So not only do I have Molly trying to play fairy godmother whether I want her to or not, there is Neil, who might be working for the World Crime League for all I know, and who has somehow gotten this ridiculous idea that he's interested in me. Come to think of it, she probably had something to do with it. I thought I was fairly clear on that last time we talked, but she seems to be pretty good at ignoring what she doesn't want to see.
    And I think delayed reaction from this afternoon is finally setting in. It's going to be a long night.

[Aside: Neil]

October 31, 1987

Naturally, we had a meeting this morning, so Reilly could tell us everything we had missed and we could try to figure out where the hell Albert was; no luck on that score so far, and we're all worried about him.
    "The Giants won the World Series? Damn. Next," Talon sighed.
    "Sorry about that," Reilly replied a bit archly.
    "But I was right, the Mariners didn't go anywhere this season."
    "Yeah, they sucked."
    "I'm sure we missed some important news over the past couple of weeks," I suggested. "Aside from the flood of theme villains that seem to have moved in."
    "We went theme villain happy," he nodded.
    "So much for the Shapiro theory that without us around the city would be normal."
    "No, without you around, 1-800-HENCHMEN went a little loonie," Reilly confirmed. "The Postman has escaped. He apparently mailed himself out of prison."
    Hardly able to credit this piece of information, I gave him a beseeching glance.
    "I can only assume that you're going to be having words with the penal institute?" Scott suggested delicately.
    "Oh no. Words have been had," Reilly growled. "Don't worry, there were many words, not fit for public consumption."
    "I mean, how small an envelope could he have put himself into?"
    Reilly's expression remained stoic. "Apparently, he was in a three by three foot box that was labeled as the death effects of one of the inmates who had recently passed away, being mailed off to the family members."
    "I'm not even going to bother to rant," Scott decided.
    "There's no point," I sighed.
    "Who else is on the street?" Talon asked.
    "You'll be happy to know that the Worcester authorities are still holding the Worcester Rooster. But there have been many minor theme villain incidents from the Archivist and the Librarian, and a pair of British gentlemen calling themselves Fox and Hedgehog."
    "They're really scraping the bottom," Talon said, shaking his head over the names.
    "Depends. What do they do?" Scott asked.
    Reilly shrugged. "We don't really know."
    "Well, apparently they're successful."
    "All anyone can recall about their crimes is they natter to one another in pleasant voices about trivialities, while the police are oddly not present."
    "It's like being robbed by Merryandrew?"
    "Something like that, yes, but with less laughing. Um, Roy McCoy and His Hyperalloy Decoys...."
    A visible shudder went through Thunderbolt.
    "Whom?" Scott prompted for more information.
    "He has a record from Chicago."
    "Ah. Illinois," Thunderbolt sighed sourly.
    "He's a master duck hunter with a shotgun and set of five robotic mallards."
    This was almost as bad as the Rooster. "Oh, my God," I groaned.
    "Never mind that announcement from Toy Man."
    "Well, we took care of him at least," Talon noted with satisfaction. Of course, we found no body.
    "Chinatown has been remarkably quiet, leading me to believe that Scott's assessment of the scenario was correct and they have faded into the shadows and are running a silent empire."
    "Well, that's lovely," I sighed.
    "Don't ask, don't tell," Paul suggested brightly.
    "There may be crimes going on there, they're not crimes we know about. They're not crimes being reported."
    "Anybody else?" Scott asked.
    "The one supernatural killing," Reilly nodded. "Yes." He sighed. "We are fairly certain that this one is supernatural causes only due to one distinct feature of the corpse." He dug in his briefcase and pulled out a folder.
    "It got up and walked around?" Scott guessed.
    "No, fortunately, we haven't seen any more of those. The man's name is Rudy LaFontaine, or at least it was. If any of you are familiar with him at all, he was apparently, according to the dossier that we have on him, one of the world's experts on Greek and Roman sculpture. Can't hardly seem that significant. Nothing was stolen from the apartment that he was living in. There were no visible wounds on the body, he just keeled over dead, in his bed, by himself. No evidence of any sexual activity recently, that there was anybody else in the room. Nothing. However...." He pushed the photo across the table.
    The corpse's eyes were open, and both of them were jet black.
    "You think that ain't normal?" I said in mock surprise.
    "That's not normal," he confirmed. "We're running a pattern search right now, seeing if anything else of this nature has turned up. Haven't found anything yet, but we haven't finished contacting Interpol."
    "No drugs or anything like that?" I asked.
    "That's different. Nothing on the autopsy?" Scott asked.
    "Nope. Everything looked absolutely clean. The autopsy was like someone flipped a switch and he shut off. There was nothing biologically wrong with him other than the fact that he was dead. I was talking to the coroner, coroner said it was possible he killed him. That strikes me as being uncommon. If you run across anything else like this, if you get any brilliant ideas...."
    "We'll let you know," I promised.
    "And there could be someone out there hunting for other experts in sculpture, or maybe he had something on him that we don't know about that was stolen. I can only hope that this is not some side effect of Traveler's abilities and he's hunting after curios again."
    I shook my head dubiously. "The last person we know of that Traveler killed did a lot of bleeding through the eyes. I think there'd be a mark." It still upsets me to think about that.
    "According to the doctor, this isn't a hemorrhaging effect, there's some sort of cloudy substance that was suddenly materialized inside each eyeball."
    "Ow," Scott remarked. "That sounds like it would hurt."

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