Disclaimer: see Perspective Part 1. This story is #3 in the 
"Telempathy" Series.  

PERSPECTIVE PART 2

"Wow! Room with a view!" Daryl Banks declared as he gazed out over 
Cascade from the bank of windows in the Chief of Police's office.

Simon Banks allowed himself a slight smile – when you managed to impress 
your children you knew you were doing something right. Pouring himself a 
cup of Vanilla Mocha from his fancier, bigger machine (while realising how 
much coffee he had been consuming recently and mentally noting to make 
sure Sandburg didn't find out), Simon placed the mug on his desk as his son 
shook his head in answer to the silent offer of a cup. "Do I need to write out 
another cheque so soon?" He said with jocular exasperation.

Daryl grinned. "Nope. I just came to let you know – Ellie is going to take 
over loft-sitting duties-stroke-Dastardly and Muttley watching duties. I'm 
going to D.C. for a few weeks."

"Is there a problem?" Simon was concerned, guiltily aware that he hadn't 
exactly had Daryl anywhere on his priority list over the past few weeks.

Daryl gave a loud chuckle at his father's expression. "No, dad, but to be 
honest – you're in the middle of planning a double wedding, settling in as 
new Chief of Police, trying to keep out the Feds and offload Parker 
Dackholm, IA Detective from Hell. I've decided that discretion is the better 
part of valour."

Simon winced. "Have I been that bad?"

"I take the Fifth." Daryl retorted, but his grin took any sting out of the 
words. 

"Okay, okay." Simon's mock-glare didn't faze his son in the slightest. "As 
long as you clear Ellie taking over with Jim and Blair."

"Sure, I'm going to call them today." 

"And Ellie doesn't mind?" Simon wasn't going to have his son charming 
Daryl's soon-to-be stepsister into doing all the hard work.

Daryl's smirk assumed enormous proportions, "Trust me, Ellie's really 
looking forward to some space from her mom right now."

"Hah-hah." Simon growled. "If you're gonna go, git! Some of us have work 
to do!"

Daryl "got", but as Simon sat down he couldn't help but laugh as he clearly 
heard his son loudly whistling "the Great Escape" theme tune down the 
corridor. That boy…ruefully he acknowledged that both Daryl and Ellie 
McKinley probably had the right of it. Of the four people who would be 
centre stage at the double wedding, the only calm and collected one was, 
surprisingly, Rhonda Delagardie, who theorised that her own pregnancy was 
using up all those hormones that had turned Simon, Henri Brown and Dr 
Leonie McKinley into tense, bristling porcupine people well on their way to 
bleeding ulcers. He sighed – considering that he had yet another meeting 
with the FBI over their "Cascade office" proposal this afternoon, he heartily 
wished he were in his son's place…

Jauntily Daryl Banks made his way through Major Crime, noting how even 
though Jim and Blair were away, their desks weren't being used as dumping 
grounds. Daryl wasn't stupid, he had long since recognised that Jim's 
Sentinel status was an open secret, and was quietly proud of his position as 
being a member of "Us", the Sentinel and Guide's own personal support 
network. Exchanging greetings with Joel, Rhonda and the others, the young 
man left 250 Pender Street and made his way home, letting himself into the 
now empty house.

Daryl walked slowly upstairs to "his" bedroom, a little wistfully. An English 
immigrant who based their layout on the grace-and-favour homes bestowed 
by the Queen-Empress Victoria had built these mews houses in the 19th 
Century. Along the coast road north towards Seattle, the construction had 
consisted of a row of courtyards. Each courtyard had two houses on the left, 
two at the top facing the road and two on the right. Large, black wrought 
iron gates could be closed, making each little courtyard a secure rectangle. 
His mother had liked being able to place her adventurous toddler son 
outdoors in the knowledge that she didn't have to maintain constant 
vigilance. Not wishing to make each pair of houses attached to each other 
as he recognised this would lower their value, the original builder had 
separated them with a large stone carriage shed. Obviously the courtyards 
were too small for a carriage-and-four to pull in, so the sheds "faced" the 
opposite way. Admittedly each mews house was not very large – one of his 
mother's many excuses for not having more children – compared to most 
modern American homes, but was still a good size.

Daryl pushed open the door to his old bedroom, doing a quick check to make 
sure there was nothing left behind that he hadn't already transferred to his 
new dorm room at Georgetown. He'd learned quite young that he owned 
this house and the one next door, the "left-hand" side pair of the six in this 
courtyard. His parents had never spent a full night in this room and so were 
completely unaware that if you went over to that corner there and laid your 
head against the wall, the ventilation bricks transmitted sound with 
crystalline clarity. His parents hadn't yelled or screamed at each other, and 
Simon Banks had instilled in his son with more than words that no real man 
would ever hit a woman, but by the time he was in second grade, Daryl had 
easily recognised the "tone" of their many tense "discussions" and by the 
time they finally separated when he was ten, the event was far from a 
surprise. 

Simon had inherited the pair of houses from his own grandfather, as deeply 
racist towards whites as many whites were to blacks. Daryl had once heard 
his dad explain how the old man had howled with bitter glee as he hired a 
variety of down-at-heel "white trash" actors to dress up in fancy suits as 
"Mr Banks' Tenancy Manager" to collect the rents of the fashionable, 
wealthy whites who rented the houses from a "front" company that 
disguised the fact that a black man owned them, vital during the decades 
when America was enforcing "Segregation", it's own version of Apartheid. 

Recognising that such an attitude did neither blacks nor whites any good in 
the long run, Simon had deeded the pair of houses, with something akin to 
relief, to Daryl within days of his son's birth, which was why they had 
escaped the risk of being sold as part of a divorce settlement. Had there 
been a second child, the other house would have been given to him or her. 
Both houses had now been rented out to "professional" couples as Joan had 
long gone, Daryl would be in D.C., while Simon and Leonie had taken on one 
of the old houses up on Rainier Heights  – the large, 19th Century stone and 
wood built houses in one of the most fashionable, affluent parts of Cascade 
were much sought after but William Ellison had heard a rumour at his 
country club and asked the seller to consider his "good friend" Chief of 
Police Banks. Eager to "get into bed" with the thriving corporation that was 
Ellison Industries, the seller had ensured that a sale to Simon and Leonie 
had been a sinecure.       

Closing the door, Daryl went back down the stairs. He felt a pang, sure, but 
no more than that. Some kids' adolescence lasted a couple of years, some 
used the full teenage spectrum, others never matured emotionally at all! 
Daryl knew that he himself had grown up in a single day; when he was 
twelve years old and Garrett Kincaid had dangled him out of a third-story 
window because he was a police captain's son. Already wishing to speed up 
divorce proceedings because she had met Daryl's stepfather, that incident 
had caused Joan to go ballistic and she had torn strips of Simon, but those 
frantic, terrifying hours had made Daryl into a man in every way except his 
biological age.

Unlike Joan, Daryl had never blamed his father for the situation and the 
Sunrise Patriots' attack on Cascade Central Precinct opened his eyes to how 
the real world worked as he acknowledged that he had been somewhat 
spoilt and immature for his age. He loved his mother deeply, but Daryl 
understood that she placed too much importance on things like social status 
and career progression – things that hadn't been worth a damn when a 
"hippie look-alike" grad student who was - on the surface - a poster boy for 
illegal narcotics had risked his own life to save a bunch of virtual-stranger 
cops and a whining black child.

Daryl blew out a breath. Right now the timing couldn't have been more 
perfect for him slip his little plan underneath his dad's radar. By the time 
his dad found out that Daryl had become a police volunteer in Washington 
D.C., Daryl would have been doing it a fair while and would be able to 
weather the inevitable storm and calm his dad down. Going from boy to 
man in a span of a few hours had definite advantages; when most teenage 
males saw no further than the weekend and opportunities to score cars, 
girls, beer and/or get high, Daryl was charting out his own personal life 
map. Daryl Banks fully intended to be Cascade's Commissioner of Police, or 
Mayor – possibly Congressman or Senator Banks – but wisely knew such 
wouldn't occur for a good thirty years, long enough for his father, Jim and 
Blair to be retired and off fishing.  

Leaving the house, Daryl made sure Ellie was comfortably ensconced at the 
loft and that no "this guy's a Sentinel" clues were available. Daryl knew 
that she was not the type of girl to snoop, besides which she really wouldn't 
be there for much longer than it took to feed Dastardly and Muttley each 
day – Ellie had enough on preparing to start her own freshman semester at 
Georgetown as well as calm down her mother; the erstwhile formidable Dr 
Leonie McKinley swung between composure and hysteria as the wedding 
approached. He would call Jim and Blair in Witt's End – what a name for a 
town! – later on. Making it to the airport for his flight to IAD with plenty of 
time to spare, Daryl settled himself in the departure lounge with the paper 
and a can of coke, still musing on his master plan – "Operation Present Dad 
With A Fait Accompli". 

A large part of Daryl had just wanted to go straight to the Police Academy, 
but he had easily decided against it, knowing such a course of action was 
doomed. Some of the instructors would have all but let him shoot up in the 
hallways to "get in good" with the new Chief of Police, whilst others would 
have crushed him like a bug if he so much as blinked wrong in their 
determination to show how "impartial" they were. 

Likewise he would have been a "poisoned chalice" to any precinct and 
partner unlucky enough to get the Chief of Police's only child as a rookie; 
again he would either get away with murder or have Internal Affairs 
breathing over his every move. "Time and unforeseen occurrence" 
permitting, Daryl intended move very fast up the career ladder of the police 
department, but knew he couldn't do that in Cascade – at least until his dad 
and Jim "super-cop" Ellison were faded enough memories to negate a lot of 
the inevitable charges of nepotism. In Washington D.C., however, which had 
the country's largest and most poverty-stricken black population, he was 
just another hungry young black man who would rise – or fall – on his own 
merits. Daryl knew that he needed to hack it in D.C. to prove to himself, 
before anyone else, that he had what it took. 

The problem being that he couldn't just graduate and enter some Police 
Department as a Lieutenant under the Federal Law Enforcement Graduate 
Program. Well, Daryl admitted to himself as he resettled himself in his seat 
and refused the air stewardess's offer of a drink, the problem was that he in 
fact could do exactly that! 

In the politically correct climate of modern America, a black graduate 
wanting to enter a law enforcement oriented career would be able to pick 
and choose amongst the assorted "Alphabet Soup" of agencies for any job 
he wanted, on any terms he wanted, just another facet of "positive 
discrimination" or as it was more commonly known, the "less qualified black 
woman syndrome"; Daryl had no employment worries in that regard. But 
growing up as his dad worked his way up the ranks in various precincts, 
Daryl had seen graduates come in as officers, young men and women with 
an academic knowledge that made Blair Sandburg look backward; yet they 
had never served on the streets, and had no idea how the real world 
worked. Whilst the darling of PR types and superiors such as mayors, local 
politicians and police commissions, such officers had rapidly ended up being 
disliked, mistrusted and certainly not in the least respected by their 
subordinates and colleagues, and those were the sorts of situations where 
the good cops either died or transferred out and you were left with the 
disinterested and dishonest ones.

Daryl was under no illusions – the $25 per week Police Volunteer stipend 
wouldn't even keep him in gas money, and he would certainly have to take 
on another part-time job, but it was essential for his future credibility. 
When he entered his first job it was imperative he know the nitty-gritty of 
what being a police officer was really about; being able to look a thirty-year 
veteran sergeant in the eye and calmly state that he'd been a Police 
Volunteer in Washington D.C., one of the country's toughest bailiwicks, for 
five years during college would be worth double it's weight in gold to canny 
veterans who were weary of yet another "Ivory Tower Idiot" as Daryl had 
heard the usually mild-mannered Joel Taggart refer to one during his 
captaincy of the bomb squad. 

Toughest bailiwick, however, equalled danger. Daryl had no fear of being 
the trouble magnet that poor Blair Sandburg was – though he strongly 
suspected a lot of that had to do with being Jim's Guide and the "Shaman" 
of the Great City – but he was acutely aware of the dangers. Garrett Kincaid 
had proved that not even a police precinct was a safe haven from the 
scumbags of the universe. As the nation's capital, D.C. was a seething 
cauldron of political, social, religious and economic pressure groups, 
caucuses, criminal gangs, terrorist cells and generally unstable people.    
Daryl kept such worries in perspective by realising that he could very well 
end up the victim of sheer cosmic bad luck by getting hit by a bus or slipping 
fatally on greasy sidewalk one morning. Trouble was none of this reasoning 
would cut any ice with an over-protective father, or Jim Ellison. 

After Blair and then Simon, Daryl knew he came next in line to suffer Jim 
Ellison's "Mother Hen From Hell" tendencies. Jim's Sentinel persona, which 
Daryl still found a little scary truth be told, was not all that enamoured of 
Daryl being so far away, and he could just imagine Jim's reaction to Daryl 
being a police volunteer! As he settled down to catch some sleep as the 
plane roared towards the nation's capital, Daryl decided that his best 
strategy would be to get Blair on board. Blair was as over-protective as Jim 
and Daryl's dad, but he would listen first and yell later. All he needed was 
to get Blair to support his perspective – Jim might roar and stomp, but if 
Blair genuinely supported Daryl, it would be okay, and once Jim was on 
board, his dad would also come round…

* * *
  
"What clued you in?"  Jim asked Blair as they walked away from the café up 
the road towards Edgar Fincham's cabin.

"When she was talking about how Witt's End pulled out of the 70s-80s 
slump." Blair quoted: "'1992 was the first year in nearly two decades that 
Witt's End didn't have zero or negative population growth.' Unquote. 
That's the sort of phraseology you hear in Microsoft's Boardroom, not some 
folksy, home-spun small-town café."

It took less than ten minutes to walk leisurely to Edgar Fincham's home. 
Witt's End's residential buildings fell into two main categories, those that 
were built on the lake, and those that were scattered around in the forest, 
where the trees were thinner and large glades abounded, though some 
residents also lived on boats on the lake. A large, two-storey wooden house 
as opposed to an actual log cabin, Fincham's place was in the middle of a 
thinly wooded copse of trees, just off to the right of a wide, well-used 
hiking/riding track and reasonably visible to normal eyesight from the main 
road that went up from Witt's End to St. Mary Vale. In short, it would have 
been easy for a passerby to notice a stranger near the cabin or an unknown 
vehicle there from the main road without said stranger necessarily noticing 
them; another nail in the "random passing psycho sicko" theory. Just to be 
sure, Blair and Jim did a sweep all around the cabin, but found no tyre 
tracks or signs to indicate a vehicle had been at the house, which would 
have been an anomaly since Fincham had no car. 

Jim eyed the bright police tape with its "crime scene" warning dubiously. It 
would have taken a five-year-old thirty seconds to figure out multiple 
ingress routes into the house without disturbing the tape in any way, and of 
course the logical "prime suspect" had trampled all over it anyway. He 
focussed on the exterior but could see nothing untoward; what did intrude, 
more loudly than back down in Witt's End, was that annoying hum he'd 
picked up earlier, now annoying in a dual hum-hiss, hum-hiss rhythm. 
Underground generators and air circulation system – Jim had a good idea 
what that meant. Oh joy.

"Jim?" Blair's voice was unusually soft.

"Later, chief."

Blair nodded; something was bothering his Sentinel, something only he could 
see – or hear, or smell – but Blair would learn about it if Jim felt it was 
pertinent to the investigation, or it threatened Blair in some manner. Blair 
turned away from Jim's ultra-sharp eyes to the house's taped up door. He 
had felt something as he had started to examine the exterior of Fincham's 
property – a tug, a pulling, towards the deeper forest to the North East, out 
past St. Mary Vale. He'd felt exactly that same strange but subtly pervasive 
yearning once before – in Sierra Verde fifteen minutes before he'd walked 
around some shrubbery and come face to face with the "Angkor Wat" of 
Sentinels. A number of Native American tribes still lived traditionally in the 
American North West, whose vast, deep forests and treacherous volcanic 
mountain ranges had never been explored in detail and Blair had a sneaking 
suspicion of what he would find if he followed the invisible psychic trail. 

Not likely! If he had to tell Jim about it, he would also have to admit that 
his dream back at the loft had been more a sort of, okay actually yes, a 
vision! Blair had no intention of dancing to the spirit plane's tune if he could 
possibly obfuscate his way out of it. "What do you think?" He nodded at the 
police tape.

"Through the window." Jim decided finally. "If we disturb the tape every 
nosey parker might think its open season to come and have a look around."

It took all of twenty seconds to slide up one of the Georgian-paned windows 
and slip inside, where the place was cast in semi-gloom. Blair and Jim took 
a moment to scan their surroundings, looking for anything out of place. The 
ground floor consisted of a large living area with a stone fireplace on the 
right-hand short wall and a kitchen/dining area that was tucked under the 
upper level, which covered the left half of the room, with a steep flight of 
steps running up the wall just to the left as you would have walked in the 
door. A low wooden balustrade marched along it. On the floor at the bottom 
of the steps was the traditional white-tape outline of the body – Rick Valenti 
would have shoved open the door, stepped inside, and found Fincham in a 
crumpled heap quite literally at his feet. The furniture was old, somewhat 
shabby and completely unremarkable – couch, dining table and chairs, TV, 
coffee table. What was remarkable was the far corner of the downstairs 
living room directly opposite Jim and Blair to the right. The corner where 
the long back wall and short, right-hand-side wall joined together had been 
changed from wood to two vertical strips of floor-ceiling panes of glass. 
Cater-cornered in front of the glass corner wall was a large, imposing and 
obviously antique desk – clearly the most valuable thing in the room. Mounds 
of paper and very old leather-bound books were stacked higgledy-piggledy 
all over it, with a variety of expensive looking fountain pens, a genuine ink 
well and assorted magazines stacked all around it. A large ornate brass 
reading lamp was angled over the desk and a deep, polished leather 
armchair rested against the glass panes. Blair and Jim exchanged glances 
and the same opinion – the whole scene had an air of conscious self-
importance, a sort of "I'm an artist" feel.

By mutual unspoken consent the two men walked over to the desk and 
began to look through it, Jim hiding his amusement as Blair became visibly 
more disapproving every second at the obvious pretentiousness of it all. The 
paper was thick, almost legal type stuff, the ink well full of coagulating, 
drying ink, the fountain pens ostentatiously expensive. "Good grief!" 
Muttered Blair involuntarily.

"What is it?" Jim asked, leaning over to peer at what had provoked such an 
expression of disgust on his Guide's face.

Silently Blair passed over the paper to Jim who read slowly, "An Ode To… 
blue? Stanzas one hundred three to one hundred ten…?!" He read a couple 
of lines, and then dropped the page as if it smelled bad. "Yuck."

"Uh-uh." Blair agreed. He picked up a magazine that bore the title, in huge 
black letters, RADICAL RADICALS underneath which was the description: the 
essential periodical for cutting-edge philosophers and free-thinkers. There 
were a lot of them – it looked as though Fincham had subscribed to every 
issue. Taking a copy each, Jim and Blair flicked through and almost 
immediately saw why. 

Placing the magazines back down they exchanged wordless but speaking 
looks. Radical Radicals should more accurately have been described as 
absolute drivel. Crammed full of long-winded and senseless pontificating 
articles, long-winded, meandering, execrably bad poetry and "original" 
rubbish artwork, the magazine clearly had a small to non-existent 
readership, since the contributors seemed to be the same small group of a 
dozen or so, including Edgar Fincham. Blair's magazine had contained Ode 
To Blue1 Stanzas 1 – 20; Jim's had had stanzas 21 – 33 on page 5. "Wait, let 
me see." Picking one of the magazines back up, Jim looked at the editorial 
in the front and grunted in satisfaction. "Bennett Holmhurst."

"Who's he?" Blair frowned at the vaguely familiar name.

"Youngest son of Senator Gregson Holmhurst, Boston 11th." Jim explained. 
"I ran across the Gregson and his two older sons at dad's country club years 
ago when I was a teenager – shortly before I skipped town to join the Army. 
Conceited yuppies. I've come across Bennett a few times when I've been 
dragged to one of the Mayor's brown-nosing parties by Simon. He scraped 
through college with a Theology Degree by the barest margin and somehow 
picked up the idea that he was an essayist and thinker to compete with the 
likes of Henry Kissinger, Winston Churchill and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, with a 
bit of John Keats, James Fenimore Cooper and Alfred, Lord Tennyson 
thrown in for good measure."

Blair nodded understanding, not at all surprised, as some would have been, 
at the way Jim casually mentioned literary figures usually unknown to the 
Average Joe. "Not quite in their league in actuality, I take it?"

"You're telling me." Jim snorted. "He was too crap to get his drivel 
published in anything that wanted to retain any shred of credibility, so his 
doting parents bankroll Radical Radicals; Bennett will publish pretty much 
anything anyone sends to him and has a readership of about two dozen 
equally cotton-headed out-where-the-buses-don't-run types. He swans 
around most of the high society scene, doing his "serious radical political 
editor a la Jean-Paul Sartre" bit to anyone who pauses for breath in the 
vicinity – goatee beard, shit-brown polo neck sweater and too-tight, ugly, 
shiny grey pants that look like the lost half of a 1980s power-dressing suit 
circa the last three seasons of Miami Vice."

Blair snorted at the image, "I hear you. Oh man, Fincham was a bad poet. 
Bog-standard descriptions of fluffy clouds and scintillating colours 
interspersed with barmy mangled metaphors about the evils of Big Brother 
Government. It's as if he's cribbed a couple of lines from every poet who's 
ever lived, tossed them all in a hat and randomly plucked them out a few at 
a time."

"He probably did." Jim nodded towards the stacked leather bound books, 
smiling to himself as Blair leaned forward and picked up the top one from 
the nearest stack with reverent care.

One of the things Blair obviously loved most about having the apartment 
below Jim's loft was abundant book-space. He had shelves crammed with 
everything from Edgar Wallace to Kafka, Terry Pratchett to John Keats, Sir 
Arthur Conan Doyle to Herodotus. Jim had filched The Complete Works of 
Josephus from one bookshelf and was currently working his way through the 
destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. – in some ways it was odd to realise that 
as a Jew, Blair had had ancestors in the city. Now Blair rubbed his fingertips 
over the cover, a smile on his face as he inhaled the wonderful scent old 
leather and paper. The tome was by Byron, and the two investigators 
quickly counted almost every noted 17th – 20th century poet and/or 
essayist/philosopher amongst the stacks - British, American and European.

His lip curling as he looked down at Ode To Blue, Jim asked, "Can we take it 
as read then – no pun intended – that Edgar Fincham is not going to be 
posthumously "discovered" and his poetry worth millions?"

Blair snorted, "I'll say – if someone did murder him in the assumption that 
his poetry would be worth millions once he was dead, they obviously never 
read any of it first."

Jim dropped the offending magazine back on the desk with disgusted 
finality before making towards the stairs. "And I thought you were flaky…"

Uttered in such a casual manner, it took several seconds for the comment to 
register with Blair who had automatically followed, and his outraged yelp 
was drowned out by Jim's snickering laughter, the older man pleased to get 
one over on his buddy.

"You'll get yours, Ellison." Blair threatened, giving Jim a non-too-gentle 
thump on the back, which didn't bother the big detective in the slightest.

Pausing at the foot of the stairs, Jim let all his senses expand out; Blair 
stood quietly by and let his Sentinel work. Jim had learned to "anchor" 
himself to the present by using Blair's heartbeat as a focus – he could listen 
to it forever yet never zone and that combined with their more recent 
mental linkage meant a major improvement on their ability to examine 
crime scenes. Blair could accompany Jim with evidence bags or other 
equipment, and if he sensed Jim "drifting" he would simply mutter a few 
technical-sounding-but-meaningless phrases for the benefit of those around 
and/or lightly lay a hand on Jim's arm in the guise of pointing something 
out. These had brought a welcome end to forensic - and other - cops 
shooting Sandburg puzzled and/or hostile looks when he used to follow 
Ellison "like a damn lost puppy contaminating the whole crime scene for 
Christ's sake" (so one detective had sneered loudly) whispering what to 
them must have sounded like nonsense babble.

Being careful of the taped outline, Jim made his way up the stairs slowly, 
suddenly crouching down on his haunches as he peered at something stuck 
in the wooden slats. Jim held out his hand and Blair carefully gave him a 
very small, re-sealable plastic bag and a pair of disposable sterile-packed 
surgical tweezers that the anthropologist had learned to get in the habit of 
carrying around with him within months of starting working with Jim. Using 
the tweezers, Jim carefully plucked something from in between the slats, 
holding it up to the light before depositing most of it in the plastic bag and 
leaving a tiny fraction gripped between the "pincers". It was a small, 
misshapen white blob, barely the size of a pinkie fingernail.

"Wax?" Surmised Blair as he looked at it.

Jim carefully rubbed the fragment between his sensitised thumb and 
forefinger, nodding agreement. "Yes, odd though, got some herbs mixed in 
with the wax…incense – no surprise there…couple of others I can't 
place…Don't know how significant it'll turn out to be…" He mused finally, 
slipping the plastic bag into his inside pocket.

"Could be very…" Blair gave a nod to indicate the room in general. The two 
men looked at each other and said in unison, "No candles." 

Indeed, realised Blair as he and Jim went up to the bedroom, considering 
that Witt's End had been founded by a bunch of hippies, Edgar Fincham's 
cabin possessed a veritable dearth of "New Age" accoutrements – besides 
the lack of candles, there were no wind chimes, no bowls of herbs or joss 
sticks, not a hint of feng shui or "earth music" CDs. The bedroom lacked 
candles and any surprises. A large bed took up most of the space, beyond it 
being a plain brown door that was slightly ajar through which could be seen 
the bathroom. The only other furniture was a closet and a bedside cabinet 
on which resided a "Teasmaid" and a two-thirds empty bottle of cheap 
bourbon. It was literally only four feet from the bottom edge of the bed to 
the top of the staircase.

"Shut the bathroom door." Blair requested as he turned and went back 
down to the main door, speaking aloud to clarify things in his mind. 
"Fincham writes his suicide note and places it out of sight in the bathroom 
and shuts the door. Then he kills himself – swigs enough bourbon and pills to 
annihilate the entire 101st Airborne, lies down on the bed and slips from 
sleep into coma and then death…"

"…and about twenty – thirty minutes later, the would-be killer arrives at the 
door," interjected Jim from his position at the top of the stairs.

"Hm-hm. A toddler could jimmy this lock…so he – or she – comes in, walks 
up the stairs…" Blair suited his actions to his words until he was back at the 
top.

"- Completely unaware that his victim literally is already dead to the 
world." Jim finished. "So then he or she gets hold of Fincham…"

"Nh-uh…if it were me, I'd pull him down the bed." Blair postulated, "You 
know, get hold of his ankles and slowly ease him down to this corner of the 
bed. That way the MP could pick him up, turn around, take two steps and 
just drop him down the stairs."  

Jim nodded, seeing the possibility, "And if the MP did that it still means a 
woman is as likely as a man to have done it. Would they have risked it, 
though, the ankles…?" He mused doubtfully.

"I would have." Blair shrugged, a somewhat unnerving dispassionate 
calculation creeping into his tone, "Remember - that frat boys' escapade 
with the face paint while Fincham slept off a binge pretty much proved to 
any interested party within a fifty mile radius that you could probably hold a 
rave party down there and not wake Fincham up."

"There are times Chief, when I'm really glad you're on our side." Jim 
muttered, "You're almost an American Agatha Christie."

"Huh?" Blair blinked at this non sequitur.

Jim flashed a smile as he began to walk around the bed, looking for anything 
else that might have been missed. "I read a bio on her once, the "Queen of 
Crime"2. One of the reasons she used poison so often was because she knew 
them so intimately – she was a pharmacist and a military nurse in World War 
I. One Home Office guy said he could only speculate on how many Army 
doctors Agatha Christie had witnessed kill their patients through arrogance 
and over-confidence. I think he was the same guy who said about her being 
on the side of the angels – just think how many people she could have 
gotten away with killing for decades if she'd put her mind to it."

Blair nodded his understanding. "Yeah, like during the Middle Ages – 
chemistry wasn't as primitive as we like to think. Queen Catherine de 
Medici was nicknamed the Serpent Queen of France due to her 
encyclopaedic knowledge of poisons…"

"I remember one of the Miss Marple stories." Jim had a thoughtful 
expression on his face now, "Something about Trinidad or Jamaica – the 
Caribbean at any rate. If I remember correctly it hinged on something Miss 
Marple said about murderers getting away with it when people expected the 
victim to die…I think it turned out this man had been moving around Britain 
and Europe marrying and then murdering women for money. Got hitched, 
then started introducing psychotropic drugs into his wife's food to make her 
paranoid and depressed. One day he'd drug her unconscious, go out to work, 
have to come back because he'd "forgotten" something and lo! Be just in 
time to save her from her suicide attempt. Lots of distraught husbandly 
tears, and so on, then a few months later the wife would make another 
suicide attempt – only this time successful. The wife's history of depression 
and neurotic episodes meant that people were half expecting her to do 
herself in away…"

Blair snapped his fingers, "Yeah! Like Harold Shipman…Britain's worst serial 
killer? That doctor who murdered over two hundred of his patients over 
about twenty years? I remember that – part of the reason he got away with 
it for so long was that his victims were elderly people, and the sad fact is 
that old people die, so nobody noticed anything untoward when Shipman's 
patients did…it's the same here with Edgar Fincham, Jim – the MP didn't 
expect the crime to be discovered. I mean, you heard Rick Valenti – for 
years everyone around here has been expecting Edgar Fincham to break his 
neck tumbling down his own stairs after a booze binge. If Fincham hadn't 
coincidentally already killed himself before the MP got here, then he or she 
would have gotten clean away with the crime because Valenti et al would 
have chalked it up to an unfortunate drunken accident."

"Which leads back in the direction of a local killer, not a tourist or random 
wandering lunatic." Jim summarised. Glancing at his watch, he suggested, 
"Let's take this to the doctor to be analysed, we can do it on our way back 
to the hotel for dinner. Witt's End seems idyllic, but I don't trust it enough 
to have the pair of us wandering around here in the dark on our first day in 
town."

They left the same way as they entered, securing the window behind them, 
and set off back. Witt's End doctor lived in a two storey stone house right 
on the main road leading up from Witt's End to St. Mary Vale, and parked 
outside was a large flatbed truck, though of a much more modern type than 
Jim's beloved "Sweetheart", one of the rare sightings of a vehicle the two 
men had seen since they got here. It made sense though – in an emergency, 
split seconds of seconds counted. Jim paused as they walked over the road 
blacktop onto the front yard – the main house was joined on the right to a 
double garage, also stone, which in turn was joined on to a single storey 
stone house that somehow looked a bit more "official" than it's climbing-
rose adorned companion, which had real wood smoke wisping up from the 
chimney very picturesquely – pine logs, Jim's nose told him. His ears also 
only detected a human heartbeat coming from the single-storey building. 
"Let's see if the doctor is in."

Going up onto the porch, Jim pulled back the mesh outer screen door and 
pushed open the inner wooden one, which had a large clear pane in the 
upper half. It was done without conscious thought and intending no rudeness 
– the Sentinel always went first, primed and ready to shield his Guide from 
any danger lurking within. They entered a small reception area but even 
Blair's nose twitched as he smelled antiseptic and formaldehyde from the 
back…<dial it down, big guy> He gave the familiar but now unnecessary 
encouragement automatically.

A tall man came out from the back room as they entered and waited in front 
of the counter. His brown eyes twinkled in a ruddy, jutting-chinned face 
with a slightly bulbous nose, and he sported a mop-head of ruffled, salt-and-
pepper hair. Not fat by any means, but a big man, he smiled with a sort of 
cheery energy that gave him a superficial resemblance to Dick Van Dyke in 
that TV show, Diagnosis Murder. 

"Dr Martin?" Jim said cordially, "I'm Jim Ellison, this is my partner, Blair 
Sandburg, from –"

"- Cascade PD." Shaking hands with each of them and not batting an eyelid 
at Blair's less than conservative appearance, Martin then lifted up the 
counter top and stepped through so he was with them instead of facing off 
over the counter. "Call me Bert, everyone does. Anything I can do to help, 
please…"

Removing the plastic bag from his pocket but watching the doctor's 
reactions closely, Jim explained and asked, "Is it possible for you to run 
forensic tests here rather than have to send it to Cascade and back?"

"Absolutely!" Martin took the bag and peered at the wax blob interestedly, 
completely oblivious to the mental conversation going on right next to him 
as Blair informed Jim telepathically, <Not so much as an empathic blip> and 
the big detective responded, <Ditto, this guy's blood pressure is better than 
mine!>

"I serve as Doctor, pathologist and undertaker for Witt's End and St. Mary 
Vale, while my wife Judith is midwife, nurse practitioner, forensic scientist 
and the local Coroner. We consider it a fair division of labour!" Bert Martin 
smiled and then asked half-hopefully, "I take it I'm not a suspect then, if 
you're asking me to test this…wax?"

"No, sir and we think so." Jim smiled back, instinctively drawn to the man's 
genial attitude. "As the town's doctor, there would have been too much 
opportunity for you to successfully pass off Fincham's death as a drunken 
accident if you'd been the killer, so what would be the point of you telling 
Valenti about the Murderer Presumptive or that Fincham had actually killed 
himself?"

"Murderer…? Ah, yes I see." Martin nodded like a playful Great Dane.

"Have you any thoughts as to why Edgar Fincham would have killed himself – 
or why anyone would want to murder him?"

Martin shook his head. "Not in the slightest. It's the damnedest thing – I 
know I look a little like that Van Dyke guy in Diagnosis Murder, but when 
will people get it through their heads it's a TV show, it's scripted and Dick 
Van Dyke is no more a master sleuth than I'm the Queen of England? I was 
absolutely stunned when I did the post mortem and found the damage to his 
neck. I mean, you could still smell the whisky and it was obvious he'd 
downed enough tranquillisers to wipe out a herd of elephants, so the PM was 
a formality…" Martin shook his head. "Completely baffled me, doesn't seem 
to be any motive for it."

"Was Fincham terminally ill, suffering great pain or anything?" Jim 
suggested.

"No…He had no truck with medical sorts, but the last time I did get him in 
for a check up I had to lay it on the line to him. Cut down, or preferably 
out, on the booze, the high cholesterol diet, smoking and his trips to 
Cascade to visit…er…shall we say ladies of ill repute…and he might live 
another ten years if he was lucky. But it certainly wasn't the sort of thing to 
drive him over the edge. Edgar just ignored me and carried on committing 
slow suicide by Scotch…I can get this done for you day after tomorrow?"

"That'd be great. Thank you. Er…Dr Martin…how long have you been the 
doctor here? Are you the local doctor for everyone in Witt's End and St. 
Mary Vale?" Blair suddenly looked very much younger than his age and 
vulnerable as he hesitantly asked these questions. He didn't use his wide-
eyed, pouting-lower-lip "Bambi" look very often, especially not when Jim 
was around; the big detective knew that look usually signalled some 
obfuscation about something Blair didn't want to discuss, and the older 
man's usual response was to cut right through the crap and insist that Blair 
"deal" with the problem – after spilling his guts to his fiercely protective 
Sentinel of course. Jim became alert, aware that Blair was about to test 
Martin, and he was fully prepared to intercede, even physically, to protect 
Blair from any retribution.

"Ten years or more and yes. Why?" Dr Martin was clearly surprised at Blair's 
obvious discomfort.

"Well…er…would you know…would you be able to tell if a girl had an illicit 
abortion…or someone was poisoned to death in what seemed to be a cancer 
case?" Blair threw everything he had into his patented "trembling fawn 
caught in the headlights" look.

For a moment Martin didn't react, then his face went a worrying shade of 
purple. For an instant Jim tensed as the doctor's fists clenched then the old 
man suddenly deflated, though his face, eyes and voice retained their 
anger. "Yes, I would know…and I can categorically confirm that both those 
rumours are scurrilous nonsense!"

"I'm sorry," Blair back-pedalled meekly.

"We have to make sure," Jim began.

"No, no, I understand." Martin cut him off but the anger faded somewhat.

"Have you any ideas who's behind these rumours?"

"No," Martin looked grim, "but if I did, you'd have to arrest me for murder 
after I throttled the vicious little swine. I'm afraid people around here know 
better than to utter tittle-tattle and conjecture in my presence – at least 
unless they want to be furiously yelled at…You see, I knew a man once back 
in Boston, a kindergarten teacher, just an ordinary, hard working Average 
Joe. Someone spotted him sitting on a park bench next to a pretty blonde 
young thing and the rumour got about he was having an affair with her, 
embellished with each telling of course  – the employer was a Methodist 
School, very upright and sober, so they managed to make him redundant; 
the rumours had gotten about to such an extent that he couldn't get a job. 
A couple of weeks later he just disappeared. Police could find no trace of 
him, his bank account and credit cards weren't touched; they dragged the 
local rivers – not a sign of him. His poor wife was out of her mind with worry 
and all everyone could do was cluck like chickens and whisper, 'If only she 
knew!'" 

"There isn't going to be a happy ending to this." Jim made it a statement.

"Hardly." Dr Martin looked furious again, his face taking on that aubergine 
tinge. "Ten days after all that, people came running when the plumber Mrs – 
well, the wife – had hired ran screaming from the house like all the hounds 
of hell were after him. The day he "disappeared" the husband had in fact 
sneaked up into the attic and hung himself from the rafters."

"Oh god." Blair looked sick.

"That wasn't the worst. Everyone turned out for the funeral – big Methodist 
memorial service - and got the shock of their lives when his wife arrived at 
the church pushing the wheelchair her husband's popularly supposed 
"mistress" was sat in. It turned out that pretty blonde girl was the 
husband's kid sister – suffered catastrophic brain damage when she was the 
victim of a hit-and-run at the age of sixteen. Pretty much a vegetable, the 
only person she recognised – and could meaningfully interact with on any 
level – was her adored big brother."

There was a moment's silence and then Dr Martin shook himself briskly. 
"You can take this to the bank – Rick Valenti worshipped the ground his wife 
walked on, and she did die of ovarian cancer. I had to do the post mortem – 
even though it was only a legal formality, and Lily was riddled with the 
disease; I shudder to think of the pain she endured and if – if  - Rick Valenti 
took any unauthorised steps to end that pain before "Nature" finally got her 
head out of her ass and did it, then he has nothing but my profound respect. 
As for the abortion – and again, I expect this to go no further – I examined 
Cecily Wynn a few weeks ago because she has a grumbling appendix and I 
can assure you if she was pregnant before that date it was the world's 
second Immaculate Conception!"

Taking their leave of Dr Martin, the two men walked down the porch steps 
of his home, pausing on the bottom tread as the late afternoon sun caressed 
the mountains and dappled across Lorelei Lake. Jim looked down towards 
where Witt's End seemed bathed in a golden aura, the sun's rays reflecting 
off windows, burnishing wood to bright gold and picking out glints of 
sparkling fire in polished stone. Could a place be too beautiful? 

No. Man was the problem, as always. "The word "Devil" means 
"slanderer"," Jim murmured to himself, realising how precarious that 
beauty before him was; in danger of being shattered like a delicate, 
priceless vase by a spiteful tongue. "By the way Chief, you can add Dr 
Martin to the list."

"How?" Blair asked as they began the walk back to Witt's End.

"You couldn't see those scraps of sheepskin on his walls." Jim strove to 
keep any hint of reproof from his tone; at thirty-four Blair was getting to 
the stage where his short sight demanded he always wore spectacles or 
contact lenses, but vanity hadn't given up the fight yet. Jim had to admit he 
himself was living in a glasshouse – now he'd hit forty, forty was hitting back 
– despite his Sentinel abilities and his exercise regime and his usually 
healthy diet (courtesy of aforementioned nagging Guide), Jim was 
experiencing "twinges" where none had been before, and things he would 
have shrugged off or not even noticed two years ago were making their 
presence felt. Unfortunately a certain mop-topped Guide was rather too 
fond of teasing his Sentinel about being six-years older – he wasn't stupid 
enough to give Sandburg more ammunition! Getting back to the matter in 
hand Jim informed,  "Martin graduated with top-class honours from guess 
where…?"

"Go on…"

"Johns Hopkins, no less."

An appreciative whistle sent a small bird skywards in startled flight. 

"Gets better, Chief. Neuro-surgery at Boston Memorial, three years as a 
Teaching Fellow at Oxford University School of Medicine, two years in 
Paris…He had enough bits of gilt edged sheepskin to make a decent sized 
hearth rug on that back wall."         

"Impressive."

"So what's he doing in a one-horse backwater?" 

Blair mused, "So - we have a special forces sheriff, a waitress who talks like 
a Wall Street tycoon and doctor who could walk into Cedars-Sinai and name 
his own salary, yet who holds down three jobs in the boondocks. Curiouser 
and curiouser, to quote Alice."3

Jim listened intently – unless Blair was wrong – and Blair Sandburg was very 
rarely wrong – the good folks of Witt's End were a lot more interesting than 
the surface seemed to show. He reiterated the dichotomies: "Witt's End – 
small, artsy, folksy tourist town in the middle of Nowhere Important  - but 
the sheriff is a U.S. Navy SEAL, a waitress at the local café talks like a Wall 
Street investment banker and the local doctor's more qualified than the 
Surgeon General."

"Exactly." 

* * *
     
Lounging on his bed in his and Daryl Banks' dorm room, Xander rolled his 
eyes and sat up as he clearly heard footsteps approaching from the other 
end of the corridor. That aural clarity had doubtless counted strongly in the 
Secret Service's approval factor, but it was going to put a serious crimp in 
Xander's social life. God help any girl who decided to pay a "surprise" 
amorous visit to his dorm room, or any friend intending to "spook" his 
buddy, the poor kid wouldn't get within a mile before being pounced on by 
the Duty Goons of the hour. Xander wasn't spoilt despite his life of wealth 
and privilege – he had to expect certain inconveniences and curtailments as 
the price to pay for it, but he wouldn't be human if he didn't sometimes 
resent not having the personal freedoms his five elder siblings had enjoyed. 
His parents generally belonged to the "if you can't say something good 
about a person don't say anything at all" school of thought, but their less 
than warm opinions of the previous Commander-in-Chief, President Howard, 
and Vice-President Peterson had sometimes shone clearly through. 

Xander was enormously proud of his dad's accomplishments, well aware how 
rare his happy family was in a time when many of his father's 
contemporaries had a dozen mistresses on the go and their wives bedded an 
endless succession of college-jock gardeners and pool boys. It hadn't taken 
Xander long to figure out that Jedidiah & Genevieve Monteith had planned 
their presidency campaign to end in the White House when Xander was 
graduating college at twenty-two after enjoying four years of relative 
anonymity as the "son of a State Governor" – oh yeah, that's nice, go play 
with your forty-nine counterparts buddy. President Howard's "shock" 
resignation due to "ill-health" had put paid to their careful choreography – 
Xander appreciated that too much money and time had been sacrificed not 
just by his parents but by other people to let it go now. 

However Xander was aware of how little breathing space he had – all it 
needed was a "quiet" news cycle for some ultra right-wing or left-wing rag 
to wonder where the youngest of the First Children was going to college and 
his secret would be out, the more "responsible" media would then be free 
to throw their two cents worth into the pot hiding behind the excuse that it 
was "already in the public arena" anyway. Keeping clear of the White 
House, Xander and Stevie had all but moved into Georgetown even though 
the semester wouldn't start for several weeks and nobody much was around 
- at the moment there was too much going on for the press to be interested 
in and Xander didn't intend to bring himself to their notice unless forced. 
The fact that Mrs Iolanthé Becker would be presenting the President with his 
sixth grandchild in a few months had made yesterday's News At Eleven; Lan 
and Brett had confirmed the sex of the baby as male and jokingly appealed 
to the public not to encourage their twin daughters Iona and Cassandra in 
their campaign to get their baby brother named "Bart Homer Millhouse". 
Xander had felt a twinge of concern when he'd heard about the new baby 
long before the press; his sister's pregnancy with the twin terrors had not 
gone smoothly and Lan was already complaining that Brett was clucking like 
a hen over her – to her disgust, Brett had his in-laws on his side.          

The footsteps had passed the stairwells, which meant they were coming to 
one of the rooms at this end of the corridor – his room and Stevie's opposite 
were the last ones at this end of the corridor unless the person had the 
ability to walk through the end wall! Xander knew that the three men in 
Stevie's room would be on alert, no doubt waiting just inside to pounce if 
necessary. Big brothers could be such pains in the rear end some times…Nick 
and Morgan had "dropped by" very discreetly (only one SS agent in tow 
each) a few hours ago, which had immediately raised Xander's suspicions, 
considering how rare it was for any of the family to have frequent 
opportunities to be in the same place at the same time. 

Nick's witch's-cat green eyes had been blank and calm, Morgan's clear grey 
gaze serene; Xander hadn't fallen for it for a second. As the unexpected 
surprise after a few years gap, Xander had been a baby brother greatly 
indulged by his elder siblings, like the time Nick got three days KP for 
allowing a certain gleeful toddler to play around in the cockpit of an F14 
and they got caught by the CAG! But his two brothers had only ever double 
teamed him when they knew something was up that would cause Xander to 
have one of his very rare explosions of temper – Xander despised meanness, 
slyness, spite and bigotry and would challenge it wherever it raised it's ugly 
head – especially when his family was attacked – one time, just after Lan 
had got engaged to Brett, a racist had thrown a rock and badly bruised her 
arm, it had taken both older boys to hold down their screaming, struggling, 
infuriated brother. 

Nick and Morgan had been bland and cheery and distracting as they admired 
his dorm room, chatted about Daryl Banks – whom Xander knew they would 
know the last detail about – and conversed with Stevie. Xander had let 
Morgan think he'd been successful when his older brother perched his ass on 
the desk and "accidentally" hit the off button on the TV remote, but if they 
thought Xander was going to fall for a trick that old – Nick's part in the two-
step as his brother killed the TV was to "let out" that Cassie and her current 
beau looked like being the real deal – as in engagement rings and white 
picket fences. Xander had been properly distracted for a while until finally 
he asked if his brothers or Stevie wanted anything from the snack machine 
in the hall below, which also had a student's common room. It had only 
taken the three five minutes to realise what an awful long time he was 
being, but by then he had the news on and was building up to detonation.

The First Lady had gone to a meeting in Delaware about education yesterday 
– nothing important, not even televised – or it wouldn't have been had a 
reporter and cameraman for a small local station not gotten mixed up and 
gone around the back of the wrong building, which gave them a perfect 
view of the back of the proper building and the outside doorway, where a 
renowned "reactionary" Republican Congressman was wagging his finger at 
the First Lady in what was clearly a fierce argument with not a Secret 
Service bodyguard in sight. The camera had trembled when, letting his 
sexist attitude get the better of him, the Congressman hauled back his arm, 
fist clenched, and the First Lady instinctively raised her arm to block the 
blow. At that moment a stray cat had knocked over a trashcan lid, bringing 
the man to his senses; turning on her heel, the First Lady had retorted 
something over her shoulder and gone inside, leaving the congressman red-
faced and trembling. It had led the evening news, with women's groups in 
uproar though the First Lady had downplayed the situation stating that 
things got a little heated on both sides.

"He was going to hit my mother!" Xander's roar had echoed around the 
building causing Nick and Morgan to wince, but unlike Stevie, they weren't 
inhibited by an inability to physically restrain Xander; finally they'd calmed 
him down with the blunt truth, "Come on, Xan, don't you think that dad is 
all over this?"

Xander had finally stopped yelling. He could well imagine his father's 
reaction and had no doubt that the hapless Secret Service agents who 
should have been with his mom in the first place had been well and truly 
verbally roasted, if not posted to deepest Alaska, and if the Congressman 
had truly lost all sanity and hit the First Lady…it didn't bear thinking about! 

Returning back to his dorm room, Xander had forgiven them but banished 
them to Stevie's room so they could talk "spy shop" with his bodyguard 
while he got on with some real work…on his Playstation. Right now he 
waited as the door to his room opened and a familiar black face strode in. 
Dumping his carryall on the floor, Daryl Banks flopped face down on his bed 
with a loud groan, "Aaah!"

Acutely aware of Nick, Morgan and Stevie eavesdropping like crazy, 
particularly his brothers, Xander asked, "Dar' I didn't expect to see you this 
early. Are you moving in before the semester starts?"

"Yeah – I had to get away from my dad, fast."

Despite the dividing brickwork, Xander could practically see his three 
guardian angels go to DefCon 3. "Is something wrong?"

"I love my dad," announced Daryl grandiosely, "and I think my stepmom 
Leonie is great – but people who are getting married should be sedated or 
locked away and just wheeled to say their vows at the ceremony! Are you 
having any upcoming weddings, Xan?"

"Er…my sister might be getting married soon?" Xander said circumspectly. 
Doing his best to ensure he was known only as "Xan" or "Xander", much to 
the young man's relief, nobody had seemed to twig yet that he was the 
Xander – like his sister Elizabeth said, it was all a matter of context – many 
movie stars could have freely moved about in public if they only ditched the 
silly disguises and ostentatious jewellery because people didn't recognise 
them once removed from the context of limousines, Versace and de Beers. 
Likewise the President's son was a glimpsed figure-at-the-edge-of-camera-
shot with dark hair and a plastic smile dwarfed by bodyguards; plain old Xan 
and his bud Stevie living unremarkably at Georgetown were out of context. 
However, should he start mentioning a sister called Cassiopeia it wouldn't 
take rocket science to do the math.

"Run!" Intoned Daryl dramatically, finally getting up and picking up his bag 
to empty it. "Escape while you can!"

"That bad, eh?" Xan relaxed and laughed.

"You wouldn't believe," Daryl's tone was heartfelt, "what with all the other 
stuff…"

"Oh?"

"My dad's just been made Chief of Police of Cascade." Daryl said with pride 
and love ringing in every syllable.

"Cool! That's great!"

"Yeah. He's trying to settle into work, sort out his wedding to Leonie, 
dissuade the Feds from setting up shop in our fair city…" and make sure his 
Sentinel and Guide support team don't find out about them. Daryl finished 
the sentence in his head before grinning at his friend, "I dread to think what 
his blood pressure must be like, so I've come out of the way. Which reminds 
me…" Picking up the phone he dialled a number, "Hi, could you put me 
through to Detective Ellison's room please? Thanks…Hey, Blair! I'm just 
calling to let you know that I've come to Georgetown a few weeks early. Is 
it okay if I leave Dastardly and Muttley with Ellie?…Yeah, the wedding…"

Standing up, Xander indicated with his head that he was stepping out of the 
room and did so, not surprised to find Morgan, Nick and Stevie loitering in 
the hallway. "You guys need to go!" Xander hissed imperiously, "If he sees 
you Dar' will figure out who I am in about a second flat. G'wan!" He shooed 
at them.

Both men rolled their eyes and Nick commented, "What it is to be loved." 
But they said their goodbyes to Stevie and walked off down the hall en route 
to whatever secret mission was undoubtedly next.

* * *
       
About to turn left down Main Street and back towards the Lorelei Hotel, Jim 
just managed to stop himself cannoning into Blair's back when the young 
man stopped suddenly. "Chief…!"

Blair wasn't listening, instead he was peering at someone stood across the 
road. Jim followed his gaze, automatically cataloguing the woman – a 
couple of inches taller than Blair, dressed in ordinary blue pumps, navy 
slacks and a pale grey silk blouse with a single strand of small pearls, she 
had curly walnut-brown hair, a slightly snub, freckle-smattered nose and a 
naturally smiling mouth that wasn't detracted from by her slightly over-full 
lips. Pretty but not beautiful or eye-catching. She was holding an envelope 
in one hand and what presumably was a letter in the other, an expression of 
anxiety on her face as she crumpled the letter tightly in her hand, which 
had rings on the third finger.  

"Julia? JULIA!" Blair raised his voice and started over the street.

She looked up at the voice; for an instant her sweet-sherry coloured eyes 
were blank, then she smiled. Jim blinked – it transformed her face from 
mildly pretty to interesting, making the whole much greater than the sum of 
it's parts. "Blair!" Surprised pleasure infused her voice.

Jim was about six yards away when he felt it, a lightly prickling, a feeble, 
pallid imitation of what he'd felt when Alexandra Barnes had come to 
Cascade, but there nonetheless; he saw the same sensation reflected in the 
slight widening of "Julia's" eyes and the uncertain, wary expression that 
crossed her face. Then something in Jim relaxed – whatever she was, this 
woman wasn't a Sentinel; she was too weak to be a threat to his possession 
of his Guide.

Who was now shooting daggers at him in a clear order to "behave" even as 
Blair smiled at "Julia" and made the introductions; deliberately Jim sent 
Blair a vivid Technicolor memory of the last time they had bonded, his 
Guide offering his throat to his Sentinel, and smirked at the blush that 
heated Blair's cheeks.

"This is Mrs Julia Bettencourt." Blair forged ahead, "I met her at Rainier, 
she was one of the hundreds of case studies I told you about when we met."

Ah, that explained the prickling – she had one enhanced sense, maybe two? 
A Sentinel Sensitive at best, certainly not even a Beta. Jim smiled more 
genuinely at Mrs Bettencourt and saw in her eyes that she was rapidly 
connecting the dots. 

After a lot of muttering and typing and hurling Burton's work against the 
loft walls, Blair had come up with a sort of Sentinel classification system. Of 
the six billion humans on earth, about seventy percent were "non-
Sentinels". They had one or maybe two enhanced senses at most, perhaps 
all five were slightly more acute than normal, giving them better than 
average reflexes, but they usually didn't even notice them and they had no 
impact on their lives. Next up were those who were Sentinel Sensitive – they 
had two or three enhanced senses, maybe all five heightened but only very 
weakly – enough to be noticed but still well within apparently "normal" 
parameters. They didn't need Guides, didn't have zone outs, didn't suffer 
hardly any lifestyle impact, though they did show a tendency to orient 
towards their empathic "Guide Sensitive" equivalents, Blair having classified 
empaths in much the same way. Beta Sentinels had three or four but not 
five enhanced senses that were clearly hyperactive/beyond the normal 
range. Again though drawn towards those whose empathy made them fall 
into the Beta Guide category, this description was a misnomer, Beta 
Sentinels didn't bond with a Guide in the same sense that an Alpha Sentinel 
did; they didn't suffer from zone outs. 

Then there were Alpha Sentinels like Jim and Alex Barnes, and true 
empaths, Alpha Guides, like Blair. Sandburg had added another category, 
Dark Sentinels, or rather Alpha Sentinels that were "super-charged", though 
he had actually ignored this because the "Dark" Sentinels were 
exceptionally rare and usually had very short life spans. The super-senses 
that made these better warriors/guardians than two or even three Alphas 
came at the price of deeper, more intense zone outs and an exponential 
increase in "primitive brain hardwiring" that manifested itself in some very 
aggressive personality traits. From what little Blair had been able to 
extrapolate from the paucity of records available, Alpha Sentinels were 
protectors, Dark Sentinels were predators; Alpha Sentinels searched out a 
Guide, Dark Sentinels actively hunted the Guide. Most Dark Sentinels did not 
survive puberty – too often even an Alpha Guide lacked the empathic 
"clout" to be able to "break through" a Dark Zone Out to bring the Sentinel 
back out of it even if the empath were willing to try – apparently a Dark 
Sentinel's psychic "whammy" could overload the empathy of a too weaker 
Guide and just "burn" him or her out, sometimes permanently. Since Dark 
Guides were even rarer than Dark Sentinels, there had been very, very few 
such pairs ever recorded anywhere, though those pairs that had were 
apparently staggeringly successful – Blair had written an entire theory of 
how the mythical Sumerian King Gilgamesh and his best friend Enkidu, 
amongst others, were actually based on a real Dark Sentinel/Dark Guide 
pairing whose telepathic/empathic synchronicity must have seemed 
supernatural or divine to those around them.
    
Jim tuned back in to the conversation.
              
"Poor Edgar Fincham." Julia Bettencourt shook her head, "I find it 
incredible, I mean, it sounds terrible when I say this…but Edgar just wasn't 
worth the effort of murdering…"

A tall man with sandy blond hair and round, gold-rimmed spectacles that 
enlarged twinkling hazel eyes was approaching. His eyebrows drew together 
at the sight of Blair, then he too smiled broadly as he came up to the three 
of them. Both Jim and Blair noted how the envelope and letter had 
mysteriously vanished into the depths of Julia's purse but as she turned to 
the man, her smile became incredibly sweeter and they exchanged a look of 
such obviously genuine love that both Blair and Jim fought the urge to look 
away amidst a sensation that they were intruding on something very 
profound.

"Hey! Jim, this is Julia's husband, Tad Bettencourt, Tad this is Lt Jim 
Ellison, Cascade PD." 

Jim shook hands with Tad, feeling a liking for him – like his wife he was not 
bad-looking but unremarkable, unless you had the wisdom to see the 
intelligence in his eyes or the strength of character in his face. "Edgar 
Fincham…" Tad shook his head, "If anyone told me that somebody would 
ever be murdered in Witt's End I'd have laughed in their face."

"Would you like to come to dinner tonight?" Invited Julia, "If you feel able 
to cope with the hellions that masquerade as our kids…"

"We'd love too." Jim accepted promptly. "About eight o'clock?"

"Sure we're number eight, just up Snowdrop Hill, up there." Tad gave them 
directions and then he and his wife left, he linking his arm through hers in 
an automatic gesture as they walked.

"Sentinel Sensitive, smell and taste." Blair murmured what would have been 
cryptic nonsense to any eavesdropper. <And you can't possibly feel 
threatened by her, Ellison, so what was the crap with that Bonding scene 
playback?>

"Thought so." <Just double-checking, Sandburg, and I did the playback 
because it's just so much fun watching you squirm…> 

<You're getting way too much into the vacation spirit, I think> Blair 
chastised but without heat. Jim so rarely let himself exercise his sense of 
fun, it was too often suppressed by his sense of duty as both a police officer 
and the sworn protector of the "tribe" of Cascade; Blair liked the playful 
Jim he so infrequently got to see, but he had no doubts that he would be 
the focus of Jim's humour, which could be a little heavy-handed sometimes. 
"Hey, look."

Both men turned into the diner where they could see Rick Valenti at the 
counter. He looked up from his newspaper as they came to his stool and 
ordered two large coffees, though they declined the Danish he had.

"We'd like to apply to join." Blair sipped his coffee black, watching with 
resigned disapproval as Jim poured in three sugars and about half a cow's 
worth of real, thick cream from a china jug before winking broadly at the 
amused waitress.

"Join what?" Valenti frowned in puzzlement.

"The Utterly Baffled Club." Jim took a deep, satisfying swig of coffee, 
deliberately smacking his lips to annoy Blair.

"No joy at Fincham's house, then?" Valenti accurately estimated.

Jim made a decision – Valenti was no more the Murderer Presumptive than 
Jim was Mary Poppins! "Not really. Only thing we came across was a small 
deposit of something in one of the stair treads – Dr Martin is analysing it for 
us, but it's probably meaningless - looked like candle wax."

"Candle wax? Are you sure?" Valenti set his mug down sharply.

Blair and Jim exchanged startled glances as now they got an excited 
reaction from the man, but Jim answered, "Yeah we're pretty certain…we 
just noticed there didn't seem to be any candles at Fincham's house – "

"There aren't any candles there and there wouldn't have been. That wax 
has to come from the MP." Valenti stated decisively.

"Why are you so certain?" Questioned Blair.

"Migraines." Valenti shoved aside his mug and plate, unconsciously leaning 
forward. "Fincham had a nose like a bloodhound. I found it hard to believe 
at first but I've seen him in action. He told me once it was hereditary – his 
mother's family were perfumers to the Royal Court in France for centuries 
and made an absolute fortune – they escaped to America during the Terror 
in the 1790s."

Jim could see alert tension in every line of Blair's body – one sense instead 
of five, but generations of Ellisons had been Sentinels after Spring Blossom's 
marriage to St. John Ellison brought the Sentinel genes into the Ellison line. 
"Fincham had this really great sense of smell?"

"Absolutely. He was incredible – he could identify a dozen different 
perfumes by scent alone from twenty feet away." Valenti assured them. 
"Anyway, then he got sick – one of those head colds that make you feel like 
death? When he got over it, he kept complaining about smelling things from 
fifty – hundred yards away, kept getting really bad headaches. So he…well, 
the only way I can describe it is he "de-scented" his house."

"De-scented?" Jim repeated warily.

"No candles, no scented soaps, no perfumed detergents or washing 
powders. What's more he wouldn't let anyone near the place who was 
wearing perfume or aftershave or who had a pet with them – anything that 
might leave a lingering odour was driven off. I had to have a sharp word 
with him once when he waved a shovel at some tourists."

The three men paused and looked at each other with faint hope, "So if that 
blob is candle wax, then the killer brought it in to the house." Blair said 
thoughtfully.

"Definitely." Averred Valenti. "Could have brought in an actual candle, had 
some of it fall off his – or her – clothing, whatever, but definitely the 
Murderer Presumptive."

"Thanks." Jim got off the stool feeling much more positive than when he'd 
sat down, "We may actually be getting somewhere."

Leaving Buddy's Diner, the two men continued to the Lorelei Hotel to wash 
up before going to the Bettencourts. There were several people about, some 
of whom had reasonably strong, mostly amorous designs on each other; Jim 
could detect the hormonal lust-mush, Blair the empathic intent to ravish, so 
both men out of respect dialled down their respective abilities. Due to this, 
both remained unaware of the man watching them from the lakeside where 
he was ostensibly tying up a boat. 

He watched their lithe progress and animated conversation surreptitiously 
via the assorted reflections off the water and the boat's hull; he was 
certainly not stupid enough to be caught watching them directly. It had 
been a nasty surprise when Fincham's death was discovered to be murder 
and not the drunken accident he'd been counting on, but it hadn't really 
mattered – nobody in this hick burg was smart enough to figure it out, and 
he hadn't been worried when they'd sent for two city cops from Cascade. 
The big blond one, Ellison, was no threat – an ex-Army goon who'd got his 
job at the PD due to daddy's influence, probably had the IQ of a sausage. 
But the other one, the slender, curly-haired one… The man shivered with 
hate, still quietly amazed that nobody could see it. Some people's outlines – 
he refused to use that New Age "aura" jargon crap – were blue, some were 
red, some were gold, some were colours for which no name had been 
invented. But very, very rarely did you find one like Sandburg's. Not colour 
at all, but light, a thin silhouette around the younger man, so white it was 
beyond white, a surrounding sliver of brilliant incandescence.

And it was getting wider. Still raw, still untamed, but not any longer 
untapped. It poured off the man in pulsing heated waves that should have 
the power to knock anyone within ten feet on their asses, yet Sandburg 
himself was only just beginning to be aware of the power within himself. 
Long, bony hands clenched around the towline in frustration – it wasn't fair, 
for that stupid child to have so much of what should rightfully have been 
his. Sandburg would have to be killed, and quick. Not that that untried boy 
was a danger to his use of these stupid sheep, but unfortunately eventually 
someone would find Sandburg and train him, teach him how to become fully 
what was now only unrealised potential; then the Light would grow, and 
spread, not just a sliver but a widening band that became a beacon of 
purity, a holy fire. Nothing could stand against a Lightbearer – that thin 
sliver of white-fire brilliance was a brand, the mark of someone who was 
truly good. Such a person might be a soldier, might be a spy or work for 
dubious secret agencies, but inevitably that core shone through…

And they drew people to them like moths to flame, those equally good, 
those just ordinary, and those evil. The dark was drawn to the light it could 
not have – even he, for all his superior intellect and skill, felt that tug, that 
niggling desire to be in the company of that young curly haired man, to be 
his friend. It was incredible Sandburg wasn't dead already – surely some 
psychopath would have crossed his path by now and snuffed out that hateful 
light as the diseased mind recognised in it's sick, twisted way what the boy 
was and destroyed him in a vain attempt to possess that soul-comforting 
warmth for himself? Sandburg was a servant of the divine, a living symbol of 
the holiness, the worthwhile effort of attempting to be a good person in 
your life. Sandburg had to be gotten rid of – his very presence made his skin 
itch and his blood burn with pain. Only power mattered, only power was 
worth pursuing…

* * * 

Easily picking up the prescient hum as he sat on his bed, Jim finished 
putting on his boots with one hand and reached out the other to pluck the 
beside phone from it's cradle before it was midway through the first ring. 
"Ellison?"

Blair came out of the bathroom at the shrill, vigorously towelling his hair; 
Jim nagged him about going out with it "dripping wet" but Blair refused to 
inflict the damage of a hair dryer.

"Hi Daryl…everything ok…sure it's no problem to leave the deadly duo with 
Ellie." Jim had no qualms; Daryl had kept the Sentinel secret since he was 
twelve, he had enough brains to ensure Ellie McKinley remained unaware of 
the situation. "You're settled in alright at Georgetown? Okay, bye."

Blair raised an eyebrow, "Daryl's already moved into his dorm room?"

"Yeah. Apparently Simon and Leonie are a little frazzled." Jim said with 
sympathy – outwardly stoic as ever, he himself had inwardly been a 
gibbering wreck in the run-up to his marriage to Carolyn, frequently plagued 
by nightmares of dashing to get to the church only to find himself naked, or 
inadvertently stepping on the hem of Carolyn's dress and ripping a big hole 
in it, or forgetting the words, etc., etc. In reality the day had proceeded 
with the exactness of a Swiss clock and the smoothness of Carolyn's silk 
garter. Blair had been his loft roommate for almost exactly twice as long as 
Jim's marriage to Carolyn had lasted, counting the wedding day as the start 
and the day of the decree absolute as a finish.

Blair checked his watch, "Give Simon a call. We've got plenty of time."

Nodding, Jim hit 9 for an external line and then direct-dialled the Cascade 
Chief of Police's office. Despite the hour, the phone was picked up within a 
couple of rings and a deep voice crisply intoned, "Banks."

"Hey, Simon." Jim greeted his friend and Blair echoed it to let Simon know 
he was standing next to Jim.

Simon's businesslike tone was replaced with a decidedly warmer one. "How 
are you two doing?"

"Fine. Daryl called us from Georgetown about Ellie looking after Dastardly 
and Muttley. Everything okay in Cascade?" Jim queried.

Silently blessing that conversation with son, Simon trotted out the ready-
made excuses – settling into his job, the marriage, getting rid of Parker 
Dackholm - keeping it light and excising any hint of the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation from his thoughts. Sandburg couldn't read minds per se but 
Simon wasn't taking any chances. If the FBI thing didn't happen, there was 
no need for Jim to know about it, if it did, Simon intended to be present to 
instigate damage control when the big guy found out. 

"How's the Fincham thing going?" Simon asked.

"I'm afraid it might be a bit more complex than we imagined…" Jim 
confessed.

Simon sighed, "Damn, can't you two ever catch a break? I wanted to be able 
to give you something that wouldn't be too much stress, even if I can't give 
you any official vacation time."

"Don't sweat it, Simon!" Blair soothed from his position stood next to Jim, 
listening in. "Witt's End is great, we're both feeling much less tense, but 
hey man, it's us. Did you really expect it to be simple?" He laughed to take 
any sting out of his words.

Simon's explosive snort sounded clearly over the line. "True, true. But 
you've managed to narrow it down to the locals in Witt's End and St. Mary 
Vale, right? Can't be too many viable suspects?"

"Er…not exactly…there's a complication, sir." Jim felt compelled to admit, 
ignoring Blair's startled look.

"What sort?"

"There's a military installation here too, sizeable enough to have at least 
fifty if not a hundred personnel…"

"That can't be right…" Simon peered at one of the maps on his office wall 
where colour-coded pins highlighted police precincts, fire stations, military 
bases, coastguard stations and so forth as appropriate, "There's no Army 
base on the map there…" His voice trailed off as Jim maintained a sheepish 
silence. 

"It's mostly underground if the generators and vent system is anything to go 
by…" Jim offered, "I don't think I'll have much trouble checking it out…to 
eliminate it from the investigation –" 

"Damn it, Jim, just how retired from covert ops are you?!" There was a 
pained silence and Simon relented. "Sorry, forget I said that, wedding 
jitters talking."

"It's okay, Simon…I'll get Sandburg to bring you back some sage…" Jim said 
sweetly.

Simon's reply was unbecoming that of an officer and a gentleman, but he 
finished with his usual concern, "Do you want me to come down there?"

"What, and put Leonie's blood pressure in the stratosphere?" Jim joked. 
"No, we're okay, really."

Simon rang off and for a moment Jim and Blair contemplated each other.

"Where in the forest is the base in relation to Fincham's house?" There was 
no anger in Blair's tone for the simple reason he was fighting a major guilt 
attack, acutely aware that this was the ideal time to confess about the 
probably close proximity the temple, and equally aware that he wasn't 
going to say anything; he fancied he could almost hear the angry growl of a 
wolf and the scornful snarl of a panther.   

"More or less a straight line – less than ten minutes brisk walk as the crow 
flies." Jim admitted.

There was a pregnant silence between the two men, Jim well aware of the 
ramifications. For anyone to walk from Witt's End or St. Mary Vale on the 
road to Fincham's cabin, "kill" him and then return to either town without 
somebody seeing him or her en route, despite the early hour, was virtually 
impossible – hikers, campers, fishermen, golfers, bird watchers and ramblers 
were all potential witnesses. However, a murderer that had the advantage 
of being able to approach and then escape through the depths of the forest 
itself stood an enormously good chance of being totally unseen; appear from 
the trees, "murder" Fincham, and then melt back into the woods like dew 
dissolving under early morning sun.

"Tomorrow." Decided Blair firmly; tonight they were going to relax a bit.

Jim nodded more than happy acquiescence; his "fluid" covert operational 
status was something that irked Blair but which they had over time sort of 
mutually agreed to ignore, though no words to that effect had ever been 
spoken. Truth be told, Jim was more interested in Julia Bettencourt and the 
opportunity to fill in hopefully a few more of the many gaping holes in Blair 
Sandburg's past. His cop instincts were telling Jim that there was a lot more 
to the story of Julia being one of Blair's test subjects than seemed apparent 
on the surface.

The evening had a serene, crystal quality and many people were out and 
about enjoying the night air; Jim and Blair arrived at 8, Snowdrop Hill at 
exactly five-to-eight. It was a large, three-storey construction of hewn 
stone, wood and an upper level that featured a sweeping glass wall with a 
view over the lake. Two huge oak trees stood guard on the front yard – one 
had a rope swing, the other bore the marks of frequently climbing by small 
feet. They went up the front porch, Blair holding the bottle of Northwest 
wine they'd hastily purchased from the hotel, and Jim raised his hand to 
knock.

His knuckles never made contact as the door was wrenched open with some 
force. A tow-headed boy with sherry-brown eyes and a liberal spattering of 
facial freckles stood in the doorway; about eleven, he had a slightly crooked 
couple of teeth and the semi-disgusted look of a kid who has recently been 
scrubbed into protesting submission by a mother wielding a mean washcloth 
and lots of hot soapy water. His eyes widened fractionally as they digested 
and dismissed Jim's no fuss buzz-cut and then took in the chocolate curls of 
Sandburg; a speculative gleam lit them as they fastened on Blair's earrings 
and neither Jim nor Blair needed to be telepathic to easily read the kid's 
mind.

Ushered inside, both men felt the warmth of the place wrap around them in 
a manner that was almost tangible. Downstairs consisted of the dining room 
on the left, connected by an arch into the kitchen at the back and on the 
right was the main living room, part of which was again partitioned off into 
a book lined den – it sported a computer work station piled high with books 
and papers, one precarious pile of which had as a paperweight an oversized 
mug bearing the words: I'D RATHER BE FORTY THAN PREGNANT; between 
the main room and the kitchen the stairs led up. The Bettencourt family 
were gathered around the dining table, which like the rest of the furniture 
was either old and/or hand crafted, of good quality without being 
pretentiously antique; it was a house that was lived-in without being 
slovenly. 

Jim and Blair didn't need to look at each to agree on their impression – in 
total silence this house nevertheless practically yelled FAMILY. A variety of 
childish drawings were pinned by magnets on the refrigerator, a big pair of 
comfy old slippers in front of the couch had a much smaller and very similar 
pair beside them, on one of the worktops in the kitchen were two chef's 
hats, the big one bearing the legend, in bright pink sequined stitched on 
letters: QEEN OF THE KICHIN and the smaller: PRINCESS OF THE KICHIN. 

Even if Jim's olfactory excellence hadn't already clued him in, the tabletop 
groaning with food would have given away Julia's status as culinary royalty. 
The smells were indescribably wonderful – Jim had to furiously repress the 
urge to suck in huge lungfuls of air and drool like a waterfall. Their press-
ganged butler had four siblings, each one as bright-eyed and well-scrubbed 
as he. Sadie at thirteen came first – her mother's eyes, her father's hair, 
and a healthy dose of freckling, she was an intelligent, confident girl who 
smiled flirtatiously at Blair. The diminutive Jeeves was eleven-year-old 
Joseph, "Joey", followed by the seven-year-old twins, Darian and Devlin, 
both peas-in-a-pod carbon copies of Tad, and finally three year old Rosalie – 
with golden tresses cascading around her in sweet ringlets, and her topaz 
brown eyes bright in her chubby, ruddy face, she gazed at them with one 
endearingly crooked milk tooth peeking out between tiny lips – Jim and Blair 
took one look at this pre-Raphaelite angel and prudently decided not to 
trust her an inch. 

It was rare that either man got to socialise with anyone outside their 
immediate, trusted circle of intimate friends/support network and both 
made the most of it, aided by a repast that must have been what the 
ancient Greeks had in mind when they sang songs about ambrosia, the 
legendary food of the gods; even sprouts, those most vile of vegetables, 
became flavoursome. For Jim especially it was a revelation as taste after 
taste flowered on his tongue to be replaced by another, yet never was 
anything too sour, too sweet, too spicy or too bland; there was no doubt 
about it, the loft really needed a live-in chef, and he was sure he could find 
something for Tad and the kids to do…

The children were polite and well-behaved and were rewarded by being 
sent upstairs as soon as reasonably possible – the unmistakeable sounds of 
five kids dashing into a playroom clearly audible even to non-Sentinel ears. 
The four adults sat back and savoured the Irish coffees that Julia had 
prepared as Jim steered the conversation to Julia and Blair's first meeting; 
he rubbed his hands together in an overdone Shylock-the-Jew way and 
grinned at Julia, "So give – what verbal "naked baby pictures" of Sandburg 
can you give me?"

"Jim!" Blair's protest was lost as the other three laughed. "Don't you 
dare…" he protested in vain over Julia's long, drawn out drawl of 
"Weeeell…"

She laughed again, then asked seriously, "How many heightened senses have 
you got?"

"All five."

Tad and Julia's eyes widened but Julia had definitely suspected, "An 
Alpha…?"

"Uh, yeah." Jim was actually rather embarrassed about going round saying, 
in effect, "I'm an Alpha Sentinel, I am."

"Is your family…supportive?"

Hah-hah, jackpot, Jim easily read the subconscious yearning in her eyes and 
the equally unconscious flash of envy she had shown at his and Blair's close 
bond – anyone with heightened senses would be grateful for an empath who 
would help them. "They are…now. When I was growing up it was very 
difficult." Seeing Tad's sharp interest and finding himself possessed by a 
desire to help another who had obviously experienced a similar personal 
crisis, though maybe not as intensely, Jim explained, "My father is William 
Ellison – the William Ellison of the Washington State Ellisons?" At affirming 
nods he went on, "My parents' marriage ended acrimoniously when myself 
and my younger brother were not as old as Darian and Devlin are now. My 
father wasn't cruel but he was an undemonstrative man whose own parents 
had had a bitter divorce, he took the ending of his own marriage as a 
personal failure and drove a wedge between me and my brother – my 
Sentinel abilities were anathema to him."

Unconsciously Julia's hand stretched out across the table and Tad took it 
and squeezed it supportively.

"I'm now reconciled with my father and brother, but we were estranged for 
many years until Sandburg worked his magic…" Jim smiled across at his 
clearly embarrassed Guide. "In my father's defence his attitude wasn't his 
fault – his twin brother, James, after whom I am named, was an Alpha 
Sentinel who died in a zone out when he was ten." Any last doubt Jim had 
that Julia and Tad weren't au fait with matters Sentinel died when neither 
batted an eyelid or looked remotely confused at "Alpha Sentinel" and "zone 
out". "My father's father was a violent, unbalanced man and recently my 
father discovered that his father's brother was a Sentinel who had 
committed suicide when his Guide – died –" Jim couldn't prevent the slight 
hitch of his tone, "- of meningitis."

Julia looked across at Blair with an obvious affection that made the younger 
man's blush deepen even further. "I met Blair at Rainier…he…well, saved 
me, I guess. Saved our marriage at any rate." She smiled at her husband and 
squeezed his hand again, before relating her own experience:

"I have two heightened senses – smell and taste, taste being the stronger. I 
was born with them and I suppose as normal in these situations just assumed 
everyone was like me. My mother certainly didn't mind when I was little – 
having a child who will only eat fresh, proper food like fruit, vegetables, 
meat, bread and dairy produce and who turns their noses up at chips, 
candy, chocolate, burgers and the like must be every parent's idea of 
heaven. I didn't really begin to realise I was different until I was eight and 
my father…"

Blair subtly projected confidence and affection.

She gave Jim an understanding smile. "My father and I have never gotten on 
– too much alike, basically, both stubborn! Well, one night when I was eight 
we sat down to dinner and I refused to eat my cabbage – it just didn't smell 
right. My father stated I would be able to leave the table when I finished my 
dinner and not before, I refused. Like I said, I inherited all his pig-
headedness and then some. So I sat there from half-past six, bored out of 
my mind and desperately missing my favourite TV shows, but I wouldn't give 
in. One of my sisters found me stretched out snoring on the dining room 
chairs at nine o'clock. My father sent me to bed with the warning that the 
cabbage would be served every night until I ate it and that I was also 
grounded for a week."

"But…?" Jim raised an eyebrow, sensing there was far more to the story.

"It never happened." A small smile played around her lips, "At half-past-ten 
I was the only one capable of calling the local doctor – my father was the 
first one to start worshipping the bathroom porcelain with Technicolor 
yawns as Joey would say, followed by everyone…bar me."

"The cabbage?"

"Oh yes. When the doctor got there I explained to him that my family had 
food poisoning from bad cabbage – turns out the stuff was contaminated 
with some bacteria that I could never pronounce, but the end result for all 
my family was the same – minimum five days of bed rest interspersed with 
cycles of vomiting and diarrhoea as it worked it's way through their 
systems. I'm afraid as well as stubbornness I also inherited a lack of tact 
from my father and I was rather too gleefully smug about it all. Since I was 
the only one on my feet and a minor, we had to hire a nurse to come in and 
she had her hands full looking after all her patients – for ten days I basically 
had free run of the house and conveniently forgot all about being grounded. 
That's when I first started cooking for myself and discovered what my 
senses could let me do with food. Unfortunately my relationship with my 
parents, my father especially, went downhill from then on."

"How did you come to be at Rainier?"

"I was taking a part-time degree in Nutritional Science." Julia explained. 
"My mother was quick to let me have free rein once the family tasted my 
meals and realised how good they were, and I learned how to season my 
food for both normal and "sensitive" – or Sentinel as I now know – palates. 
When I said I wanted to go to college to study to be a chef, my family didn't 
object because it would be a useful skill for when I settled down to be a 
good little wife and hostess."

"Julia's family are very conservative in their attitudes." Tad's tone was very 
measured, and far more condemnatory than anger or viciousness would have 
been.

"The first time things went wrong was when I was nineteen at Rainier," 
Julia recalled, "got a cold that turned into tonsillitis and laryngitis and the 
bronchitis from hell. I recovered my sense of smell okay, but my taste buds 
were ultra hypersensitive – everything tasted as hot as a Mutton Vindaloo. 
My sister Dorothea came to "visit" for three weeks while her apartment was 
being redecorated and noticed that I never ingested anything other than 
bottled water and bland foods – milk, slimmer soups, rice puddings – washed 
down with enough vitamins to make me rattle like a pair of Canastas. 
Ignoring everything I said as my family did and do, she hauled me to a 
doctor who examined me and said there was nothing wrong with my throat 
any longer and that my problems were a psychosomatic holdover from my 
illness."

Jim growled, "Been there – for months before I met Blair I had doctors 
telling me there was nothing the matter when everything I wore burned my 
skin like acid – that was the worst, people don't realise just how powerful 
their sense of touch is, everyone always concentrates on sight and hearing." 
He explained to Tad, "Imagine if, no matter what you wore, everything felt 
like someone had marinated it in itching powder!"

Julia glared at some middle distance, her tone reflective. "What makes me 
so angry about all this spiteful gossip that's been flying around Witt's End 
recently is that it's so insidious; it destroys so easily yet so violently. I 
didn't realise back then how vulnerable women especially are; how easy it 
is to label us with terms like "neurotic" and "hysteric". What's worse is how 
things stay in the medical records even after they've been proven grossly 
inaccurate or completely wrong – each new doctor can only go on what's 
written down by his or her predecessor, and by the time he's read "anxious 
hypochondriac" four times in the first three pages you're doomed, even if 
later on it's proven that you were seriously ill all along."

Blair raised his coffee glass and took a sip, exchanging a look with Jim; both 
men were thinking of Leonie McKinley, who had suffered so much vicious 
harassment for so many years because each new Police Department, albeit 
without malice, read and believed the initial falsehoods perpetrated by her 
first husband. They tuned back in as Julia carried on.  
 
"That's how it started with me – Dorothea only needed to hear the doctor's 
opinion and immediately started bullying her silly sister into eating 
"properly". I waited until she'd gone and then reverted back to what I knew 
to be right. Fortunately my taste did settle down on it's own, but I spent 
nearly a year on a staple diet of milk pudding. I left Rainier and got a job in 
a restaurant in Seattle." Her eyes brightened, "I loved it there; the owner 
would let me experiment with new recipes and our business tripled in a 
month – when he broke his leg in a skiing accident he put me in charge of 
running it, and I was able to try something I'd always wanted. You see," 
unconsciously she leaned towards them in her enthusiasm, "having to eat 
bland yuck for a year made me think about all the others, you know? People 
who were diabetic and celiac or who had nut allergies? What must it be like 
day after day paying way over the odds for stuff that looks like cardboard 
and tastes like the bottom of a bird cage?"

"I've done it," Jim admitted, "a couple of my early doctors did think I had 
become celiac or developed food allergies. It was like trying to eat straw 
and hay half the time."

"Exactly. So I put a sign up on the door," Julia cleared her throat and 
deepened her voice before declaiming, "Are You Celiac? Are You Diabetic? 
Are you allergic? Are You Fed Up Of Eating Stuff You Wouldn't Feed Your 
Dog? Then Challenge Julia – You Ask It and I'll Make It and Make It Nice!"

"Did it work?" Jim asked with genuine interest, remembering vaguely a few 
years before a local news report about some Seattle restaurant that was 
making a fortune catering to people with nutritional conditions – that had to 
have been Julia!

"I didn't believe it! I'd expected a couple of people maybe once a month. In 
the end we were booked solid with a six-week waiting list every night! With 
my sense of smell and taste I could tell if nut oil had been anywhere near 
anything, I could spot gluten and yeast at twenty feet. The assistant chefs 
did most of the "normal" or "safe" dishes and I concentrated on the 
specialist stuff. I had the Mayor of Seattle's brother offering me a blank 
cheque to be his personal chef after I reduced his wife to tears of joy. But 
best of all, it's how we met…"

"I'm celiac." Tad took up the story. "Ate tasty junk like an All-American 
teenager till the age of twenty-four when I caught some flu virus in 
Singapore. Recovered and came back home to discover I was reduced to 
eating cardboard for the rest of my life. I moved to Seattle to work for New 
Science magazine and saw Julia's ad in the window – went in not expecting 
anything…and got everything. We were married within three months…"

"But…?" Jim noticed how Blair was obviously unsurprised by the unfolding 
tale.

"Unfortunately our haste was another black mark in my family's book." 
Julia's smile was suddenly strained.

"We booked a church, Julia made all the food for the reception because of 
my dietary needs and quick froze it, then we just hired a band and servers 
and sent out the invites a month before the day." Again Tad spoke with a 
measured calm that both their guests knew indicated great disapproval and 
a tinge of anger.

"My family weren't impressed by my turning an also-ran restaurant into a 
runaway financial success because a woman's success in my family is 
measured by how good a marriage she makes. Flaky Julia falls for a 
scientific journalist just didn't have the ring of my "son-in-law the 
investment banker-stroke-lawyer-stroke-insert-upwardly-mobile-career of 
your choice. Our haste also made them jump to a rather obvious but 
erroneous conclusion that we had to marry; there was rather a lot of 
sheepish congratulations going on when Sadie didn't appear until we'd been 
married for three years."     

"Sadie's like you." Jim said with certainty.

Julia smiled, taking no offence. "Oh yes, it was so much easier because I 
knew what was going on. She took to helping me out with the cooking like a 
duck to water when she was a toddler."

Tad gave a soft chuckle. "Sadie's got a healthy dollop of that determined 
streak. Her sights are firmly set on the Sorbonne – she's going to be one of 
those celebrity chefs." There was no doubt in Tad's tone that his ferociously 
determined daughter would succeed in her aims.

Julia shot a grateful glance at Blair and Jim became alert, realising they 
were getting to the relevant history now. "I had some minor problems with 
senses for a bit after Sadie, and then Joey, so when the twins were born I 
didn't bother…but then I got tonsillitis again and it didn't clear up. 
Everything I ate tasted like wet sawdust, but it was even worse than before. 
At the time, Tad was working impossible hours in a precarious job, I was 
working for minimum wage, the twins seemed to be catching every cold 
going and passing it on to me and we were struggling to get Joey into one of 
the most over-subscribed pre-schools in the city.' 

Julia's hands twisted together in her lap in remembered anxiety. "I daren't 
for a second confide in my family, and I was terrified that Tad would react 
just like them and think I was nuts…I just struggled on getting more and 
more depressed. I was losing too much weight, the kids were wearing me 
out, I was barely eating enough to sustain a sparrow, never a mind a woman 
with four kids under the age of seven. I usually took a short cut through 
Rainier's campus to get to work and one day I saw this big board outside 
Hargrove Hall, advertising for people to come in for sensory sensitivity 
testing. I decided I had nothing to lose – the only doctor I'd risked going to 
had all my tests come back negative and basically told me it was all in my 
mind." Julia snorted derisively at the memory, "I sat there listening to him 
patronise me and I could almost see a cartoon "thought bubble" over his 
head with the words "young, over-anxious mother" in it. So I went into 
Hargrove Hall."

Blair blushed and squirmed, much to Jim's amusement. "I told you about all 
the case studies I'd done before I met you, Jim. I used to put notices up 
asking for volunteers to be tested, that's what Julia saw. Apart from Dy- 
well, a four-sense Beta Sentinel, Julia was one of the strongest positive 
results I ever had, but it was obvious by the time we'd finished testing that 
her senses were seriously out of whack."

Julia nodded vehemently. "I think it was one of the auditoriums was one of 
the testing rooms. Anyway Blair told me to picture a row of dials, like an 
old-fashioned radio?"

Jim grinned, "Oh yes, dial it up, dial it down."

"There were five labels with sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. Only 
taste and smell had dials, the others were blanked off like in some non-
luxury cars, you know, where not all the specifications come as standard? 
The dials for both were set on ten, and Blair helped me bring them down to 
five – it took an hour and we were both exhausted, but it worked. I just 
burst into tears."

"Don't say it, Ellison." Growled Blair as Jim opened his mouth to make some 
witticism out of Julia's final words.

Smiling at the byplay, Julia went on, "Unfortunately I hadn't then got the 
necessary control. After a few days my senses went again and though I tried 
the "dials" just kept slipping, so back I went to Rainier. Blair started helping 
me with some meditation exercises so I could really control the dials 
properly. Unknown to me someone who knew my family spotted me in 
Rainier's refectory having lunch with Blair and hot-footed it back to the 
homestead to let them know their daftest daughter was carrying on with 
some man other than her husband who looked like he'd just left 
Woodstock."

Jim and Blair didn't need to exchange glances or words – gossip again, a 
nosy parker who'd gone eagerly back to spill misconstrued tittle-tattle.

"Next thing I get a phone call from my mother wanting to know what am I 
doing cavorting in public with some unsavoury hippie? I'm being more than 
unusually silly even for me, et cetera. I told my mother to basically butt out 
and thought that would be the end of it."

"At that point, one of Julia's brothers called me for a man-to-man chat 
about how Julia was "carrying on" and how it was a disgrace to the family." 
Tad Bettencourt's tone indicated clearly his opinion of the malicious 
informant. "There was no attempt to find out if there were real problems in 
our marriage – for all Julia's family knew I was battering her to a pulp in a 
drunken rage every night – just an assumption that Julia was being flaky 
again. I'd already figured out something was going on – Julia had been 
perilously close to clinically depressed for months and then suddenly 
brightened up, but she kept going to Rainier every week. So one day I 
followed her…"His voice trailed off for a moment and he was clearly 
embarrassed, "To cut a long story short I saw Blair and Julia sat side by 
side, Julia was clearly agitated and Blair put his hand on her arm rather too 
familiarly. I saw red and ran over and…er…let him have one."

Plucking the memory of a red-faced Tad Bettencourt charging at him with 
fists swinging from Blair's mind's eye, Jim devoted a couple of precious 
seconds to squishing down the Sentinel who had reacted instantly to this 
confession of hurting his Guide. Firmly shutting the caveman up for now, he 
managed to paste on a smile, aware of Blair's acute relief, and even 
managed to lie jocularly, "I've often felt the urge to thump Sandburg 
myself."

Blair blew him a loud raspberry, deliberately projecting amused affection to 
lessen the awkward moment. It worked as Julia explained, "I was in tears, 
Blair was stunned, Tad was yelling – it all got too much and I fainted. 
Swooned into Tad's arms like a Victorian maiden."

"Blair got me to bring Julia to his so-called office, that glorified artefact 
storage room, and by the time we got her settled on a chair and coming 
round, he's managed to pretty much explain the situation." Tad told Jim. "I 
had to listen, because I couldn't carry Julia and go after him at the same 
time. Once I knew, lots of little things made sense, both about Julia and 
Sadie."

"Once we'd got everything cleared up I coached Tad on how to help Julia 
and her problems disappeared almost miraculously. I'm convinced he has 
some empathic sensitivity." Blair finished. "I'm astounded to see you in 
Witt's End though?"

Tad and Julia exchanged glances. "It was too difficult." Tad again chose his 
words with a care that showed he was clearly trying to remain polite about 
his wife's family, something that only emphasised his true feelings. "Sadie is 
the only one like Julia as such, but the other four all have superb reflexes – 
the twins especially are the absolute darlings of their Little League Baseball 
team, their coach swears they have more eyes than Blind Io and that they're 
practically telepathic. Also, Sadie used to have a lot of mood swings and 
Joey could be a right contrary brat, but since Rosalie was born the four 
older ones have calmed down tremendously, I'm convinced she's got a lot of 
Guide in her."

Blair nodded, his eyes alight with the unaccustomed delight of being able to 
talk openly about his overriding life's passion, anything Sentinel/Guide 
related, "Probably, yes. If the Ellison family history that Jim's dad William 
gave me is representative of Sentinel genetics generally, quite often a 
family who had children born with heightened physical senses would go on 
to have one or two with strong empathic abilities – usually siblings or first 
cousins. Sometimes a Bonded Sentinel and Guide pairing would be two 
siblings or cousins."

Realising Jim was still waiting, Tad hastened on, "Julia's family weren't 
supportive and sometimes the children were indiscreet about what they 
could do. We were at another family do when we heard a distant cousin 
laughing about "batty Julia" and realised that we could be facing serious 
problems from the family."

"We couldn't tell my family the truth – the first thing they would have done 
was try to get me to see a shrink for my "delusions", and when that didn't 
work they would go to court to get me committed and obtain custody of the 
children because obviously Tad is so besotted he's in serious denial of my 
problems." There was a weary pain in Julia's voice that Jim understood 
completely – he knew the pain of not being able to turn to your family, the 
one group of people who, above all others, should be a safe harbour from 
life's storms and oasis of help to a deserted soul.

"Would they…?" Blair cut off his words.

"No, they wouldn't have succeeded." Julia shrugged. "Once in a court I 
could prove easily that I was both rational and that my abilities were real. 
But that would destroy my relationship with my family once and for all; they 
could never accept anything so outside their context of reality, and the last 
thing I wanted was for the public at large to know I was some kind of 
sensory freak and have doctors trying to turn me into a guinea pig in their 
tactless fascination. Another trait I share with my father is a total inability 
to navigate – we can both get lost inside paper bags – which is how we found 
Witt's End when we were on a vacation. We decided -"

The phone cut off her words abruptly, making even Jim jump as he had 
been so wrapped up in Julia and Tad's story he had been largely unaware of 
peripherals. Standing up, Julia went over to the phone and answered it, but 
then her body lost it's ease and she stiffened, her tone becoming carefully, 
politely neutral, "Oh. Hello, mother…Yes I did… Monday then…No, Tad's still 
at the office, I'm afraid."

Blair and Jim exchanged a quick glance at this blatant lie, but Julia had put 
the phone back to them and turned with a pinched, embarrassed expression 
on her face, "Oh dear," she uttered the words softly, half to herself even.

Jim bit back words asking her if she was all right, as she clearly wasn't, but 
Blair enquired innocently, "Is that letter that upset you from your mom?"

Tad looked enquiringly at his wife, who nodded at Blair and then picked up 
her purse of the sideboard, pulling out a familiar crumpled piece of paper 
and handing it to Tad with the explanation, "I didn't want to deal with it 
today." Turning to Blair, she confirmed, "My family are coming to visit us 
next week – that was their letter telling us when they're due to arrive."

Jim made an interrogative noise at Julia's somewhat excessive distress – 
surely her family's impending visit couldn't be that bad…?

Tad and Julia shared a guilty glance, looking for all the world like a pair of 
schoolchildren caught in a yard with a ball and broken window. Laying the 
letter on the table, Tad confessed, "We…well…did a "moonlight flit", I 
suppose is the only way to describe it. We knew things were coming to a 
head, but we daren't put the house up for sale on the open market as the 
family would have taken it as a personal insult if we even hinted we wanted 
to move away from them…"

"Then I got lucky," Julia put in, "When I resigned from my job we were able 
to sell the house to a colleague of mine without having to put it on the 
market. Within two weeks we were packed and here in Witt's End before 
anyone really had chance to realise we were going. We found this place on 
vacation and fell in love with it."

"I work as the Maitre D' at St Mary Vale Country Club, and I'm also the Sub-
Editor of the Witty Chronicle. Julia works as a chef four nights a week at 
the Lorelei Heights, and she works as a kindergarten teacher at the school. 
We're not rich and never will be, but Witt's End is a big family – or it was 
until all this vicious gossip started up – and we all pull together. It's done 
wonders for our children."

"You lied to your family," Blair said knowingly to Julia, "and you've been 
putting them off for months, right?"  

Jim was astonished and alarmed to see the sheen of moisture in her eyes as 
she nodded. "It was an acceptable way to leave so suddenly. I phoned my 
parents the day we left and told them that Tad had been offered a lucrative 
middle-management position and we had to move fast. They think Tad's 
raking in the bucks as a senior sales executive for some big corporation! 
God!" She gave a sudden, harsh bark of laughter, "I can't even remember 
what company I told them! Every time they called I just kept saying Tad was 
working late or still at the office…"

Jim whistled, "Now they're going to turn up next Monday on your doorstep, 
and…"

"We're screwed." Tad finished harshly, lines furrowing his forehead. "It'll 
take them half a day to realise I'm nothing more than a glorified waiter…the 
kids are too used to being able to be themselves here in Witt's End to hide 
what Julia and Sadie are, even if they wanted to. They're proud of their 
mother, and their sister, just like I am – I'm glad I haven't got heightened 
senses, but I believe God gave people like Julia a gift. You have all five and 
you're guardian of an entire city, Julia has only two and she uses those to 
bring pleasure and enjoyment to people like me, whose bodily illnesses 
mean that a basic human need such as eating becomes an unpleasant chore. 
Julia's family will freak – it'll be World War Three; their crazy daughter, her 
"enabler" husband and five allowed-to-run-wild kids stuffed full of silly 
notions. Lawyers will be in a feeding frenzy over us for years."

"Not necessarily." Jim heard himself say, the words, 'Maitre D' at St. Mary 
Vale Country Club' echoing in his mind.

"Jim…?" Blair's tone was hopeful.

"What do you mean?" Julia fastened her eyes on him.

"Can you give me a couple of days?" Jim asked.

Tad gave him a measuring look, going up yet another notch in the Ellison-
Sandburg Good Person Scale – this was a mild-mannered, gentle man, whose 
first, last and only priority was the happiness of his family. "Of course…" 

<Jim?> Blair sent the message urgently. 

<My dad and Stephen both belong to WSSACCA - the Washington State 
Social & Country Club Association.>

<And his being part of something with a title that pretentious and long-
winded helps us how?!>

<Chief, membership of WSSACCA is only open to those with serious amounts 
of money and or social prominence. If you can afford the annual fees, you 
can join "a" country club, but membership of the WSSACCA means you are 
automatically granted membership with "every" country club and elite 
social organisation in the entire State – we're talking membership fees in 
excess of $2 million a year per person. Only people like Bill Gates and the 
President get into WSSACCA…and my dad…>

Sandburg had never been slow. < And every country club in Washington 
State would include St Mary Vale…>

"…appreciate anything you could do." Tad finished sincerely, completely 
unaware that neither man had heard a word during their silent conversation 
with each other.

* * *

Another spasm of pain shot up Daryl's jaw into his skull. For the past hour 
and a half, it had taken all his willpower to maintain his expression as one 
of bland, naïve eagerness, and the strain was beginning to tell; repeatedly 
having to keep his lower jaw from dropping open and his lips curling into a 
rictus of shocked disapproval were telling now in the way his teeth throbbed 
and stress-caused shooting pains went from his chin to his earlobe.

Daryl had spent an enjoyable evening watching the game with Xan in their 
dorm room along with Stevie Dax, but the flight from Cascade had left him 
tired enough to seek an early night. This morning Xan had gotten up first as 
he and Stevie had to go out for some shopping – apparently they were both 
studying for the degree in Political Science, with Xan doing his Minor in Law,  
and hadn't quite got all the course books or something. 

Realising that speed was probably of the essence, Daryl had himself risen, 
showered and dressed in his only suit, relieved to discover that it still 
looked good on him. Bought by Joan for a large wedding on her side of the 
family last year, the suit had been a very expensive made-to-measure 
midnight blue, complete with lighter blue silk shirt and complementing 
pastel blue silk tie; to his vast relief, Daryl had finally stopped growing 
when he hit fifteen and six feet four inches at the same time, so the suit 
still fit perfectly. Georgetown was one of the few places where the Metro 
rail didn't go, so it had been a bus down into D.C., and then two more buses 
to the M.P.D. Central Precinct.

His first shock had been ease of entry. Following the Sunrise Patriots 
escapade, security at 250 Pender Street had by increments now reached 
sufficient levels to satisfy even the most deeply paranoid; viruses couldn't 
get in without going through the security checks at the front desk. Daryl 
walked confidently up the steps, through the double doors and up to the 
precinct front desk with nobody batting an eyelid. As he waited patiently 
for the desk sergeant to deign to take notice of him amongst the other 
complainants, the double doors had swung open again and a tall, grey-
haired man with truly appalling "spats" style shoes a half-century out of 
fashion and a colourful tie had come barrelling in and past into the bullpen 
that was to the left of the long front counter – a terribly exposed bullpen 
that Daryl could quite easily have sprayed with bullets had he a machine 
pistol handy. 

Daryl had had to stop himself from goggling as "Spats" sauntered through 
the bullpen completely oblivious to how exposed he was to attack from the 
civilians waiting with various degrees of impatience to be seen behind him, 
"goggling" because he knew who the man was – Chief Jack Mannion, whose 
controversial, unorthodox policies had grabbed Washington D.C. by it's ears 
and shaken it hard – and there, coming down the stairs at a slow saunter as 
if next week would do was Mannion's second in command, Deputy Chief Joe 
Noland, whose only shield was the manila folder he had in one hand! Calling 
a couple of the detectives – "Temple" and "Debreno"  - over to him, 
Mannion disappeared with them and Noland into his office. Resisting the 
urge to shake his head at this cavalier attitude to personal security, Daryl 
finally got his chance with the desk sergeant, which started this circus off! 

Daryl knew that in some States, the Federal Police Volunteer programme 
had taken off enormously as a well-organised positive initiative, whilst in 
others like Washington State, it had languished forgotten until rediscovered 
by someone like Joel Taggart, seeking a loophole to help a friend. It was 
clear to Daryl five minutes in that his home state's namesake Washington 
D.C. was definitely in the latter not the first group. It took ten minutes of 
fast talking and showing the first sergeant the relevant legislation to prove 
he a) wasn't making it up and b) was serious about doing it and wasn't some 
joker out to waste the sergeant's time.

Over the past ninety minutes Daryl had been slowly passed up the food 
chain to a variety of superiors; he had repeated his entire explanation five 
times, showing three Lieutenants and a Captain the legislation in the MPD 
procedures, and proven his identity and credentials no less than eight times. 
Now as yet another suit scrutinised his driver's licence in a miserably failing 
attempt to hide the fact that he had no idea what to "do" with Daryl, the 
youth sat back and tried to keep his disappointed contempt from showing, 
though he was grateful that he had had the foresight to prepare his 
identification beforehand. Daryl wasn't an idiot and he had scored highly in 
statistics at school – the leading cause of death amongst black males aged 
between 12-23 in American cities was gunshot wounds, and the main 
perpetrators other than inter-gang warmongers were police officers. Daryl 
knew he was ten times more likely to get pulled over by the cops in D.C., 
and sixty percent more likely to be arrested "on suspicion" so he had 
colour-copied his driver's licence and all other pertinent details, laminated 
some as appropriate, and put copies in all his belongings and clothing as 
required, so even if he forgot the originals, he would never be without ID.

The Captain who had been interviewing Daryl – yet again – returned, a smile 
on his face, and Daryl felt his heart sink. It was not a friendly, encouraging 
smile, it was the smirk of a man who had suddenly found a way to get rid of 
an irritating problem. Curtly telling Daryl to follow him, the Captain – 
Hedges? Hodges? – led the way along various corridors until he got to a door 
that had a frosted glass upper pane, but before Daryl could read the gold 
lettering, Captain H. rudely pushed it open without knocking and stepped 
inside. The dark head bent over a desk rose to reveal a reasonably pretty 
brown-eyed woman whose brunette hair was a curly bob.

"Congratulations, Finkelman." Captain H's tone was slightly sneering, 
"Young Mr Banks is the MPD's first Police Volunteer and Homicide is just the 
division to get him started properly. He'll be under your direct supervision 
for the duration of however long a time he chooses to volunteer."

At the man's opening words, Daryl twigged why the woman looked familiar, 
and relief flooded through him. Captain Sarah Finkelman! The woman who 
had deputised while his dad was in hospital back in Cascade – sure she'd 
made a poor start by revoking Blair's observer's pass, but by the end of her 
stint, both Sandburg and Jim had been friends with her. He opened his 
mouth – and rapidly closed it again as Sarah Finkelman gave him a look that 
suggested he was something vile she'd just trodden in.

"What are you on about, Hedges?" Her tone was sharp and hostile. "I don't 
have time to babysit –"

"Sorry!" Hedges trilled, sounding anything but. "Orders from on high – see 
you later, gotta go!" Turning hurriedly with a big, nasty smirk Hedges 
scooted around Daryl's wavering form and out along the corridor, clearly 
pleased.

"Oh come in and shut the door!" Snapped Finkelman loudly and Daryl swore 
that Hedges chuckled as the man carried on his way.

His heart in his boots, Daryl obeyed and waited, frozen; this was not how he 
intended things to go at all!

Coming around the desk, Sarah Finkelman stood in front of him, then a big 
grin broke over her face and she grabbed his hand, pumping it vigorously. 
"Daryl Banks! How's your dad? Are Jim and Blair okay?"

"Uh, y-yeah…" Daryl responded with a slight stutter, trying to regain his 
hand. "Er…why are we whispering?"

Gesturing him to a seat, Finkelman went back behind her desk and gave him 
a long look, as if deciding that she could rely on whatever she saw in his 
demeanour, she explained candidly, "You'll pick up most of the scuttlebutt 
anyway, I suppose… It's simple, Daryl. I have three strikes against me – I'm 
the new kid on the block, I'm a woman, and I'm a Jewess. I've been in this 
job as the new Captain of Homicide here in the District less than a year – I 
was Jack Mannion's first appointee – and to cut a long story short I've been 
creating tidal waves in the MPD. My predecessor was, and I make no 
apologies for saying this, a misogynistic, bigoted dinosaur who ran this place 
way behind the times in 1940, never mind 1990; I've been cleaning house 
and I'm about as popular as a fox in a hen house as a result."

"So if you had let them see that you were happy to see me, I'd have been 
placed under another Captain and spent my time as their personal lackey-
cum-glorified-typist. This way they leave us alone, happy in the knowledge 
that they've managed to get one over on you again." Daryl surmised.

"You're a bright boy." She grinned at him, then leaned back in her chair. 
"Come on Daryl, give. What are you doing here? Why Police Volunteer? You 
do know the stipend is only $25 a week?"

Though editing his reply to protect Jim and Blair's secret, Daryl gave her an 
honest and frank explanation of his career aims and intentions, and his 
reasoning, concluding, "…if I enter the police force at post-graduate level, I 
have got to have some way of establishing "street cred" with veterans like 
Joel Taggart who've worked their way up the ranks, else I'm finished before 
I start, that's why I'm here. All I'm asking for is a fair chance."

Captain Finkelman studied him for a long moment, then gave him a 
conspiring grin. "And I promise you'll get one. But let me make one thing 
absolutely clear," she put in as he began to grin back at her, "while I count 
Jim and Blair as my friends and know they would do anything to help me 
should I ever have need, I have no regrets whatsoever about revoking Blair 
Sandburg's credentials during my tenure as Major Crime's locum Captain!"

Keeping her gaze unwavering on his she saw the flare in Daryl's eyes that he 
wasn't able to hide at her uncompromising tone. "Daryl, it's become 
obvious to me that there is more going with their situation than I am aware 
of," she paused as she saw the look that flitted across his face before he 
became impassive again, "and I certainly won't try to get you to tell me 
anything that you have been told in confidence and aren't at liberty to 
reveal. I have enormous respect for Blair's intellect, his courage and his 
deductive capabilities, but the fact remains that he was an unarmed, 
untrained civilian, yet he repeatedly accompanied Detective Ellison into 
situations and investigations so dangerous that in any other police 
department they would have just sent in an entire S.W.A.T to clean house 
and have done with it! Daryl, I promise that you will not be relegated to 
being my glorified dogsbody – by the time I've done what you don't know 
about being a cop won't be worth knowing - but you will not be gadding 
about all over the place like Blair Sandburg – it's far, far too dangerous. 
Deal?"    

Daryl knew a good thing when he heard it. He held out his hand. "Yes 
ma'am, deal."

Grinning at each other like kids, they shook hands.


To be continued in Perspective Part 3...


© 2003, Catherine D. Stewart



1 Ode To Blue is taken from the Tamuli books by David Eddings.
2 For a complete biography of Agatha Christie, see Analysing Agatha on the 
original non-fiction page. Most of her stories did utilise poison and were 
incredibly factually accurate to the extent that crimes were solved due to 
several of them. After reading one novel, a man realised his neighbour was 
trying to poison his wife; a policeman fan was able to solve a series of 
baffling murders, and a children's nurse recognised the symptoms of 
poisoning in a baby.     
3 The "Alice" refers to the lead character in Lewis Carroll's famous anti-
political epic satirical novel: The Adventures of Alice In Wonderland and 
Alice Through the Looking-Glass And What She Found There.