible to get ready for bed. She didn't sleep well.

The hotel room was generic and colorless, but it felt and smelled odd to Karla. She tried to get to sleep but the strange noises of a new city, and the awareness of how far away from home she really was bothered her, badly.

Karla slept fitfully and dreamed of mad science and the ugly smell of the autopsy room. She had her gun handy, but it didn't make her feel any better.

-*-

The next morning came too early with a call from the front desk. It was a young woman, not Ralph. She told Karla that her ride from the VCPD was there. Karla stumbled around getting back into uniform and performing the tricky task of brushing her teeth with her lower right hand while at the same time brushing her hair with her upper right hand. It was slow and took her concentration. However, unless she did it that way her other hands stood around and reminded her that they had nothing to do. This was more distracting than simply focusing well enough to keep both right hands at work.

Karla went down stairs, half filled with alertness towards her new day, and half filled with longing for her bed in Four Corners. Karla was more than filled with a feeling similar too but not as strong as a hangover.

In the lobby of the Red Sheep Inn, Karla found Sonja Traveler waiting for her.

"Good morning." Sonja greeted her guest. "Sleep well?"

"No." Karla said. "I slept like hell. And yourself?"

"No complaints. Do you think some breakfast and some coffee will help?" Sonja asked.

"N-" Karla started to press forward into her working day, when her stomach answered for her. "Yes. That sounds lovely."

Sonja gestured towards the door. "After you."

Karla walked out looking for a police issue plain wrap. She couldn't find one. Some hippie had parked a flowery, chaotically painted VW microbus in the drive way. Karla looked at Sonja for a clue.

Sonja walked over to the hippie mobile and opened the driver's side door.

"This is your car?" Karla asked, stunned.

Sonja grinned. "Yep. Isn't he cute?" She hopped up into the driver's seat.

Karla climbed into the passenger seat and settled herself.

Sonja murmured soothingly at the VW and patted the dashboard.

"You really like this thing, Huh?"

"Like any man, he won't move unless properly motivated." Sonja smirked.

Karla smothered a snort.

Sonja turned the key and the VW rattled to life. "Hooray! Bribing the mechanic pays off!"

Karla laughed and then sniffed the air of the old car curiously.

"What's that smell?" She asked.

"Marijuana." Sonja replied breezily.

Karla quirked an eyebrow at Sonja. "Oh?"

"It's embedded in the metal. We search it every so often but the drug dog can't find anything." Sonja explained.

"Okay. Why?" Karla asked.

"Why what?"

"Why" Karla waved her hand at the old bus "This?"

Sonja was quiet as she turned onto Valley Boulevard. Merging into traffic she answered. "My original boss demanded that I have a car so I could respond to emergency calls. I was getting by just fine without the car. I live less than five minutes away from work by bicycle. However, my boss insisted so... I got a car."

Karla sounded thoughtful. "Captain Ashby doesn't sound that tough."

Sonja shook her head. "Wasn't Ashby. It was Sergeant Callahan. He's... gone now."

-*-

Breakfast tasted especially good to Karla. She knew she was hungry because it was Denny's and Denny's was never that good.

Over some special with a funny name Sonja asked casually. "How are you feeling, today?"

Karla thought it over. "I'm fine. Why?"

Sonja took a deep breath. "Because you were a might... testy, yesterday."

Karla opened her mouth the reply harshly and then realized how it would sound. She looked deeply into her breakfast as she gathered her thoughts. "It was a long plane ride."

"Have you ever flown before?" Sonja asked.

Karla shook her head. "Not like that."

Sonja sighed. "It can sneak up on you. You're physically fine, but emotionally drained."

Karla nodded. "I think I'll be able to do better today."

Sonja asked "Have you traveled very much?"

"Well, a little." Karla admitted. "This is the furthest that I have ever traveled, before."

Sonja nodded. "Why not?"

Karla looked at her. "You don't know?"

Sonja shrugged. "Nope."

"Well, like it said on the news, until recently the existence of people with four arms was a closely held secret." Karla explained. She was hoping to lead Sonja into remembering the events of the last two years without heavy coaching.

"Why isn't it secret any more? Why was that any reason not to travel?" Sonja asked.

"Seriously. You don't know?" Karla said stunned.

"Nope." Sonja said.

"Well, two years ago this summer, the story of our existence was broken when one of our truck drivers named Cody Macabee had an accident and was rescued by government agents." Karla started.

"Two years this summer? That explains it. I was in Calgary, Canada at a ski lodge. There was no cable and I didn't give a damn enough to learn how to work the satellite. I was isolated from the world media for the entire off season." Sonja said.

"You have no idea how fortunate you are." Karla said.

"Sure I do." Sonja grinned. "So this Macabee guy turned into a media circus, huh?"

Karla nodded soberly. "Uh huh. And when the press discovered that there was a whole town full of us, the Circus came straight to Four Corners."

"And poof! No more secret, huh?" Sonja said. "I bet that was mess."

"We had a number of deaths. Someone took a shot at the President and killed our Mayor." Karla explained. "It was a nightmare."

"The President? You mean of the United States?" Sonja asked.

Karla nodded soberly.

"Wow. And yet when I came back to town there was not a word anywhere." Sonja said.

"Once it became plain that gun battles and assassinations were not on the regular social calendar of Four Corners the mainstream media sort of lost interest. We stayed quiet. America stayed complacent. Soon enough the Ukraine/Russia war brewed up and all the people in the Banana Republic clothing left to find more blood." Karla said.

Sonja shook her head. "I always thought that the short-attention-span press was it's own reward. It worked out okay for you."

Karla nodded. "It worked out okay. That was because we didn't solve the problem in an hour including commercial breaks. Nothing was solved. Nothing really changed. We got our fifteen minutes and then were left waiting for the next shoe to drop."

"But that still doesn't explain why you didn't travel much, yourself." Sonja said.

Karla stared. She wriggled twenty fingers in the air. "Hello? I have four arms. We all do. It's weird and it's a secret. We were honestly afraid that if it came out, we'd be hunted down and exterminated, or locked into concentration camps and tortured in mad experiments. It simply never occurred to anyone that we'd turn out like the Spice Girls. Fifteen minutes and then 'Yawn, what's on the next channel, Marge'! We're yesterday's news."

"Ah," Sonja got it. "But before then, the outsiders were the enemy. Unpredictable and untrustworthy. Liable to turn and get you at a moment's notice."

Karla nodded. "Yep. It hasn't gone away. Just now it's on a quieter one- on-one basis. Sometimes people can deal with you and sometimes they can't."

"I know exactly what you mean." Sonja said.

"Really." Karla challenged. "I don't see your other set of arms."

"You're not looking closely enough. I am a Gypsy." Sonja explained.

"What?" Karla was confused. "What does that have to do with it?"

"You don't know anything about Gypsies?" Sonja grinned. "Looks like the shoe is on the other foot, now."

"I've led a sheltered life. Please explain." Karla said, scooping up the last of her breakfast.

"We're the terminal outsiders. Always on the move. Always viewed with suspicion. Always in a state of undeclared war with the outsiders. I moved around a lot as a child. No school, no permanent last name, no friends outside of the Gypsy community."

"Ugh." Karla said "I'm sorry." She tried to picture growing up without Four Corners around her and failed utterly.

"Well it's not that bad really." Sonja said. "It's just different from what you're used to. And yes, just like your people, we were told that if the outsiders ever paid any real attention to us, then we'd be arrested, killed, carted off to concentration camps, and so on. It happened before."

"Really?" Karla sounded surprised.

"World War 2?" Sonja said. "Gypsies went into the ovens along side the Jews. Our reaction was different, though. We became more committed to hiding and stayed out of 'normal' society."

"And yet, here you are." Karla pointed out. "Wearing a badge and enforcing the law."

"It's just something I do today." Sonja shrugged.

"Oh. And tomorrow?"

"We'll see about that when it happens. Are you done with your breakfast?"

Karla looked down and was surprised to find her plates clean. "I guess so."

"We can pick some donuts on the way into the office, but I would like to move, now." Sonja said grabbing her purse.

"Why?"

"Scott warned me when he asked me to pick you up this morning. The media has been alerted to your presence." Sonja said standing up.

Karla hurried to catch up. "That explains the hippy-mobile."

"You have to admit, no one is going to mistake it for an official car." Sonja grinned.

"Not by a long shot." Karla smiled back.

-*-

"Does your presence mean we can expect more four armed people coming to Vista City?" The reporter asked.

"As Americans we are free to move around the country. I am a resident of Four Corners, Georgia and I have no plans to change that." Karla answered.

"Do you attribute the murder of the four armed woman to racial prejudice?"

"We are working to ascertain the motive for the crime now."

"Do you have any suspects?"

"We are working on several promising leads."

"Sheriff Morgan? Jerry Berry, San Francisco Chronicle. Does this mark the beginning of the end for the isolation of Four Corners and it's people?"

Karla sighed. "The beginning of the end was two years ago. All the King's Horses and all the King's Men can't put that particular shell back together again."

"Then why are you here?" Another reporter barked.

"Was that some sort of obscure reference?" another chimed in.

By then Karla was through the guard of uniformed officers holding the front door against the frenzied reporters. She turned to face them and bellowed "Thank you gentlemen! Now I must get to work!"

The roar in return was deafening.

-*-

"So you don't like Freddie Rios for it?" Karla asked.

"No." Angelo said. "On the surface it looks good but right under the surface it all falls apart."

"So what's the next move?" Scott asked.

"Well there are two courses of action open to us. Both of them are fairly routine investigation procedures. We question Mrs. Arnold and the regulars of 'The Soul Attraction' about the other car, and we start digging into Marlene's past." Angelo explained.

"What? Why?" Karla asked.

"It's twelve times more likely that a murder victim has been killed by a member of his or her immediate family as any other category of assailant." Angelo explained.

"The next most common form of murder is the drunken brawl." Rebecca said. "I don't think we're looking at one of those."

"Don't you think that this could be the act of a person with some grudge against four armed people?" Karla asked.

Sonya shook her head sadly. "It could easily be, but that leaves us nothing to do. With no connection between the killer and the victim, tracking the killer becomes much more difficult and conviction becomes unlikely at best."

Karla sighed deeply. "Well I can assure you digging into Marlene's past beyond the last year is a dead end."

"What makes you say so?" Scott asked.

"Because Four Corners is a small town. It seems even smaller than usual because we're all kind of stuck together. If there was anyone liable to murder Marlene then I would have known about it long before now." Karla explained.

"Oh." Angelo said quietly.

"So why did she leave?" Sonja asked.

"What?" Karla said irritatedly.

"Why did Marlene Summers leave Four Corners?" Sonja asked again.

"Oh, well I suppose it was to seek greater career opportunities as a singer..." Karla said.

"Don't you know?" Rebecca asked pointedly.

"Ah..." Karla frowned. "No. She never told us. One day we woke up to the news that she was gone."

"Did she stay in touch with anyone in Four Corners? Did she write letters, telephone anyone on a regular basis?" Scott asked.

Karla shook her head. "Not that I am aware of."

Angelo nodded. "Uh huh. Then that's what we dig into next."

"You're not even going to double check on the racist violence angle?" Karla asked.

"Sure we will." Scott said. "But solving murder is a game of the odds, really. We'll try to track down the type of car seen at the time and start asking questions of local hate groups. But the odds say that it's someone close to Marlene and so we'll check that out, too."

"And what does that entail?" Karla asked.

-*-

"You want to go to Four Corners?" Moody asked surprised. "I don't know if I can find the money for that..." Assistant Chief Alejandro Moody was of average height, a trim figure, short, bushy black hair and an olive complexion. He was younger than most of the Detectives he supervised. Moody had the schooling and the training to make Chief Arbuckle look good and that secured his position.

"That's where the immediate family lives. That's where the woman's past is. That's where I have to go to dig." Angelo said. "Don't worry about it. I'll hop a plane and go myself off the budget."

"I might know someone who could help..." Scott said thoughtfully. Would Dane Taylor agree to foot the bill for the investigation?

"Tell the Chief that this will get the controversy out of his jurisdiction and away from the local media's zone of coverage." Sonja suggested, only half joking.

Moody sighed "That might work, if I absolutely have to beard the lion in his den. I'd rather find a way around it if I can. Can't you suggest a line of inquiry to Sheriff Morgan and have her people there look into it?"

Angelo and Scott looked extremely uncomfortable.

Sonja looked about ready to say something but couldn't quite work out how to say it.

"Mr. Moody." Karla said grimly. "I think that your people are off on an irrelevant trail myself, but I can't claim anything like the experience in this type of investigation that I'm told Detective Mancuso has. Maybe it's a little spendy, but I'd like your people to get to know this brick wall really up close and personal, so that we can get back on track more quickly and find the murderer."

"Maybe Four Corners doesn't have the same sorts of budget problems as Vista City, Sheriff, but I'm working off of the Vista City budget and I have to pinch every penny that happens by until it screams." Moody said "In short, I don't think we can afford it unless the mayor and the City Council okay an emergency outlay. And that's not going to happen any time soon." Moody said sadly.

"May I use your phone? I think I can find a way around this problem." Karla said. She'd never heard a city official complain about his budget being too tight before. Mike Conners and Jim Mosley regularly returned money to the individual tax payers because the income tax on the Industrial Waste plant in Four Corners paid off so heavily in income tax that the city was barely able to spend it all, even with extravagant investment in education and services.

-*-

"Jim, I have Karla for you on line one." Ricky said.

Mosley snapped up the phone and jammed the button. "Karla! How are you?"

"Fine, Jim. The people handling the case are treating me very nicely and things are going well." Karla said.

"How's the case going? Got any suspects?" Mosley asked.

"No suspects. There was one local who looked good but there's no evidence for him. They let him go twenty minutes ago. The lead Detective says we need to start poking into Marlene's background for leads and possible motives." Karla said.

"What do you think about that?" Mosley asked.

"Well, I don't think that they'll find anything, but we wanted an honest investigation. It seems like it would be spitting in Kharma's eye to deny it when it goes places we don't like." Karla said.

Mosley thought about it. "Did they tell you the statistic that it's twelve times more likely that you'll be murdered by someone in your immediate family?"

"Yep. That's exactly the one they referred to."

"Ah Hell. That means they're treading water and hoping for a break. Okay, bring 'em down and let them spin their wheels in beautiful down town Four Corners." Mosley said.

"You've been hanging around with the tourist bureau for too long." Karla said.

"We don't have a tourist bureau, Sheriff." Mosley growled.

"See? I have been gone for too long. Jim, one more thing. I'm going to have to truck them down on my expense account. Their Assistant Chief says that he can't pay for the tickets to get them down there." Karla said.

Mosley rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. "What the hell? It's only money."

"Thanks Jim. We'll prepare Marlene's remains for shipment and be on the first flight down."

"Right. How many should I tell Marcy to get ready for?" Mosley asked.

"Hold on." Karla told Jim. "How many are you sending?" she asked Scott.

"Angelo, Sonja, Me." Scott said.

"Three." Sonja said.

"Okay." Karla replied. "Three." She repeated to Mosley.

"Right. I'll get everything ready. Call me again and tell me what plane you're on." Mosley said.

"Alright. Jim please call Jake and Danny and let them know I'm coming home, Okay?" Karla said.

"I'll let them know." Mosley grinned.

Karla hung up the phone.

Moody spoke quietly to Ashby. "You too, Scott?"

The SIS Captain replied thoughtfully. "I have been asked repeatedly to try and make sure this thing goes down quietly. Call it a hunch, but I figure some on site supervision might be called for."

Sonja snickered. "Scott just wants an excuse to get out of the office."

Angelo didn't say anything. Usually when a Captain supervised a case directly it turned into a nightmare for the investigating detective. Nevertheless, Scott had surprised him before.

Scott shrugged theatrically. "She's got me on that one."

-*-

The Airport in Atlanta was busy and crowded. Karla and the Vista City officers moved through it swiftly. It helped that Karla knew what they were doing.

In the baggage claim area they met Jim Mosley. He towered over the detectives and shook hands with them all. Then they got to supervise two people from the Airport staff loading the box of Marlene Summer's remains into a blank white delivery van.

Deputy Crenfield was standing next to one of the three marked Four Corners Sheriff cars. "Karla. Nice to see you back."

"Roy." Karla acknowledged. "These are Sonja Traveler, Angelo Mancuso and Scott Ashby from Vista City."

"Pleased to meet you." Roy Crenfield said doubtfully. "Nice of you folks to escort the Sheriff and Marlene home."

"Besides escorting us home, they wanted ask some questions about Marlene's past." Karla informed him.

That earned a cold look from the Four Corners Deputy. "What for?"

"We're investigators. We look for clues." Angelo explained.

"Well, I don't guess you're going to find anything." Crenfield said.

"That's what I said, but it couldn't hurt to humor them. You never know, Roy. We might learn something." Karla said.

"Huh." Crenfield grunted. "Guess not."

Mosley came over. "The box is loaded. Who rides in the black and white and who rides with me?"

"If you don't mind, Your Honor, I'd like to ride with you." Angelo said.

"Only if you promise to call me Jim." Mosley said. "I'm not comfortable with 'Your Honor'."

"Figure about the time you get comfortable with it is time to boot you out and turn it over to someone less comfortable." Karla grinned.

"I'm ready to retire right now." Mosley said "Show me someone else as well qualified to handle it."

"Nope. You're stuck with it." Karla said. "Lets get going. I want to see Danny."

Scott and Sonja got into the back of the patrol car while Angelo and Mosley climbed into the delivery van.

Crenfield got into the driver's seat and Karla got into the shotgun seat and the two vehicles moved off through urban Atlanta.

-*-

Georgia was hot and muggy. If felt like the inside of a green house to Angelo. It didn't take too long to drive through Atlanta and get onto the two lane highway leading out to Four Corners. The vegetation looked riotous, extremely green and made out of broad, flat pieces to Angelo. The setting sun cast shadows and sunbeams randomly though the tree cover. It was actually quite beautiful.

"Did you know Marlene Summers?" Angelo asked.

"You don't waste any time, do you, Detective..."

"Mancuso. Call me Angelo."

"Okay Angelo. I didn't know Marlene Summers too well. I am about twenty years older than she was and the time sort of told. I could identify her by sight and give you a rough outline of her life. But I wasn't privy to any of the details." Mosley explained.

"A rough outline would be nice." Angelo said.

"Didn't you ask Karla?" Mosley asked.

"I did, but she had other things on her mind." Angelo said.

'I bet. Anyway, Marlene Summers was an interesting person. She had a couple of tough breaks growing up. Her mother died in child birth and her father was, frankly, not terribly useful up until then. After Matthew lost Libby he just went to hell. Still lives in a shack up in the hills and drinks himself to sleep every night. Marlene managed to get some sort of life together though. In High School I remember her being the star of the home coming dance. She sang at the dance and brought the house down. That's how we knew that Marlene was really something." Mosley explained.

"What happened after High School?"

"Well things kinda got rocky for Marlene. The town offers scholarships to those people who want to pursue degrees, especially in medicine or science. Marlene was more interested in music and I guess an organized course of study wasn't her cup of tea. We have a radio station here in town, and Marlene worked there for a while. She was the morning DeeJay, and even used the equipment in the station to record a couple of CD's. But she was really limited by our..." Mosley waggled the upper set of hands, the ones he wasn't driving with, "condition. She felt that she couldn't really move around. Dig into the music scene, get to know people, join a band, go on tour or anything outside of Four Corners."

"But you have people with advanced degrees in medicine and the sciences. Not to mention truck drivers and a nation wide business. How is this all handled when undercover?"

"Well, Sir, before The Secret was blown, our truck drivers and outside workers were generally able to hide their lower set of arms. At least temporarily. That, and a few discrete allies in the outside world and we were able to get by with it for a surprisingly long time. Our students do most of their studying remotely, by mail or now, by computer. A few of the allies I mentioned are tutors from the University of Georgia. Our students only had to go to the actual campus for a six month cram before being awarded their degree and coming home. We could usually afford private housing for our students on the campus, so hiding the arms wasn't a 24 hour a day problem. These days we have enough teachers of our own so that we're in negotiations to open our own branch of the University right here in Four Corners."

"But that didn't operate for Marlene." Angelo prodded.

"Nope. We don't force anyone out of Four Corners if they don't want to go. Before The Secret came out we actively discouraged anyone from risking it. The fewer who were outside the less chance there was of accidental discovery. Marlene wasn't that sure of herself. I was Sheriff at that time. She came to me and asked my opinion. I reminded her that if she were caught that it would be the end, not only for her but all of us. I said she shouldn't leave unless she felt certain that she could live up to the responsibility one way or another. Marlene evidently didn't feel like she wanted the pressure because she stayed. Then she hooked up with Kyle Warner and seemed to be on the verge of settling down. She did continue to work at the radio station and sing for us. There was some hint of trouble with Kyle and she broke up with him. Then The Secret got undone and we were all distracted."

"I heard a little bit about that at the time..." Angelo temporized.

"It was all over the media! You couldn't get away from it!" Mosley said, outraged.

"I was in training at Quantico during part of that time. As for the rest, well, I don't pay much attention to the media." Angelo said.

"What were at Quantico for? Isn't that where they train FBI agents?" Mosley asked.

"Yes. I was there for some training in how to handle... special crimes. For a while I thought I might be going to the FBI. As it was, I got some valuable training that helps me with my current job." Angelo explained.

"Ah. Anyway, when The Secret was blown, things went sort of nuts for a while. We had some drive by shootings, a serious media circus, and general insanity." Mosley continued. "When it calmed down again, We discovered that it had been harder on some than it had been on others. Marlene was withdrawn, didn't look too healthy. She stayed at home a lot. She went back to Kyle and he said she wasn't handling the stress to well. He tried to nurse her through it, but it's hard to help people when they don't want it." Mosley shook his head. "Then she left. Up and left without a word."

"Well that gives me some ideas about where to look, next." Angelo said. "Thank you."

Mosley shook his head. "I know what you're thinking Detective. There's no one in Four Corners who wished Marlene any harm. If there was I would have known it. Karla would have known it. The whole Sheriff's department would have know it. Hell most of Four Corners would have known it. It's small town and you can't hide anything in a situation like that."

Angelo nodded. "Of course. However, I have to make sure every step is taken completely and without any hesitation. Or else when we finally catch the murderer the case will fall apart."

-*-

The conversation in the Patrol car was much shorter and more tense.

"So the big city cops are going to come in and show us how it's done, huh?" Crenfield said.

"That's not fair, Roy. They want the same thing we want. To catch up to whoever killed Marlene." Karla said.

"Then why are they here, Karla?"

"We're here to find a motive for the killing." Sonja said.

"The motive seems pretty clear to me." The Deputy said coldly.

"Excellent. What is it?" Scott asked.

"Marlene was killed because the idea of people with four arms scares you." Crenfield said bluntly. "Hell, you people were lynching each other because of the difference in skin color thirty years ago. That seems like a very minor difference to me." Crenfield gestured with the hands he wasn't driving with to make the point.

"Roy!" Karla yelled. "I can't believe you! Does your Momma know you're this rude to guests?"

Crenfield shook his head. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude. A lot of us think that the killing was racially motivated, pure and simple. And now here you are digging into our town about it."

Scott sighed. "Deputy, would it soothe you at all to hear that I have people in Vista City working on that angle?"

Crenfield was cool. "Not really."

"Deputy, I have promised these people our full cooperation. You will cooperate fully and unstintingly, am I clear?" Karla said dangerously.

"You're the Sheriff." Crenfield sighed.

"You damned betcha, Roy. Let's not forget that, hmmm?" Karla snapped.

-*-

"One more question." Angelo said.

"Shoot."

"Why is the mayor of the town driving the truck and manhandling the cargo?"

Mosley laughed. "Force of habit I guess. Once upon a time we had to carefully limit our exposure to the outside world. We had to go into Atlanta on a regular basis for shipments and errands, but only the smallest number of people necessary to get the job done went and if possible, the most experienced at moving around undercover. A lot of the time that was me. This time, out of habit I guess, I picked the person with the best combination of factors to allow for the job. And since I'm the Mayor, no one argued with me about it."

 

-*-

 

The highway almost passed by Four Corners completely. This was by design. There were gas stations and motels in Four Corners. However, they tried to down play the fact and encourage drivers who could to press on towards a better lit town.

The patrol car and then the delivery truck made the turn and drove down a stretch of two lane road into a Norman Rockwell painting.

Four Corners was laid out in a solid grid pattern, of smaller scale than was usual in the late 20th century. In 1912 when the founding fathers of the town laid it out, they had no conception of the social changes that were even then beginning to stir, thanks to the automobile.

The blocks and streets were laid out for people, horses and wagons. Some concession had been made for automobiles after the fact but not a lot.

The buildings were made out of the cheapest and most common material of the day, red brick. Between red brick and poured concrete Four Corners looked like it wanted to be a college town more than anything else.

Then only concessions to modern times were the sodium street lights that were threatening to turn on and add a yellow glow to the town, concrete barriers that blocked the street in front of the old court house and a modern office building grafted into an old store. The main drag of town was now no longer a straight through run to the highway. It made a drive by shooting seem less easy than before.

The main drag of town was appropriately called Main Street and the single lane residential streets that peeled off of it were named for trees or presidents.

The small motorcade passed most of the way through town until the main drag became highway 61 again. There, behind a couple of turns in the road and a gentle hill with the hyperactive Georgia greenery all over it was a gas station and a brick hotel flanking the road.

The motel was called the "Evergreen", and the gas station was called "Marshall's" both seemed to have avoided any entanglements with any sort of franchise.

"We're here." Crenfield said.

Both Scott and Sonja viewed the hotel with well practiced eyes. Depending on how it was run the hotel would either be a dive or a cute place with lots of personality.

The delivery van pulled up.

"You're storing the body at the Evergreen Hotel?" Angelo asked.

"Nope. Marcy would have a fit. We're dropping you off now. The undertakers was back there a ways on Spruce and Main. We'll get Marlene settled on the way back." Mosley explained.

"Ah. Thank you." Angelo said.

"You're welcome."

The detectives walked into the coffee shop on the forward ground level of the hotel.

Scott and Sonja smelled the cooking wafting out of the kitchen. They exchanged glances. "Nice." Scott said.

"Personality" Sonja concluded.

"Smells good." Angelo added.

-*-

Crenfield, Karla and Mosley left to take Marlene back to the undertakers.

Karla handed the detectives a card with the Four Corners Sheriff department number on it and her home phone number written on it. "I am going home to see if my son is still alive and to get some sleep in my own bed. Shall we begin bright and early tomorrow?"

Scott nodded. "Sounds good."

Marcy came over. "Good evening. Welcome to Four Corners. What can I get you this evening?" Her accent was enchanting. Her upper pair of arms made a welcome gesture while her lower set held a pad and a pencil.

"Whatever that is I smell cooking will do just fine." Scott said.

"Fine. I like people who recognize quality." Marcy grinned.

"What if it's possum stew or something?" Angelo commented quietly.

"Then it will be the best possum I have ever eaten." Sonja said.

"Oh."

-*-

From Karla's reception she would have guessed that she was gone for weeks and months. She didn't mind. After Danny was unwrapped from her neck he regained his senses. "What did you bring me?"

Karla didn't realize that she had forgotten a souvenir for the boy until that very moment. "I'm sorry Danny. I was working so hard that I plum forgot."

Danny's face started to fall.

"So that means we'll have to arrange a special trip into town later, just for you and me." Karla said.

Danny tried manfully to overcome his disappointment. "O-okay."

Karla looked around and saw fifteen year old Julie, her usual baby sitter. "Where's Jake?"

Julie looked embarrassed. "He's out with Elizabeth."

Karla gave two thumbs up with her upper hands while pumping both lowers. "Yes! Danny, Julie this definitely calls for ice cream."

"Really?" Danny said

Julie grinned happily "Yep!"

"All right!" Danny yelled.

"Get in the car!" Karla called.

-*-

The next morning came about three hours too soon for Angelo. He woke up anyway. Something deep and dark inside of him called him to wakefulness with the rising of the sun. Angelo got ready for a day at work. Brush teeth, hair, wash, dry. Lay out clothing, dress carefully. Business like, definitely. Tan slacks, light blue shirt, and light blue sports jacket. Shoes carefully shined. Check the weapon. Nylon shoulder rig with three full clips. Cell phone fully charged and in its case on his belt. Angelo felt ready to investigate the world.

First he had to collar his partners.

-*-

"God damned ungrateful..." Matthew Summers griped. It was ten in the morning but he was already halfway through his first fifth of gin. It made him surly. His eyes were red. He smelled of the years and years of bad booze that saturated his body. "I gave her a home! I kept her alive after... after..." A big swig. "Anyway. She was never quite right. Always goin' off t' do things her own way."

"Do you know anyone who might want her dead?" Angelo asked.

"Huh? Want her dead? WANT HER DEAD!?!" Matthew shouted he stood up uncertainly and pointed with his bottle for emphasis. "Only you God Damned SHORTS! Marlene was a God damned ANGEL! Who'd want to kill her? She was a sweet girl. Only you fuckin' shorts! You'll get us all in the end won't cha!?"

"Shorts?" Sonja asked Karla quietly.

"Explain later." Karla whispered.

"I tol' Marlene not to go. I tol' her to stay here with me..." Another big slurp. "I didn't want her to go."

"You knew Marlene was leaving Four Corners?" Angelo asked.

"Marlene was going to leave Four Corners?" Matthew swayed drunkenly trying to take in the data.

"Yes, Sir." Angelo said.

"Marlene's left us?" Matthew's face began to crumple. Tears started to flow. "Why? Why would Marlene leave us? Why would she leave the place where people loved her?" He began to cry, sobbing bitterly. "God damned ungrateful bitch! Could never do things right! Always had to go and do things her own way! Who's going to t' take care of me now?"

"Thank you very much for your help, Mr. Summers." Angelo said. He stood up. "I think we have enough information for now."

"Yeah!" Summers said. "You have enough now! Jus' my life and my daughter!" He waved his bottle around. "You c'n get the rest when you come t' cart me away t' the concen... centen...con... Those God damned places!"

"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir" Angelo said, backing away.

Taking the cue Sonja started to back away too.

Karla stepped forward. "Matt? Take it easy, Okay?"

"Huh? Karla? Y' going to arrest these damned shorts? Hee hee. I didn' know it was Halloween yet." Matthew swayed. Then he became serious. "Karla, get out of here! They'll git ya! I'll hold 'em off. Run girl!!" he staggered off into the shack.

"Oh hell." Sonja said.

"Is he armed?" Angelo asked

"Maybe you should get to the car now." Karla said.

"Good idea." Sonja said.

They two Vista City detectives turned and began to leave. Just outside the door they turned to see Matthew Summers in the main room of the shack fighting with a recalcitrant shotgun.

"Matthew, you give me that gun!" Karla said in a tone the brooked no defiance. Karla wasn't aware that she had learned this particular voice from being Danny's mother for ten years.

Matthew Summer's stared at her in shock for a few moments before giving her the gun.

"Whatever works..." Angelo commented.

-*-

The office was cool after the hot, muggy Georgia day outside.

"The Agency didn't used to have mailing addresses." Scott commented.

"Times change. These days we see ourselves as providing a vital public service. Hard to do when the public can't see you." Taylor said.

"Not being seen was part of our vital public service, once upon a time." Scott griped. "What can I help you with, today?"

"I am sorry to pull you off the immediate case in hand. Our files suggest that detectives Mancuso and Traveler are competent to handle things right now." Taylor said. "I have been asked by my superiors to pull you in for a good, old fashioned debriefing."

Scott sighed. Taylor was right. This particular case was right up Angelo and Sonja's alley. "All of the files and sensitive data relating to my activities are in Vista City."

"And they're on an isolated system." Taylor said.

"I cut the old radio modem out of the thing myself. The frequencies and codes are all old." Scott said. "If you want copies of my files you'll have to send an agent by to pick them up by hand."

Taylor nodded. "Okay. We'll arrange that. Now, onto business."

Scott sighed. "Right. What's first up on your list?"

"We'll need a full report on the Father O'Callahan incident." Taylor said. "I'm sure that it took some tap dancing to explain shooting a naked priest with silver bullets."

"You don't know the half of it." Scott could feel a headache coming on.

"That's why we're here." Taylor replied.

-*-

"Shorts?" Sonja asked Karla.

Karla looked grim. "It's a pejorative term for people like you."

"A pejorative term?" Sonja pressed.

Karla sighed. "You're short by two arms."

Sonja giggled. "I like it. It's cute."

Karla shook her head and said firmly. "No. It's not."

-*-

Merlyn Carter said "We were close all through High School. Poor Marlene. She had such a rough time growing up."

"How so?" Angelo asked.

"Well, have you met Marlene's Dad?"

Angelo and Sonja nodded.

"Then you know what he's like." Merlyn said. "Some days he'd be an angry drunk and abuse Marlene, physically and emotionally. Other days he'd be a weepy drunk and wrap Marlene around his fingers."

"Sounds rough." Sonja said, sympathetically.

"Worse was the money situation. For most of us here in town money isn't a big problem. We work in for the Waste Disposal planet or in the sciences or in some support role, and because the waste disposal plant is one of so very few, it's a money machine. That engine drives the rest of the town. Marlene's dad was too drunk too often to contribute to the town and so very little of the money rolled down to him. And Marlene's the one who suffered for that." Merlyn explained.

"Really? How?" Angelo asked.

"High School is really a very cruel and shallow place. All the kids are interested primarily in appearances and fads. Marlene came to school in ragged, patched clothing that was generally hand me downs. Being fashionable was not a consideration. And I am ashamed to say that a number of kids teased her and rode her about it pretty heavily." Merlyn said.

"What happened?" Sonja asked. "Everyone seems to have a different opinion about her now."

"Well, Marlene started to sing. She joined the choir early on, but in High School she really began to bloom. By her sophomore year she was being asked to sing at church, at social functions and at school events. Then she got a boy friend and things began to really pick up for Marlene. By her junior year, she'd abandoned her dad and was mostly living with Kyle. It seemed as though things were really looking up for Marlene. The few of us who knew her well were very happy for her." Merlyn looked sad at the memories.

"Tell me about Kyle." Angelo said.

"Well, we like to say that underneath he's just a good ol' boy. He likes cars. He works as a mechanic here in town. He wears an old cowboy hat and drinks beer. He listens to country music and occasionally gets into brawls down at Axel's. He loved Marlene and was occasionally jealous of her." Merlyn said.

"And how was their relationship?" Angelo asked.

"By the end of high school it looked like Marlene and Kyle were going to get married. Marlene had a couple of CD's in local circulation and everyone knew that if a machine was broken then probably Kyle could repair it. They looked like they were on their way up in the world. Then all the chaos happened. We were too busy worrying about defending the town to pay much mind to poor Marlene." Merlyn said.

"What does that mean?" Angelo probed.

"Well, you know there was a good deal of fear and paranoia happening when The Secret came out. We were basically convinced that at any times an army of sh... two armed people were going to march into town and burn it to the ground. We were afraid that we'd all be hunted down and killed. A lot of us hunkered down inside or took long camping trips about that time. I have two children and a husband who works at the Waste Disposal plant. He was afraid that if that was damaged we'd have our own little Chernobyl down here. So I hunkered down with the kids and he went to the plant and we prayed, a lot. Kyle said that Marlene wasn't handling it well and that she needed some time alone to work it through."

"And afterwards..." Angelo prompted.

Merlyn shook her head. "I tried to call a couple of times. Either he answered the phone or no one did. He wouldn't let me speak to her. Frankly I think he was a little jealous of the way Marlene and I got along."

"Do you know anything about Marlene's decision to leave Four Corners?" Angelo asked.

Merlyn sighed. "Nope. The first we heard about it was Kyle staggering around town dead drunk, crying that she was gone."

"Did you ever hear anything from Marlene after she left?" Sonja asked.

"Well, yes, actually. She wrote me twice." Merlyn went to a desk in her living room and opened a drawer. "She wrote one postcard from Hollywood and one letter from someplace called Vista City. But that's where you're from, isn't it?"

"How long ago was the letter from Vista City?"

"About two months. I answered it immediately. She never wrote again."

"May I read it?" Angelo asked.

Merlyn looked at him oddly. "Why?"

"It may contain clues."

Merlyn handed him the letter. It was a short letter. About two thirds of a page, printed by a computer somewhere. Angelo would have bet that it was the business computer at "The Soul Attraction".

Marlene wrote of how much better she felt and how her time away from Four Corners was helping her straighten things out. She wrote of how it felt to sing in front of an audience every weekend. She wrote a little bit about meeting the people of Vista City and being pleasantly surprised at how supportive and open they were.

Marlene even hinted that she might come back to Four Corners and visit Merlyn. Marlene asked Merlyn not to mention anything to Kyle especially not where she was writing from.

"It sounds like a happy letter." Angelo said.

Merlyn nodded. "It sounded that way to me too. I was happy when I got it, and let Marlene know it."

"Hmmm. Did you let Kyle know where Marlene was?"

Merlyn looked embarrassed. "I... I had too. Marlene's leaving him hurt Kyle so bad. I just wanted to let him know that she was okay."

"Do you know where Kyle is right now?" Sonja asked.

"No. You don't think he had anything to do with Marlene's death, do you?" Merlyn said. "I mean that happened all the way across the country. Kyle was here in Four Corners the entire time."

"When was the last time you spoke saw Kyle?" Sonja asked.

"No. I will not sit here and listen to this." Merlyn's eyes flashed. "Hasn't he lost enough? He'll never be able to get things worked out between him and Marlene now, will he? And now you want to start grilling him?"

"We're trying to establish the truth, Mrs. Carter. Sometimes that means we have to ask uncomfortable questions." Angelo said.

"Not in my house you don't." Merlyn's voice cracked. "Get out. You're just trying to frame Kyle and get some two armed person off the hook. Wasn't getting Marlene killed enough for you people?!"

"Thank you for your help Mrs. Carter." Sonja said, pulling Angelo to his feet.

"Karla, how could you bring those people into my house asking those sorts of questions?" Merlyn demanded. "I want them out!"

Karla said. Mer, we're just getting to bottom of this. That's all. You can trust me, Can't you?"

"I thought I could!"

-*-

On the way out to the car, Sonja said to Angelo. "Definitely time to speak to Kyle."

Angelo nodded. "I agree. What do you think, Sheriff?"

Karla looked at them for a moment. "I think I agree with Merlyn. I still like Freddie for it. And I think you're trying to prove that it wasn't a two armed person."

"I am not trying to prove anything." Angelo said. "I just want to speak with Kyle Warner."

"I'll see what I can do."

-*-

Scott walked out of the Federal Offices feeling like a wrung out dish rag. It had been a grueling debriefing. Scott wasn't too surprised about that. He hadn't been debriefed by The Agency since 1992 and they had some catching up to do.

The sun was just going down and the heat was abating. Four Corners looked just as picturesque and Norman Rockwell as ever. Scott enjoyed that as he walked along. As the evening wore on, neon was coming up. Scott spotted a couple of hot rods cruising the main drag. They looked very nice. The people cruising had evidently put a lot of work into their cars and it showed.

Scott idly wondered if there was time for him to walk down to the Tastee Freeze and have an ice cream cone. Scott was a big fan of Americana and sampled it when he got the chance.

Jim Mosley pulled up in a gray Chevy Lumina. It looked all the world like a police plain wrap. It even had the antenna and radios like a police unit.

"Scott!" Mosley waved him over.

"Mr. Mosley?" Scott Approached.

"Hey, got a minute?" Jim asked.

"Certainly, Sir." Scott said.

"Well then get in and call me Jim."

-*-

Angelo and Sonja sat in Axel's and listened to country music while they waited for Karla Morgan to return. Karla had insisted on going out to interview Kyle Warner on her own first. She said she didn't want to start a confrontation until absolutely necessary.

A four armed man with a short hair cut and red skin under his out door tan walked up to Angelo and Sonja. He was wearing a simple durable denim shirt, cut for his four arms, work boots, jeans and the obligatory dark glasses. He had a poll cue ostensibly from the game he was just playing.

"Hey, Short!" He growled.

Angelo looked up at the belligerent man. "Can I help you?"

The man was distracted momentarily by the sight of Sonja's butterfly tattoo fluttering up her neck and settling itself firmly on her cheek. Then he blinked a couple of times and returned to business.

"We don't want you around here, Short." The man said.

"I'm sorry, Sir. We're here for a while and then we'll leave." Angelo said.

Sonja noticed somewhat uncomfortably that there were several four armed patrons of Axel's watching the confrontation. Their body language was tense and ready for a conflict. They seemed to agree with the hostile man in front of Angelo.

"We don't need no shorts comin' in here and tellin' us how to run our business." The man said.

"I see. And what's your name, Sir?" Angelo asked.

"I'm John Stanley. And I'm the guy telling you to get out of Four Corners." The man growled.

"I'm sorry Mr. Stanley. I am here investigating a crime. I have to find out what happened." Angelo said.

"Marlene Summers got what she deserved for going out to live in the outside world. Some short whacked her for having four arms out in the world and you're here trying to pin it on us, so you can go your merry way without having to admit what sort of bastards you shorts really are." Stanley said.

"I'm sorry you see it that way." Angelo said.

"You mean you're sorry that I see the truth. You mean you're sorry that your kind has had its day and the next team is here. You mean that you're sorry that you can't just dump poor Marlene's body on us and then wall us away again." Stanley charged.

"Angelo." Sonja warned. She was afraid that Angelo's ego wouldn't allow him to avoid the confrontation. Sonja was good at avoiding these sorts of confrontations. You agreed happily with whatever the idiot said until you could get away. What did it matter what some drunk in a bar thought?

Angelo glanced quickly at Sonja and caught what she was looking at Stanley had back-up.

"John Henry Stanley, What the hell do you think you're doing!?" A female voice demanded.

It was Mollie, the four armed waitress/bartender at Axel's. She was carrying a tray of beers for a nearby table.

"I was just discussing what business these shorts have in here, Mollie." Stanley said to her, with an aggressive grin.

"Well, you hairy ape, they got money and I got beer to sell. Do I have to draw you a map?" Mollie came over and stood by the detectives.

Stanley shook his head at her. "No. Here in Four Corners."

"I don't care." Mollie said. "When I woke up this morning, this was still the United States of America. That means people are free to come and go as they please 'round here."

"Tell that to Marlene." A voice behind Stanley called.

"If you want to be free in this country then it has to start at home." Mollie yelled. "If we want to be treated like people then we are going to have to make it start here, with us!"

"Mollie, there ain't no America for us. We're too different. They won't accept us." Stanley said. "Four Corners is our home and our country. If we don't defend it against these shorts, then whose going to?"

"You keep talking like that, John Stanley and I wonder where you'll be buying you beer next week, 'cause I'll have Axel eighty-six you so quick your head will spin!" Mollie said.

"You can't do that Mollie." Stanley said. "You have to live here, too."

"Are you threatening me, John?" Mollie got right into Stanley's face. "I hope you're not threatening me."

"I'm just telling you the truth, Mollie."

"That's it. Get out." Mollie gestured theatrically at the door with her lower left hand. "You've had enough for today."

Stanley walked out of the bar. "You just remember where you live and how many arms you got, Mollie."

"Don't let the door hit you in the ass!" Mollie yelled.

Mollie stared defiantly as about half of her customers walked out with Stanley. Then she turned back to Angelo and Sonja. "I'm sorry about that folks. We like to think we're a little more civilized than that around here."

"We didn't want to cause any trouble." Angelo said.

"We should be going." Sonja said.

"I wouldn't recommend that right now." Mollie said. "John and his crew are going to be hanging out right now, having resentful thoughts and trying to decide where they want to get drunk for the rest of the night. If you walk right into the middle of that then it's bound to get ugly."

Angelo nodded "Makes sense."

"Where's the Sheriff? I thought y'all were her guests." Mollie asked.

"She's out interviewing Kyle Warner." Angelo said. "He might be a witness in the case."

"Kyle? He was Marlene's boyfriend before she left, you know." Mollie said.

At the next table, Kate McAslin and Billy-Joe Wilcox listened to this conversation. They agreed whole heartedly with John Stanley, but didn't see the point in getting eighty-sixed from their favorite watering hole about it. Now they listened and picked up what Angelo and Sonja knew as well as what Mollie was telling them. After Angelo and Sonja had ordered dinner for themselves, Kate and Billy-Joe left quietly and without fuss.

-*-

The sun was down and early evening lay softly across Four Corners. Scott enjoyed the view out the window of the Mayor's office.

"Wow." Mosley said. " A real celebrity." He shook his head. "Sort of hard to believe."

Scott grinned faintly. "Thanks. But I was just someone with a job to do. It wasn't the sort of thing one did to become a celebrity. Besides. You're the leader of a colony of a new type of people. In two hundred years will they look at you like we see George Washington or Thomas Jefferson?"

Mosley laughed. "Heaven forbid! Any way, so tell me, why is a former astronaut playing cops and robbers in a small town?"

Scott shrugged. "You know Taylor Dane, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"You about what he does?"

"A little. Not much."

"After I left the space program I was drafted into the 'Department of Unusual Phenomena.' After I finished my tour there, I wanted to join a community and put my skills to use in support of that community." Scott said. "I'm the one of the most obscure people who was involved in the Space Program. I'm surprised you recognized me."

"Well," Mosley shrugged. " I can't take credit for that. It was the final question in a game of Trivial Pursuit that I lost about ten years ago."

Scott grinned. "You remember the answers to Trivial Pursuit questions you lost ten years ago?"

"Well, I'm not liable to forget. It was the town championship and my wife never let me forget losing it like that." Mosley grinned back.

"So I'm a Trivial Pursuit question now?" Scott shook his head. "Oh, the fickle finger of fame."

Jim grinned. "It's worse than that even. No one plays Trivial Pursuit any more. So tell me what really brings you people to Four Corners. Tell me about the case."

Scott reported about the case. He mentioned the suspect, Freddy Rios and how he didn't work out. He mentioned the forensics evidence that cleared him. Scott mentioned that checking the close family of the deceased was a basic step of the murder investigator. Scott mention the two cars that were seen at the back of "The Soul Attraction".

"What!?" Mosley said. "Describe that car."

Scott complied. "A 1963 Ford Fairlaine. Fire engine red with a white top. It was jacked up in back with chrome mag wheels and extensive chrome fittings. The license plate was black with white numbers, but the witness couldn't identify the state."

Mosley slammed his hand down on his desk. "Damn! This would have been much simpler if you'd told me that to begin with. That's Kyle Warner's car."

Scott said "We described it to Sheriff Morgan but she didn't recognize it."

Mosley was up pulling notes off of a wall map to reveal it in detail. "Karla Morgan is a genius. She's tough and good leader. She makes almost a perfect Sheriff. To her, cars are 'boy toys'. She can't tell make and model from nothin'."

Scott got up and help Mosley finish uncovering the map. Mosley turned from that task to the radio on his desk.

"How long do you think that it would take to drive from Vista City to Four Corners?" Mosley asked staring thoughtfully at the map.

"Depends on how you do it, and what your endurance is like." Scott said.

"Straight through?"

"Driving as straight as possible, he'd be arriving about now."

"And if he rested and drove normal?" Mosley asked, checking his own thought process.

"Err, two, maybe three more days." Scott said.

Mosley walked over to a radio in his office "Evie? Jim calling, Come back."

"Go ahead, Jim. I read you." The dispatcher said.

"Get me the Sheriff, please."

"Calling now, Jim."

The radio crackled a bit. "Jim? Karla here. Go ahead."

"Karla, That other car at the night club. That sounds like Kyle Warner's car. Can you check the location on Kyle Warner, over?"

"Damn!" Karla cursed. "Jim that's a negative on Kyle. I am at his place now. No one has been here for a week or so. Over."

"Right, well if he was coming in from the west and trying to be sneaky about it, he'd be coming down Highway Sixty-One from Rome, wouldn't he? Over." Jim said, peering at his map.

"I'm out of position, Jim. I am at Kyle's place right this minute with the Dennison brothers. Over."

"Evie, you on line?" Jim asked.

"Affirmative, Jim."

"Call Crenfield. See if he can get out to Highway Sixty-One in time to catch Kyle. Over."

"Negative, Jim. Crenfield is logged out of his car and off the clock, right now. I have been trying to get him, but there's no answer." Evie said.

"Then I'll go get him. Karla you stop by in town and pick up Angelo and Sonja, then meet us out there. Over."

"Negative! Jim you're the Mayor not-" Karla's voice was cut off as Mosley took his hand off the button for the radio.

"Shall we?" Mosley gestured to Steve.

A car roared by outside, its big v8 motor sounding muscular.

"I don't know, Jim. She's right, you are the Mayor of this town. I'd hate to see what would happen if you got hurt in an incident..." Scott temporized.

"In case you forget Scott I was Sheriff around here before she was. I don't think I have forgotten anything important. Besides. What was that you said about being of service to your community?" Mosley had his sports coat on and was already walking out the door.

Scott sighed and hurried to catch up.

-*-

The gray Lumina slid out of its parking space and out onto Main Street. Mosley put a red flashing light on the dash board and pressed the accelerator hard.

The motor of the car gave an angry hiss through its well tuned exhaust system.

"Forgive me for saying so, but the Mayor's official vehicle bears a strong resemblance to an unmarked police unit." Scott said.

"Yep. When I was elected Sheriff, I pressured them to let me keep my old unit as the Mayor's vehicle and to buy Karla a new one of her own." Mosley said. "Just call me sentimental."

He whipped through the turns, passed the gas station and hotel and north on Highway Sixty one.

-*-

Finishing their meal, Angelo and Sonja paid Mollie off and made to leave.

"Are you folks sure you want to leave right now?" The waitress asked.

"Yes." Sonja said.

"We do have work to do. Thanks for your help." Angelo said.

"Just be careful, okay?" Mollie said.

"You bet." Sonja said.

-*-

The Georgia forest was green and seemed soft as it slid by.

"Why are we driving so fast?" Scott asked Mosley.

"Three reasons. Mosley said. He was driving with his two upper arms and had his lower right on the manual gear lever. "One. I don't want anyone to get to Warner before us and maybe warning him that we'd like to speak with him. Two. Did you hear that car going by my office as we left? That's a coincidence. I don't coincidences. And lastly, I haven't had the excuse in a long time."

Scott grinned and shook his head. "That last one I'll believe, anyway. Why the hurry? We don't even know if he's on this road or not."

"If we get to Rome without seeing him, I'll ask Sheriff Manowar to keep an eye out."

As a curve flowed past them a pair of tail lights was visible ahead.

"I wonder who that is?" Mosley asked.

"I don't know but he's going awfully fast for a evening's drive." Scott said.

"About as fast as we are." Mosley said casually.

"How fast is that?" Scott asked.

"About a hundred and ten." Mosley said.

-*-

Angelo and Sonja walked along the street casually.

"See anyone?" Sonja asked.

"Not a soul." Angelo answered.

"My butterfly still showing?" Sonja asked.

"Yep." Angelo said shortly.

"I don't like that." Sonja said. Her butterfly only made itself visible when definite danger threatened her.

"Neither do I. Instead of the Hotel why don't we go over to the Sheriff's office and wait for Sheriff Morgan?" Angelo suggested.

"Sounds good." Sonja agreed. The two detectives altered course for the court house.

-*-

The car ahead of the them was a brown Plymouth Duster. It had fat rear tires and the rear end was raised quite a bit.

Mosley reached out with his lower left hand and flipped the siren on. Scott could barely hear it through the sound proofing of the car. They slid up behind the Duster.

Through a big turn they slowed quite a bit. Even so, the Duster slid and wobbled. Out of the turn, though, the Duster began to pull away.

"I guess that's John Stanley's car." Mosley said.

"What is he doing?" Scott asked. He hated being in the passenger seat during a car chase, but did his best to handle it professionally.

"My guess is that he's trying to beat us to Kyle Warner in order to warn him and keep you from arresting him." Mosley said.

"Why?"

"During one of the drive by shootings we had here a couple of years ago, John lost his sister. Since then he's had it in for the two armed world." Mosley said.

Scott reached down and grabbed the radio. "This is Mayor Mosley's car calling dispatch."

There was no answer.

Scott had to hang on while the two cars entered another turn. Mosley held a tighter line and tried to go inside the Duster. They were neck and neck coming out of the turn, but the Duster again began to pull ahead as the turn straightened out.

"Mayor Mosley's car to dispatch, come in dispatch." Scott said again.

Still no answer.

"Hold it up." Mosley ordered. Scott leaned over and held the microphone up to Mosley. "C'mon, Evie! He's not kidding! Answer us!"

Silence.

"Hell!" Cursed Mosley. Another turn loomed.

-*-

A block away from the court house a black and white patrol unit pulled up next to Angelo and Sonja.

Crenfield got out. He said. "Hold up a minute."

Angelo and Sonja stopped. Suddenly about a dozen people appeared from behind a corner two blocks down. The two detectives recognized a number of people who had accompanied John Stanley out of Alex's.

"Uh, Deputy, I'd sort of like to avoid a confrontation here, and-" Angelo began.

"Then why did you come to Four Corners?" Crenfield asked.

"We're looking for the person who murdered Marlene Summers." Angelo said.

"Then go back to where you come from and look into your own heart. The outside world. The world of people like you is what killed Marlene. If she'd stayed here, where she belonged, nothing would have happened to her." Crenfield said.

"Aren't you interested in discovering the truth?" Sonja asked. She wanted to ask more but restrained herself.

"I already know the truth. The truth is that Four Corners is the only place where I can live free. Four Corners is my home. And I don't want people like you feeling like you can come in here, stirring up trouble whenever they feel like it." Crenfield said bitterly.

The crowd caught up to them. "Have you got 'em Roy?" One woman asked.

"Oh, yes. " Crenfield smiled. "We got 'em."

-*-

A hand stuck out of the driver's side door of the Duster as the Duster and the Lumina slid through another turn. Scott noticed an object in the hand.

"Gun." He warned. Scott pulled out his own weapon and checked it.

Mosley focused on holding the smoothest line through the turn that he could. The object grew a tongue of flame and there was an audible popping noise. The Lumina made a thunking noise.

"Hell." Mosley said. "If you can, I'd like you to return fire."

Scott rolled down the window. The noise of the two bellowing motors washed over them. "Is this trip really necessary?" Thought Scott but he said nothing.

Stanley's gun popped again and the Lumina gave another thunking noise.

"Any time you're ready." Mosley said.

Scott fired three shots at the Duster in quick succession.

The turn ended and although it wobbled badly, the Duster stayed in control and started opening up distance again.

-*-

"You are all under arrest." Angelo said.

Sonja would have yelled but she was used to Angelo by now.

"Surrender or you'll only make things worse." Angelo said.

"That's hard to imagine." Sonja commented.

Crenfield drew his gun out of its holster. Several people in the crowd took guns out.

"Me and my big mouth." Sonja said.

"Are you people more interested in counting arms or finding out what really happened? Ask yourself, what if Kyle did hurt Marlene? Why did she leave so suddenly? Who told you that she was too ill to speak with anyone after things calmed down two years ago? Kyle did. What do abusive husbands and lovers do? They isolate their victims! None of this is unusual or hard to believe!" Angelo said.

"For your people, no." Crenfield said. "I could believe it easily. But we're not like you."

"We're different. We're better. We don't treat each other the way you people do." One of the crowd added. A general chorus of agreement erupted.

"Yeah. I believe that." Sonja said quietly.

"It doesn't matter what you think or believe or say, Short." Crenfield said. "You're on your way out of Four Corners one way or another."

-*-

Scott stuck his reloaded gun out of the window. The Duster was speckled with bullet holes. None of them seemed critical. The Lumina was missing its windshield and making an odd noise in the motor. However, it was still keeping up with the Duster.

As they entered a particularly sharp left hand turn, Stanley realized that he was going into the turn too fast. He pumped the brakes firmly and the Duster screamed turning slightly sideways.

"Damn!" Mosley cursed. He downshifted and steered with his other three arms. The Lumina also started to skid and slid sideways into Stanley's Duster.

Scott's right arm was caught between the two cars and crushed.

Moving much more slowly the two cars separated and slid. Both Mosley and Stanley regained control and began to accelerate away.

"Are you okay!?" Mosley yelled over the noise.

Scott looked at his arm. The cybernetic limb was crushed out of shape. He'd have to undergo serious repair work on it. There was an ozone smell and the arm went dead. "My arm is broken and I've lost my gun!" Scott yelled. "Otherwise I'm fine!"

Mosley did small double take but then had to focus on driving. The engine began to throw steam.

Two head lights appeared down the road. The Duster's motor howled as it pulled away.

-*-

"You're a better type of people, huh?" a voice said from the crowd.

Every one turned to look and see Bodine Macabee. He was an older man with a serious presence.

"Bodine, we have this under control. You don't need to bother yourself." Crenfield said.

The older four armed man came and stood next to Angelo and Sonja. "If you're running people out of town for being different tonight, then you might as well include me on that list."

The crowd hesitated uncertainly.

Crenfield looked irritated. "You've lived here all of your life, Bodine. You're one of us, not them."

"Thank you very much, Sir, for the thought." Angelo said. "But this is a police matter. If you'll please step out of the way." He tried to gently move Bodine out of the way.

Bodine didn't move. "Roy, you idiot. You standing there yakking about being superior and yet here you are at the head of a lynch mob. You look like any other bunch of racist morons to me."

The crowd murmured uncertainly.

Sonja plucked at Bodine's sweater. "Angelo and I are cops." Sonja said. "We volunteered for this and we're wearing kevlar. There's no need for you to get shot, too."

"Thank you, very much, miss. But I don't think they have the balls to shoot me, too." Bodine said quietly.

Crenfield raised his gun to point at Bodine. "It's us or them, Mr. Macabee! You've always said so! Now is the time to get them the hell out and claim this place for us alone! You're either for us, or you're against us!"

Angelo's gun appeared in his hand. "Don't do it!" He pointed it at Crenfield.

Crenfield shifted his aim slightly to point his gun at Angelo "Drop the gun, Short!"

-*-

The two cars screamed down the road at the oncoming car.

The Duster was ahead and pulling away.

"It doesn't matter! He can beat by ten seconds if it's that important to him!" Mosley yelled "Then we'll arrest them both!"

Stanley took another shot at the Lumina. Instead of making a thunking noise like all the other hits, this impact made a banging noise. The steering wheel jerked to the left and the Lumina slewed sickeningly to the side.

Steve held on for dear life as the mayor's car slid sideways. Then the leading wheel dug in and the car flipped into the air...

-*-

Sonja slowly pulled out her gun and leveled it at Crenfield. "You may win the war, but this battle's going to be a bitch." Her heart was hammering in her chest and felt like she could barely breathe.

Guns were raised and pointed.

"Can you really justify shooting me, Roy? Do you think anyone will believe it?" Bodine asked.

Crenfield resumed his aim at Bodine. "Us or them!"

Angelo stepped in front of Bodine. "Don't shoot the civilian."

"Shut up!"

"Shoot him and you'll have to shoot me too." Mollie the waitress from Axel's said. She walked through the crowd and stood next to Angelo and Sonja.

"Please leave!" grated Angelo. "Please get away and take cover!"

"Why should we?" Bodine asked.

"Because I'm not doing my job if you get shot, Mr. Macabee!" Angelo was as close to shouting as Sonja had ever heard him get.

Bodine turned to Crenfield. "See?"

Two more people appeared at the edge of the crowd.

Cody Macabee and his fiancé‚ Dr. Teresa St Thomas joined them. "Us, too, Roy."

"No!" Roy yelled.

"Yeah!" Angelo seconded. "Get the hell out of the way! Do you want to get shot?!"

"Short loving bastard! This is all your fault anyway!" Crenfield raged at Cody "If you'd hadn't crashed then none of this would have ever happened!"

"But it did happen. You can't put the genie back in the bottle Roy." Cody said.

"I bet that crash wasn't even an accident! What did you do, meet your short lover there and offer her us in order to make her career?" Crenfield yelled.

"Roy, you've got this weird idea that we could live without the two armed people." Bodine said.

"Why not? We did it for fifty years. Nobody knew! Nobody bothered us! We were safe! We knew what might happen so we stayed quiet and we were safe!" Crenfield said. "Until you ended it!"

-*-

Scott managed to undo his seat belt with his left hand. Once more he reminded himself to practice doing more things with his only remaining natural hand.

"Jim! Jim, Are you alright?" Scott called. No answer. He laboriously turned around in the upside down passenger seat and saw Mosley hanging limply by his seat belt straps. "Jim! Mr. Mayor!

Reaching over with his left hand was a challenge, but Scott managed it. He felt for a pulse. There was one. It was good and strong. Good. Maybe the Mayor would survive this. Scott shook Mosley roughly.

"JIM! WAKE UP!" Scott bellowed at the top of his lungs. No response. "Problem." Scott said to himself. He looked at the way Mosley was arranged in the seat. Unconsciousness could result from a head injury. Scott realized that if he managed to unbuckle Mosley working with only one arm, then the four armed man would fall immediately onto his head. "Not good." Scott spoke to himself.

The only thing to do was to try and get help.

Scott wriggled free and began to exit the car.

-*-

"Is that what you think? Do you honestly believe that we lived in some splendid isolation before?" Bodine said harshly. "You couldn't be more wrong, Roy!"

"Huh! You mean I was daydreaming the first twenty five years of my life?" Roy sneered.

"From the beginning of this town to the very end, we have been depending on people with two arms to help us out, Roy. Hell Mama Dozier has two arms! Would you run her out of town?" Cody said.

"Son, you can't have four armed people without the two. The two armed people are starting to figure out just how valuable we are to them, but it's not like you can build a wall and have it mean anything." Bodine said.

"Mealy mouthed apologizing for the shorts." Roy sneered. "Eventually they'll try to kill us, old man."

"Then they'll be killing themselves too. Because there is no 'us' or 'them.' The four armed people and the two armed people are stuck together now. We always have been. We always will be. We're like what they used to call siamese twins, Roy. We can't separate out now. It was to late to begin with." Bodine said.

More people were joining the group in the middle.

Frank Swearlow came hobbling in. "I only have two arms, Roy. Are you going to shoot or deport me, too?"

"Mr. Swearlow, you're one of us. You were here in town before this all started." Crenfield said desperately. "You're different."

"Nope." The eighty year old man said. "If it's racial purity you're after then count me in the 'other' category, along with all the rest."

-*-

Scott crawled out of the car and found the world spinning around him. "Must have hit my head, too." He said to himself. He staggered up the embankment to the side of the road. Two cars were pulled over by the side of the road. One was a brown Plymouth Duster. The other was a fire engine red Ford Fairlane.

Two men were standing beside the cars talking in the headlights.

Scott staggered towards them.

As he got closer one of them noticed him and whipped up a gun. Belatedly the other man saw him and started pawing for his own weapon.

"You lose, Short!" One of the men said.

Scott stopped short "Which one of you is Stanley?"

The first one with the gun said. "As if it matters. Me."

"Are you going to shoot me right now, or do you want to hear what I have to say?"

"I'll shoot you when I feel like it." Stanley sneered.

"Shoot him now, John." The other one said.

"What's important to you, Mr. Stanley? I thought the lives of four armed people were important to you." Scott said.

"Yes. Much more import than yours anyway." Stanley sneered.

"Does Jim Mosley count?"

"What? What are you talking about?" Stanley demanded.

"Well, you're out here, after a life threatening high speed chase, having had your car shot all up and why?" Scott asked.

"I am not going to let you trash Kyle Warner in order to get some damned short off the hook." Stanley said.

"Shut up!" Kyle said. 'Now he knows my name!"

"You're out here to defend Warner. You're out here to save a four armed person from the shorts, right?" Scott said. His head was clearing now but he was still too adrenalized to feel the pain and the stiffness.

"Yes. That's correct." Stanley said condescendingly.

"So if something happens to Kyle, then that would be bad."

"Would you get to the fuckin' point!?" Kyle yelled.

"Yes, granted." Stanley said irritably.

"You four armed people are badly out numbered in this world, right?" Scott said.

"That's about to decrease by one." Kyle yelled.

"That's part of the problem. If there were enough of us to threaten your kind then we wouldn't be nearly as vulnerable as we are." Stanley said.

"Okay, so that means that every four armed life is precious to you." Scott said.

"Yes. That's true."

"And yet, there's Jim Mosley over there, possibly dying."

"We'll take of him after we get rid of you, if that's any help." Stanley leveled his gun.

"But who speaks for Marlene?" Scott asked.

-*-

Lights filled the scene. Police cars with full pursuit lights blazing surrounded the confrontation.

"Drop all weapons!" Karla Morgan's voice came over the amplified PA system. "Surrender immediately!"

From the other sides of the crowd the two Dennison boys flipped the switches on and off on their sirens. This caused the Four Corners Sheriff cars to whoop a single note like banshees.

"We have you surrounded! You're under arrest!" Karla yelled. "Don't make me come in there!"

Most of the separatist crowd threw down their weapons.

"Can't you see what they're doing to us?" Crenfield yelled at them. "They're turning us against each other! Divide and conquer!"

"You're the one that wants to divide people up, Roy." Bodine said quietly.

Many of the former mob were quietly backing away from the scene and away.

"Four Corners is for us, not you!" Roy yelled raising his gun once more. There was a polite and slow scuffle as Angelo tried to get in front of the civilians and the civilians tried to cover Angelo.

"Roy, I have you covered! Don't make me shoot you." Karla yelled.

Crenfield hesitated just half a second too long. Bodine Macabee stepped up to him and took his gun away. "Don't feel too bad, Roy. You just have a few more things to learn is all."

Crenfield looked confused, beaten and mournful. Tears began to flow down his cheeks. "I... I don't understand."

Karla Morgan came forward. Angelo was surprised and a little worried to see that she carried a tactical shotgun in her upper set of arms, a pistol in her right lower and a billy club in her left lower hand. Angelo was wondering if she could use all those in concert.

She stepped up to Crenfield and holstered her pistol. The she reached up and unpinned his badge. "Roy, you're fired."

Crenfield started to laugh and cry at the same time. It wasn't too pretty to watch.

"Ron, Mac, round up the lynch mob." Karla ordered her two deputies. She turned to Angelo and Sonja. "Your Captain hared off with our mayor in a high speed chase and then the radio went dead. Would you like to come with me to provide back up?"

Angelo and Sonja hurried over to Karla's patrol car. Karla followed. "Mr. Bodine, Can you please go see why the radio is off line?"

"Sure thing Sheriff." Bodine said. "Cody, Dr. St. Thomas, you're deputies, now. Let's go see what's up in the courthouse."

"Oh, boy!" Cody rolled his eyes "Look whose on duty again! Sheriff Macabee will clean up the town!"

"Just until I get back!" Karla yelled. "And alert the Hospital to get an ambulance down Highway Sixty-One!"

She leapt into her patrol car and tore off to the North.

-*-

"Your outside world killed Marlene, Short. She should never have left." Stanley said. "And you should have never come here."

"Look at Warner's gun." Scott pointed. "It's a Colt m1911 A1, by the look of it. That exactly the same caliber as the weapon that killed Marlene. Millions of those types of guns are floating around. Ask yourself if he would let us test fire the gun to make sure. All it would take would be one bullet to say yes or no."

"I am not listening to your lies, Short." Stanley said.

"Why is this so hard to believe?" Scott asked. "Where has Warner been for a week?"

"Shut up now! Or I'll kill you!" Kyle screamed.

"We're better than you." Stanley said. "We don't have crime and murder and drugs the way you do."

"No violence either?" Scott asked.

"No."

Scott pointed back at the wreck of the Lumina. "But there's Jim Mosley. Your bullets put him in the ditch. You fired on him and may have already killed him. If you could do it, why not Warner?"

Stanley grimaced at Scott. "It's his fault! He's the one that sided with you shorts!"

"If he hadn't done that, you wouldn't have had to shoot him?" Scott asked.

"Uh..."

"And so what did Marlene do that made Warner have to shoot her the same way?"

"She should never have left me!!" Kyle yelled. "We were happy and she had to fuck it all up and move into the outside world! We were happy!!"

"Marlene wasn't really happy though, was she?" Scott asked.

"Shut up, Kyle." Stanley said.

"She had some bad ideas. We were workin' on those. Her place was by my side, makin' my children and keepin' my house. That's the way it's supposed to be." Kyle said. "We were workin' on it."

"But Marlene wanted to sing." Scott said.

"Shut up!" Stanley yelled. He wasn't sure if he was yelling at Kyle or Scott.

"God dammit!" Kyle yelled. "She belonged at home takin' care of me! She belong with me! She was MINE!"

"Tell me about what it was like when she left." Scott said.

"Shut the fuck up, Short!" Stanley threatened Scott with his gun.

"You're supposed to be the superior man, Stanley. How superior can you possibly be if you can't look at the truth?" Scott said.

"I'll put you right down, Short!"

"You're right!" Kyle yelled. "We don't need to take no shit from this short!" He raised his gun.

Stanley looked at him for a moment.

Kyle looked back "Well, aren't you going to shoot him?"

"You got a gun. Why didn't you shoot?" Stanley raised his gun to high port.

"Well," Kyle thought quickly. "I thought this one was, like, your shot, you know?"

Stanley stared hard at Kyle for a few moments.

"What?" Kyle demanded.

Stanley looked back at Scott. "You're pretty brave for a man with no gun."

Scott shook his head. "No. It's just that the truth is all I have left now. The only way my wife and kids will ever see me again is if you open your eyes to the truth."

Stanley looked grim.

"That's real tough." Kyle said. "Real tough." He raised his gun.

"Where have you been, Kyle?" Stanley asked.

"What? Don't tell me that you're starting to listen to this crap."

"I'm not listening to anything, Kyle. I am asking for a truthful answer, now. Where have you been?"

"Nowhere. Nowhere, man. I went hunting out in the woods. Nowhere near California." Kyle said.

Stanley looked at him sharply. "Who said anything about California?"

"Uh, it was his accent!" Kyle pointed at Scott with his chin.

"Funny," Scott said. "I grew up in Colorado."

"Shut the fuck up, Short!!" Kyle screamed.

"God above, you did it, didn't you?" Stanley said.

"She shouldn't have left, John. Hell you said it yourself. Marlene had no business in the outside world." Kyle said.

"When did I say you should kill her, Kyle?" Stanley's face grew hard.

"If she had stayed with me, nothin' woulda happened to her! Her place was with me, not out there singing to a buncha damned shorts!" Kyle yelled.

"We don't kill each other, Kyle. We were supposed to be better than that!" Stanley bellowed.

"What in the fuck was my life worth without her, John? She said she'd stay, and then she left! And I couldn't stop thinkin' about her out there, singin' to 'em, talkin' to 'em, maybe fuckin' a couple of 'em..." Kyle's face grew distant and hateful. "She was mine! Mine! She belonged with me and nobody else! Nobody!"

"Jesus, you hit her, didn't you?" Stanley said. It was as though a veil had been pulled from his eyes. "You hit her and no one listened so she had to leave."

"She didn't belong on no stage displaying herself to everybody!" Kyle screamed "Those days were OVER! She was MINE and she belonged to ME!" Kyle looked at Scott and raised his gun again. "It's us against them John! The shorts want to take everything away from us, you said so yourself! They started with Marlene but I didn't let 'em get away with it. I stopped 'em. Now we just hafta plug one short and it's a done deal. Four Corners one, Shorts zero."

"No, Kyle." Stanley said. He raised his gun to point at Kyle Warner. "Put down the gun. You're done here, tonight."

Kyle stared at Stanley in naked shock. "I can't believe it. You're going to believe some damned short before one of your own kind!?"

"Marlene was one of my kind, too." Stanley growled.

"No she WASN'T! She left us! She left me! She made the decision to go live like a short! That made her like one o' them or less because she betrayed us!" Kyle yelled waving his gun around.

Scott started to slide to the side slowly.

"Who betrayed who, Kyle? Marlene just left, but you've killed one of us." Stanley said. "Now put down the goddamed gun!"

"I never thought I'd live to see the day John Henry Stanley would betray one of his own on the word of a Short!" Kyle raged.

"I guess it just boils down to the truth, doesn't it, Kyle?" Stanley said. "I ain't asking you again..."

"Sonofabitch!" Kyle screamed, bringing his gun around.

Scott dove for cover as two shots rang out.

-*-

The Macabees discovered that Roy Crenfield had "kicked the plug" on the dispatch radio at the city hall in order to give Stanley the leeway to get to Kyle without any FCSD backup interfering. The fault was easily repaired and soon patrol cars and ambulances were being routed where they needed to be.

-*-

Jake Morgan looked up as someone entered the radio station. He was surprised to see a two armed person enter the building. It was the man with the black hair.

Jake wondered what he was doing there. "May I help you, Sir?"

"Yeah." Angelo said. "I'm told that you have Marlene Summers' CDs here for sale."

Jake had mixed emotions. On the one hand, he was jealous of the best singer to come out of Four Corners so far. He wanted to say "No. She belongs to us."

On the other hand, Jake was overjoyed to see that someone from the outside was interested in what was going on in Four Corners. It was a sort of vindication.

On the third hand, Jake was curious. He went with that one. "How did you happen to hear of Marlene Summers, Mister..."

"Mancuso. Angelo Mancuso." Angelo reached out to shake hands. "The fact of the matter is that I just missed meeting her. And from what the people close to her say, she had a voice like an angel."

Jake nodded "It would be a lucky angel to have that voice." He reached into his desk and pulled out three CD's. They were done in the digital studio attached to the radio station and featured an eclectic mix of covers and original material. Marlene had crossed genre lines casually and fearlessly on those CD's. They would wind up being her legacy. Jake decided to go ahead and blow more production CD's. "That'll be $26.89." Jake said.

Angelo flipped out a well used gold card. "Thanks."

"Just do us a favor and play 'em loud so your neighbors can hear." Jake said.

"Can I have your address? That way friends of mine back home can order copies of their own if they want them." Angelo said.

"A pleasure doing business with you, Sir." Jake grinned. It wouldn't occur to him until later that he didn't know what to do with Marlene's share of the money.

-*-

"Have you spoken to Jim?" Scott asked. His damaged arm was in a sling. He'd have to go to see a specialist to get it repaired.

"Just a few minutes ago. He's doing fine and said he's sorry to see you go." Karla said.

"What's going to happen to John Stanley?" Scott asked.

"Well according to your account the shooting was pure self defense. I don't think we're going to charge him with that. But he is probably going to do some time for shooting at the Mayor and a guest police officer." Karla said.

"How about the people in town?" Angelo asked.

"Some of them have been arrested for incitement to riot and disorderly conduct. We'll hold a hearing soon to decide how to charge Roy for threatening you." Karla said. "All of that is in the hands of the court system now. I just gather the evidence and present it."

"I can't say that my trip has been an unadulterated pleasure," Sonja said, "But I'd like to come back some day and play tourist."

"You'll get the chance. You'll probably be called to testify about what happened in town." Karla said.

"Great." Angelo said. "Not that I didn't like your town or anything. It was just bad for my blood pressure."

"Don't worry. I can guarantee that your next trip will be quieter." Karla grinned.

"Don't make any promises you can't keep." Sonja said knowingly.

"Flight 243 for San Francisco now boarding." The PA said.

"That's us. Time to go." Angelo said.

"Nice to meet you, Sheriff. See you again." Sonja said.

"Before I go, I'd like to invite you and your son to come out to Vista City for an informal visit." Scott said. "As it happens my family has lifetime passes to Disneyland and we're overdue for a visit. I'd like to show you that the outside world isn't all that bad."

Karla boggled "Life time passes? How did you get those?"

"Well at one time my wife and I helped Disney Security with a sticky problem-" Scott began.

"Captain!" Sonja called.

"But that's a story for another time. Goodbye, Karla." Scott turned and walked towards the plane. "See you again soon."

"I wouldn't miss it!" Karla said.

-end-