Chapter 4

Endgame Chapter 4
By: Felix Velcro

Kimberly Ann Hart stood silhouetted in a beam of pale yellow sunlight that streamed down from a ceiling fan, its blades casting wide, slow-moving blue shadows across the sharp, porcelain mask of disgust that was her face. Eyes as hard and ancient as amber assessed and dismissed Skull in a single glance.

"Skull." Kimberly Ann Hart shook her head in disgust, "that's blackmail, you little weasel. You know, when I heard you'd joined the police force I'd kind of hoped that you'd started showing some sort of basic human decency." She curled one perfect ruby lip in a gesture of utter contempt. "I was wrong." Unhurriedly she unwound herself from the leaning position and pushed off from the Cessna, and began to stride towards Skull and her uncle, taking controlled, powerful strides, broken only by a slight limp she fought hard to suppress, but even that seemed to lend a terrible strength to her approach. Skull drew in a breath and held it. The years had changed her, sharpened her, refined her, but had not taken from her the beauty that had made her the object of universal desire in his high-school days. Every facet, every curve was as he remembered it, but something was missing. It was in the eyes, the eyes that in warmer, sunnier days had laughed and danced like a rainbow in a waterfall were now as still and as cold as ice, one way glass that took in all they saw but let out nothing. They sent a chill down his spine. As a cop, he'd seen those eyes before, dead eyes, killing eyes.

"Oh, yeah, I'd almost forgotten." Steve chuckled obliviously from behind Skull, "You two used to know each other, didn't you? High School, right?" There was a nasty edge to his voice that Skull didn't like.

"Yeah, High School…" Skull croaked. This was one coincidence too many. Skull was starting to feel like maybe he hadn't skipped his ten-year High School reunion after all.

"Yeah, High School." Kimberly assented coldly, stopping just in arm's reach of Skull and deftly plucking the oversized pistol that dangled from his loosened grip. "I remember how big you were on toys." A look of mild amusement softened her features for a moment as she inspected the ludicrously huge IMI Eagle. "Still compensating pretty heavily, I see?" She weighed it in her hand for a moment before setting it gently down with a dull clink on the rickety card table behind him, the slight smile still dancing across her features.. "Not the first time you've tried to show me your hardware, is it?" The gentle humor was undercut with a razor's edge of contempt.

"Yeah, but its the first time I've gotten you to touch it." He grinned. She slapped him. Hard. He kept grinning. Some things are just worth the price you pay for them. His left cheek was still warm from where she hit him. He wasn't entirely certain why his right cheek was warm.

"Nervous, Skullovitch?" Steve quipped from behind him, across the table. "Man pulls heat that fast, you'd almost start thinking he's expecting trouble. You expecting trouble, Skullovitch?" Skull could hear him lean forward on the table, but couldn't seem to pry his eyes away from Kim, who glowered angrily, almost glowing what seemed to be a muted pink in the dull yellow-brown light. It had always been like this, for longer then he cared to remember, the center of his attentions, no matter what the matter at hand actually was.

"Yeah, and it looks like I found it." He smirked slightly and winked up at Kim, who tilted her head just enough to avoid eye contact. Steve rapped on the table to draw Skull back to the here and now.

"Yeah, maybe you did. Now maybe you'd best let it drop. I've got my payment, your boys have got their goods. I can't see that you've any more business here." A click from Steve's side of the table spun Skull around in his seat. Steve's .45 was out,locked, loaded and pointed casually towards the ceiling, his elbow cocked like the hammer of a revolver, framing a face set hard for business.

"Hey, I'm here on business, pal." Skull shot back into Steve's face, the best defense a good offense. And Skull could be plenty offensive. "Maybe it isn't the business you thought it was, but business none the less. You know something. I want to know it. My offer stands. The DA's office. You tell me and I don't tell them."

"Your offer's crap." Kimberly snarled from behind him. "I made two calls when I got in to the town this morning. The first was to Cassie, she still thought you were a cop, you slime. The second was to Rocky, I think you know what he told me. You've got less juice at the PD then most junkies our age. I've seen your cards and you don't even have a pair. But then, I've been saying that you don't have a pair for years."

"You talked to Cassie?" Skull's eyes darted around in their sockets to glance at the smug Kimberly standing over his right shoulder, gloating.

"Yeah, who do you think had me fly into AG? Me, I thought I'd left this place behind, long ago." She stopped for a moment and chewed her lip a little, the armor slipping in just the slightest, before she regained her train of thought and continued, as if that moment had never been. "After all, We P…" She stopped herself and tried again "We ladies have to stick together." She smirked. Skull smirked and shook his head slightly. The kid was smarter and tougher then he remembered, but she was still new to this game, letting slip more then she should have, and bringing up two questions for every one she'd answered. And questions were the one thing that you never wanted to give the other guy. Questions made people do things, dumb things, dangerous things. Especially people like Skull.

"Yeah, I suppose so," Skull's smirk twisted a little, turned ugly, "You ladies made quite a team at the Olivers' wedding…" Skull paused for effect, then cut off Kim just as she opened her mouth to form a flabbergasted reply, "Oh, yeah, that's right, you weren't there, were you? Now why do you suppose that was? And Kat was so looking forward to…" His smile died and he trailed off as he saw Kim's face turn hard and pale, twisting itself into a marble mask to hold back a building tide. Steve was grimacing painfully and shooting Skull a heartfelt, imploring look, his face showing the pain in proxy for Kim, who couldn't. Skull took a deep breath, licked dry lips and finished off his beer before daring to break the delicate silence.

"Listen, Kim, I'm sorry I.."

"For what?" She asked quietly, as if challenging him to be sorry for something, a brown-red fire burning in her eyes. "I know I've got nothing to regret." She swallowed hard and seemed to wince in just the slightest, but her words were flat, even, perfectly measured, the fire quickly burnt down to ashes. "If you're really here for business, get to it, then get out." She smiled and sounded almost pleasantly enough to hide the biting edge to the words, and the spasm in her hip as she jerked her head towards the door.

"OK, how about this, then?" He put real effort into not looking back at the politely fuming Kimberly as he turned back to Steve. Steve looked curious but fully prepared to not be impressed. "I may not have juice but I can get bread, dig? Give me a number, Hart. Give me a number then give me a name, that's all I ask."

"Cash? You?" Steve's eyebrows went up patronizingly. "Please Skull, where would you dig up the kind of bread I'm gonna be needing? For putting my ass this blatantly on the line, I'm gonna start talking about a lot of zeros." He said, explaining it slowly, as for a child.

"And from where I'm standing," Kim cut in acidly, "There's only one zero here."

"Please." Skull snorted, "You think I'd be this interested in a dead Ranger if somebody wasn't greasing my palm pretty heavily. Somebody in this town is still looking out for the truth, although its more of a wake for it then intensive care. And that somebody is rich enough that they can afford to be honest. Which means they're more then rich enough for you to be."

"You?" Kim's eyes shot wide with shock. "Chasing Zack's killer? Why do I doubt that? I mean, I know that Trini told us it wasn't..." She trailed off, then regrouped and went back on the attack. "Listen, Skull I trust you considerably less far then I can throw you, so why don't you just leave us alone and leave the chase to people who care." She drew her trembling red lips back in anger, and for a moment Skull braced himself for spittle in his eye that never came as she turned her head aside at the last minute to spit at his feet. He raised questioning eyebrows at Hart, who sadly shook his head in the negative in the moment his neice's were still closed. Behind the concern, Skull could still see him counting up and saying good bye to the kind of numbers that existed only in imagination.

"Alright, kid, lets go." Steve stood and nodded towards the door, raising himself tiredly from his chair. His body was still going through the motions, but his heart really wasn't in it anymore. Skull let himself move along towards the door with Steve but his heart wasn't in it either, it was back there, with his mind, wondering about her and what she meant by "people who care", although one group who was dangerously close to being back together came directly to mind. He didn't even realize that he'd left the building until the door closed behind him and he found himself groping desperately for his shades or be blinded by the sudden explosion of sunlight as he stepped outside.

"Here, you forgot this." Steve shoved something large and metallic into the still blinking Skull's hands. And a small card. Before he could produce the proper sounds to ask, Hart was back inside the building and the local kids were staring blankly at him with their dead, animal eyes. As he blinked his eyesight back into existence, he looked down and found that the cold metal was that oversized hand cannon of Reggie's and with it a card with a name on it and "don't forget my share" scribbled hurriedly across the back. The way things had been going, Skull knew he shouldn't have been surprised that it was a name he knew. Skull should have left, he could already see the predatory stares the locals were shooting him. He should have followed the best lead he had. He should have, but he didn't, Skull never was much good with "shoulds" anyway. He shoved on the cracked shades and eased back into the welcoming blue shadows of afternoon.

Five minutes later found him lurking between a pair of probably empty hangers across from Hart's, watching the door, waiting for Kim. Chances were she already knew what her uncle knew and if she hadn't gotten to it yet, then her trail wouldlead there fairly soon. Two birds. One stone.

He waited, eyes locked half the time with the local kids, who circled him warily, sizing him up as either predator or prey. He was a stranger and in that they sensed weakness but kept a respectful distance, probably because of his gun. Men with guns were men to be respected here, but kids with so little to lose don't respect much, so Skull was still glad that he didn't have long to wait. Kim threw open the hanger door and Skull faded into the shadows, watching as she stopped in the doorway to touch her left hip gingerly. She gritted her teeth and launched into a fast, determined limp, favoring the well-worn leather holster with her uncle's .45 automatic in it. Her own talisman to ward off the locals. Slowly, patiently, Skull waited a heartbeat and a half then crossed the alley, and started strolling casually down the next row of hangers, glimpsing her from between the very buildings that concealed him.

Skull held back and waited a moment as she strolled out between the broken gates that marked the boundary between the old airport and the abandoned labyrinth of highways and service islands that surrounded it. She stuck to the main roads, using a straight-line-and-road-sign route towards the downtown. Two years of living in this empty, haunted urban graveyard stood Skull in good stead as he kept to the abandoned, boarded-up gas stations and shadowed graffiti-covered underpasses.

The nearly subterranean route he'd chosen was awash with the garbled tribal heraldry of the gangs and strangely beautiful alien symbols, many carved into the cement itself, and with a profusion of sinister, crudely drawn symbols of an ambiguously occult nature, usually in plain black spray paint or hand painted in thick red-brown that he hoped to god was just paint. Not the usual alien-cult-crop-circles or rebellious teen pseudo-demonic crap, this was stark and dangerous-looking and seemed to leer out at him from the very surface, threatening him, always painted on top of the rest of the graffiti, very new. Four years he had worked xenology for the ACU and never had he seen stuff even vaguely like this, although it all seemed vaguely familiar at the same time. It was done at odd angles and made Skull's head spin to look at it. Once he even could have sworn he almost heard the faintest hint of the arhythmic thumping and deep, inhuman chanting from his dreams. He shuddered and hastened to check on Kim's position. The moment he had spent staring at the graffiti had cost him dearly, she was almost too far ahead of him to see. He ran to catch up, his footsteps echoing hollowly through the maze of underpasses. She moved slower then he'd expected and he found himself gaining ground on her. Too much ground, she turned to look behind, her gun hand raised threateningly and his heart stopped in the same moment he did. The moment lengthened unbearably as her hand raised a little more and she squinted suspiciously at shadows, her face dark and unreadable. Then the moment was broken as her jerked to the side, following the path of a plastic bag being pushed along by an eddy of wind, her face cleared and she shook her head, relieved. Her sigh of relief as she turned forward was relief for them both, Skull had to bite back a giddy laugh and waited for her to make space between them before again remembering how to move. Silently he sent up thanks for black suits and lengthening shadows and took a steadying swig from a silver flask refilled at Junior's party last night. The strange booze hit him hard, his throat burned hot and beads of sweat formed on his brow. Moving a little smoother, he slunk after her.

Slowly, the landscape began to change from empty highways and service islands to the sharper, straighter grid of residential districts. Here he was a backyard ghost, flitting from backyard to backyard, hiding in direct sunlight, catching glimpses of her as she limped double-time down the cracked sidewalk., from between dead, sun bleached shells of happy, suburbanite homes, always staying a house or two behind, staying just out of her peripheral vision.

She picked up her pace and her movements growing more sudden and edgy, glancing back more often then Skull would have liked, her right arm tensing, her right hand drifting nearer and nearer to the holster, something was on her nerves, Skull pursed his lips as he realized that he must be an occasional flicker on the edge of vision. He dropped back a house and contented himself with following the sound of her mismatched footsteps. It seemed to work and she picked up the pace a little and letting the gun arm hang a little looser at her side.

They continued on, a little farther. Twice he heard her stumble and cry out with pain as her hip gave out on her and twice he had to stop himself from rushing forward to check on her. There is no sound like the unfeigned whimper of suffering unaided to torment the mind. He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists and waited, both times, waited two houses down, for the silence of recovery and the dull, plastic click of the pills spilling from the bottle, the muttering about the breakdown of public transit, uselessness of doctors and any number of other injustices and the renewed, angry loping towards the ever-growing gem of Downtown.

They skirted furtively around the police checkpoints into Downtown by following the coastline, the "bum's road", north from the sheer rocky cliffs that gave nearby Stone Canyon its name, to the wide, carefully kept, white sand beaches that served at the pleasure of Angel Grove's new cloistered elite and its ragged remains of a tourist trade. Skull kept lagging farther and farther behind her, trying harder and harder to keep out of sight as the buildings and cover grew gradually sparser until they passed into the beach proper and he stopped behind one of the changing huts to rework his tactics. Shadowing someone through a twisting labyrinth of abandoned beach houses and empty residential districts was one thing; shadowing them across an open, populated beach was quite another. He peeked around the corner and watched her head inland, then north again on Watershed and out of sight. He gritted his teeth and took off at a quick jog, not really caring who saw him at this point. Small children, mostly, out with their parents and bored teenagers, fascinated one second and bored once more the next, no one else really saw him. He was lucky, this time.

Skull screeched to a stop just short of the turnoff to Watershed Street. The jog had cleared the head for a moment, lifted the blinders. Slowly, carefully, he peeked around the corner. No Kimberly. It was trying almost painfully hard to be a typical long, sanitary, trendy seaside side street in any trendy, well-kept family seaside town on the continent, with overpriced pizza kiosks, cardboard flats manned by fat, sweaty old women, sullen, dark-eyed army-aged sons and vaguely disgruntled teenage daughters selling authentic local souvenirs made in Taiwan, and sprawling tent arcades for the parents to drop the kids off in while they hit any of the fake-tropical theme bars, which were all basically the same place except for the general shape and color of the neon in the window. It tried but this wasn't just any other trendy, well-kept family seaside town, this was Angel Grove. The kid at the pizza kiosk was a greasy looking Edenite with eyes the exactly wrong shape for an Earthmen, half the tent arcade's video games were ten years ahead of anything else out there, driven by sense induction, garishly-painted, screenless boxes played by immobile, zombie-like patrons who lived the dream of its creators, the retro-engineering industry's best and brightest; there was an entire strip mall overtaken by business offices of several garage-level xenotech firms and the souvenirs had the angular cast of Triforian peasant labor, sold by a pair of short, furry Liarians in blindingly bright shirts and shorts that might, or might not, have been Hawaiian and Bermudan respectively, if done by Picasso, or might have been the result of a particularly bad acid trip. It was like watching a group of people playing a beach town in a badly-cast amateur play.

At the other end of the stage, separated from the chintz and the plaster by a moat of yellow-lined asphalt that served it as a parking lot, was a low-built but expansive building, understated and cheerfully-painted. Marked by a clean, new sign as "Adele's Beach Club". The parking lot wasn't exactly empty but it wasn't full by any stretch of the imagination.

Skull squinted and put up a hand to shield his eyes from the late afternoon sun. At this distance it was hard to tell, but he could have sworn that the van was the same as one he'd seen parked at the hotel the day before. A lump started to form in his in the pit of his stomach. Too many coincidences to be coincidence. Coincidence didn't usually hunt in packs like this. He strolled just a little too fast to be casual towards the beach club. He supposed Kimberly could have turned off into any of these little bars, all of which were looking pretty good to Skull, despite the strange and soothing booze he carried with him, or caught an autocab deeper downtown, or even just walked farther on. But she didn't. It was hard to explain, but her reference to Cassie and now this unmarked van. The place was an oasis of class and calm in a loud, crass, busy crowd. Like Kimberly herself. It made as much sense as any of this did. He took another quick shot from the flask and forced himself forward.

The air above the parking lot wavered with reflected heat and the building wavered for a moment. Skull's feet came down hard on the new pavement, sending shock waves up his bony legs, the cold flask thumping against his ribs inside his jacket. The heat made him nauseous but then a lot of things made Skull nauseous, so he just took another shot of courage and cruised on, looking as much like he was supposed to be there as an unshaven, sweat-soaked little man in an frayed black suit and dog collar could in the half-empty, newly-paved parking lot of where the elite meet to eat lunch. Somewhere nearby, an priceless car stereo system in a worthless car blared out scratchy latin music and Skull unconsciously picked up the beat, twisting his crouching lope into something resembling a fast swagger, his lips curling ever so slightly into something of a smirk, or maybe it was a sneer, just to stay in tune with the cocky, up-tempo music. He even managed to spin around on a single heel without toppling over when a car he passed barked his name.

"Well, well, well, Skullovitch, we are being seen in all the right places this season, aren't we?" The voice, rich with mocking laughter continued. The voice was, as always, emitting from the smirking, irritatingly handsome face of Bogart, darker haired of the local repeat champion pain-in-ass duo of Humphry and Bogart, trademark brown felt fedora tilted at a jaunty and subtly insulting angle.

"Indeed, with your track record, one wouldn't exactly think your social calendar would fill up like this? What's your secret? Pity for your quickly advancing age?" And where you found Bogart, then the jocular, blond Humphry wouldn't be far behind, collar turned up presumptuously on his trademark loud, canary yellow, hawiian shirt.

"Piss off." Skull's theme music quickly faded into the background and he turned to leave these two eating his investigative dust. He didn't know why they were here and frankly, couldn't care less.

"Ahhh, of course, the patented Skullovitch wit. That must be it." Bogart quipped and they both laughed. Skull gritted his teeth and prepared to press on. There was nothing about these guys that didn't both disgust and enrage him. Not the least of which being that they were both younger, better looking and more successful then him. Not that that took much these days.

"Assholes." He muttered lowly as he spun again and started back towards the club, trying very hard not to look at their faces. They had very punchable faces.

"Hey! Skullovitch! We haven't dismissed you yet!" One of them shouted from behind him, the sneer in his voice pulled across Skull's ears like nails across a chalkboard. Skull stopped and gritted his teeth, just stopping himself from turning and really giving them a piece of his mind.

"Don't see why not, I dismissed the two of you years ago." He didn't turn, didn't give them the satisfaction of seeing the cracks in his armor reflected in his eyes. They 'ooohed' mockingly behind him in the car, hooting for him to do more then just quip. Not that he didn't think it, but it was broad daylight, there were two of them and they were both younger and spryer.

"Hey, hey, Skullovitch, come back here. We got a deal for you." The words were honey-smooth and conciliatory, not unlike Mephistopheles's was before signing with Faust. Skull knew this, but his pockets were empty and empty pockets will turn where pride won't.

"What deal?" He growled from behind his shades, hands shoved deep in his pockets.

"Twenty now." A crinkled bill appeared out of Bogart's sleeve.

"And twenty when you come back out with a headcount and guest list. Maybe another if you get more." Humphry leaned out the passenger's side window holding another. Both were grinning like they could still taste the proverbial canary. Skull paused, looked at both the bills. In the long afternoon sun, the way they were folded, they looked like glasses of beer. Pursing his lips as he swallowed his pride, Skull nodded and stepped up the driver's side and held his hand just short of the bill dangling from Bogart's hand.

"One question." He peered what he hoped passed for menacingly over his sunglasses. "Why pay me to do it? Why not do it yourselves?" He may have been a rat, but at least a rat knows the smell of a trap.

"We're waiting for a ride." Bogart said in all seriousness from behind the wheel of his green, '82 Citation. "No more questions, Skullovitch. Just take the money or don't." Skull waited a moment while he locked eyes with Bogart and snatched the money from the waiting hand.

Without looking back, he marched across the hot asphalt, preternaturally smooth, like the courage burning in his throat. The sign said "closed for renovation", but the building's outside was pristine and untouched, without even the inevitable pile of detritus outside that work generated. It might have well read "closed for bullshit." He smirked and started doing the circuit of the building's doorways.

The kitchen. No one ever locked the kitchen door. Skull was in. The kitchen was empty but warm. Warmer then outside. It had been used real recently. Skull proceeded with caution. He caught the still-swinging inside door, and held it open just wide enough to catch the first, fresh scraps of conversation drifting down the short hallway from the main body of the restaurant. Women's voices, laughing, clinking glasses, one voice, big, hearty, Adele's he guessed, above the others. "...Leave you girls to your business" as it moved back towards the kitchen door. Skull jumped back. Panic time. He threw himself quickly behind one the giant, industrial, stove that dominated the middle of the kitchen. A long, silent moment passed, Skull's heart pounding like a jackhammer in his ears. Then the door slammed open and Adele's feet echoed like a bass drum, covering up Skull's shallow breathing. A second door slammed as she left and Skull took a minute to learn how to breathe easily again. When the moment had passed, he lifted himself slowly from the floor and headed through the door, taking a moment to snap up a mouthful of the warm cooking sherry left to "breathe" on the stainless steel counter. At the door he paused, turned back and on a whim, went back to grab the rest of the bottle, after all, he was already breaking and entering, with real potential for a little invasion of privacy on the side, so what was a little petty theft here and there?

The door was still swinging when he got to it, so Skull could just gave it a little nudge and slipped out into the hall. Voices rattled down word by word from the main room. He stopped and listened.

"… expect for him to show up." Kim was sneering, voice faded with fatigue.

"I'm not surprised." Another voice, tired, but not with walking, the harder sounds softened, the emphasis twisted oddly, Skull recognized the tell-tale drawl of Zanotec, a cheap prescription tranquilizer that had just started to come into vogue with the downtown social set two years ago. "Gene's never been able to get over you people. You Rangers." She spat out the word with a relaxed contempt and Skull stopped dead in his tracks. He knew this voice, her name had been on the card, Connie Crandall. He stumbled forward slightly with the shock. He lifted the bottle to upraised lips with one hand and took an industrial-sized mouthful of the cooking sherry and steadied himself against the wall with the other.

"Hey, guys," Cassie, tentative and conciliatory "listen, maybe its not so bad, I mean, he did lie to me but he does seem to be after the same thing that we are, maybe we could even..."

"NO!" Two voices, sharp edges of contempt and hatred honed separately by drugs and pain shot out at once, slicing off the end of her apology.

"You don't know him like we do, Cassie." Kim continued without a beat. "I've known Skull since grade school. That little weasel's just in this to grease his own palm…" He voice stopped, choked up with pain and hatred. He could hear the others, multiple others, softly try to comfort her, except for Connie, he knew her voice better then the others, and he didn't hear it in the cooing chorus of platitudes.

"Bullshit." There it was, Skull scowled to himself. She must have downed a couple more Mother's Little Helpers, her cadence was warped, like someone reading a tone poem. "Gene doesn't have the sense to be corrupt. 'Follow the money'. Isn't that what they say? Well, you follow the money and you won't find Gene." That bitch! Skull almost opened his mouth to give himself away. It was one of their old arguments all over again, only he wasn't able to bark out his usual retort. "Only thing he cares about is being right, especially about Power Rangers, and that's it. He'll find just enough rope to hang himself. Typical." Only another swallow of the weak, bitter sherry stopped up his reply this time. "He was a good enough cop for that." Her tone changed now, a little wistful, and a part of Skull almost hoped that it wasn't just the tranquilizers kicking in. "A lousy man, but a good enough cop." Skull's epitaph.

"You have a point, Connie?" Kim was calmed now, calm enough to snap at Connie anyway. "Because some of us came here on business, not to hear you bitch about old boyfriends." Something wavered in her admonition, something uncertain and afraid.

"Odd you should use that word.." Connie mused distantly. "..Bitch." The word was uttered almost cheerfully, the intonation disturbing almost to the point of being alien. It occurred to Skull that it sounded like they'd made Zanotec more potent in the last two years. "You asked me here, so you'll sit on that tight little ass of yours and take it however I give it." Another long silence. Then a single slap, loud, clear and almost in stereo. Skull winced unconsciously, until his frightened animal of a subconscious caught up to his alcohol-dimmed conscious mind and realized that it wasn't directed at him, another swig from the bottle, and the gulf between mind and body reopened nicely.

"Kim!" A new voice, familiar but not readily available to Skull's swimming consciousness, sweet as sugar cookies and shrill with domestic outrage, colored by the slightest hint of an Australian accent. "What'reya doin'? We're just lucky that she's so easygoing…"

"Oh! Shut up, Kat!" Kim lashed out at the quiet Aussi. Katherine Oliver, another ex-Ranger, Skull was becoming less and less surprised at these sorts of things. however, what made it surprising was that she hadn't been seen in the same room with Kim since she'd married the love of both their lives. This could get messy. Skull could hardly wait. "She's doped to the gills, and you know it! I'm just doing what we came here for, now let me get on with it before she passes out!" The sounds of a brief scuffle and the eerily slow laughter of Connie in the background followed.

"Down, girl..." A tired Cassie, followed by a grunt of exertion. From holding Kim back? The sounds of chairs scraping, people resettling. Skull made sounds of five people. One voice he hadn't yet caught.

"Hart! Sit down!" The last voice, female, soft but clipped and military precise. This one, Skull definitely didn't know. "We're all Pinks here, we don't fight our own!" Something focused, the way that it carried without being loud enough to make an echo, told of space, with the regular, controlled tones that have marked soldiers since time immemorable. No make.

"Oh," Kat spoke up again, sounding almost guilty, as if it was her fault, "don't be so hard on her, Kendrix, she's been under a lot of stress since breaking her..."

"Stress!" Kim snapped again, the sound of small, tentative movements, everyone tensing for another go, "What do you know about stress you little..." She muttered under her breath, restrained, conscious of the restraints the other placed on her, letting her words trail off, unfinished but not unknown, as Connie's distant, distorted laughter drifted around their words.

"We are not here on your pleasure, you are here on ours." The one called Kendrix, addressing Connie. "Now, this a matter of grave importance to us, and you know what the four of us can do to you from our respective positions in life, should you not cooperate."

"Phhhttt…" Connie made a rude noise, of the sort that those who cannot feel their own lips are wont to do, then let it hang there for a moment, aimlessly clinking about the ice in her glass. "Grave matters, matters of the grave, what's the difference? They do something to me if I do tell you, you do something if I don't. I'm the daughter of the Mayor, and as such I order you to go fuck yourselves." Followed by another round of disjointed, asymmetrical staccato laughter. Low whispers as the Pinks went into huddle.

"Perhaps you have a point, Ms. Crandall." That Kendrix chick again. "After all, right now, if the people you're protecting are capable of repeating their little trick from Friday, our threats pale before theirs. So what can we proffer to sweeten the deal? You're too well off economically to want money." True enough, Skull could smell Connie's imported cigarettes on the air, spiced with just a tang of an alien root that hadn't yet been classified well enough to be outlawed. On the black market, a carton of those could keep you eating for quite some time. "What do you want?"

"Want?" The sing-song quality the pills lent her voice made it come out almost like an insult, accentuated the sneer in her voice that she was trying to hide. "Do I want something?" It'd been a long time since Connie had been able to effectively play the innocent and she'd definitely grown rusty.

"You must. You're here." Kendrix replied coldly. Obviously, even her military patience was quickly running out.

"Alright." Some of the coyness dropped from her voice. "I want a headwire." Simple alien tech, pleasure/pain simulator.

Total silence, no moving, no talking, breathing so soft as to make no sound discernable from the hallway.

A moment of total silence. The calm before the storm, and when the storm broke it was a hurricane of wind, fury and voices. All raging towards and around a silent Connie.

"Connie, are you really sure you want to.."

"No. Under no circumstances, Ms. Crandall, will you get a headwire on our..."

"Why you grasping little junkie wh.."

"Kim! Jesus Christ, get a grip, girl…"

"..But a wire? Connie, isn't that illeg.."

"It is and she knows it, Oliver. The answer's still 'No'…"

"Hands off, Chan! Unless you want to loose them!"

"You see, Connie, maybe you just want to… I don't know.. reconsider..?"

"Christ, you're wound tight today, Hart.."

"Just back the fuck off, Chan!"

"This informant is worthless, no information is worth this price.."

"I don't know, Kendrix, I mean, really, maybe if we give just a little, like a sample.."

"Don't Even, Oliver! We are not pushers, we're…"

"Like you know what we're about! Shit, Morgan, you weren't even…"

"I'm not telling you again, Hart! Turn it dow.."

"Damn right you're not, Chan! Who died and made you boss, huh? I was the original.."

"I've taken just about as much of your crap as I'm going to, Hart, I don't care who you used to.."

"What was that?!? Don't get me started Morgan you wannabe, some of us.."

"Some of you what? What were you going to say, Hart? Some of us died in the line of duty? Huh? 'Cause otherwise.."

"Cassie, don't bring that up.. please, god!" Kendrix, but different, weaker, scared, begging. Another moment of silence.

"So, do I get it or not.. I am getting awful tired, and I think I need to go.." Connie whined coyingly, breaking the moment and the mood.

"You'll stay where you damn well are!" Kim, tired and hoarse with shouting. A hand slammed down painfully hard on the table. There was the sound of falling glasses, and a squeak Skull could only assume came from Connie.

"Now." Kendrix, cold as ice this time, a little too cold to be real. "We're not here to cut deals. Tell us. How did you know about Taylor's death?" A short, rude noise followed, itself followed by a sharp smack and the sound of something small and hard, like pills, scattering across the floor.

"Again." The façade began to wear thin, and Kendrix's voice was softer, rougher this time, "Who told you?"

"No wire?" Connie knew the answer, but couldn't keep from asking. No answer was forthcoming, only the question.

"Who told you?" Less cold, more impatient, this Kendrix was a hard customer, whoever she was.

"Al.. Alientown, I heard it down in Alientown…" Connie's voice was soft, and there was a catch in it that anyone else could have mistaken for a suppressed sob. It was a laugh being choked down. And Skull was in on the joke for once.

"Alientown. Now we're getting somewhere!" Cassie was quick to jump in, The good cop to Kendrix and Kim's bad. "Now, what were you doing in Alientown…?"

"I was…" Connie's voice was quiet now, and managed to encapsulate the helpless shame of the junkie, "..shopping.." the lie was nearly too soft to be heard.

"I'll bet." Kim snorted in derision.

"Maybe she was looking for souvenirs?" Kat added hopefully. There was a round of cruel, biting laughter there to shut her up with an "its alright, dear" from Cassie at the end to blunt the blade a bit.

"Shopping, huh? Where at?" Kim again, the sneer on her face easily read in her voice. "C'mon! Talk!" Sneer slipped into snarl. Connie still let a long moment pass before forcing out the answer."

"The Red…" she took a deep breath, choked with shame, "The Red Limit." A border bar, mainly for tower trash who were slumming, but the implications of what she was doing there, and worse, dripped from her voice. It was where more alien drugs changed hands then anywhere this side of the pharmaceutical companies. She was faking it, of course, but then faking it was what Connie did best, as it took Skull two long years to find out. He stifled a laugh.

"Doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out what you were doing there." Kim snapped tiredly, weary in body, mind and soul, angry at every moment she wasn't resting now. She wasn't resting now.

"Like you wouldn't know." It may have been sneer, gentle jape or honest question, it was hard to tell at this distance and with her in that state.

"You… Little… Whore…"

"Stand down Hart. I don't anticipate telling you again." Kendrix. There was the iron of command. Military and ranking, that much was obvious. A sullen silence followed.

"That.. that isn't really important, is it?" Kat, obviously disturbed, rushing the interrogation along. "Now, lassie, what'd you hear there?" The tone was nice, strained, but nice.

"Some aliens I… I was dealing with.." sobs spiced with a more cautious tone, like the scared witness on the cop shows, sounding precisely how witnesses never sounded. Skull knew, he'd been a cop. And a witness. This bunch wouldn't. They were bright enough, and well-meaning, but it was still amateur hour out there. "Dangerous-looking, lots of.. of…" she broke down now for effect, with Kat predictably comforting her, "..guns and stuff…" There was the tip-off, Connie was a lot of things when stoned, but never, never did she say "and stuff" ever, no one raised as carefully as she had been would. "..I overheard them talking… talking about killing him…" There was another rattle of the bottle and her sobbing died down.

"Why did you not inform the authorities?" Kendrix, smooth as ice and twice as cold. She was well trained, he'd concede that, she knew all the basic questions. Give her some street smarts, and she might just make a decent cop.

"You don't know who these guys were! They were Legion! Don't you get it? It was him or me! You understand? They would kill me! Him or me.." She trailed off, more sobbing, not hard, Connie could lie so hard that sometimes even she believed it. Especially after as much tranqs as it sounded like she'd had.

"Legion? The Onyx Legion?" Kendrix, wariness and surprise, natural if she was indeed military.

"Are you sure?" Cassie, scared but critical. She knew more then he'd figured.

"Onyx Legion?" Kat piped up, a little confused now. Skull threw back some more of the wine and choked back a head-slap. If things were running to form, Kim should be lashing out at her right about..

"You stupid little Aussie cow!" Now. "Don't you even read the fucking papers?"

"Hey, back off, she's been busy…" Cassie, trying to play peacemaker again.

"Yeah, busy being married." And failing. Kat's turn to bite, again the sounds of muted struggle.

"The Onyx Legion are the last remnants of the armies of the Old Warlords, the immortal monsters who reigned in this and adjacent galaxies previous to the current round of wars."

"You know? The ones we rangers risked our asses fighting? You remember those at all? Is there room for them in your teeny, tiny little mind, you goddamn little cum-catcher?" Another little bile-filled tidbit of bitterness from Hart. He was really starting to like this new Kim, they had a lot in common.

"Revenge? So this murder was revenge?" Cassie was outside the fighting now, doing some thinking. "But why just Zack? There were plenty more of us there that night." Puzzled, and maybe a little frightened. Thinking tended to lead to that.

"I don't know! You have to believe me, I don't know why! They were scary and violent and.. and… and they ki… ki.. oh, poor Zack.." She cried out and broke down again, a torrent of almost unnaturally violent sobs. Skull was starting to get a little frightened, the sobs were starting to sound just a touch of convulsions from a Zanotec overdose.

"We've gotten all we're going to out of this pill-popping bitch. Anything else we're going to have to get on our own." Kim shoved back her chair, probably to stand up.

"You're dismissed." Kendrix, military precision showing through again.

"Hmmm…?" It was hard to tell if it was an unconscious moan, or a real sound of incomprehension. If it wasn't the latter, Connie was headed straight for an emergency room

"Hit the street, dumbass." Kim growled, Connie giggled and stumbled to her feet. Skull scowled, just like her, never really in crisis when it wasn't convenient. Skull took another swig of the wine and started out the back door, to catch her on the way out to a background of whispered plans from the ex-Pink Rangers. Amateur was over, time for the professional talent to take the stage. He caught up with her on the way out, just outside the exit, slipping into the doorway behind her. She didn't notice. He wasn't surprised.

"Some performance, Connie. Nice to see you're still in practice." His voice was slow, deliberate and dripped with a strange combination of wry amusement and deep-seated bitterness. He still had the wine bottle from the kitchen in one hand and was taking liberal sips to wet his whistle between slow, evenly-paced sentences. "But I guess lying's like riding a bicycle, you never really forget, do you?"

"Gene!" She spun with a speed that exceeded her current grace and nearly toppled over. Skull just leaned against the doorway, watching with no little amusement as she swayed a bit and then righted herself. She glared at him with the eyes too wide and pupils too narrow, then regained a certain smug, medicated composure. "Gene. Genegenegene…" She smirked as if she had said something witty. He grimaced, rolled his eyes and took another therapeutic mouthful of the cheap sherry. Somehow the bitter taste it left in his mouth seemed the take some of the bitterness out of his tongue. Some, but not much, not really.

"Connie, you sang those girls quite the song in there, always did have a nice voice.." That wasn't all she had that was nice. He trailed off and let his eyes travel the long, slow road south as the wine started to lighten his head a little. Maybe not as scenic a stretch Skull had seen today, but at least this was a route he'd driven before and Skull knew from experience that it could quite a ride. "..now, how 'bout you sing me a little something, maybe in the key of 'believable', eh?"

"Hmmm…?" She looked at him blankly. The words had flown right over her. He took a breath and a drink and tried again.

"You know what I mean. Onyx had about as much to do with Taylor's murder as I did." His words were all business but his eyes were having trouble staying on hers. It had been a long time for him and while his mind was thinking about the case, his body was thinking about all the things he'd missed.

"Hmmmm?" Vague, clouded eyes blinked with incomprehension, her voice growing stranger and more distant as the drug's affects began to compound. "I didn't know you'd helped. I thought it was just Walsh's man." She smiled pleasantly. "Have we met?" She asked suddenly, and he took another drink to keep from spitting. She was a bitch to deal with when stoned. And he wasn't nearly drunk enough to be patient. Close, but not quite. Still, she had told him something. Brigadier General David Walsh was the new head-man up at NASADA. It just confirmed what he'd been saying the whole time.

"No. We haven't." He scowled. "Those four years we lived together, I didn't know you at all, so no, we haven't ever really met. But we've fucked." He finished off the last of the sherry and tossed the bottle to one side with a clatter. He'd forgotten all about the people inside, and wouldn't have cared if he had.

"Walsh's man, huh? That'd make him an official military sniper, wouldn't it? But why? What's NASADA's percentage in greasing… unless he was dealing independent of them…" He was talking to himself now, out loud, and a light had just gone on.

"Well, you won't get me to tell you. No sir." She saluted spastically and grinned, having apparently made quite a coup in whatever conversation she thought she was having with Skull. "Not like that loud-mouthed little bitch, Hallie, hmmmm? You're nice." She shot him a sudden smile, warm but vague and Skull stopped to consider the offer, until he stopped to consider what she'd said. Then she tipped forward and draped her arms around his neck, and he switched tracks once again, it might not be fair of him to take advantage of a woman obviously going under at an alarming rate, but Skull wasn't real worried about fairness right now and a quick one might be nice. Just thinking about it gave him a hard one.

"Really Nice." She breathed again, her sickly-sweet medicine breath in his nostrils, his little stallion ready to ride. "So, nice man, have you seen my Bulkie…." And it died, right there and then.

Now, while no Ranger-in-Shining-Armor like Adam or Tommy or one of those, Skull usually didn't hit a lady. But then, Connie'd just crossed over from lady in his mind anyway. Just like the time she'd told him it was Bulk she thought about when they were together. He hit her, once, hard, and sent her sprawling across the asphalt. She probably hadn't even felt it before she passed out. Hot rage flushing his cheeks, he stormed away towards the beaten old wreck that held those damn kids. He'd get twenty bucks out of this if nothing else. He could already hear scrambling from inside, they'd probably be out to check this out in a second. He didn't care. He was through with this place, with these chicks, with the whole damn situation for today. He'd done enough today.

All he wanted right now was the other twenty bucks and a nice, quiet place to get good and fucked up. "Bullshit." There it was, Skull scowled to himself. She must have downed a couple more Mother's Little Helpers, her cadence was warped, like someone reading a tone poem. "Gene doesn't have the sense to be corrupt. 'Follow the money'. Isn't that what they say? Well, you follow the money and you won't find Gene." That bitch! Skull almost opened his mouth to give himself away. It was one of their old arguments all over again, only he wasn't able to bark out his usual retort. "Only thing he cares about is being right, especially about Power Rangers, and that's it. He'll find just enough rope to hang himself. Typical." Only another swallow of the weak, bitter sherry stopped up his reply this time. "He was a good enough cop for that." Her tone changed now, a little wistful, and a part of Skull almost hoped that it wasn't just the tranquilizers kicking in. "A lousy man, but a good enough cop." Skull's epitaph.