After I was shot the third time and before I received my settlement money from the City, I needed an income. I called up some of my old military buddies and eventually got hooked up with a group doing research on better bullet-proof vests. Thinner and lightweight vests. I’ve been shot a lot so I pitched in with my experience and wound up being part of the team that created a new vest/shirt that was currently being rolled out by the army.

This got me introduced to a bunch of other civilian military inventors. I had even been to a convention and spoke of my experiences before I became rich and didn’t need to work anymore. And here was the common thread. The killer was most likely one of these people.

People much smarter than me. I’m glad I’m not in this line of work anymore.

Borges changed the subject. “Do you know a massage parlor girl named Lin Wei Fan?” he asked.

“I might,” I admitted, “although probably not under that name. They usually use Americanized aliases and never full names. I might know her as Jenny or Susan or something innocuous like that.”

“We don’t know her working name, I’m afraid. The SF Police received a tip last night that led to her apartment. It appears that she is the artist behind the painting at the second crime scene.”

I pondered that one for a moment. “Foul play?”

“No signs of it that we can see. She has a lot of photos of you though, spread out at her apartment studio. They look like video conversions.”

Well, that solves that. Someplace I have frequented videotapes the clientele. That won’t be one of the Chinese houses. Given that Feng told me that this was one of his girls that meant that someone was moonlighting. It’s not common because the life of a massage parlor girl can wear a person out, but it does happen.

“Do you have a picture of her?” I asked.

Faulkner took another photo out of his folder and put it on the table. “This is from her apartment,” he said.

I took a look at the picture. She’s pretty – or was if she’s dead and she most likely is given how this has been going. Definitely my type. The problem was that I’d never seen her before, and said as much to the Feds. I also mentioned my suspicions about this girl moonlighting in one of the non-Chinese houses.

“This is going to make hear nearly impossible to back-trace,” Faulkner said. “This city has a lot of massage parlors.”

“There is also a chance that she was moonlighting as an escort,” I said. “If she was doing it on her own there are only a few places for her to scout for clients, and I know all of those.”

“Please elaborate.”

So I spent the next 10 minutes explaining how the escort industry works in San Francisco. The websites where people advertise, the two free newspapers where discreet ads are placed, the code system on Craigslist. That last one took some time to explain because Craigslist stopped accepting “sex ads” after a man used them as a cover to kill a co-ed back east. Now they are disguised as ads for other services, like resume services or freelance secretarial work. You just have to pay attention to the language in the ad. Both men took copious notes, and I imagine that the detectives watching this interview outside did the same.

“Let’s change topics and focus on the killer,” Borges finally said.

“Please,” I said. Borges sat back down. He was good at this – changing the subject just as you got comfortable with it. It keeps the interviewee off balance and less likely to keep their lies convincing. My old friend Eric Clapton is also very good at it.

“Who do you know who works on weapons technology?” he asked.

“I know a few people,” I said. “Most are ex military but I have to stress that I don’t know them very well. The project I worked on was defensive in nature…”

“The new vests,” Faulkner said. “I’ve seen them in action – nice work.”

I smiled. “Thanks,” I replied. “Here’s the thing – everyone I know is working on creating things that do more damage; fragmenting rounds, grenades with a wider dispersal range, that sort of thing. I’ll write up a list of names for you with contact information.”

Faulkner passed a pad and pencil to me and I got to work. Borges stepped out of the room for a few minutes, but I had the list finished before he came back. It wasn’t a long list, but it was thorough.

When Borges came back into the room Gilda was with him. I made a mental note to only call her Captain from this point forward. No need to bring up that old history before the Feds.

“Are any of the people on your list working on high- or experimental-tech?” he asked.

“They all are,” I replied. “Why?”

He looked at Captain Gold and nodded. “We have a mystery,” she said. “According to preliminary findings by the medical examiner there are no burn marks in the wounds.”

My mind went reeling for a moment. “They weren’t shot?!?” I exclaimed. Faulkner also looked surprised by this news, and I could see that he even knew why.

Because of my own history I can tell you that bullets are screamingly hot. A bullet that has just been fired will cause water to steam. You can almost always tell a bullet hole in a body because there will be the slightest evidence of the tissue burning as the bullet made contact. It’s not going to be much because of the speed at which bullets travel, but it will still be there. But it doesn’t happen in seconds like on the TV shows – it takes a detailed examination and time.

I learned something new though – Faulkner has also been shot.

Borges brought everything back into focus. “Anyone on that list working on something that shoots something other than bullets?”

Click. I actually heard the wheels in my mind snap into place. Every last detail of everything suddenly made perfect sense. Everyone else in the room noticed it too.

“You just put it all together,” Faulkner said.

I nodded. “Name number four on my list, James Chalone. You really want to talk to him.”

“Why?”

“Bit of a loner and an eccentric. He has this big fascination about making weaponry light-weight so that soldiers have fewer burdens when in the field. I can’t speak for now, but when I knew him a couple of years ago his focus was on weapons you didn’t have to reload.”

“What?” Borges asked, thrown by the direction I was going.

“Weapons you don’t have to reload,” I repeated. “Compressed air in a gun.”

Everyone else got it at that moment too.

“And,” I added, “he has a taste for massage parlors too.”

Gilda took out a pad and wrote down Chalone’s information on a piece of paper. She then tore it from the pad and opened the door, handing it to Detective Clapton, who was already there. He’d probably been watching the interview and saw the move coming.

“Find this man and bring him in,” she said.

“Consider it done,” Clapton replied. He was already walking away.

Borges turned back to me. “I think we’re done for now,” he said. “You can be reached easily?”

“I can. The Captain has been having me followed since this began,” I pointed out.

“For a man with your proclivities you seem to be taking it well.”

“I don’t really mind. My ‘proclivities’ are well known and I’m sure the Captain has a rookie or two that need hazing. Besides – I still don’t understand the fascination with me and how I’ve been thrown into this case. It’s nice to have some police near by because if we don’t wrap this all up eventually someone is going to come after me.”

Both Bores and Faulkner nodded, and Gilda had to cover her emotions for a quick second. Come on now, it’s pretty obvious that I’m a target for some reason.

“And”, I added, “I wouldn’t mind a ride to one of the restaurants by the ballpark. I haven’t really eaten yet today.”