Androids weren't usually assigned to murder cases in Harrison City. This case was different. Adele Bridgeport was different. She was the first human to ever marry an android. Now, quite possibly, she was dead by the hands of that android spouse. At least, that was the story the papers were certain to print in their morning edition.

"You aren't going to touch her, are you?" the uniformed cop asked. According to his name tag, the man's name was "Brison."

"Has the coroner been here?"

"No."

"Then obviously, I'm not going to touch her." I jammed my finger into Brison's police datapad and retrieved the names and addresses of the people who'd found Adele. Then I ignored the uniformed cop and used my telescopic sensors to zoom in on the body from a discrete distance. Adele's body temperature indicated a death within the last three hours. She had scratches and fresh bruises on her upper thighs, and small red indentations on either side of her neck. To me, these red markings were a clear indication that she had been strangled, but of course, that was for the coroner to decide. I zoomed in closer on the markings to see if I could detect human or android fingerprints, only to be bumped out of focus by Coroner Wilkins, an old man whose vision and coordination had both seen better decades.

"Ah, Jerry. I'm surprised to see you, here," he said.

"Just doing my job. This is the case I was assigned." Wilkins walked over to the body, knelt down, and examined the woman's face.

"Oh, I didn't know. This is Adele Bridgeport! No wonder they asked you to investigate!"

Adele was one of Harrison City's brightest social-lights. Her face was regularly plastered on the society pages of all the Harrison papers from the Herald to the Informer. Everyone recognized her. Just as everyone recognized Harry Bridgeport, the rich, handsome android she'd married.

Wilkins started to poke and prod the body with various instruments as I stood a few feet back and continued my own sensor probe. He constantly obstructed my field of vision, but I deleted the images of his intrusive white head from the final data stream. As he changed the position of the body, I was able to collect a few more interesting factual tidbits. For example, it appeared that Adele had been struck on the back of the head by a blunt object. Blood and bits of grass were matted into the back of her carefully-coiffed, silver-toned hairdo.

After one last sensor glance at the body, I decided that I'd wait for Wilkins' report to get the final details, and began to put together a mental list of people and androids who needed to be questioned.

Sandra Monroe, professional snoop for the Harrison Herald, arrived at the crime scene just as I was about to leave. I looked around quickly, to see if there were any convenient holes I could jump into, but I saw nothing but trees and wide-open, grass-covered space.

"Detective Andy! How are you?" she asked. That was "Andy" as in "Andy the android." It was Sandra's idea of a joke, but I didn't find it particularly amusing.

"My name's not 'Andy,' Ms. Monroe. As I've told you before, I'm Detective Gerald Markowitz."

"Ah, yes. How could I forget the Jewish android?" she asked.

"You know very well, Sandra, that I was originally purchased by the Markowitz family. When Congress freed the androids, I took their name out of respect." Sandra was a petite blonde with an angelic face which contrasted sharply with her sharp tongue. She also had long silky legs which I wished I didn't admire quite so much. In fact, the woman's condescending attitude made me want to tear open my chest and rip out those infernal male hormone synthesizers before I was tempted to do something I'd regret.

Sandra pulled out her electronic notepad and stylus, an indication that she was ready to get down to business. "So what happened to Adele?" she asked.

"It's too early to say for certain, of course. But it appears that she was beaten and/or strangled to death."

"Charming. Did the android husband do it?"

"Now, Sandra. How can I know that? I haven't started my investigation."

"What are you waiting for?"

"I'm waiting for you to finish your questions."

Sandra licked her lips in a peculiar, feline motion. "Okay, here's a great question. Why were you given this case?"

"I don't know. You'll have to ask my boss, Captain Leland."

"Think it's because you're an android?"

"I said I don't know. You'll have to ask Captain Leland."

"Can't you venture a guess?"

"I don't care to venture a guess. Now, if there are no more questions, I have work to do," I said.

"Yes, Detective Andy. It looks like you have a lot of work to do."

"My name," I said, "is Detective Gerald Markowitz."

It didn't take much thinking to decide who I should interview first. It took about as much processing power as an antique 286 needed to play chess with a moron. Although classic police techniques dictated that I speak with the kid who'd found the body, or the two suburban ladies, before too much time had passed, I knew who Captain Leland would want me to see right away: Handsome Harry Bridgeport.

Bridgeport had always been one lucky son of a circuit-breaker. Freed ten years before most of the rest of us, over five years before independent androids became socially acceptable, he had found success via his looks and charm, both of which were modeled after some obscure 20th century actor. He'd met Adele Harrison at a cocktail party for the very wealthy. Harry had hidden his characteristically pale grey android eyes behind dark brown contact lenses, and successfully courted the beautiful heiress before she knew that he was an android, an act which was still illegal in some parts of the country. He then married her and moved into her lavish Harrison City mansion. They'd had a successful marriage for over twenty-five years. Adele liked her eternally youthful, android husband, and looked the other way when he had affairs with younger women or female androids. For his part, Harry enjoyed the money and prestige he got from the Harrison family and appreciated the fact that Adele, at fifty-three, still had a better body than most women in their early twenties. At least, that's the way their relationship was reported in the papers. It was my job to separate the facts from the legend and decide whether Handsome Harry had the motive and opportunity to terminate his long-standing arrangement with Adele.

The Harrison mansion was ten miles west of Harrison Center, a good thirty-minute drive through heavy downtown traffic. My gasoline-powered Buick Century, an antique which should have been auctioned off the police lots years ago, coughed and sputtered through the various in-town toll plazas, traffic lights, and stop signs. During the drive, I formulated a few million variations of the questions I wanted to ask good old Harry. Through sheer willpower and mental discipline, I managed to ignore the surly human and inconsiderate android drivers who clogged the road like horny adolescents, all trying to access the same X-rated Web server at the same time.

Finally, I weaved my way through the traffic to tree-lined Harrison Boulevard and wound my way up the curved street to the mansion's imposing front gates.

The metallic-faced, gate-keeper robot had no intention of letting me through those gates, unchallenged. "State your business," he said.

"I'm Police Detective Gerald Markowitz," I responded. "I'm here to see Harry Bridgeport on a matter of extreme urgency."

"Did you call for an appointment?" the gate-keeper asked. His metal jaws moved in the artificial robot manner that I always found somewhat disturbing. "Is he expecting you?"

"No. But this visit is quite official, I assure you. I have some disturbing news for him and I need to ask a few questions."

The robot sighed in a curiously human fashion, given his utilitarian, metal-plated design, then slowly opened the gates. I drove the Century around the long driveway and parked next to Harry's expensive German hover-sedan.

An ancient human butler, whose shiny black uniform was in direct contrast to his dull gray hair and wrinkled skin, ushered me inside the mansion. After he took a magnifying glass to my police credentials, he showed me to the study and went to fetch his android master.

Harry popped into the room a few moments later, dressed in a maroon silk shirt and blue jeans. The shirt was opened at the neck, allowing a few stray black chest hairs to greet me as he approached. Like most androids with especially attractive bodies, he was proud of the way he looked.

"Jerry, it's good to see you, old man," Harry said in his typical effusive manner. His pale grey eyes twinkled as he thrust out a well-muscled hand for me to shake. "It's been ages."

"It's good to see you too, Harry. Reminds me of the old days back at the manufacturing plant, before we were sold."

Harry squinched his face into an unpleasant expression. "Don't date yourself, old man. That's over fifty years ago! Many things have changed since then. For me, at least."

"Yes," I said. "I've heard a lot about you, lately."

"Well, you know. I get around. So what can I do for you today?"

"Harry, I have some unpleasant news for you. Your wife is dead. She's been murdered."

A trained detective watches his suspects very carefully when they first hear the news about a crime. I kept my eyes, ears and sensors tuned to Harry's facial expression, heart rate, and bio- mechanical interfaces, but sensed nothing. No alterations to any of his major systems. "Harry, did you hear me?" I asked. "Adele is dead."

"I'm shocked," he said, though he didn't sound it. "I'm completely and utterly dumbfounded." He walked over to a nearby couch, sat down, and stared at the blank wall behind me.

"Do you want more details, Harry? Do you want to know how she died?"

Harry ignored the question. "I can't believe she's dead," he said. "I'll miss her terribly, but -- look, I'd better tell you before you hear it from someone else. Frankly, Adele and I haven't been getting along too well lately, Jerry. We even discussed divorce."

"Really?"

"Yes, really," he said. He looked up and I actually saw a tear in his eye. It was an android tear, of course, stimulated by easily faked subroutines and composed of a glycerin compound, but it was a tear, nevertheless. "We fought constantly. And it's all because of those horrible, horrible Purists."

"Purists?"

"They're a radical human group, opposed to the presence of androids in society. They've been harassing us, Jerry. They... I'm sure they were the ones who killed her. How _did_ she die?"

"We're not positive yet, but we think she was strangled -- choked. We found her body early this afternoon, in old Harrison Park."

"Strangled?" His voice sounded far away, as if he were lost in thought, yet my sensors still detected no changes in his bodily functions. I wasn't sure whether to categorize his behavior as extremely guilty or extremely innocent.

Harry abruptly stood up, as if the couch had suddenly jolted him with an electrical current. "Wait here a second, Jerry. Let me show you something," he said. He left the study and my highly trained ears soon heard him jostling furniture in the adjacent room. He returned a minute later, holding a green piece of paper in his hand. "Look at this flyer," he said. "We've found a different one pasted to the front gate every morning for a month. All with the same theme, or subtle variations on the theme. Robby, the gate robot, has no idea who brought them. He never sees or hears anything. But he's an older model, so that doesn't mean much."

I took the paper from him. It was a crudely prepared flyer, printed with old-fashioned true type fonts. The headline read: "Android Are A Slap In The Face Of The Lord".

Captain Leland paced back and forth in his office with the green flyer in his hand. "You think these lunatics killed Adele Bridgeport?" he asked.

"I don't know," I replied. I avoided Leland's baleful glare and instead kept my eyes focused on the picture behind his head. It was the now-ubiquitous portrait of smiling President Alphonse, posed in front of the fifty-three star U.S. flag.

"But why kill her? Why not destroy Handsome Harry? He's the android, not Adele."

"I don't know."

"Are you sure Harry didn't do it? Are you sure he didn't print these flyers himself?"

"I don't know."

Leland's normally reddish complexion had deepened to a shade that almost matched the maroon of Harry's shirt. I wondered if he was about to have a stroke, heart attack, or other malfunction of the human cardio-vascular system. My sensors detected abnormally high blood pressure. "What the hell _do_ you know, Jerry?" he asked.

"I know that I have to check some of my underground sources, to see if anyone has ever heard of this 'Purist' group. I know that I still have to interview the boy who found the body, and the two ladies. I have to check on Harry's activities over the last few months. I have to check on what Adele's been doing. I have to have a chat with their friends. I have to..."

"Okay, okay. I get the point," Captain Leland said. "But you have to understand, Jerry, Adele Harrison was very high- profile. Everyone is breathing down my neck on this one. And I do mean 'everyone.' The state police commissioner just called me, for god's sake. And the news reporters are all crawling up my butt." Leland pulled out his desk chair, sat down hard, and belched loudly. "Excuse me."

"I'll find out who killed Adele, Captain. Don't tie your stomach in knots over it."

"Don't worry about my stomach," he said. "Just get to work. Find out who killed that woman, before the press and the police big-wigs have me drawn and quartered."

"I'm on it," I said. Leland stopped me before I could touch the knob on his office door.

"Oh, by the way, Jerry. You told the Herald reporter, the Monroe woman, that Adele Harrison was strangled. Why? Why'd you do that?"

"Because she _was_ strangled, Captain."

"Are you the coroner? Have you seen Wilkins' report? Last I heard, he hadn't even finished the report."

"Captain, I'm an android. My sensors are very sensitive and..."

"Oh -- Cut the bullshit about your friggin' android sensors, Jerry. Let Wilkins do his job. And stop talking to that Monroe broad."

"Yes, Captain," I said. I pulled open the door and made it safely into the hallway before he could say another word.

Coroner Wilkins was waiting for me at my desk. "Okay, Wilkins, don't say a word. The Captain already bawled me out for talking to Sandra Monroe."

The man peered at me quizzically, through thick, corrective lenses. "What? The Herald reporter? What did you say to her?"

"Nothing," I said. "What do you need? Have you finished your report?"

"Yes. Yes, I did."

"Adele was strangled, right?"

"Yes, strangulation was the cause of death, but..."

"But what?" My mind was beginning to wander. Wilkins seemed infuriatingly slow of tongue. "I know she was beaten, too. I saw the bruises on her thighs and the nasty bump on the back of her head."

The old coroner opened his magnified eyes so wide, it looked like I could fit a basketball through his pupils. "There's more," he said.

"What? Tell me, already."

"Well, there was oil in her stomach."

"Oil? What do you mean? Salad oil?"

"No. Motor oil."

"Motor oil?" I asked. "You mean like I'd use in my car?"

"Yes. Or something that's chemically very similar."

"That's odd -- very odd," I said, half to myself. Perhaps the Purist group had forced her to drink motor oil as some kind of symbolic gesture. An ironic punishment for her union with the android.

"Well, I'll give you my complete report in the morning," Wilkins said. "It'll be here on your desk, first thing."

"That'll be fine," I said, as I tried to think of an alternate explanation for the presence of the oil. I couldn't come up with anything plausible.

The communications telebot chose that moment to buzz through on my desk phone. "Jerry, there's a call for you on line three. It's a woman named Selma Jenkins."

"What does she want?" I asked.

"She says she's the mother of the boy who found Adele Harrison's body, this afternoon."

"I'll take it," I said. It was possible this woman's son could shed some light on the mystery of Adele's death. Unlikely, but possible.

At 6:30 that evening, I found myself at the home of Selma A. Jenkins, a pleasant-faced woman in her mid to late forties. I sat on a couch with burn holes in its cushions, and tried not to stare at the stuffed owl which sat on the mantle.

"You're an android, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yes. Yes, I am."

"That's why I put the dog out. He doesn't like androids. He barks at them." She took a deep drag off a cigarette and flicked the ashes somewhere near the ashtray on the table in front of her. "Can I offer you something to drink? A soda maybe?"

"No, thank you."

"Androids do eat and drink, don't they?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am. Androids eat, drink, and go to the bathroom, just like humans. We were designed to emulate human behavior. That's why we're androids, not robots."

"That's what I thought," she said. "We don't get many androids around here, so I had to ask, just to be sure." She exhaled a puff of noxious smoke in my direction.

"I'm pressed for time, Mrs. Jenkins. So if I could just speak to your boy -- his name is Larry, isn't it?"

"Yes. My son's name is Larry and the dog is Barfy."

"Well, if I could speak to Larry for a second."

"Why don't you just speak to me? Larry is a little scared of androids. He doesn't like them much. You understand, don't you?" She snuffed out the cigarette in the ashtray and turned her head, so she didn't have to look me in the eyes.

"Larry found the body, Mrs. Jenkins. You weren't there."

"But I know the whole story," she said. She emphasized the words "whole story," as if I was supposed to be persuaded by the inflection of her voice. Actually, I was persuaded. I decided to listen to what the woman had to say, and come back later to speak to Larry, if necessary. "According to Larry, Barfy started to bark way before they found poor Adele Bridgeport," Mrs. Jenkins said. "That woman actually _married_ an android, you know. I don't think that's right. Do you?"

"That's not for me to judge, Mrs. Jenkins. So Barfy started to bark... and?"

Mrs. Jenkins raised a carefully-tweezed eyebrow. "And maybe that means there was an android around somewhere. Like I said, he barks at androids. Barfy _always_ barks at androids."

"I though you said that you didn't get many androids around here."

"Yes, that's right. Androids don't come around here because Barfy always barks at them."

"Okay. So the dog barked and sometime later, Larry found the body. Did he see anything that seemed out of place -- out of the ordinary?"

She lit another cigarette and threw the match at the ashtray. "Well, the body, of course. That was the first time Larry'd ever seen a dead body."

The whole interview began to seem like a waste of time. I wanted to get whatever information was available and beat a hasty retreat. "But did he see any other people in the area? Did he notice anything?"

"No. But Barfy ran off for a few minutes and came back with a piece of paper in his mouth. I think it's important."

"Uh -- could you show it to me, please?"

Mrs. Jenkins reached into the pocket of her loose-fitting blouse, pulled out a folded, green piece of paper and handed it to me. It was a flyer, almost identical to the one Harry Bridgeport had shown me, earlier in the day. Though it had been punctured and slobbered on by wet, doggie teeth, I could still read the headline. It said: "Warning. Androids Are A Danger To Man".

Mrs. Jenkins puffed on her cigarette and exhaled more smoke in my direction. "Who are these Purist people?" she asked.

"I don't know. I have to find out," I said. It was time to visit a certain android bar and track down my usually reliable source.

I grabbed a quick dinner at a nearby Harrison House restaurant then drove the Century downtown, to Pete's Lounge. The place was a hangout for androids and a few humans who didn't quite fit into normal society. A rag-tag, grey-eyed, android man and woman, and a young ne'er-do-well of undetermined origins, were seated at the bar when I arrived, already half-crocked on house bourbon, rot-gut rum, or cheap beer. I could smell the alcohol in the air as I approached. I was glad I hadn't brought Mrs. Jenkins. Combine her cigarette habit with the fumes from these fine specimens, and you had the makings of a four-alarm blaze.

"Jerry, my love! Good to see you." That comment came from Shirleen, the android woman. She and I had been friends, once upon a time. Now, she drank so much, I was surprised she remembered my name. We androids are a lot sturdier than humans, but given enough cheap booze, we can turn our insides into foul mush, same as any man.

"Hi, Shirleen. How've you been?"

"Same as always, Jer. Still hangin' in there, I think," she said. "Have you met Bill or our little human friend, Dave?" Bill treated me to a drunken wave. Dave didn't respond. He was currently snoring away with his head on the bar, next to a half- eaten plate of nachos and cheese.

"Where's Pete?" I asked, as I looked around for the ever- friendly bartender and proprietor.

"Right here, Jerry," Pete said as he emerged from the back room and took his customary place behind the bar. He placed a cup of coffee next to Dave's plate of nachos. "I brought something to sober up little Davy, here. But maybe I should face facts. He ain't going to be dancin' the polka for quite a few hours, yet."

"Pete, I have something to show you," I said. I pulled the green flyer out of my pocket.

"Well, I've got something to show _you_, lover," Shirleen said with a drunken giggle.

"Sorry, Shirleen. I've already seen what you've got and I don't want it anymore." Shirleen stuck out her tongue at me, then downed a half-glass of beer in one gulp, just to kill any pain that my comment might have caused.

"Pete. Can we go in the back and talk privately for a second?"

"For a second," he said. "It's nearly seven. We'll start to get busy in fifteen or twenty minutes."

Pete wiped his hands on a towel and walked toward the back room again. I followed him into the room and closed the door behind us. "What is it this time, Jerry?" he asked. He stared at me with pale grey eyes that were a lot less friendly than I'd expected. "I'm getting tired of being your underground android stool pigeon."

"Come on, pal. I don't bother you that often," I said.

"You don't bother me that often? Hell, Jerry, it seems like you're in here every other night. I'm tired of looking at your synthetic ass. Why don't you find some other place to get your information, once in a while?"

"Pete, just shut up and take a look at this flyer," I said. I shoved the green paper in his face.

Android blood is more viscous that human blood for some reason, but it all drained out of Pete's face, just the same. "The Purists. Yeah, I've heard of these guys. They're bad news. They busted up my front windows a few months back, and left behind a stack of flyers just like this one."

"What do you know about 'em?"

"They're a group of radical human nut cases. Mostly uneducated, violent, and prejudiced as all hell. Not a fun group. I'd stay away from them, if I were you."

"They may be involved in the death of Adele Bridgeport."

"The woman that Handsome Harry married?" he asked. "The one that was strangled this afternoon?" I nodded and Pete actually backed away from me a step or two. "You're working on that case?"

"Unfortunately, yes. I am."

"That murder's been all over the news. Why'd they choose you to investigate? Because you're an android?" Pete asked the question, but he already knew the answer.

"Well, I'd like to say 'no, they chose me because of my stellar police record,' but yeah, they picked me because I'm an android."

"So you're going to tangle with Harry?"

"Well, I questioned him, earlier."

"I'd bet that Harry killed her, himself, don't you think? I hear they weren't getting along so well."

"Maybe he did and maybe he didn't," I replied. "But I've come across these flyers twice already, today, so it could be these Purists _are_ involved."

"Wait a sec," he said. "I did a good deal of research on the Purists. Let me call up the file from my data banks." Humans have an old expression they use when they see someone deep in thought. They say 'I could see the wheels moving.' Well, in Pete's case, I actually could see the wheels moving. His eyes rolled back in his head as he accessed the information. A minute later, he held out his hand for an old-fashioned, android, flesh-to-flesh, data transfer. I pressed my palm again his sweaty palm, and the information began to load into my skull.

Even though Pete wasn't a trained professional, the information was pretty comprehensive. Along with tidbits of data on Purist activities and the complete text of every flyer Pete had seen, he included a list of every known Purist, information obtained from a variety of android, robot, and human sources.

    Two names on the list seemed familiar to me. Hilda Swenson and Gloria Freed. I'd definitely heard those names before, but where? In what context? A quick cross check of my own data files gave me the answer. Hilda Swenson and Gloria Freed were the two women who'd stumbled on Adele's body. Right after Larry the kid and his dog.

End of Part One - Click here for PART TWO