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."

Supositions: Continued ii

If you went to the police station and approached the desk clerk and said "I'd like to speak to Fletcher Gerald or a member of his team" the officer on duty would have probably stared at you blankly and said "Who?" It was true. Even though he was one of the oldest officers still on active duty, and he was favored by the Captain and quite a few big muckety-mucks at City Hall, he was virtually unknown by those who didn't get out in the field. And then not many of those field officers could have told you his name. He was a living urban legend: his name sounded vaguely familiar but was soon forgotten by more urgent things. Of course there were a few detectives who remebered that his existance was fact and who were brave enough to take the long trek to the basement whenever they were faced with a particularly challenging case. But not many were that willing to admit such a weakness.

He never entered through the front door. Always the secondary fire access located at the back of the basement parking garage. Down the long, empty, sterile, white hall to the door marked Records Review Annex. He was never called up to the chief's office. Joan always came to him.

Whenever a media camera would appear at a scene, when there was a scene, he would turn and walk away. He was never at a press conference. And the brass had long given up trying to make him, or his team, give any statements. "It's none of their business," he had mumbled the last time when Joan had pleaded for "something, anything! Just wave at them once in a while, Fletch. Fine. If you won't do it, then Calvin will. They'll eat him up!" "Exactly," he had mumbled. "I need Calvin here. On this planet." "I could order him." Joan had declared without any heart. That caused the old man to look up, a knowing smile furtively perched on the corners of his mouth, high humor for him.

And his "team"? It didn't exist. At least not officially. He was the only member of the group that was even on the city's payroll. His position, as recorded on the duty roster, was: Gerald, Fletcher; records clerk. The other three were funded by a blind trust managed by an anonymous oversight committee. There was no "Cold, Unsolved, and Bizarre Cases Task Force" on the books. He liked it that way, though he would never boast about it. Anonymity. Relative independence. Minimal outside control. Freedom to follow the leads wherever they ran, no matter the door they disappeared under.
Fletcher sat at his desk, hunched over the papers that covered the sagging, formica particleboard top. Every wall of the small room was lined with gray, three drawer filing cabinets, slightly more rusty than would have been expected of a government run facility.

He looked like a vulture that had given up hope of ever finding another carcass to harass. His hat sat brim down at the top of the desk, facing him, where he could see it out of his peripheral vision. It was so nice of Cindy to send it to him.
His cheap plastic swivel chair creaked as he leaned back without reclining, elbows tucked to his sides, hands folded in his lap. The lights from Felicity's desk caught his eyes and he focused, briefly, on the fashion models that marched up and down the runway that was her computer screen. Her desk was spotless and bare, except for the stapler and tape dispenser that stood guarding the base of the plasma screen monitor. His eyes flicked sideways, unconsciously, to Isabele's desk, a mountain of papers and binders and post-it notes, ominously threatening avalanche. A puppy lay curled in the corner of her monitor's screen, occasionally stretching himself before wobbling to a different corner, turning three circles and laying back down with an enormous caricature of a yawn.

He smiled at that. He always smiled at that. But he never knew it.

Just beyond the two desks, closest to the door, was a chair, much like a dentist's chair, only streamlined, and lacking that knuckled swivel light that either blinded or brained you alternately. It was a clever contraption, Fletcher thought to himself. He thought that every time he looked at it. But he didn't know it.
It was Calvin's office. At least that is what the kid jokingly called it. "Everything a nerd could need, at the touch of a sensor" he had informed everyone that first day, as he sat down and demonstrated by pressing his left thumb over a receptor in the left armrest. A panel had instantly opened on that side of the chair and a pencil thick hydraulic arm extended out, bending at four all-way servos over his lap, presenting a touchpad keyboard that looked like it had been molded over the top of a basketball. With a stroke of his finger on the keyboard a digital holo-monitor had appeared before him.

Fletcher wished that he had just a fraction of the kids talent and genius. He always thought that, when he thought of Calvin Harper. He always knew it too.

Supositions: Continued

"So, anybody with a hundred and fifty thousand and a garage could have fabbed these?"

"Oh sure," the old man shrugged nonchalantly "as long as the neighbors didn't mind all the noise, you could afford the power and water bill, and you could stand the constant hundred plus heat that would be generated by the production.
"But then you have to factor in one other thing: so you got a variety of great cartridges, and I mean that: what fires them?"

"Right," Harper nodded as the realization dawned on him.

"The entire purpose of a firearm is to deploy a projectile. You know that. This little thing here," he held up a bindle with a small cartridge in it "looks like a nine, but it’s not: somewhere between thirty-eight and nine, and inside, it’s blacker than space. Now, of course it’s going to be black, you’re burning powder, right? But the burn isn’t just collected on the surface, with a little heat discoloration; it’s burned and pocked into the metal and that’s not even brass. My guess is titanium, maybe a ceramic composite. These things are fast and hot. No, make that HOT. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the round is actually burning.
"This big one," he held up another bindle "is a lot like an elephant round; and then you have these" he held up bindle with two casings that looked like D-cell batteries "are a lot like an ordinance round: bean bags, smoke grenades, that sort of thing.
"You add all that up: ordinance, weaponry, fabrication costs; manufacturing constraints and over head and you’re probably looking at closer to five hundred thousand or a million."

"Well, darn," Harper snapped his fingers. "There goes my garage theory."

"Out of the boat, and into the lake," the old man chuckled.

"Keep your ear to the ground for me?" Calvin asked as he picked his coat up.

"Absolutely," the old man nodded his head earnestly as he began dropping the bindles back into the large manilla envelope that they had been dumped from.

"Thanks for all you help," Calvin pulled his left glove on and held out his bare right hand.

"Any time," Calvin caught the sincerity in the old man’s eyes as he shook his hand firmly. "And tell Fletcher that just because it’s his turn don’t mean he can’t come around once in a while. Or at least call."

"I’ll do that, sir" Calvin said as he pushed the door open.

"And if you fellas ever need anything, hardware wise" he said with a wink "you come round here and we’ll see that you’re set up proper.

"No other place will even come to mind," and the door closed with a soft whisper, sealing the two men apart.

Calvin turned towards where he had left the car, his hands stuffed down in his coat pockets, shoulders hunched up about his neck, trying to shut out the cold that his up turned collar could not stop.

Things were supposed to be simpler now: he was supposed to have found out where the casings had been bought, get a sales receipt with the purchaser’s name and address and phone number printed clearly on it, call up said Johnny Lawbreaker "Yeah, will you be home at, say, Four, so that we can raid you home while you’re still in it? No? That won’t work? What about four-thirty or five then?" There weren’t supposed to be more questions about exotic rounds and spaceman pistols and gold plated machinery from the sun and planet destroying manufactory.

Calvin sighed in resignation, like a child that’s just been told that he will have to wait for his treat. A warmth, deep down in his chest, that had sparked to life when the old man had said "Well, bucko" was slowly beginning to grow. If he had wanted it easy, he would have stayed full-time with his father, programing AI’s and working out the kinks in MILOTREC’s quantum mechanics calculators.

Chapter 2: Suppositions

Calvin Harper leaned against the glass counter-slash-display case and looked at the old man over the top of his glasses. He tugged the cloves off of his hands. He was going to be here for a while. It was a refreshing change to find someone that not only seemed willing to help, but actually might know what he was talking about.

"There's a pot, on the burner, in the back room. Some cups on the counter too," the old man indicated with a snap of his head toward the back of the store.

It was a small shop, but what it lacked in size, it made up for in volume. Glass display cases ran paralel with all four walls, each case neatly packed full of handguns. Rifles and shotguns and semi-automatic sporting carbines, stood at ease in their brackets on the walls, calmly awaiting their inspection and hopeful requisition. A single, wide, double sided isle ran down the middle of the store, its contents a collection of accesories and ammunition.

Calvin shrugged out of his overcoat and laid it across the glass case, at the end of the long row of plastic bindle baggies, each containing a different type of spent casing. Evidence from the alley.

He straightened his silver suit jacket and turned towards the back of the room, his black Italian dress shoes made little "squock-squock" sounds on the highly polished floor.

"You work with Fletcher Gereld?" the old man called after Calvin as he steped through the open door into the back room.

"That obviouse, huh," Calvin called back as he picked up the only mug next to the coffee pot and tipped it over, making sure to knock whatever might be in it, out. Never mind the dried ring in the bottom, the fresh coffee would take care of it. He didn't see any creamer and so didn't bother looking for any. These "chance" encounters where like job interviews: say the wrong thing, make the wrong expression, and it's "Don't call us, we'll call you."

"Gereld always had a nose for the help.

"Where'd you graduate from?"

"Didn't" Calvin replied as he returned to the counter with the mug in one hand and the pot in the other. He held it up and the old man, without looking, reached behind him and picked up an odd, mishapen vessel and held it out for the coffee. "I was homeschooled. My father was a genius, I managed to inherit a couple of his, odder cells, and so I was done with school by fourteen and then we moved overseas, and then it was from town to town to town. Wherever the work was."

"Even after you were old enough to go out on your own?" the old man paused in his inspection of one of the bindle bound casings, and looked up.

"By then I was a full partner in his business. Computers. Oh, I took some classes, when I could. I just took what I needed." Calvin shrugged nonchallantly, the fabric of the suit coat bunching over the roll of his muscular shoulders. "All they tried to do in college was 'educate' me. Also Know As 'indoctrinate.' Little Mind-Numbed Robot Factories. Nothing like going into a place and being told by a moron that you're the stupid one and that you'll 'always be stupid unless you think like me.'"

The old man just grunted in affirmation.

Calvin sipped the black, astringent coffee and watched the shop owner inspect each casing, as meticulously as possible through the plastic baggies.

"Well, Bucko," the old man set the last casing down and straightend up, pocketing the loupe that had been pressed to his right eye, a white ring around his eye was quickly turning to pink, "you've caught a bully this time."

"Oh?" Calvin straightened, his pulse quickening. It had been three hours of, "Who are you?", "Get a warrent", "Sorry, can't help you", "I'm just the hired help, I don't know nothin'" before he had stopped into the this "hole-in-the-wall" place.

"Oh yeah" the old man put his left arm up on the glass for the first time since Calvin had come in. A silver cap covererd the end of his arm where his wrist should have been. "My brother thought it was a quail," he winked and smiled at Calvin's curious expression.

"Half these rounds are stardard, off the shelf ammo. A quarter are milspec only, and the others . . . Home made, is the only word that comes to mind. But you would need fifty thousand dollars worth of equipment to make these casings.

"You say these where in an alley?"

"Yes. About a thousand times what I have here."

"Seriously?"

"Quite."

The old man was quiet, he sipped his coffee from the chipped and cracked and mishapen mug, and looked over the bindle baggies again. Calvin could now see the I Luv Daddy painted on the side.

Chapter 1, Part Aiii

"Well, as you can tell," Joe began, gesturing with a gloved hand at the ground at the foot of the wall, "looks like a bunch of people came up and over. There are three trails leading off into the tall grass. That one there, in the middle, almost due West, looks pretty well traveled. Pro'bly three, four people, at least.
"Maybe they came up that way and when they went back over, some went back the way they came, one or two went in to the North there, and one went in to the South, there."

His audience followed the movements of his hands, like the heads of small dogs following the master's treat.

Isabele looked down the grassy hill, down towards the lake and the hazy far side of Crater Park and sucked her teeth. "Is Fletcher right there?"

Joe looked back over his shoulder. "Inspector Fletcher!" he called into the alley. "He's coming," he informed the expectant group. With a snap of his head he indicated when Fletcher had arrived.

"Fletcher?" Isabele shouted.

"Yes, Isabele."

"Fletcher, we're gonna have to go into the park."

"I thought as much," came the response. "Proceed with caution."

Isabele turned to her partner as she dug in an inside pocket, producing a black device, like a bicycle grip. "Well?" she asked as she pressed a button on the flat washer-like top.

"Oh." Felicity said dryly, tucking her chin in. "It's in the car. I left mine in my handbag."

"Not gonna help you do you job there, now is it," Isabele scolded quietly.

"Fletcher," she called back over the wall. "Van Hollen forgot her Jipsloc"

An identical black device came floating up into Joe's hands on the wall and with a flic he tossed the GPS Locator to Felicity.

"You do have your camera, right?" Isabele said from the top of her eyes as she finalized the setting on the GPSLOC.

Felicity nodded eagerly.

"Anything that looks remotely suspicious, shoot it. We'll go over it back at the house,"

"Right," Felicity acknowledged smartly as she set her GPSLOC.

"You." Isabele pointed at the younger officer who had kept Felicity talking, rapid fire, for the entire walk. "You're with me," and she turned out to follow the "North" trail as Felicity turned to follow the heavily traveled trail straight down into the park.

They followed off to the side, not wanting to disturb any microscopic evidence that might still remain on the beaten down path. They moved slowly in the tall grass, scanning the trail with meticulous, trained eyes. It's amazing how wonderful of a creation the brain is. How a carpenter will see a sixteenth or a thirty-second of an inch; or how a trained investigator will see the outline of a footprint in living grass.

Every step or two, the two investigators would press the green button on the top of the their GPSLOC's, and whenever they would note something of pending interest, they would point the butt of the device at what they were looking at and press the black button next to it; a laser would pinpoint exactly what they were marking. When forensics would enter the scene, which undoubtedly they were already in the alley, all the data that Smith and Van Hollen were logging, would instantly appear on their data slates. Their individual paths would appear in solid green lines across the rendered topography. Their "data of pending interest" would appear as red X's, highlighted by their exact GPS location.

Smith stopped and looked back over her shoulder, the wall, where Officer "Joe" still stood, looked like a short fence, and Joe, a child determined to straddle it. She inhaled deeply and blew out the pent up breath, the exercise concluded with a bought of violent coughing.

"You okay, Ms. Smith?" the young officer asked as she straightened up, wiping her mouth.

"It's 'Miss', and yes," she spat the bile into the grass, and "shot" it with the blue button, marking it as "investigator introduced." She hated this part of the job. She would never let on, but she absolutely hated it. Give me the paperwork. Let me interview people.

She swept her vision in a slow arch down into the park, until she found Van Hollen, a bright red speck against a backdrop of golden yellow. She wasn't moving. Isabele could tell that, even at this distance.

Her phone rang, the ringtone jarring on her last nerve. She dug it out with her right hand, her left hand disappearing into the over-sized pocket on that side of her jacket.

"Felicity," she stated. She never used the young woman's first name.
"Isabele," the voice on the other end was shaking. "Right here. There is blood. A lot of it."

Editorial Comment

{[(yes. Bullets are harder and have much more inertia than brick. Brick is porous and so if you shot it, it would leave an impact crater. Much like Crater Park. Only smaller, of course.

Okay. Time line is good. I had been thinking about the "when" of the story. Are we thinking 2007 or more? like 2015 or something like that, or maybe "just tomorrow" where we might have a few clever devices (you guys know how much I love clever devices) I have a line on Isabele and F. that I think is kinda cool, but I'll keep it to myself right now, see what y'all come up with.

The problem with having a great big, deep crater in the middle of a city is that cities, the size of New York and Tokyo take years, decades, centuries, to build and so, unless it was a geological formation that was created by God that the city was built around, you wouldn't be able to have any mystery about it. Unless that just it. Nobody does know how it got there. Sorta mass amnesia or something. Hmm. A little paranormal, but it could be made to work. Maybe it's something in the water. Haha)]}