5.1. Breaking the Law
Melissa Kohl's older daughter was eating peanut butter between two sliced halves of pickles. She yawned sleepily as she offered another cup of coffee to the chief of police, and he ignored the regulations against accepting it. Just like he had ignored that memo from the department in the city she came back from, the one about the bullet-riddled body found in a house that she had been showing. A cold-blooded killing, they had said. The victim had a record and perhaps he had died at the hands of a rival, or perhaps a potential victim. He had been shot repeatedly in the bedroom, followed down the hallway, and finished off in the foyer with a single round to the skull.
The murder weapon had been a.38 Special. Brittany's mother had once been listed as owning a revolver in that caliber, which like every single gun in town had been claimed "missing or stolen" during the mandatory buybacks. Brittany had been sought for questioning, but she had lawyered up and they had nothing on her. It really didn't matter to Chief Putnam, so long as she didn't ventilate anyone in his town without good reason. Unsolved murders outside his jurisdiction could stay unsolved for all he cared; he had his own problems.
The plywood boarding had been removed from the windows, the glass and brick facade had been cleaned and mended. A sturdy wood-planked wall had been erected immediately inside, with a reinforced steel door barring the way to whatever had been done to the rest of the floor-space. The front entrance of the building was thus left as a parlor room, and he doubted that merchandise was stored in the back.
"Ah, yeah. Well, I had been kind of hoping that I could beg forgiveness rather than ask permission, since I've reconsidered my original business plans." admitted Bradley. "But don't worry about it. If you'll give me just a few days, I'll take care of this issue as soon as I can and then we shouldn't have any problems."
"It's a simple enough matter to rezone the building to residential." offered Brittany, smirking. "After all, you're presently speaking to one-third of the local zoning board. We'll settle the matter at the next meeting if you really think it matters."
"Yes, I do really think it matters. You're on the board, Mrs. Kohl, so you of all people should know that zoning laws exist for a reason."
He tried to sound authoritative, though even he wasn't really convinced. Zoning laws do exist for a reason, the police chief well knew. Historically, zoning laws existed as a means of keeping the poors and racial undesirables out of exclusive urban neighborhoods, and as a means for land speculators to keep the price of real estate high. People like to pretend that better reasons have been devised in the time since then, and maybe they have, but he would be hard-pressed to see any in this case. Once again, he wondered why he had even bothered coming.
An uncomfortable pause followed, Bradley took another sip of coffee and smiled thinly.
"Tell me, Scott, do you like that blue-eyed, brown-skinned beauty you currently have in your holding cell? If you do, and if you're willing to give us a bit of leeway here in our living situation, then I think we can both make each other very happy..."
5.2. Medice, Utera Te Ipsum!
Dr. Sunil and Dr. Purnima Bajwa, cardiologist and family medicine doctor respectively, ran the only health clinic in Cedar Station. Twin daughters Priya and Chandra were working as receptionists and non-medical assistants, having claimed a family emergency as reason for their early break from med school. They intended to change their specializations to Ob-Gyn or Pediatrics upon resuming their studies, and Bradley would be able to make arrangements for them to do this while also remaining in town to assist their parents. After all, your specializations are whatever your official credentials say they are, and files on a computer can be made to say just about anything.
Priya only smiled dreamily, looking on quietly as Bradley talked business with her parents. She was a lithe, slender young woman with captivating amber eyes and a charming bronzed-brown face, made all the cuter by a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. Her appearance was almost virginal. Almost.
Bradley smiled at that fact. He knew that she had only recently showered off the aftermath of her deflowering before reapplying her prim and proper outfit of blazer, silk blouse, and white slacks. Life-making seed was trekking into her Fallopian tubes at that very moment, and her mind was understandably focused less on the present conversation and more on the fact that she might conceive at any minute.
While Bradley had been dealing with local law enforcement, Michael Mulroney had come to the clinic to make an appointment for his wife Sonam, pregnant again at the surprising age of 46. He could have afforded the service of a "real" hospital in a "real" town if he had wanted, but some strange impulse had instead drawn him into what he always thought of as a worthless roadside medical stand.
He had lingered at the clinic and chatted amicably with the family for some time, in fluent Punjabi no less. Purnima had remarked that it was almost funny how her daughters were identical twins: fraternal twinning is primarily caused by a hyperovulation gene which tends to run in the families of the mothers, as it does in her own family. Identical twinning, in contrast, is typically not genetic, being caused by a random splitting of the zygote. Sunil pointed out that fraternal twins run in his family as well, and while a hyperovulation gene would obviously have no effect on the number of children he has, it could further predispose his daughters to multiple births.
Michael noted how the women of their town had become so surprisingly fertile lately, and then offered a fascinating experiment in which he would breed both of the twins and see how many children they might bear. He could afford to care for as many as they might have, after all. It seemed to all like a most intriguing suggestion, and so he retired to an examination room with them to conduct the procedure. He and Chandra were still back there, and one could faintly hear the ovulating virgin's cries of ecstasy as he continued to tenderly pleasure her, loosening her body and opening her womb, preparing her to join her sister in the transition from maiden to mother.
While Chandra moaned through the breaching of her hymen, Priya let out a sudden, simultaneous moan of her own. She tensed, her small chest heaved once, her eyelids drooped and tension fled her body, she sank into her chair as a look of total serenity spread across her face. There was a wetness in her eyes when they reopened. Sunil and Purnima hugged and congratulated her and thanked her for making grandparents of them, while Bradley bade a good day to the joyful family. He left the clinic in happiness, but also in no little surprise that he of all people might still know jealousy.
As it happened, both twins were going to have triplets. Chandra's children were fraternal while Priya's were dizygotic: two embryos would be fertilized and one of these would split into an identical pair. There was cause for concern that such small-framed ladies would have to bear such burdens, but both were strong and healthy and they would be spending their pregnancies literally next door to the maternity ward. Complications should be unlikely.
But that family would need long-term monitoring, thought Bradley gamely. What if they have further sets of triplets, or what if the next generation is somehow primed to all beget quadruplets? Now, that could be something to spiral out of even his hands!
5.3. Swim Class
There's a common joke in America's school systems: if you want to teach high school history and you're wondering if you should focus on American or World History, you should probably focus on football. School districts, especially rural school districts, care a lot more about ball-kicking than they care about the Philadelphia Convention or the Roman Empire.
Bradley had noticed something odd about the Cedar Station High School, in that the student body appeared to consist exclusively of seniors all past the legal age of majority. Juniors, sophomores, and freshmen did exist in theory, but he never saw them. It was a lot like how he never saw any children in town, at least not on this side of the birth canal. It was uncanny, but for now he had no time to think about it.
Coach Emily had only recently relocated from Brooklyn, where life was becoming less and less comfortable for public school teachers with last names like "Moskowitz." The Nubian Knights, the Aryan Raiders, and the Avengers of Al-Asqa were actively recruiting in the classrooms, and having distant cousins in the so-called Holy Land presently marching the "Seed of Amelek" into 24-hour burn pits wasn't helping. The young teacher decided to relocate to a place where most of her students couldn't spell her last name or point to Israel on a map, and that almost made up for their strange ideas on family planning.
Emily Moskowitz didn't care at all for field sports, but she was halfway competent as a swim coach. It was almost surprising that a dinky little district like the one in Cedar Station would even have a swimming pool. An indoor pool, no less. Apparently built in better days by the estate of the late owner of the defunct car dealership, for whom it had been named. Signs of neglect and ill-repair were obvious, and it would likely be unusable within a few more years, but for now it was an excuse to stay off the gridiron.
Bradley noticed the lack of chlorine in the air, and he wondered how the school managed to do that. He then saw that they managed to do that by severely under-chlorinating the water. Next he saw visions of Cedar Station in an alternate world where he had never arrived and the town went on to become infamous for an unusually aggressive case of naegleriasis, brain-eating amoeba, that started in the pool before somehow spreading to the municipal drinking water. He shuddered at the mental images, and tried to focus instead on his goal of spreading an entirely different form of microscopic life.
He wasn't sure what had brought him here until he saw Venus Anadyomene incarnate, replete with her wringing water from the braids of her straight, rust-red hair. Slavic ginger rather than a Western ginger though, he suspected. Emily was even more top-heavy than Stephanie or Tina, her white and green swimsuit stretched enticingly over a set of soft, melon-sized breasts that had to complicate things in the water. They were at the upper end of what he considered attractive, though in her case he deemed them extremely so.
The muscles of her waist and the powerful legs beneath her well-proportioned hips showed evidence of serious endurance training, though not quite pro-level. Her skin was milky pale, she had a lovely, freckled broad face with deep brown eyes and a wide mouth that probably looked pleasant when it smiled, though right now it twisted under work-related strain. She was speaking to a couple of students as he approached.
"Good job today, Jaselyn. I'll see you again next week, and remember that we only train on Wednesdays and Thursdays now. Our roster gets smaller and smaller, so they're giving us less and less time for practice. But, waddyya gunna do?"
"Yeah." said the girl. "See you around, Coach Mouse."
