Suppositions: Continued iv

"We found the bullet impacts, and recovered some metallic particles, that we can only surmise are bullet fragments, from within the alley. Three stories up to be exact. But unfortunately, there was not nearly enough evidence to account for the six thousand spent casings that were recovered from the alley floor."

"Six thousand?" Felicity asked with open mouth. "How is that possible?"

"Oh, it's quite simple, my dear," Gerald explained with all apparent seriousness "several men, equipped with varying types of firearms, depressed the triggers of said weapons and continued to fire until they were out of ammunition. And we can safely deduce that they reloaded those weapons at least once; but I speculate that whomever it was did so more than once."

"Calvin was right: it was the Third I.D. and the Seventh Cav.," Isabele said. "The canvas hasn't produced any results, has it" she then stated.

"No," Gerald gave his lieutenant the direct answer.

"How is that possible?" Felicity repeated herself. "How is it possible for that much ordinance to be deployed and there not be any witnesses?"

"There were witnesses, my dear. Of that you can rest assured," Gerald stated with confidence, as he eyed the apprentice with expectation.

"Right, there was the emergency call, from down the block," she gestured with a small, soft, left hand. "Due to the nature of the evidence in the alley someone did bear witness to the events, if not visually then at least by hearing. But who was that individual and why where there no others? Why has no one else corroborated this statement? Especially under direct question from the police? I mean, there where others near by, right?"

"Yes," Fletcher gave another small, minuscule nod. "There where three manufacturing facilities in the immediate vicinity who had overnight shifts," he left the statement incomplete.

"And no one to volunteer information," Felicity finished for her boss. "Let me guess, these business are heavy industry and there could be 'absolutely no way for anyone within the buildings to hear what was transpiring without'" she cocked her head to one side, her braid slipping over her shoulder, her face screwed up in incredulous disbelief.

"What are the names of these businesses?" she asked her boss, pulling out a note pad and pen from the top center drawer of her desk.

Gerald flipped back through his notes and told her.

After recording this information she opened the bottom, right hand drawer of her desk and pulled out a compact laptop computer, about ten inches wide by eight inches deep. She placed it before her desktop monitor, and the again stalking models displayed thereon, and placed her thumb on the biometric lock in the center of it's cover. Soundlessly the paper thin cover slid upwards and down upon the desktop and the holographic display came alive. The display was as large as her desktop monitor: seventeen inches wide by fifteen tall. And as it came to life, the prancing models vanished from her sight. Something in the tech prevented bleed-through so that the laptop's Holographic Heads Up Display was just as secure and private as the antique LCD flip-tops and their Direct View Only tech. No image could be seen through the H-H.U.D. and nothing displayed upon it could be seen unless you were directly in front of it.

Felicity pulled a tiny cable out of the right side of the laptop and with a CLICK CLICK plugged it into the small docking station at the base of her desktop's monitor.

This was one of four hubs that allowed access to the outside world. Though the four desk computers in the room where inseparably linked together, they stood completely autonomous from the rest of the universe. They were a closed system. No external access was permitted, or even possible. All data provided by "outside" sources had to be manually transferred into the Task Force's system. After it had been scanned and approved. And if a worm or a bug ever did burrow it's way into this private galaxy it would be trapped there. For data, once admitted, was never allowed out.

Fletcher Gerald was adamant upon this fact. Calvin Harper was resolute in implementing this policy and perfect in enforcing it.

The net came alive with a single BEEP and Felicity, brushing her fingers over the keyless keyboard, began to dive through the net, digging up as much data on these three companies as her certifiable police I.D. would permit, which was considerably more than any layman would ever be allowed to access.

The phone on Isabele's desk jangle though the soft hum of the now awake, if only groggily, office.

It was an archaic rotary phone with an actual physical bell, and it brought another small smile to Gerald's face.

He watched the woman pick up the receiver with her right hand, without lifting her head from where it rested on her standing left fist which in turn rested on the desk top.

"Yeah," her voice was strong, free of any sounds of sleep. "Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay. Thanks Greg. Send me the rest when it's finalized. Thanks for the heads up. I owe you one. No. No. I mean it. Yeah, so I still owe you for last time. You're banking credits," and then she laughed, at something "Greg" said, a soft, warm, genuine laughter, void of any flirtation.

She re-cradled the receiver and sitting up straight turned towards her colleagues. "Greg, down at the lab," she explained "thought that we would like to know that what Van Hollen found in the crater was blood. The reason why she couldn't get a definite result on the field equipment is because it was loaded with a synthetic protein, and, wait for it, nanobytes."

Suppositions, Continued iii

He turned back to his papers and shuffled them around a little. They had nothing to do with the current case, but the urge had struck him suddenly. He slowly put them back into the order that they had been in before he had decided to look at things "backwards." That hadn't helped either. They would have to wait now. Again. It was a shame. She had been waiting for too long.

He pressed the giant four point paper clips back onto each edge of the papers and photos, placed them in turn into the file folder marked Cain, Terresa, and then slipped the whole bulky package into an oversized manila envelope with a white three by five file registry and a red string tie on the flap. He rubbed the date on the file registry gently, almost wistfully, before placing it back with its twelve brothers and sisters. Each file register stared up at him like the pleading faces of abused children.

He shut that thought out of his mind. No matter how much he did, it would never be enough.

He cleared a little spot in the center of his desk and taking a yellow legal pad began to write down, in small, mechanically concise print, everything that he had seen in the alley off of Production St.

He was on his fourth page when they began to arrive.

The two girls were first. Flipping the completed page over and placing his pen precisely at the top of the pad, he swiveled his head up, in recognition of the women's entrance and also to observe their behavior.

Fellcitous Tidings, as he thought of her, came clipping crisping into the room. She had removed her leggings and exchanged her oft questioned boots for sleak, black, closed toed pumps. Designer, if he knew her. And he did. Her handbag was over her left shoulder and she held it in place with her left hand, her right swinging at her hip, wrist bent out slightly. He was certain that she was unaware of this posture. Or perhaps she wasn't. The thought entered his mind for the first time and he looked at her face intently.

"Mr. Gerald, good evening," she beamed at him a perfectly strait, brilliantly white smile. It was infectious. He had to return it as best he could: the corners of his mouth turned up.

Moments behind her, Isabele came schlepping in, like a marionette in the hands of an exhausted amateur. Her face was haggard, limp, like a wax bust that had been placed to close to a candle. Her eyes where deep pools of charcoal, like void sockets in a high-school science teacher's desk skull. She sagged into her chair and smiled wanly at the sleeping screen saver, wistfully touching the animated puppy.

"Lab boys call, Boss?" she asked Gerald without looking in his dirrection as she disturbed the screen saver and brought her system alive (He could see the reluctance in her action).

"No," he looked at his watch. The boy must have had some success, he then thought as he looked at the office door. "But we knew that."

"Yes, we did," Isabele answered as she closed her top desk drawer and successfully lit her first cigarette in fifteen hours and blew smoke towards the atmo-recycler at the center of the ceiling. She leaned back in her chair and hung her hands limply off the arm rests, her head dangling back. Gerald leaned forward slightly, fingers on the frayed edge of his desk, preparing to speak, preparing to send this vital memember of his family home.

"Must you do that?" Felicity snapped.

Gerald leaned back, scarcely an inch, to his previous position and cleared his throat, softly, in a fashion that would not make it past Felicity's desk, what with the soft wirring of computers coming to life and chairs creaking and groaning.

The young woman's head snapped around, her face instant, soft attention.

Gerald shook his head slightly, almost imperceptibly. The young woman took the hint, drew a deep breath and, he could tell, thought twice about sighing. She turned back to her system, drawing out a docking station from a side drawer of her desk, and connected her digital camera and borrowed gpsloc.

Isabele didn't respond; immediately. She reached up with her left hand and undid the sloppy knot on the top of her head and with a combination of combing fingers and small shakes of the head, sent the tresses flowing to the floor.

Gerald had never seen a more beautiful head of black hair. It came from her mother's side. As did her name. But he noted, with detached curiosity, that the gray was getting more pronounced at her temples. It had only just began to shift in the last six months. That was the first time that he had noted a few silver strands. That was when she had started smoking again. But now, small, localized cells of five or six silver strands were marching across her scalp line, begining to make an inroad assault down the center of her skull.

Has it been that long? He wondered to himself. Yes. Six years. And she wasn't a rookie when she asked to join.

"Don't worry, Van Hollen," Isabele interrupted his thoughts "it won't get on your clothes," and she puffed another cloud at the recycler which quickly sucked it into the purger's scrubbing chamber. "If only it were that easy," the woman mumbled to herself. It wasn't that he heard Isabele say these last words, most definitely Felicity had not or she would have rejoined, but he read her lips.

He picked up his pen and continued recording his data.

Three packed pages later he set his pen back down and looked back upon his two subordinates.

"There was new evidence discovered in the alley," he spoke softly.

Both women quickly turned to him: Van Hollen's expression was eager surprise; Smith's was desensitized overload, as she lit a new cancer stick from her first before crushing the stub out in a plastic cup.

"Gun shot impacts," he said in response to their expectancy.

"Where?" Smith coughed in her refreshingly blunt fashion.

"I'm confused, Sir," Felicitous Tidings volunteered "We search every square inch of that alley, didn't we?"

"Yes" he raised the corners of his mouth "and no."