esk. "Please sit down, madam. You wanted to
see me?"

"You are Mr. Kirk?" A warm voice, almost on the husky side.

"Lieutenant Kirk."

"Of course. I _am_ sorry."

* * * * *

While she was being graceful about getting into the chair, Kirk stared
at her openly. She was worth staring at. She was tall for a woman and
missed being voluptuous by exactly the right margin. Her face was more
lovely than beautiful, chiefly because of large eyes so blue they were
almost purple. Her skin was flawless, her blonde hair worn in a medium
bob fluffed out, and her smooth fitting tobacco brown suit must have
been bought by appointment. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and was
probably thirty.

Her expression was solemn and her smile fleeting, as was becoming to
anyone calling on a Homicide Bureau. She placed on a corner of Kirk's
desk an alligator bag that matched her shoes and tucked pale yellow
gloves the color of her blouse under the bag's strap. Her slim fingers,
ringless, moved competently and without haste.

"I am Naia North, Lieutenant Kirk."

"What's on your mind, Miss North?"

She regarded him gravely, seeing gray-blue eyes that never quite lost
their chill, a thin nose bent slightly to the left from an encounter
with a drunken longshoreman years before, the lean lines of a solid jaw,
the dark hair that was beginning to thin out above the temples after
thirty-five years. Even those who love him, she thought, must fear this
man a little.

Martin Kirk felt his cheeks flush under the frank appraisal of those
purple eyes. "You asked for me by name, Miss North. Why?"

"Aren't you the officer who arrested the young man who today was
sentenced to die?"

Only years of practise at letting nothing openly surprise him kept
Kirk's jaw from dropping. "... You mean Cordell?"

"Yes."

"I'm the one. What about it? What've you got to do with Paul Cordell?"

Naia North said quietly, "A great deal, I'm afraid. You see, I'm the
woman who doesn't exist; the one the newspapers call 'the girl from
Mars.'"

It was what he had expected from her first question about the case. Any
murder hitting the headlines brought at least one psycho out of the
woodwork, driven by some deep-seated sense of guilt into making a phony
confession. Those who were harmless were eased aside; the violent got
detained for observation.

But Naia North showed none of the signs of the twisted mind. She was
coherent, attract