ON THE VERGE

by Chris Lark cql@hopper.unh.edu
Rated: PG

FYI, this is a sequel to my most recent story, "Small Town Bringdown" (ergo I'd appreciate if you'd read that one first). The rest of my opening blurbs are in that story, too.

***********************************************************************
Intro: Vapour Trails

Boy oh boy, had that been a run of good luck or what? That last shot was already starting to seem like a dream to Celine, and she couldn't help pinching herself as she changed her clothes in the locker room. The score had been even, but a St. Anna's player had almost broken it just as the game ended. She would have, too, if Celine hadn't been able to hang onto the basket, grab the ball and drop it through the basket. Nobody had even seen her until she'd leaped to make the shot.

It was her last game on the St. Fortunata's court for a very long while, and Celine was glad she could feel good about it. Of course, she would feel much better about it if she could stay around Chicago; but witness protection from the mob was infinitely more desirable. As her teammates congratulated her on a game well played, she savoured these last few moments she'd have with her friends before leaving for New Hampshire. If Fraser was right, though, she might be able to come home within a year. Well, she would at least have somebody to love while she was away, somebody who had already proved himself more than protective.

As Celine retrieved her last few belongings from her locker and shoved them into her bag, she noticed Melissa walking slowly over to her. The best for last. Celine turned to face her, forcing a sad smile.

"So I guess this is it," she said finally.

"For now," Melissa said. "I'll pray for you while you're away, that you can come home soon."

"Thanks, I'd really appreciate that. Just do me one favour, okay? When you're pretending to be me on the way out, don't bury yourself in the part."

Melissa laughed, and under the circumstances, it felt great to laugh. "Okay, I won't," she giggled. "You take care of yourself, huh?" She bit her lip, blinking a few tears back.

"You bet I will," Celine promised. "So long, Mel. I'll see you soon, I promise." She hugged Melissa, who returned the embrace and then gave up, letting the tears go. Pretty soon she had Celine tearing up as well, and she murmured a goodbye as they hugged for almost a full minute.

Sister Anne now entered the locker room, and she looked around for Celine and beckoned to her. "It's time," she called.

"Here we go," Celine said. "Good luck."

"We'll be okay," Melissa sniffled. Picking up the empty suitcases she'd brought into the locker room with her, she passed Sister Anne and left the room.

Outside the door, Benton Fraser and Ray Vecchio fell into step on either side of her, and they exited the gym and made for the school's north entrance. A few seconds later, Celine slung her larger bag over her shoulder and picked up her two smaller ones, and out of the locker room she went. In the gym to meet her were Pete Porter and Detective Stanley Kowalski, and together the trio left the gym and started for the west entrance of the school. Some seconds afterward, Jack Huey and Tom Dewey escorted a third girl to the south entrance, and two lesser lights walked with a fourth to the east one. Sister Anne watched the four parties leave, and she knew it was far from overkill. To avoid interference from the mob, they had to have one team at each entrance to confuse hit men and allow Celine to make it safely to the airport. It had been carefully arranged a few days in advance, and it gave Sister Anne some sense of security. She felt much better with Ray as the head honcho of the operation, she mused.

Walking toward the north entrance, Ray lifted his walkie-talkie. "This is unit one, all units on the move?" he said.

"Unit two, roger, we're moving," Kowalski answered first.

"Unit three, ten-five," Huey responded.

"Unit four, affirmative," the fourth team's senior detective, Ed Kendall, chimed in. Ray nodded to himself, and he, Melissa and Fraser ascended the steps to the north entrance. There they paused, and Ray waited to give the other three units time to get into position.

Fraser would have felt a lot better if he and Ray could be escorting Celine, but he also knew that it would be a dead giveaway if any mob lookouts saw her with Ray. He knew very well that as far as protecting Celine went, Kowalski was the man. So was Pete, for that matter. It didn't make him feel any better risking Melissa's life like this, but since her description didn't even come close to matching Celine's, there was a ray of hope there.

"South entrance?" Ray radioed.

"We're ready here," Huey said.

"West entrance?"

"Roger, ready when you are," Kowalski responded.

"East entrance?"

"Roger, in place," Kendall said.

"Ready...let's go," Ray said. Simultaneously, all four teams exited the school and made a beeline for the cars parked a short distance from the doors. Ray pulled out his car keys, and at the trunk of his old Riviera, he and Fraser kept an eye out while Melissa dropped the empty suitcases inside. Ray shut the trunk, and all three got into the car's front seat,with Melissa sitting between Fraser and Ray. In the meantime, Celine was shoving her bags into the back seat of Pete's elderly Impala while Pete and Kowalski watched both directions. That done, Kowalski got into the passenger seat and Pete into the driver's, Celine between them. The other two teams were doing the same, and at roughly the same time, all four cars pulled away from the school and split into different routes to the airport.

***********************************************************************

Part 1: Escape Is At Hand for the Travellin' Man

Fraser, seeing the look on Melissa's face, took it on himself as usual to offer some comforting words. "She'll be fine," he said. "Everything's carefully arranged. It's highly unlikely anything will happen."

"I sure hope not," Melissa said. "I mean, what if they do get to her at the airport?"

"We've got a chopper standing by on the tarmac just in case," Ray said. "There's no way to be too careful in something like this."

"Tell me about it."

Meanwhile, Pete was driving on a route parallel to Ray's, and he and Kowalski were keeping a continuous eye out for suspicious activity around them. Eventually, to relieve some of the arduous tension in the car, Celine spoke up. "So what happens now?" she asked.

"We get you on the plane, you go over to Boston and head for the Frozen North," Kowalski said simply.

"And once we reach what is at this time of year the Oppressively Hot North," Pete said, giving Kowalski a dirty look, "we go according to the plan we whipped up the other day. The UNH shuttle bus from Portsmouth to the campus will have a change of drivers at the airport, and once we offload everybody else, we go over to your dorm and put out the word for extra police patrols through the area."

"I take it the bus driver is trustworthy?" Celine said.

"Well, I should hope so, she's a damned good friend of mine."

The four teams arrived in numerical order, with the Riviera pulling into the airport's service entrance first. Ray drove slowly to let the other teams catch up, and a minute later, the Impala followed him in. The other two teams followed thirty seconds to one minute apart, and this time they stuck close together as they moved toward the terminal.

The junior detective of team four took the hand radio from the dashboard. "This is team four, we're in," he reported.

Kendall snapped him a glare. "Schmidt, what the hell are you doing?" he snapped. "We're supposed to maintain radio silence after we leave the school."

His partner gave him a sheepish look, then glanced at the radio and sighed. "Oh, yeah," he said. "Forgot." Tossing the radio back onto the dashboard, he rubbed his lip and stared out the window. Kendall kept glaring, and he drove up alongside the terminal behind the other three cars.

"Vecchio's not going to be too amused, pal. You'll be lucky if he just has you busted to walking the beat."

"Yeah, I know."

They were using the service entrance to the terminal as well, both to throw off any possible mob lookouts and to be close to the helicopter if worse came to worst. Ray stopped the car right by the entrance, and Pete pulled some distance ahead and stopped his car up there. Huey stopped his car parallel to Ray's and several meters away, and the fourth team paused right behind them.

"Here goes nothing," Ray said, getting out of the car. Melissa got out on his side, and Fraser exited the car and looked around, then circumvented the Riviera's front to join the other two.

It was then that the shots rang out.

The first shot to be heard was a burst of machine-gun fire from the roof of the terminal, and it hammered a pattern into the ground on the Riviera's right. Reacting in an instant, Ray shoved Melissa toward the door, but she needed no assistance getting there. Now the other detectives were returning fire, and shouting at Celine to take cover, Pete pushed her to the ground and gestured to roll under the car. She obeyed, and Pete followed her under the car. In the meantime, Kowalski took cover behind it, shooting back and fumbling for his glasses.

"This is unit one!" Ray bellowed into the hand radio. "Warm that chopper up! Get the SWAT team up on the roof RIGHT NOW!" He made sure Melissa was safely inside the terminal, and then he drew his gun and ran around the rear of his car to take cover and fire back. The other two teams had also taken cover behind their vehicles, but that cover didn't last long. Another contingent of shooters was on the roof of a building across the way, and it looked hopeless--they were caught in a crossfire with no hope of escape except constant return fire.

"Come on, come on," Ray muttered to himself, crouching at the Riviera's tail end and firing in one direction at a time. He looked at the Impala up ahead, and Pete and Celine were still lying flat underneath it. As far as he could tell, they were still alive. Another pattern of bullets stitched the side of his car, and he snarled an Italian expletive and fired at the second contingent of shooters.

"What's the matter, Ray?" Fraser yelled over the noise of the gunfire.

"What's the matter?!" Ray repeated, gesturing at his car. "I just got the damn thing fixed, and it's already taking bullets, for crying out loud! Go figure!" He resumed fire, and Fraser just shrugged and nodded. Ray had rarely failed to make him see reason about damage to that car.

At long last, they heard another burst of machine-gun fire from some distance away. They looked up at the roof of the terminal, and sure enough, the shooters up there were abruptly stiffening and then slumping over the railing. One of them dropped his weapon, and it fell to the ground.

"There's the SWAT team," Ray shouted. "Okay, I'm going for the chopper!"

"Good luck!" Fraser answered. Jumping to his feet, Ray fired at the shooters on the other roof, and he waved to Kowalski and pointed in the direction of the helicopter as he ran.

Kowalski nodded in understanding and knelt down beside the Impala. "Now's your chance!" he yelled at Pete and Celine. "Get outta here, go on, go!" Both of them started crawling headlong out from under the car, and Pete was the first to drag himself out at the front. He got up, extending his hand to Celine as she slid out behind him, and he pulled her to her feet. Together they sprinted after Ray, who was dumping out his empty clip and shoving a fresh one in.

The detectives on the ground and the SWAT team on the terminal roof provided cover and then some for Ray and the kids. They still had to avoid some bullets, though, as they ran around the corner of the building onto the tarmac. The helicopter was just a few meters away, and Ray bent down to avoid the wavering rotor. Celine and Pete did the same, and Ray tore the door open and held it for the kids, who scrambled aboard and into two of the rear seats. Ray slammed the door and opened the copilot's door, and he leaped aboard just as the helicopter started to lift off.

Taking a headset from the hook beside his seat, Ray put it on and turned to the pilot. "Stay low and head due south," he instructed. "We don't want them figuring out where we're going." The pilot nodded once, and he set course due south and stayed at no more than five hundred feet as he flew away from the airport.

"You kids okay?" Ray called over his shoulder.

"We're fine, Ray," Pete answered. Ray turned his head a little further to get an answer from Celine, who looked understandably shaky.

"More scared than I ever hoped to be, but I'm okay otherwise," she panted. Pete gave her a comforting hug, and Ray sighed with relief and took his walkie-talkie from his jacket pocket. Moving the headset's mouthpiece and one earphone aside, he pressed the button.

"Fraser, we're in the air and the kids are okay," he reported. "How does it look down there?"

"The SWAT team has things under control," Fraser replied, watching several SWAT officers run across to the other building to take in the perps on its roof. "We'll send your belongings over later on."

"Good idea. I'm going to stay on for a day or so and make sure everything works out."

"Also a good idea," Fraser said as Kowalski came over to join him. "You know, Ray, there's no way we know of that they could have found out. While you're gone, Stan and I had best investigate this last attempt."

"Yeah, you do that."

Kowalski grabbed the radio, giving Fraser a dirty look. "Yeah," he said. "We'll investigate on one condition: Fraser quits calling me Stan."

Fraser opened his mouth and raised his head to nod. "Understood," he said. And he did understand fully--he knew that Kowalski hated to be called Stanley or any variation thereof, preferring his middle name: Ray.

"Have fun," Ray said. "See you when I get back."

"Good luck, Ray. See you then." Fraser turned the radio off and pocketed it, and he paused, looking for a moment at Kowalski.

"So we're partners one more time, then," Kowalski said.

"You never know," Fraser said. "This may not be the last time. There's only one thing that really bothers me, though. Ford and his partner have both been incarcerated, and yet the hit on Celine is still out."

"So you think somebody's still carrying on their work."

"Either that, or Deeter didn't put the hit on her at all."

"Okay, maybe you'd better fill me in on everything that's happened while I've been away." They started over to the Riviera, and Fraser went on to regale Kowalski on the events of the past week: He and Ray had investigated the death of Armando Langoustini, with Celine as their informant, casually gathering information from her mother. But when her mother was killed in a drive-by, Huey and Dewey had traced it back to the crime syndicate with which Ray--and coincidentally two FBI agents with whom he was unhappily acquainted--had been undercover for some time. Fraser and Ray, meanwhile, had discovered that one of these agents was the one who had killed Langoustini to get Ray undercover, and his partner had had Celine's mother killed so that the scheme couldn't be exposed. But by then, it was too late--Celine already knew enough to expose it already, and two (now three) attempts on her life had failed. Now here they were, without a clue as to how they'd been found out this time.

"You know, Ray," Fraser said after finishing his recap, "we also never found out how they knew that Celine was staying at Pete's house for the night."

"Must have been an informant in the precinct," Kowalski said.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. Whoever it is may have also leaked the word about our plans here. Somebody got close, very close."

**********

Fraser and Kowalski drove back to the precinct, and they reported in to Lieutenant Welsh, who was predictably not amused. "Oh, great, so we're trying to get a witness to the mob out of town, and we wind up having to shoot our way out," he said irritably. "I take it this wasn't due to any negligence on the part of you or any of your fellow officers out there."

"That I don't know, sir," Kowalski said. "But, um, Vecchio went with the kid to make sure she'd make it all right."

"Is there an upside to this?"

"I believe so, Leftenant," Fraser stepped in. "At the moment, Detectives Huey, Dewey, Kendall and Schmidt are at the airport with a crime-scene unit. A special weapons assault team was able to apprehend most of the shooters, although the rest of them escaped."

"All right," Welsh said. "Kowalski, you start in on them. Vecchio takes over when he gets back, understand?"

"But, sir, what if--"

"Look, he's been undercover with this syndicate for months. He knows how they work. We need him on the point to catch these guys."

"Yes, sir," Kowalski grumbled, turning to go. Fraser sidled out of the office after him, and they made off to Kowalski's desk, which sat in the corner across from Ray's.

"You know, Fraser, I've been wondering," Kowalski said. "What's up with Vecchio calling you Benny, anyway?"

"Are you sure this is a good time to discuss this?"

"Look, I gotta get my mind off that kid and what's gonna happen to her. What's the deal?"

"I'm not sure, entirely. In fact, I remember that when I told him my first name, he didn't believe it was my first name."

"Well, how do you think I felt?"

As Fraser was trying to think up a response to that, Detective Kendall popped into the squad room by the side door and looked over in their direction. "Hey, Kowalski," he said, walking over and waving. "Do you know when Vecchio's going to be back?"

"Couple of days, tops," Kowalski said. "Why, what's up?"

"I wanted to let him know about something," Kendall said. He leaned a little closer to Kowalski and Fraser, lowering his voice. "My partner made a transmission when we were supposed to be maintaining radio silence. And all this time, I thought he knew how Vecchio would react if he tried it. Guess we'll find out when he gets back." He turned around and walked to the front doors, and Fraser looked at Kowalski and frowned.

"I suppose in this case, the attack was due in part to negligence," he said. "The shooters must have had a radio scanner with them, intercepting the transmission."

"I'll tell you one thing about this," Kowalski said. "When Vecchio gets back, I won't want to be in Schmidt's shoes."

"Hmm."

"Hmm what?"

"Oh, nothing."

"Look, Fraser, you say 'hmm', how can it possibly be nothing? Even if you're just humming 'O Canada' or whatever, there's always something in there."

"Well, if you must know, I'm a little concerned for Detective Schmidt's physical well-being when he meets with Ray."

Kowalski chortled and pointed his finger. "Oh, you don't need to worry about that, Fraser. When I'm through with him, he'll be meeting with Vecchio at the hospital. C'mon, pitter-patter, up and at 'er." Shoving his gun into his armpit holster, he tossed his jacket on and led Fraser to the side door. Fraser grabbed his Stetson from Ray's desk, where he had left it before the basketball game to avoid drawing attention, and he put it on as he followed.

Who should they run into but Huey and Dewey as they were walking down the hall, and both pairs stopped upon meeting. Evidently, they had something to say to each other, and as Fraser had feared, the three detectives all started to speak simultaneously. There was a long moment of confusion, until finally everybody shut up.

"After you," Kowalski said.

"Okay," Huey began. "We searched--"

"Oh, God," Kowalski interrupted, putting his head in his hand.

"Something wrong, Ray?" Fraser asked, concerned that Kowalski might have forgotten something important.

"I just talked like Fraser," Kowalski moaned. "I, um...I gotta go. Nature calls. Be right back." He turned around and rushed off in the other direction, and Fraser frowned as he watched him go. He certainly couldn't see any problem with Kowalski talking like him.

"Hmf," he said thoughtfully, turning back to Huey and Dewey. "You were about to say...?"

"We searched the roof of the airport and every shooter we caught," Huey said. "Didn't find a radio scanner anywhere. There was nothing that could have let them know what to do when we got there."

"Two of them were carrying walkie-talkies, but the set frequency shows they were being used for one team to keep in touch with the other," Dewey added.

"Yet they knew somehow," Fraser mused. "Thank you kindly. I think I'd best see if Ray is all right." He turned and walked down the hall away from Huey and Dewey, in search of Kowalski.

He found him in the men's room, leaning heavily over the sink with his head hung and his eyes closed. His face was still dripping a little water, although Fraser saw no reason for him to throw it there. Whatever the reason, far be it from Fraser to pry. He caught Kowalski's attention, keeping his voice low as he explained what Huey had told him.

"No scanners in the area that they could find," he murmured. "Ray, we may have trouble here. If Detective Schmidt sent a radio transmission and it wasn't intercepted by a scanner..."

"It must have gone straight to the shooters," Kowalski finished.

Fraser nodded grimly. "I believe Detective Schmidt was also the informant who told Deeter where to find Celine on the night she went to Pete's house."

"Let's get him in here, then." Kowalski strode around Fraser and to the door of the bathroom, outside, and resolutely down the hall.

**********

Around 4:00 P.M. Eastern time, the helicopter arrived over the Pease International Tradeport and began its descent. The Atlantic Ocean was just barely visible on the horizon from up here, and it looked wonderful. During the flight, Pete had told Celine about what summer was like in these parts, and it sounded like her kind of summer--beaching, camping, and dozing on the UNH lawns everywhere.

Ray, on the other hand, was brooding just a bit. Ever since meeting Kowalski, he hadn't been impressed with the fact that Fraser had been partnering with the guy for half a year. He also knew what Kowalski had done to his car once, and he wouldn't put it past him to do it again. However, his primary concern right now was protecting Celine until he was sure she was safe.

The helicopter landed in front of the terminal, and Ray, Celine and Pete clambered out and made their way over to the entrance. "Okay, campus shuttle should be coming by in about five minutes," Pete said, looking at his watch, which he had reset to Eastern time when the Great Lakes were behind them. "Let me just make sure everything's squared away." While he proceeded outside to the bus stop, Ray and Celine remained in the terminal, mainly since nature was calling Ray.

By the time Celine and Ray had left the building, the described shuttle bus was already sitting at the bus stop. At its front doors, Pete was standing and talking to the driver, and Ray indicated to Celine that they'd best pause to see what was what. As far as they could see, there wasn't much to worry about.

"Everything okay so far?" Pete asked.

"Running fine," the erstwhile driver replied. "We went over the whole bus, every inch, before we left the base. Shouldn't have any problems, but I'd still give it another check if I were you."

"My thoughts exactly. Thanks, man, see you around." Pete slapped his hand, and he nodded to Ray and Celine. Ray promptly started forward and started searching the bus's exterior for a bomb or a gas can or some other sort of threat, and in the meantime, the outgoing driver entered the terminal. At the same time, the incoming driver exited and walked over to the bus, and Pete waved.

"Hey, Allison," he said. "Keith says everything's set, but we're doing one more check before we take off."

"Want me to do a radio check?" Allison asked.

"Good idea. Allison, this is Celine, the rather unwilling reason for all this cloak-and-dagger crud." Celine just giggled and shrugged, and she and Allison exchanged their greetings. That done, the three boarded the bus, and Pete and Celine plopped down in the front seat on the right. Meanwhile, Allison dropped into the driver's seat and quickly tested the essentials.

Ray had finished his inspection of the exterior, and finding no threats on the outside, he walked forward to the doors. He climbed the steps and sat down next to Pete, and Allison closed the doors and reached for the radio phone, performing the requested radio check. Everything seemed to check out fine. With a satisfied nod, Allison offed the brake, put the bus in gear and drove away from the airport, heading for the turnpike.

**********

Fraser was indeed starting to feel a little concerned for Detective Schmidt's physical well-being by the time Kowalski caught up with him. When Schmidt had returned to the precinct, Kowalski herded him into an interrogation room, sitting him down at the table. Fraser stood in the observation room next door, staring through the two-way mirror, while Kowalski started beating on him with harsh and sometimes threatening words.

"You heard Vecchio as loud and clear as I did," Kowalski snapped, pacing back and forth in front of the table. "Leave school, get in car, head for airport, RADIO OFF. I talked to your partner and the kid you were escorting out of the school, and neither of 'em's got any reason to lie about you breaking radio silence."

"I forgot we were supposed to be keeping it," Schmidt shrugged.

"Forgot, my ass," Kowalski scoffed. He leaned across the table, pointed his finger into Schmidt's face, and sneered. "Huey and Dewey just finished searching the whole damn area for evidence that they might have intercepted your transmisson. None of them was carrying a radio scanner, but one of them WAS carrying a walkie-talkie. And get this: It's the same make as the ones we were carrying." He tore a bagged walkie-talkie from his pocket and dangled it in front of Schmidt's face. Indeed it was the same make as the radios they'd carried.

As Fraser watched from the other room, Schmidt's pupils dilated perceptibly, his breathing became a tad heavier, and he broke a sweat. He didn't say a word to this, and Kowalski went on, "That screams only one thing to me and the rest of us. You contacted the shooters directly to tell them the kid was coming in and they could take their shots at her. Even if you didn't contact 'em directly, you still made a transmission that was intercepted. If that's what it was, that's criminal facilitation. If you sent it straight to them, that's attempted murder, and you know it. You know what happens to you, too, right?"

"What makes you think they didn't know about it beforehand?" Schmidt asked nervously.

"Fact that me, Vecchio, and Fraser made the plan," Kowalski answered in a smug growl. "That's as idiot-proof as they come. You know what happens to you, too, right?"

"Yeah, I know. I go before IAD and lose my badge."

"Not really." Kowalski wore a threatening grin. "I throw you to Vecchio when he gets back." He abruptly straightened up, shoved the bagged walkie-talkie back into his pocket, and glanced obliquely at the mirror. Understanding, Fraser left the observation room and joined Kowalski walking down the hall.

"Weren't you going to ask him about the night Celine was kidnapped from Pete's house?" Fraser asked, scratching his eyebrow.

"Nah, I'll leave that to Vecchio," Kowalski said sardonically. "Oh, Fraser, one more thing. Don't leak this to Internal Affairs, okay? I hate them tramping around here even more than Welsh does."

"Understood."

**********

With the last few passengers dropped off behind the campus's Memorial Union Building, Allison pulled away from that stop, and Pete gave a nod to Celine and Ray. "Looks like we're in business," he said. "We've also arranged for some extra protection hereabouts while you're here. I'll help you get a feel for the campus next week, if that's no problem by you."

"Of course not," Celine said, propping one foot up on the engine covering. "Coming to a new place is always great...well, sort of. What do you do for fun around here, anyway?"

Glad that Celine was doing her best to get her mind off the situation, Pete gave her a half-smile as the bus turned right onto College Road. "Personally, I hang around the computer clusters and the gym," he said. "Most of the students around here just charge out the frat parties every other night. Nine times out of ten, they escalate into full-blown riots that echo all over the campus. There were two earlier this year where the cops had to bring on the pepper spray."

"Was it necessary?" Ray asked.

"Not entirely," Pete said.

"Great," Ray said. "That means a probably power-happy and definitely cruddy P.D. What I wouldn't give to hang around for a while and teach them a thing or three about dealing with college kids."

Pete elected not to ask him to expand on that, and the bus took another right onto a lane that ran past several of the dorms. A third right took them onto a curving driveway that serviced those dorms, and Allison stopped the bus just before the curve. Pete pointed at the door to the dorm. "This is it," he said.

"Okay, stay here, I'll be back in a few," Ray instructed. "Get the extra patrols moving, willya?" He got up and off the bus, and while he was walking toward the dorm's front door, Allison picked up the radio phone again to get the extra patrols on the road as Ray drew his gun and disappeared into the dorm. He wished he didn't have to proceed like this and make Celine nervous, but a little nervousness was an appropriate price to pay for some security.

Ray ascended the stairs to the second floor, eased down the corridor toward the room that had been staked out for Celine's stay at UNH, and took the key from his jacket pocket. He'd chosen a second-floor room at the front of the building for Celine, since this would make drive-bys a little more difficult. He unlocked the door and held his weapon up as he slowly opened the door. Abruptly, he shoved it wide open, leaped inside, and aimed the gun into the room, spinning around to cover the other side. The room was apparently empty. Only two places to hide--in the closet and under the bed--so Ray checked those out. Nobody was hiding in either location, so Ray then looked up and around to search for any aperture by which access could be gained. There was a small air vent on the wall just below the ceiling, and on climbing a chair to peer into it, Ray found that it wasn't nearly big enough for a person to hide in. The room seemed secure, so he departed and then went downstairs to take a peek in Pete's room.

Pete and Celine were standing outside and lingering near the bus's doors, and Celine was staring up at the second-floor windows of the dorm. As she leaned against the bus's side and waited for Ray to come out, she half-closed her eyes as she started to compose a poem in her head. Poetry was her favourite hobby--her diary entries were almost all in poetic form--and she wanted to release the turmoil that had been her life for the past week by writing it down that way.

"You know, I couldn't be gladder that we're in the same building," she said.

Pete, who had been humming a quiet tune to himself, looked toward Celine and nodded with a shrug. "Well, Ray arranged it that way, along with the extra police patrols," he said.

"He must really trust you, huh?"

"I can but hope that I've earned that trust. I have to say, though, I'd feel infinitely better if he were staying for more than a day or so. Look on the bright side, though--we threw off the mob by flying in the wrong direction for a few miles, they don't know that you came here with me, and Langoustini was the only member of the Iguana family who had a place here."

"Are you sure of that?"

"I've been going to college here for a while now. The newspaper interviews with Langoustini indicated that the Iguana family had no other ties to this area."

"He might just have been trying to protect them, you know," Celine suggested.

"I know. But the police throughout the area will be keeping an eye out, especially on the campus. Ray's also drilled me thoroughly in what to look for."

"Want to pass that on to me?" Celine forced a very tiny smile.

"If you want." Pete hugged Celine around the shoulders with one arm, and he closed his eyes and went back to humming. As he hummed, he started working lyrics into the tune, and meanwhile, Celine returned to her poem.

Ray had just finished asking the occupants of other rooms if they'd noted any suspicious activity recently, and he had checked out Pete's room as well. That one was also secure, so he walked back out of the dorm. "All set," he called to Pete and Celine. "Your rooms look good, and nobody's seen anything weird going on lately. I'll be on the stakeout across the circle, second floor, room eight. If there's any trouble for either of you, send a flashlight beam my way, and wave it around like hell. I'll call for backup and be over here ASAP."

"Sounds good," Pete said.

"Works for me," Celine chimed in.

"In you go, then. Have fun." Ray clapped Pete on the arm, and he leaned into the bus. "Thanks for the lift, kid," he called to Allison. "Your work here's done." Allison nodded her welcomes, closed the doors, and drove away from the dorm, continuing around the curve to the lane. Ray started across the circle to the opposite dorm, looking over his shoulder to be sure Pete and Celine got inside all right. They entered the dorm without incident, and Ray nodded to himself and continued to the stakeout.

**********

Back at the precinct in Chicago, Fraser and Kowalski were now taking off for the airport to make sure that there were no deadly weapons in the kids' belongings. Fraser hated to root through people's personal stuff for any reason, but a little persuasion from Kowalski convinced him to do so. It was a little reassuring to know that they were securing the kids' safety. Once finished, they sent everything on its way and then took off for home. The route from the airport to the Canadian consulate took them past the Chicago River, and as they moved along in Kowalski's black '67 GTO, they were gabbing about nothing as usual.

"Well, isn't this a nice little afternoon cruise through the city," Kowalski muttered.

"Well, actually, Ray, this isn't really a cruise," Fraser corrected. "It's more of a ride."

"What's the difference?"

"There is quite a difference. You see, riding is where one just rides along in the car. By comparison, cruising is when one is driving the car, and strictly speaking, you're not really driving."

"What, you think I can't drive?" Kowalski snapped.

"Not exactly that, Ray--"

"Are you tryin' to tell me that I, Stanley Raymond Kowalski, am a bad driver?!" Kowalski fairly yelled, taking both hands off the wheel and turning to give Fraser a glare.

"Well, this is more or less the result, isn't it, Ray?" Fraser said, pointing ahead at the tow truck hauling the GTO towards the consulate.

"No, this is the result of you not warning me when you saw that nail in the road!"

"As I recall, you saw that nail first. I tried to warn you, but you oversteered, and wound up blowing out your front left tire on it."

"Oh, come on, Fraser," Kowalski griped. "You're the one who's supposed to warn me when you see these things coming."

"Actually, you were headed for the nail, not vice versa."

"Well, who cares who was headed for what? If you'd seen it earlier, maybe you coulda warned me and I might not have had to call a tow truck to drag us back to the consulate!"

Fraser sighed, turned his head and stared out the window. "You know, I must say, it sounds a bit like you're blaming me for your own recklessness."

"Look, you just did it again!" Kowalski said shortly. "You're nitpicking, hairsplitting, caviling every damn thing I do! Don't you remember what happened the last time you started that?!"

Fraser did remember that last time, but he certainly had no intentions of mentioning it, lest it bring up another such incident. Instead he said, "Well, I hope you don't expect me to apologise."

"I don't."

"Fine."

"Good."

There was an awkward silence, with Kowalski slouching in his seat, arms folded and scowling at the tow truck's rear. Fraser watched him for a second, then spoke again. "You know, this is probably a bad time to bring this up, but--"

"Coming from you, I bet it is," Kowalski grunted. "Just do me a favour, okay? Make sure it doesn't have anything to do with the Eskimos or your dad or your grandparents or...Tokyo, whatever."

"You mean Tuktoyaktuk?"

"Tokyo, Tuktoyaktuk, who cares?! You did it AGAIN! You don't stop that, Fraser, I'll dump you out right here!"

"I should think the Inuit who settled the town care," Fraser answered. He was about to go on, but then he fell silent again. Something had drawn his undivided attention down to the river, and he kept staring at it as tow truck and car rolled past. "Oh, dear," he said. "Ray, you'd better call a crime unit down to the riverbank at this location. There seems to be a dead body down there." He put his hat on, opened the door and leaped out of the car, thudding to the ground. He rolled a couple of meters and back to his feet, and he ran across the street and down to the bank. Kowalski turned to stare in bewilderment as the truck pulled the car further away from the scene, and it was only when Fraser had disappeared from view that Kowalski got around to calling it in.

In the meantime, Fraser was down at the riverbank, and sure enough, there was a dead body lying face-down half out of the water. Obviously the victim had died in a drive-by shooting, but that wasn't what had Fraser's attention. Even from behind, the victim looked familiar--so familiar that Fraser's stomach turned. He knelt beside the body and rolled it over, and what he saw made him gasp and leap back to his feet.

***********************************************************************

Part 2: Poets

Around 7:00 PM Eastern, Celine was sitting at the foot of the bed in her new room, leaning against the wall with a small composition book in her lap and a pen in one hand. She liked writing all sorts of poetry, and that included humourous and light-hearted poetry as well. She'd already discovered that Pete was right about the "Oppressively Hot North" at this time of year, prompting her to open the window wide and peel down to her bathing suit and bike shorts. As she looked out the window, she smiled contentedly, feeling safe with Ray watching. She hoped maybe he'd have a chance to hear this poem before he left, and she looked back down at her composition book, writing out the last stanza. She read it over again, smiling.

Me and Pete, Ray and Fraser
Are puttin' the bad guys to bed.
They're joinin' the fish again
Down by Lake Michigan
And we're kickin' them in the head...

Me and Pete, Ray and Fraser
Are havin' the time of our lives.
Ray keeps his gun out
And if we run out
We're gonna be badly deprived...

Me and Pete, Ray and Fraser
Have got the mob right in our palms.
The city's just clean
'Nuff for Jessica Steen
And we're makin' them say their Psalms...

Me and Pete, Ray and Fraser
Are waitin' to give 'em a botchin'.
Next time they hit
And then try to split
You betcha we're gonna be watchin'.

Okay, so maybe that first stanza sounded a little too much like Kowalski, but Celine didn't mind. She thought the poem was cute, and she was pretty sure Pete would think so, too. Oh, Pete...how Celine wished she had the guts to let him see the other poem she was writing. She flipped to the page on which she was writing that one, and she carefully tore it out and laid it aside, getting up. She left the room, descended the stairs and ambled down the hall to Pete's room.

Since Pete travelled light, he had just taken a few essential, lightweight items with him on spring break, and he was watching Star Trek while he waited for them to arrive. At the knock on his door, he got to his feet, crossed the room and opened it, and he was greeted with Celine's bright-as-day, amusing little smile and a wave. "Hi," she said. "Can I come in?"

"Um, sure." Pete stood back, and Celine entered the room. "Anything I can get for you?"

"No, thanks," Celine said. "I just thought you'd like to hear a poem I wrote."

"Maybe during the ad," Pete said, pointing at the TV. "I'm just watching DS Nine right now."

"Oh, DS Nine?" Celine said excitedly. "Cool! What's going on?" She went over to Pete's bed and plopped down, holding the book in her lap. Pete sat next to her, pointing at the screen.

"O'Brien's undercover with the Orion Syndicate, trying to find a guy who's been leaking the names and locations of about half a dozen Federation spies," he enlightened her. He still marveled that he'd found someone to love who had so much in common with him as it was, and she was even a Trekkie, to top it all off.

"Oh, brother," Celine moaned, resting her head back against the wall. "The Orion Syndicate. I can't believe they have the Mafia in the twenty-fourth century. Aren't we ever gonna get away from them?"

Pete chortled and shrugged, shaking his head. He gave Celine a one-armed hug, and they settled down together to watch. This, they both thought, was hopefully the first of many nice nights together.

**********

"I don't understand this, Ray," Fraser said, walking alongside Kowalski toward the morgue. "I'm positive that Ray Vecchio, Celine and Pete got safely aboard the helicopter and made it out of the airport. They headed in a confusing direction. There's no conceivable way that the perpetrators could have gotten to them."

They pushed through the doors that opened into the corridor, and Kowalski pointed out, "Guess what: there is. Who knows, maybe Schmidt wasn't the only one. He could have had help, and this help might have taken some courses in flying helicopters."

"Oh," Fraser said. "For once, I do hope you're wrong."

"Me too."

They paused outside the morgue, and Fraser turned to give Kowalski a quizzical look. "But one thing still doesn't make sense. What was Celine doing back in Chicago, anyway? There's no earthly reason for the helicopter to have turned around and brought her back here."

"Fine, I'll take it up with Vecchio when he gets back," Kowalski volunteered. "If you're gonna try and figure out why, though, just don't do it by licking anything, okay?"

"Understood." Fraser marched into the morgue, Kowalski on his heels.

Dr. Mort Gustafson turned away from his examination table and smiled, tossing them a half-salute. "'Evening, boys," he said. "Ah, Fraser, I've just returned from the most marvelous performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto. It was just as if I was listening to it on an old record."

"Indeed," Fraser said.

"Don't sing it, willya?" Kowalski griped, hovering near the sink.

"Nothing to worry about, since it has no words," Mort smiled. "Now, then, shall we begin?"

Fraser nodded, walking around to the other side of the exam table. He and Mort peeled back the cover, and Kowalski promptly whirled away from the sight and bent over the sink. He was going to get sick in this place yet, and he knew it.

"I count about eighteen entry holes in the front," Mort observed. "The poor girl. She must have been no more than twenty years old."

"Eighteen," Fraser said solemnly. "She would have been nineteen in July. Have you been able to determine the time of death?"

Not one to start getting sentimental while examining a cadaver, Mort went back to his work. "Judging from the blood loss, I would say about five or six hours ago," he said. "Look at this. There are still more entry points on her right."

"Hm," Fraser mused. "There aren't many on this side. In fact, there are almost none, but there are several exit points."

"Fraser, what's up with you?" Kowalski demanded without turning. "The kid was a witness to the mob, and she was damn important to you. Don't we see a little shock or grief or something here right about now?"

"Not right now, Ray. First, we find the shooters. Then my feelings about Celine can surface." Fraser admitted to himself, however, that he was awfully close to letting them surface now. He knew he was one of the few people who could examine the body without an emotion attack.

"So she was shot repeatedly from the right," Mort concluded.

"Sounds like a drive-by," Kowalski said. "Who wants to bet that CSU finds a sea of shell casings out by the river?"

"I might, but I don't gamble," Fraser said.

"Me neither; I'm saving up for the Wednesday night performance of 'The Sound of Music' at the Lakeshore Repertory Theatre," Mort said. "A drive-by shooting. Yes, this has all the signs of one."

**********

After the second commercial break, Celine and Pete had become nearly oblivious to the show--they were lying side by side, kissing a little less than passionately. Already, the circumstances of their first kiss were seeming like a dream. This was no dream, though, and they were glad of it.

Across the circle, Ray had watched them with a bit of amusement and a bit of incredulity at first, but then he knew it would be far better to mind his own beeswax in this case. He trained the camera on the front doors of the dorm, occasionally peeking through Pete's window just to make sure everything was all right in there. So far, every time he checked, everything was. At the ring of his cell phone, Ray picked it up and turned it on. "Vecchio," he replied.

"Ray, it's me," Francesca's voice crackled from the other end. "Fraser and Kowalski just brought a body in from the Chicago River bank. It looks like she was killed in a drive-through shooting."

Ray gave the phone a dirty look. "A what?" he asked. "Frannie, there is no such thing as a drive-through shooting. There is a drive-by shooting. But there is no drive-through, drive-in, or drive-up shooting, there is only a drive-by shooting, do you understand?"

"All right, Ray, I get the picture!" Francesca snapped. "Now if you're done, I sure hope you get this picture. The victim's description matches that Celine girl you were protecting."

For a moment, Ray's heart skipped a beat, but he looked through the camera again. A brief glance made him certain, and he frowned as he answered, "Are you sure?"

"Height, weight, face, and hairstyle are all a positive match."

"Well," Ray said with a note of sarcasm, "I'm not so sure of how they can be that, since Celine Comerford is in bed with Pete Porter in a UNH dorm room about fifty feet away from me."

This time, it was Francesca's turn to stare in bafflement at the phone. If Fraser was certain of something, didn't that mean that everybody could be certain of it as well? Ray had almost never let his eyes off Celine since this whole mess started, so it had to be possible that it was really her that he was seeing. Unless, of course...

After getting off the stick with Ray, Francesca called the morgue, and Fraser answered. "This is the mortuary of the Twenty-seventh Precinct, Chicago Police Department, Constable Benton Fraser speaking," he said.

"Hi, Frase," Francesca said in her usual sweetie-pie voice. "I just talked to Ray, and he says he's dead certain that Celine is over there at UNH."

"He's positive?" Fraser frowned. "I'm sure that she is the victim."

"What if she's a lookalike?" Francesca suggested.

Fraser fell silent--she was absolutely right. After all, there had been a close enough resemblance between Ray Vecchio and Armando Langoustini for the former to impersonate the latter for several months. It was therefore possible that this girl could look exactly like Celine.

"One moment," he said, hitting the hold button. He hung up the phone, walked over to the exam table, and took a close look at the victim's feet. Measuring them visually, he cocked his eyebrow, went back to the phone and picked it up. "You're right, Francesca," he said. "Celine wears a size-eight basketball sneaker, yet the victim's feet are only size six. This girl is not Celine Comerford."        

"So who is she?" Kowalski asked over his shoulder.

"A little fingerprint ink will answer that question," Fraser said, hanging up the phone, opening a cabinet and rooting around for a fingerprint card and ink pad. He found both items, turned around and handed them to Mort, who was cleaning the fingernails in preparation to take the fingerprints.

As Mort picked up the victim's right hand and put the index finger to the ink pad, he smiled at Fraser and Kowalski. "I'll have these and the dental records to you in half an hour," he promised.

"Thank you kindly, Mort," Fraser smiled back. "Ray?" He turned and walked out of the morgue, and Kowalski kept his back turned to the body as he pulled his jacket on and trailed Fraser out of the room. They could hear Mort singing the aria from Don Giovanni's Death Scene all the way up the hall from the morgue.

**********

Ever since Francesca's call, Ray had been thinking heavily about the discovery Fraser and Kowalski had made. What was the deal here? As far as he could tell, it was nothing more than a coincidence that a girl bearing a striking resemblance to Celine had been killed. He remembered that it was a drive-by, and drive-bys were amongst the most common types of mob hits. If the mob was behind this, Ray could think of only one explanation. He pulled out his wallet, rifled through it and found the slip of paper Pete had given him with the phone number in his dorm room.

Ray turned his cell phone on and punched in the number, and he listened to the ringing tone once, then twice. Then he looked through the camera again, and Pete and Celine were still necking. Oh well, this shouldn't last terribly long.

Celine presently pulled back, not once flicking her eyes toward the phone. "Don't answer it," she whispered.

"Who said anything about answering it?" Pete shrugged. "Depends on who you think it is, though."

"My first guess would be Fraser, making sure we're okay. My second guess would be a threatening phone call from the head of the midwest branch of the Iguana family."

"Mmm hmm," Pete said, looking briefly past her. "Personally, my first guess would be...well, it would be led by the fact that I can see him sitting on the stakeout with his cell phone in his hand, but it would be Ray."

"Oh, that was going to be my next guess." Celine tossed up her hands in mock defeat, looking over her shoulder and out the window to see if Pete was yanking her chain. As it happened, he wasn't, and he rolled halfway over and picked up the phone. "What's up, Ray?" he asked.

"Can I talk to Celine for a second?" Ray asked.

"Sure." Pete handed the phone to Celine, and she looked back out the window as she answered, "Yeah?"

"Listen, you don't happen to have a twin sister who might have lived with your natural father or another relative, do you?"

"Nope," Celine said. "My dad stayed on until I was ten, and I never heard tell about having a twin sister. Twins don't run in my family. Why?"

"I just heard from Chicago. Fraser and Kowalski found a girl who was killed in a drive-by and was a dead ringer for you. In fact, they thought it was you until I told them you were here."

There was a long silence, and Celine sat up a little straighter on the bed as Pete stared quizzically at her. This had struck in her a new trepidation, knowing that it could have been her. But what if...Celine's pulse quickened as it occurred to her that it should have been her, that whoever had killed this girl had meant to kill her.

"You okay?" Ray and Pete asked simultaneously.

Flustered, Celine looked at Pete and then out the window again. "Um, yeah," she said. "I'm the only person I know who looks anything like me. Do they know who she was?"

"I guess they're running an I.D. right now," Ray said.

"I'm kind of scared, Ray," Celine admitted. "I can't help feeling that whoever killed that girl meant to kill me, and it was just a case of mistaken identity."

"It could have been that, but don't worry about it," Ray said. "You're here, the Iguana family is there. So are Fraser and Kowalski, looking into it. Don't start worrying, we've got everything under control, okay?"

"Okay," Celine said. "Thanks for telling me, I think. Are you leaving soon?"

"If there's no trouble, tomorrow afternoon."

Celine sighed. "Yeah, I understand, but I just wish it could be longer."

"Don't we all," Ray said. He heaved his own apprehensive sigh, folded the phone and put it on the table next to the camera. On the other end, Celine briefly closed her eyes before handing the phone to Pete, who hung it up. Celine rested her head back against the wall, and Pete stroked the back of her neck.

"Everything all right?" he asked.

"They found a dead body who looked just like me in Chicago. I can't help feeling that it was supposed to be me."

"Well, as long as you don't think that, then don't think about it at all." Looking for a way to change the subject and get Celine's mind off this one, Pete lit on one of the things she'd said to Ray. "So twins don't run in your family, eh?"

"Not that I know of," Celine said, tossing him a knowing little half-smile. "Do you think we could find out?"

Pete's eyes narrowed--he instantly regretted changing to this particular subject. "I'll give you an answer to that in two or three years," he said. Celine laughed, and she slid down and lay flat on her back again.

Ray half expected Celine to draw the blinds shut, but she didn't; she and Pete seemed to be staying tame in there so far. Ray looked at his watch, noting that it was 7:30 PM, almost time for his replacement to arrive. He finished off the bag of potato chips sitting on the table beside his phone, and he wiped grease from his fingers and peered through the camera again. There was a knock on the door, and Ray, turning around briefly, invited the caller in.

A medium-height, casually dressed man wearing a shield on his belt entered the room. "You Vecchio?" he asked.

"That's me," Ray said. "There's been no trouble over there so far, but believe me, there's no way to be too careful with the Iguana family."

"Got it," the detective said. "Oh, and if I were you, I'd go over to Young's. They make a shrimp dish like no other."

Ray nodded with a smile. "Thanks for the tip," he said, patting the cop on the arm. He pocketed his phone and left the room, walking down the hall to the stairs. He was getting to like this place, but admittedly, he was anxious to get back to Chicago.

He walked across the parking lot just off Main Street, which he then crossed when he saw the shingle reading "Young's" on the other side. He walked leisurely along the left side of the street, noting that the weather had brought a fraternity onto a nearby lawn. Truth be told, simply because there were fraternities involved, he could scarcely blame the cops for bringing out the pepper spray. He sometimes thought of fraternities as mob-in-training if the wrong kinds of people joined them, as they so often did.

But as he looked toward the restaurant again, Ray forgot all that.

Barely a dozen meters ahead of him, a man was rounding a corner onto a side street, and Ray felt as though he'd just seen him yesterday. He was short, somewhat heavy, and bow-legged, and he had a visible bald spot on the back of his head. Open-mouthed, Ray gave chase, pushing a few other pedestrians out of his way. He ran around the corner, and the man was still there. Ray paused briefly, then ran after him again until he caught up with him and halted in front of him. The man stared at him, baffled.

"Pop?" Ray gaped. This was impossible! His father had to be dead! God knew Ray had seen his ghost enough times to prove that.

"What of it?" the fellow asked.

"It's me, Ray! I thought you were dead!"

"Me, I'm not dead," the man informed him. "And if I was dead, I'd have died without ever seeing you before." He started to walk past Ray, but Ray put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him.

"Wait a second," he said. "You mean your name isn't Carmine Vecchio?"

"No," the fellow said with an irritated twinge to his voice. "My name's Luigi DiMaria. Who the hell are you?"

Ray didn't say a word. He just stood there, staring at the man whom he could have sworn was his father. He looked exactly like him from all directions, and even the voice was the same. But this man was definitely alive, and now he was walking past Ray and on down the side street. Ray didn't turn to watch him go; his eyes dropped to the ground, and he rubbed his forehead. He found that he was asking himself the same question as Luigi DiMaria--what of it?

**********

Bright and early next morning, Fraser and Kowalski were out on the street to work a couple of snitches about the shooting. One or two of Kowalski's snitches liked to hang around at Murphy's, and Fraser elected not to tell Kowalski that that was one of Ray's favourite bars as well. Kowalski parked his GTO down the block from the bar, and as he and Fraser got out of the car, his cell phone rang.

"Kowalski," he answered after turning it on. As he'd feared, he almost said "Vecchio", but caught himself just in time. Once again, this would take some getting used to. As always, Fraser leaned over to the phone to try and hear what was being said, but he couldn't quite make it out.

"Me again," Francesca said. "I've got an I.D. on the murder victim you brought in last night. Her name was Nicole Cameron, a freshman at the U of Chicago. Permanent home address was in New Jersey."

"Okay, thanks," Kowalski said. "Start checking to see if she had the remotest connection to the Comerford kid."

"I'm on it," Francesca said. She hung up, and Kowalski turned his phone off and dropped it back in his pocket.

"The vic was a college kid from New Jersey," he informed Fraser.

"I see," Fraser said, shifting his gaze slightly downward. As he did so, a newspaper box at the edge of the sidewalk caught his eye. As he read the headline, his eyes narrowed, and he walked over to the box. Kowalski stood beside him, and he didn't need his glasses to get the gist of that headline:

MOB WITNESS DIES IN HIT

Immediately Kowalski jammed one hand into his pants pocket and withdrew two quarters, which he dropped into the box. He opened it and took a newspaper from the pile, and he read aloud as Fraser looked over his shoulder. "'It was reported today that Celine Comerford, who recently served as a police informant in a mob investigation, was killed in a drive-by shooting last night,'" Kowalski read. "They don't waste any time, do they?"

"Speed doesn't depend on the press, Ray," Fraser dissented. "It all depends on what time it was reported to the media. But you're right; it didn't take half as long as it should have for the word to get out. Does it say who reported the hit?"

Kowalski skimmed the lines briefly, then shook his head. "Nope, anonymous source, as always. But it had to be somebody in either the department or the ME's office, right?"

"Yes. And since it wasn't generally known around the ME's office that Celine was our informant, it was most likely someone in the department."

Kowalski shook his head and slammed his fist into his hand. "Schmidt, that son of a bitch," he snarled. "I've got half a mind to get back to the precinct and kick him right in the head."

"Not just yet, Ray," Fraser advised. "It does appear that Schmidt was the one who alerted the mob to every move Celine made. He was after the real McCoy, not a lookalike."

"So who, then?"

"I don't know. Perhaps your snitch does, though." They resumed their walk toward the bar, but they hadn't taken five steps before their attention was diverted by a woman's scream.

Fraser's head snapped toward the sound, and the woman's purse was being snatched away by a scummy-looking character whose hair was even greasier than his clothes. He dashed out of sight, and by then, Fraser and Kowalski were already in hot pursuit. They ran around the corner by Murphy's, and the perp was running like the wind down the street. Fraser dodged several pedestrians, and he looked up ahead to see a railroad crossing ahead of the purse-snatcher. The lights were flashing, the gates descending.

However, the purse-snatcher was undeterred; as the approaching train's horn blared for the crossing, he ran around the crossing-gate post, and he crossed the tracks right in front of the train. Fraser was too late to chase him across the tracks; the train had already separated them by the time he got there. Kowalski slowed to a halt, but Fraser kept running alongside the train, certain that the perpetrator was running on the other side to facilitate his getaway.

As Kowalski stood still and watched in disbelief, Fraser grabbed the ladder on the side of one of the boxcars. He hopped onto the bottom rung, and he started to climb. The car's swaying slowed his climb, but eventually he made it to the roof and jumped to the car ahead. Sure enough, the perp was just ahead of him. He started down the ladder on the other side of this car, and when the distance was right, he leaped off the ladder and right on top of the purse-snatcher. They both tumbled to the ground, and Fraser rose to his knees on top of the perp, tossing the purse out of reach.

"You know something," he said, "there is an infinite number of ways you could raise enough money to support yourself without stealing purses."

"Hey, I--I didn't want to do it, man," the purse-snatcher puffed.

"I can only hope that the owner of this purse will accept that and be just as forgiving," Fraser said, dragging the perp to his feet.

"No, no, I don't mean that. I didn't want to kill that kid, man. The cop, that cop told me to do it! It wasn't my fault, okay?! He made me do it!"

"Who?" Fraser asked.

"Kendall. Ed Kendall."

"I see," Fraser said grimly. He stared at the train rumbling past, knowing that neither Kowalski nor Ray would be the least bit happy about this. Bad enough that Schmidt was dirty--Fraser didn't even want to think about what they'd do with Kendall.

**********

Within fifteen minutes, the train had passed, and Kowalski had called for backup and arrested the purse-snatcher. While the perp was stuffed into the back of a cruiser, Fraser took Kowalski aside into the shadow of a nearby railroad signal. In a low voice, he began, "When I jumped the purse-snatcher, he blurted out a spontaneous confession. He admitted to killing someone under the instruction of Detective Kendall."

"Aw, cripe, not another one," Kowalski groaned. "Vecchio's gonna kill everybody who was involved in that operation, you and me included."

"You might want to call and tell him about the newspaper article and the confession," Fraser advised.

"Sure." Just as Kowalski was reaching for his phone, it rang. Raising his eyebrows and wondering if it was Ray, he turned it on and answered. Instead of Ray's voice, he was met with Welsh's half-yell.

"Kowalski, will you kindly tell me why the newspapers have already printed a story about the shooting of the Comerford kid less than eighteen hours after it took place?" he demanded.

"We're trying to find that out, sir," Kowalski said. "It wasn't even the Comerford kid. She's with Vecchio in New Hampshire, and we just got an I.D. on the body. We also just got a confession from the killer."

"Put that aside for now," Welsh instructed. "I want you to find out how the media got that word as fast as it did, and find out now. I don't like the idea that somebody in my department wanted the world to think that kid was dead."

"Right," Kowalski said, folding the phone. Then he unfolded it again and punched in Ray's number. Ray was just getting ready to leave the campus when Kowalski got him on the stick, and he answered after topping off his two spare ammunition clips.

"One more time, you're positive she's with you and she's okay," Kowalski said.

"She's in the dorm in one piece less than fifty feet away, how many times do I have to tell you?" Ray said irritably.

"The papers ran an article on that drive-by, but they named Celine as the vic," Kowalski said. "There's more, but we'll have to tell you when you get back."

"I'll be back by noon," Ray said. "Is Fraser there?"

"Yeah, hang on." Kowalski handed the phone to Fraser, who answered, "Yes, Ray?"

"I thought I'd better tell you that something weird happened last night," Ray said. "I could have sworn I saw my dad while I was going on dinner break. But as far as he was concerned, he'd never seen me before. This lookalike stuff is really getting freaky."

"Indeed," Fraser concurred. "Oh, Ray, there was something I meant to tell you earlier. It looks more and more like Detective Schmidt was the one who gave us away at the airport. Do you think he might also have told them where you went?"

"No way I know of," Ray growled. "You, Kowalski and I were the only ones in the group who knew where we were going. Tell Kowalski to save some for me, willya?"

"He's been anticipating. We'll see you when you return."

"Right," Ray said, shutting the phone off. He stuck it in his pocket, dropped his spare clips in his other pocket, shoved his gun into the back of his belt, and picked up the case containing the camera. He walked out of the room and to the stairs, left the dorm, and crossed the circle to the opposite dorm.

He knocked on Celine's door, and she opened it a crack to see who was there, then opened it wide. "Are you leaving?" she asked.

"Yeah. Pete around?"

"He was heading for the shower, last place I saw him."

"Well, tell him something urgent came up in Chicago and I had to hightail it back there right away. How you doing?"

"I'm fine," Celine smiled. "Say, um, do you have time to hear a poem I wrote before you go? I thought you might like it. It's pretty short."

Ray glanced at his watch and shrugged. "Don't see why not," he said. He came into the room, and Celine went over to the nightstand and picked up her book. She flipped through it till she found the limerick, and as she recited it, she was pleased to see Ray's growing smile and hear him laugh occasionally.

"As Al Capone said one time, we laugh because it's funny and we laugh because it's true," Ray grinned. "That's a good send-off, kiddo."

"Thanks," Celine said. "And thanks again for being here. Even with Pete around, I wouldn't have felt half as safe if you weren't."

"Well, what can I say, it's all in a day's work," Ray shrugged. "If there's any trouble, you know where to find me. Be safe, okay?"

Celine nodded. "You too." She hugged Ray, and he embraced her in kind and patted her on the back. As he turned and went out the door, he paused to look over his shoulder and wave one more time. Celine waved back, and Ray sighed and left the room, closing the door. If only he could be sure that he was doing the right thing by leaving her now. There was no way in hell he could quit worrying until the Iguana family was either totally defunct or disorganised. He departed the dorm, walked around it, and went up the hill to the nearest bus stop.

**********

By the time Ray was in the air, Fraser and Kowalski were in the squad room, waiting for Kendall to show up. He'd been on the street working a case, so they were hovering in the squad room, waiting for him to return. Kowalski looked even less amused than he had when talking to Schmidt, and Fraser didn't like that look one bit. He was just about to remind Kowalski to save some for Ray when the front doors opened, and Kendall ambled in.

He came over to his desk and dropped his notebook on it, tossing Kowalski a casual glance. "What's up?" he asked.

"Tell me why this smells fishy," Kowalski snapped. "A Celine Comerford lookalike winds up dead, your snitch confesses to killing her, and he says that you told him to do it. What gives?"

Kendall now gave him a dirty look. "What gives is that if he told you any such thing, he's lying to save his own ass," he said. "You got him in here? If you do, give me five minutes and I'll clear it up."

"Yeah, five minutes to stall my reporting you to IAD," Kowalski said sharply.

"Ray," Fraser interjected, "if Detective Kendall believes that he was falsely implicated in the murder, we should at least give him the chance to prove that."

Kowalski stood still for another moment, his scowl shifting from Fraser to Kendall a few times. He knew he needed a lot more than the word of a purse-snatcher and murder suspect to go to IAD, and he also knew that Fraser would jump all over him like Jiminy Cricket in more ways than one. "Okay," he said finally. "Interview B."

"Thanks," Kendall grunted, brushing past Kowalski. He went out the side door, and Fraser and Kowalski followed him straight down the hall. Into the interview room he went, and they entered the observation room next door.

Kendall took off his jacket, and he paced back and forth in front of his snitch, who was avoiding his gaze. "What's all this I hear about you killing a kid and saying that I told you to do it?" he demanded.

"I thought I'd just help," his snitch shrugged. "I knew you was part of the team to get that Celine kid out of the city."

"That ain't all, and we both know it. If you don't cough it up, mister, this is the last time you and I talk about anything."

"Like I said, just thought it'd do her some good. You know, a lookalike gets whacked, news gets out that it was her, mob doesn't bother her anymore."

"And I suppose you're the one who told the meda it was Celine?" Kendall snarled, leaning on the table.

"What if I was?"

"Well, then, you're wrong, pal. It's not helpful. It's stupid. This IS the last time we talk--if Kowalski hadn't already busted you, I'd do it myself." With that, he slung his jacket over his shoulder, stalked out of the interview room and slammed the door behind him. He went into the observation room, and as he expected, Fraser and Kowalski were in there.

"Happy?" he demanded more than asked.

"Perfectly," Fraser said.

"Hysterical," Kowalski grunted apathetically. "Okay, he's your guy, you book him."

**********

As Pete was ambling from the shower to his room, he almost literally bumped into one of his dorm mates, with whom he shared a drama class. "Hey, Mikey, welcome back!" Pete said, slapping hands with him.

"Hey, Pete, you still single?" Mike grinned.

With a knowing look, Pete replied, "Nope. As of last week, there's somebody brand-new in my life. Makes me want to sing 'Iris' at the top of my lungs."

"Man, you're lucky. Hey, you gonna be there tomorrow to do that little drama project we've been planning?"

"Damn straight," Pete grinned. "Mind if my friend joins us? She'll probably jump at the chance."

"Yeah, well, don't give her your grade, man," Mike joked.

"Well, you know what they say--avarice is the root of all evil. See you tomorrow, then, eh?"

"You got it." They slapped hands again and went their separate ways, and Pete, mostly as a joke, sang the refrain from "Iris" by the Googoo Dolls at the top of his lungs. Having finished that, he altered his course, going upstairs to pass the good news on to Celine. He loped down the hall to her room, and he knocked on the door. There was no answer, and although Pete was initially concerned, he told himself to quit worrying. She just might be in the shower or dozing off. He glanced down, and he saw a piece of paper sticking out from under the door. It might be a note of some kind, for all he could see; so he bent down and picked it up, noting that it looked like it had been ripped out of a book.

It was Celine's handwriting, but it wasn't a note at all. It must have been blown onto the floor by a breeze. He knew he ought to mind his own business, but when he saw the first words, he couldn't remove his eyes.

I feel, I feel for myself, I feel for my love
I feel so strongly that I no longer feel alone.
I felt half-hearted when half of my heart was taken
From me by those who would not keep my secret.
My heart is fully complete and now abound
As I feel for he who returned it to me with my life.
Gallant, protective, and self-aware he is
And he will never let me be tragically lost.

I felt as though I had died not long ago,
And not long after, I thought I would die again.
But a fellow basket-weaver was by my side
As was my mighty and wise protector.
Two against a sea of corruption and power hunger;
They got by with a little help from their friends.
I was going once and going twice
And going three times, but not once did they waver.

I feel as though my heart is whole again.
My love for my safekeepers overflows it.
The Safekeeper of all has set it in motion;
He has set to the task the two taskmasters.
I fear no evil when they are with me.
I feel no fear for life beneath their wings.
I feel, I feel for myself, I feel for my love
I feel so strongly that I no longer feel alone.

Pete would later admit to himself that he had tears in his eyes as he finished reading. Did he and Ray really mean that much to her? But then, who else could it be; he knew that the name "Raymond" meant "mighty, wise protector" in some language or other, although he couldn't remember it offhand. One thing he did know was that Celine wouldn't know a thing about this unless she decided to show the poem to him. He put the paper on the floor and slid it back under the door, just as he'd found it.

At roughly the same time as he'd been at her room, Celine had been coming from the shower herself. She had just walked past Mike and smiled her greetings at him, and screwing up her courage, she walked toward Pete's room to tell him that she had something to show him. When he didn't answer the door, she figured he might still be in the shower, so she opened the door--apparently he didn't think there was anything valuable enough to swipe in there--and sat down to wait for him.

As she waited, her eye fell on an open notebook on the nightstand. The writing on it seemed to be in verse form, and curiosity piqued, Celine leaned closer. She remembered Pete humming outside the bus, so she wondered if this might be the result.

When you've been talking to most across 24,086 miles of space
You kind of start balking when you suddenly find yourself talking to a new
one face-to-face
When you're just walking through the kingdom of the spiders, makin' friends
all over the place
You can start chalking 'em up, but it's special having someone with whom to
keep pace

(Chorus:) Everyone wants to hear those three words
As long as they're ready, not like me
Everyone wants to hear those three words
To know that they're steady, but won't go free

I've been losing sleep and appetite for a week, ever since I just walked
right in
The company she keeps is all in her head till she meets someone who'll end
the fightin'
What she says is deep, and captivating to those who think that she don't
need rightin'
I'd feel like a creep if I were that way, and I would if not listening to
her writin'

(Chorus)

(Bridge:) Don't I need somebody to love
Don't I need her when push comes to shove
Don't I need that little white dove
To bring us to a strong point thereof...

We run interference, we rush into trouble, we get in the faces of danger
Yeah, our appearance is we seem to double, and the two of us sure aren't
strangers
To perseverance, emerging from rubble, harder for them than the Rangers
We got our clearance, but don't need the Hubble to spot 'em and kindle
their mangers

I felt it would take so much more than that so that she would sit up and
take notice
I felt like a flake just thinking that she ever would--man, she's like a
lotus
Knowing the stakes, though, she just might see that I love her, and maybe
she'll know this
I'm no great shakes, I don't deserve her, so I ain't even sure why I wrote
this

(Chorus)

Celine wiped her running nose on her towel as she straightened up from her lean. What on God's green earth made him feel that way? He was so sweet and so protective, he was everything short of a big brother. She wasn't sure why he'd written this either, if for different reasons. If he ever let her see that song, even though that was highly unlikely, she'd make a point to set him straight.

It occurred to her that he might catch her reading if he came in soon, so she got up and left the room. He still hadn't returned. Ships that pass in the night, Celine thought to herself. She padded up the stairs and toward her room, and she bumped right into the sole occupant of her thoughts at the top of the stairs.

"Oh, hi," she said shakily.

"Hi," Pete said. He frowned, bending his head closer. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

"You look a little like you've been crying."

"Oh, that's okay. I just got a little soap in my eyes while I was in the shower." Celine paused for a moment, staring at him. "Pete," she said finally, "you know, I do love you."

Pete forced a split-second smile. "I love you, too." He kissed Celine, moved past and clumped down the stairs, and Celine sighed. Maybe she'd let him read her poem after all. She went down the hall to her room, wiping a little more moisture from one eye.

**********

Ray returned to the Chicago P.D. early in the afternoon, and instead of going to see how Fraser and Kowalski were progressing or even reporting in to Welsh, he went straight to Francesca's work station. She was on the phone at the moment, and Ray, wondering if the purpose of her call was business or pleasure, hovered near the desk till she was off. Having hung up and noticed Ray standing there, she looked up and gave him a glare.

"If you're just going to stand there, why don't you say something that won't bore me to tears?" she suggested.

Ray walked over and sat in the chair beside the desk, and he dropped his voice and looked both ways. "Frannie, you remember how Pop died, right?"

"It was a car crash," Francesca recalled. "Don't tell me you forgot."

"No, no, anything but. In fact, I just remembered it crystal-clear last night. I saw this guy on the UNH campus who was the dead-spitting image of our father."

"Even the bald spot?" Francesca's glare had gradually altered to a mesmerised stare.

"It was a little smaller, but it was there. I could have sworn it was him--even the voice was similar. But he said his name was Luigi DiMaria, and that was the last I saw of him before I left."

"So if he's not really Pop, what's the deal here?" Francesca shrugged.

"This thing with the Celine-clone got me thinking. We never really did know the exact circumstances of that crash, did we?" Francesca thought for a moment and shook her head, and Ray went on, "Do you think you can find the case file on that crash? I've just got this gut feeling, and I want to see if there's a criminal element in there somewhere."

Francesca frowned. "You're chasing a ghost, Ray, that was almost nine years ago."

"I found out who whacked the Bookman ten months after the fact."

"And what makes you think there was a criminal element?"

"Like I said, a gut feeling. Can you just find the file? If I don't find anything, then forget I ever brought it up. I want to keep this as quiet as I can."

Francesca and her brother gazed silently into each other's eyes, and finally Francesca nodded in understanding. Ray was right. They really had no idea exactly what the circumstances were behind their father's death, and Francesca wanted to know what they were just as much as Ray. She turned around to the file cabinet beside her, and she started rooting through the lower drawers for the file Ray--and she--wanted.

***********************************************************************

Part 3: Long Time Running

While Francesca was searching for the file, Ray decided to track down Fraser and Kowalski and ask after Schmidt. First he went to his desk to be sure everything was still there, which it was. Ray looked up as Fraser and Kowalski came through the side door, and he could smell pizza on their breath. Pepperoni on Kowalski's, plain cheese on Fraser's. Ah, it was good to be back to the capital city of pizza.

"Where's Schmidt?" he asked. "I'm doing a case, but I want to get him out of my way first."

"Interview A," Kowalski said. Ray nodded his thanks and walked to the side door, but he paused when Kowalski called after him, "Hey, wait a second. You just got back, and you're on a case already?"

"Do I have to explain it?" Ray said tartly. He turned on his heel and marched away from Fraser and Kowalski, and the former turned to his friend with a forehead-creasing frown.

"It has something to do with his father, I believe," Fraser said. "You know, considering that your father is still alive, among other things, it's a miracle Ray wasn't found out while in Las Vegas."

"Yeah, well, that's all behind us. You know what I keep thinking, Fraser? I keep thinking, what if he and I had flip-flopped? What if I'd been the one who went after Muldoon and got between him and you and the Ice Queen? I could have taken that bullet instead of Vecchio. I wonder if I would have survived like he did."

"It was only a flesh wound, so I imagine you would have. I don't think it would have been all that different, though. You would simply have been the one who uprooted Cyrus Bolt, and Ray Vecchio would have gone with me to the north country to stop Muldoon. You might have been reunited with Stella, and I'm not sure if Ray and I would have gone in search of the Hand of Franklin, but--"

"Hey, wait, wait, wait," Kowalski cut him off. "What was that, Fraser?"

"What was what?"

"About Stella."

"Oh. I merely said that you would have--"

Kowalski interrupted again, pointing his finger into Fraser's face. "Are you telling me that Vecchio's been seeing my ex-wife?"

"Well, I wouldn't say they're seeing each other, Ray, not in the dating variety. However, they have seemed to bump into each other frequently around the station."

Kowalski didn't say a word to this. He inhaled deeply and exhaled through clenched teeth, shaking his head. He was going to lose his self-control any second now, and Vecchio was going to know how he felt about this.

**********

In the meantime, Ray marched into the interview room, and he shut the door with a slam and glared at Schmidt. "You weren't around when Will Kelly was the super in this precinct, pal," he said loudly. "One of his most famous quotes was, 'Interrogation is a contact sport.' So if you tell me what the hell you're up to and it deviates one inch from what Kowalski and Kendall have told me, I'm gonna start playing that contact sport." He leaned on the table and right into Schmidt's face, his eyes blazing. "So you better hope and pray that you don't start stumbling over your words."

"Okay, look," Schmidt began, rather shakily. "It was like this. You know those two Feds you exposed? One of them blackmailed me into doing this. He told me to stick with you and the Mountie or he'd tell the mob that I'd been undercover. So I went along."

"Yeah, and?" Ray demanded. On the other side of the mirror behind him, Kowalski entered the observation room to listen for any reference to Stella.

"I was in the gym when you were playing basketball with the Mountie and those two kids. I knew the girl would be staying with her boyfriend that night. And I gave them the word at the airport. It was either that or die due to God knows what. You know what I'm saying?"

Ray simply nodded, but he showed no signs of cooling down. "I know. But I'm going to talk to those Feds. Are you planning on testifying to that?"

"In fact, I am."

"Good. Because I'm going to get 'em to admit it, and then I'm going to ask the State's Attorney to amend the indictment. Nobody suborns perjury on my watch." That said, Ray straightened up, and as he was stalking toward the door, he heard a loud knock on the other side of the mirror. He turned to stare at it briefly, and then he left the interview room and went over to the observation room. In he went, and seeing Kowalski leaning against the two-way mirror with his arms folded, he shut the door.

"What's up with you and Stella?" Kowalski demanded at length.

"Fraser squawking again?"

"What does it matter? He says you've been seeing her."

"So what if I have?"

"So you're seeing my ex-wife!" Kowalski snapped. "Does the word 'think' mean anything to you?!"

"Yeah, ex-wife is right," Ray barked. "And now I suppose you're gonna tell me that she's not the one who divorced you. Gee, I wonder why she'd do a thing like that?"

"That ain't none of your business," Kowalski hissed. "Look, you damn well better stay away from her, or..." He trailed off, now at a loss for words. He knew very well that Ray was obligated to report it if he threatened him.

"Or what?" Ray prompted.

All he prompted was a punch in the face, which sent him stumbling backwards till he hit the wall. In no time he recovered, and he rushed Kowalski, knocking him backwards across the table in the middle of the room. Kowalski took off his holster as he got to his feet, and Ray tossed his own weapon aside and stood ready. Kowalski jumped onto the table and tried to get a drop on Ray from up there, but Ray ducked aside and grabbed Kowalski's shirt front, landing one in his stomach. Kowalski responded with a backhanded punch, and Ray lost his balance, falling across the table.

Kowalski jerked him upright and slugged him again, and Ray, wiping blood from his nose, dropped to the floor and tripped Kowalski cleanly. With the other man on the floor, Ray rose to his knees, held Kowalski down with one hand and drew the other one back in preparation to flatten his nose. "Are we gonna keep fighting over a woman like a pair of high-school football jocks, or are we gonna get back to doing our jobs?" he snarled.

"I dunno, you tell me," Kowalski retorted.

It was at this point that the door to the observation room flew open, and Ray felt himself being yanked to his feet. Kowalski leaped up immediately, but Fraser dragged him to the other end of the room as Francesca held Ray back. Kowalski was struggling to take one more pop, but Ray shoved Francesca's arm aside and fumed past her. He slammed the door behind him as he went out, and Fraser remained till he was sure that Kowalski had settled down.

"This wouldn't have anything to do with Stella, would it?" he inquired.

"Fraser, do yourself a huge favour," Kowalski advised. "And for a very nice change, mind your own damn business."

**********

Francesca went in search of Ray while Fraser gave Kowalski the chill-pills, and she found him on the roof, pacing slowly from one end to the other. He was staring hard at the roof, and his hands were shoved into his pockets as he paced. Francesca went over to him, and she couldn't tell what his face registered, if he was angry or disappointed.

"You all right, Ray?" she asked.

Ray looked up at her and shook his head. "I wish I could say I can't complain," he sighed.

"I found the file on Pop," Francesca said. "It was an open-and-closed case, and--"

"Open-and-shut," Ray interrupted. "Not closed."

"Open-and-shut, open-and-closed, open-and-claustrophobic, who gives a damn?" Francesca complained. "But as you, Mr. Super-Sleuth, are no doubt aware, that means they didn't even assign a detective to the case. They just put two uniforms on it, and they closed the case inside twenty-four hours."

"Yeah, I remember they said it was a drunk driver," Ray said. "They found a can of beer on the floor of the car, spilled all over the place. Did they ever get the driver?"

"No, he disappeared. They never lifted any prints off the can either, and since it happened during the winter, they figured the driver was just wearing gloves. There were a few witnesses who saw the driver running away, but the guy disappeared and never turned up again."

"Hmph," Ray said. "Who was the primary on the case?"

Francesca flipped through the file folder in her hand, and she soon found the sheet identifying the investigating officers. "George Kolios," she said. "He made detective last year and went to the Twenty-ninth. Still lives up on North Halsted."

"I'll talk to him as soon as I can, then," Ray said. "Thanks. Oh, and can you do a background check on this DiMaria guy? There could be a hundred guys with that name in this country, but if I'm right, he might be one of only a few in Chicago, if not the only one."

"Okay," Francesca said. Folder under her arm, she walked back to the stairwell door, and Ray plodded over to the edge of the roof and stared down at the street. As he watched police cruisers passing back and forth below him, he heard footsteps coming from the other side. Somebody else was present next to him, and since that person didn't speak right away, Ray had a good idea of who it was.

"So you finally find out you were wrong about me."

Ray turned his head, narrowing his eyes. "What aren't you telling me, Pop?" he asked stringently.

"I should be asking you that," Carmine Vecchio answered. "You're the one who's finding out what really happened. All I knew was that some nut came bombing into the wrong lane, and now here I am in purgatory. I'm starting to think that I won't get out until you stop making an ass of yourself."

Ray chortled and shook his head. "You want to know something, Pop?" he scoffed. "The way you drank, I'm surprised it wasn't you that creamed somebody. Now if you want me to keep working on this case, say so. If not, I've got better things to do." He straightened up, marching back to the stairwell door.

"Oh, yeah?" his father called after him. "Then why do you and your sister seem so desperate to find out what happened to me?"

Ray turned around, glaring at his father one more time. He wasn't going to let the old foof belittle him anymore. He decided to take the question as rhetorical, and he stumped on to the stairwell door.

On his way back down to the squad room, he bumped into Fraser, who had been on his way up to the roof to talk to him. "Ah, Ray," Fraser said. "Is everything well and good on the roof?"

"Yeah, Benny. Everything's fine." Ray moved past him and continued down the stairs to the squad room. "I'm guessing Frannie told you what I'm working on?"

"Actually, yes. You believe there was a criminal element in your father's death?"

"It's possible. This thing with the Celine-clone, then seeing this DiMaria character over there, really set my mind on one track. I just feel like I can't rest until I'm sure one way or the other."

"I understand, Ray. Where do you want to start?"

"I asked Frannie to run a background check on DiMaria, and I'm also going to talk to the guy who investigated my dad's death. Frannie says that the driver of the other car disappeared from the scene and never turned up. I think maybe you and I should go to the scene and find out if there was any way this guy could have made himself scarce, and if there was, follow it."

"Good idea."

They reached the squad room, and just as they were coming in, Welsh called Ray's name. A split second later, Francesca also called him, and he stopped short and held up his hands. "Okay, one thing at a time here," he said.

"First things first," Welsh said, beckoning. Ray shrugged at Francesca, and he and Fraser went over to the office, closing the door behind them. Welsh was standing behind the desk with his arms folded, and Ray didn't care for the look on his face.

"Vecchio," Welsh began in a quiet voice, "when one of my detectives returns from an assignment, especially an unplanned one, and most especially when that assignment concerns a protected mob witness, I expect him to report in the minute he steps into this station. What's the dope?"

"The kid's in good health and good hands, and there was nothing out of the ordinary for twenty-four hours. I set up a stakeout across from her dorm and told her to call the local cops and me if anything went wrong. As for why I didn't report in, I was working another case at the time."

"Oh, so now you work cases that you like to keep secret from the rest of the department," Welsh gathered.

"Look, sir, this is personal," Ray said, lowering his voice. "It's about my father and what happened to him."

"Uh huh. You know, Vecchio, Captain Walsh over at the Thirty-third told me about those hunches of yours when you transferred. Now, I'll admit freely that I wouldn't have gotten this far if I hadn't gone on a hunch once or twice, but I'll also tell you that that case is open-and-shut and nine years old. If you ask me, you've got better things to do. You know as well as I do that in this department, nothing's personal."

"Yeah, but--"

"No buts," Welsh said sternly. "Kowalski's got a bit of a backlog. See if you can't help him clean up his desk a little." Welsh waved his hand toward the door, and Ray hung his head with a sigh. Fraser opened the door and left the office, and Ray plodded after him. Maybe he'd be cheered up a little by what Francesca had to say, so he went to her work station and asked what she had.

"I ran that check on Luigi DiMaria," Francesca said. "Nine years back, there were three people with that name in Chicago. You were right, one of them was a dead ringer for Pop. He was squeaky clean, but he wasn't around long enough to run up a record."

"How so?" Fraser asked.

"He disappeared around January of nineteen eighty-nine and was presumed dead."

"January eighty-nine," Ray repeated. "That's the same month Pop died."

"So it's possible that it was the same story with your father and Mr. DiMaria as with Nicole Cameron and Celine?" Fraser guessed.

In reply, Ray pointed at the computer screen. "Does it say anything about DiMaria's education?"

Francesca scrolled down a little further, narrowing her eyes as she read the lines. "Uh...yeah, he graduated from Havenhill College with a bachelor in mechanical engineering and an associate in law." She looked up at Fraser with that ever-present, sweetie-pie little smile.

"Law," Ray half-whispered. "Check and see if he ever served on a jury, especially in a mob trial. I'll go talk to Kolios and ask him to dig up the case again." He straightened up, turned around and strode back to his desk, Fraser on his heels. In the meantime, Francesca called up the search screen and entered the information.

Ray flipped briefly through the phone book on one side of the desktop, found the number he was after, and punched it in on his desk phone. At the answer, he asked for George Kolios, then followed that with a couple of mmm-hmms and uh-huhs. Then he thanked the person on the other end and hung up. "Kolios and his lady are going to a Greek dinner dance at the Hellenic Center tonight," he said to Fraser. "Ever been to one of those?"

"Well, I've never had the pleasure of attending such a dance, although I did read a brief but informative book on classic Mediterranean performing arts in my grandparents' library," Fraser replied, scratching behind his ear.

"They're a blast," Ray said with a grin. "I've got a Greek snitch who's always going to those, and that's where he usually gives me information. What do you say?"

**********

Fraser said an enthusiastic yes, although he wanted to stay at the precinct for a little while and help Kowalski clean up some paperwork, as he'd promised. Ray went ahead to the Hellenic Center, which was owned by one of the Greek Orthodox churches in the area, and he waited there for Fraser and Kowalski to arrive. He found that the dance was already in full swing. Dinner was over, and there were eight or nine lines already, doing some of the classical Greek line dances. Ray elected to wait till the next piece of music had started before he joined a line, and he stood by the door with his arms folded, occasionally looking to see if Fraser and Kowalski had shown up yet.

They came in around 7:30, and by that time, Ray had joined one line in the three-step-two-kick dance. It involved a fast-paced piece of music, a line of dancers with hands joined, taking three steps and then kicking each foot into the air. Ray was looking around for Kolios, and he saw him in another line. He then spotted Fraser and Kowalski by the door, and they were standing there talking, as if trying to decide whether to join the dance or not.

"Want to grab something to eat, or do you want to join a line?" Fraser asked.

"Neither," Kowalski said, watching the dancers. "Let's just do what we came for and beat it."

"Oh, it'll be quite fun. Why don't you at least want to try it?"

"Because this isn't dancing, Fraser, this is karate. The stuff I do with Stella, that's dancing. That time when you and Vecchio went to the disco, that's dancing. This is a bunch of old fogies holding hands and kickin' each other, this isn't dancing. Thanks, but no thanks."

"Your loss," Fraser said casually, walking off to find a line. Eventually he spotted Ray, who indeed seemed to be having a blast. He walked down to the end of Ray's line and joined in, and Ray almost immediately spotted the blaze of red serge at the line's end. Fraser just raised a thumb and smiled, and Ray smiled back, as well as shaking his head and rolling his eyes. He knew Fraser would try something like this. The dance continued, and Kowalski was also shaking his head, although it wasn't from amusement.

After the dance had ended, the deejay put on another CD, and this song was a little slower-paced than the last. Some people, too pooped to continue, dropped out of the lines and drifted back to their tables. Those who were still charged up to dance continued, and Ray made his way over to Kolios and waved.

"Hey, Kolios, can I talk to you?" he called.

"Business or pleasure?" Kolios asked.

As the song started, they joined hands and coupled with the rest of the line, and the dance began. "Business," Ray answered. "Do you remember when you investigated the car crash that killed my father?"

"Oh, yeah," Kolios said, nodding. "That was a quick one. We never did catch the driver of the other car--he just vanished without a trace. No matter how many people we asked, not one of them ever saw him again."

"Well, I've got a lead that my father's death wasn't accidental," Ray puffed as he began to run short of breath. "I think he might have been killed in a case of mistaken identity or a grudge crime. Can you give me a hand reopening that case?"

"I could if I knew what gave you the idea that your dad was murdered."

"I ran into a guy who was the dead-spitting image of my dad yesterday. Every source says he's a protected witness, so I'm guessing that whoever he's being protected from mistook my dad for him."

"Okay," Kolios said. "I'll call my precinct after this one, and I'll tell them that you're reopening the case. You can go over there tomorrow and they'll give you the dope."

"Thanks," Ray nodded. The dance was over in a few minutes, after which Kolios went into the lobby to buzz his precinct. Ray, meanwhile, went to get a hold of Fraser and Kowalski; the latter was still standing by the door, while the former had just finished dancing with another line.

"Well, I must say, I've just had the time of my life," Fraser said. "I haven't had that much fun since the time when I participated in a classroom performance of 'A Streetcar Named Desire'--"

"Fraser!" Kowalski snapped. "You mention that title one more time, you're gonna be lookin' for your teeth on the ground."

"Sorry," Fraser said. "Understood." He, however, couldn't see why Kowalski hated his name so much; or for that matter, the production from which he'd gotten his name.

"Kolios says he'll reopen the case for us," Ray said. "Fraser, you and I'll take a look through it tomorrow and then go see what we can dig up at the scene. There should be a registration on the other vehicle. Kowalski, when we find that, you go over to the owner's place and shake him down." Out of the center they went, Fraser and Ray heading for the Riviera and Kowalski for his GTO. Ray was loosening his tie and breathing a sigh of relief, and at the same time, wondering how the hell Fraser could stand to stay in uniform after the heat that dance had brought on.

Ray's cell phone rang just as he and Fraser were getting into the Riviera, and he took it from the dashboard and turned it on. "Vecchio," he answered.

"Me again," Francesca said. "I finished that background check you asked for. Luigi DiMaria was the fifth juror in the trial of Thomas Mercurio, Rando Mercurio's son."

"Mercurio family's at it again," Ray said to Fraser, putting his hand over the mouthpiece.

"DiMaria and two other jurors broke up a deadlock," Francesca continued. "All three of them vanished without a trace inside of a week."

"All presumed dead?" Ray asked.

"Give the man a cigar."

Ray chortled. "Yeah, thanks, but I don't smoke. Thanks a heap, Frannie. See you back home." He turned the phone off, and he looked over at Fraser and sighed. "Well, it looks like if Pop was killed as part of witness protection, he wasn't the only victim. Two other mob jurors disappeared with him. If the Feds didn't do away with them, maybe it was mistaken identity on the part of the Mercurio family."

"Three consecutive cases?" Fraser frowned. "It just seems rather unlikely."

"Not if they got the jurors out of town on the same night as the guy was convicted. I mean, if they did it like we did with Celine, going straight from the courthouse to the airport or the train station or wherever, there was never a word about the mob attacking them."

Ray had to admit to himself, though, that this was pretty thin. He'd have to wait till tomorrow to solidify this a little. He reached forward, started the Riviera and shifted into forward, trying not to think of how this would come out with the mob involved.

**********

Next morning, Fraser and Ray got an early start, going over to Kolios's precinct first. Kolios had the case file ready for them, and Ray took it along to the scene of the accident. He and Fraser didn't say a word on the drive to the site, and he pulled up on the side of the street around the corner. Cutting the engine, he opened the folder and leafed through it to find the vehicle registrations. The first sheet was the one on his father's car, so he flipped to the next one. He picked up the radio and hit the mike button. "One-one-seven, this is three-four-two."

"One-one-seven, ten-three," Kowalski's voice crackled back.

"Here's the registration on the other car involved. It was a nineteen eighty-seven blue Chevy Caprice. Illinois plate, Robert Paul Thomas eight one three. Owner at the time was Drew Sloane, most recent address at five-sixty West Wabash."

"On my way," Kowalski said. "I'll get back to you in a half hour at the most."

"Right," Ray said. He shut the phone off, and he and Fraser got out of the Riviera and stood at the edge of the street in front of it.

"All right," Fraser said, looking over Ray's shoulder at the file. "According to this, the other driver fled the scene and ran across the street that way." He pointed across the street at a corner, and he and Ray crossed over to it. They proceeded around the corner, and they walked for several meters before pausing at a storefront.

"Trail runs cold right here," Ray observed.

"Maybe at that time, it did," Fraser said. "But at that time, most people probably didn't know where to look." He started walking again, and puzzled as usual, Ray followed. Fraser was looking at the sidewalk and the street, and Ray could feel a particularly bad omen coming on.

"Aha," Fraser said. Ray closed his eyes in defeat, knowing it would come to this sooner or later. Fraser stepped off the sidewalk and bent down, wedging a finger into the gap at the edge of the sewer lid. He heaved the lid out of the street, and Ray threw his hands up in exasperation.

"Aw, no, Benny, we're not doin' THAT again, are we?!" he griped. "Boy, let me tell you something, at times like this, I miss Vegas! At least down there, I wasn't always trashing suits and on the verge of drowning in sludge!"

"Ray, please, it's the only possible place where the perpetrator could have escaped," Fraser said.

"How do you know that? He could have disappeared easily into one of these buildings!"

"I'm quite sure that Kolios and his partner canvassed the neighbourhood, in which case somebody would have reported seeing a strange man running into the building. Since there's no such statement in that report, he must have gone this way."

"Then you'd better be right, or else the Dragon Lady hears about the real reason why the consulate's cleaning bill is so damn high." Ray stumped over to the sewer, and he squatted down and started to lower himself inside. "And you'd also better not taste, touch, or smell one thing down there, or I'm outta here at the first lid I see."

"Understood." Fraser waited for Ray to drop down into the tunnel, and he followed him, pulling the lid back over the opening.

"Eight months in Vegas, staying out of places like this, and it still smells just as disgusting as ever."

"Well, it's not that bad once you get used to it."

"Used to it? Who in their right mind wants to get used to the smell of a sewer?"

"You know, Ray, if the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handed people are in their right mind."

"Oh, geez. By any chance, were any of those books in your grandmother's library stupid joke books?"

"I can't say as they were. My grandmother always maintained that--"

"I don't give a damn what she maintained, Fraser. What I maintain is that slinking around through the sewers just to find a guy is the most half-assed method of crime detection in the experience of the entire Chicago Police Department."

"Oh, look at this, Ray."

"Look at what, a rushing river of green, haz-mat-filled mud? It's too dark to see my hand in front of my face, so I have to listen to it and almost fall in--whoa--FRASER!!"

"Oop! I got you, Ray! It's all right. Just watch your step and stick close to the wall from here on."

"Yeah, that's easy for you to say, you're the one who spritzes his uniform with teflon daily."

"Oh, dear."

"Now what? The river forks, the guy fell in and got dissolved in all that glop?"

"Well, Ray, considering the ingredients of the water down here, I don't think it's really corrosive enough to dissolve a man. It may be enough to eat away at rubber or plastic, but that's not important. We seem to have hit a dead end. However, just a few meters back, I noticed the crushed skeleton of a rat. It was evidently stepped on, and...hm. Judging from the amount of dust on the bone surfaces, it was a long time ago. Could have been some years."

"So the guy hit the dead end. Where'd he go?"

"There must be another grate or lid around here somewhere." The next thing Ray heard was a clanking sound, then a metallic scraping sound. A crescent of light appeared some distance above his head, and he could see the silhouette of Fraser pushing back another lid. He climbed up after him, and they found themselves on the sidewalk, about a block from where they had started. Ray looked at the sleeves of his coat, and he gave Fraser a look that was even dirtier than his clothing.

"How tempted I am to throw you in that river down there, Fraser," he bellyached.

**********

Kowalski had parked his GTO in front of Drew Sloane's house, and he went up the steps to the front door and rang the bell. In a minute, a short woman in her late thirties opened the door, gazing for some time at the badge he displayed.

"Mrs. Sloane?" he said. "Detective Kowalski, Chicago P.D. Is your husband available?"

"No, he's out at his office," Mrs. Sloane said. "Would you like to come in?"

"Sure." Kowalski followed her into the house, and he came straight to the point. "I wanted to ask your husband about a car he owned about eight or nine years ago, which was involved in a crash downtown at that time."

"Oh, yeah. How could we forget that? That car was stolen the night before the accident. It was totaled, so Drew and I just cut our losses and bought a new one."

"Oh." Kowalski's gaze drifted as he pondered Mrs. Sloane's story, and eventually it lit on a picture taped to the wall. It was of a man a little older than Mrs. Sloane, and he was holding a huge .357 Magnum and a .45 in one hand and a Heckler & Koch nine-millimeter machine pistol in the other. Under his left arm was an AK-47. Kowalski raised his eyebrows, and he gestured at the picture. "Does your husband run a gun shop, by any chance?"

"No, he's a Customs agent. That picture is from a bust he took part in a couple of years ago. Illegal weapons, drugs, funny money, the whole nine yards. He and a dozen other agents were commended for valour."

"Where's his office?" Kowalski asked.

Mrs. Sloane lowered her voice and beckoned to him to lean closer. "It's way out of town, actually. The bust he was in was against the Mercurio family."

Kowalski, giving the photo another once-over, nodded. "Thanks," he said. He turned and walked up the hall to the front door, and as he went outside, he rooted in his sweatshirt pocket for his cell phone. Once he'd gotten around the empty gum wrappers and still-filled gum packs, he pulled the phone out and turned it on, dialing Ray's number. He was back in the GTO, starting the engine by the time Ray answered.

"Hey, Vecchio, it's me," he said. "I just found out that Sloane's a Fed, and his car got stolen the night before the accident." He drove away from the sidewalk, waiting for Ray's answer to this.

"What branch?" Ray asked at length.

"Customs. And it gets better. He was a player in the bust where they got Tommy Mercurio."

Ray was rather wide-eyed as he looked at Fraser, who was able to hear almost every word if he cocked his ear right. "Okay, Fraser and I are going to see Mercurio," Ray said. "You go over and have--" Ray broke off as he heard a screech of rubber in the background, then Kowalski yelling, "WHOA! Geez, ya frickin' yuppie, keep yer eyes on the road!"

"You okay?" Ray asked.

"Some jerk just jumped the line and almost hit me head-on," Kowalski said.

Simultaneously, he and Ray almost dropped their phones as their eyes grew two-fold. Fraser was staring at Ray, and as he was about to ask what was going on, Ray lifted the phone back to his ear. "I'm, uh...I'm pulling over for a while," Kowalski said, heaving a deep sigh. "You and Fraser better stay off the road for a little bit."

"Good idea," Ray said. "We'll meet you back at the station house."

**********

Pete and Celine were having the time of their lives in one of the public computer clusters. They were sitting side by side at separate computers, and they were both in one of the chat rooms at the Star Trek web site. Although Pete had enjoyed it tremendously for several months, Celine was finding that it could be addictive.

As several of the participants started to get a little rowdy, Pete advised them to cool their jets and avoid being booted off the chat. Since most of them calmed down at this, Celine gave Pete an impressed look. "What do they think, you're a host or something?" she asked.

"I don't know. It's gratifying when they listen, though." They returned to chatting, and the main topic of conversation was the latest Star Trek movie. Pete shook his head, muttering something under his breath. Celine was about to ask what he'd said, but then he repeated it in the chat, so she was spared from asking: He'd said that if one more person asked what the new movie was about or when it was being released, he'd have to take a short break in the mental institution. Celine couldn't help giggling.

"Old news, huh?" she guessed.

"Try ancient history," Pete replied. They repeated their words in the chat, and Celine giggled again--she was having a blast.

She was a bit disappointed when Pete announced to the rest of the chat room that they had to depart, but it was lunchtime, so they both left the chat and closed the browser. Having logged off from their computers, they left the cluster and walked to the back door of the building.

"Pray tell, Celine," Pete said, "how would you like to participate in a drama project?"

"What kind of project?" Celine said.

"Well, my friend Mike and I are doing this project that involves commercial acting. Specifically, we're going to do our own version of a Surge ad over at the horse farm with a bunch of our dorm mates. What do you say?"

"Oh, I'd love to," Celine said. "Those ads are kind of freaky, but they're cool. When are we doing it?"

"After classes today."

"Great." Celine paused as they went out the door, then resumed, "You know, if you'd asked me that maybe a week or a few days after we'd met, I would have thought you were coming on to me."

"Are you kidding? I'm always too terrified to come on to the female of the species. It's one of those times when I don't want to do anything too quickly, I just want to get into it nice and slow."

"Just the way I like it," Celine said, thinking of how much fun it might be to try a little B&D on him some time. She paused and turned, putting her arms around him. She stood up just straight enough for a kiss, with "This Kiss" by Faith Hill taking a pass through her head. And then, song and kiss were interrupted by a loud scream from the sidewalk near them.

"And this," Pete said matter-of-factly, "is NOT one of those times." With that, he broke away, whirled around, threw his backpack aside and bolted, seeing a greaseball tearing a girl's purse from her arm. He sprinted toward them, and Celine threw her own bag aside and followed hot on his heels.

"He's got my purse!" the girl screamed. "C'mon, get him!"

"We are doing just that," Pete informed her as he ran past her. The greaseball ran across the street, and a car came to a screeching halt to miss hitting him. Pete pursued him right across the street, and Celine brought up the rear as they dashed around a corner and down College Road. The perp looked over his shoulder, and for all he knew, the huge hat perched on his first pursuer's head made him an off-duty state trooper. No way any cop was catching him.

He ran across the road, and two more vehicles skidded to a halt to keep from hitting him. Pete and Celine crossed the street at the same time, crossing behind these two vehicles. The purse-snatcher shoved a pedestrian out of his way, but Pete and Celine weren't that desperate--they just ran around the other people on the sidewalk. Neither of them lagged behind, and they didn't close the distance, either. At the dead end of the road, the chase continued along a walkway, and pretty soon it proceeded across the street to a parking lot.

Cocking an ear, Pete identified the rumble he heard as an approaching freight train. This should cut things short. The perp crossed the parking lot, and he looked behind him again before running up the hill to the right-of-way. The train was lunging closer at a good twenty-five miles per hour, and the perp shot one look at it and bolted across the tracks barely twenty feet in front of it. The lead engine's air horn gave him a short warning blast, but now he was on the other side and home free, as far as he was concerned.

However, his pursuers didn't give up so easily. Pete bounded up the hill and onto the right-of-way, and he found himself beside the second engine as he ran alongside the train. There were four engines, and Pete looked behind him to be sure that Celine was still with him. With that, he grabbed the handgrip on the steps to the third engine's rear catwalk, and he jumped aboard and held on long enough to establish a halfway decent grip. Celine stared in surprise for a moment, but then she steeled herself and looked at the fourth engine as it overtook her. Once its rear ladder had drawn level with her, she reached out and yanked herself onto the steps just in time. Pete nodded to her, and when she nodded back, they started climbing. Pete crossed to the other side of his engine, and he was almost right on top of the purse-snatcher when he got there. It was now or never. Pete jumped off the catwalk and onto the perp's back, riding him for a couple of feet before they both landed facedown on the right-of-way.

As they were getting up, Celine's engine rumbled past them, and she panicked for a moment as she contemplated jumping from a moving train. Then she clenched her teeth--if Pete could do this, so could she. Holding her breath, she bounded down the steps and leaped to the ground, and she landed on both feet and took a spill, rolling a short distance. She pulled herself together and got up, seeing that Pete had already gotten the purse-snatcher on his feet.

"You okay?" Pete yelled to Celine.

"Yeah," Celine answered. Pete gave her a quick once-over, and outside of a rip in the shoulder of her pink jumpsuit, she seemed unscathed. He was pretty sure he'd skinned his knee on landing, and his hat was lying at the bottom of the hill.

"Wherever you got the idea that purse-snatching was a get-rich-quick scheme, I don't know, but--" he started, but the perp cut him off.

"Look, I ain't doing this 'cause I want to, okay? I"m telling you I ain't!"

"And who told you to snatch a purse?" Pete inquired. "Voices in your head?"

"The Feds are makin' me keep an eye on him, man. I'm telling you I've got nothing to do with it. They dumped me over here and told me to watch the guy, and I've been here ever since."

Celine walked over to them, and her frown was almost folding her eyebrows over her eyes. "What the hell is he talking about?" she asked.

"The--the jury dude!" the perp sputtered. "DiMaria! Been years and ain't nothing's happened to him, but that other dude, the one they did in to protect him? I didn't have nothing to do with that. You don't got nothing on me."

"Well, since we don't know who or what you mean, you're quite right," Pete told him.

The purse-snatcher looked over his shoulder, giving Pete a baffled look. "What, man, you mean you ain't cops?"

"Can't say as we are. Ergo, you, my friend, are under citizen's arrest. Celine, would you kindly hail the police when the train's past?"

"Let me get your hat while we're waiting," Celine volunteered, and she went on to hop down the hill and grab Pete's hat.

***********************************************************************

Part 4: Daredevil

Heeding Kowalski's advice, Fraser and Ray took a bus over to a restaurant that they knew was frequented by the Mercurio family. They'd discovered that in a past dealing with that family, which had also made them aware of Rando Mercurio's private little office behind the kitchen. Ray explained his plot to Fraser, who obediently remained outside the restaurant while Ray went in and headed for the kitchen.

He'd been pretty sure that his Armando Langoustini I.D. would come in handy again someday, so he took it from his inside jacket pocket as he reached the back of the kitchen. He pushed through the doors, and four of Mercurio's henchmen hopped to their feet, hands hovering near their weapons. Then the nearest one hesitated as he took a good look at Ray, and his mouth opened slightly.

"Hey," he said, pointing. "Ain't you..."

Ray handed him the I.D., and the henchman's eyes grew just big enough to satisfy him. "Does that answer your question?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Langoustini, it certainly does," the henchman said, handing the I.D. back. He went over to a desk on one side of the room, hitting the button by the buzzer. "The Bookman's out here, boss. I think he wants to talk to you."

"Let him in," Rando Mercurio answered from his office. All four henchmen parted like the Red Sea, ushering Ray toward the door. He marched between them and through the door, and Mercurio got up and came around the desk to greet him.

"Armando Langoustini in the flesh," he said, kissing Ray on both cheeks. "How long's it been, five, six years?"

"Yeah, but who's counting?" Ray said. "Listen, I was wondering something. Do you remember when Tommy was tried and put away?"

"That's over and done with. The jurors who sent Tommy away never even made it to O'Hare or Union Station or wherever they were going."

"Are you sure it was the jurors you killed?"

Mercurio frowned; he didn't quite understand what "Langoustini" was getting at. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"One of them could have been a lookalike. The fifth juror was named Luigi DiMaria. Last time I was at my summer place in New Hampshire, I saw his name in the news. It could have been a different guy, but they could have gotten him out of the city and you might have had the wrong guy."

"I don't think so," Mercurio dissented firmly. "We set it up perfectly. One of my men spotted him, got my driver rolling, and ciao DiMaria on impact."

Ray walked over and stood ominously above him. "You'd better be a hundred percent sure of that, pal."

Mercurio didn't raise his head, but his eyes rolled upward till they met Ray's. "Oh, yeah? Why's that?"

At this, Ray had had it. His nostrils flared; he grabbed Mercurio by the lapels, dragged him to his feet, and held him so close that the tips of their noses touched. "Because you killed my father, that's why, you mobbed-up son of a bitch," he snarled through clenched teeth. "You know what I do to guys who kill my relatives? You know what I do to guys who cut in front of me in line?! You tell me who the wheelman was and I'll reconsider planting a car bomb in your house! Then you set up a time when I meet him. If this guy doesn't show, then ask yourself if the name Leo Crosetto means anything to you." Having said that, he dropped Mercurio roughly back into his seat, leaving him to consider his position. Leo Crosetto had spit on Armando Langoustini's front walk once (while Langoustini was still alive). He'd promptly been knocked out, and he had been taken into a meatpacking plant and never come out.

"All right," Mercurio said finally. "All right. Johnny Giulini. I'll send him to the S.A. Torrance Refinery at seven o'clock tonight."

"Nothing doing. Seven o'clock, yes. But I meet him in the field off State Street. Neither of us brings reinforcements. He's all mine, you understand?" Ray turned around and made a beeline for the office door.

"Don Iguana's going to hear about this, you know," Mercurio called after him.

Ray turned and glared over his shoulder. All he said was "Leo Crosetto," before he opened the door and marched out. Mercurio, admittedly, was so shaken up by this time that the slam of the door startled him--a death threat from the Bookman was like a curse from the devil himself.

Just outside the restaurant, Ray's cell phone rang. As he was walking over to Fraser, he turned it on and answered; once again, it was Francesca.

"The UNH P.D. just called," she said. "Your two friends over there caught a purse-grabber who spilled his guts on Luigi DiMaria."

"Purse-SNATCHER," Ray corrected in an irritated tone.

"Snatcher, grabber, pincher, yanker, you're as bad as Kowalski," Francesca snapped back. "ANYWAY, like I was saying, he told them DiMaria's life story. The Feds got him out of the city, and they sent this guy over here to keep an eye on him. Apparently he thinks that when Pop died, the Feds did it deliberately to protect DiMaria."

"Well, they didn't," Ray said. "I just got a confession out of Mercurio. I'll be meeting his wheelman tonight."

"Just don't do anything stupid. Oh, and I called Kowalski, too. I told him about this, so he's going over there to check up on this guy."

"All right, thanks, Frannie." Ray turned the phone off and dropped it back in his coat pocket. "I think everything's in hand, but Kowalski's on his way to UNH to look after another witness. I've got half a mind to go join him after we're done with Mercurio's wheelman."

"Hm, so I heard," Fraser said, cocking one ear. "I tend to agree with Francesca, though, Ray: Don't do anything stupid."

**********

UNH classes were over at 5:00 PM Eastern, and Celine and Pete went right over to their dorm to get their personal business squared away. Pete first called Ray to make sure he'd gotten the message about the purse-snatcher, and then he went down to the vending machine at the end of the hall to grab a Surge can for the project. He then met Celine, Mike and their six recruits at the front door, and together, the lot of them took a shuttle bus to the horse farm.

They walked across the farm to the corral, where several riders who had volunteered to participate were riding their horses around the perimeter. The rest of Pete and Mike's class was assembled to observe the entire project, as they had done with everyone else's. The six racers took up position at the north end of the corral, while Pete, Celine and Mike proceeded to the south end.

"Oh, Mike," Pete said. "Just so you know, Celine is here under witness protection, so I wouldn't use her real name if I were you."

"No problem. Sounds kind of cool, though."

Pete chortled. "Believe me, buddy, if you knew what she and I have been through in the past week, it'd be anything but cool." He turned and walked over to the selected location, and Mike shrugged noncommittally and tagged along.

"Okay, you ready?" Mike asked.

"Let's do it," Pete said, tossing the Surge can up into the air and catching it. Celine watched him and grinned, eager to see how the project would come out.

Mike turned around toward the gathering of classmates behind them, then proceeded. "Okay, it's time for another Surge Remote," he began. "I'm here with my two buds Pete and Heather at the University of New Hampshire horse farm, and what do we got today, guys?"

"Well, we're to the south of the farm, and we've got a half dozen of our dorm mates standing down at the other end of the horse corral," Pete began. "Okay? I'm going to put this can of Surge down, and they have to get across the corral to get to it. When I yell 'Surge', they'll have to jump over the fence, get around those nine or ten horses prancing around the corral, make sure the horses don't jump and trample them, avoid the manure lying all over the corral, then jump the other end of the fence and get the can."

"And they can't stop to check out those babes in the tight riding breeches, right?" Mike snickered.

"Hey, hey, there's a lady present," Pete said defensively, motioning at Celine. "Don't mind him, Heather, he went to a frat party last night."

"That explains all the blue lights I saw. Is this going to smell bad?" Celine asked, trying to disguise her voice.

"Not if they don't trip and fall on their faces," Pete answered. "Ready? Stand back, down goes the can..." He put the can on the ground, took a deep breath and stood back, and Mike and Celine stood by, holding their breath.

"SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEE!!!!"
Pete bellowed.

By the time he was finished yelling, the half-dozen kids on the other side of the corral were sprinting forward. The volume of Pete's yell had been enough to startle the horses, which were now neighing loudly and jumping all over the corral. Good thing, all three reflected, that they'd gotten some members of the equestrian team to participate in the project by keeping those horses under control. Still, it was a hoot to watch the six kids trying to avoid the jumping horses and the piles of manure at the same time. Eventually, though, all six made it to the other side of the corral and leaped over the fence. One of the kids who now resided just down the hall from Celine leaped and hit the ground belly-first, wrapping both hands around the can.

"Hey, all right!" Mike exclaimed. "Eric Muniz, Surge Champion! Okay, we're outta time. This is Mike, reminding you to Feed The Rush." He turned around to see how the rest of the class had reacted, and Pete extended his hand to Eric, pulling him to his feet.

"Man, that was awesome!" Mike said. "We gotta do this again some time. What do you all think?"

"I THINK," Pete laughed, "next time, we'll time it with a passing train and make 'em climb between the cars of a moving train to get to it. Ultimate Surge Remote, eh?"

"Oh, I dunno, sounds dangerous," Celine said.

"Yeah, I'm just kidding. Funny thought, anyway."

Less than a mile away, at the UNH police headquarters, Kowalski had arrived a couple of hours ago to supervise the purse-snatcher's movement out of the university. In an operation similar to the one they'd conducted to get Celine out of Chicago, he and the local police had moved the perp south and across the river into Maine. The only difference was that they'd had no dirty cops alerting hidden mob guys.

Right now, he'd just finished flipping through the campus directory (also known by the students as the "Campus Stalkers' Guide"), and he was on the phone to Pete's dorm room. It rang once, twice, three times, and God knew how many more times, and there was no answer. "C'mon, kid, pick up already," Kowalski muttered. After the fifteenth ring, he hung up and tried Celine's room. This time, he let the phone ring for almost a full minute before he hung up again. Over he went to the dispatch office.

"Put the word out to watch for a six-foot-two guy in a lumberjack get-up, walkin' with a five-foot-ten brunette," he called to the dispatcher. "Don't apprehend, just ask them to come down to the station."

"Will do," the dispatcher said. In the meantime, Kowalski left the police station, clumping down the steps. He started up the sidewalk toward the main street to start his own search for the pair.

Pete and Celine were walking together across a parking lot, on their way back to their dorm from the horse farm. "Well, now that Ray knows about this purse-snatcher," Celine said, "you think he'll be back?"

"Oh, probably. If this guy had anything to do with his father's death, Ray would doubtless be all over him. But they probably got the guy out of town hours ago. Could be in Quebec, by now, for all we know or care."

"I care," Celine said. "I know exactly how he feels. I had half a mind to tell him what it's like after the cops got done with him."

The twosome heard the sound of a motor revving up, and then a car pulling out of a parking spot. They both fell silent, but kept walking, not turning their heads. As the engine noise increased in pitch, Pete licked his upper lip and channeled a little extra energy into his legs. "Ready..." he muttered. "RUN."

They sprinted for the stairs in the corner of the parking lot, which took them up a steep hill to a sidewalk. The car promptly screeched after them, and they took the steps two at a time as it came to a halt. Two men got out of its back seat, opening fire on them with handguns. They ducked, and the bullets panged into the wood of the staircase. At the top of the stairs, they were on the other side of a stone wall that bordered a bridge above the railroad tracks.

Kowalski, walking along Main Street across from Thompson Hall, stopped dead in his tracks as he heard the shots. They were some distance ahead of him, probably coming from one of the parking lots on either side of the tracks. He snapped his gun from his holster, shoved his glasses on, and took off for the parking lots at a dead run.

"C'mon, get in, we'll get after 'em!" the wheelman shouted to the shooters. They got back into the car, and the wheelman floored it and took a U-turn around one row of cars. He drove back to the parking-lot exit, and in the meantime, Pete and Celine dashed across the bridge. On the other side was another staircase leading down to the dairy-bar lot, and they leaped down the steps and toward the tracks. In the meantime, the car had left the parking lot and was roaring up the hill to the main street and the bridge.

The kids had run under the bridge, and now they were holed up there, standing on the trackside loading platform. "They won't see us on the street, and they'll know we came down here," Celine puffed.

"We don't need to worry about that," Pete said, pointing up the tracks. Celine leaned forward to look around him, and she saw a broad blue nose topped by a headlight approaching. Now she could hear the loud rumble of diesel engines and wheels hitting rail joints, decreasing in pitch as the train started downgrade. Pete squinted at the curve nearly a mile up the line, and the last car hadn't reached the curve yet. The lead engine was just passing the freight house near them.

"Good, this is a long one," he observed, cocking an ear to the bridge above them. He heard what he was listening for immediately: a roaring auto engine speeding across the bridge. "They just crossed the bridge. If we were willing to climb to the other side of a train to catch somebody, so will they. We'll have to hide in between."

"What are you talking about?" Celine had to raise her voice as the train plunged closer. As Pete explained, she wished she'd never asked.

"Most of those cars are between forty and fifty feet long, and it's doing twenty-five on this line. There should be just enough time to roll under a car and lie as flat as possible between the rails. If we lie flat enough, there should be several inches to spare between us and the train."

"Gee, I'm glad I work out every day," Celine said, bug-eyed. Pete barely heard that, since the lead engine was now starting under the bridge. Pete started pumping his fist in a "pull the horn" gesture, and the engineer cooperated, giving the cord a good yank. Celine had to cover her ears at the earsplitting horn blast.

"Yes, there was a reason for that," Pete said. "Get ready!" He jumped off the platform as the last of the five engines thundered past, and the perpetrators sped down the lane toward the parking lot. Pete pointed at a small depression in the ground between the rails, and when the second car was past, he hustled Celine forward. She took a deep breath, threw herself to the ground and rolled over the rail just before the trailing truck passed. Pete shot a fast look at the parking lot--the car was just screeching to a halt on the other end of the tunnel. It was now or never. He dived underneath a boxcar, lay flat on his stomach and took off his hat, keeping his head down.

Ahead of him, Celine was also lying on her stomach, eyes squeezed tightly shut as the train roared over them. She had the strongest urge to cover her head, but if Pete said to lie pancake-flat, she'd better lie pancake-flat and keep her arms ahead of her. There were indeed a few inches to spare between them and the deafening train, and Celine prayed that they wouldn't diminish at all.

The three mobsters were out of the car now, standing at the edge of the platform and looking for the two kids. There was no sign of them to the north on this side of the tracks, and no place for them to run in that direction. They did have someplace to run heading south, though, so the wheelman shouted at the first shooter to come with him and the second to get across the train and search on the other side. While the second shooter climbed up the side of one car and across the roof, his two companions ran south on their side to search the grounds. Their two targets couldn't have gotten far by now.

Their two targets hadn't gotten far at all, because they were still under the train, lying low enough not to be seen in the shadows beneath the cars. Pete got a little nervous as a brief string of tank cars passed over them, since a chemical leak from one of those cars wouldn't do them much better than they were. But none of those cars was leaking, and they soon passed, followed by some more empty boxcars. Pete's heart sank as he realised that he hadn't anticipated any hopper cars in this train. He couldn't raise his head to look for any coming up behind him--he would just have to hope and pray. The trapdoors on those cars that projected almost a foot lower than the rest of the train would really spoil the day.

The three mob guys, meanwhile, were getting almost frantic searching either side of the tracks. The two on the east side of the tracks were searching through a small tree grove, and finding nothing. The one on the west was searching the grounds in front of the gym, and now running up to the street to see if they'd gotten that far. If they hadn't, he would have to run to the back of the gym to see if they had made it to the sport fields behind it.

Rooting around in the lining of his coat, Kowalski came up with a bug and a tape recorder as he neared the car. He pulled them through the hole in his pocket, looked around to be sure no mobsters were watching, and opened the driver's door. Taking his gum wad from his mouth, he used it to stick the bug to the underside of the driver's seat. Then he shut the door, held his weapon ready again and started toward the tunnel under the bridge. The train's halfway point had just passed, so Kowalski pressed himself against the tunnel wall and waited for somebody to appear.

It seemed like forever before somebody did appear, and Kowalski was prepared for neither the somebodies' identity nor their position. The last car passed, and at first, Kowalski was afraid that they'd both been run over. But then Pete raised his head, then pushed himself off his stomach and watched the train racing away. The last car's trailing air hose hadn't felt good hitting his back, but at least it hadn't hit too hard.

"Celine, you okay?" he called.

"I'm making like a pancake, why don't you flip me over," Celine replied.

Pete couldn't help laughing at this crack. "Take some stuff out of your pockets and throw it on the tracks," he instructed. "With any luck, they'll think we got run over and are a mile away by now." He hurriedly pulled some looser objects out of his pockets and tossed them to the ground between the rails, and for good measure, he planted his hat right side up as well. Celine followed suit, dropping a few things on the tracks with his. That done, she turned the other way and ran with him to the tunnel.

"You know, keeping the mob off your backs is partly your job, too," Kowalski told them when they were under the bridge.

Pete paused to look up at him, surprised but relieved. "Are we glad to see you," he said.

"Yeah, but he's right," Celine said. "If we don't quit it, they'll never leave us alone. Why did they come after us, anyway? We didn't have anything to do with that DiMaria character."

"The purse-snatcher spilled his guts to us first," Pete answered. "As far as they're concerned, whoever heard about it needs a pair of cement overshoes."

"C'mon, down here," Kowalski said, pointing to a small stream running along the right-of-way. They hopped down the embankment and took cover behind a thick clump of smooth sumac, and Kowalski stayed alert, ready to shoot at the first sign of trouble. "We got your purse-snatcher out of town a few hours ago," he said. "I just bugged their car. If they think you took a spill under the train, we'll hear about it in a minute." He made sure there was a tape in his recorder, and his thumb rested on the record button as he waited for the mobsters to return to their car and take off.

"So you're not going to arrest them?" Pete asked.

"If I arrest them, word'll get back to the Mercurio family and they'll come after you two in spades," Kowalski said simply. Pete just shrugged and nodded; he couldn't argue with that.

Three minutes later, the wheelman and the shooters came out from under the bridge. They stepped up onto the loading platform and walked over to their car, and Kowalski nodded slowly to himself as he peered through the bushes and watched them get in. They had no idea that he'd been here. The wheelman started the car, and as he backed up, Kowalski hit the record button. The car took off for the main street, and the three in the bushes listened attentively, hearing the wheelman pick up the car phone and dial an eleven-digit number. He had to be calling out of state.

"It's me, boss," he said in a second. "We missed the guy who spilled his guts on the juror, but our boys in Maine will keep looking for him.

"Yeah, we caught them by the railroad tracks with a train coming. We heard its horn blowing, and after it passed, we found their stuff lying around on the tracks. It's probably taken them God knows how far away by now.

"We'll be back by tomorrow morning." With that, he hung up the phone, and Kowalski turned the tape recorder off.

"Thank God," Celine sighed, rolling over and flopping down on her back.

"You took the words right out of my mouth," Pete agreed.

"Okay, let's go home now."

"Took 'em out of my mouth, too," Kowalski said, holstering his gun. He got to his feet, made positive that the perps had made themselves scarce, and climbed the embankment to the tracks. Celine and Pete retrieved their stuff, and together, the three of them walked off to the dorm.

**********

Fraser and Ray were on the field at the prearranged time. Ray parked the Riviera in almost the dead center of the field, and he and Fraser got out, waiting for Mercurio's wheelman to appear. The sky was clouding over, and the wind had kicked up somewhat in the past couple of hours. Before long, a pair of headlights came into view on the road, and they turned toward Fraser and Ray and came up the hill to the field. The car stopped several meters away, and Johnny Giulini got out and came around the car, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Ray walked forward, an officious look on his face. Fraser stayed by the Riviera, apprehensive about this entire matter, but confident that Ray would do the right thing. The two met halfway between the cars, and Ray was the first to speak.

"So you're the one," he said.

"What one?"

"The one who thought you killed a juror in Tommy Mercurio's conviction."

"Hey, I didn't think, I knew," Giulini said. "There was a spotter sticking with DiMaria all the way. He radioed me where to get the guy. I went straight for the intersection, got him right in the side, dumped the beer can out on the floor, and took off. No one ever knew I was there."

"Not till today," Ray growled.

"What do you care? DiMaria never did anything to the Iguana family."

"Maybe that's because I'm not in the Iguana family," Ray said. Seeing Giulini's disbelieving look, he continued, "Maybe that wasn't even Luigi DiMaria you killed. Maybe my name is Ray Vecchio, not Armando Langoustini. And maybe the guy you killed was Carmine Vecchio--my father!"

"Wait, wait, wait," Giulini said. "Hold on a second. You're saying you're not the Bookman?"

"What are you, deaf? The Bookman's dead! And guess how he died, pal! A car crash even more violent than the one that took my father about twenty years before his time! And you want to know something? I masqueraded as the Bookman for the last six months. Want to know something else? There's still enough of him left in me to make sure you never drive for Rando Mercurio again." Slowly and silently, he reached back and slipped his gun out of his belt, holding it at his side.

"Ray, don't," Fraser said from behind him.

"Yeah, why not?"

Fraser had stopped his father from doing this. He'd stop Ray from doing it too if it meant taking the bullet. "This isn't right. Killing this man won't make life any easier on you. And I think we both know that Francesca and your mother will be even worsely affected."

"My father's dead because of this guy, Benny. What would you do in my place?"

"I have been in your place, Ray," Fraser reminded him. "I've been there twice. I had Gerard within arm's reach for all of twenty-four hours, and yet he's still alive today in White Island. I pursued Muldoon for seventy-two before I caught up with him, and he and Gerard are in the same section. Just because a man caused the death of your father, it doesn't mean that he has to die for it as well."

"Then what does he have to do?" Ray demanded.

"He has to give himself up to you and serve life for second-degree murder," Fraser replied. "He also has to confess that his fellow henchmen kept George Kolios and his partner quiet regarding the accident, threatening them with death if they told. He must also confess that he forced Kolios to tell him if anybody ever wanted that case reopened, so that he could do away with them. Finally, he must confess that he stole Agent Drew Sloane's car, using it in the accident as a form of retribution for Sloane's role in the bust. And you, Ray, must arrest him on these charges."

Ray didn't move. He was aiming his hateful glare into Giulini's eyes, and since Giulini still felt like he was facing Armando Langoustini, he was paralysed. Ray made no move to put the gun away, and Fraser took a step forward, ready to take it away if he had to. But finally, Ray stuck the weapon back into his belt and pulled his handcuffs from it.

***********************************************************************

Coda: The Rules

Kowalski was back from New Hampshire the next day, and Ray had posted a guard on Giulini's cell in the tank. The two detectives and Fraser were back together in the squad room at ten in the morning, and Kowalski looked decidedly refreshed. "Kids're okay," he reported to Fraser and Ray. "But can I ask you something, Fraser?"

"Of course."

"Did you hang with that Porter kid for more than twenty-four hours at a time?"

Fraser thought for a moment and shook his head. "Not that I'm aware of."

"Just thought I'd ask." Kowalski slunk off to his desk, his mind still on that hiding-under-the-train trick, and Fraser sat down across from Ray.

"I've got to say, Benny, sometimes I still wish I could kill that guy," Ray admitted.

Fraser grew reflective, and Ray knew what was coming. But he didn't mind--he and Fraser had been apart so long that he'd almost missed those Mountie anecdotes. "You know, Ray, my father pursued Holloway Muldoon for three weeks and didn't concentrate on any other thing. When he caught up with him, he made his best effort to kill him. That was when he began wasting away. His beard grew, and he stopped eating and working for a disturbing amount of time. It was a relief when he finally turned his life back in the right direction."

Ray simply nodded. Becoming like Fraser or his father didn't appeal to him in the least, so that did make him somehow glad that he'd arrested Giulini instead of killing him. Yet some part of him still wished he had. He needed a little time to sort himself out. "I'll be on the roof if Welsh starts hollering," he advised Fraser. He rose, went out the side door and made for the stairs to the roof.

"So why don't you?" Vecchio Sr. demanded from behind him.

"Why don't I what?"

"Kill the guy. Hey, if you think he deserves it, no argument here. He damn well does, as far as I'm concerned."

"You know, Pop, if Giulini hadn't killed you, I'd have a hard time resisting the temptation," Ray said sharply.

"And get like your Looney-Tunes Mountie pal in there? Uh uh. No kid of mine is gonna even start imitating him. Why don't you do just this one thing for me, huh?"

"Because it's against the rules. Hate cops all you want, but don't expect me to break the law when I'm supposed to be enforcing it."

"Maybe you should try enforcing it, then," Vecchio Sr. scoffed. "Be a lot easier if you quit hanging with Lobsterback in there, if you ask me."

"Did I ask you? No. But let me ask you this. Can you please go bug Frannie for a change?"

finis

_______________________________________________________________________

Copyright 1998 by Chris Lark. All rights to Due South are reserved by Alliance Communications and CTV, and no copyright infringement in the least is intended. Please do not reproduce this work for any purpose but personal, or copy to any other Web pages, without author's permission. Please do feel free to E-mail me at cql@hopper.unh.edu with any questions (if you're going to criticise, I take it a damn sight easier in question form) you have.

Return to Due South Fiction Archive