To: 
From: "Jay  P Hailey" 
Reply-To: trekcreative{at}yahoogroups.com


Title: Accidents
Author: Jay P. Hailey (JayPHailey{at}aol.com) Series: Vista City
Part: 4/8
Rating [PG]


Then they had to sort out the background check on Sonya Traveler. The young
Romany woman had drifted into to town and applied for the police as if out
of the blue. Her test scores and aptitudes were very good and the VCPD
accepted her only to find weeks later that much of her background was
impossible to check on. When questioned, Sonya freely admitted to Scott
that "Traveler" was a name that she had adopted for the VCPD and
normally her family simply didn't use last names.

While not technically illegal, the VCPD usually frowned on this. The normal
procedure would have been to let her go. With Sonya's help Scott had double
checked her reference from the North Slope Ski Lodge, and an added
reference from a Canadian Mountie named Kelley Staton. Officer Staton's
references checked out and on the phone he vouched for Sonya. That was
enough for the Assistant Chief, and he closed the matter.

The Assistant chief was really the man who ran the VCPD. He had done the
office politics well enough to make the post of top assistant to the Chief.
But, the Chief was an elected post, and the current Chief of the VCPD was a
political animal. He considered the post a stepping stone to higher offices
or better influence within his party. Consequently he was often away on
seminars around the country or hob nobbing with the political powers in San
Francisco or Sacramento.

The Assistant Chief held his post as long as he made the Chief look good
and he knew it. This had forced him to occasionally sacrifice more complex
cases and issues to the political considerations of his job. In his mind,
Scott and the Special Investigations Squad were a chance to address some of
these issues without risking his own status.

Scott liked Moody. Despite having the appearance of a hard driving, career
oriented yuppie, Moody had a streak of imagination and tolerance that was
rare. Moody was careful to keep his yuppie facade intact.

After the meeting with Assistant Chief Moody, Scott joined some of the rest
of his detectives in their squad room, trying to run down leads on old,
stale unsolved cases that had been dumped on them. There was no shortage of
this stuff for the Special Investigations Squad.

The best investigator for these was Angelo Mancuso. A refugee from Los
Angeles, Mancuso and his partner had stepped on one too many toes in the
big city. Mancuso had a quiet, detailed approach to police work and enjoyed
solving riddles. His work in the Police was an expression of this desire.
Angelo's parents were rich Bel-Aire natives who had educated Angelo to be a
Nuclear Physicist. He turned to police work after independently solving an
unsolved murder in Los Angeles.

His habitual partner, Marcus Gonzales, was a loose cannon. Gonzales was
more prone to give chase and shoot first and then gather the details
together later, if at all. His impulsive nature balanced Angelo's
thoughtful attitude and the two together made a good, if politically unwise
team.

The next full time detective on the Squad was Rebecca Stevens. She had been
a detective for the LAPD, too. She had specialized in Japanese culture and
language, and was the chief investigator of the Yakuza for the LAPD. That
is, until a bomb took her right arm off.

Scott didn't know who had built her cybernetic replacement arm, but he was
certain that it was not the same crew that was responsible for his own.
Rebecca's arm was a gleaming metal limb that made no attempt to hide its
artificial nature. It had mechanical joints and a port in the fore arm for
some sort of experimental blaster. There were small solar cell arrays on
the arm, and when the power in her arm ran low, Rebecca had to plug it in
to a wall socket to recharge it. Scott thought that this was a cruel
approach. But it was safer than the micro-nuclear packs that powered his
own limbs.

Rebecca herself was a professional and competent detective, but she was
still trying to overcome the events that had taken her arm. The VCPD was
the only police force that would take her after the loss of her natural
arm. Moody had confided to Scott that the VCPD thought that her experience
would be more useful than her actual duty on the street. Rebecca's
experience was valuable, but she still went out on the street and had
proven herself as far a Scott was concerned.

But she was still a little gun shy and liable to forget that she was a
woman with a shiny metal arm.

For the rest of the day, Scott worked and thought about what his wife had
asked of him.

-*-

Tuesday was much the same. Wednesday, Jack Small called Scott during lunch.
"Scott, I have a damage report on the B-25."

Scott said "Shoot." He noted that Jack sounded happy.

"Brannon Mark agreed to finance the repair."

This was good news, indeed. Brannon Mark was a wealthy industrialist from
the nearby town of Beauville. He was one of the airplane enthusiasts who
had bought and reconditioned the old plane. he had enough money to buy and
recondition five old Warbirds, but his fortune and finances kept him too
busy to play along too often.

"What's the catch?" Scott knew there would be one. Brannon Mark
wasn't wealthy for nothing.

"Er, well, he wants first refusal on the next five flights."

"How much is the repair going to run?"

"About two thousand in body work, plus another engine."

Scott did the math in his head. "And what's he charging us for the loan?"

"Three percent. It's the minimum under the law."

"Well he's not asking a lot, but I hate to give in on the first bid."

"Jerry said that we should offer the first two and then settle for three."

"What do you think?"

"I think I want to fly it, next time myself, that's what. How about we
counter offer three?"

Scott wanted to ask Jack if he were bothered by the deaths of the people in
the other plane. He didn't. On the flight line in Viet Nam, and back in
World War Two you didn't discuss anyone who didn't come back. It was a
pervasive superstition. If you let it get to you, then you'd be the next
casualty.

Scott enjoyed flying. But he didn't know if he enjoyed it enough to kill
anyone over it. And that's what it felt like.

"Okay. Offer him first refusal on the next three flights."

-*-

The next Sunday, Scott made the short drive over to Beauville, dressed for
heavy work. They would be congregating in the small hangar that housed the
bomber, and doing as much of the work on repairing it as possible. Even
with the loan from Brannon Mark money would be tight, and they needed to
maximize what they had. Besides, under most conditions, working on the
plane carried a large amount of satisfaction. It was something of a love
affair with the plane.

This time Scott was distracted. He just couldn't put the minute amounts of
attention into the plane that he usually did. Scott didn't notice his own
state until his arm over heated.

Scott could pound away with repetitive strength and force using his
cybernetic arm. But if he worked it too heavily for too long, then it over
heated. The sensations were unpleasant. Once the arm ran wild as its over
heated electronics fed spurious feedback to the motors.

Now, the arm just went dead. Scott went outside and took a walk, to give
the arm a chance to cool down and his mind a chance to grapple with his
emotions.

Jerry Bernard walked up behind him. "Scott, are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm just taking a walk to cool off, you know."

Jerry was a San Francisco based reporter. He had first met Scott while
investigating the end of Discrete Investigations Internationale, in Los
Angeles. This was the event that convinced Scott and Jennifer that
retirement was their only course.

Jerry was the only one of the reporters who explored the background enough
to discover the Scott has actually been an astronaut.

"Okay, yeah, you got it under control, Moon man."

Scott bristled at Jerry's tone. "What's that supposed to mean?"


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