NEW DETECTIVE, HARRY ELMORE, JR.

I’m a police officer following in the footsteps of my father. Like him, solving mysteries makes it easier to get up each morning. I like solving puzzles. I need to move, not sit behind a desk, so being a police officer is good.

My dad, Harry Elmore Sr. died on the job when I was a pre-teen and my mom died soon after I graduated from the police academy. Mom had been slowly withdrawing from everyone for years, like a tree slowly rotting inside its trunk. She ate like a bird, lost weight, stayed in bed until late morning, then had coffee for lunch as she sat staring at the TV for hours, crying to the point of dehydration until she was hospitalized. Instead of recovering, she died. Dad’s death was painful, but when mom died it was agony. She took care of me until I left home and began my independent, adult life. She must have seen that as a goal to be reached so she could let go. She welcomed death. Now she’s buried next to dad in a floral and peaceful section of Heaven’s Garden Cemetery.

I’m Harry Elmore, Jr. I still see Dad every day when I go to the North Street entrance of the police station. That’s when I walk past the ‘hallway of heroes,’ where his smiling picture hangs among the other fallen police officers. I often stop and speak to him, silently. He was my hero growing up and still is. Mom was the hero who took wonderful care of her hero and her son. Dad was a taciturn, thoughtful guy, usually introverted on the job but loving and caring at home. He was devoted to Mom and me.

Rumor has it that when Dad was working on a particularly tough murder case, he got unusually frustrated by the complexity of it and, out of frustration, he blurted, “I’d give anything to solve this case.” Well shortly after that, he did solve the case, but died in the process. I still hear the nonsense about how he had to die because he solved the case. Each year the stories get more enhanced. Will there, one day, be a golden halo hanging over dad’s picture? Everyone likes a happy story, especially if half of it is exciting, thrilling, and false. Lies are like spices added to food. I only asked Mom about Dad’s death once. She broke out into tears, ran to the bedroom, and closed the door. I never made that mistake again. In my mind he was a good dad who seldom talked about his detective work at home.

Long before Dad died, Mom had said she always worried about him getting hurt on the job. One time Mom suddenly became morose and with sadness in her voice she told me (not word for word), “People seek to distance themselves from death by doing what they can to live longer, but the more time we have before death, the more degraded our minds and bodies get, so time is a gift and also a thief.”

I enjoyed my criminal justice classes at the St. Petersburg College. I got hooked on them. I wanted to know, then know more, then act on that knowledge. It was after a two-year community college experience that I attended the St. Pete Police Academy for six months of training. I enjoyed that, too, though I heard a lot of grumbling about, “Just how much training do you need to put some scumbag drug-dealing murderer in cuffs and behind bars?” I thought, there’s a guy that should have been eliminated from the program, but somehow made it through the psychological screening processes. I doubt, however, that he’ll make it through the academy. He wants ‘easy,’ but he’ll find ‘hard.’

There was a new trial program, a test program, where the academy student with the highest overall grades would get a job at the St. Pete Police Department. I graduated first in a class of thirty-two students (the grumbler never made it halfway through). I was accepted without an interview, but, logically, my academy record was my interview, plus the academy’s instructors’ recommendations.

I was placed on patrol car duty with an experienced officer, who taught me more street education than the academy could. Luckily, he was a decent, motivated guy. I had to be on this duty for a minimum of two years before I could request a change of duty, and that was only for those with an Associate of Arts (AA) degree in law enforcement who wanted to work at a higher level of police work like me wanting to be a detective just like dad.

However, I had to take an advanced placement law-enforcement test concerning the many rules and regulations on how you can and cannot enforce the law. There were hundreds of those rules but, luckily for me, my law enforcement classes covered most of them. We also took some sort of puzzle-solving and problem-solving tests. I say ‘we’ because there was only one other guy taking the test, a guy named Hector Garcia. The kid was brilliant and outscored me on the test. His technical vocabulary was so vast that I barely kept pace in our discussions. He made it into the forensic department—I remember him saying that he was a complete science nerd. I went to the detectives department as a beginning detective, third grade, hungering to be as good at it as my dad, Harry Elmore, Sr.

Now, I would never go as far as my dad did to solve a crime. I doubt anyone believes that story about him, though it makes for a great embellished thriller. It’s usually said that he was having difficulty solving a series of deaths at a newly built apartment complex and was supposed to have said, “I’d give anything to solve these crimes.” He did solve them but died doing it—bitten and killed by a poisonous snake hidden in the toilet plumbing system. My dad’s comment could have been said carelessly by anyone having difficulty solving any problem. In everyday life, I’ve heard it hundreds of times. But rumors get blown out of proportion, exaggerated, with added scenes, and where questionable quotes attach themselves to the story until they have a wonderfully entertaining but half-true story. Hyperbole is the secret to an entertaining movie and conversation. Plus, you need to train your brain to temporarily believe the improbable, sometimes the impossible. Like my dad, I didn’t watch law enforcement TV shows, nor those types of inane movies. Dad didn’t talk about his cases when he was home.

I’ll work diligently to prove myself to the other detectives and the boss. My first problem to overcome would be my age. I was not only the newest member of the crew, but the youngest member to become a detective in years. I was shy of thirty years old. That fact would be a disadvantage right from the start, but being single, with youthful energy, keeping busy, and working voluntarily overtime—while the others went home to their families—may help me overcome my youth. None of the detectives were younger than forty except for two female detectives who worked as a team. They normally did not participate in my hazing. They were nice to me.

The male detectives referred to me as “kid,” “baby face,” “barely out of diapers,” “puppy,” and, most of all, “newbie.” I’d gotten used to it in a couple of months. I still had a throw-away desk brought up from the storage room, plus a three-wheeled office chair with one cracked wheel that clicked whenever I moved. I liked to roll it because I knew that the clicking irritated the senior detective, Paul, who was the shogun in his feudal system of slackers. Paul thought he was witty, but in fact, he was only half that.

I didn’t have a partner yet. No one wanted their two-some to temporarily become a three-some to teach me the beginning level detective work, and the valuable things they had learned over the years. Paul was about to retire soon, so he didn’t seem to give a shit about anything, especially helping a ‘newbie.’ I wasn’t bothered by it since I liked working alone, as my dad did. Now I can understand why he preferred to work that way. If you’re superb at something, an inferior partner can only drag you down with him or her. However, a great partner is a rare coupling. The department was in favor of partners, but there were rare exceptions. My lieutenant hinted at it once during a “keeping her up to date” office visit.

Being the lowest-ranking person in seniority and experience, I got the “shit jobs” or, at least the jobs the others thought of as shit jobs. After three months in the department, I figured the hazing would trickle down slowly and it did. But most of the detectives who did it, under Paul’s leadership, acted like childish fraternity brothers who liked nothing better than taunting the newest member of their fraternity. They were blind to their own childishness, still thinking that bullying is macho and that it shows strength and confidence. They still looked to Paul for approval. Some of them literally looked at him waiting for a head nod of agreement. Unfortunately, for most of them, they still think their penis heads are larger than the shaft, so they don’t slip off and punch themselves in the face while masturbating.

I’m considered an upstart for having passed over older police officers who have been waiting for a promotion to the detective squad. That can be done without college courses if a police officer has had a minimum of five years of patrol duty and passes the tests. I’m a showoff, shining brightly in my intellectual snobbery, have an unearned advancement, undeserving of extra consideration for taking law enforcement classes before entering the police academy, so says the donut patrol, those overweight hemorrhoid smashers. They don’t disguise their jealousy and resentment either. They are correct about the automatic advancement, but I fulfilled the requirements and wasn’t foolish enough to reject it.

One day while I was unnoticed and in the bathroom stall (shit happens) getting a few minutes of peace and quiet (it’s usually a good place to focus on undistracted thoughts about a case), I overheard a small group saying that even my dad didn’t deserve his great reputation for solving crimes. They were angry about his being a loner, taciturn, unusually lucky, and didn’t fit into the detective department. The climax of their group cock-stroking was in their laughter, and their verbal ejaculations. “Good riddance to the arrogant prick.” I recognized Paul’s voice. Being near him must be like a close encounter of the turd kind. He’s in the appropriate place for it. His minions mumbled agreement. I swear I see crusty brown on their lips.

          *

This morning I found the case file of another shit job on my desk. Appropriately, I ignored the giggles, went to my favorite bathroom shitter, and sat down to take my shit job seriously. Murder at the local veteran’s hospital, the same one that provides services for me after my tour (Tour? You take a ‘tour’ of a museum or a new building or a unique garden, but a trip for pleasure is not to be found in a war zone, so let’s “stand-down” on that fiasco.). Luckily, I know the layout of the huge hospital, plus a few doctors, some staff (mostly nurses), and maintenance employees who are veterans. Dad went there regularly as a veteran and many times I accompanied him. I’m hoping some of these connections will be helpful, like having ‘confidential informants’ (CI) on the premises.

I arrived mid-morning at the St. Petersburg, Bay Pines Veterans Hospital. As usual, I had to search for a parking spot, but I tried to find one away from the main entrance so a handicapped person would have a place to park. I quickly walked to building one hundred, the main entrance, and proceeded to the information desk. A friend was at the desk. “Hey Margie. How come I keep getting older and uglier while you look younger and prettier?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Harry. How come you always have a load of sweet-sounding bullshit whenever I see you? And me being old enough to be your mom.”

“That hurts, Marge. You wounded me and now I need to see a surgeon. Who do you recommend?”

“Harry, I love you dearly, but you’re a pain in the ass. You were the best high school volunteer we ever had, until you graduated. And you, the guy who wouldn’t flunk his serious year for a worthy cause, another year of volunteering.” She held her hand over her mouth, looked over her glasses at me, and giggled. “You’re still full of baloney; just the pile of it is larger. You just need two pieces of bread, and you could become a sandwich.”

“Well, shit! I thought I was a comedian. You have been watching a lot of Netflix stand-up comedy lately?”

“I’m gettin’ good, huh? Now what can I do for my favorite new detective? I suppose it’s about last night’s suspicious death, right?”

“Yep. That’s it. I’m heading for the elevators. Catchya later, Marge.”

The Security Office is just down the hall. I knocked, then entered. “Hi. I’m Detective Elmore,” I showed my badge, “and I need to go to the dead guy’s room. Do I need an escort?”

“We were told to expect you and that we should escort you to that room. My name’s Richard. I prefer ‘Rich.’”

When we got to the room the door was open. I stayed outside but peeked inside. “Jesus! Rich, has this room been unlocked all this time and cleaned?”

“Of course. Can’t let another patient use the room until it’s cleaned and disinfected.” He looked so innocent when he said that.

“Sheee-it! I know it’s not your fault, Rich, but you work security. You should know that if the door is unlocked, then anyone could walk in and accidentally or purposely destroy evidence. Cleaning the room destroys any remaining physical evidence. You should watch more CSI shows and be prepared to stop any cleaning or entry into the crime scene to keep it untouched.”

“You need to talk to the Chief. He’s new, a retired police officer. I was asked to escort you here. All I know is that recently there have been a couple of unusual and unexplained deaths in some VA hospitals. Now we have one.”

“Please understand, I know your boss tells you what to do, but evidence tells me what to do. Your boss should have known that. Especially an ex-cop.”

He leaned his back against the wall as I stood in the doorway and looked around the room again. The sun shone brightly through the one window. I could see the curves and swirl patterns on the floor from the cleaning mop, plus the dust cloth marks on the furniture and the window washing streaks. I know that window washing can be a “pane,” but streaks should be rubbed away. Then my eyes were drawn to a piece of plastic that looked as if it had broken off a piece of equipment. Was it an example of a contaminated crime scene or was it a useful clue, or both? A sunbeam had made friends with the plastic, and they reflected on their friendship by winking in the bright light. My eyes were drawn to it. I walked to the freshly made bed, kneeled, and reached under the bed near the back wheels where it was partially hidden. I picked up the object and examined it. It meant nothing to me, so I dropped it into my pants pocket. I was about to turn away when I noticed faint scratches on the wall, above the bedposts that made the headboard. It looked like four streaks, made by something rubbing, not digging into the wall. At least I found two pieces of evidence that weren’t washed away. I could still smell the cleaning antiseptic spray. I shook my head in discouragement.

I turned to the young man. “Rich, I’m sorry I was grumpy with you. Could you please take me to the morgue?” On the way, I realized that my jaw muscles were tight from frustration, so, while walking, I opened my mouth, as if to yawn, which stretched and relaxed them.

When I stepped into the morgue, the Security Chief walked to me and pointed to a white gown and a mask. I was asked to put on a white gown and a face mask. As we walked to the cadaver, he introduced himself as Chief Larry Dickerson, mentioning that he was a twenty-year retired police officer. I introduced myself, then listened as he said, “I’m sorry about the room cleaning. I tried to contact the head nurse, but she was in the bathroom. Another nurse who thought she would show some initiative grabbed another nurse to help clean the room before I could get the head nurse to stop it. After that disaster, there was no need to lock the door.”

“I understand, Chief. Shit happens but solving a case without evidence is not my specialty.” He looked at me, not knowing if I had insulted him, so I said, “Not your fault Chief. You tried. Thanks.” That satisfied his ego and saved any hard feelings between us. I knew that I may need his help later, plus he seemed like a decent guy.

The Chief pointed to the person leaning over the cadaver. In a whispering voice and warm breath on my ear, he said, “That’s Doctor Janice Haller, the hospital’s mortician, and pathologist. She says that she’s almost done with the preliminary examination and that, if an autopsy is necessary, she’ll be the one to do that, also, because of the state’s strict regulations about suspicious deaths.

Dr. Haller suddenly seemed to sink into the floor like a magic illusion. She looked at us over her mask and bifocals from behind her protective face shield. She walked around the table, smiled, and said to me, “You didn’t think I was that tall, did you?”

She and the Chief had their private moment of laughter, brightened by the flush of my embarrassed, red face. I grinned to play along. I hadn’t even been thinking about how tall she must have had to be as she leaned over the cadaver. What had distracted me was my focus on why the Chief of Security was there. But then I was distracted, again, due to movement in my peripheral vision. I could see one of Dr. Haller’s assistants pushing away the wheeled, aluminum, step-up platform which she needed, due to her shortness.

She walked to me and stood directly in front, her neck straining upward, chin pointing at my solar plexus, flashing an overstretched, white-toothed smile that showed she was enjoying my discomfort. Such a sarcastic smile from a tiny, five-foot-three or four-inch munchkin. I grinned, not at her smile but because the music from the movie, Wizard of Oz, was streaming in my head.

“You and I could never date, you know.”

I stared down at her, in confusion. I was involuntarily starting not to like her despite her comeliness.

“I don’t date men who are over five feet, nine inches; makes intimacy awkward although stand-up oral sex is convenient.”

“Not a problem, Dorothy.” I looked at her shoes. “Where’s the ruby shoes?” Touché, I thought. After a moment of her embarrassment, I wondered why I wasn’t lovin’ this lady for her sex talk, but my mind was leaning the other way. Maybe because she caught me off guard and made me blush so brightly with discomfort. It was because there’s a time and place for everything and now wasn’t either the time or the place. Being a man, however, my mind rebelled and veered quickly to the ‘standing oral sex’ remark. My nasty comrade, Mr. Tumescence was awaking from its dormancy.  

Chief Dickerson slapped me on the shoulder in a friendly manner, but Dr. Haller stuck out her open hand for me to shake and, still smiling, but not as brightly, said, “Just call me Jan or Janice.” I shook her hand, which was pointing at my zipper, and about a foot away. Coincidence? “Hi,” I said. “I’m Harry.” Her hand in mine was like a golf ball in a catcher’s mitt.

“You don’t look hairy.”

I let out a sigh, then spelled, “H-a-r-r-y.” “I hear the ‘hairy’ joke a lot,” I said with a bored expression. People seem to act as if they were the originators of that joke, not realizing how utterly bored they’ve made a person, with such worn, ragged humor. I’ve been hearing jokes like that since kindergarten. Now I was waiting for the ‘hairy dick’ joke that Dad said he heard through middle and high school.

“Hairy all over, or just in spots? What spots? How hairy? Like a bush or just a patch?”

I had to wait for her infantile questions to stop so I could say something, but I was also thinking, “Yep. I don’t like her. Prettiness can be a danger, like the pretty looking, clear pool of poisoned water that a thirsty desert traveler may come across. They’re so focused on the thirst for water that the small dead animal bodies surrounding the pool, and at the bottom of the pool go unnoticed. She finally paused to breathe deeply.

“I took the opportunity to quickly say, “You done with the jokes?”

The Chief knew her well enough to quickly take advantage, too. “You should …” but that’s as far as he got. She wasn’t just a handful of bullshit; she was a shovel full of it.

“OK, hairy dick. They still call detectives ‘dicks,’ don’t they? So, how may I help you?”

“He’s on the table.” I pointed. “I need any information that may help me solve his mysterious death.” I tried to keep a neutral expression, but my eyes must have given me away. My frustration must be obvious.

To me, she was a highly educated, stupid person; one that fits nicely into The Basic Laws of Stupidity by Carlos M. Cipolla, or Corinne Purtill’s The Five Laws of Stupidity.

“I hope I’m not wasting your time,” she uttered, knowing that she was. “Perhaps I should give you a quicky now.” She smiled at her unsubtle innuendo.

The Chief excused himself from the room and I decided to play her game. “As busy as I am, I’d like that. Are you up to it?” I held onto my belt as I stared at her. Then I reached for my zipper and had it halfway down when, suddenly, her facial expression and posture changed radically. Her bluffs are seldom challenged. Shocking bluffs had served her well, but like a high school bully, I knew that a shocking, metaphoric bloody nose could work wonders to tame, as well as shame, a bullshit bluff. It was chilly in that room, so I zipped up quickly.

She turned away, walked to the table, and spoke normally. “Mr. Thomas is a seventy-eight-year-old Vietnam War veteran. He was a middle-ranking officer, never wounded. He was what I’ve heard called, negatively, an ‘out of combat’ warrior. A simple, protruding hernia is the reason he was here for surgery. Probably would have been home in a day or two after the operation. Other than the hernia, he was in good health for his age.”

“I’m not interested in what did not kill him. What killed him?”

She paused at my aggressiveness. “Death was by forceful strangulation. The hyoid bone was broken, and the neck’s cervical vertebrae were cracked between the C1 and C2 positions. Those are the two vertebrae closest to the skull. Unusual because the hyoid bone, the small and fragile horseshoe-shaped bone in the front of the neck, was not just broken, it was crushed. I also found bleeding and tearing of the strap muscles that overlay the larynx. I’ve never seen that much damage to a strangulation victim.”

She often looked at her shoes and swayed in place. Was she nervous?

The attractive doctor with the wild, outlandish behavior is suddenly transforming into a restless, shy teenager. “Anything else?”

“Yes. The force needed to accomplish something like that would take a tall, highly muscular man, comparable to Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. The state rules for suspicious deaths require an autopsy. I’ll do a full and detailed one later. A copy will be sent to you at police headquarters. “

“May I see the neck area?” Manners seeped back into me.

“Of course. Come.” I followed her to the stainless steel body table.

Dr. Haller pulled the covering sheet down to the cadaver’s chest where I could see the glaring, red strangulation marks. “The marks only go halfway around the victim’s left side of the neck. You didn’t mention that.” I said to show my irritation with her. “Only the left half of his neck was used to strangle him! What the hell!”

“I wanted to tell you and show you at the same time. The markings are hard to describe accurately. Seeing for yourself is better. It looks, to me, as if he may have been strangled with one hand. What do you think?”

“For now, I agree with you. It appears as if the killer was strong, as you said, and only needed one hand. Of course, a big guy would have a big hand, but I’ve seen slim basketball players who can nearly wrap their hands around a basketball. So, it’s not necessarily a big guy, but it is.” I paused a few seconds, mulling over the strangulation marks, then thought “Or he only has one human arm and hand,” I mumbled.

I walked into the hallway and spotted the Chief who was leaning against the wall, waiting. “Peculiar woman, Harry. She goes too far to push a joke on someone, but she’s not usually like that unless there’s some handsome guy to flirt with.”

“Yeah. Your wife must dislike her for that.”

“Ha. You’re a jokester, but I liked it.” We walked down the hallway.

“The Chief turned out to be a good and helpful guy. We became casual friends, and he willingly became another hospital confidential informant for me.

“You used discretion and left the room. Thanks.” The chief looked up at me, question marks in both eyes, matched with a smile that said, “So, what happened?”

“When I called her bluff, her tough, vixen attitude melted away, and then she acted more professionally.

“She’s the type of woman that you either like or dislike almost immediately,” said the Chief. “I try to get along as well as I can. Glad I hardly ever see her. When I do see her in the hallway and cafeteria, she’s nice.”

“Well, Chief, first impressions are often wrong. I like to give someone a second chance. I’d want that for myself, so I give it to others.”

“She seldom strikes out with a guy, you know. At least I’ve never been made aware of it. She’s single and, like honey, she attracts most of the straight male bees in the hospital, even the married ones.”

“Jesus, Chief. How does a handsome guy like you stay out of her clutches?”

“I can still run fast, plus, I doubt she would ever be attracted to old geezers. And I say that as an advantage for me. Can you imagine a nymphomaniac octopus in your bed? Sure, I’m attracted, but I’ve been happily married for a long time, and I won’t jeopardize that for easy pussy. I’m too old, anyway. My libido keeps decreasing steadily each year.”

“I respect you for not getting caught in her web.”

“You don’t know this, but you did well with her,” he said with a voice expressing laughter. “Most others who are caught off guard, even her peers, leave the room talking to themselves, then get lost in this maze of hallways even though they are familiar with them. It’s like she’s two people. One can make men dizzy with desire, but the truth is, Harry, she’s superior with any of her medical work from what I hear from several hospital sources. A nurse acquaintance of mine said that her office is plastered with awards, commendations, and other forms of praise and recognition as a highly regarded pathologist. He says that she gets offers to work in other hospitals every week or two. I don’t know why she stays. That’s puzzling. You’re the detective. You figure it out.”

“Napoleon complex? Teased about it all her life, even now as an accomplished adult. Born short but standing tall in the minds of others.”

“Maybe. I don’t know about stuff like that.”

“I need to see the head nurse on the victim’s floor. Please take me there.”

“Sure. No problem. But you need to realize that the head nurse on the night shift is different from the one working the day shift.”

“I’d like to talk to her about hospital procedures, work schedules, and duties, then talk to the two nurses who cleaned the room during the night shift.”

“Those nurses will be home now. Will you still need me after that?”

“No, Chief and I’d like to express my thanks for helping me in such a friendly manner, like a cop to another cop.” I smiled and shook hands with him. His face beamed brightly with pride.

“You’re like your dad you know. He was a friend and the best detective of all of them. He didn’t have many friends in that department, but I got to know him a little over a cup of coffee. I’m proud that he considered me a friend and treated me like one.”

“I appreciate that, Chief. I miss him, too.”

                                                           * 

Ms. Miller, a gray-haired, sixtyish-looking spinster type, with an overweight body, was unimpressed by me and immediately showed her displeasure with my interruption of her duties. She didn’t notice just how handsome I was at six feet tall, one hundred and eighty pounds of strawberry licorice sweetness. I showed her my ID, but it was the brightness of my gold badge that blinded her. I’m sure that was it.

“Ma’am? I need to see the visitor log for Mr. Thomas.”

Ms. Miller, the head nurse, looked up from her paperwork and grinned at me; a ‘get lost copper’ type of grin. It was a look in slow motion as her eyes began on my belt, my shirt, chest, neck, chin, and eyes. I’ve seen it done in movies; never saw it in real life until now. She was imagining me being naked and the bad look she gave me was just a final chance to restrain her desire or I’m not as charming as I thought I was.

“Sure. Anything to help our local teenage police officer.”

“I’m Detective Harry Elmore.” I showed my badge. “I’m investigating last night’s suspicious death of Mr. Thomas. “Then I had an opportunity for a mild verbal revenge. I said, “As you know from personal experience, the aged lose perception and perspective about the much younger generation. Quite often glaring mistakes are made about young people, by old people. I’m twenty-seven. I think you must be in your seventies, right?” I knew from the information the Chief gave me that she was sixty-four and would retire in a year or two. I received the silent snarl of disgust that I hadn’t seen in a decade when mom accidentally caught me masturbating in the bathroom, as Holden Caufield did in the book Catcher in the Rye.

Miller walked a couple of steps away, turned so her back was toward me, but facing a low shelf. Good God, I was almost caught off guard as she bent over, instead of kneeling. Before I could slam my eyes shut, she showed a butt like a split beachball. She was straining to reach the log. I heard her sigh as she stretched farther. I was honestly waiting for a booming fart. Luckily for me, it didn’t happen. I heard her mumble, “Ass hole.” I wondered what kind of negative experience she had with the police that brought out a generalized dislike of police officers. A full moon in late morning, however, was not expected. Then, thinking crudely, I wondered how much buttocks overlap there was when she sat on the toilet. I was smiling when she returned and placed the log in front of me.

“It’s Nurse Miller, not ma’am, the young man.”

“It’s Detective Elmore, not ‘teenaged police officer,’ Nurse Miller. I never intended disrespect, never called you ‘ma’am’ to hurt your feelings. It was simply a case of not knowing how to address you so, I apologize, Nurse Miller. She stood in front of me watching me read the log. Should I ask for copies? That too might irritate her, so I decided to use my phone to take pictures of the prior two days of visitors’ signatures.

“Thanks,” I said in a gentle voice. “I appreciate your help.” No use ruffling any more of her feathers, though I figured she needed to get goosed now and then. However, I may need to return for follow-up questions, and I didn’t want her to transfer her hostility to other staff with whom I may need help.

                                                            *

Back at the ‘dick’s’ department, I fed what information I had gleaned from my visits to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC), which is a huge federal database for tracking and sharing crime-related information with law enforcement agencies in all fifty states.

I fed my data concerning the crime, especially the odd ‘one-handed’ strangulation speculation of mine. To my shock, the return information showed that similar unsolved veteran cases had occurred at veteran’s hospitals along the Northeastern and Southeastern U.S. Years had separated the deaths. Since the latest victim was a male Vietnam veteran, I narrowed my search and focused on that information. On a hunch, I printed a list of victims’ names that were in the Vietnam conflict, plus a request for their locations while there. To my surprise, I found strangulation deaths of five officers, from Lieutenants to Majors, and two Sergeants, all while they were at VA hospitals.

Each day I worked on this case I became more intrigued, especially when I used my law enforcement credentials to fill out a request for military records of these victims from the Military National Archives of Personnel Records in St. Louis, Missouri.

The next day, I received a lengthy printout, the highlights of which were the verified fact that the one-handed, strangulated military victims had all served in Vietnam, at the same time and place. That place was called Khe Sanh. Further research showed me that it was the bloodiest, one-sided, siege battle of the whole Vietnam War, lasting nine months and with astronomical casualties to our Marines—two-hundred seventy-four dead and two-thousand, five-hundred wounded. Many of the medical helicopters were delayed, damaged, or destroyed while attempting to pick up the wounded and deliver supplies.

The Marines were at a base at the bottom of surrounding hills. The enemy had the high ground, thus the superior tactical advantage. It was like the Khe Sanh base, at the bottom of a natural bowl of hills, and the enemy was attacking from all around the rim. Military Intelligence took a severe beating for suggesting that a base could be safely built and maintained in such a poor defensive position and in a territory not even controlled by U.S. soldiers. But the attack was inevitable. A Boy Scout could have seen that. It was such an easy target. When it was attacked the commanding officer of the base panicked and reverted to making poor tactical decisions, which needed to be followed by his lower officers playing, ‘monkey see, monkey do.’ My thoughts drifted and I blanched at the description of vivid thoughts of legs and arms destroyed in violent, carnage showing the brutal inhumanity that humans are capable of.

At my desk was a note that informed me that my boss wanted to see me. Her boss, the captain, had designated lower-rated police officers to take control of separate departments, such as Vice, Drugs, Homicide, etc. Lt. Briona Brown, my boss, is a black woman in her mid-fifties. Stout and determined to deal with the subcaliber ratings of her detectives. She was usually in a bad mood, thus indicating her progress. I knocked on her open-door frame and she waved me in. I had heard that she busted through several prejudicial barricades like racism and gender to struggle to her current rank and position.

“Detective Elmore, do you wish to be addressed formally as I just did?”

“Lieutenant Brown, I would like you to address me as ‘Harry.’”

Her eyebrows raised and her eyes squinted at me. I couldn’t read in them what she was thinking, especially when a micro-grin followed. I took that to mean that I wasn’t going to catch hell for something I did wrong.

“I wish I had been as smart as you in the beginning, Harry. I started as a beat police officer, about as low as there is on the police force. I got my AA degree in Criminal Justice a few years later, struggling for promotions. You’ll notice that I’m black and a woman, so the stairs to promotions are greased, and slippery. A few years ago, I finally got my B.S. degree, also in Criminal Justice with emphasis on Security Management.”

“I’m more than halfway to my B.S. degree, just like you. It looks like I’ll be following in your footsteps, too, along with my dad, Harry Sr., although he had no degrees. I’m confused about something though.”

“And what might that be?”

“Did you say that you were black?” She looked at my puzzled expression and we both laughed.”

“A jokester is better than a prick. I also said I was a female, Harry.”

“No comment Lieutenant. That’s a dangerous area to talk about, although it’s obvious. I’m not a misogynist about female bosses. I made out great with a female boss all through academia, especially the one that’s been a resident in my home for three decades.” A grin this time.

“Do you still feel that you could work with a female partner?”

“I can do that. Do you have one coming?”

“Not yet, Harry. What I was getting at is that you have an AA degree and you’re working on your BS degree. That’s why I stated that you were smart. Going to night school and, sometimes, Saturday classes, was not pleasant when I had a family. That unpleasantness resulted in my divorce and some resentment from my grown kids.”

“I understand how you have had to struggle under much frustration and stress, but you should be proud of your accomplishments.”

“Thank you. Now you’ve felt the resentment of your colleagues, the reason being that your outstanding performance at the Academy gave you a free push that jumped you right into this detective department a lot sooner than normal. Most of my male detectives are old and will retire in five or ten years. You may have noticed the Neanderthal attitudes.” She looked out of the window and into the room of detectives. Silence.

I filled the silence with, “I understand Lieutenant. I’ll deal with it.”

I knew what her pause was for when she whispered, “Harry, can I trust you; rely on you to do an excellent job like your dad?”

“I can’t promise to be as good a detective as my dad, but you can trust me to do my best. You can rely on me to do my best on each case, whether it’s the theft of lollipops or murder.”

She chuckled. “Great. It’s a good start at improving this department. At least race won’t be an issue between us.”

“Do you still believe you’re black, Lieutenant? I’ll need to study you closer.”

“Charming bullshit, Harry. I was young when your dad was at the end of his career. I remember some people saying that he didn’t have much of a sense of humor.”

“At home he did. Sometimes we’d laugh until our stomachs hurt. He took his job seriously, though, too seriously. Serious attitudes about work don’t pair well with joking. On the job, serious. At home, a punster, prankster.”

She pulled her chair closer to her desk, so her breasts were over the edge, then each arm raised so she could rest both elbows on her desk. She then placed her fingertips together in the church steeple position. She still hadn’t spoken when she rested her fingertips under her chin.

“I’m so glad we had this talk, Harry. You’ll do nicely here, Harry. Now I need to have a summary of how you’re coming along on the VA hospital case.”

As I switched positions, I heard coins clink in my pocket. I reached in to grasp them. When I pulled my hand out, there was a bunch of change, dirt, and fuzz but it was the soft strip of plastic that I noticed and had forgotten.

I started thinking about how nervous I felt when I first entered the boss’s office. Usually, when a person is called to see the boss, something has gone wrong, and you’re to blame. I immediately thought of Nurse Miller. But when I first walked into my boss’s office, she looked worn-out, tired, and impatient, but after talking a few minutes, I got comfortable with her and she was with me. I thought she’d make a good boss. I didn’t envy her having to be a mother to the cave people she had working for her.

“OK, tell me what you have so far.”

I talked about the most vital details for half an hour. I didn’t mention my unproven speculations; too early for that. When I was done, she gave a sigh that seemed to come from relief not disappointment. The shadow of a grin passed by her lips, then, “Good work, Harry. Continue working on it alone. That’s all for now.”

It was an abrupt ending, but I knew she had much on her mind, like keeping her job, plus hammering the bent nails in the room to make them straighter. I rose and walked to my desk, lost in thought when I felt eyes upon me. I heard, “Ass kisser. Brown nose. Girlfriend,” mentioned, but I pretended not to hear them, although the experience was like running an old-style Indian gauntlet and pretending you didn’t get pummeled. I decided to eat more seafood to help grow a thicker shell. They wanted to get my attention so they could pry information out of me concerning my visit to Lt. Brown’s office. When at my desk I had to grin. I found myself thinking as a kid, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” I laughed at myself. Unfortunately, the guys thought I was laughing at them, which would make things worse. But I laughed, again, for spite.

As I was checking my notes and researching with my desktop PC, half the detectives departed, hopefully to gather information that will help solve their cases. The other half of the Dick Squad were using their phones, reading incident report forms, checking for phone messages, or making phone calls.

I needed to call Dr. Haller to ask about full or partial fingerprints on the victim’s neck. I screwed up. I should have done that yesterday. She should have mentioned it like the raw mark only on the left side of the neck. Still, it was my fault. I dialed the phone number as I was thinking, “Come on kid. You need to do better.” My fingers were stiff at the joints, alerting me that I had them closed tightly into fists. My knuckles were white and there were deep fingernail marks dug into my palms.

“Hello, this is Joan, may I help you?”

“Joan, this is Detective Elmore. You may have seen me talking to Dr. Haller yesterday. May I speak with her?”

“She’s just coming out of the ‘women’s room. Hold on and I’ll get her.

“Hello. This is Dr. Haller. Is this my hairy detective?”

“Harry Elmore, detective, here with some questions that I should have thought of yesterday.”

Then her flirtatious voice purred into the phone, with a couple of subtle innuendoes. I would have thought that ended yesterday. I had hoped it would. Think again, Harry. I asked about the fingerprints.

“The killer must have worn a glove. No fingerprints. Not even partials. But the glove wasn’t latex; I checked. No cotton or leather fibers so it would be an uncommon glove. Where there would usually be fingerprints on the skin, it’s smooth, raw, and reddened due to overstretched skin. as well as capillary bursts. I used a magnifying glass to be certain there were no prints.”

I said, “I researched similar crimes, where the apparent one-handed strangulations occurred. Mostly on the east coast. Those deaths all occurred in Veterans’ hospitals, not civilian hospitals.”

“All along the east coast? If so, you better get busy. There are plenty of them.”

I noticed she quit the purring voice. “Hallelujah,” my brain shouted.

“Let me try something out on you ….”

“Oh, dear me,” she interrupted. “Is it new? Will I like it? Damn, now I’m wet. Harry, do you happen to have a pair of handcuffs next to your bed with the metal parts cushioned by pink velvet? And do you suppose that we could …”

“Will you be serious,” I interrupted her; my voice a deeper tone, “I have what looks like a murder case here, and don’t have time for your foolishness.”

“I am being serious, Harry, and it’s no act.”

“You don’t date tall guys, remember, so why the flirting? “OK. The question is could someone with a prosthetic hand, made to have a strong grip, be able to strangle someone?”

She mellowed, then replied, “I should think so. Well, on the surface, it sounds logical, but the grip would have to be powerful and very few prosthetic hands are like that, at present, anyway. It would also be expensive because it would need to be customized for a particular person. “

 “Who would need that kind of grip?”

“I’m surprised I remember this, but a year or two ago, I knew a guy who worked in the prosthetics lab. Once, while he was reading a journal about strengthening grips on prosthetics and wasn’t done with the article, he took the journal out of the room. He told me about a millionaire getting a new kind of grip for his prosthetic hand. The millionaire was an avid weightlifter with a basement gym in his house. He even had a private trainer. I’m only guessing that his quarter-of-a million-dollar hand job worked out for him. But you’ll have a difficult job searching because every VA hospital you go to will have plenty of amputees with prosthetic arms and hands.”

“Yeah. That’s a problem. A big one. Well, thanks for your help, doctor.”

“Call me Jan or Janice and call me anytime, Harry. May I call you, Harry?”

“Of course. I prefer that.”

“Then let me have your phone number so I can call you, Harry. I’ve never dated a tall man, I’m curious how it would work out. Oh, and you should talk to Dr. Jack Barton. You’ll find him easily in the prosthetics department. He’s working with a military grant. Practically lives there. Sometimes his protégé does seem to be living there.”

“What building, wing, department, and/or room?”

“In ‘H’ building, east wing of the ground floor. Give me a second. I’m looking up the room number. OK, it’s room 115 and should be labeled ‘Prosthetics Laboratory.’”

I said goodbye, then heard the purring sound as I hung up and was surprised by my involuntarily, growing tumescence. “When you’re hard below, you’re soft above,” my dad would always say when I was going on a high school date. Sometimes just happens at odd times, as if Mr. Nasty has a mind of its own.

                                                            *

“Shit!” I thought. “Now she has my cell phone number.”

I needed more information without playing games, so I drove to the hospital, found the laboratory, and as I tried to walk in, a guard stopped me, questioned me, peeked in the room, and asked to see Dr. Jack. When he came, I was allowed to enter. I showed my badge and followed him.

“Appointment?” he questioned.

“No. Police business.”

He escorted me to his office. The room had his desk and three other long tables, each full of prosthetic arms and hands, parts, and accessories. Some looked old and discolored, while some looked new. The innards were visible on many of them. Looking for ways to improve the mechanics, I guessed. I stared back and forth at them. Dr. Jack smiled, which was an odd coupling since his chin looked like the toe end of a cowboy’s boot. Dr Jack stated, “This is a ‘hands-on job,’” as he picked up a hand and waved it at me. I restrained myself from saying he had a ‘hand job.’ Dr. Jack opened his drawer and took out a ‘non-disclosure’ form. He asked me to sign it before we went any further.

He pointed to a chair, cleared it for me first, and there I sat. “I’ve read that you’re a well-known pioneer, an expert in prosthetics research and development. It’s good for the hospital, too, right? Each hospital you travel to must gain prestige just because you are there. How long have you been working with prosthetics and how long have you been at this hospital?”

“Over thirty years and four or five years,” he answered both questions.

A laconic answer. Couldn’t waste time on me. “You must have seen thousands of amputees in those three decades.”

“I’ve also seen plenty of arms, hands, and legs blown off or shot off in Vietnam. The agony of those men propelled me in this direction after becoming an M.D. However, I am still helping those men by making these prosthetics better and better. I became obsessive about it and am now considered an expert in this field. I don’t do much in the ‘medical doctor’ hospital routines. I’m isolated, by choice, in the advanced area of prosthetics.”

“Advanced? How so?”

“Research and developing better prosthetics, repair, computer chips, ultra-thin electric-conducting wires as thin as fine sewing thread that could only be cut with wire cutters, delicate plastic, not metal, joints, and digital systems, and occasionally the cosmetics part of it, the fleshy part of the prosthetics. Most of it falls under the experimentation phase.”

“Dr. Haller said you had a grant to work on the latest, advanced prosthetic model.”

“Yes. It’s a military-related grant to work on the dynamic, new myoelectric prosthetic hands, like the one I’m holding.” He raised it to show me. “The structure of the hands,” he added, “is far more complex than the arms. Hands have twenty-seven fragile bones, while an arm has only three much bigger and tougher bones, none of them fragile. The new materials are working much better than expected. We now have PA12 nylon casts, lighter and stronger than anything previously used. And in conjunction with that new material, we now use acrylic and rubberized coatings that look remarkably flesh-toned. Even the glues we use are far better than expected. Some we use dry in seconds are twice as strong as the super-glue stuff and flexible, too. They only have a specialized use and haven’t even come on the commercial market yet. Oh, and I almost forgot the new weight of the arm and hand together. These prototypes weigh between two and five pounds, depending on the internal mechanics, comparted to eight to twelve pounds with the older ones.”

“Nylon?” I reached into my pocket and scooped out the piece I thought was plastic. I handed it to him. “Is this plastic or nylon?”

“Without detailed examination, under a microscope, I could not tell you. The nylon, in certain ways, is like plastic. Have you ever had a nylon rope, cut it and the end begins to fray? You then melt the end fibers, so you now have a solid lump of what looks like melted plastic. Where’d you get that?”

“The dead man’s room.”

“Must have come off a piece of cleaning equipment.”

“Perhaps. What would be the cost of a prosthetic hand that’s like your prototype?”

“You’d have to be rich to afford one, thus they are prohibitive for the average person. However, the wealthy amputees will pay whatever it takes to get one. This type of hand won’t be ready for commercial or military use for another year or two. The mechanics are surprisingly good, but the cost is a severe problem.

“To envision the prohibitive cost, you need to understand what’s involved, the details, micro-details, and advanced components. The myoelectric arms and hands are attached to residual muscles that have already partially atrophied. In other words, the operating principle for these new prosthetics is that they are operated by utilizing electricity that’s generated by residual muscles and reconnected nerves. That’s incredibly advanced compared to what most amputees are using now. Would you like a hook for a hand, or fingers with joints that move like real fingers? An amputee must learn to use it, of course, to train those minute muscles and nerves to do as he commands. The brain sends, for simplicity let’s call them electric messages, to various parts of this device to get movement so the amputee’s nerves and residual muscles and chips take over for damaged synapses. Now muscle-generated electricity can be directed to the part of the fingers that the amputee wants to move. That’ll take about a year of training for the amputee. Then the ultra-thin, durable wires, which, have not been commercialized yet, connect the muscles electricity to the finger joints. An ultra-thin wire is used for that.

“I have a brilliant assistant, nearly finished with his Ph.D. requirements who is working with me on a miniature computer chip that will facilitate the thousands of electric messages to the nerves that operate each finger. And, if not enough muscle electricity is generated, then a hearing aid-size battery helps generate the energy that the residual muscles aren’t producing enough of. It’s a real breakthrough in advanced prosthetics technology. We can now even control the arm and hand remotely, for research experimentation and testing. The real prosthetics, naturally, won’t have that function.”

The words ‘remotely’ sent a shock up my spine, and I saw a flash of what looked like lightening blazing its way across a dark sky. “Is that why there’s a guy in a sports coat, outside your door who checked my ID, made a phone call to the security office, then let me pass? When the guy opened the door for me his coat opened, and I saw his shoulder holster. I know Chief Dickerson so, I guess that’s why it was an easier process for me to enter. I didn’t realize that until just now. So, this is secret stuff and that’s why I had to sign the non-disclosure form.”

“Secret and proprietary, and that’s no ordinary ‘guy’ as you say. That’s a Marine trained in close-quarters combat, but in civilian clothes. He’s not eye-catching large, but he’s ordinary-looking and has a pleasant, disarming smile. He isn’t carrying a concealed handgun. It’s a hidden, mini-taser where a shoulder holster would normally reside, plus he has a small but high-voltage stun gun in his back pocket, concealed by the overlapping sports coat. Why? Because of industrial espionage. Commercial competitors want to steal our crucial, proprietary data, plans, and research, and they’d give an ‘arm and a leg’ to have this prototype in their hands. A little humor.”

I smiled. “Yeah. I can see where that would come in handy.”

Dr. Jack stood and didn’t acknowledge my counter-humor. Not much of a jokester. Probably needed to sit at a counter for him to appreciate my counter humor.

“You want to see our work area?”

Now this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I couldn’t decline that invitation, especially since my thoughts were leading me in a strange direction.

“Follow me,” he said with a braggart’s grin.

I followed him to the end of the long room until we came to a solid, battleship-gray door. I could see that it was heavy; reinforced. Dr. Jack pressed in the security code numbers and the door opened slowly and silently, no noises, reminding me of the Starship Enterprise doors in the sci-fi movies. Another more alien world like the first one I encountered. This second alien world contained numerous new-looking, synthetic arms and legs, alien-looking stainless-steel tools, glues, and wires that I’d never seen in hardware stores. The white walls had no pictures, but prosthetic arms and legs hung there loosely. The back and side walls had what looked like the history of prosthetic development from old to new. There was a space on the wall for their latest model. There were no desks, just countertops on those three walls, with chairs on wheels and some stools. All the countertops were lit impressively, with no shadows, nor eye strain. Special countertop material, I guessed. A closer look revealed recessed LED, four feet, tube lights that were focused on the countertops in a way so as not to tire the eyes of any of Dr. Jack’s laboratory protégés.

Dr. Jack noticed me looking under the light shades. When standing, the lights were not seen. “They are an advanced lighting system, the NORA, LED, under cabinet light bars. Expensive suckers. About a hundred and fifty dollars for each three-foot section. What you can’t notice is what’s inside the walls, floor, and ceiling,” he added. “The latest imaging and listening devices can’t penetrate it. The military makes sure of that by checking it thoroughly every morning.”

“That must be an unusually, wonderful military grant if you can spare no expense for an advanced lighting system.”

“Detective, you’re thinking small. Do you not understand that what we are working on here will eventually be a billion-dollar industry?” His tone was one of boredom towards an intellectual inferior.

I just shook my head and ignored him, then looked around the room again. I felt like I was inside an alien factory on a distant planet. I know I was being watched. Too many unhidden cameras to miss that fact. Impressive doesn’t quite describe the room. Two technicians, with their backs toward us, were working quietly at each end of the room. Dr. Jack led me to the man with the prosthetic hand in his hand.

We walked to that man, and I could only see the back of his head.

“This is my tech wizard partner. Together we’re doing important things; revolutionizing prosthetics. Meet Ryan Swane. Ryan this is Detective Harry Elmore, who’s investigating the death of that Vietnam veteran while here at the hospital.”

I held out my hand. He shook it and said, “Glad to meet you. Geez, you must be a hell-of-a a good friend, or you have a million dollars in bribe money. I can’t remember the last time Dr. Jack invited anyone into this room.”

Dr. Jack’s cell phone rang, but before he answered it, he addressed Ryan, “Harry here is curious about our program. Would you answer his questions without giving away any proprietary information?” Then he answered the phone and turned his back to us and walked a few feet away for privacy.

Ryan looked to be in his early forties with receding, salt and pepper hair which made him look older than he really is. He had an unusually skinny nose which made pushing up his glasses a frequent action. His ruddy complexion could have been mistaken for a healing sunburn. He acted shy, not wanting to look me in the eyes. His athletic shoes were more interesting to him. They looked new and I doubted there was any running involved.

I pulled the piece of plastic or nylon—not sure which it was—out of my pocket and held it in my palm. “Ryan, do you have any ideas what this might be from? He picked it up, squeezed, and ran his index finger around it’s slightly contoured shape and off-white color. “I have no idea. Where’d you find it? That might answer your question.”

“In the dead man’s room after it had already been sanitized.”

“Well, then, there’s your answer. It came off a piece of cleaning equipment or something used to clean the room.”

“Ryan,” Dr. Jack said immediately after ending his phone call, “is fine-tuning the remote-control system. A loose wire was causing a problem so now he’s soldering the connections. An easy fix, but we need to have the remote control for testing the prosthetic. Can’t attach it to an amputee every time we need to test it. Too much complexity and costly to attach it to anybody without extensive surgery.”

I addressed Ryan. “How long have you been here?”

“A couple of years. Neither Dr. Jack nor I have stayed in any one VA hospital for more than four or five years. It’s like our traveling magic show with prosthetics being our magic tricks.”

I said, “And like magic tricks, you two magicians need to keep the secrets.”

“Well put,” added Dr. Jack.

I looked at Ryan. “You two ever worked on the west coast?”

Dr. Jack answered for Ryan. “No. Just up and down the east coast. They have their own wizards on the west coast. Competitors, but we are ahead of them in most areas. We naturally work where there’s the largest concentration of amputees. That’s the west and east coasts, but, like I said, there’s another group like ours assigned to the west coast VA hospital in San Diego.”

Ryan, with pride, announced, “One of Jack’s trainees runs that program for the military. In a few years, I will be advanced enough to have my laboratory at some VA hospital, but I need to complete my Ph.D. work and thesis first. I’ll have my Ph.D. in a few months.”

“Now I was hooked on the idea that the one-handed strangulation deaths were somehow connected to prosthetics. Dr. Haller had mentioned an article she had read that said variable grip strengths and just a while ago Dr. Jack mentioned ‘remote control’ of the arms and finger movements. I wondered if the ‘grip-strength’ becoming adjustable and the ‘remote control’ already reliable, then the thoughts of this new, super-advanced prosthetic development made me dizzy just thinking about what I was thinking. Could it be? Am I now walking away with my hands in a pot of golden ideas?” I don’t know how long I stood there.

I looked around. Dr. Jack was gone. “Where’s Dr. Jack?” I asked.

“He goes home as soon as he can which is usually about now. I guess he’s already gone. I always work additional hours. That will look damn good on my resume, plus it should say I’m responsible, devoted, and trustworthy. Oh, and my colleague, Bruce, is a family-oriented person, so he leaves, also.” Ryan pointed to the other end of the room. Bruce was gone. I restrained myself from asking if Ryan comes back often at night to work in the lab. That question was already answered by his frequent additional hours of work. I called it a done day and headed home.

In the morning I’d research and investigate Mr. Ryan Bledsoe more thoroughly. When I undressed for bed, I took the car and house keys and changed out of my pants pockets. The mysterious, plastic object I had found was gone. I’d left it at the laboratory.

I called the lab immediately. Ryan answered and said he didn’t see the object anywhere on his countertop. Of course not. I was a fool for forgetting it. If the remote-operated hand was the murder weapon, and the plastic piece came from it, then Ryan was there now to fix or replace it. Now no evidence. Damn! Such a fool I was.

I didn’t get much sleep that night. Too busy with my hurricane of ideas and objects being thrown around in my mind, sometimes too quickly for me to understand right away. Even Dorothy, from The Wizard of OZ, went flying by on a bicycle, waving to me with a prosthetic arm and hand while being chased by the wicked witch with her prosthetic legs and ruby shoes attached, rapidly churning the bicycle pedals.

Back at the office early, I didn’t even go to my desk first. I went to see the lieutenant. I entered her office. “Lieutenant Brown, do yah have a minute?” She waved me in.

I told her of my findings and my suspicions but said I didn’t know of any motive for murder.

Her laconic response? “Find something and stop the formal ‘Lieutenant Brown,’ and just say the letters ‘LT’ OK?”

I said, “Sure,” her phone rang. She waved me away with the back of her hand. Fingernail polish? Nice, but who would have expected? Most female police officers usually tried to not look pretty to the male police officers, but LT was a mild rogue. Good for her.

As I sat at my desk, highly focused on thoughts of the case, I could hear distracting comments from the leader of the hemorrhoid smashing, donut brigade. Joe must have been a founding member of the bitch brigade who was lazily waiting for his twenty years, on-the-job, to end so he could sit around collecting his pension. No one needed to tell me that he was divorced twice. That was a given.

Joey—he hated that name—was pointing at me when he said, “See that stream of smoke coming out Newbie’s ears. Our Newbie musta got hisself a hot twat las’ night, and his mind’s on fire.

The expected laughter occurred. I looked up and said, “Joey, I wonder

how many people were injured or died due to your lazy incompetence?” I pointed to his minions and said, “You guys taking lessons from him? In five or ten years you’ll look, talk, and act like him and be divorced twice with kids that hate you. Time to wake up, guys. Good advice can come from Newbies, not just from out of the cave Neanderthals.

“Think about me, the Newbie, Joey. You’re the oldest guy here and I’m the youngest. I should be learning from all of you guys. Joey, you should be acting as a positive model for all of us.

“What little I do know, as your Newbie, I act on. Knowing a lot about your job, but not doing it yourself, or not passing it on to colleagues is irresponsible. My dad taught me responsibility. If you accept payment for a job, then you’ve made a contract to do the job, the right way.”

“Well, let’s all listen to the Newbie trying out his leadership skills. He’s bossy and demanding already.”

I shouldn’t have, but I insulted Joe by saying, “Joe, you need to change your last name to ‘King.’ It would suit you much better than ‘Dumblowskey—Dumbrowskey. It would be much more accurate. Then we would know that you were ‘JoeKing.’”

Joe’s face turned scarlet, his fingers formed fists, and his eyes shone with hatred, as he quick-stepped toward me.

“Joe!” LT shouted. “Get back to your desk before I write you up for behavior unbecoming a police officer. A fine and a downgrade in your rank will be well deserved. Sit down!” she screamed, spittle spraying from her mouth.

I had been standing behind my desk waiting for Joe in a defensive position. Fighting is not my style, but Dad taught me a few things. More to the point would be calling myself a damn asshole for saying it.

Everyone turned toward their desks as LT commanded, “I’d like to see some productive work getting done. Get your asses back to your jobs. Solve some crimes. Most of you know you don’t have notable evaluations. Will you risk losing your job or a demotion for your inexcusable behavior and work quality? Joe. In my office, please.”

How was she feeling? The slamming door and rattling window answered that question for everyone, then her final act was to lower the blinds on the door window and her office window. She’ll call me next for baiting Joe into a physically threatening response. “Guilty, as charged, you jerk,” I mumbled to myself, as the sound of a loud voice blanketed the room.

I turned on my computer and went straight to the DMV records. I found Ryan’s latest address. Then using my detective shield number and department password I looked up previous records. Ryan was right when he said he moved around a lot. No family was mentioned. Odd. I continued my VA hospital searches and stumbled onto a non-VA hospital where Ryan had been as a patient. It surprised me. A patient for what? I wondered.

Joe exited LT’s office and glared in my direction, but I lowered my head toward some papers on my desk. Staring back at him would be like pouring gas onto a fire while trying to put it out. Then the thought, “Why doesn’t LT inquire about an early retirement for Joe?” Too many questions popping up and few answers.

I couldn’t see LT now. She’d still be heated and angry from the confrontation with Joe. Health records are out of bounds, with some exceptions, to law enforcement and the military. Confidentiality rules. An hour later I went to see LT. She said she couldn’t help me gain access to medical records. Doing that is a definite no-no. I knew better than to argue. She was still irritated by Joe’s behavior.

I’d have to think about that. Was there a way around it? I went to lunch at Subway, sat in a booth, and enjoyed my Italian sub. I wondered why there was no Irish corned beef sub. While chewing fast and thinking fast, I bit my tongue. With a finger, I found a couple of drops of blood. Delicious. When done eating, my tongue felt more painful. I put my finger in my mouth, over the painful area. Not much blood which was out of proportion to the pain. I scolded myself. “You baby, Harry. Need a nurse. A doctor to sew it up, or … Wow! There it was. Floating on the surface of a pond of ideas. A doctor has access to health records, especially a VA doctor who’s working at a VA hospital. Dr. Jack and Dr. Haller. Dr. Jack first. He can shed more light on Ryan’s health status. Surely there must have been a job interview with records checking, references, and a personal meeting with an interviewer or interview committee. Dr. Jack would demand that he be part of any hiring of any person who was to work as his colleague on the secretive, advanced prosthetics project. It would be of supreme importance to him. He may have even been the determining factor in hiring anyone to work with him. That was a promising lead.

Now I must do what was always my dad’s and now LT’s maxim, i.e., “Change words into actions.”

                                                          * 

It was late. I was tired, as well as impatient. I wanted to call Dr. Haller, but her pithy, sexual hints held me back. I was being too puritan with her and that wasn’t normal for me. I don’t want to owe her anything, nor to be her gigolo, though I think that, at about a decade older than I, she could teach me a few things, be much more open to experimentation, less morally rigid—so glad my mom can’t hear these thoughts. Stick with the original idea of talking to Dr. Jack, I told myself. I’ll be damned if a colorful, detailed picture of Dr. Haller, in a skimpy bikini, didn’t just flash to life in my mind. Then I heard my mom’s voice saying, “Men are such pigs.” The next day, I didn’t go to the office. I did call LT to let her know I was on the job, just not in the office. I drove straight to the hospital to talk with Dr. Jack.

I told him only what was necessary about the case and asked him not to confide the information to anyone, but I did not truly know if he could be trusted. I was suspicious.

His immediate response was a good chuckle that transformed into a broad smile. He must have had some great dental work done. His smile reminded me of a freshly painted, white picket fence.

“With respect, detective, you most certainly must be wrong about this new direction in which you are headed. Ryan is an employer’s dream. His work week isn’t forty hours, it’s more like eighty hours. The guy is brilliant. He has made important contributions to this project. Our progress is far ahead of where I thought we would be at this time. He’s quiet, cooperative, and does not flaunt his superior IQ and knowledge.”

“I’ll bet you’re correct doctor. But I must be thorough when my boss asks me if I’ve been thorough. So, we can get this out of the way quickly because you’re correct. Ryan has been employed mostly in VA hospitals on the East Coast, but there was one VA hospital where he was the patient, not the employee. Will you expand on that point?”

“Oh, that. There was a brief time he was a patient and seeing a psychiatrist due to an obsessive-compulsive, personality disorder. But in six months, with his medication and mental therapy, he was released. I checked into it. Besides, that was years ago and there have been no problems since then. We hired him because he’s brilliant. A researcher at his previous VA hospital, as an employee, informed me about him. We hired him temporarily, but he worked out so well that in a year we hired him to his permanent job here with me.”

“I see that he is well built. Weightlifter?”

“Oh, yeah. Seems to be his hobby. It is also the reason he’s working on perfecting an adjustable grip for prosthetics. He lifts weights with amputees here and knows the problems they have with lifting the bar. He spots many of them. You know, ‘spots,’ as in standing right by them in case they need help with a weight that’s too heavy for them.”

“I see. Interesting. Is the strength of grip his project?”

“Yes. Under my guidance. He’s personally responsible for that area but reports to me any time there is considerable progress or problems, and at the end of the week, every Friday, we meet for lunch and discuss how he’s doing. The remainder of this complex project we both work on together. I have administrative duties to perform also, then he works on any area that I assign him. The grip area is also his thesis subject. He’ll easily get his Ph.D. at my recommendation. You see, his thesis is about a proprietary and secret area of prosthetics. It can’t go to a committee, nor can it be published, so I, my West Coast equivalent, plus a high-ranking, medical, military prosthetics representative with a secret or top-secret clearance will read it. If we all agree on its superior content, he’ll have his degree in a couple of months. That’s another reason that he works overtime, on his thesis. A little unorthodox Ph.D. procedure, but it happens quite often when working with the military.”

“The OCPD episode won’t hurt his chances for the degree?”

“The mild symptoms, if there are any, will be helpful. His meds control his intense need to succeed. Details and orderliness are both desirable symptoms, also. You must have noticed his orderliness and how he focuses on details. He says that he usually has a schematic, like an electrician may have of an entire house circuitry, in his head. He arranges and rearranges that circuitry mostly without hands-on experimentation and manipulation, which is another reason that his desk and countertop is not cluttered with items used for his style of work.”

“How about social relationships?”

Dr. Jack paused, thought about the question as he rubbed his chin, then offered, “You know about his voluntary overtime hours, so, naturally, I can say that he may not have many friends after work hours simply because of his work hours taking up so much time. I’d say he has more friends here at the hospital than away from the hospital.”

“How about aggression, temper, extreme opinions, or challenging your competence or command of the department?”

“Like I already said, no problems.” Then a thoughtful pause. “OK. Sure. He’s stubborn and won’t quit a project even when I see that he’s on a path toward a dead end. He draws his images of the schematic for me, but if I properly explain the flaws that he’s up against, he suddenly realizes it’s time to move on. He usually just says, ‘Oh, shit. So, what’s next, Jack?’ It’s said rationally, calm with no temper or aggression. And to let you know that I’m not perfect, he produces unique proposals. Unique to him. If I see the promising possibility of it working, then we work together on it. I keep an eye on his behaviors, which is easy in this small department. And before you ask, yes, we’re on a first name basis.”

“He doesn’t mingle with the staff much, but when he does, he seems fine. His friends are mostly the weightlifters, both with and without a prosthesis. He’s friendly to our own staff, but there’s few of them that he meets.” Dr. Jack paused and thought about the question as he rubbed his unshaven chin.

“So, he’s still somewhat of a puzzle, except for his excellent work, right?”

“I disagree. A puzzle to me is a problem. Something is missing that prevents seeing the entire picture, just like something is missing in solving problems unique to prosthetics. The irony is that he works so much that I don’t think he has many friends or much of a social life, simply because he works long hours. A ‘Catch-22’ dilemma.”

“So, he has permission to enter the lab at night and early morning?”

“Of course. I just said he works long hours in the laboratory. He’s the first one here in the morning and the last one to leave at night, plus he returns at his discretion. And, yes, you’ve seen all the cameras. They record the lab area twenty-four hours a day. I check them each morning. No problems there.”

“Your secretary is a nice-looking woman. How has his behavior been towards her?”

I don’t have a secretary due to the secrecy of the work, but our lady lab assistant usually plays a dual role. She works closest to the entrance door, so she takes care of the few visitors that we get, usually administrators checking up on our finances. The grant doesn’t cover everything, the hospital pays some and they are extremely frugal-minded. The woman is part-time help. Not here today.”

“Same question. The secretary, lab assistant?”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t answer your question. It’s a simple answer though. He barely notices her, and seldom talks to her. Just doesn’t seem interested. She’s got a doctor boyfriend working in the ER, so she wouldn’t reciprocate.”

“Gay?”

“I can’t ask him that question. Rules. Don’t ask, don’t tell. However, he has shown me no evidence of having any gay tendencies or relationships. It’s a sensitive issue for any employer. He does exemplary work in the area that he was hired to do. Period.”

“Didn’t mean to step on your toes, or his.”

“Your suspicions are wrong about him. I’d hate to lose him. When constructing these ingenious prosthetics, you can see his hands are as steady as a surgeon's.”

“Thanks, Dr. Jack. That’s all.” We shook hands and I departed.

                                                            * 

The remainder of the day was information gathering. Checking East Coast VA hospital records to see if there were those unique strangulations at hospitals that Ryan worked at before his employment here. I didn’t have much luck getting access until one of the security department Chiefs noticed me trying to gain access. He checked me out, went to the chief hospital administrator, and then contacted me. “Harry, you have been given access to the files for twenty-four hours.” I worked late because of the time restraint. I found what I needed.

The next day I checked Ryan’s employee record, and I got access to the records of the names of the soldiers whose deaths were labeled as unsolved, or as mysterious strangulations. I read the deceased’s service records. I wasn’t surprised that they were all Vietnam veterans. What did surprise the hell out of me was the fact that they were all at the Khe Sanh siege at one time or another since the siege was nine months long. It would not be hard to do given that much time. Furthermore, they were all Marines. One shock followed by another. Coincidences? Bullshit! I had a tiger by its tail. As I rushed deeper into the files each became linchpins of information that connected all of them. I was hopeful and thought this information might give me a breakthrough in my case and other cases in other hospitals. All those Marines were survivors of the long, disastrous, and deadly siege.

I felt as if a jolt of electricity was racing through me. I was sitting at the edge of my chair, then fell into the back of the chair, hard. The wheeled office chair rolled backward as my mind plunged forward. I pushed myself back to my desk and my hands went hunting and pecking around the computer keyboard like a crazed chicken’s beak picking up seeds. I was in such a hurry that I started making many typing errors. I was wasting time. I slowed to a crawl and after swearing a hurricane of silent words, began searching employment names at each hospital where the unsolved, and suspicious deaths occurred. Ryan’s name was at everyone, then another shock. Dr. Jackson Barton was also at these hospitals and at the same time as Ryan. My eyes bulged out and my mouth opened in astonishment. I sat there, shocked. My mind swirled and made me dizzy. It felt like I was swirling inside a tornado of dread.

I closed my eyes as a brilliant nova of light burst into my head, just behind my eyes like two suns. I felt blinded for a second. It looked like wherever Dr. Jack went, Ryan followed, first as a lowly nurse’s aide, then an LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse), then an RN (Registered Nurse). A gap appears where he earned an engineering degree, Summa cum laude, the very summit of academic success. From the nurse's aid to the engineering degree took ten years. Looking back at my timeline I saw that there were two similar deaths in my case when Ryan was hiking through the path of academics.

Then nursing fell out of importance, but his time there gave him a thorough knowledge of what happens on what floors and in different departments. He would also learn about security. He simply had to make a friend who worked there, and then question him for details. He’d learned about medications and anything else he thought might come in handy after his engineering degree, then prosthetics. He used his engineering degree, but also had a minor in computer science, to assist him to be superbly qualified for working with high-level and advanced prosthetics. That’s how he and Dr. Jack finally connected.

My thoughts were twisting around and around my brain, like the marble in the roulette wheel. Once my thoughts stopped spinning and my head caught up, I heard myself say, “Dr. Jack?”

I shouted it so loudly that when I looked around the room, all eyes were staring at me; eyes full of curiosity or WTFs the matter with him.

My laborious work through the mazes of DMV records, hospital records, and public records, plus military records, and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), now moved some important puzzle pieces so they fit and enlightened me more about this case. If it were not for computers, cases like these would become ‘cold cases’ and not be solved.

The one persistent problem I had was trying to get records from MCOP (Medical Center Orthotics and Prosthetics, Silver Springs, MD) which required detailed information about the person, from a doctor requesting that information. A smile stretched my lips. I asked myself, who do I know who might help me with that? Unfortunately for me, my only answer was Dr. Janice Haller. I could no longer depend on Dr. Jack as my suspicions grew like showing a weed growing in a fast-forward video.

Now I had to swallow my pride and agree to take Janice out to dinner, at a restaurant of her choosing (stupid me), before she would help me. I took her to an expensive dinner. To my pleasant surprise, she acted normally, a little nervous, like I was as if this was our first date.

Janice explained, “I’d like to apologize for my behavior when we first met and on the phone. I’m used to guys who like sex jokes, and subtle innuendoes. They say it turns them on, sexually. I never used to like being so forward with my talk, but that has been the way it works for me and the dating game. When you’re my size, you need some extra help. High-heeled shoes are too painful. Sex talk was my helper.”

I had no idea what to order. I’d passed Bascom’s Chop House on Ulmerton Road hundreds of times. It looked too pricey for me to ever eat there, but that’s what she wanted and that was the deal. She instructed me not to order a side dish, nor any dessert because I wouldn’t have room for them once I ate my main meal.

We started with an appetizer of Calamari, then Slow Roasted Prime Rib. She got the 12oz. and I got the 16oz. version. Like I said, I was lost in this posh type of environment, so I simply ordered whatever she ordered except for wine. She had two glasses of what I could not even pronounce. Something called Pinot Grigio. “Can I just have water?” I asked the waiter. Wow! What a dirty look I got. “Harry, I think you’d like the Watermelon Collin.” I got that, and a glass or water.

“You don’t drink much?”

“No, but when I do it’s usually a ‘sissy’ kind of drink. Low alcohol and a tiny umbrella with which I can play.”

“Well, you certainly are going to get a sissy drink, but you’ll like it.”

Next, we went to a popular bar that was closed. We couldn’t sit at the bar on bar stools due to her shortness. She had looked at the stools, embarrassed until I said, “You can get high another time. Let’s find a booth.” I like White Russian drinks and had two. She had two drinks called Corpse Revivors and laughed at me, followed by, “Boo!” as if to scare me. We talked casually and got comfortable with each other. She reached across the table, which came to her armpits, and held my hands. Warm and gentle. When I asked her about her statement about not dating tall guys, she smiled and asked, “Is this a date?” I didn’t know that, Harry. I thought of it as a bribe, not a date. If you think this is a date, then you better get lost friend. She stuck out her thumb and kept it in motion like an inverted pendulum but pointing towards the door. We both laughed a lot. She was a different person.

“I heard your dad was a famous detective, and solved difficult cases for many years until that poison snake bite killed him. Was he a good dad?”

“He was a great dad who didn’t bring his work home with him, not that mom and I could tell, anyway. He was great at separating his job from his home. At work, though, he was all business. When home he was a mushroom. You know a ‘fun guy’ spelled ‘f-u-n-g-i.’ Dad was a lifelong punster. When I was young, I didn’t understand a lot of them so he would explain. As I got older, we had a rule. When he got home from work and I met him at the door, we’d sit so he could relax for five minutes, then we’d tell each other a joke. Most times they were puns, but not always.”

“Tell me one.”

“Can’t think of one now that I’m on the spot.” I paused. She waited. “OK. I can only think of this one. ‘Where do bad rainbows go?”

“I give up.”

“They go to prism, but it’s a light sentence.”

“Oh. That’s awful,” she replied, but still laughed.

“Another one just popped into my head. “When you die, which part of your body dies last?”

“I have no idea.”

“Your pupils. They dilate.”

“Oh, Harry. Stop!”

“That’s the type of pun jokes we told each other. I got much better at it in high school. It’s important to remember that the word ‘pun’ appropriately starts with the letters ‘P’ and ‘U.”

When she stopped giggling, she asked, “Do you want to have a nightcap at my apartment?”

“Another time. I like you this way, not the hospital way.” I drove Janice home and left her at the door. She looked over her shoulder at me with a cupid’s smile. “I’ll see you around, perhaps.”

“Then I may become a square,” I whispered back to her.

As I drove away, she looked confused. Dad liked the silly humor of Robin Williams who had a comedy show on TV long ago. Robin often said, “Be there or be square.” Dad used to say that frequently.

Early the next day, I gathered all my paperwork which pointed to Ryan and Dr. Jack working together and brought it to LT.  She looked through a few pages and looked up at me with big eyes of surprise. “Damn,” she whispered, as she leaned over her desk. Then, “Harry, close my door and lower the blinds.” As I did that, she was closing the blinds on her hallway view window. Now I sat quietly while she read the remainder of my report.

“Criminals can occasionally slip through the eye of a needle a couple of times before the needle pokes into their eye, but these killers are slipping through the eye of a needle repeatedly,” I said in a hushed voice.

“Agreed, but, again, Harry, what’s the motive?”

“I’m getting close to that answer. Presently I know the deaths are connected to their experiences in Vietnam, and specifically that long, drawn-out battle at a place called Khe Sanh. It was a several months long siege and the bloodiest battle of the entire war. The enemy had a Marine base surrounded. There was no escaping by land, or by helicopters which couldn’t land while under so much gunfire. Supplies had to be flown in via helicopters that often couldn’t land due to the enemy’s concentrated rifle fire. They were forced to circle over the siege area and drop the supplies. A year-long siege resulted in nearly three hundred deaths, and the wounded numbered close to an unbelievable twenty-five hundred, mostly Marines, but some Army. The U.S. land forces couldn’t reach them for months.”

“And LT, every one of those mysterious strangulations at those VA

hospitals were Marines. Also, an item of particular and peculiar interest is that in those VA hospital deaths, the victims were all survivors of the Khe Sanh siege. In addition, it looks to me as if those dead soldiers were leader types, such as officers and sergeants who are the ones giving orders to the troops. Might the motive be panicked, confused orders or commands that were seen by someone as being immoral, unwise, careless, or reckless, or officers in pursuit of decorations and promotions, playing with Marine lives to gain personal rewards?”

“That’s kind of a stretch, don’t you think so, Harry?”

“No LT. Not only did things like that happen right after the war was over, but it happened in combat situations. Have you ever heard of ‘fragging?’”

“No. Don’t think so.”

“It’s usually where an officer gets killed, by his men (or man) because he is giving orders that are unwise, reckless, and getting too many soldiers killed. Usually, it’s done with a fragmentation grenade, thus the word ‘fragging,’ to make it look like a combat wound. Sometimes an officer was shot from the front with an enemy rifle to make it look like the enemy had shot him. From 1969 to 1972, there were nearly one-thousand incidents of suspected fragging with only a half-dozen proved. If you think you are alive because a fellow soldier killed the foolish, reckless order-giver, then you guard that soldier. He kept you alive. You owe him. You won’t give him up. It’s nothing new. It's happened thousands of times on most of the battlefields in history. It’s just not mentioned in the history books. Too delicate a subject.”

“Well, holy shit! I never heard of that. I’ll apply for a warrant with the captain, but he’ll have to get it approved by a judge. Hopefully, a reasonable one and it’ll be ready to use sometime tomorrow morning.”

“Good. This case seemed like a simple task, at first, but it turned out to

be complex, confusing, enlightening, and exhausting.”

The next morning, I sat at my desk impatiently waiting for LT. As soon as she showed up, she saw me and started waving the warrant, signed by a judge, and now waiting to be served.

LT said, “I don’t want you to be alone this time. It’s time for you to have a backup partner.”

I looked at the room full of curious eyes and said, “I don’t want any of them watching my back.”

“None of them will, Harry.” She pointed to her office window and waved her hand as if she wanted someone to come out. Someone did. “Harry, meet your new partner, Patricia Spenser.”

Patricia held her hand out and offered a friendly smile, a firm grip.

“Patricia is another new addition to this department, Harry. You should remember her from the academy.”

In a few seconds, I said, “Yes, now I remember something. She’s …”

“Good to see you again, Harry,” Patricia interrupted. Her smile was friendly but had an edgy defiance to it. That didn’t make sense to me. I can figure out most things, with time, but women? It took me a lifetime just to know and understand my mom, so I never did understand female thinking. Mom explained it in simple terms. She said, “Men will never understand, Harry. Their simple brains won’t allow it.” Pardon me? What did she say?

Suddenly my mind became clearer, and I remembered details. Academy graduation ceremony. She finished second to me in the overall evaluations. If she’d beaten me, she would be standing where I am meeting me.

“She won’t need much help on procedures, nor rules and regulations, Harry. A quick learner, so I put her with a good teacher. You guys, if you work well together, will gain a lasting, good reputation. But only if two serious competitors can genuinely work together. Don’t let your egos ruin it for either of you. Oh, and, Harry, don’t forget that she scored better than you on the target range.”

I blushed. “Yeah. I remember that LT. We didn’t see much of each other to socialize, but I do remember her name coming up quite often as a superior academy student. And I must say that I am glad to have her as my partner.” Patricia was nice enough not to tease me about my marksmanship. She just smiled. Another unreadable woman, but the smile was genuine especially when it migrated to her green eyes, liquid emeralds.

“Harry, I’ll certainly be glad to have you as my partner, too.” Then she said, “I hope I can be your co-star and not your coaster.” LT and Patricia laughed, as I was silenced by Patricia’s bold reversal of our roles. Mom was right.

“Teach her, Harry. Start by giving her all your information, speculations, and conclusions. Catch her up on the case as much as you can. You were my first step to change this department, Harry. Out with the old and in with the new. Then she moved closer to me and said, “In five or ten years, all these guys, she pointed around the room, will be gone, mostly to retirement. I need you two to lift the status of this department so I can recruit more quality detectives. I’m counting on the both of you. Please don’t disappoint me.” She turned and walked back to her office.

“Patricia, I have a warrant to serve and evidence to collect at our local VA hospital. It looks like an ingenious murder case that may affect other unsolved cases at other VA hospitals over the years. It’s about a thirty-to-forty-five-minute drive so I’ll fill you in on the way. Are you ready to be a friend and a partner?”

“Damn right, Harry. I’ve been looking forward to this day for more than a couple of years. I knew I could catch up to you. Women are smarter and work harder than most men. You can count on me.”

Did she just insult me or praise me? See what I mean about me not understanding women.

“OK, partner. Let’s get started.” When we arrived, we went directly to the chief administrator’s office, and then to the chief of security. The administrator nearly shit his pants and pounded a fist on his important man’s desk. After I handed him LT’s phone number we walked out. A warrant doesn’t need permission to be carried out. He couldn’t call security without getting himself into trouble. A warrant just needs a judge’s signature. He grabbed the phone and called LT. We couldn’t notify him beforehand because he may have alerted Dr. Jack. Chief Dickerson was a better story. He was helpful and even alerted the other security personnel that we’d be in the prosthesis laboratory so they should stay away. They weren’t going to get past that Marine guard, anyway.

Chief Dickerson, then escorted Dr. Jack and Ryan to an empty office where a security guard was posted. The Chief, having been a police officer, knew how this went. He provided boxes for us, and three hours later Pat and I walked out with three boxes of information: records, receipts, financial information, notebooks, letters, emails; and anything that seemed relevant, but not the new prosthetic arm. The Marine had locked the door and set the alarm. It was off limits and the Marine guard wouldn’t have allowed it to be removed, even if it were on the warrant, and I wasn’t about to argue with the guy. So, the new arm and hand were well cared for. The warrant was wide open and didn’t restrict us from any area of the laboratory, but we’d pay with our jobs, fines, and prison if we leaked any of the proprietary, secret, data that we had removed, so the ‘chain of custody’ was a job-saving detail for us. Pat knew it, too, so we paid special attention to it. Every signature was checked and rechecked by one of us before we gave up custody of all the evidence.

After we departed, Chief Dickerson stood by the door with the Marines. They talked casually about military duty. The Chief has been an Army police officer. There would be no entry without the approval of me, Pat, or LT. The Chief was free to go when an on-duty officer replaced him.

About a week later the puzzle pieces showed a clear picture of those mysterious deaths. It was Patricia who spotted the vital clue when she rummaged through piles the loose papers and found an old and worn map of the hospital’s duct works. “Harry! Come here!” she shouted. She asked me, “Could the hospital’s duct works have been an unseen entrance into the victim’s room?” Immediately I remembered the faint, long-forgotten streaks on the wall.

“Nice job, Pat, but if it’s true, then we need to inform the military police to get a ductwork map of those other hospitals and see if they can find evidence to duct work vent tampering. They could solve those ‘cold cases of mysterious strangulation deaths occurred.”

“Pat. Let's follow that thought. Say it’s the ductwork, plus a remote-control hand with an adjustable grip that can travel through the ductwork to the room. By remote control and with revolutionary fingers it forces open the heat or A/C duct work, it jumps on the bed before the victim knows what’s going on, even easier if they’re sedated. Damn impressive job, Pat. We’ll be great together. Wait, wait, wait a minute,” I hesitated. “Wouldn’t the grill that covers the opening of the ducts cause a gouge on the floor as it fell? Wouldn’t that startle the victim? Wait … It was kept from falling, somehow.”

“You want me to check that out with the clean-up nurses?”

“Yes. Great.”

Pat checked with the clean-up nurses who said, definitively, that neither one of them found a gouge, not even a scratch on the floor. She returned to me with that information. So, we agreed, the grill hadn’t fallen, but it was opened. I called Chief Dickerson to come help Pat and me. When he arrived with a step ladder, he climbed to check the screws. He touched, then pulled mildly on the grill. It came off. “Harry, the grill has screw holes, but no screws. This duct vent has been glued back on. “Look here.” He said as he pointed to the spots of glue. He came down the ladder with the vent to show us the residue of glue.

“Anything else?” Pat asked.

Chief Dickerson seemed to surprise himself as he quickly answered “There’s a dust trail. By God, Harry. She’s right on the mark. The dust on the vent’s floor has a trail-like pattern in the dust, like rubbing a few fingers along a dusty table.”

Both Dr. Jack and Ryan were arrested and charged with premeditated murder. No bail was allowed. Dr. Jack, it turned out, was the brother of Ryan’s dad. Ryan’s dad had to rely for a lifetime on a prosthetic right arm and leg, a wheelchair, plus a cane to move around his house. He wore aged prosthetics overtly and a bitter contempt covertly for those on his list. Before his death, he handed the list to

Ryan discussed names of a few military persons who were in command positions that he regarded as mass murders due to their rash, panicked decisions, poor judgments, and the resulting catastrophic orders that meant certain death to soldiers when there was no hope of succeeding with the mission. They were carelessly, recklessly, making panicked decisions that sent dozens of Marines to their deaths, repeatedly. The odds were simply overwhelmingly in favor of the enemy who controlled all the surrounding ground outside the base perimeter with a battalion of troops. In the coming years, hatred had lushly bloomed in his poisoned soil; his mantra was, ‘Life is a journey of suffering, with but a few moments of pleasure.’

Ryan had sent that list to his uncle, Dr. Jack, years ago. And the anger simmered for years in both. When a family Christmas dinner was scheduled, Dr. Jack and Ryan drifted away to the privacy of Ryan’s bedroom. There they made a pact to do what Ryan’s dad wanted but could not do himself while confined for life in a wheelchair.

In the past, Dr. Jack would do much more than tinker with prosthetics when not acting as a traditional MD. He would focus his ambition on that direction until he became a leading expert in that area. It took years.

Ryan, who was already a brilliant high school student, would need to change his name to his mother’s family name (Swane), so as not to be connected to his uncle, Dr. Jack, unless some deep research and investigation made it necessary, but that wasn’t likely to happen. Ryan dedicated years of training, becoming a nurse and then veering off to the field of prosthetics.

Both were excited about learning much more about prosthetics, but it was easier for Dr. Jack, having already gotten his degrees. A bit more difficult for Ryan with his demanding academic workload, but he remained an exemplary student. Waiting patiently was not a problem for either of them, at first. They had the attitude that if it occurred, fine, and if it didn’t that was OK. They agreed not to be obsessive about the long-range task. They both acknowledged that it would take years, a decade or more to educate themselves and work on prosthetic development while working on research and at VA hospitals, waiting for any of those names on the list to show up. It was expected that Mother Nature and Father Time would have claimed some of those names.

They knew there would be unexpected interruptions, as well as expected delays, especially for Ryan who always had a mild misanthropic view of humanity. One unexpected event was Ryan’s worsening depression. During his depression months, he isolated himself and started missing his university classes. Uncle Jack made an emergency visit to convince him to break-up with Miss Mary, his controlling girlfriend. Shortly thereafter the medication took effect.

Under continuous pressures and academic demands, Ryan slowly was feeling mental attrition. Not wanting his grades to be affected, Uncle Jack advised him to arrange an authorized break from his studies, which turned out to be a painless process. It also turned out that Dr. Jack made arrangements for his depression medication. Since he was a medical doctor, it was easy to write a prescription for Zoloft, and later for Prozac. Ryan also self-medicated with his special girlfriend, Miss Mary Wanna Cannabis.

Uncle Jack stayed with him for a long weekend to get him out of his

funk. Ryan and Jack worked all weekend on the prosthetics, variable grip problems, extensive computer research, reading, drawings, engineering diagrams, and brainstorming. Jack would propose an idea that was studied from all angles, and then they both decided if it was promising and why. They worked wonderfully together as two highly intelligent twins might do. This was what Ryan loved, diving into the depths of a complex problem-like void and beating it as it tries to thwart him. He was energized, and focused, so by midnight, Monday morning, he and Jack thought they had the problem solved on paper. They had notes,

diagrams, circuit paths and electric energy needed and its source. Ultra-fine wire and computer chip locations were solved, theoretically, but testing was needed.

Ryan went with his Uncle Jack back to the VA hospital laboratory for experimentation and testing. Ryan was hooked, again. He had no time to be depressed. His intense interest brought him to the brink of obsession but it knocked out the depressed opponent like an undefeated heavy-weight boxer. The new configuration and wiring made the remote control look even more promising, but the fingers moved too slowly like fine sandpaper rubbing on fine sandpaper. The internal mechanics were taken apart and Ryan cleaned them with fine lady’s cosmetic brushes, blow-dried dried to blow out fine particles, and then oiled with the super lubricant mostly used on the inside controls of jet aircraft. The final process was to pinpoint the lubricant where it was needed without slopping it over other parts where lubrication was not needed.

Now, at the lab, working within sight of other people, Ryan could see that his uncle had already developed a well disguised persona, becoming a convincing charmer when necessary or a task-master when needed. The broken mirror in the lab’s bathroom attested to the fact that much anger was present, but concealed, and only sometimes blasted out in certain private ways.

Working together, with added hours in the evening, one day, with everyone gone home, there was a double-barreled blast of the word, “Eureka!” Both men became exuberant, hopping up and down, with back-slapping by Ryan, while Jack pumped his fists and held them high as Rocky did in the movie by the same name. Then they got busy on the next part. They knew that they needed to mount a mini night-vision device which had been sitting in a box in the storage room for a couple of years. It was easily mounted between the middle finger knuckle and the wrist. Now they were so excited that their eyes bugged out as they looked at each other, internally celebrating their success. Now they had a revolutionary hand they could operate remotely. The hand was remarkable. It could walk as well as climb using its fingers as arms and legs. These processes were remotely controlled, plus a mini monitor the size of an old-fashioned matchbox, but only one-fourth as thick was only slightly more complex than an expensive remote-control car for kids. Its movement could easily be controlled by the RC device’s operator and what it was doing was seen on the mini monitor connected to the RC device.

They remained calm. If a name showed up, and Ryan was not available, Dr Jack executed the plan himself. They had used an advancement in the remote-controlled hand that was kept secret from competitors at the request of the military. This remote control hand was fitted secretly with a camera monitor, plus a hollow index finger containing glue or oil depending on the job requirements. The RC hand was guided through the duct works, would find the room, dig out the screws, tie a light, cotton cord to the vent grill, then lower the rest of the cord to the floor. The new generation of highly sophisticated hands lowered itself to the floor or onto the bed, if it were directly under the vent, as directed by the RC operator who could see everything via a night vision lens on the camera that was connected to the operator’s monitor. After the deed was completed, the hand climbed up the cord into the vent, then glued the vent shut to look as if it had never been disturbed. Foolproof ingenuity left the victim dead and no easily found evidence which had defeated all the previous investigators and left them scratching their heads and whispering, “How, God dammit! How?”

Both Dr. Jack and Ryan were arrested and charged with premeditated murder. No bail was allowed.

LT, Harry, and Patricia were swamped with calls from reporters. Harry had been saying, “No comment,” but later he changed it to, “If you write a report in your newspaper about this case, make sure you mention my new partner, Patricia Spenser, Detective third grade.”

The District Attorney had the case now. Harry was delighted to pass the case off to someone else. It had, many times, evolved into a mind-numbing, exhausting experience, especially for a newly assigned detective. It was supposed to be simple enough for a Newbie. He was happy about his new partner and hoped to solve many cases with her help.

However, as might be expected, the detectives’ room didn’t change. More jealousy, and taunts, persisted, but whenever Pat and I walked past LT’s office window she never failed to greet us with a smile and a fist with its thumb-up signal.

“Well, then, we’ll see what happens when we screw up a case, Pat.”

“Harry? Do you know what’s the best thing about Switzerland?”

“Watches or chocolates?”

“Maybe, but their flag is a definite plus.”

“Really? You gotta be kidding me. I like those kinds of jokes.”

                                                 END