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."