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Tortured Souls

Written by Thomas Richardson

Apartment of Geri Kinney, near the university

Jena, SoTF

Monday afternoon, May 15, 1634

Geri Kinney spun the knob on her keyless deadbolt. "Momentchen, ich komme," she said loudly. But her open door revealed no black-toothed, middle-aged German man and no awestruck university student. "Hi, Jimmy. Come in."

After Geri shut the door, James Alec Wild grinned and pulled out his wallet. "Ken Miller says we'll have food cans in under three years." He pulled two twenties out of his wallet. "So in three years, I can get a discount."

Geri took the twenties, and moved to the other room to hide them. She called back, "I haven't taken canned food in two years. And you're already getting a discount."

"Yeah?" Jimmy said.

Geri couldn't put the money into her Velcro-tabbed pouch with Jimmy here; he'd recognize the "ripping" sound. So instead, she jammed the money under her pillow. Meanwhile, she called back, "The Germans, I charge them more."

"No shit?" she heard.

"Yeah, and I take bills or guilders or florins. But the college boys, I'll do them for cheaper, if it's green paper."

"Cheaper than forty?"

By now, Jimmy was sitting in her overstuffed chair, with his pants down around his ankles. Geri walked up to him and said, "Everyone but you pays more than forty. That's all you need to know."

Then Geri knelt, and gave him what he'd paid for.

****

As Jimmy was zipping up his pants and fastening his belt, he said, "I just came from seeing Linda and the boys. And shit, looks like Linda and her new kraut husband are getting along."

Geri said, "Is that good for you, or bad for you? Your ex-wife—"

"You ever think about marriage?"

Geri let the smirk show. "All the time. I'd starve if not for married men."

He frowned. "I didn't ask this so you could make a joke."

"Yeah? Marriage is a joke. Wifey's supposed to stay all faithful and saintly, but 'boys will be boys' if Hubby steps out? Please."

"I'm just saying, if you stay in this life, sooner or later you'll get messed-up by some guy."

"Well, I have your gun. And I have those moves you and Dad showed me. I'll be okay."

"But if you got married—"

"What man is going to bring home a whore to meet Mutti and Vatti?"

"Haven't you heard? Us up-timers, we're all rich. And we all do wizard shit."

"Yeah? Abracadabra. Guess what, nothing happened. And I'm not rich either."

"Well, I think you're hot. You're prettier than Linda, and God knows you're better in bed."

Geri wasn't bantering anymore. "If you're going to bullshit me, if you're trying to sweet-talk me, maybe you should leave now."

"What? Bullshitting, why would you think that?"

"Because if I'm so goddamn pretty, if I'm so wonderful at sex, then why'd Philip Garrett honkytonk on me when I was fifteen and giving him the world?"

"Goddamn, I try to pay you a compliment, Geri, and you go all soap opera on me!" He was quiet for several seconds, then said, "There's something I'm trying to ask you, but you won't let me."

"A whore and an ex-con, married? It's divorce court waiting to happen."

"Not so. Sometimes they work out. As for the 'ex-con' thing, I was younger. And the guy, he was asking for it. It wasn't all my fault."

"It never is. You and my daddy should form a club."

Jimmy took half a step closer. "You calling me a liar?"

If Jimmy hadn't acted like an asshole right then, Geri would have apologized for hurting his feelings—maybe even on her knees. Instead, she glared at him. "If I say 'Yes, you're a liar,' you gonna beat me up?"

"I can't believe I'm taking shit from a whore."

"The whores of the world are kept in business by all the jerks of the world."

"To hell with you, Geri. You know, back in your Goth days, you looked like a black-and-white clown."

Geri went to the front door and jerked it open. "You need to leave. Now."

Jimmy didn't move. Instead, he said, "For a Grantville girl doing what you're doing, you sure are full of yourself!"

"Get the hell out!" When he didn't move, she turned toward the bedroom and said, "If you're still here when I come back, I'll blast you where you stand."

"Like I want to stay here." He walked to the door, then headed down the stairs. "Skanky slut whore!" he yelled, loud enough for the whole town to hear.

Geri flew to the top of the stairs and screamed, "You just doubled your price, you asshole. No more forty dollars for you—if I even let you through my door. You hear me, you jackass?"

Slamming the door made a nice boom. It almost made her feel better.

Soon after, her door got pounded on. "I said get out, Jimmy." She yanked the door open.

Then she gasped, embarrassed. "Ach, es tut mir leid. Bitte, bitte, kommen Sie ein!"

 

Pieter Freihofer's house

Jena, SoTF

Tuesday, May 16, 1634; before dawn

 

"Your Honor, Your Honor, please wake up."

"What's wrong, Ilse?" Pieter Freihofer asked, squinting at his cook in the dim light.

"The Town Council, some are here. They wish to speak with you."

He sat up, though his body begged for more sleep. "Tell them it will take me time to get dressed."

When Pieter stepped into his parlor, waiting for him were indeed some councilmen, plus Karl Strom, the young assistant dean of the university law school. Pieter's five visitors looked like they'd been awake all night.

"Gentlemen, what's going on?" Pieter asked.

Stadtrat Heyder said, "An up-timer woman, Geri Kinney, was murdered yesterday afternoon. Here in Jena."

"Politically, that is awkward."

"It's a mess, is what it is," said Stadtrat Krausold. "The likely murderer is an up-timer man."

"And you're here for me to advise you? I think Strom here is better suited. He knows up-timer law better than I, and he's even talked to up-time women at the medical school."

Stadtrat Teuscher spoke up. "Advise us? No. We're asking you to accept the post of Special Investigator-Prosecutor for this murder."

"Well, certainly I did a lot of that, until recently," Pieter said. Before Jena's new law, passed less than a year earlier, judges (and only judges) questioned witnesses, arrested suspects, questioned suspects, and tried and sentenced those suspects. Pieter added, "But under our new laws, 'police' do crime investigation."

"Give this investigation to the police?" said Stadtrat Wex. "Those jumped-up ex-watchmen? The ones who aren't stupid, lazy, drunk, or corrupt are all CoC, and those people think most up-timers are saints."

"So why me?" Pieter asked. "Why not Schiffer or . . . ?" Pieter stopped speaking when he realized that his five visitors were looking embarrassed.

Assistant Dean Strom said, "The problem is judicial torture. The Americans hate it—fiercely and implacably."

"Then how do Americans convict people of crime? Witnesses are often mistaken, and often sworn statements are lies."

Strom answered, "The Americans have—or they did have, at least—many up-time tricks for discovering reliable evidence. If one of us here raped your cook, for instance, the Americans up-time would know who."

"Wow," said Stadtrat Teuscher.

"As a result," said Strom, "the Americans don't need confessions to convict criminals, and they think judges who torture to extract confessions are savages."

Pieter sighed. "Then all of us judges except Fassbinder, we're all tainted, so far as Americans go. You're back to your police."

Strom shook his head. "But we've checked records, and you've done less judicial torture than the others. You often get suspects to confess during the pre-torture conference."

Pieter said, "It's no big secret, how to do it. Most people fear the torture, and their consciences bother them anyway. If I'm a good listener, they'll confess beforehand. Now, the Landschädlichen"—criminal class—"will not willingly confess except under torture, and sometimes lie even then. But because they all think themselves more clever than I, they can be tricked into confessing."

"Tricked how?" asked Stadtrat Wex.

Pieter smiled in mockery. "There is the truth I tell God, and the 'truth' I tell a suspect. But once they confess, does it matter what I said? Confessio est regina probationum, confession is the queen of evidence."

Stadtrat Krausold said, "You prove again, you're our best man. What is your answer?"

Pieter said, "I will do this. I'll need to reassign my case load, though."

The five visitors looked relieved. Strom pulled a slip of paper from his sleeve. "You want to talk to this young man. He is one of my law students and, so far as I know, he is the only good witness you have to the crime."

Pieter took the piece of paper. "'Werner Brecht.' I will speak to him today."

Pieter then added, "But first I must see the deceased."

 

Near the apartment of Geri Kinney

Early morning, Tuesday

 

Pieter was a little surprised by the policeman who was actually guarding the up-timer's door, rather than drinking beer in a tavern. But what really surprised him was the presence of an up-time bicycle, a large green knapsack, and an up-time red-haired woman in her thirties, all three of which leaned against the hallway's opposite wall.

Much about up-timers puzzled Pieter, and now this woman's clothing puzzled him. He knew that up-timers could dye clothing bright colors; and that up-time, they could buy already-made clothing that fit as well as any clothing made by tailor or seamstress. Yet the up-timer woman's pants and top were both loose and baggy, and both were the same dull-green color.

When Pieter had entered the hallway, she'd glanced at him. She kept watching him as he turned to speak to the policeman. Pieter then showed the policemen his commission from the Town Council. As the policeman was opening the door, and Pieter was rolling the paper back up, then retying the ribbon the woman spoke, "Mein Herr?"

Pieter turned around. "Yes?"

"Are you here to investigate the murder of Geri Kinney?" the woman asked. Her eyes were puffy and red, perhaps from lack of sleep.

"Yes. I am Judge Pieter Freihofer. How may I help you?"

"My name is Mary Patricia Flanagan, and I'm one of the Leahy group who's teaching at the medical school. I want to help in your investigation." Flanagan stood straight, and looked at Pieter squarely. She reminded him of a cavalry captain Pieter had known in younger days. The up-time pistol that was holstered at her hip strengthened this martial impression.

Pieter asked her, "How can you help?"

"Up-time medicine can determine facts about the person's death, and what happened just before. I know those tests. In addition, Grantville's police department has been trained in forensic investigation, and sent me a step-by-step guide to what to do."

Pieter had no idea whether could help him. But he understood the politics: Grantville would accept the trial and execution of an up-timer, if it was based on up-time evidence. "Follow me," he said.

With a wave, Mary Pat declined Pieter's not-yet-spoken offer to carry the knapsack for her; but she clearly was struggling to get it through the door. Once in the room, she shut the door, walked to the corner farthest from the dead woman, set the knapsack down, and dumped the contents on the floor. She unholstered her pistol, did something to it with her thumb, then laid it on the floor as well. She spent a minute organizing the things she'd poured out of her bag.

Pieter didn't recognize many of the things lying at her feet. But the big rectangular bag with handgrips on the long sides, this he understood. The bag was black, and made of a strange material, but its use was clearly evident.

At the end of the room was another door, going to Kinney's bedroom, Pieter presumed. That door had a round brass bulb with a zigzag slot where the door lever and keyhole should be. Geri Kinney lay dead near that door.

Pieter knew the dead woman had to be Miss Kinney because the corpse had brunette hair cut in an up-time style. The corpse's light-purple skirt, which was hemmed above the knees, was also a hint. The corpse was lying on its back, its toes about three feet from the bedroom door. The body was in full rigor, with the wrists bent and the fingers making their ghastly curl. Pieter saw pale-yellow fly eggs that coated the corpse's lips and staring eyes and filled the dead woman's nostrils. Flies crawled on the pale face.

A few feet from Kinney's head was a two-foot length of twine. Kinney had a red line of matching width around her neck—a line that was dotted with fly eggs and visited by more crawling flies.

Mary Pat asked, "Do you have any suspects yet?"

Pieter said, "I'm not allowed to discuss that."

Flanagan frowned, then shrugged.

****

A man's voice loudly said, "I just want to put this on her table. I won't bother anything!"

Pieter went to the hallway door and opened it. The policeman's bulk was partly blocking his view, but facing him was a young man who wore the robes of a law student. The young man held a folded piece of paper in his hand.

Pieter tapped the policeman on the shoulder, then stepped forward. He said, "I am Judge Pieter Freihofer, and I am investigating this murder. Who are you, and what is your business here?"

"Your Honor, I am Rolf Krebs, a law student at the university. I also am . . . a friend of Miss Kinney." Krebs was craning his neck to see through the open door.

Pieter glanced back; Kinney's corpse and Mary Patricia Flanagan were plainly visible to young Krebs. Flanagan now gripped her pistol, but it was pointed at the ceiling. Turning back to the law student, Pieter held out his hand and said, "Do you have something for my investigation?"

Krebs blushed. "No, this isn't official. It's, ahem, personal. It's for her family."

Pieter kept his hand out. Blushing even redder, Krebs handed over the paper.

Pieter unfolded it. He saw a pen-and-ink drawing of a rose lying on a table, next to a burning candle. The drawing was detailed, and had clearly taken much time to make.

Pieter said, "I will ensure that her family gets this." He turned to go back into the room.

"Your Honor?"

Pieter turned back toward the law student.

Krebs said, "You're lucky to have an up-timer working for you. The murderer, whoever he is, has cause to worry."

****

When Pieter's attention returned to Flanagan, she was in the corner, exchanging her pistol for a pen, a paper with blue lines forming squares all over it, a device that clamped that paper to a flat board, and a strange device that extended a metal ribbon with ruler-markings on the ribbon. She began to make a map of the room.

When Flanagan was through locating all the furniture on her map, she then used her ruler-ribbon and some sketching to map the location of Kinney's corpse and the twine.

Then Flanagan stood and looked around the room, checking things against her map. She nodded, signed the map, and handed it to Pieter.

Pieter was puzzled anew. In all this time, Flanagan had not done anything more than glance at Kinney's corpse.

Flanagan went back to her pile and exchanged the ruler-ribbon and paper-clamping board for some printed papers, a strange device that looked like a giant silver nail (with a clock where the nail-head should be), and a pair of scissors. Flanagan laid these down on the floor by Kinney's body, then picked up the silver nail, gazed at its "clock," and wrote something at the top of the first printed page.

At last she knelt over Kinney's corpse. More flies were crawling on the body. Flanagan was pulling away clothing from the dead woman to expose her abdomen. Then she eyed Pieter and said, "This isn't sacrilege."

Pieter wondered, "Sacrilege"? What is she—

Flanagan took the silver nail and stabbed the corpse's exposed flesh. Pieter gasped in shock, and almost dived forward to stop this corpse-mutilation. But he caught himself and merely watched.

Flanagan was now staring at her up-time watch. After a time, she shifted her look to the silver nail's clock, then consulted her papers, and glanced again at her watch.

"Geri Kinney died between fourteen and sixteen hours ago," Flanagan announced. "Between four and six in the afternoon, yesterday."

Pieter looked at her sharply. "Did someone in Jena tell you that?"

"No," Flanagan said, and tapped her printed papers. "Geri's liver temperature told me that."

Flanagan then picked up her scissors. By well-planned cutting of Kinney's clothing, Flanagan was able to remove the clothing without moving the body at all. Pieter had to keep reminding himself, This isn't sacrilege. This isn't desecration.

Flanagan went back to her pile and exchanged the scissors and instructions for the paper-clamper board and a new sheet of blue-lined paper. She also picked up a strange box with a curved mirror in front. She grabbed something on the side of the box and made quick circular motions with her hand, while the box purred like a cat. After a minute of this, she stopped and touched something on top of the box. Then something in the middle of the curved mirror shone brightly. The box was a lantern, but one that didn't need oil and didn't smoke.

Within seconds, it was obvious to Pieter that Flanagan planned to map Kinney's corpse, just as she'd earlier mapped the room.

As the up-timer was training her up-time lantern's beam over every bit of the corpse's skin, Pieter asked, "What are you looking for?"

Flanagan said, "Surprises, basically. A stab wound would suggest that she actually died of stabbing, and the strangulation was done postmortem to fool you. I'm looking for bruises. They show up after death, and will say if her murderer hit her. Of course, broken bones say the same thing."

A few minutes later, Flanagan put her lantern down and said, "I'm ready to turn her over."

"Did you find anything?"

The up-timer woman looked puzzled. "There's no stabbing so far, which confirms strangulation. No broken bones—except for the hyoid bone, of course. No surprises so far. But I expected bruises on her wrists or face, to show that she struggled. Nothing. And look around the room—there's no furniture knocked over, nothing seems out of place. It's like she let the guy walk right up to her and strangle her!"

Flanagan rolled Kinney's corpse over. As Pieter expected, the body was statue-rigid. If Kinney's body had been unlifelike pale before, now much of what he saw was a dark red. The heels, calves, buttocks, elbows, and shoulders all were purple.

Pieter commented, "She wasn't moved. This is where she died."

"Look at that," Flanagan said, pointing. "The marks made by the twine don't go to the back of the neck. Instead, the skin on the back of the neck, between the twine marks, is darker. I think it's bruised."

Pieter realized what that meant: "She was strangled from behind." Then he thought about how the body had lain when they'd found it. "She turned her back on him, and let him get between her and the only door out of her apartment."

Flanagan nodded. "She trusted him. Then he strangled her."

As before, Flanagan and her lantern examined every bit of Kinney's skin; Flanagan even pulled Kinney's hair aside and checked the base of her skull for a stab wound.

A few minutes later, Flanagan rolled Kinney's corpse onto its back. "I can't check for bruises back there, but I saw no stab wounds, and no broken bones. No surprises."

Flanagan was marking her "corpse map" when Pieter saw her suddenly startle. She grabbed the lantern, shoved it at Pieter, and said, "Can you hold this? Shine it on her fingers!"

And while Pieter watched, she waved away two flies that had been half-hidden under the fingernails of the body's right hand. "Gloria in excelsis Deo!" she exclaimed. Then she added in German, "Blood under her fingernails. This is wonderful."

Nothing that brings flies can be "wonderful," Pieter thought.

Flanagan leaped across the floor to her pile in the corner, then hurried back. Now she was holding a tan-colored bag that had writing on it, and a roll of silver ribbon. But Pieter discovered, when he touched it, that the underside of the silver ribbon was strongly sticky. Flanagan pulled the bag over Kinney's right hand, then used the sticky silver ribbon to close-off the end of the bag against Kinney's right arm. "The plan is to cover her hand so that no more flies can get to it."

"But why?"

Flanagan's smile was bloodthirsty. "She might have scratched her killer. And if so, we maybe can tell you something about him. I hope so, in any case."

Flanagan handed her corpse-map to Pieter, then opened the black bag. "Will you help me put her in the body bag?" she asked Pieter.

Normally, Pieter would have given this task to an assistant. He hated handling corpses. But he refused to look squeamish to this up-timer woman. "Yes, I will help you."

It had been twenty years since Pieter had touched a corpse who wasn't family. Pieter discovered that his age and wisdom hadn't made this task easier.

The last thing that Flanagan did was to get a pair of tweezers, pick up another sack that had writing on it, pick up the twine with the tweezers, drop it into the sack and seal it with a green ring that could be stretched and twisted.

She looked at Pieter and sighed. "I'd hoped to take the murderer's Fingerabdrucke. But I can't get useful Fingerabdrucke from twine." So saying, Flanagan tucked the sacked twine into the black corpse-bag.

Pieter asked, "Is that an up-time word? I don't know what you mean by `finger marks.'"

Flanagan pointed to the fingertips of her left hand. "See these lines of skin? Mine are unique, yours are unique, every person on earth has a unique Fingerabdruck."

"So what do you use them for? Divination, like tea leaves?"

She paused for several seconds, as if trying to decide something; then she said, "I was hoping there would have been a fingerprint of the murderer that was visible to the naked eye—a bloody fingerprint on a drinking glass or a knife blade. But, our bad luck, there's nothing like that in the room. Still, let me show you what I'm talking about."

From her pile of mysteries, Flanagan brought forth a sheet of snow-white up-time paper, a tiny jar, and a tiny bowl that was so shallow that it was almost flat. Flanagan tore the white paper into two pieces, then opened the jar and poured into the bowl a gray powder that was unnaturally fine. She said, "These are graphite particles—think of it as artificial charcoal. Pretend it's blood. Now, please rub one of your fingertips around in the dust; get it shiny gray." After Pieter did that, Flanagan told him, "Now, mash your fingertip against one of the pieces of paper, then lift your finger straight up."

When Pieter did that, his fingerprint was clearly visible on the half-sheet of paper.

From her pile of mysterious items, Nurse Flanagan now picked up what she called "tape," a sticky ribbon as wide as her wrist, that was transparent like glass. By using the knife built into the tape dispenser, Flanagan was able to get herself a square of tape without needing to touch the sticky underside much. She pressed the square of tape down on Pieter's charcoal-gray fingerprint, peeled the tape loose—and the fingerprint came with it. Now Flanagan pressed the tape, with its captured fingerprint, against the other piece of paper. "Look at that," she said. "You left a bloody fingerprint, and now I have an accurate paper record of it."

"Criminals in Jena should quake in fear with you here, Nurse Flanagan."

She shook her head. "I'm not trained in this and I've never done this before. So I didn't even try to capture any invisible fingerprints, because I know I can't."

"Invisible fingerprints?"

She nodded. "Whenever you touch a smooth surface, you leave fingerprints." Pointing to her up-time lantern, she said, "My fingerprints are on this, just as yours are on the oil lantern."

Pieter picked up the lantern and examined it closely. "I don't see them."

"You can't, but they're there. I think a good fingerprint tech could make them show up," Flanagan said casually, "but that's a tricky job to do right, and I don't have the training. I'd either destroy evidence or waste time."

Flanagan looked at her watch, walked over to the body bag, and closed it. After that, she started to refill her knapsack. Pieter walked over and gestured to the up-time things still on the floor, the knapsack, and the filled black bag. "Whose idea was this? Whose idea to do all this?"

Flanagan said, "My idea. This needed doing." She said it as if that explained everything.

Soon Flanagan put everything back in her knapsack except for a small, odd-shaped thing; she picked up the oddity and held it in her hand. She eyed Pieter and said formally, "I am employed at the University of Jena Medical School. I ask for temporary custody of Geri Kinney's remains so that an autopsy can be performed."

"The woman is murdered, and you want to make her insides be entertainment for medical students?"

"It would be a murder-investigation autopsy, not a teaching autopsy. They would do medical tests that I cannot do here. They would again examine the outside of her body, and confirm my notes. They would test the blood under her fingernails. They would examine her vagina for bruising, which means nonconsensual sex. And yes, they . . . ahem . . . they might cut her open. They might look inside her."

"And their doing these things would help my investigation?" Pieter asked.

"Most definitely."

"Then I consent. Inform me when the family can have the body for burial."

The oddity Flanagan was holding turned out to be a hand-held radio. "On my way with the body," she told someone. She asked Pieter, "Will you help me carry the body outside?"

Of course Pieter agreed. Did he want up-timers snickering at him?

As he and Flanagan were carrying the body down the outside steps, she remarked, "Both the medical students and the law students have asked if we would do the autopsy in the operating theater, but that's the wrong place. It would be a circus."

A minute later, Nurse Flanagan, Pieter, and the black bag were at the street, waiting for a horse-drawn cart to come from the medical school. Nurse Flanagan turned to Pieter and said, "If you find a visible fingerprint in Geri's apartment, messenger me immediately. Even if you're sure the fingerprint is Geri's, I'll come back here with paper and tape and capture it. With one good fingerprint in the right place, and help from the angels, we can blow this case wide open."

 

Law library, University of Jena

Later that morning

 

The law-school assistant dean, Karl Strom, had told Pieter that Werner Brecht was a "good witness" to Kinney's murder. Herr Strom had spoken less than truth, Pieter realized.

"I didn't actually see the murder," Brecht admitted.

"What did you see?" Pieter asked.

"I was walking back to my apartment house, when I heard Miss Kinney and a man shouting. In English. They both were angry."

"Do you speak English? Do you know what they were saying?"

"I speak some English, and read it better than I speak it. But they were using many words that aren't in West Virginia law books."

"Too much to hope for," Pieter said. "Continue your tale."

"To go into my apartment house, I had to walk around the up-timer's truck. About an hour after the up-timers were screaming, I was walking past Miss Kinney's apartment when I noticed her door was open. She never leaves it open. I went in to check on her, and found her on the floor. She had been strangled."

"You reported her murder at 5:47 p.m. What time do you think you discovered her body, and what time were the up-timers shouting at each other?"

"It didn't take me long to find a policeman, only about fifteen minutes after I found her. So that's around five-thirty. The shouting was about an hour before that—say, four-thirty."

"About an hour before? You're sure about that—not less time, not more?"

"Your Honor, what's the big idea? Are you saying I'm stupid? Or scatterbrained, or lying?"

Pieter smiled to soothe the youth, explaining, "She died after the argument, so I must be clear when that is."

"Of course, sure," Brecht said. "And yes, I'm certain about the time."

Pieter wrote all that down, then asked, "After you found the body, tell me exactly: What did you do?"

"After I threw my trash away—that's why I was walking in front of Miss Kinney's apartment—I came back to my apartment and wrote down everything I could remember about the truck the up-time man was driving. Then I found a policeman and told him about the murder."

"Let me see what you wrote down," Pieter said.

Brecht pulled out a paper from his sleeve. On it he had written:

 

white Truck

on left Door: MALLERS HARD_ _ _ _

tall Man, his Age in thirties? Pale blue Eyes. Walks with a Limp.

 

Pieter pointed to the bottom of the writing. "Who is this man?"

"That is the man who was with her yesterday."

Pieter looked at Brecht sharply. "You just told me you didn't see the murder, or the man she was arguing with."

Brecht shrugged. "I didn't. But this man I've described, he's come to visit Miss Kinney several times. I've never seen her with any other up-timer."

"So he's her betrothed, perhaps?" Pieter asked.

Brecht shook his head. "Um, Your Honor, did nobody tell you, um, about her? About Miss Kinney?"

"Tell me what?"

"Miss Kinney was a—she was a sister of Rahab, Your Honor."

Pieter stared open-mouthed at the young man. "An up-timer, a prostitute? As rich and sorcerous as they all are?"

"Yes, Your Honor. She entertained men."

"And how much did she charge, this up-timer prostitute?"

Werner quoted two prices, and Pieter nearly choked. Then Werner added in a matter-of-fact tone, "Of course, more time cost more money."

"And she didn't starve? She got men, at those prices?"

"Oh yes, Your Honor. Several of my friends at the law school visit her regularly—visited her regularly. My friend Rolf once stood in her apartment and read her a bawdy poem in Latin." Brecht lowered his voice and added, "Of course, being an up-timer, she couldn't understand it."

Pieter finished writing in the case's Akte (dossier). Now he looked at Brecht. "As soon as I can arrange it, you and I will go to Grantville. I need to find the truck and the up-timer you saw."

Brecht nodded. Then he said, "Your Honor, if it's all right with you, Rolf Krebs will wish to come too. Partly because he's interested in up-time law."

"The same Rolf Krebs who wrote a poem for Miss Kinney?"

"Indeed, Your Honor."

"Very well. But he'll have to pay his own way."

Brecht shrugged. "For Rolf, that won't be a problem."

 

Jena Courthouse

An hour and a half later

Pieter had met with Judge Schiffer, to transfer one of Pieter's two active cases to him; and then had dumped his other case in Judge Fassbinder's lap. Now Pieter returned to "his" empty courtroom, and through the door into his office, in order to sign whatever paperwork his clerks had waiting for him. After doing that, Pieter planned to hit the streets—he had an English-language translator to recruit and a murder to solve.

But waiting in his judicial chamber was a young woman. She was in her late twenties, with straight brunette hair. Perhaps she was unmarried because her face was plain, and she was as thin as an up-timer, although her rich clothing told Pieter that she could certainly afford to eat. She had intelligent eyes. She sat by the room's second door—the one that led to the clerks' office—and Pieter wouldn't have been surprised if there were two or three big guards standing just outside that door.

"Can I help you?"

The woman leaped up and gave a well-practiced curtsy. "Your Honor, I am Anna Maria von Schurmann, from Utrecht. I have a letter of introduction from Erdmann von Regenberg in Pomerania." From a slit in her skirt, she pulled out a wax-sealed, folded piece of paper. "Herr von Regenberg knows you?"

"In a way. His young son and I once had business together," Pieter said. He managed to keep irony out of his voice.

As Pieter took the paper that Anna Maria was holding out to him, he said, "You have a German name, and yet you come from a Dutch city attacked by the Spanish. Which likely makes you a war refugee, yet you don't look or act like a war refugee." He raised an eyebrow.

"My father was German, but I have been raised in Utrecht since I was a small girl. Some months ago, my mother and aunts decided I should go on a grand tour. They decided this about the time the Spanish came to Utrecht," Anna Maria said, smiling at her own joke.

"A grand tour? A good idea," Pieter said, smiling at the joke himself. Anna Maria was about ten years too old, and the wrong sex, to really be going on a grand tour. But We're sending you all over Europe to see the sights sounds a whole lot better than We're sending you out of town before Spanish soldiers ravage you or disease kills you.

Anna Maria continued, "So after visiting interesting places elsewhere in Europe, here I am in Jena. And now I wish to visit Grantville."

"Ah, yes, Grantville," Pieter said. Then he broke the wax seal and began to read.

A minute later, Pieter said, "Herr von Regenberg writes that you draw, you paint, you speak many languages, and you are 'curious about everything.' All these will help you in Grantville."

"Oh?"

"The best minds in Europe, even brilliant children, are flocking to Grantville. Can you speak English?"

In reply, she spoke a sentence he could not understand, in an English accent.

He said, "The up-timers insist that their English is very different than the speech of England now. You will have an adventure, I bet, learning to talk with them!"

Anna Maria shrugged. Then her shoulders tensed and she asked, "So will you write me a letter of introduction to any up-timers, please?"

"There's no need for a letter as such. The up-timers hate being formal; a scribbled note will work. That is, if I can't give you a personal introduction."

She blinked. "You would do that for me, go with me to Grantville and make introductions? Grantville is a day's coach-ride from here."

He laughed. "First of all, the up-timers have set up a train"—Anna Maria looked puzzled, hearing the unfamiliar word—"that makes the trip to Grantville in only three hours. You can be in Grantville by early afternoon tomorrow, making your own introductions. Or I can walk you over to the medical school right now, and introduce you to the up-timer woman there who's helping me with my murder investigation."

Anna Maria choked. "The medical school has an up-timer woman?"

"Two women, actually."

"What—what do they do there?"

"They teach. They are nurses, which up-time had lower status and less responsibility than did up-time physicians. Still, these nurses know more about medicine than any man in the medical faculty."

Anna Maria stared, her mouth open. After a time, she said, "My goodness. But how can an up-timer nurse help you with a murder?" Clearly what she meant was Why do you need an up-timer nurse to help you take depositions?

"Come, I'll walk you to the Medical School while I explain. Then with luck, Nurse Flanagan will be there to further explain what I cannot. What I saw today was amazing."

****

Five minutes later, the judge, Anna Maria, and her two bodyguards were headed toward the medical school. ". . . And Nurse Flanagan seemed certain that if the murderer had left a bloody fingerprint, he would be in Jena's prison before the day is out."

"My goodness," Anna Maria said, well-bred enough to understate her total shock. Then she changed topics: "I wish not to embarrass myself around the Americans. Is there anything I should never do, around an up-timer?"

The judge said, "Yes. Never talk down to an up-timer, as to a social inferior. Even though any of them will tell you, his bloodline is no better than a peasant's."

"Is it because up-timers put on airs? Everyone I've talked to, says that everyone who meets an up-timer thinks he or she is Adel. I do not understand this—how can I meet a blacksmith and mistake him for a baron?"

"Equality," the judge said. "The idea that all men are equal before God. German pastors and priests say it, but the up-timers believe it."

They had entered the medical school and were walking down a hallway. Anna Maria smelled unusual smells, some awful, some merely odd, and heard a man screaming somewhere in the building. Two young men passed them in the hallway, talking about "bacteria of the colon." Anna Maria had no idea what "bacteria" were.

Only seconds had passed since the judge had spoken. Now Anna Maria replied, "So is living in Grantville how that—that witch got her unnatural ideas? That peasants are—Ha!—the equals of nobles? She is in Amsterdam this minute, spewing those ridiculous ideas."

Judge Freihofer had stopped in the hallway, in front of a wooden door. But instead of knocking, he turned to face Anna Maria. He said, "Many things about that woman offend me as much as they offend you. But here's a warning: Never criticize Gretchen Richter in front of any up-timer. Such as Nurse Flanagan here."

So saying, Judge Freihofer knocked on the door. A woman's voice with an unfamiliar accent said, "Kommen Sie ein, bitte."

He gripped the door lever, but then turned back toward Anna Maria. "Tomorrow morning, three of us will be taking the train to Grantville, in order to investigate this murder. You are welcome to ride with us."

Less than a minute later, the judge was headed home, and Anna Maria was seated facing a genuine up-timer, Mary Pat Flanagan.

Fifteen minutes after that, a stunned Anna Maria and her bodyguards were headed toward an inn for the night. Anna Maria had much to think about.

 

On the train to Grantville

Wednesday, May 17, 1634; morning

 

Frau Küster, Pieter's translator during this trip to Grantville, was about the same early-twenties age as Werner Brecht, Rolf Krebs, and Anna Maria von Schurmann. But right now Küster was showing the excitement of a child. Pieter smiled, recalling his own youth.

"What do you think, Rolf?" Werner Brecht asked. "The speed of this train, is it like a trot or a canter? I say it's a trot. A fast trot."

Rolf Krebs replied, "No, it's a canter."

"My friend, if this is a canter, you've ridden only sickly nags."

"It's a slow canter, but it's a canter," Krebs insisted.

"Objection: Arguing facts not in evidence. It's a trot," Brecht said.

Krebs said, "We need an independent ruling. Frau Küster, what say you?"

She shrugged. "My only experience with horses was my father's plowhorse. Who tells a plowhorse to trot or canter?"

A smiling Anna Maria laid down her sketchpad. "It's neither a trot nor a canter, because a horse is not pulling this train, a truck is."

Pieter was smiling as well. "A truck that is colored a most unhorsely blue, and that growls like a dog."

Krebs asked Frau Küster, "So you grew up on a farm? You didn't grow up in Jena?"

She nodded. "Our farm was north of Apolda."

Brecht asked her, "So why are you in Jena, and not at your home north of Apolda? Or on some other farm?"

The change was remarkable, Pieter thought. Frau Küster had been acting happy and lively since yesterday afternoon, when Pieter had asked her to translate for him in Grantville. But now, after Brecht's questions, Küster's smile disappeared and her eyes went dead.

With strained voice and stiff posture, Frau Küster said, "Why am I in Jena, instead of back home? Misfortunes."

****

A half-hour later, the train was leaving the Rudolstadt station. The youngsters were excited—and to be honest, so was Pieter. Off to the southwest was what looked like a forested mountain range. That had to be where the Ring of Fire was!

Rolf Krebs asked, "So Your Honor, what do you want to see in Grantville?"

Pieter replied, "The police house, to talk to Chief Richards. After all, that's why we came here."

"You don't want to see anything else?"

"Not today. If I am lucky, we'll all be leaving on the afternoon train, along with an up-time man in shackles." Pieter nudged the sack at his feet; it clanked.

Krebs then asked, "And what about you, Frau Küster? What would you like to see in Grantville?"

Her eyes glowed. "The original Freedom Arches. And definitely I want to see the high school."

Pieter said, "Yes. I must admit that, if I had the time, I would love to visit the library there. Imagine, looking up your friends' names, and finding out if the future remembers them."

"That too, I suppose," she said. "But I want to see the place where Jeff Higgins proposed to Gretchen Richter."

Anna Maria shot Frau Küster a sharp look, then said, "That legendary library, that's my preference too. As soon as we get to Grantville, I'm headed to the library as fast as I can go."

Krebs laughed. "Which is very fast, in Grantville." He turned to Werner Brecht and asked, "And what would you like to see in Grantville, Werner?"

Brecht shrugged. "Not much. I think Grantville is overrated. You?"

Krebs answered, "I wish I could walk around inside the high school for hours and hours, before I visited their library. Imagine, hundreds of up-time girls of marriageable age, all dressed to show their knees! Wonderful."

Pieter noticed what Krebs clearly wasn't noticing: that Frau Küster was scowling.

****

Minutes later, Anna Maria pointed out the window and said, "They weren't kidding!"

The train had been moving west, paralleling the Saale. Now the upriver direction of the Saale changed to southeast, but the train turned due south. After the train turned, the miracle done to the Thuringian landscape was clearly visible from the right side of the train.

To the passengers' immediate right, a gentle Thuringen hill rose up—and stopped. Beyond it, a tree-covered American hill towered above it.

The train was approaching a line of cliffs, up ahead and to the right, with a gap between them. But whereas cliffs normally were at least a little rough in their surface, these cliffs were shiny-smooth. They reminded Pieter of the side of a marble baptismal font, or the face of a granite headstone.

After several minutes, the train made a half-right turn; the shiny cliffs, and the gap between them, slid to the left. The American cliffs came closer, and now Pieter could see that the cliff faces were striped with different colors of rock, in different widths. As Pieter moved still closer to the cliffs, at last he could see imperfection there: mud smears, soot, rust stains; most of the stone stripes lost their luster when viewed closely. And yet a few other stone stripes, even three years after the Ring of Fire, gleamed. Closer, ever closer Pieter's eyes came to these scattered, smooth bands of rock, and still they kept the shine of a stonemason's masterpiece, till they vanished from sight.

The train soon passed between the cliffs, moving through the gap that Pieter had spotted earlier. The America-Thuringia boundary was marked by a wooden sign to the left of the track that read, "Die Ringwand hier." Beyond the sign was a creek, and beyond the creek was a road that looked to be made of molded tar.

Soon after the train passed the Ring wall, it slowed, then turned sharply right. The gentle hills of Thuringia had allowed the entire train ride from Jena to be traveled in straight lines; but now past the Ring, the land was filled with steep hills. Rather than try to climb those hills, the train made S-turns to stay in the valleys between the hills.

But geography wasn't the only thing that was new and strange to Pieter.

Everything was different. The trees were different; the plants were different. Dots of yellow told Pieter that safflowers were growing wild here, but everything else was unfamiliar. A bird flew from one tree to another, its color a brilliant red that would make a dyemaster weep. A creature chased its fellow around a tree; both were shaped like squirrels, but they were bigger than any squirrel that Pieter had ever seen, and they were colored gray-and-yellow instead of red.

Anna Maria was sketching like a woman possessed.

****

Not twenty minutes later, at the Grantville train station, Anna Maria and her bodyguards hurried off toward the high school, riding in a genuine up-time "taxi." Meanwhile, the four Jenaites were leaving the Grantville train station for the police headquarters, riding in their own up-time taxi. Pieter had wanted to take a horse-drawn taxi, it being much cheaper, but Krebs had offered to pay the extra money.

In only a minute, the taxi had stopped in front of the "police station." Pieter and Krebs paid the driver.

Rolf Krebs looked over at Frau Küster and grinned. "Such a short trip! We didn't see much of Grantville, did we?" He laughed, and added, "I think I wasted my money."

****

While Krebs and Frau Küster were talking, Pieter looked around. And listened. And smelled.

The smell was different here. It was springtime, and perfume was in the air, but it was not a perfume Pieter had ever smelled before. But mixed with that perfume were alien smells, not made by either beasts or sweating men.

Pieter heard the clip-clop of a horse, along with the clatter of a wagon. That, at least, was familiar. But when the wagon moved out from behind a shiny-leafed tree, Pieter saw that on the side of the wagon was a sign in English. With a Star of David in a corner of the sign! So much for some things staying the same.

The police station was near a main road, and now moving along that main road was an ear-splitting noise. It had the same artificial sound as a truck or car, and was moving quickly enough to burst the heart of even the fastest horse. But when Pieter turned to look, the source of the racket turned out to be not a truck or car, but rather a bearded man astride a—a thing. A two-wheeled monstrosity that looked like an up-time bicycle's mean first cousin.

And Jeff Higgins had come to Jena in September 1631, riding on a metal beast such as that? No wonder the university students and refugees had listened to his preaching—who would have dared walk away?

Pieter felt completely overwhelmed by Grantville. One of these up-timers was a murderer, and to catch him, Pieter had to outthink him. But how could Pieter succeed at that, when these people's thoughts were so alien to him? For the first time in decades, Pieter felt unequal to the task before him.

Still, it was his task, for he had promised the Town Council he'd do it. Pieter might fail, and live out his days knowing that a murderer walked free; or he might suffer humiliation and be removed from this position. But no matter how abject his failure, he would never quit.

Thus resolved anew, Pieter picked up his bag of manacles and fetters, and then the four Jenaites walked toward the police building. Peter's ears still were ringing from being blasted by the bearded man's car-bicycle.

 

In the office of Police Chief Preston Richards

Five minutes later

 

Chief Richards was a trim up-timer man, late thirties, with close-cut hair. Now he was asking a question in English, his eyes moving between Werner Brecht and Frau Küster.

Frau Küster, translating, said, "Chief Richards wants to know if Mr. Brecht remembers the license plate on the white truck he saw."

"No," Werner Brecht said. "Sorry."

Chief Richards shrugged. Then he looked at Pieter and said, "I think I know the man this paper describes."

Chief Richards picked up a telephone, and began talking as if to a person. Küster translated—

"Hello Ken, this is Press, how are you? . . . Great. Listen, I have some people here from Jena about Geri Kinney's murder, is Marlene there? . . . We'll want to talk to her, yes. And James Alec Wild, is he there? . . . I can't tell you, Ken, but we'll have to talk to Wild too. Did he, or did he not, take one of your trucks into Jena, two days ago? . . . So nail him to the floor till we get there. . . . We're rolling in a few, see you soon."

Chief Richards put down the telephone, and walked to a set of tall, metal, gray cabinets. He stopped in front of one cabinet, opened a drawer, plucked something from it, carried it to his desk, and opened it. He beckoned Pieter and Werner Brecht over. "Ist er euer Mann?" he asked.

On one shiny piece of paper were two shades-of-gray pictures of the same man. In one picture, his face was looking straight ahead; the other picture showed him in profile. In neither picture did he seem happy.

Brecht said, "Yes, it's him, I think. That's the man I've seen going to visit Miss Kinney."

Krebs came over and eyed the pair of pictures. "He looks familiar. I might have seen him once."

Pieter said to Chief Richards, "So you know this man? What is his name?"

Richards replied, "His name is James Alec Wild, and he is a convicted criminal. Convicted for assault."

Frau Küster didn't know that last term, and had to confer with Chief Richards. A minute later, Pieter had the sense of it: Wild had been tried for beating-up a man.

"Beating someone up was a crime up-time?" Krebs said. "Amazing."

Wild was tried and convicted up-time? I've found the killer, Pieter thought. "You said he was convicted. Why didn't you carry out the sentence?"

Richards said, "We did. He served all the years of his sentence, they released him from prison, and he came back to Grantville."

"Why didn't the up-time judge order him executed? Then Miss Kinney would still be alive."

Chief Richards gave Pieter a steely look. "That's not our way. We don't kill men, except after they kill. We also don't torture suspects."

"We stopped doing that," Pieter countered, "mainly because of you people. Now the Landschädlichen lie to us judges, and laugh in our faces. It makes our work harder, and puts dangerous men on the streets."

Frau Küster said, "Ahem, Your Honor, most respectfully? Sometimes men weren't tortured because they were landschädlich but only because they were poor. A poor man who says 'I didn't do it' is never believed." Frau Küster turned to Chief Richards and said, "If we know who this man in the pictures is, shouldn't we go talk to him now?"

"Yes," Chief Richards said in a flat voice, while glaring at Pieter. "Sure. Let's go."

Pieter hid his annoyance at Frau Küster with an indulgent smile. "A poor man, innocent and unjustly tortured? I doubt this happened often. The old laws had safeguards."

 

Outside Miller's Hardware

Three minutes later

 

As soon as the police car had stopped moving and had quit making noise, Werner Brecht was out the door and was running toward two white trucks. He walked around the nearer white truck, then the farther, then he yelled, "This is it!"

Everyone rushed over. Brecht was pointing to the door on the truck's right side. The door had an irregular, bowl-sized indentation, which had green specks in it.

Brecht said, "I remember this. The first time I saw this door, I wondered, 'Why is it green there?'"

Chief Richards pulled a small book from his pocket, walked behind the truck, wrote something down, then put the book away. "Shall we go talk to everyone? Your Honor, best you leave the shackles in my trunk for now."

 

Office of Ken Miller

Miller's Hardware

Two minutes later

 

Marlene Kinney demanded, "Where is he? Where is this judge who can tell me about Geri's murder?"

James Wild worked for Ken Miller. But so did Marlene Kinney, mother of Geri—and it was Mrs. Kinney who now came bursting through the door and into Miller's office. Already there and waiting were Pieter and the other Jenaites, Chief Richards, and Miller. "Jimmy the Wildman" was on site, Miller had assured everyone; but at the moment, Wild was "unloading the Mennonite wagon."

Pieter said to Mrs. Kinney, "I am Pieter Freihofer. My condolences on your loss. I am doing my best to make sure that justice is done."

"Such as?"

"An up-timer, Mary Patricia Flanagan, examined your daughter's body, and took it to the medical school for further examination."

A nagging little uncertainty made Pieter not mention the blood under the fingernails that had excited Flanagan so much. Why did Miss Kinney turn her back on her killer, after she and Wild screamed at each other?

"Do you know who her killer is?" Mrs. Kinney asked Pieter.

At that moment, Werner Brecht's chair creaked as Pieter saw Brecht lean forward. Rolf Kreb's foot-wagging stopped.

Pieter replied, "I am not free to say. But there is someone here who might have answers for me."

Mrs. Kinney said, "I'm afraid you wasted a trip. Geri didn't write to me much, she couldn't telephone me—as if she would!—and my husband Gil is out of town."

Ken Miller said, "Marlene, they're here—mainly they came to talk to Jimmy."

She said, "Jimmy the shit? Why do they—?" Then Mrs. Kinney's face got angry, and she started yelling in English, using words that Frau Küster was unable to translate.

Chief Richards leaned over and murmured to Pieter, "Jimmy Wild was Geri Kinney's first customer, I think."

Mrs. Kinney turned on her employer and yelled something accusatory; Pieter caught the words Jimmy, truck, and Jena. Ken Miller shrugged, and Mrs. Kinney gave him a venomous look.

Then the door opened, and a blue-eyed man limped in. From Chief Richards's pictures, Pieter recognized the man as James Wild; but Wild's face looked five or ten years older than in the pictures.

Wild said, "Yeah, Ken, you need something?" His eyes were on his boss; he gave the Jenaites no more than a glance.

Mrs. Kinney rushed forward, with violence obviously on her mind; but Chief Richards grabbed her around the waist from behind. Mrs. Kinney could no longer move, but she could still yell; and again, Frau Küster missed words.

When Mrs. Kinney finally had quieted herself, Brecht said, "Ist er." He pointed to Wild.

Wild finally took notice of the Jenaites. He looked at Werner Brecht in puzzlement.

Which was not the way Pieter expected a murderer to react, being identified by a witness.

Pieter stood. He said, with Frau Küster translating, "I am Judge Pieter Freihofer, from Jena. I have a commission to investigate the murder of Geri Kinney." Pieter took out the commission, untied the ribbon, and showed the paper to Wild. Pieter pointed to the words Geri Kinney, and Wild's face got serious.

But what Wild's face did not show was fright, anger, or defiance, the usual reactions when a criminal met Pieter, his questioner. Pieter thought, Something is odd here.

Wild, meanwhile, was saying, "I guess you know I was there Monday, huh?"

Pieter turned to Mrs. Kinney—who was yelling and waving her hands around—and said, "Please, I must ask you to be quiet."

Chief Richards said something in a stern voice, and pointed to the door. Mrs. Kinney shot him a look, closed her mouth, and took her seat.

****

Pieter replied, "Yes, I know you were there Monday. Was that spur of the moment, or planned?"

Wild said, "Planned. Well, I had hardware to deliver in Jena, and I did that, and then I dropped in, unofficial, on Linda and the boys."

"Linda?"

"My ex-wife."

"And after you visited your ex-wife and your sons . . . ?"

"Instead of driving to Grantville, I went to Geri's place."

Mrs. Kinney muttered something that was probably an insult.

Pieter said, "So what happened during your visit with Miss Kinney?"

Wild said, "I paid her, and then she got busy..."

Or so Frau Küster translated his words. But judging by how red Mrs. Kinney's face was getting, Wild had said something quite different than those bland words.

Wild continued, ". . . and then we talked, and then somehow the talk turned into an argument, and then I left."

So far, Wild had been completely cooperative. But Pieter knew that was about to change. Pieter asked, "So what was the argument about?"

Wild frowned and crossed his arms. "Sorry, that's personal."

Pieter nodded, and set the question aside. Instead he asked, "What was Geri doing when you left?"

"Yelling at me down the stairs, loud enough to bust an eardrum. Very unladylike. She told me, she might not let me see her again."

"Hallelujah," Mrs. Kinney said.

Pieter asked Wild, "By 'down the stairs,' you mean the argument took place in the hallway outside Miss Kinney's apartment?"

"We started arguing and yelling in her apartment. But the screaming ended up in the hallway, yeah."

"Did anyone see this argument? Did anyone come out into the hallway while you two were yelling, or was already in the hallway?"

"I can't recall anyone. Nah, I'm pretty sure nobody was there."

Pieter again asked Wild, "So what was your argument about?"

"Hey, buster, I just told you, I'm not telling you shit. All that stuff is personal, and it doesn't matter for catching Geri's killer."

Again Pieter laid that question aside. "So what time did you get to Miss Kinney's place, and what time did you leave?"

Wild said, "Hm . . . I got there at four-fifteen exactly, according to the dashboard clock. She finished up in under ten minutes." Pieter noted Mrs. Kinney fuming, and decided that Frau Küster had cleaned up Wild's words again. Now Wild gave Mrs. Kinney a challenging look, and spoke again. "Geri did a great job that day. She proved herself master-level in her craft." The words, as Frau Küster translated them, were as bland as porridge, but Mrs. Kinney looked ready to leap across the room and kill Wild.

He finished up: "And then, five minutes after I zipped up my pants, somehow Geri and I were in the hallway, screaming at each other. I was back in my truck at four-thirty."

"Four-thirty exactly, or four-thirty about?"

"Exactly. Straight-up four-thirty."

"And how do you remember that?"

"Because I remember thinking at the time, 'That was sure a sorry-ass way to spend fifteen minutes. What the hell just happened?'"

"And what did just happen? What was the argument about?"

"Jesus Christ, you are one pushy kraut bastard! I'm not telling you that, got it?"

Rolf Krebs said to Wild, with Frau Küster translating, "I am not a violent man, but we 'krauts' are three to your one, up-timer. Show respect."

Pieter waited to see if a fight would break out. When none did, Pieter said to Wild, "And Miss Kinney was alive when you left?"

"Didn't I just say that?"

"So what is your relationship with Miss Kinney, beyond the merchant part?"

Wild said, "Well, I first met her in 1996, four years before the Ring fell. I was just out of—I had just come home, and Geri had just started hooking. Geri needed money, and I wasn't getting much action from Linda, so it worked out."

"You liar," said Mrs. Kinney. To Pieter she said, "That year '96 that he's trying to gloss over? My daughter was sixteen, and wrecked up from a broken heart." She said to Wild, "Geri would've quit selling herself and gone back to school, if not for you putting bills in her hand."

"Yeah, sure," Wild said. "You think I was the only guy with her, down at the swimming hole? I wasn't. And I never asked her to do any nasty pervert stuff, so cut me slack."

"Oh, you are a good, good man," Mrs. Kinney said sarcastically.

The two up-timers glared at each other. In the silence, Frau Küster turned to Pieter and murmured, "Geri Kinney chose this life?"

Pieter looked at Wild and said, "Ahem. To repeat my question, what was your relationship with Miss Kinney, beyond exchanging money for services?"

Wild said, "I liked her. Even though in '96 she looked like a witch—black clothing, black lipstick, black nail polish, ghost-white makeup. No offense, but if you Germans had gotten hold of her during the first few months after the Ring of Fire, you krauts woulda burned her at the stake soon as you saw her! And yet, she wasn't scary or freaky in '96 despite how she looked, she was nice. And"—Wild smirked at Mrs. Kinney—"I think Geri has always liked me back."

"You're dreaming, Jimmy," Mrs. Kinney said.

Pieter said, "I have no more questions." He saw Wild relax.

****

So what do I know? Pieter asked himself.

The facts were these: Geri Kinney had argued with Wild, had gotten him angry. And Wild was a dangerous man when angry. And then about this same time, Kinney had turned her back on a man, and had been killed. Which meant that either Kinney was a fool for trusting Wild, or Wild was not the killer. The problem was, Pieter had no evidence that Kinney was foolish, and Pieter had no other suspect.

Karl Strom, the law-school assistant dean, had once said something that had flabbergasted Pieter: "The up-timers don't worry about fugitives." If someone ran away, the up-time policemen could send messages faster than the fugitive could move, so that the fugitive would run straight into other policemen. Radio-with-pictures told the general public to look for the fugitive. The up-time police even had special glasses that could see a man hiding in a tree at night!

As a result, so Herr Strom had explained to Pieter, up-timers arrested someone only when the police had "probable cause," which is what the up-timers called sufficient indication. Up-time, even a man strongly suspected of a crime, if the evidence wasn't yet there, was allowed to leave after questioning.

Oh, to be a judge in such a paradise! Pieter thought. Because in Germany of the seventeenth century, if a man ran, he was gone. As a result, judges in Germany imprisoned suspects as soon as they became suspects, until they were tried or until they were no longer suspects. If a judge thought that a witness might disappear, the judge would imprison the witness as well, pending trial.

So despite Pieter's new misgivings about Wild's guilt, Pieter now declared, with Frau Küster translating, "James Wild, a resident of Grantville, I arrest you for the murder of Geri Kinney, a resident of Jena."

Wild's face turned white. Mrs. Kinney started screaming at him. Chief Richards rushed over to Wild and put up-time manacles on Wild's wrists—in the process, blocking the still-yelling Mrs. Kinney from reaching Wild.

Wild yelled, "Marlene, I didn't kill Geri!"

And Pieter wondered whether he'd arrested the wrong man.

****

Pieter and Mrs. Kinney set a time tomorrow when they would meet at Geri's apartment in Jena. Then Chief Richards took James Wild and Pieter in his car to the police station, Wild in the back seat, Pieter in the front. The other Jenaites were left at Miller's Hardware for the moment.

At the police station, Chief Richards pressed Wild's fingers against an ink pad, then pressed them against a white paper that was made for such things. Both up-timers acted like this was familiar. Chief Richards explained to Pieter that any fingerprints found at a crime scene would now be compared to Wild's fingerprints on these fingerprint cards.

Chief Richards then unlocked a desk drawer, and brought out a box smaller than a woman's hand. Putting it to his face, he took photos of Wild, again in face-front and profile views.

"If he escapes from your prison, we'll have pictures of him to show people," Richards explained.

Chief Richards and Pieter went to the back, to put Wild in lockup till it was time to take him to the train station. Pieter knew well that the prison at Jena was a dark and foul-smelling place; but the Grantville jail had no smell, and was lit as brightly as sunlight. The chief explained that the metal object in the corner of the cell was for bodily wastes.

With Wild put away, the chief glanced at his watch. "I have a little more paperwork to do before you and your prisoner leave, but I can finish that after I bring your people back here."

Chief Richards and Pieter, in the police car, found Frau Küster in the hardware-store parking lot, quite alone. "Those two boys are still inside," she laughed. "I'll go drag them out, but I might need help from the army."

A minute later, the three young people were approaching the police car. Rolf Krebs was carrying a strangely shaped black box with a metal red flag attached to it. "What is that?" Pieter asked, as Chief Richards opened the police car's back door.

"A genuine up-time-style mailbox," Krebs replied, as he, Brecht, and Frau Küster got into the back seat. "I write many letters to a young woman in Magdeburg, and so I need a sturdy mailbox."

Frau Küster smirked. "Your Honor, do you know what I found these two talking with Mr. Miller about, just now? Strongboxes! Mr. Miller has many pretty wooden yard ornaments, and these two were asking him about strongboxes!"

Brecht replied, "Because Mr. Miller sells the best strongboxes I've ever seen."

"They made even better ones up-time," Krebs added. "Is it true, Chief Richards, that the up-time strongboxes with spinning wheels on the front, nobody could break into them?"

The chief answered, "Yes and no. Even the best ones can be broken into, but you need to know how, have the right tools, and be patient."

 

In the office of Chief Richards

Five minutes later

 

On a desk that was in a corner of the room were several boxes connected by black ropes, along with a palm-sized, round-topped box, which had a gray rope. While sitting at that desk, Chief Richards moved the round-topped box around, and stared at the box that was in front of his face, which showed a changing picture. Two of the boxes on the desk made steady sounds.

Pieter and the youngsters watched all this in fascination.

Chief Richards did something to the round-topped box, and said "Done." One of the sound-making boxes got louder.

A minute later, that box pushed a piece of paper out. Chief Richards grabbed it and handed it to Pieter, who passed it to Frau Küster. Other than Wild's full name, which was underneath his two pictures, Pieter couldn't read it.

Werner Brecht said, "These pictures were made today?"

The chief smiled. "They were made while he was buying a mailbox."

Krebs started untying his money pouch from his belt. "Chief, I will pay you almost anything you can ask, if you make a picture of the four of us."

The chief's smile vanished. "The digital camera and the computer are for police business. I'm not running a tourist business here, kid."

Pieter said, "Chief, if your price is reasonable, I will pay the same amount, plus postage, for you to mail a picture to me in Jena."

When Chief Richards still looked rebellious, Pieter leaned down and murmured, "The truth is, I will be telling my nieces and nephews about this day for years to come. And has there ever been a government office in the history of the world that didn't need more money?"

Fifteen minutes later, Pieter smiled as Frau Küster wrote her name by her face—front row, left—in Rolf Krebs's picture.

 

In James Alec Wild's cell

Jena Prison

Thursday, May 18, 1634; early morning

 

"I did not kill Geri Kinney," Wild said, as soon as Pieter walked into the cell. "I would never hurt her."

Pieter knew better than to agree or to disagree with those statements. Instead, he said, "Please remove your shirt."

As Wild was pulling his shirt over his head, he asked, "Ain't I entitled to a lawyer?"

Pieter lifted up his lamp to light the right side of Wild's face. "Certainly you're entitled. If you wish to hire an attorney, we will let him visit you whenever he wishes." Pieter was looking for the scratches that Miss Kinney had made in her killer's skin.

Pieter saw no scratches on Wild's face. Pieter moved his lamp down near Wild's neck.

Wild said, "I ain't talking about hiring a lawyer. I can't afford that. I'm talking about Jena, or the SoTF, or USE, or somebody pays for my lawyer because I can't."

Pieter saw no scratches on Wild's neck.

Pieter replied, "That's right, you Americans did that up-time, didn't you? Well, the answer to your question is no. Jena can't afford to hire your attorney."

Pieter walked around Wild, holding the lamp close to Wild's arms.

Wild had no scratches on his hands, and none on his right arm. Pieter even checked Wild's left arm. No scratches.

This complicated Pieter's life. The killer, whoever he was, had to have scratches on him.

Maybe the light isn't good enough, Pieter thought. He got the jailer to let him out of Wild's cell, got a second lamp, and brought both lamps back.

With twice as much yellow light on Wild's skin, Pieter still could see no hint of scratches.

When the jailer answered the pounding of the door the second time, Pieter told him, "Bring fetters here; I wish to take the prisoner outside."

Minutes later, the jailer and a pike-carrying guardsman returned. Wild's ankles were shackled, and he, Pieter, and the pikeman went outside.

By sunlight, Pieter saw that Wild had a tattoo of a dragon that covered his entire back and then went over his shoulder and onto his chest, while the dragon's tail went around his waist. It was impressive, actually. But what Wild had no mark of, no sign of, not even a hint of, were fingernail scratches made by a healthy young woman who had been fighting for her life.

Pieter realized: He is not the killer.

Since Pieter had told Wild that he wouldn't be given a free attorney, Wild had said nothing. Now Pieter asked him, "Is there nothing else you wish to say to me?"

"Depends," Wild said. "Did Chief Richards tell you that I . . . ?"

"That you were imprisoned for a violent crime? Yes, I was told."

"Mount Olive Correctional. Which means, anything I say now, can and will be used to fuck me over."

 

Outside Geri Kinney's apartment

Early afternoon

"Tell me again, what you want from me?" Marlene Kinney said.

Mrs. Kinney had met Pieter at the Jena train station, and he had walked her over to Geri Kinney's apartment building. Pieter had just unlocked the hallway door with Geri's key then dropped that key into a pouch as he and ...