Bruno opened the door to his little apartment with no special relish. It was a hovel more than a home and it simply served to remind him of how poor his life here was. It was, however, usually an escape from his work. Not today.

Bruno flipped on the light switch. And saw Chief Police Gounard with one hand covering Wade's mouth and the other pointing a gun at her head. "Hey, man, let's not do anything stupid..."

"The pictures," he rasped. "The originals of the pictures you took. Out on the table now!" He cocked the gun and Wade's muffled screaming got a little louder. "Or she dies."

"You'll let her go?" he asked earnestly. "Her life for the pictures?" The elder man nodded.

Bruno felt trapped. He had no choice but to give him the photos. Moving slowly so as not to make the man with the cocked gun suspicious, he reached into his jacket pocket and produced the manila envelope. He threw it on his coffee table. "Now let her go."

Gounard looked like he might shoot her for a moment. Then he released her. Wade moved away from him quickly to the other side of the room. "But I didn't say anything about letting you live." The man got an evil-looking grin on his face, pointed the gun at Bruno and pulled the trigger. Fear filled his face as Bruno waited for the inevitable...click.

Nothing happened. Bruno's face came unflinched to see what went wrong. And got the surprise of his life.

"That chamber wasn't loaded, Bruno old boy," Chief Gounard smirked at him. "You didn't think I'd shoot Wade, did you? Oh, that's right. You did. You think I'm a killer." He didn't even look around him until he heard Wade's voice.

"That was what we counted on," he now looked closely at Wade. She had her own gun drawn and pointed at him.

"What the hell's going on?!?" he demanded.

"To catch a murderer..." Wade commented glibly.

"Wait," Bruno said frantically. "I didn't kill Jennifer Lewis, he did."

"You're wrong about that, Bruno," Gounard responded.

"I killed Jennifer Lewis," said Wade. "Well, actually my lookalike did. See I'm not really Wade Welles. I couldn't be, because she's dead." Wade had thought about how to explain the concept of doubles here but decided there had been enough twists and turns here already. "When I found that manila envelope with the pictures in it, I found a bunch of tapes. Wade didn't trust you, Bruno, any more than I did. She put a wiretap on your phone. Lots of interesting conversations on those tapes. Information galore."

"Gounard hired you..." Bruno rasped accusingly.

"Nope. Free agent." Wade smiled at him maliciously. "I just like to see justice done. I found out about your scheme to use Jennifer Lewis to blackmail Gounard into resigning and how it ended up in murder, and I just couldn't resist bringing you down. Jennifer was supposed to create the sex scandal, Wade was supposed to testify to it because Jennifer didn't want to be part of it. But Jennifer got greedy and decided she could take the stand on her own. Suddenly, you don't need Wade. So you decide to kill 'me'. The only problem was Wade found out through the wiretaps."

Wade reached in her coat and produced a piece of paper. "Wade's phone records say that she made a call the day of the murder to a warehouse not three blocks from where Jennifer Lewis was killed. It seems Wade told the people who were after Jennifer in the first place just exactly where she was. Not the same as pulling the trigger, maybe. But close enough when you're a cop who's supposed to be protecting somebody."

"Ya see, I didn't kill Jennifer," he told her with some satisfaction.

Wade kept her gun trained on him. "No, you didn't. You killed Wade. She was going to tell you about the hit on Jennifer, use it as a bargaining chip to keep herself alive, probably. But you didn't give her the chance. Just shot her in the head without giving her a chance to speak."

"You can't prove a thing," Bruno hissed back at her.

Wade laughed. "I can prove everything. Wade had a video camera that caught it all."

"You really blew it when you showed her where the body was," Gounard threw in. "That cockamamy story about 'neighbors' seeing somebody digging was kinda shot by the fact that nobody lives around there for miles. Nobody could have known that that was where the body was...except the guy who moved it."

"What'd you do?" Wade asked. "Panic when you saw the body? Decide to get it out of the way, but leave it somewhere incriminating to Gounard?"

"You guys have got it all figured out haven't you?" Bruno asked. Before they could stop him, he produced his own gun. "Who wants to bet that they can shoot me before I shoot them?" Suddenly a blow from behind knocked him cold. Rembrandt emerged from the closet where he'd been hiding, baseball bat in hand.

"Thanks, Remmy," Wade said.

"No problem," Rembrandt replied.

"Can you take care of him from here?" Wade asked the Chief of Police.

The elder man nodded in affirmation. "I can get a dispatch here in a few minutes. But if you're here it might be complicated to arrest him for Wade's murder."

Wade gave him a half-smile. "Don't worry. I won't be around to complicate things."

***
Professor Maximilian Arturo had gathered the judge, jury, several bailiffs, the opposing lawyer and Quinn into the room where the murder had taken the place. It was becoming quite cramped.

"I suppose there is a point to his, Mr. Arturo?" the judge asked him.

"There is indeed, your honor," the Professor answered. "I have brought you all here to prove conclusively who killed Joseph Brighthod."

The room was abuzz with speculation. The judge called for them all to be silent. "Proceed, Mr. Arturo."

"First of all there is something you must know about the accused, Mr. Mallory. He does not come from this dimension. For that matter, neither do I." Some that were gathered there, began to laugh. The prosecuting attorney objected. The judge overruled him. Arturo cleared his throat and continued. "We use this device," he said, holding up the timer, "to travel between worlds. It opens portals to parallel worlds. Such a portal brought Mr. Mallory into this room."

Now there was outright scorn and mockery to be found in the faces of others in the room. The prosecuting attorney spoke up. "I suppose Mr. Arturo has proof of this."

"I do intend to prove it," Arturo responded, "by leaving this dimension via a portal in merely a few minutes from now, with Mr. Mallory in tow." Before the room could explode again, he went on. "But first I plan to expose the true murderer."

The judge looked at the prosecutor, to see if he might object. "Oh please, let Mr. Arturo prove what professional criminal investigators couldn't. I'd like to see it."

Professor Arturo began to pace the room. "I believe that the killer was one of the so-called 'sliders', those that invented the ability to open transportational portals. They certainly had motive and opportunity, as anyone who knew the building would. The problem, of course, is that the door was locked with no means of escape at hand for any potential killer, other than, of course, our Mr. Mallory who was already found in the room, and Mr. Brighthod himself. However, I believe we can safely rule out the possibility of suicide."

Arturo looked straight at the jury. "But I believe the investigators overlooked something. Someone who could concoct an alternate route of escape. Someone who could find a way out that didn't involve opening a door."

"You're saying..." the judge started to ask him.

"I'm saying that one of the sliders planned to kill Mr. Brighthod and then have the others open a portal into the room to allow him to escape." Arturo answered him.

"Can you prove it?" the prosecutor asked

The Professor looked as though he was prepared for that question. "Exhibit A. An inventory sheet of all the devices in the 'sliders' laboratory. Missing was a quantum flux generator used to phase out the body slightly, to make it easier for transportational portal travel. The attempt to leave via transportational portal was unsuccessful, however. The killer saw his chance for escape in the form of the portal that brought Mr. Mallory here, thinking it was the same sort of portal that was supposed to be his salvation."

Arturo wound up his argument. "But the portal closed before he could travel to another dimension. Ordinarily this would have been enough to kill him, but in his 'phased-out' state, it merely turned him invisible and practically intangible, making him have the appearance of a ghost."

"So, uh, how will we catch him?" the prosecutor asked, amused.

Deciding to take his question seriously, Professor Arturo answered "I believe that when we reactivate the portal he should rematerialize, so to speak. I've built my own quantum flux generator, to make sure he does so."

The judge looked harried. "Any more surprises you have for us, Mr. Arturo?"

"Yes," came a voice from outside the room. It was Wade with Rembrandt in tow. "The sliders were planning to sell their invention to the Nationalist Chinese, using a smuggler named Bruno Hartman as their conduit. And I've got the tapes to prove it."

Professor Arturo opened the vortex. Some bailiffs moved to block the portal. Arturo activated the generator and the killer started to come into focus. "Now, for the real killer to be revealed as... Quinn Mallory." Sure enough, this world's Quinn stood agape as he began to materialize just outside the rim of the wormhole. The bailiffs seized him and placed him under arrest.

The judge took charge once again. "Very well. Court is adjourned until this Quinn can be arraigned. Mr. Mallory is to be assigned new legal counsel. Meanwhile, the four of you are free to go. And I must say it's been quite a demonstration."

Quinn turned to Maximilian Arturo. "Thanks, Professor."

Professor Arturo smiled. "There will be enough time for congratulations on the next world, my boy." The four slid out without any further discussion.

<"My dear...This portal leads to an infinite number of Earths...", Maximilian Arturo, 'The Pilot', in response to Wade's desire to go back through to find Quinn.>

I haven't decided if the first chapter of "The Charm" will be up next week or not (I start classes so I might be kind of busy). It may be week after next. Anyway, thanks to everyone for reading!

ThomasMalthus