Vince saw the young, curly-haired deputy straighten up at P.J.’s door.

"Whoa!" he said. "What’cha doin’?"

The man in uniform turned to him and held up the yellow sheet. "Dropping off the last official notices," he said.

Vince took one and read it. "What does this mean—this ‘moot question’ shit?"

The deputy shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe the legislature repealed the law or the Supreme Court reversed itself on one of the rulings that allowed the trial to go forward. In a presumption of guilt case, it could be a lotta things."

"You mean this happens all the time?" queried Vince, accompanying the deputy back down the hall in the direction from which he had come.

The deputy stopped in front of the next door, bent over and slid a yellow sheet of paper through the crack. "No, but it could."

He continued down the hall with Vince at his side. "Tell me," the deputy asked Vince as he stopped in front of Gloria’s door, "how close did that guy come to getting Gidarbed?" He slid the notice under the door and handed the last one to Vince.

Vince crooked his neck. "Hard to say. It was 7 to 5 for acquittal going in. We had a couple of holdouts for conviction at the end, but I don’t think they could have lasted much longer. Before the first vote..." He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. "...the Wicked Witch of the West swore on the bible that she was never going to change her ‘guilty’ vote. That’s what we’ve been up against for the last few days. I think she wanted to back down when the count got to be 10 to 2, only she couldn’t see how to do it. Some of the other jurors kept trying to bury her in the hole she dug for herself; they didn’t have the sense to help her out of it. I tried, but...I don’t know."

"So," said the deputy, "in the end the big trial came down to an exercise in how to save face."

"That’s about it."

The deputy shook his head and turned to leave.

Vince stopped him. "Hey buddy, what’s the check-out procedure?"

"There’s no rush, if that’s what you mean. The State has got you paid up till noon tomorrow. Anytime before then, all you gotta do is leave."

"What about the key?"

"Keep it for a souvenir if you want. That’s what they expect everybody to do. Good advertising. At noon tomorrow you’ll need another key to get back in. ‘Course you’ll have to pay for it."

"Thanks," said Vince as the deputy walked away.

The deputy held up a hand of acknowledgment as he kept walking.

Vince plucked his card key out of his shirt pocket and entered his room. Somewhere between seeing the deputy at P.J.’s door and discussing the case with him, Vince had realized that he didn’t have to play the part of a detective. He could call one. Hell, he thought, I can call anybody I want.

He sat in a chair by the window, pulled a light pen from the inside pocket of his sports coat and accessed the telephone icon in the T-window beside the refreshment cabinet. First, he called Aaron. When he got an ELF in the wall telewindow telling him that his friend was not available, he left a message to call.

"By the way," he said to the Aaron ELF, "why don’t you give me the number of your son-in-law? I gotta talk to him right now."

The ELF looked as though he was thinking it over, then smiled. "Here you go."

A blue light flashed in Vince’s wristband telewindow telling him that Ken Campbell’s name and number had been inserted in his communication data base. He thanked the ELF and called the number. A crude Ken ELF answered.

"Please stand by." said the ELF. "I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person. The Campbells are attending the funeral of Mrs. Campbell’s father, Aaron McPhail..."

The news of Aaron’s death rocked Vince like a hammer-blow to the gut. He didn’t doubt the truth of it for an instant, nor did he believe that it came about by accident or natural causes. He simply knew that his friend had been murdered. Why hadn’t Ken let him know about it when it happened?

He held the communication line open, growing angrier by the second with the Ken ELF’s brief description of when and how Aaron McPhail had drawn his last breath. What’s this crap about a VR chamber mishap? he thought. Why doesn’t he come out and say the man was electrocuted?

Once articulated, the question answered itself with a horrible mental image of his friend’s well-cooked body. He shut his eyes as if by doing so he could blot it out instead of sealing it in forever.

"God forgive me," he muttered, blaming himself in part for what had happened to Aaron and it total for what was going to happen to the presently unidentified person or persons who killed him. During the war in South America, his plan of action would have been called a combat mission, even though combat would have meant that something went wrong. He wasn’t going anywhere to fight anyone. He was going somewhere to kill someone. Who, where, when and how were questions he would find the answers to in time. For now, the number one question was whether he would have enough time to say good-bye to an old soldier who should have died a better death.

Of the six men from Michigan who had served under Captain Aaron McPhail in Company B of the 82^nd Airborne Division’s 4^th Ranger Battalion, only Vince Costello and Hector Clay were still alive and well. I wonder if Clay knows about this? thought Vince absently, bringing up the funeral service program in the wall T-window. He was so focused on seeing whether he could make it to the church in time that he didn’t notice Hector Clay’s name as the person delivering the eulogy until he downloaded the program to his wristband computer.

"I’ll be damned," he said, slicking back his hair with his hands as he left the room. He started for the elevator, then, calculating how much time he had to get to the far northwest side of town before the services began, he stopped in front of Gloria’s door and knocked.

"Gloria." He knocked again. "Gloria. It’s Vince."

If he could have seen through the door, he would have known that she heard him. She was glad that he couldn’t; not because she was still lying on the bed completely naked, but because she was elated that he’d come back. She didn’t want him to know that. She didn’t want him to know how afraid she’d been that he wouldn’t come back. Of course there was always P.J. He didn’t have Vince’s powerful physique or his aura of violent masculinity. But he was cute, and nice and closer to her age...and she could tell by the way he looked at her that he wanted her.

Gloria waited for a third knock at her door. She heard footsteps instead, footsteps striding briskly away. Her heart leaped to her throat as she leaped to her feet. She cursed herself for letting him get away again as she reached the door and pressed her ear against it. Her pride kept her from calling after him. Maybe he’ll come back, she thought, without much hope that he would.

Then, to her delight, she heard footsteps again, a man’s footsteps walking toward her until they stopped at her door. She was so sure that it was Vince, that she didn’t think to look through the peephole. She simply twisted the knob, and yanked the door wide open.

Never before had she done anything so brazen or been so embarrassed by the results. The man standing in the doorway wasn’t the dark, handsome Vince Costello. It was that cute blond, P.J. Shields. She wouldn’t have known what to do if he hadn’t had a suitcase in his hand and a look of shock on his face that was downright hilarious. He was more embarrassed than she was. He looked so innocent and vulnerable, the exact opposite of the man she was expecting to greet in the altogether. There was something wickedly appealing about that, something that emboldened her to play out her hand as though she’d stacked the deck to get exactly the cards she wanted to play.

"I was wondering when you’d pay me a visit," she said, striking her sexiest pose and not worrying about his first impression of her reaction to him. His reaction to her was enough to explain that away. She smiled and batted her lashes, reveling in the power her nude body had over him in this peculiar situation.

P.J. sputtered, his eyes fixed on the triangular patch of hair below her navel, "I...I...." His first thought was that he had to be looking at a patch of cloth. His second thought was that his first thought was wrong and that he was really seeing the power of prayer in action. "I... just came by to say..."