Checking in the library, Brian found newspaper photos in black and white of Doctor Mordenslice and of Doctor Jonas Cutter.  The supervillain wore a shiny silverish suit of power armor with a clear faceplate, and he could walk about with a menacing swagger as the reporter put it.  Cutter was confined to a wheelchair due to a childhood disease which had caused his lower body to be crippled so that he could hardly use his legs, and which had caused his head to swell to twice normal size.  Both of them had very large skulls, and the same sneering facial expression although, with Mordenslice it was also mixed in with screams and rages.

It was a bit frightening to realize that the abusive Doctor Cutter was the toned down version of the man.  He regularly caused secretaries to cry, and in Brian s time at BBS one Marine had punched a hole in a bathroom door--"because I won t punch a cripple even if he deserves it," the veteran of the Pacific War part of World War Two had snarled.  Brian's face stilled.  If Cutter genuinely was Mordenslice, and given their facial and physical similarities he could not think otherwise, then Cutter had deliberately murdered TC III by starving him to death.  The level of malice required to slowly murder a man over weeks was genuinely scary.

"We are in Sovereign Hands," Brian reminded himself, feeling fear flee.  Now all that was left was wariness as he recognized the nature of his enemy.  Cutter needed to be stopped because whatever he was planning would be, due to his own nature, immeasurably vicious.

Putting back the microfilm, he leaned back in his chair.  Cutter was wicked, but not thoughtless.  If he did something, it was either because of his anger getting out of control or because of a plan.  Creating a forcefield generator and trapping a hero seemed like the work of a plan.  This meant that Cutter had known who TC III was, which in this world was not easy.  He had attacked the former Mister Justice at the man's private home, in his secret identity.

Or had he?  Perhaps there had been a fight, and Justice Past had tried to take refuge in his own home?  Brian dug into the microfilm again, and despite an hour searching could not find any mention of a fight between Justice That Was and Doctor Mordenslice in that area and time, although he found numerous other fights between the two.  Given Mordenslice's evident penchant, demonstrated in numerous articles, for grandiosity, this seemed unlikely.  Add in that a big fight would have alerted the neighbors, and someone would have come over.

This showed that TC III did not have strong relationships with his neighbors, but then what with his normal life and his superhero life he might not have had time for neighbors--an oversight that had killed him.

Logic said Mordenslice knew TC III was Mister Justice and ambushed him at home.  The way it had been set up also suggested that Mordenslice was familiar enough with TC III's home to know where to plug in the forcefield generator and how to block off escape by the bathroom.  Riveted, Brian wondered, had Cutter and TC III been friends?  Or at least social acquaintances?  Perhaps Cutter had gone to TC III's house for a party?

Going back to the microfilm, and this time searching the social events, he found a fair number of parties.  The writers clearly strained themselves to say nice things about Cutter's parties, but reading between the lines it was easy to see the event with Cutter humble-bragging to one and all.  Keller had fewer parties, but they were larger and more enjoyable to judge by the reporter's enthusiasm.  He glanced at a few others, and noted that neither of them were true social butterflies compared to some others.  Cutter had perhaps three parties a year, and Keller always hosted a masquerade ball in honor of William Tell the First's birthday.  One photo showed The Eagle and Sockajawea dancing a waltz at Keller's party two years ago with the caption 'Not a Rain Dance'.  This reminded him again, they needed to ask Sockajawea what she knew about the Yellowstone Caldera.

The only good reason Brian came up with for the murder of TC III had been to send the Sword out of this world, but he was beginning to suspect there was another reason.  Maybe TC III had known something but not realized it.  Now how to figure it out.  He certainly was not going to do as King Saul had done, going to the Witch of Endor to bring back TC III from the dead for a chat.  Nor was he going to do that for Gorillaxe who was another 'man' that Cutter had murdered, either directly or by proxy.

With the library soon closing, and his researches hitting a dead end for the moment, he left, and changed to Mister Justice to patrol the town in the night.  A couple burglars discovered to their consternation that 'Justice prevailed' as they walked back to their truck to find a man with a flaming sword waiting for them.  Mister Justice did not even have to hit them; they surrendered.

There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #521:  Versers Act.  Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter.  It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.

As to the old stories that have long been here:

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