Young Sam Campbell lay belly down on his bed with an old-fashioned audio headset, watching an ad for an advanced line of telewindows in the small, outmoded telewindow against his wall. This was the commercial message Sam Jinks had cut away from to show the news special. At least, that’s what it was on the Tanaka network. Sam didn’t know or care what the other network was advertising. As long as he didn’t have to listen to that Jinks guy with the same first name as his, he was content. He couldn’t understand how anybody could listen to that phony, especially his mother who used to listen to him all the time.

Sam recognized the toothy pitchman in the window as Tad Barrister, a popular game show host. Sam didn’t like him either. But he did like the product he was pushing, an Ito Supreme T-window, with an automatic movie editor. This one actually programmed itself to colorize black and white films, to turn 2-D movies into 3-D and to synchronize lip movements in foreign language translations. Its automatic programming could make computerized age advancements and regressions in place of different actors of different ages and it could substitute ELFs of anyone for anyone else.

Now that was a cool feature! Instead of fiddling with a bunch of controls every time you wanted an old move to look right, you could set the master program the way you like it and leave it there. The Wessons had three Ito Supreme telewindows. Oliver Wesson had one of his own, which was one of the reasons Sam spent so much time over the Wesson’s house. Both of the boys loved old moves and TV series, especially old cowboy series like "Gunsmoke," "Have Gun Will Travel," "Wanted Dead or Alive" and "The Rifleman." With the addition of color, depth, and modern special effects, they were hard to beat for telewindow entertainment. The modern stuff for kids was just plain dumb. Nothing exciting ever happened, nobody ever got killed and you couldn’t reprogram them the way you could the old stuff to show blood and gore—and naked women!

Sam’s parents were always behind the times. That’s because they were narrow-minded and cheap. The only modern feature their telewindows had was the special report alert which opened the main window to whatever was happening in the world that made the reporting of it special. Every time it came on, they treated it like a personal message from the President—or whoever it was who ran the country. Most of the time it was boring junk, but it was good enough often enough to make it worthwhile to check out.

How silly it was of his parents not to know that he was watching the same telewindow program they were. All he had to do was stomp around with his lip stuck out and they assumed he was going to his room to sulk. They hadn’t caught on yet. Sam guessed that they never would.

They didn’t even know that he’d been watching Hector Clay’s God pretty regularly since he was a little kid—since his grandfather told him that he was going to be a guest on the show. The first thing he learned was that his mother’s father had influenced Hector Clay as much as Sam himself had been influenced by him. That knowledge carried over to the boy’s appreciation of everything the host of God had to say which might have come from his grandfather. Listening for those signs of Grandpa McPhail’s influence on the talk show host kept the little guy coming back until he was hooked. He had understood little of what was being said back then. An item or two still went over his head, but the big picture was usually plain enough.

He knew enough about politics, for instance, to assume that the police were using the WQST parking lot as a sort of stage to put on a show for people like Sam Jinks. But it didn’t strike Sam as being the kind of show that anyone would applaud. What would the killer be doing lurking around a place where everything was in the open? That’s stupid!

Sam was already convinced that the man who killed Estelle Gidarb could be found easily enough on the list of men that she had done that terrible thing to or one of their relatives. As near as Sam could tell, the only question was, "Which one?"

It seemed natural to the boy that the police would consult Hector Clay about the knife slaying. If the man on the mountain had chosen him to tell the world about God, why wouldn’t the police choose him to tell them about the killer? All of the men who served under Sam’s grandfather could say whether or not the slasher had military training. The host of God knew everything about that and a lot about everything else. In Sam’s estimation he was probably the smartest man alive. The police would be pretty dumb not to talk to him. Sam was sure that his father would have consulted him if he had been assigned to the case.

The boy took off his headset and rested his ear against a place on the wall where he could hear everything that was being said in the entertainment room directly below. He listened to his parents and their guests with an eye toward the telewindow, wondering what was so bad about Estelle Gidarb getting killed. He thought it was great news. Surly his friend, Oliver, would think so, too.

The horrible thing she did to her husband and other men and what she had wanted to do to Grandpa McPhail—and, perhaps, to boys like himself, had given Sam the worst nightmares of his life. A strong feeling that she had something to do with his grandfather’s death made her the first person he had ever genuinely wanted to see dead.

He’d gotten through the roughest parts of the funeral by pretending it was Estelle Gidarb’s dead body in the box instead of Grandpa McPhail. Ever since then, he had wished with all his might that he could see her there instead of him. Now he had his wish.

The commercial ended short of completion with a return to the WQST parking lot. Sam saw Hector Clay, Gail Parker, another woman and two other men he didn’t know standing outside the door in their winter coats. The officer in the snake-skin hat was talking to Hector while a stocky, hatless, gloveless, square-jawed white man with a thin, sharply tapered nose and a thin brown jacket stood next to him. The officer in the gray overcoat stood by the driver’s side of Hector’s car door. Sam didn’t notice that Hector’s hands were behind his back or that the square-jawed plainclothesman had one of his hands behind Hector’s back, too.

The camera zoomed in on the tip of a bare finger and a small red dot near the I.D. strip that opened and closed the door.

Sam’s heart seemed to slam against his chest. They think he did it! his mind screamed. The astounding thought circled his cranium like a steel ball on the rim of a roulette wheel. Where it would stop, no one could say.

From the sound of the grown-ups downstairs, the implied accusation had found a negative slot in their way of thinking. Their mutual thoughts shouted, "Bullshit!" in the voice of Vince Costello, "What the fuck is this!" in the voice of Cousins, and "I don’t believe it," in the voice of Sam’s father. His mother gasped. The general growled.

Sam balled up his fists....

Downstairs in the entertainment room, Yu balled up his fists.

Banks lifted his hand, stopping all conversation behind him like a tank commander at the head of a an advancing column. He stared intently as the telewindow camera dollied back to frame the square-jawed officer with the thin jacket.

Partly because of the upward angle of the shot, the shorter-than-average man looked like a towering, heroic figure. Banks could see that the other reason he looked that way had to do with his studied military bearing. He impressed Banks as the kind of man he had seen before, one who wanted to be exactly where he was—framed in a heroic pose in the telewindows of America.

Ken grumbled. "It would be Folgman."

Banks looked back at him at the same time Yu, Vince and Cousins cut their eyes in his direction. Yu queried, "You know this guy?"

"You bet," said Ken—"

Before he could elaborate, the camera switched back to Jinks and Hollingsworth. Jinks turned to Hollingsworth. "Haven’t we seen this handsome detective in connection with another case?"

"Sure have," said the woman next to him. "Matthew Folgman; super cop, lead detective in the Brown Belt Strangler investigation...."

Ken’s head jerked forward, his eyes squinting as if to bring an unrecognizable object into clearer focus. When did that happen? he thought with a nasty turn in his gut as Vince looked to him with the same jarring question on his face. Ken answered Vince by hunching his shoulders. They were going to have to get back to that.

Dr. Sandra Hollingsworth placed Folgman on a pedestal of kudos with a long list of individual accomplishments and associations with honored groups and causes. "...Marine Corps Reservist...Toys For Tots..."

"Ha!" Said Yu derisively. They used to give toys away to poor people. Now they make a big thing out’a sellin’em cheap."

Cousins pitched in with a parody of the familiar American Party refrain, "To give the no income recipients the dignity of buying toys for their children. What a load!" He looked at Ken. "What else do you know about this Boy Scout?"

Ken took a deep breath. "...Matt Folgamn is the most racist son-of-a-bitch I ever met. Lives in Howell or Brighton—one of those. Has some Reservist buddies on the Farmington Hills Police. That’s probably how he got called in on this. If he didn’t love the Corps so much he would probably be a grand dragon in the KKK.

Vince asked, "What makes you say that?"

"I was never there to see it, but according to him, he was an active Klan member. Never missed a cross burning if he could help it. And beating the hell out of Negroes was one of his favorite ways to relieve the stress of the job. Only he didn’t say ‘Negroes.’ He once told me—and I quote, ‘I hate niggers. I wish I could line up all the niggers in the world against a wall and mow’em down with a machine-gun.’ He meant it; I know he did. If you’d seen him, you would have thought so, too."

Cousins asked the obvious question. "Did he tell you this stuff before or after your race change operation?"

If embarrassment could kill, Vince Costello would have died a quick but painful death. Hell, Cousins had embarrassed everyone in the room to the bone except himself. It suddenly came back to the former lieutenant why the former private had gone no farther in his military career. In civilian life, the color of his eyes my have played a role in his sour fortunes. That wasn’t the case in the military, except for all white Reserve and National Guard units that were as intolerant of dark brown eyes as they were of dark brown skin. His stunted occupational development in the Regular Army could be traced straight to his inability to edit his thoughts for public consumption. Obviously, he never learned.

Ken regrouped quickly, almost grateful that the taboo subject was out in the open. "After," he said. "Folgman wouldn’t have talked to me if he’d known what color my parents were."

"No shit?" said Cousins, always dismayed to discover people who could think that way. He retreated inside of himself, knowing that he’d said something wrong but not sure of what it could have been. People think I’m dumb, he mused. Maybe I am. But if race change operations prove anything, it has to be that nobody can tell the difference between people like the Campbells who chose to be white and people who were born to be that way. The only white people you can tell for sure were born white just by lookin’ at’em are all outcasts like me, with eyes the same color as black people. No one gettin’ a race change would ever overlook the eyes....

The telewindow camera switched back to Sam Jinks and Sandra Hollingsworth. Jinks announced, "Hector Clay has...Yes. Hector Clay has asked for his attorney....Oh-oh, Sandy. This must mean that the police have read him his rights."

Hollingsworth nodded smugly.

The Campbells and their guests groaned and cursed under their breaths.

Jinks held his hand to his ear and gnashed his teeth causing Vince and Yu to think that he, too, wanted to curse. "Network policy bars us from showing you that dramatic moment at this time....I must say that this sounds to me like a brand new policy. I don’t understand it. And I won’t stand for it! You, the people, have a right to know! We, the press have an obligation to inform!"

Jinks and Hollingsworth began a rambling dialogue on the subject of the network’s censorship of its veteran news people and the courage of their stand against it.

"You know, Sam," said the Harvard psychology expert, "this sounds to me like another misguided attempt to shape the news by denying the harsh realities of race and violence in the United States. When are these people going to learn that ‘political correctness’ is a bad idea whose time has come and gone? Haven’t we had some recent experience with that?"

"How right you are, Sandy," said Jinks. "Since the network forced telewindow journalists to stop showing the true relationship between black on white violence and white reaction, the Justice Department tells us that they’ve seen an upsurge in both."

Hollingsworth nodded vigorously. "I am particularly appalled by the increase in cross burnings across the country which inevitably follow instances of heinous black on white violence against women which go unreported in the dominant media. The truth always finds a way. The more we try to cover these things up or downplay their significance, the more credible the hate groups who exploit them become...Is it true that CBI News can’t even show cross burnings anymore?"

Jinks nodded. "The powers that be determined that our broadcasts of those Klan rallies where crosses were burned in protest of black men’s brutal assaults on white women amounted to free advertising—even though we condemned them, as all people of good will must."

"And," added Hollingsworth with a forced smile and an incredulous tilt of her head, "this policy has been in effect, even though studies have shown that failure to telewindow peaceful cross burnings have produced disastrous results. They have lead to violent demonstrations against Negroes, former Negroes and even suspected..."

Jinks cut her off. "You’re the doctor," he said, resting his chin in his palm with his elbow on an unseen shelf behind the podium. "What do you call it when people in authority like our so-called superiors in the news department make arrogant, self-defeating ‘politically correct’ policies like that?"

"The same thing that anybody with a brain would call it." Hollingsworth stared directly into the camera. "I’d say it was idiotic."

The strong words didn’t end there. Every statement was, in fact a challenge to Jinks’ CBI superiors to cut them off, a challenge that could only be answered by not doing it.

Banks wrinkled his nose, afraid that his judgment about the words he was hearing may have been clouded by his feelings about the man using them. "What is all that about?"

"Not sure," said Vince. "I hope it isn’t what I think."

"Well, Costello," said the general, "What do you think?"

"Ben Foski, the man who started WQST had two daughters, Vivian and Mina. Clay was engaged to Vivian, I think. You’ll have to ask him. Her sister, Mina, runs the news department at CBI."

"So," said Banks, "Mina Foski is the one Jinks is talking about."

"Yeah; her and her boss, Margaret St. James or St. Somebody...I dunno."

Cousins looked puzzled. Banks knew why. The active military officer who had gone so far in his field and the ex-enlisted man who had gone nowhere in any field, wouldn’t have become friends if they hadn’t understood each other well. Cousins was thinking that Foski sounded Polish and he was wondering if Vivian Foski’s color had anything to do with what was happening to Hector Clay.

Ken glanced back at Yu who seemed to know the answer and Barbara who undoubtedly wanted to. There was no danger that she would announce her thoughts to the world the way Cousins had done earlier. Though Ken had handled that awkward moment well and, to all outward appearances, moved on, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

While Vince was taking a roundabout path toward revealing the fact that the Foskis were African-Americans, Ken’s preoccupation grew more intense—and more focused. Even the bomb about Folgman taking over the Strangler investigation and what it could mean to P.J. and Gloria gave way to Cousins’ tacky question about race. The man in him wanted to forget the entire episode. The detective in him knew that it was somehow important to remember and to put to good use.

No one could so much as allude to the subject of racial origins without being labeled a racist. Cousins clearly didn’t think that the label would be applied to him. Ken was now forced to consider the fact that there was no logical reason it should have been, only a common cultural understanding fed by unchallenged media repetition that it would be. Ken certainly wouldn’t have mentioned it if he hadn’t been forced to.

It wasn’t as if he and Barbara were hiding what they had been. Given the close association of their guests to Barbara’s African-American father, that would have been absurd. Cousins’ faux pas had to do with the idea that a race reassignment from black to white was not a change, but a correction in a mistake of nature. Moreover, once people began to question one person’s racial origin, everyone’s racial origin became suspect. It was a short step from there to questions of racial purity which preoccupied Folgman’s KKK. That, in turn, threatened the very concept of a peaceful society in which race reassignments were not only possible, but encouraged.

Ken flashed on a cartoon character he saw when he was a little boy, a cat who literally turned into a sucker. That’s how he saw himself now. He knew beyond a doubt that the entire race reassignment phenomenon was like Mother’s Day, an irresistible scheme some scam artist came up with to make a bundle. Sell the idea and the products and services that go with it will follow. People like Cousins, Banks, Yu and the Wessons next door knew that. People like Barbara and himself and most of the brown-eyed whites who could afford Eye Dye, rarely learned.

Anticipating what Cousins was about to say, Banks got ahead of him. "Tell me more about the super cop."

Ken knitted his brow.

Yu helped him out. "Folgman," he said.

"Oh, yeah. Matt Folgman....He’s nothing but a loud-mouth bigot. Likes to act tough. You know, play the role. Always angling for a place in the spotlight."

Banks nodded as if he were hearing what he’d expected to hear.

A light went on in back of Vince Costello’s eyes. "Oh man," he said, "This is too close. He even has the same initials..." He cut his eye at Banks who locked eyes with him and smiled.

Vince took it from there. "Did Folgman ever beat up women?" he asked.

"He claimed he did if they deserved it, but he’s smart enough not to say anything that would show up in a time scan. You probably wouldn’t find evidence for the men he clamed to have beat up, either. That was another thing he bragged about. Said he had friends in the Department who covered for each other. Said they put evidence where they needed it to make a case; said they could have gotten away with murder if they wanted to."

"You mean," said Vince, "he lied about who, where and when but not necessarily about what."

"Exactly. If you talk as much as he does, you’re bound to say a thing or two that could get you into trouble if anybody bothered to look into it. But if you add ten things that couldn’t be true, nobody’s going to believe the one true thing that could hang you. Chances are, they won’t even look into it."

Vince exchanged knowing looks with Banks, to the growing irritation of everyone else. Vince said, "Smart guy, huh. Extremely observant. Takes note of important details that most people overlook."

Ken glared at Vince for a moment as if to ask, How did you know that? But he said, "He could be one of the brightest men on the force. That may be why they asked for him on the case. I mean, looking at his record, his bad temper and that sort of thing, you’d think he’d be a liability on the witness stand no matter how he did his job. But he seems to have great discipline for special occasions. You ought to see him in court....And you’re right about the other thing. He does pay close attention to detail."

Banks took over from Vince, "He’s an old pro. He’s been at scores of bloody murder scenes—seen scads of bloody footprints. He knows the criminal justice system inside out. Knows the people he works with who matter; the sergeants, the brass, the prosecutors. He’s worked with them before. He knows how they think; what they pay attention to, what they ignore, what they will tolerate from a cop like him and what they won’t tolerate from anybody."

Ken said nothing, expecting to hear more from Banks. He heard more from Vince.

"How did Folgman feel about mixed couples?"

This time Barbara, spoke up, the vexation in her voice matching the frown on her face, "Where are you going with this?"

"You’ll see," said Vince. Come on, Ken. What can you tell us about that?"

"I only worked with the man once. The subject didn’t come up. You gotta understand that most of what I told you is hearsay. That is, I’ve heard the same things said by enough people I trust to believe it. But I’ve got a feeling that you know more than they do. Why is that?"

"Because," said Vince, "me and Banks have seen the mold he came out of; an LA cop named Mark Fuhrman in the O.J. Simpson case. Whoever is behind this must have studied the same tapes we have. There ain’t no time tracks. He’s got to be one arrogant son-of-a-bitch to think that nobody is going to see the same things he did."

"No," said Banks. "It’s a smart move. Nobody put together all of that information about Fuhrman when millions of people had all the pieces to work with. Back then you had dozens of television and radio networks. Now, as far as news is concerned, you’ve got one; Condor Broadcasting Incorporated."

He gestured toward Jinks and Hollingsworth. "They were the only news we had for years; them and people like them. Things changed for a while. Now they’re trying to reassert themselves. The way I see it, that’s what all of this is about—power. The worst that can happen to the people who set this up is it won’t work, and Folgman will take the fall. Like you said, everything is too close to the Simpson case to be a coincidence."

Yu and Barbara looked at each other as if the general and the ex-lieutenant had begun to speak in an alien tongue.

"What the hell are you guys talking about?" asked Yu. "So what if this Folgman guy is a skunk? He’s not a magician."

Four sets of stern eyes turned on him as if he were a traitor in their midst. If the former Top Sergeant’s feelings had been hurt, he didn’t show it. "There wasn’t enough time," he explained, "for Folgman to do everything he would have had to do to pin it on Clay. My first reaction was, ‘no way!’ But let’s face it, maybe Clay did take her out. Haven’t you thought about it? I have. You know me, I always said that some people need killin’. Estelle Gidarb was one of’em. I would have done it I could have figured out how to get to her and get away with it."

Cousins rolled his eyes. "Damn, Top, Clay ain’t no fool. Everybody in the world knows who he is and damn near everybody knows that he hated the bitch. There ain’t no why he could hide. And why would he have used a knife instead of a...a rope or somethin’ that wouldn’t leave blood everywhere? That don’t make no sense at all. Especially since everybody knows he was a fucking Ranger, and everybody knows what we did with our bayonets Down South."

"But you guys are saying he was framed. How could Folgman have known that Clay didn’t have an iron-clad alibi when he was planting that little smudge on the car?"

Vince held up his wristband. "Haven’t you ever heard of wireless communication? Clay and Gidarb could have been under surveillance for months. There could have been bugs planted in 10 different places to keep track of both of’em till everything was in place to make the kill."

Yu held his ground. "So, you think it’s a big conspiracy?"

It suddenly occurred to Barbara that a good frame-up, by definition, would have to consist of evidence that makes the accused look guilty. And judging by Yu’s ready acceptance of the apparent facts, she could see how little it would take to give a well-planned and well executed frame a perfect fit.

"The conspiracy doesn’t have to be that big," she said, All you need are two or three people. One to plant the bugs and monitor the bugs and one to do the killing. The killer could be anywhere within a short drive to the Farmington Hills estate waiting for a call."

"That’s right," said Ken, impressed with his wife’s shrewd observation. "A killer who could pass for Dr. Clay in a mask and gloves, and fit into a pair of his shoes."

Yu shook his head. "You’re reaching, he said. How would Folgman know that he would get called in on the case and when would he have a chance to plant evidence of his own when he found out about it? We don’t know nothin’ about no shoe prints. But we do know whose parking lot had blood in it after the murder. We know whose car had blood on the lock. Even if we don’t know whose blood it is, yet, what are the odds against all of the blood bein’ in both of those places at the same time? You can’t ignore the evidence because you don’t like it or because you don’t like the guy who found it."

"Found it?" asked Banks, "or put it there?"

"Yes,’ said Ken. "What are the odds that Folgman of all the homicide detectives on the force would end up in the middle of a case of a prominent black man accused of killing a white woman?"

Yu shook his head. "You guys are making too much of Folgman. He ain’t that important. If anybody tried to plant anything in that parking lot, it would show up on a time scan. It’s hard to believe that a veteran cop would put his career on the line with a dumb stunt like that."

Cousins fumed. "How about Clay’s career?"

Yu flashed on the image of the man on the mountain and Clay’s interview with him that night which his old comrades in arms had gathered in the home of their fallen Captain’s daughter to see. He said nothing.

Banks asked Yu, "Did you get a good look at him?"

"Who? Folgman?"

"Yes, Folgman."

"Sure," said Yu.

Banks smiled. I don’t think you did. Ken, run the disk back to that shot of Folgman and Clay in the parking lot at the same time."

Ken pressed the mode button on his wristband twice. The man and woman in the E room telewindow appeared in the telewindow on his wrist. The images in both windows froze. Ken moved the slider bar under his wristband T-window to the left, moving the images backward."

"Right there," said Vince.

The scene in the window froze with Folgman, partially hidden by Hector Clay.

Banks pulled out a light pen and asked Ken, "Do you mind?"

Ken shook his head.

Banks aimed it at the window, and brought up a menu which allowed him to change the perspective, isolate the two men, put them together and compare them side-by-side. Everyone could see that they were roughly the same size and build. When Banks dressed Folgman in the same heavy coat, raised the hood on both men and covered their hands and faces, they were visually indistinguishable.

Jaws dropped all around.

Ken’s image of himself as a sucker was instantly transformed into that of a 19^th century schoolboy in a dunce cap. Of course! he thought. Folgman! Army Rangers weren’t the only professionals who knew how to kill with a knife—or a belt.

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Contact the author: Jasper Garrison