We ran up the stairs to the roof where we reloaded our smoking pistols. I even gave her some .357 dum-dums to blast out of her .38. From there we moved across rooftops, at last coming down a rusty fire escape into a stinking alleyway. Police sirens clogged the damp sooty air and we thought it best to find a place to hide until we could get back to her car and get the hell out of the neighborhood. Cop cars screeched to a short stop in front of the hotel. Led by a couple of care worn lieutenants, a brigade of uniforms piled through the hotel's front door. There was nothing to use for cover but the cold black of night.

"Whoever capped these losers were some real nasty bastards," One cop commented to the other. The other nodded, making note of the spread open bullet holes that had left intestine spattered on the floor like spilled mop water.

"The jig on the desk said he'd just rented this room to a Mr. and Mrs. Fayed."

"Fayed? Arab?"

"She coulda been. He didn't get a good look at the guy."

"Yeh, well, where the hell are they now?"

"Dunno, but wit' this kinda action goin' down, I'd think about makin' myself a little scarce too."

"Yeh. Say ya notice somethin' about these guys?" He kicked one guy in the teeth and the teeth came tumbling out of the corpse's head like crooked dice.

"Yeh. Dum, de, Dum-Dum."

"That's right. Whoever ate these maggots alive, had a badge."

"Maybe. Maybe he just had a source."

"Maybe."

"We've got an APB out for Electric. If he shows his face, he's a dead man!"

"I'd like to believe that, Chief Bolton." "

You can believe it, Schwartz. Wouldn't want little Po to go wettin' the sheets again, now would we?"

"That's Von Schwartz and I wish you would show a bit more compassion for the girl. Doctor Yuno tells us that Soyoung's is the severest case of arrested development she's ever witnessed. My daughter has the body of a mature 21-year old, but her mind has never been able to go beyond the horrible night when she was—" Von Schwartz choked up, though Bolton could barely conceal his lascivious thoughts of the beautiful oriental girl's sleek and shapely yellow body. He imagined Soyoung as he has last seen her; curled into a fetal ball whimpering mutely. Now she lay in the meager sunlight that came streaming through the stain glass window of a bare room on the sequestered grounds of a private estate, sucking her stub-like thumb, pale flesh glowing with fierce perspiration, the room stinking of urine and feces. The girl's slender angular pelvis clad only in a soiled diaper, her body so wan as to require the smallest size fitted for an infant. Von Schwartz thought this was what a healthy 21-year old looked like. The busy millionaire obviously didn't get out much. Bolton grinned as if to reassure Von Schwartz that he had the girl's best interest in mind. This was the man Von Schwartz was relying on to look out for his daughter's safety.

Detectives Lieutenant Richards and Kosova sat in the cramped detective squad room. They were puzzling over the use of police regulation hollow points in the shootings of a group of pimps in a rundown hotel off the west side highway when their thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the frosted glass of the door. Kosova opened the door to see two people in neat dark attire, the man, sporting a natural carrot colored crewcut wore an impenetrable pair of black ray-ban sunglasses over a pale and freckled face. He removed his shades to reveal small beady baby blue eyes. The woman who wore a short tight skirt over slim blue stocking legs and stiletto heels was older, an attractive Asian with shifty narrow eyes. She followed with punchy short steps as he came into the squad room. Richards looked up from his desk.

"What gives?" he asked.

The blond man flipped his wallet, displaying the silver Federal star. "Special Agent Casper. FBI. This is my partner, Special agent Huang. We're on the Electric case."

"The what?"

"Barry Electric. Ex-con from across the river. Got fifteen years for kidnapping and rape. Released after doing his full time. But he got into a scrape a few days ago and wasted some people."

Richards sat back, pushed his hat back on his head wistfully. "I've heard of this Electric. Ex-cop."

"That's our man. He eluded a dragnet over in North Jersey. We think he's here in the city."

Richards made furtive knowing eye contact with Kosova. The Dum-Dums, they were thinking, but withheld the information.

"Who'd he waste?" Asked Richards.

"Bunch of high school jocks," replied Casper blandly.

"What for?" chimed in Kosova.

Casper turned to face the beefy pasty-faced dick. "Seems they had him cornered in his attic. The house caught fire, no one knows how of course, but the kids had gone in after him after he punched out the high school principal in a street brawl."

"Sounds like he was defending himself. You callin' it Homicide?" Casper scowled.

The big city DT's didn't seem anxious to jump on the bandwagon.

"We're callin' Electric a fugitive. That's what we're callin' it."

"Then you came into the wrong office, Casper. This is Homicide," Richards put flatly. At that point, Special Agent Huang stepped forward, getting the men's attention by straightening her starched white blouse over an ample pair of perfect teardrop shaped breasts which hung loosely in a sheer lacy brassiere.

"Electric is obviously dangerous. He's armed and capable of anything. He's a wanted, hunted man and will go to any length to avoid being captured. What we don't know is what he intends to do next."

Richards sat up stiffly, watching the woman's chest heave as she gave her breathy speech.

"What's he packin'?"

Casper answered the Detective's question. "The boys were shot with .357 hollow points. The bodies were burned beyond recognition, but the slugs had already torn them to pieces. That's why we're in your office, Detectives. If Electric kills again, it will come across your desk."

"If you'll excuse us," Spoke up Kosova. "We've got a report to write."

He moved towards the door and opened it, holding it open as a cue to the Feds to take a walk. They understood and resentment reddened their otherwise placid faces. "Okay, but if—," Huang was saying when Kosova cut her off.

"We'll be in touch." He studied the clean lines of her dark suit, and the curves underneath, anticipating another encounter with the high strung Asian-American Special Agent. Once the Feds had left, Kosova returned to his desk.

"Okay, what gives?" he asked his partner.

"We go see Pat over in Sex Crimes. She'll tell us what gives."

"Officer Barry Electric: accused and convicted of the kidnap and rape of six-year old Soyoung Von Schwartz back in the mid-eighties."

"What convinced the jury that he was guilty?"

"Testimony given by a sergeant Bolton. He testified to finding Electric passed out in a drunken stupor besides the girl's body in the room of a cheap hotel, out on Route 44. The girl was so traumatized that she could offer no testimony and hasn't spoken a word since. The family sent her away and her whereabouts are currently unknown. The Von Schwartz's have enough money to keep her well out of sight."

Kosova turned to his partner.

"I don't get it," then back to the ADA who held the confidential file in her manicured fingers. "Is he guilty or not?"

The three of them were standing in a dim sconce lit subterranean passageway, well below the hustling for fast convictions and two-bit alibis going on in the courthouse above. She looked the Officers over with a sly and malicious grin on her hard pink lips. She wanted to keep her woman's intuition out of it, but she had to confess what was her gut feeling.

"No," she said curtly. "The jury convicted Electric on such slim evidence that the shadow of doubt loomed large over the case. Electric was also never able to testify. He was serving hard time and heard the conviction announced over the prison radio. He’d been busted off the force and carted off to prison the same night as his arrest. He didn't even have a fighting chance at appeal. The wheels of justice went Express to cover up the very notion that a rookie cop in a supposedly crime-free model bedroom community could kidnap and rape the daughter of the town's most affluent couple. The daughter was an Asian by the way. Adopted."

"Yeh, so?" Kosova questioned, nonplussed by the mere fact that an American family would adopt an Asian child.

"She has a natural mother that gave her up. She was thought to still be in contact with the Von Schwartz's, if not the girl herself. That all came out in the papers at the time but quickly dropped because it was bad publicity. It smelled like blackmail, but no one could ever be sure where the stink was coming from."

"Like Von Schwartz was paying somebody off to keep a secret of some kind?"

The Sexy Assistant DA shrugged her padded shoulders. Her breasts caught the amber glow of the crystal light, reflecting the shimmering prisms of colors along the rounded protrusions that made the white silk blouse stand out against the dark tweed of her tailored jacket. Her shadowed eyelids fluttered.

"This ain't your beat, boys," she said softly, almost playfully, through wet parted lips that were sensuous yet utterly serious.

"The Feds seem to think so. Electric's wanted again. Gunned down the whole damned varsity football team," Richards shrugged off, hands in pocket.

"Fifteen years ago those boys were three years old," she noted in passing, closing the file and placing it beneath her arm.

"Fifteen years later, they're dead," was Richards comment.

She stepped into them and the two Detectives closed ranks, hands reaching past her weapon, pushing the black leather pocket aside, their fingers making the hard smooth lines of her thighs. Her skirt rose, hiking above her garter and stocking top. There was enough darkness for them to be discreet about a mild early morning three-way grope session.