Major Crime Bullpen, the next morning

"You used me, Sandburg," Jim said, as they entered the bullpen, "and you used your mother, too. You're shameless. I'm an old-style Joe Friday kind of cop, am I?"

Blair could tell that Jim wasn't really angry. In fact, he sounded kind of proud. He grinned. "Well, it worked, didn't it? They just needed to think they had a sympathetic ear, and it's true that Naomi used to take me to marches against the CIA." He stopped at his desk and riffled through the pile of phone messages. "Oh, shit."

"What?"

"Now that I'm their friend, they want to tell me all their problems. I think there's a message from just about everyone who was there last night."

"No sympathy from me, partner."

Rafe called over. "Sandburg, there was a guy in a shiny hat here to see you earlier. Said he'd be back. He wants to tell you about his neighbor, who was replaced by a clone. Say, where do you find these people, anyway?"

Blair groaned. "Oh no, Woodrow Fleener."

"You'd better start checking into that helicopter thing right away," Jim said. "You know, the unmarked helicopter that swooped down on Fleener's car and followed it for miles while making his car vibrate."

"Before or after I check into the microwaves?" Blair grimaced. "But, you know, this government conspiracy stuff is really fascinating. I wish I could do a research project on it, because it's just ripe for anthropological study. I mean, talk about your closed societies. They have their own language and belief system that are pretty obscure to anybody outside the group. Some of them are paranoid schizophrenics, or even psychotic. Hearing voices is pretty common with those types of mental disorders. But some of the conspiracy theory people are sane enough, and it's more like they got caught up in a strange religion. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to tell the difference.

"They all seemed kind of goofy to me."

"Maybe I really could do a research project on the conspiracy subculture," Blair said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't have to be associated with a university. I could just do it on my own, and I might still be able to get something published." His eyes brightened. "I even have a nice little group to study that's just dying to tell me all about themselves and their beliefs. An urban tribe, so to speak."

"Sure, I think you should do it. You don't have to be a cop twenty-four hours a day."

"Right, and I'm used to multitasking. Man, I feel energized just thinking about it!" Blair bounced a little on his toes.

Jim picked up one of several thick folders lying on his desk, and handed it to his partner. "Good, use that energy to absorb this report from the crime scene unit."

They were almost done reading the reports when Simon appeared at the door of his office and ordered them inside.

"Morning, Simon," they chorused.

"I've been reading the report on Milo Spalding, and I hope this is going to be a nice straightforward suicide. We don't want any messy murder with the heir to the potato chip king. The papers would have a field day."

"We think it does look like suicide," Jim said, "although it's not perfectly straightforward, I'm afraid. Mr. Spalding was involved with a group of people who think that the CIA did him in with mind control machines. According to them, he was harassed by voices telling him to kill himself, until he did."

Simon rolled his eyes. "The papers will really run with that one. Please close this case as soon as possible. I want you to make it your first priority."

"They should do the autopsy later today," Jim said. "They had to wait for the wife to formally identify the body, and she was out of town when he died."

"We're going to talk to her this morning," Blair added.

"Well, get going then." Simon waved them out of his office.

"Hey, Sandburg," Henri called over. "I'm on the phone with the front desk. There's a guy down there wearing some sort of metal headgear who says he wants to talk to you."

Blair said, "Tell him I'm not here." He headed rapidly for the door, Jim right behind him.

"Hey, what happened to Mr. Sympathetic?" Jim snickered.

"Shut up," Blair said, walking faster.

Spalding estate, later that morning

"I feel like we're serfs arriving at the castle," Blair grumbled, as the gate slowly opened and they were permitted to drive onto the grounds of the Spalding estate. "Don't forget to say 'yes, mum' and tug your forelock. Oops, sorry, you don't have a forelock, do you?"

"Very funny. You're just gloating because all your hair's grown back." As they drove up the long winding drive, a sprawling pseudo-English mansion came into view, sitting grandly at the top of a cliff overlooking the bay.

"I could live here," Blair said, impressed. "Man, just think of the potatoes."

"What?"

"Think of how many potatoes gave their lives to Spalding Spuds in order for this to exist."

"I never would have thought of it that way," Jim mused, parking in front of the door. "Only you, Sandburg." They got out and rang the doorbell.

As the elderly housekeeper who answered the door escorted them through a long hall, the Sentinel could hear the low sounds of a conversation ahead of them. He extended his hearing.

A confident male voice was saying, "...Algerian contact has been authorized to buy at the price I'm asking. They want to see more, too."

"Do be careful, darling," a female voice entreated.

"Don't worry. I'm careful. You won't have to see them at all in Paris. The business won't take long and then.."

The voices stopped abruptly as the detectives entered the large plant-filled sunroom overlooking the water. The man and woman who had been engaged in conversation moved slightly apart.

"I apologize for our being a little early," Jim said. "I'm Detective Ellison and this is Detective Sandburg. We're very sorry about the unfortunate death of your husband, Mrs. Spalding."

"Yes, yes," the woman said a little distractedly, "of course. I'm Belinda Spalding, and this is my dear friend Kurt Luker, who was so kind to come and console me about poor Milo." Mrs. Spalding didn't really look like she needed much consoling. She was a sulky-looking brunette with a voluptuous figure filling out a tight burgundy jumpsuit and long painted fingernails to match.

Her darkly handsome companion turned to them and shook their hands. "Yes, dear Belinda is all alone now. She needs support from her friends in her hour of need, and I was happy to be here for her."

"Did you know Mr. Spalding?" Jim asked him.

"Not well. We really didn't have much in common," Luker said in a slightly contemptuous tone. "I haven't seen him in some time, and there is nothing I can tell you about his death. I'll be going, unless you need me."

Jim watched him begin to stuff papers and letters from a nearby table into a leather briefcase. "Is someone planning a trip to Paris?" he asked casually.

Luker looked up sharply, his green eyes glittering. "Paris? How..."

Jim nodded towards a travel brochure lying open on the table.

Luker snatched it up and put it in his briefcase. "I have some business to attend to there."

"I'm sure it will be nice to get away from Cascade at this time of the year, and of course Paris is Paris, any time of the year," Jim said.

"Oh, I love Paris," Mrs. Spalding said brightly. "I'm really looking forward to getting out of this dreary place." She stopped short.

"You're going to Paris, too, Mrs. Spalding?" Blair asked.

"Oh, well, we'd had this trip planned for some time."

"You're still going, then?"

"Milo and I were separated, after all," she said a little defensively.

Kurt Luker closed the briefcase and put on an expensive-looking camel's hair coat. "I must be going," he said. "I'll be in touch, Belinda."

"Ciao," Mrs. Spalding said throatily, blowing him a kiss as he left the room.

"It's always good to have friends around at such a stressful time," Jim said neutrally, wondering just how good a friend he was to the new widow.

"So sad about Milo," she murmured, sinking into a cushy flowered chair and picking up a glass of wine on the side table. She motioned them to sit opposite her. "I had to go down to the Morgue earlier this morning and identify him. What a horrible place," she shuddered. "I was truly traumatized."

"How long had you been married to Mr. Spalding?" Jim asked.

"Two years, but we hadn't been living together for the last couple of months. I'm afraid the poor man had become as nutty as a fruitcake, and quite impossible to live with. He was kind enough to let me stay in his family home while he worked out his problems, and he took an apartment downtown."

Jim wanted to hear her assessment of the victim's mental condition. "In what way was he 'nutty', Mrs. Spalding?"

"He was always a bit, well, antisocial, but about two months ago he started having these paranoid hallucinations about hearing voices. Can you imagine?" She shook her head in amazement. "I really couldn't be expected to live with him in that state. I told him to see a shrink, but I don't think he ever did. Instead he took up with a bizarre little group of crackpots that just encouraged him in his delusions."

"Did he tell you what the voices said?" Blair asked.

"Oh yes, he said they criticized him and told him he was worthless. Personally, I think it was a projection of his own mind or something, because somewhere in there he probably knew that it was true. Unfortunately, Milo was kind of a loser. He never had a job, never tried to do anything with his life, never lived up to the family name. His father was very disappointed in him."

"So, do you think that he killed himself?" Jim pursued.

She took another sip of wine and gazed intently at Jim. "I'm sure of it. It's too bad, but I guess some people just don't have what it takes. I like strong men, Detective Ellison, and poor Milo was weak. Maybe the one strong thing he did in his life was to end it. Sad, isn't it?"

They thanked her for her time and left. As soon as they were outside the door, Jim fumed, "Did you see the way she looked at me when she said she liked strong men? She was practically coming on to me!"

"I noticed. And she was totally unsympathetic to Milo's problems, and not exactly grief- stricken at his death. Coral was right. She's a bitch."

They got into the truck. "Unfortunately, being a bitch isn't against the law, and I don't think she killed him," Jim said more calmly. "Well, have we decided that it's suicide, unless the autopsy gives us some new information? How about some lunch?"

"Lunch sounds good, although it would have sounded better if you hadn't brought up autopsies. But then I'd like to go back to Spalding's apartment one more time and look around a little more. I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I just have the feeling that there's more to this somehow. It's awfully convenient for bitchy Belinda that her husband committed suicide, since she inherits everything."

"Let's go, then. Just keep an eye out for low-flying CIA helicopters."

Milo Spalding's apartment, that afternoon

The apartment was still secured by yellow police tape when Jim and Blair let themselves in with the key. Everything was as they had left it, and yet it felt somehow emptier than it had before. If Milo Spalding had left some presence of himself where he had last lived, it was already gone.

They made one circuit of the entire apartment together, trying to decide what, if anything, needed more examination. Blair finally settled at the desk again, saying he hadn't looked at everything before. Jim examined the living room and balcony once more with senses dialed up, in case some piece of evidence, no matter how small, had been missed.

After about half an hour, Jim began to feel dizzy and nauseous, exactly as he had felt the last time they had been in the apartment. He finally sat down on the sofa. "Sandburg," he said miserably, "I'm not feeling so well. How are you feeling?"

Blair looked up from his work. "Actually," he said, "I'm getting a headache, but you look terrible. In fact, you look as green as you did the last time we were here. What's going on?" He stood up in confusion.

"I think," Jim said, "that there's something in this apartment that's making us sick. Remember, when we were here before, we thought we were getting the flu, but we felt fine not long after we got out of the room?"

Blair added, "And remember how Coral said Spalding hadn't been feeling well lately, that he had headaches, dizziness, and stomach problems? Maybe it's that sick building syndrome, where there's something in the air ducts or in the environment that makes people ill."

"Maybe so. We should ask the manager if other people are chronically sick."

"Or what if the conspiracy theorists are right?" Blair's eyes grew wide with the possibilities.

"You mean the CIA really is bombarding the building with mind control devices, or death rays, or something?"

"Well, Naomi taught me never to trust the CIA, but it doesn't have to be them. Maybe there are a lot of power lines nearby with strong electromagnetic fields. People have been complaining about getting sick from those for years. Or maybe it's radiation leaking from a scientific laboratory nearby. I don't know! You're no doubt more sensitive to it than most people, but I'm feeling something too."

Blair walked over to his partner and looked at him closely. "If you feel up to it, perhaps we could try an experiment. I'm not sure whether this would work, but if we're being affected by waves or fields that normally aren't detectable, maybe, just maybe, you would be able to feel something with your heightened senses. If I guided you to focus on your sensations in this room, maybe you could tell where it's coming from. Sort of a controlled zone out. If it got too uncomfortable, we could stop. What do you think?"

Jim took a deep breath. "Okay, Chief, let's try it. I'd like to get to the bottom of this."

Blair moved a footstool in front of Jim and sat down on it. "All right, lean back and close your eyes. You don't need your eyes for this. I'm not sure what sense you need, exactly, but it's probably not even on that internal dial. You'll have to go beyond the dial, further into new areas of sensation, just beyond your reach. But you can get there. Now relax." Blair continued to talk to him gently, encouraging him to let everything flow through him and around him. "Let everything in, Jim. Don't fight it. Now go deeper. Deeper."

Jim listened to the soothing voice of his guide and relaxed into the sound. He extended his wide-open senses, accepting everything until he was floating in a sea of pure sensation. Blair's voice reached him there, telling him to go still deeper, to use the feelings of dizziness and nausea to direct him to their source. Gradually, he became aware of a low thrumming sound, and he focused on it, embraced it, amplified it. Yes. He opened his eyes. Without speaking, he rose and walked out on the balcony. Across the street, between them and the bay, was a low-rise building, and he knew the thrumming came from that place. He let the sound pull him in, and then he knew it was coming from a window at one end of the fourth floor.

"Jim. Come back now." The voice was bringing him back. Slowly, he returned, and realized he was cold.

"Jim, are you okay? You've been standing there staring across the street for ten minutes now. I was starting to get nervous."

He nodded, and they went back into the living room. Jim sat on the couch again, and Blair sat on the footstool at his knee.

"I'm fine," he finally said. "I've found the source of the problem. It's coming from a building across the street. That was a very strange experience. When I totally opened my senses, and let them wash over me, I was able to hear a deeper sound. When I focused, I could pick it up and make it louder. Now it's like I've tuned in to the right frequency, so I'm still aware of it, underneath, and I don't even feel dizzy and nauseous any more."

"Oh, man!" Blair said excitedly. "You've just discovered something new! A whole new area to explore!"

"We need to close this case first," Jim reminded him.

"I know, I know, but this is so great. We know your hearing is supersensitive to loudness, but we never thought to experiment with frequencies. It makes sense that you could hear sounds outside the normal range, subsonic sound waves too low for most of us to hear, and no doubt you can hear ultrasonic waves too high for the rest of us as well. We need to test you with a dog whistle!"

"Arf."

"Well, it would be one way to call you to dinner. Oh, and I bet you could hear all the whale songs. You know, a lot of their calls are outside human hearing, really high and really low. We're in whale country, too. We've got to check it out, not for any dissertation, but to see what you can do."

"I just needed a little help from my guide." He smiled at his partner.

"I helped you, didn't I? Sometimes, I think you've got it all under control and don't need me much any more for your senses, but I helped you find out something new."

"Yes, Chief, I couldn't have done it without you."

Blair was beaming. Jim thought he suddenly looked again like the enthusiastic kid who had moved in with him four years ago. Blair was a cop now, but underneath he was still the same eager student and teacher. Jim was enormously glad of that.

"Come on, let's go check out that place across the street," Jim said.

They locked up and headed for the old low-rise apartment building Jim had been drawn to. When they showed their police IDs to the manager, he told them that the apartment they had identified from the outside, on the top floor, west end, had been rented for the last two months to someone who had paid ahead in cash, but who never seemed to have moved in. It was a man, but he couldn't remember what he looked like. He was quite happy to give them the key.

When they unlocked the door, they saw it immediately. There was no furniture in the room, only a large black metal machine on a tripod, aimed out the window and pointing up to Milo Spalding's apartment. It looked like a strange cross between a camera and a machine gun. Jim felt the sound waves emanating from it, and he dialed them down. They approached the device cautiously.

"What the hell is that?" Blair wondered aloud.

"I haven't any idea," Jim said, zooming in his focus to examine the metal surface. He saw scratches, fingerprints, and a faint discoloration that appeared to be the outline of a lightning bolt in the rough shape of a capital Z. Focusing in even more closely, he detected small traces of adhesive, as if something had been removed, the maker's logo perhaps. It looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place it. Putting on latex gloves, he carefully turned a small switch to the off position, and the sound in his head died. The switch was marked SOUND ON/OFF. Another switch with a microphone next to it was marked VOICE ON/OFF. A third switch next to a tape recorder was marked TAPE ON/OFF.

Jim turned the tape switch on. A male voice began speaking.

"You're a pathetic excuse for a human being, Milo. Just pathetic. Your miserable little life isn't even worth living. Why don't you do the world a favor and end it? You think your wife loves you? Think again. How could she love such a worthless little twerp? And you're not exactly a hunk. Homely, flabby, balding Milo. No wonder she kicked you out. Your father tried to make a man of you, but you always ran to mama, didn't you, mama's boy? End it. You're a loser and you always will be. End it now."

Jim turned the tape switch off

Blair sighed. "It looks like the conspiracy nuts were sort of right after all. Who would have such a thing, and use it on another human being? Oh man, maybe it is the CIA. It isn't the sort of gadget most people keep around the house."

"You've got me," Jim said. "Well, I'm pretty sure what we're going to find, but let's test it. Go back over to Spalding's apartment, and I'll try the different settings out on you."

The results of the experiment were as they expected. When Blair returned, he said, "If I didn't know you were over here, I would have thought I was going crazy. The voices were outside my head, but I couldn't tell where they were coming from. When you spoke your voice sounded different. I could barely recognize it. It was pretty creepy."

Jim nodded. "It looks like Milo wasn't crazy, after all. Now all we have to do is figure out who set it up. I've called in a request to have someone come collect evidence from this apartment, and he should be showing up soon. But let's take this machine back with us and see what the technical crew can make of it. Take some fingerprints first. You'll get some if you try right there and there." He pointed to spots that were invisible to Blair.

"You know," Blair complained amiably, "you could just do these fingerprints yourself instead of pointing them out to me. You're the one that can actually see them, after all."

Jim was pitiless. "And you're the one who needs the practice, junior."