Someone asked me if I ever plan on doing a sequel to "Stigma." If I did,
here's a sample of what it might be.

-- Listar MIME Decryption --------------
-- Name   : Mermaid's Justice.txt

     "Good morning, Inspector," a voice said at the door. "How's the old 
ticker doing?"
     Inspector Takeda Jiro of the Tokyo Prefectural Police Special Unit 
looked up from his tepid coffee to the sight of Inspector Ozawa Iwase. 
Ozawa had been recently promoted after the resolution of the Nerima 
Mangler homicides. Takeda had suffered a mild heart attack at the end of 
the case.
     "It was doing fine until you walked in," he grunted in reply. Ozawa 
didn't visit often, but when he did, it usually meant trouble.
     "You'll love this one," Ozawa said, and dropped a manilla file on 
Takeda's desk.
     The inspector eyed it warily and thought about his heart.
     "Somehow I doubt that."
     He thumbed through the file anyway. He found himself lingering longer 
than he would have liked over the photographs. Finally, he nodded brusquely 
at the report's conclusion and snapped the folder shut.
     "Seems like an open and shut case," he remarked. "We've got a dead 
woman, aged approximately thirty-three years old, who was decapitated in 
a brutal struggle with a man, aged about nineteen. The man died of his 
wounds shortly after the woman died. They've got his fingerprints on the 
murder weapon, his blood on her clothes, and her blood all over him."
     He set the file down.
     "So what?"
     "It gets better," Ozawa smiled. "The local yokels were all set to wrap 
this one up. As you said, it seems pretty obvious that they had killed 
each other in a struggle. The man was a drifter, and the woman was a 
recluse, so there wasn't much chance of discovering any kind of motive."
     Ozawa paused for effect.
     "So... it looks like he's the prime suspect, right?"
     "*Was* the prime suspect, you mean," Takeda corrected him.
     Ozawa smiled again.
     "He's still the prime suspect. There's a warrant out for him."
     "Come again?" Takeda grunted.
     "This is the part where it gets better," Ozawa said. "The guy who 
killed the woman? He got up off the slab at the morgue and walked away. 
Three people, including the Medical Examiner, watched him do it. He's on 
two separate security camera tapes as well. Just walking away, blood soaked 
clothes and all, like nothing's happened."
     Takeda looked at the file again.
     "It says here in the crime scene report that the sonofabitch suffered 
blows from an *axe* to the chest, left arm, and the left side of his head. 
You expect me to believe he just got up and *walked* away from something 
like that?"
     "I can show you the tapes if you want."
     Takeda set the file down and leaned back in his creaking chair. He 
closed his eyes and tried to wish Ozawa away. When he opened his eyes, the 
inspector was still there. 
     "Why me?" he sighed.
     "Consider it the price of success: you're the guy who solves all the 
weird cases," Ozawa told him.


____________________________________________________________________________
          J. Austin Wilde and Fission Park Press proudly present:


                          MERMAID'S JUSTICE

                   Coming whenever the inspiration
                       strikes me to write more