Multiple Pairings with
Equal Focus

Excerpt:

They returned to the street and found the Medical Examiner had arrived and was busy loading the victim into the back of the morgue wagon. Trowa approached them, waving a careworn leather wallet in his rubber-gloved fingers.

“Lorenzo D. Guadinigno,” he announced.

Duo whistled. “That’s gonna be a hell of a tombstone.”

“Better get used to spelling it, because I’m giving you two this case,” Noin said, watching the ME drive off down the street, Lorenzo D. Guadinigno safely stored inside his van. “You get anything out of that lady in the apartment?”

“Oh yeah,” Duo replied. He made a show of pulling out his notepad and flipping it to the first blank page. “Let’s see. She didn’t see nothing, and she doesn’t want to talk to no police.”

He flipped the book closed and pocketed it again.

“Shmuck,” she said affectionately. “Come on, let’s get back to the station. I’m freezing my ass off out here.”

They piled into their squad cars, Heero and Duo to one, Trowa and Sergeant Noin in the other. The various other uniforms followed suit, slipping into the blue-and-white marked vehicles dotting the intersection. With the body gone, the crowd around the crime scene had already begun to disperse, filtering away down side streets and alleys, their attention held only as long as the spectacle remained. After all, in another week, a different dealer would take up residence on this corner, hawking dope where days before a dead man had lain, and probably sooner rather than later, there would be another murder in the Drain, and the circus would start all over again. Life went on.

That was the way it went in Sanc City.

Crossing the Line

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