Decisions AUwA (Mature) 12/28/10 [WIP]

[greywolf]

Liz wasn't the only Parker with a plan. The moment he'd seen that empty gun cabinet, Jeff Parker knew what was going on. He'd grabbed the big Kabar from the top of the cabinet, and turned and run for the open door. He was going at a full sprint as he came to it.

OK, it wasn't MUCH of a plan, but it actually wasn't all that unreasonable either. The shotgun blasts had come from the corner of the porch - almost certainly from Diane Evans - and Jeff Parker knew that it would take her time to extract the shells from the ancient double barrel - close it - and cock the manual hammers. He also had little doubt that Liz would be bringing the little 22 to bear momentarily and put herself at risk doing so.

A frontal assault by a guy with a big knife would at a minimum draw Williams sights away from the women and - the man had a scoped rifle and the scope occluded the iron sights. Unless Williams could actually get his eyes out of that scope and fire accurately by looking over the top of it, he had almost no chance of hitting a moving target. That was the theory anyway. Right or wrong, Jeff had little doubt that his DI back in boot camp would have approved. Gunnery Sergeants were like that.

Besides, even if he never made it to Williams he would draw his fire, give Diane Evans a chance to reload, make sure the guy didn't spot Liz and put a bullet in to her. For a father worried about his only child, that was reason enough to do this. Besides, if the guy only wounded him, he might still be able to make it the fifty or sixty feet to Williams before he went down. They'd actually pracitces knife-fighting with their Kabars in boot camp - albeit with a scabbard on them. All you really had to do was to insert the knife just below the sternum in a swift upward movement at 60 degrees to the ground. The sharp blade would cleave through the muscles of the upper abdomen, come up through the bottom of the diaphragm, and put a big slit in the left ventricle heart. After that the possibility of Williams causing Liz future harm would decrease rather drastically.

Like bayonet practice, the Marines did it over and over. It actually wasn't easy to get normally adjusted people to kill other people - assuming of course you believed Marines to be normally adjusted. That was why you drilled repeatedly with the Kabar and with bayonets. So you could do it by rote and not have to really think about it - because if they really thought about it - really understood they were taking a human life - they'd generally freeze up and not be able to do it. That's why all the training. Even then you were at risk for post traumatic stress relating to killing the other person.

Of course when your loved one's life was on the line, like Liz's was today, Jeff had a pretty good idea that the rules were different. He didn't think there would be any hesitation under that sort of situation. As he sprinted for the door he was thinking about those knife lessons a whole lot more for technique than he was because they were supposed to desensitize him to the act of killing itself. Protecting your family was all the motivation you really needed.

But as he came through the open door - still accelerating - there was a little 'pop' of a 22 caliber single-shot bolt action rifle - and Williams collapsed like a cheap suit. The man literally bent at the knees and tumbled over backwards and lay there - his feet still awkwardly bent under his unmoving body.

'THAT,' thought Jeff Parker, '... is a kill.'

He slowed his headlong charge and finally got himself stopped nearly one-third of the way to Williams - just a few feet short of the collapsed Mr. Evans. He turned to look and saw his little girl... his only child ... the 22 still in her hands and running tearfully toward him. The sight of her tore at his heart envisioning the mental anguish and trauma she'd just experienced. As she ran toward him he held out his arms to hug and comfort her as he had done hundreds of times growing up....

The really good news, was that in another six months, Jeff was going to have a grandson and a granddaughter, and he would love them almost as much as he had their mother. And they would reciprocate that love for the rest of his long and interesting life. And their favorite story of all the stories he would tell them, would be about the day that some insane guys had tried to kill their mom, and that when the last guy was dead, he'd put out his arms to hug her, "... and then your mother ran right by me without even seeing me, to make sure your father was alright."

It would be a story that he would tell and retell to his grandchildren, a story that would reliably make their mother blush and protest that she really HAD seen their grandchildren, she was just worried about their daddy. It would in time become part of the lore of the Parker ranch - more valued even than the oil wealth the place would generate.

Yes, it was bittersweet losing a daughter, but Jeff was wise enough to understand that losing her was inevitable and the only way to get her back was to let her go. So he stood there - sort of like a statue - with this big honking knife in his hand watching his daughter on her hands and knees holding the head of the young man who appeared to be slowly regaining consciousness against her bosom, her raining kisses down on his hair in a manner that would have told even the most doubtful parent that she was unashamedly, undeniably, unabashedly, and most totally Max's.

Only a little over an hour ago he'd wanted to kill the lad - thinking HE had been the one trying to kill Liz - but he'd been wrong - wrong about a lot of things. Besides, when a daughter makes her choice, a wise father just smiles ... blinks the tears out of his eyes ... and agrees. Oh. Max wasn't REALLY good enough for her ... no man was ... but he was the one she'd chosen. That made Max ...family.

Nothing else really mattered.

[greywolf]

Diane had been frantic - frantic as any mother could be - as she tried to get the spent cartridges out of the old shotgun. Double barrel shotguns sort of went out of vogue because they were awkward and slow to reload. You had to push a lever to the side - allow the gun to 'break', the barrel tilting forward on a hinge while the stock, triggers, cocking mechanism, etc., went backwards, opening the breech of the barrel and allowing you to get at the spent shells. There were extractors that would pull the spent shells up a quarter-inch or so to loosen them - but the ancient double barrel didn't actually eject the spent shells like newer shotguns. They had to be removed by hand and the other shells placed in their appropriate positions - by hand. Even after the shells were in position, the entire shotgun had to be manually straightened out - getting the the breech to lock back in position, then a hammer on either side cocked. It wasn't a process that was fast, but it could be slowed appreciably by trying to rush your efforts - and doing them poorly. Realizing her son was about to be killed made Diane hurry - knowing that hurrying might make her clumsy and slow up the process even more was making her frantic.

She was concentrating on the process of reloading, afraid to even look at what Williams was doing - for fear it would slow her down. But she was also terribly afraid - afraid that she'd hear the discharge of that big high-powered rifle. Instead she heard the crack of the small 22, almost inaudible over the noise of Abernathy's screams. She turned her head just in time to see Williams fold like a cheap suit and collapse unmoving on the ground.

'Thank you Lord..., she thought as she turned to run to her son - shotgun in hand, '...and thank you Liz,' she thought as she saw the young lady, already around the side of the porch and running frantically for Max.

As she approached Max, it was obvious to Diane that Liz was a faster runner than she was. Diane wanted nothing more than to grab Max in her arms and hug the boy to her bosom and let kisses of relief rain down on her son's head while tears of joy filled her eyes. That particular job, however, seemed to already be filled.

So she slowed herself to a stop and contented herself with watching the young lady who was carrying her grandchildren, reassure HERSELF that Max was OK. Fortunately he did seem to be OK. Physically spent maybe, but recovering. And his smiling face as he looked up at Liz seemed to be filled with immense joy.

'I don't think this shotgun will actually be necessary to get him to that wedding,' thought Diane, smiling down at her son - her son who after all these years seemed to finally realize that he WAS a real boy. Or at least a real young man. There was certainly nothing fake about Liz's love for him - or his love for her.

She'd had him for such a short time - to have to give him up. And he'd ALWAYS been a real boy, whatever he may have believed. Still, she wasn't so much giving up a son as gaining a daughter. And in six months she'd have a chance to have what she had long wanted - actual babies to see from the very beginning. OK, they'd be grandchildren and not her children, but that would be wonderful too, and with Max and Liz still having to finish school, she'd get plenty of opportunities to 'help out' with childcare. Liz wasn't the only one with a plan - Diane already had a mental list of things she could get for them - places she could take them - fun they were going to have....

Diane looked over to Jeff Parker who was looking down at the two youngsters and smiling ... and shedding a few tears of happiness - and she realized she was doing the same. She followed Jeff's eyes as he nodded and she looked back at the two children - well, children no more. Max had recovered enough to get his head up and return one of those kisses.

'No, this certainly won't need to be a shotgun wedding...' she thought to herself happily, pointing the shotgun in a safe direction and slowly, carefully, lowering the hammers.

[greywolf]

Jim Valenti was on his feet for less than a second before Jeff Parker came back from the rear of the house, moving at a good clip and continuing to accelerate with a big honking knife in his right hand. He knew instinctively what Jeff was up to - he was going to make a run at Williams. It was a risky proposition for any guy to do - any single guy. Of course Williams had a bolt action rifle and was maybe sixty or seventy feet away. Jim looked in Pemberton's eyes and it was like they read each others mind. As long as they kept their silhouettes staggered - so no single bullet would drill through the three of them - there was simply no way the son of a bitch could get all three of them until one of them got to him. Chances are at least two would make it.


'This bastard has been setting us up for weeks - making fools of us - and if it wasn't for the Evans boy doing what he'd done - and God alone knew how he'd done that - we'd be being doused with gas and ready for the torch, or maybe already burning,' thought Jim.

Yeah, it was a high risk plan. One of the three of them could easily end up dying - but it meant that bastard out there was going down. After the events of the last hour, that was reason enough to join in Jeff's kamikaze charge.

Jim and Pemberton went through the door side by side and then spread out so that the bullet could only get one of them - but when the gunshot came, it was the little pop of a 22, not the loud bang of Williams 30-06.

Over almost 20 years, Jim had seen four shootings in the line of duty, one of them fatal and arrived at the scene after a half dozen other fatal shootings - most of them suicides. He'd never seen someone just .... drop ... like Williams had.

'It had to have been a head shot,' he told himself. He'd never seen anybody actually collapse on to his own lower legs - just lay there on his back with his eyes looking up at the sky - chest not even moving. '... he must have been dead the instant he took the hit...'

Of course, looking at Williams he'd damn near run inn to the back of Jeff Parker who'd come to an abrupt halt as Liz - still carrying the little 22 in one hand - had run right by him enroute to Max.

Max himself ... well, Max looked about like Kyle had looked the morning after Liz had kept him from dying of alcohol poisoning at that party. Kyle had told him later like he'd felt like he'd 'have to rally to die...' Apparently whatever he'd done with that golden light-ray thing coming from his hand had really taken the stuffing out of the kid. Looking out at the carnage - the big crewcab diesel pickup burning merrily with Abernathy underneath it and on the other side McCarthy's body smoldering away - maybe that was understandable.

Of course Max brightened visibly when he found himself eye level with Liz's cleavage, with her clinging to him and kissing him on the top of the head. Jim fought back a chuckle. Apparently the young lady wanted to give the kid something to live for. It appeared to be working too, as his head finally came up and their lips met. Jim looked at Jeff, who seemed to be handling the situation OK, and at Diane. Both were crying, but there were big grins on those faces the tears were trickling down from.

Jim took a deep breath and leaned back to take in the entire scene.

'This is going to be a shitload of paperwork,' he thought, '... and if those two kids are going to have any chance at a normal life, that paperwork is going to have to be creatively... edited.'

Of course, that's when he saw what Pembroke was doing.

The deputy had stopped briefly, taken in the scene with disbelief, looking at the unmoving and not even apparently breathing Williams, the burning remains of Abernathy, wedged under the truck, and finally at McCarthy, the one deceased who had - pretty unequivocally - died as a direct result of Max Evans, and his strange ability to have a laser ray or some damn thing shoot out of his palm.

Pembroke walked over to McCarthy slowly looking back toward Max several times - before stopping near the edge of the circle of fire still consuming the dead thug. He reached in to the grass - just outside the scorched area - and retrieved his service automatic - ejecting one shell and catching it in mid-air to ascertain the weapon was loaded. Then he turned and - weapon in hand - walked straight toward the recovering - but still pretty fatigued looking - Max Evans.

Unfortunately, thought Jim, the deputy might not be willing to let bygones be bygones with Max, and he apparently wasn't the only one that seemed to fear that. As Pemberton came back from the flaming remains of McCarthy, he walked directly to Max - the deputy's eyes looking at nobody else, but three other people were looking at him. Jeff Parker - who slowly moved the Kabar from his left to his - dominant - right hand, Diane Evans, who was as pokerfaced as any trial lawyer could be, while her right thumb quietly cocked one of the hammers on the old 12 gauge, and even Liz Parker - who slowly was lifting the little 22 from the ground where she'd laid it down.

Jim hoped - fervently - that Pemberton wasn't actually going to confront Max Evans. If he was, Max would be the least of the man's problems.

[greywolf]

Deputy Pembroke was looking out through one of the shattered front windows when Jeff Parker came back from the rear of the house, running toward the door with a big the big Kabar in his hand.

It was clear what Jeff planned. The man was going to make a run at Williams. In football they'd have called it a safety blitz. You eschew playing defense for an all out rush. You get to the quarterback before he can - in the parlance of the game - pull the trigger - and fire the ball at the guy you may have left wide-open behind you. It's not an unreasonable strategy - you know given time he's going to beat you - but if you get to him with your bull rush ... well, the play is certainly over. Of course, Jeff Parker was betting his life on this play.

Of course, with the Evans kid having taken out McCarthy - exactly how he'd done that was some what of a mystery but Pemberton had a pretty good hunch from some material he'd found once upon a time in an old desk he'd gotten out of salvage when he was a rookie detective - not that he'd ever really believed it.

He'd actually thought it was a joke someone was playing. I mean this was Roswell he was starting to work as a detective in - and the town still talked up that old weather balloon incident to bring in tourists. Except no one had ever kidded him about it... he'd waited for years - cops were known for elaborate practical jokes on new rookies - but no one had ever given him the punch line.

Of course, after seeing the beam of light come from the kid's hand and the havoc it had caused, he was reevaluating the ancient document. Of course, that wasn't his immediate concern.

What Jeff Parker was doing was a risky proposition for any guy to do - any single guy. Of course Williams had a bolt action rifle and was only sixty or seventy feet away. Pemberton looked at Jim Valenti and it was like they read each others mind. As long as they didn't get in a row - so no single bullet would get them with one shot - there was simply no way that at least one of them - more likely at least two - wouldn't get to Williams. After that - they'd show the bastard the meaning of the expression, 'police brutality.'

Yeah, it was a high risk plan. One of the three of them could easily end up dying - but it meant that bastard out there was going down. After the events of the last hour, that was reason enough to join in Jeff's kamikaze charge.

Pemberton had done a lot of thinking in last twenty minutes. Most of it had been about dying. It hadn't even been the thought of being burned to death that had been the worst, it had been the thought of leaving Steph and little Angela alone. That's why he hated Williams so much. It wasn't just that he'd have had a painful five or ten minutes and ended up a charred mass of flesh and bone, it was that a six year-old girl would have grown up with no daddy to take care of her.

Oh, he loved Steph too, more than he could ever tell her, but she was an adult and a very capable one - she had to be being a cops wife - but Angela was just a little girl who expected - who needed - for her daddy to be there for her future to come out right ... and Williams had been planning to take that from her, take the future from his daughter, at least the kind of future she should have.

Sure, that was always a possibility - that he'd die and leave his kid with no father. An occupational hazard of being a cop - a risk with every domestic violence case you responded to. You take your chances every day as a cop, with every person you wind up dealing with ...but Williams was different from that. Williams was just plain evil. He didn't want Williams walking around in the same world as his little Angela.


Pemberton and Jim went through the door side by side and then spread out so that the bullet could only get one of them - but when the gunshot came, it was the little pop of a 22, not the loud bang of Williams 30-06. It had to be Liz Parker - she was the only one unaccounted for.

Over almost 9 years, Pemberton had seen two shootings in the line of duty, none of them fatal, but he had arrived at the scene after the fact at four other fatal shootings - two of them suicides. He'd never seen someone who had just .... dropped ... like Williams had.

'....and you thought you were protecting her...,' he thought to himself as he slowed up to keep from running in to a young lady with a 22 who was running like the wind to get to the young man collapsed in front of Jeff Parker.

'...and HE is the one you were going to protect her FROM...,' he thought as he watched the young lady bury Max Evans head in her chest and kiss the top of his head.

'Hell, I'm half-worried she's going to smother him..., he thought, turning his head and chuckling. 'I guess if you can't take a little irony, you ought not to be a detective...' Pemberton told himself as he smiled and looked away. The kid looked like he'd recover ... he had responded to the kisses with one of his own ... and if it weren't for the mess to clean up, Pemberton thought the kindest thing they could do for the young couple was just for him, Jeff Parker, Jim Valenti, and Diane Evans to just go get a cup of coffee.

Obviously the two had a lot to talk over - assuming they could keep it to the talking stage. Sneaking another look, Pemberton didn't even think THAT would be a problem. Clearly Max Evans was improving, but he still looked like the effects of almost a half Liter of single malt Scotch hadn't entirely worn off. But as he looked back to the bodies of the three real perpetrators, he figured the two of them would have a whole lot of better days ahead of them.

'Once the paperwork gets done, of course,...' Pemberton thought, and he certainly wasn't looking forward to that. That's when he saw the weapon laying on the ground not too far from McCarthy - or at least what was left of McCarthy.

He walked slowly out to the unmoving still burning corpse, and reached down five or six feet from it to pick his service automatic up off the dirt. It was hot to the touch - far too hot - and he quickly pushed the clip release to drop the magazine into his left hand. It too was hot to the touch, but it would cool quickly now. He slipped it in to his pocket. Pemberton ejected the chambered shell without pulling the slide back far enough to engage the slide holdback - and caught the ejected cartridge in mid air, pocketing it too. Now the firearm was safe - if too hot for him to want to put it back into his holster. He carried it gingerly by the composite grip, not touching the metal

He looked down at McCarthy in disgust - the bastard would have probably killed all three of them if Williams and Abercrombie hadn't turned up just as he was able to get away from them.

"Hope the broken nose hurt like hell, too..." he said to the burning corpse, then shook his head. That would have been small consolation had Max Evans not gotten lose - had Max not taken out McCarthy - even if he was aiming at Williams. "Hell of a bank shot the kid's got, wasn't it," he asked the corpse. Outside of a little cracking and hissing, there really wasn't much of an answer. Pemberton looked at Abernathy's body, wedged under the crew cab Silverado pickup that was burning more furiously by the second, then another look at the unmoving body of Williams that was grotesquely collapsed onto its own lower legs.

'Let's see, that would be one perp taken out by the kid you wrongfully charged, one taken out by the mother of the kid you wrongfully charged, and one taken out by the young lady you were trying to protect.... Not the best day for the Roswell Sheriff's Office Detective Department, .... although all things considered, being alive at the end of the process is kind of nice....'

For which, Pemberton decided, he really had Max Evans to thank.... and he ought to be getting to that now. He strolled up to the boy - check that, Max had recently been upgraded to fine young man status in Pemberton's mind.

He walked slowly back to where the Sheriff, Jeff Parker, Diane Evans, and Liz Parker were gathered around the still seated on the ground Max Evans. But Pemberton had been a street cop for almost seven years before he became a detective. He knew how to read body language. Jim Valenti was looking at him with concern and disapproval. Jeff Parker shifted his Kabar knife from his left hand to his right, and was holding it in the serious thumb and three-fingered grip of someone who actually had been trained in knife-fighting, Diane Evans was surreptitiously - not quite surreptitiously enough though - cocking that ancient12 gauge, and even Liz Parker was pulling the little 22 close to her.

"You guys can NOT possibly think that I'm going to give Max a hard time about this, can you...?"

Four pairs of eyes looked at him skeptically. Only Max wasn't looking at him with some doubt, and that was because Max wasn't looking at him at all. The poor young man was apparently still nursing that hangover.

"Look, the only reason that my little girls daddy is going to be coming home tonight is because of Max. The least I think we can do is to try to help get him off of the jailbreak and grand theft auto charges he's going to be facing .... isn't it Jim? I mean... you owe him too, Jim. We can't let this couple spend their lives harassed by all the weirdos that come to the Crash festival - or worse yet - the feds??"

Jim Valenti chuckled. "No, I guess we can't, can we...?"

[greywolf]

Of course, while all this happiness, affection, and bonhomie was going on Williams continued to lay on the ground, collapsed onto his own lower legs, about thirty-five feet from the fiercely burning Silverado pickup.

The bullet had only been traveling 1125 feet per second when it left the barrel and even in the relatively thin air of the high plains of eastern New Mexico it had already started to slow down before it had struck Williams. But it still retained enough energy to punch through the skin of the occipital triangle just behind the sternocleidomastoid muscle of the neck.

That actually wasn't where Liz Parker had aimed - she'd been trying for a head shot, believing that to be the most likely way to actually stop Williams before he got his own shot off. She might actually have been wrong in that supposition - depending on the angle of impact, the little bullet may or may not have penetrated the skull at all - but a rushed shot had caused her to jerk the trigger and, well, she shot went where it went.

The odds on her making the shot - had she actually been trying to make it - would have been near astronomical. Given that she wasn't actually targeting what she hit, one would think it would have been even less likely. But as a statistician would tell you, given a near infinite number of places a stray shot might hit, the probability of it hitting ANY discrete point is vanishingly small. Still, it has to hit somewhere. As improbable as the shot was, it was no more improbable than any other discrete outcome out of the universe of possibilities. The implications to Williams, however, were quite severe.

The bullet entered at an angle from front to back hitting absolutely nothing of physiological importance until the very back of the neck where the bullet exited - almost - between the fourth and fifth cervical vertebra.

The upper spinal cord has a number of tracts, and they all do different things. The bullet smashed into the spinal canal through the foramen of the right fifth cervical nerve, which would - for the rest of his life - cause an area of numbness to his right shoulder and parts of his right arm. From Williams perspective, that would ultimately be the only GOOD thing that would happen to him for the rest of his life.

Spinal cords actually have some degree of stretch to them, but not enough to take the impact of the little 22 bullet, despite it's slowed speed. It impacted directly on the right rubrospinal tract, destroying it utterly. It then traversed through the center of the spinal cord itself - doing surprisingly little damage - until it was stopped on the left side of the spinal cord - as it crushed the left rubrospinal tract up against the interior of the neural arch and transverse process on the other side.

The rubrospinal tract carries motor impulses from the brain down to the muscles. Not just voluntary movements - but even the motor function necessary for just normal muscle tone. Absent these motor impulses, no voluntary muscles could work.

As the rubrospinal tract was severed on both sides, Williams had dropped like a puppet whose strings had been abruptly cut, staring straight up into the blue New Mexico sky. Suddenly nothing worked. Oh, he could see and hear alright - the transection of his spinal cord had left him that - he could even breathe after a fashion - the phrenic nerve that runs the diaphragm comes branches off from above where he'd been injured - but that was about it. He could feel and he could breath - sort of. Normally most of the breathing is done by the muscles of the rib cage - augmented by the diaphragm. Most of his rib muscles were paralyzed, but as long as he didn't move around much - and that would never be a problem again - Williams would breathe well enough to stay conscious - just not enough to speak or - ultimately - to scream.

Oh, his eyes could move - to sweep that space of sky above him - but not much else. His lips could move - but he couldn't generate enough of an exhalation to be heard over the crackling flames of the fiery truck. Mostly he just hurt - in his neck and - increasingly - in his lower legs, where his hips - collapsed on top of the legs themselves- were gradually cutting off the circulation.

When the shadow of the woman fell on his face those eyes swiveled, expecting to see Liz Parker - but it wasn't Liz that Williams saw. She was already kneeling at Max's side. Nor was it Diane Parker either. She was standing by her son - engaged in the delicate mental process that all mothers go through when they adjust to the fact that their son has another woman in his life - and she's the real thing too.

No, it's very possible that the young lady standing over Williams wasn't real at all - just a figment of imagination of a mind that had just received an overwhelming shock. But gradually Williams thought he recognized that young lady. It was ... he decided ... Debbie Hargreaves. Not the Debbie that had actually died that day. No, this was a different Debbie Hargreaves. This was not the tormented soul who had taken her own life but rather ... well, perhaps the young woman that innocent little Debbie WOULD have become without his ... intervention.

She looked down on him with... was it pity? Could ghosts ... or angels ... feel pity? Or was this apparition merely an illusion of a mind that was overwhelmed with the catastrophes that had befallen it?

'Stupid bitch!' he thought at the apparition. 'It's all YOUR fault. If you hadn't lost it ... killed yourself ... I'd be governor ... and well on the way to being President.
But YOU....you ruined everything....'

The woman's eyes looked sad as she looked at him ... like she pitied him ... and that only stoked his anger even more.

'Go away,' he tried to scream at her, '...this is all your fault.' but no real noises came out. But it was almost as if the apparition had heard him and - with one sad shake of the head, it walked off toward the mountains to the East.

But the sound of the fire was no illusion as the pool of fire spread wider and wider as the cans of gas emptied themselves into the ever widening pool. The truck itself was diesel powered, and as it came from the factory it had a standard 36 gallon tank. Of course that hadn't been enough for Williams - he'd had a 52 gallon tank added to handle the wide open spaces of the high plains of New Mexico. The tank was polyethylene - plastic - corrosion proof and even sturdier than the original sheet metal tank that was installed beside it. Of course it wasn't intended to be at the center of a pool of burning gasoline - and eventually the top parts of it melted and began to burn, allowing the diesel fuel to drip to the ground.


As Jim Valenti continued to kid his chief of detectives, the burning truck 80 or 90 feet away suddenly flamed even higher as 52 gallons of diesel added themselves to the fiery conflagration below.

"Hey, that truck is really burning," said Jeff. We better get Max back to the porch. before it blows. Inside might be better yet..."

"It's a diesel, it shouldn't blow, but it can really burn like fury," said Jim Valenti. "Let's get Liz and Diane and Max back in the house. It'd probably be a good idea if the rest of us tossed some water from your cistern onto the porch and the face of the house. It's going to get real hot around here. I doubt the flame will get this far but look how it's spreading. Must have been a hell of a lot of fuel in the truck."


Williams heard the sound of Diane Evans and Liz Parker helping Max Evans away from the oncoming flame and tried to scream out for help - but what noises passed his lips were lost in the noise of the flames. He heard all three men splashing water on the front porch - while the air around him got more heated by the second.


Williams could hear the fire coming closer and as the fuel tank of the pickup truck finally melted completely to add it's 52 gallons of diesel fuel to the inferno he could feel the heat on his face Yet still the heat grew with each passing second. He could smell the acrid smell of burned hair as his scalp started to burn. The pain was Eventually he could smell the burning flesh - and realized it was his. He tried to scream out his agony, but even that was denied him. All he could do was pray that this agony would soon be over.


The entity that had once been Debbie Hargreaves wandered eastward toward the mountains. It had been years since she'd been there. As a young girl - before the terror started - she had happily ridden these hills dozens of times on her little pony. She still loved the land and loved those memories. Not that where she was currently ... well ... living wouldn't quite be the right word .... was really at all bad. She had her mother and her real father and many friends - and she'd found a true love of her own.

Everyone makes decisions, and everyone makes mistakes. She too had hurt people with her actions... but she'd repented them. She'd even forgiven Williams for what he'd done to her. She hadn't had to come back here - hadn't had to make herself available for Williams - to allow him the chance to repent his own sins and to earn - like she had earned - another chance for happiness.

Yes, she'd wander the hills for a few more hours and then return to her own domain - not unlike the dream plane that Isabel traversed so easily - although sort of a different frequency.

Debbie looked back again at the fiercely burning pickup. She had forgiven him - and all he had to do was repent and he too would have had a second chance. His decision had been otherwise. Arthur Williams life would be over in a few minutes as the burning fuel first surrounded and finally consumed his body. But the domain he would go to - his own personal hell - would be the one he was building right now. A domain of pain and the sickly smell of his own scorched flesh and hair ... and his domain too would be an eternal one.

She shook her head sadly. Everyone made decisions in their life....and Williams had made his....

[greywolf]

It was twenty minutes later and the fuel was finally burning itself out on the Silverado pickup.

Not just the 52 gallon accessory tank, or even the 15 gallons of gasoline and 5 gallons of diesel that had been brought from the Williams ranch. ALL the fuel, including the 30 gallons of diesel that had been in the main tank, the eight quarts of oil in the crankcase, 5.3 liters of ethylene glycol coolant in the radiator, 3 quarts of brake fluid, the rubber on all six tires on the dually vehicle plus the spare, and every bit of plastic and leather in the interior.
Before it had started to burn out, the circle of flame had encompassed not only Abernathy – still wedged underneath the burning chassis, but the charred and still-smoking bodies of McCarthy and Williams as well. But it was starting to burn out, finally, and the wind was carrying all the smoke and most of the heat away from the ranch house. Yes, the face of the house toward the burnt-out hulk of the pickup was steaming from the radiated heat where Jeff and the two law enforcement officers had doused it with water, but it was nowhere near its kindling temperature and with the fire now burning out, further spread wasn't really an issue.

Diane Evans had moved the other vehicles well away from the fire, while the guys were dousing down the front of the ranch house. She'd brought the sat-phone back in just as they were finished and Jim Valenti had called for help. Unfortunately, the 'local' volunteer fire department was finishing up at a structure fire almost twenty minutes on the OTHER side of their station. It'd be a good forty minutes before they would get the first vehicle to the ranch to respond. The medical examiner's office and forensics people would be even longer in getting there – probably no less than 90 minutes. The third call had gotten instant success. The superior court judge on call had agreed that Valenti and Pemberton could – based upon the things that Williams had said about framing Max – have a search warrant to insure that the evidence at the Williams ranch – and any unsecured firearms – were secured as soon as they could get over there, even before the forensics people arrived. Jim and Pemberton planned on getting over there in another fifteen minutes or so – and dropping Diane off at her car on the way. Right now though, everyone was in the ranchhouse. Jeff, Jim, and Pemberton were sitting at the kitchen table having a well-deserved cup of coffee. Diane was in the living room taking a cup of coffee to Max – at Liz's request – to help the young man with the remains of his hangover.

“Thanks, Mrs. Evans,” said Liz as she set the cup of coffee on the table next to the sofa.

“Yeah, thanks, Mom,” said Max. “Uh...Mom.., about not telling you about before you picked us up...”

“Let's not talk about that right now, OK, Max? Right now you just relax and drink your coffee and eat the toast Liz is feeding you. I want you in good health … when I finally get around to unloading on you for not trusting your very own mother for the last ten years....,”

“But Mom...,”

“Hush, now,” Diane said, finally taking her turn to hug him tightly against her chest and give the top of his head a kiss. She liked Liz, loved her in fact, but she wasn't going to let the young lady hog her son completely.

“We'll talk about this at a later time, when your sister is present. I might not be able to stay upset enough to do justice to how I feel twice, so I'll just have to have that talk with the two of you both at the same time.” She softened the stern warning with a smile, while reaching up her hand to muss his hair a little – not that Liz hadn't beaten her to that as well. Then she turned to Liz with a twinkle in her eye. “Besides, … I need to go clean that old shotgun. You never know, I might need it later....”

Liz stifled her own conspiratorial grin. “You know, Max, you really do have an awful nice mom. I really like her a lot.”

“I like her a lot too, in fact I love her. I never meant to hurt her feelings – it was just that I never really thought I COULD be the real boy that she wanted me to be...”

“Look, Max, I know that what happened the night of the party – well, it certainly wasn't your idea. I really don't expect you to feel obligated to...”

His finger found her lips, silently shushing her.

“Oh, it was my idea, alright. I'd dreamed of us doing that since puberty … in fact I think it was what caused me to go into puberty … it's just that ... well, I couldn't really bring myself to do that to you...”

“That?”

“Not that THAT. I dreamed about doing that THAT so often I was afraid some night Isabel would dreamwalk me and catch me. … us ...”

“Dreamwalk?”

“Uh, this is going to be more complicated than I thought. Isabel can get in people's dreams and see what they are dreaming...”

“Max.... first things first. If not THAT 'that', what 'that' were you talking about?”

“Liz, if I'd have known that I was really even MOSTLY human, there would have been nothing in this world – or any other – that would have kept me from asking you out … from courting you. But since I didn't think I was human, I didn't want anything that would hurt you. I noticed the signals you were sending – even in junior high school – and if I'd believed for a moment that we could have a life together, I'd have been asking you to every dance, every movie.... But I didn't think that we were … compatible … and when you tried to push things at the end of last year .. I figured I needed to just give you up cold turkey, just say no. But I've never been able to do that. I guess I just need you too much.”

“Well Max, what I meant to say is... well I care for you too, but I know you didn't plan this pregnancy … and you shouldn't feel obligated...”

“Liz, let's stop the pretending right there – I've pretended all my life, and I don't want to pretend any more.. These ARE my children too. Of course I want to be a part of their lives, but I want to be a part of their mother's life even more.

Liz....will you marry me?”

“Max.... are you sure?” she asked, “... because you don't HAVE to do this..”

“I know I don't. True, Mom's got her heart set on having you for a daughter-in-law, but I don't think she'd REALLY use that shotgun on me if I didn't ask you,” Max said, “ of course I HAVE loved you since third grade and dreamed about being married to you since I understood what marriage was … probably before that actually … but I guess the real question is whether you can forgive me for being such an idiot for all these years … and whether or not you want to be part of this whole alien thing or not...?” he said, giving her his most encouraging smile.

She smiled back at him. “Well, you were quite an idiot at that … ,” she acknowledged with a slight nod of her head, “...but you are awful cute .. and fairly responsible … and I am carrying your two children inside of me … two kids that when they are in the 'terrible twos' might be capable of ...what did you call it... powerblasting? I MIGHT need a little help with that...”

“So that would be a yes then?”he asked, somewhat wide-eyed.

She kissed him first, then spoke, her answer coming through the connection even before he heard her voice.

[That would DEFINITELY be a yes]

Meanwhile, back at the kitchen table, Diane was rejoining the three other people.

“How is he doing?” asked Jeff.

“Well,, your daughter was right about the toast, Max seemed to be almost back to normal. We'll see what the coffee does.”

Jeff nodded. “My daughter the hangover cure authority from the one time inn her life she ever got drunk – the night of that football party..."

“Yeah,” Diane said, “...I'm sorry that happened too...”

“You're sorry? Hell, I'm the one who is sorry. It was my son that actually took Liz to that damn thing...,” interjected Jim Valenti.

“Yeah, but it was MY son who … well, did the deed...” said Diane.

“Well, in fairness, Liz bears her own responsibility for the decisions she made that night. The problem I've got is … hell, I'm not even sure they were the wrong decisions, said Jeff, "Not that I wanted Liz to be a single mom., you understand...”

Pemberton sneaked a peek into the living room where the young couple had just gone from kissing to looking at Liz's ultrasound pictures. Max was resting his hand gently on Liz's lower abdomen – to feel the auras of their children-to-be and looking like the happiest guy in the world. Pemberton chuckled and nodded at the two teenagers.

“I may not be the BEST detective in the world, but even I would be willing to lay long odds on the two of them being married long before Liz is actually anyone's mom,” he said.

All four of them at the table took a quick look at the two teenagers and smiled.

“I think you may be right,” said Jeff, grinning at Diane, “... and what I meant was … well, it's not that I'd have chosen for that night to happen that way for Lizzy, but it scares me even worse to think of what would probably have happened if those two HADN'T gotten together that night, I mean, this wasn't your typical street thug with no resources and no idea of what the police were capable of that was trying to kill my daughter...”

“You got that right,” said Pemberton. “Williams knew what police expect to find. Most murders of young girls are usually domestic violence that gets out of hand – some boyfriend or would-be boyfriend – and they usually are impulsive. I admit, I had the wrong idea about your son, Mrs. Evans. I knew about him being a foundling … that he and Miss Parker had done a lot of things together. When she was so defensive about him … well, it all sort of came together. Kid with a sort of screwed up upbringing – before you adopted him I mean – who was the long-awaited child of a couple of well-to-do lawyers. The kid forces himself on the girl when she was impaired....”

“You had that part right, I guess,” said Jim Valenti, “... except for who was impaired.”

“...and who apparently did the forcing,” said Jeff, nodding.

“Well, then the guy goes crazy not wanting the pregnancy and the girl doesn't go along with aborting it... that's just the situation we see all the time...”

“Yeah, I suppose the boy wanting the pregnancy aborted because he's not sure he's human – or that the pregnancy might hurt the girl – well, that just isn't all that common,” said Diane.

“No. Not that having some homicidal lunatic with all the resources that Williams had after a young girl who – apparently – had no connection with the intended victim is either,” said Pemberton, “I'm not sure without knowing about the oil discovery we … I .. would have ever figured that out … at least not in time.”

“All of which takes me back to my somewhat ambiguous feelings about that night. I can't actually APPROVE of my daughter's decisions and actions that night, but had they been any OTHER actions … it's unlikely that this whole plot would have been discovered … at least not before Williams had actually killed Liz...”

“Hell, she didn't miss dying by that much anyway,” said Jim Valenti, “....none of us did.” He took another drink of coffee and decided that he really REALLY would call Amy DeLuca up and ask her out on a date. After all, no one lives forever.

“And if it hadn't been for Max, that night, the pregnancy, everything... I probably WOULD have lost my daughter, my own life .... everything. THAT'S why I just don't know how to feel about my daughter's actions that night. I've been kicking myself for weeks for pushing her to go to that party, but if she hadn't, would she even be alive now...?”

“Would Max have ever even told us the truth about himself...?” Diane agreed, nodding her head.

“Maybe this was just destiny,” said Jim Valenti. “Maybe those two were always supposed to get together, and somehow, everything happening like it did, that was the only way FOR it to come out right. Liz surviving.... Max getting tested – at least through his children – and learning he was human....”

“And Williams and his two thugs getting stopped...” agreed Pemberton, “... and it's even stranger than you think. This has been decades in the making – older in fact than those of us here. Max may have been born in our lifetimes, but he was conceived – intellectually and physically – long before that.”

“What do you mean?” asked Diane.

“When I first got promoted to Detective they were expanding that part of the department. I was the third guy in a branch that had only had two guys. There was room in the department for another cubicle, but they didn't even have a desk for me. I went down in the basement of the old city hall and scrounged around for something. I found a desk – gun metal gray and dating back to the 1940s. The right lower drawer could barely be opened and made a horrible squealing noise when you tried, but the other drawers worked fine and I needed something, so the janitor and I carted it upstairs. Eventually I decided to try to fix the drawer. I got the thing out, and it was just some rusty bearings on the slide – but while I had it out I found something. It seemed like the desk had been used by an FBI guy back in 1947.”

“The Special Unit guys,” said Jim, nodding his head. “My father told me about them … secretive bunch. They were the ones that investigated the weather balloon flying saucer incident.”

Pemberton nodded. “Well, I guess paperwork has always been a part of law enforcement work. I found in the bottom of the desk, underneath that stuck drawer …. well, do any of you know what flimsies were?”

“Flimsies? Asked Jeff, shaking his head. Jim and Diane didn't appear to know either.

“Not surprising, really, I had to look it up myself. Well, back before word processors, they had typewriters, and what flimsies were were sets of duplicate or triplicate or quadruplicate papers for writing reports. The paper was real thin – hence the name – with a thin, one-time use only, carbon paper in between – because they didn't have copying machines back then either.

The mechanical typewriter put marks on the top one by striking an inked ribbon with a typeface, and the pressure would carry through the light paper to type a duplicate underneath and a duplicate under that. Each copy got progressively lighter and you really couldn't go over three copies for each original. The flimsy stack was glued together at the top with a perforated area below that so you could rip off thee top and you had basically a piece of typing paper and three duplicates. What I'd found had been used on something marked 'top secret,' by the guy who typed it.”

“Somebody left a Top Secret document in a desk drawer?” asked Jeff Parker. “That's hard to imagine...”

“It wasn't the document itself,” said Pemberton,"... it was the old carbons. They were light and – well, they were apparently stacked up in there pretty deep, and these just seemed to have fallen over the back of the drawer and gotten lost inside the desk itself. A couple of them were duplicates – two pieces of carbon paper from the same flimsy. Anyway, because they'd only been used once, they held the impression of the typing. That is, the ink was missing from the carbon paper where the imprint had been made. So I laid them out and read them. That's when I decided one of the other detectives was pulling my leg.”

“What did the documents say?”

“Well, they told about material that was removed from a crashed flying saucer...”

“It WAS real then - the flying saucer - not just some story?” asked Diane.

Pemberton chuckled. “You have the son who packs a bazooka in the palm of his hand, and you ask ME if the flying saucer is real?” chuckled Pemberton. “I didn't BELIEVE the carbons were real then, just some elaborate hoax to fool the new detective - but now...”

“So what did they say,” asked Jeff, realizing this probably affected his future grandchildren.

“There were these four metal …. well, pods is what the guy called them, found in the wreckage. They put the other three along with most of the wreckage in storage while they investigated that one pod.

The Air Force thought at first they were part of the propulsion mechanism of the saucer, so they took that one and had the powerplant guys looking at it. They couldn't figure out how it worked, but they did notice that when you got a watch near it – well, the pod slowed time down. Pretty soon they had some physics guy do some experiments and he theorized that – at the center of the device – time was stopped altogether. They poked around longer and found a viewing port that could be opened. It apparently looked right in to the center of the device and it gave a magnified view of what was there.”

“What WAS there..?” asked Jeff and Diane simultaneously.

“A human fetus. Not only that but once they got the life support and biological scientists involved, they figured the whole thing was some sort of incubator – that it was capable of bringing the fetus to term and supporting it until it was maybe 25 of 30 pounds The report said the pod had been shipped to 'site y,' somewhere in southern Nevada, for future study, but that was just background. What the FBI guy was looking for was the OTHER three pods...”

“But you said they were in storage...”

“That's just it, they WERE in storage, and something in there with them had cut it's way out, through the hangar exterior wall, and through the base perimeter wire as well, and about three or four hundred pounds of what was on the inventory as 'miscellaneous debris,' was gone too.”

“So you think that Max and Isabel...”

Pemberton shrugged his shoulders. “I guess you'll have to ask your son, but I'd guess he eventually came from one of those missing pods,” he said, “...probably your daughter too...”

“Probably wouldn't be the best time to do that,” said Jim Valenti, nodding at the two teenagers in the other room.

Max was down on one knee, and had his hand out toward Liz with his palm upwards. The diamond ring sparkled brightly.

“How did you do that...?” Liz asked in disbelief.

“I made it. The metal is just silver, I'll replace that with gold when I can get to a jewelry store to buy some,” said Max. He'd had to borrow the change from his mother, he was still wearing the pocketless orange jail jumpsuit, “... as for the diamond, that's just a silly alien – well, part-alien, I guess, trick that I'll have to show you.”

“But it's so.... beautiful. How did you make it … so quickly.”

“Easy. I've dreamed of making it a thousand times – thought over and over in my mind just how I would do it.. I just never really thought I'd get the opportunity,” he replied, as he – with shaking hands that had nothing to do with the hangover – put the ring on her finger.

In the kitchen the four adults watched with smiles on their faces.

“To Max and Liz,” said Pemberton softly, holding up his coffee cup.

“To Max and Liz...,” agreed the other three, the coffee cups meeting with gentle 'clink's.....

[greywolf]

It was two days later in the Superior Court where once-retired Judge Albert Roberts was hearing three cases involving the same individual. That individual was Maxwell Evans and - since he was not yet at the age of majority - the hearing was being held behind closed doors without any public viewing. Defending the young man was his mother, Diane Evans. The prosecuting attorney was deputy prosecuting attorney – Alehandro Mariscal.

The first case was a motion of habeus corpus on the charge of attempted murder of one, Liz Parker, and after only the briefest of testimony from Sheriff Jim Valenti and Chief of Detectives Deputy Royce Pemberton, the outcome wasn't in doubt.

".. and when we searched the premises of the actual perpetrator, your Honor," said Deputy Pemberton, "... we found, along with other evidence of significant wrongdoing, exactly what the man had boasted about. There were .223 caliber bullets that had been fired through the firearm that was left in Max Evans' locker, along with the plastic sabots necessary to get them up to a size where they could be loaded in the 30-06. There was also a hand made note - in Williams handwriting - giving the ballistics of such a cartridge and a rough sketch calculating the drop to the Parker residence from the old grain tower. We also found copies of old utility drawings from the Parker residence, with instructions on just how to sabotage them to cause the explosion that leveled the top floor of the Parker residence. What's more, from the videotapes we found of the two associates of Mr. Williams, both now deceased, we were able to get four different people - unrelated to Maxwell Evans in any way - identify both McCarthy and Abernathy as the so-called Beavis and Butthead individuals that were involved in the shooting in the Crashdown that came close to taking the life of Miss Parker. To the best of my knowledge and belief, your honor, young Mr. Evans is totally innocent of the charges against him, and I'm recommending that instead of granting the writ of habeus corpus, that you simply dismiss all charges - with prejudice.

Mr. Mariscal, do you have any objections?

Alejandro shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "When the arresting officer tells me that new evidence completely exonerates the accused, your honor, I'm not foolish enough to continue to press the point. Like you, I've seen some of that evidence, and I have no reason to believe the Deputy is not perfectly correct in asking that you dismiss all charges with prejudice.

The gavel smacked down resoundingly on the sound block. "So ordered. Will you prepare the documents for my signature please, counsel?"

"I have them right here, your honor," said Diane. She handed him a legal folder and he scanned it quickly, before signing it and handing it to the court clerk.

"Bailiff, call the next case..." he ordered.

"This is case 24-119, defendant Maxwell Evans is accused of violation of New Mexico Statutes annotated, 31-26-11, escape from incarceration, 30-16-3 NMSA, theft of a motor vehicle, with concomitant theft of two firearms in the vehicle, one of those a fully automatic rifle, fleeing to avoid capture, making this also a violation of 30-7-1 NMSA, "Carrying a deadly weapon" which under this statute means being armed with a deadly weapon by having it on the person, or in close proximity thereto, so that the weapon is readily accessible for use. Since the weapon in the trunk was fully automatic there may also be a violation of the state code prohibiting carriage of a machine gun without a federal Class III permit your honor. Part of the purpose of the hearing was to entertain arguments from both the defense counsel and the prosecutor as to whether an automatic rifle incidentally stolen and secured in the trunk of the car actually could be considered 'carrying', since the fact that it was there was unbeknownst to the defendant. Of course, the fact that the car has a trunk release easily accessible from the driver's position clearly complicates that as well...."

"Very well, an interesting case indeed. Are you prepared to defend this case, Mrs. Evans?"

"I am, your honor."

"And is the prosecution ready to proceed?"

"I am, your Honor," said Alehandro Mariscal.

"Uh... your Honor, if I could say something..."

"Deputy Pemberton? Well, is it relevant to this case?"

"Yes, Your honor, very relevant."

"Well, go ahead then, please make it brief."

"You see, it's this way, your Honor. I think this has all been just a big mistake and maybe we ought to just drop the charges. I mean, the kid wasn't guilty - he shouldn't have been in the jail to begin with...."

"While I will concede the young man wasn't guilty of the attempted murder, Deputy, after all we just dropped those charges, the fact that he was erroneously incarcerated does NOT give the young man license to either break out of jail or to steal public property - and firearms at that."

"Well your Honor, he didn't actually BREAK out of jail - more just wandered off. We did an investigation and we are pretty sure that - well, as embarrassing as it sounds, someone in the department just forgot to lock the cell ..."

"Forgot to lock the cell...???"

"Yes, your Honor," said Pemberton, smiling agreeably.

"And the jail itself I take it?" said the judge, the disbelief written all over his face.

"That too, it would appear," said Pemberton, managing a dopey grin.

"But he certainly would have known when we put him in jail that he wasn't supposed to ... wander off. Isn't that right Deputy?"

"Well, I'm not too sure. Actually, I sort of expected that his mother was going to be able to get him out on a writ of habeus corpus, your Honor. I may have mentioned to him that he might not have to stay there too long, and that he'd probably be going home pretty soon. I suppose it's very possible that he just misunderstood and - when he found the door unlocked - just thought it would be OK to go, your Honor."

"However he did take a patrol car, did he not Deputy Pemberton?" asked Judge Roberts.

"You know, that might have been a misunderstanding too. I seem to recall him asking me how he would be getting home - if his mother was able to get the writ over the telephone that is - and I seem to recall telling him he could borrow my car. Now of course I MEANT my personal car, but you know, I drive that old patrol car all the time, and I'm pretty sure he just got confused and thought when I said 'my car' I meant that patrol car."

"So he jimmied the ignition to take it...," started the judge.

"Actually, sir. I may have left the key in the ignition by accident. That's a real bad habit I somehow got in to, I know..."

The gavel came down with a resounding whack.

"This court is in recess. I want counsel for the defendant, the prosecuting attorney, Deputy Pemberton, and Sheriff Valenti in my chambers, and I want them there pronto!" said Judge Roberts.

"All rise," said the bailiff.

It was only five minutes later when the five of them were seated at the conference table in the Judge's chambers. Diane, Mariscal, Valenti and Pemberton, and of course the judge himself. Judge Roberts was the first to talk, and he addressed himslef to Jim Valenti.

"Sheriff, does this man generally tell the truth? I mean ... when he writes a report, are you usually pretty comfortable he's not telling you atrocious lies?"

"Well, yes, your Honor." said Jim Valenti, not entirely sure where this conversation was going.

"Well that's good, because I can tell you for damn sure, he has neither the skill nor the experience to lie convincingly. I wish I'd gotten him into a poker game forty years ago, I could have retired back then. The man is the most thoroughly incompetent liar that I have ever seen," said the judge shaking his head in apparent disbelief. "Deputy Pemberton, how DARE you sit in my courtroom and lie? If you'd been sworn in, I'd have no choice right now but to have you charged with perjury. As it is, I imagine you've poisoned the jury pool - that there is no way that Mr. Mariscal can possibly convince a jury that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, isn't that right Mr Deputy Prosecuting Attorney."

Alehandro looked more amused than chagrined. "It would certainly be difficult to successfully prosecute any of these charges now that Royce ..., I mean, Deputy Pemberton has gone on public record with these statements, your Honor..."

"Were I a suspicious man,." said Judge Roberts,"...I would almost be inclined to believe that you intentionally destroyed any chance of making these charges stick, Deputy Pemberton, nor would I really be inclined to rule out the possibility of collusion on the part of the prosecuting attorney as well ... were I a suspicious man, that is."

Alehandro Mariscal did an excellent job of keeping a straight face. "Well, your Honor, I must admit that it is difficult to work up any real ... enthusiasm ... for prosecuting a young man who - knowing himself to be innocent and therefore knowing the young lady he cared for was still at risk from the REAL would-be murderers took advantage of the opportunity to elope from custody to go warn her."

"Yes, I detect a rather distinct LACK of enthusiasm in your tone, Mr. Mariscal. 'Elope' you say? That may well be the most unenthusiastic way of describing grand theft auto I have ever heard."

"Well, given the urgency of the situation, I suppose you could consider the borrowing of the patrol car appropriate under a necessity defense, your Honor."

"Necessity defense? Mr. Mariscal, do you believe Mrs Evans is incapable of defending her own son?" asked the judge, shaking his head.

"Not at all, your Honor. It's just that - well had the defendant not done what he did do, had he not gotten there before Williams and his two hired helpers had time to go through with their plans..."

"And had he not been able to somehow get himself out of the duct tape and let Miss Parker and Mrs. Evans free ... then confronted those thugs and slowed them up while Mrs Evans and Miss Parker got in position..." said Deputy Pemberton.

Judge Roberts shook his head. "Well, I suppose we must allow for a little lack of objectivity on the part of three of the four people in this room, since the young man saved your lives. It's only human nature, I guess..."

The Judge looked at the four people in front of him and smiled. He was no fool - he knew that more had gone on at that ranch house than Valenti or Pemberton of Diane Evans were telling. He wasn't sure exactly WHAT had happened, but he had quickly decided he didn't WANT to know if the two law enforcement officers or Diane Evans, herself an officer of the court, had played a little fast and loose with the rules of evidence or even their own testimony about what had gone on - nor was he inclined to worry about justice being done - at least not in this instance.

He had known the Hargreaves family - before the husband had died and Janice had remarried Commissioner Arthur Williams. He had thought at the time there had been little love there, more political opportunism, but when Jim Valenti and Alejandro Mariscal had taken him aside yesterday and showed him the tapes that the Sheriff and Deputy Pemberton had found at the Williams ranch house, the tape of the drug and alcohol assisted rape of little Debbie Hargreaves, he had been physically sick after less than a minute. The tapes the other two had made of their 'conquests' of underage girls down in that Mexican bordello were equally disgusting in their own way ... still, to do such a thing to your own step-daughter....

The fact of the matter is, Judge Roberts no longer cared if Pemberton and Valenti had followed the Marquise of Queensbury rules in this case. If Liz Parker wanted to claim that she'd fired two shots with that little 22 - and that the first one had set off explosives that had caused the blast, Judge Albert Roberts was disinclined to call the young lady a liar, even if the forensic evidence didn't quite make that plausible.

The evidence was overwhelming that those three men had made three attempts on the young girl's life. If she'd somehow hit some explosives they were carrying with that little 22, well, it was her turn. If, on the other hand, Max Evans had somehow gotten his hands on explosives and used them to blow up that truck ... well, those three had blown up the girls room attempting to kill her. What goes around comes around sometimes. Besides, the disgusting bastards deserved to die for what they'd documented themselves doing on those tapes.

"Well, I guess there really is no salvaging the charges against Mr. Evans for the events at the jail and the uh ... use ...use of the patrol car. You might want to caution your client that he should not use patrol cars as ... public transportation .. in the future though, counselor."

"I'll do that, your Honor," said Diane.

The Judge looked at his schedule and chuckled. "Well, I see the young man isn't going to get off completely. I expect after the pleading coming up, to sentence the young man to life. That ought to keep him out of mischief."

The other four people in the room nodded their head in agreement, their faces lit with knowing smiles.

Ten minutes later the court was reconvened. At the deputy attorney general's request, all charges related to the jail break and the theft of the patrol car were dismissed. Then the bailiff called the next case.

"Your Honor, the next case is a little unusual. The state of New Mexico is requesting an injunction against Diane and Philip Evans. Diane and Philip Evans are custodians of two adopted children. They have given permission under New Mexico Statutes Annotated Section 40-1-6 for their adopted son Maxwell, who has yet to attain the age of majority, to marry Elizabeth Parker, who also has yet to attain the age of majority. Her parents have also given their permission. Given that Mr. Maxwell Evans was a former ward of the state and has a history of some mental health issues, the state Department of Social Services has requested an emergency injunction ordering Mr. and Mrs Evans to cease and desist in their Section 40-1-6 permission action to allow department psychologists to assess whether or not Maxwell is sufficiently mature emotionally for such a union. Representing the State Department of Social Services is Mr. Harrison."

The judge nodded at the bailiff, then turned to Mr. Harrison.

"I recently sentenced the young man in question to community service after an altercation at his high school. He seemed quite mature from what I got to know of him. Do you have any particular reason for believing that this young man isn't mature enough for marriage, Mr. Harrison?"

"Your Honor, the department objects in principle to minor children being married. We routinely request injunctions in cases like this involving adopted children. We believe waiving of the usual age of consent should be an exceedingly rare event, and then done only after extensive psychological and psychiatric evaluation."

The judge looked at his wristwatch, then looked back at the lawyer for the state department of social services. "Well, Mr. Harrison, I figure you have ten minutes to make your case before I deny this motion and get to my next appointment."

"Ten minutes, your Honor?"

"Yes, Mr. Harrison. This perfectly delightful young lady has asked me to officiate at her marriage to a fine young man of my acquaintance, and I have no intention of being late...."

[greywolf]

It wasn't a huge wedding - just family and friends. Judge Roberts actually hadn't done a marriage since his Justice of the Peace days, over forty years previously, but he remembered most of the words, and read those he'd forgotten off a crib sheet at the podium.

• "We are gathered together here in the presence of these witnesses to join this
  man and this woman in matrimony, which is an honorable estate, and is not
  to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently and discreetly. If
  anyone can show just cause why this man and this woman may not lawfully
  be joined together, let them speak now or hereafter remain silent."

Well, nobody spoke, and everyone remained silent, although there were tears trickling down the faces of Diane and Nancy. Liz had never looked more beautiful, whether it was her being a blushing bride or the hormones of her pregnancy causing flushing, the young lady positively radiated loveliness.

Michael was best man, Maria was maid of Honor. Alex was a groomsman and Isabel a bridesmaid. The Valentis were there - Jim with Amy on his arm.

It was a beautiful ceremony which, unfortunately, would be followed in only three days by having to return to their high school classes. Still, that gave them a weekend. They would be returning to Liz's newly rebuilt room, with an added nursery, but their parents had seen to it that they had at least a brief honeymoon in a small condo up in Taos.

It was a six hour drive when you counted stopping for dinner along the way, and night had fallen before they were checked in and able to relax. The silky negligee had been a present to Liz from her new sister-in-law, perhaps sort of a peace offering too for all the years she'd conspired to keep them apart. It was the sort of garment that didn't tend to stay on very long.

When Liz stepped out of the bathroom wearing it Max was already in bed.

"You," he told her, "... are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen..."

Liz's smile seemed to light the room. "I bet you say that to all the girls who are carrying your babies."

"I know how incredibly insensitive it is to say so, but you know I don't really remember actually ... doing it."

"No," said Liz. "That isn't insensitive at all. Insensitive was pushing you to do something when you didn't know what you were doing."

His finger went to her lips to shush them, then he gathered her in his arms and kissed her softly ... then with growing passion.

"I imagine it's like riding a bicycle," he said, "... it'll all come back to me.."

"Now THAT is insensitive," she giggled. "A bicycle indeed....," she shook her head, looking at him lovingly. "No Max, it is your first time, and we'll pretend it's my first time too.... not that I'd want to change anything."

Somehow in the next few minutes the negligee found itself on the floor. The boxers he was wearing disappeared altogether. They never did find them - they probably dissolved. It was a memorable night - one that neither would ever forget - filled with passion that had matured during many years of longing and reinforced by the certainty in both of them that this new life of theirs was what they had both wanted and needed so badly.

Never again would either of them doubt themselves or the other. Several hours later they just lay there - intertwined - passion - for the moment at least - spent, and content just to rest in their new found closeness. Two friends ... lovers ... and soon to be parents ... just holding each other and sharing caresses and gentle kisses.

"I love you Elizabeth Evans," he whispered in her ear.

"I love it that you love me, Max," she replied, "... and I love being Mrs. Evans."

They spent Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday morning in Taos - but never did see much of the town. Sunday they drove home, to their new quarters above the Crashdown. Monday morning they were back in school.