Detective Fog woke up in a holding cell in the San Francisco Police Department's Public Safety Building. Her new client, Adoni Rex, had been escorted home after his interviews, so she was saved from having a neighbor sobbing in the next cell, but she was out of the loop on the case's development.

The cot bed was archaically hard as a rock, and it seemed to consist of a mattress on top of cement coming out of the wall. Only the mattress seemed to be more a product of the occupant's perceptions, the brain registering what looked like a mattress as some foamy soft pillowy support when there was nothing there but fabric and some air. The light coming through the barred windows was heavenly bright, and when it blinded Detective Fog at six a.m. in a direct shaft right into her eye sockets, it made the detective beg for the Bay Area fog that everyone always cursed, anything to block it out.

Early morning creativity urged her to get off the intended cot, bringing the so-called mattress with her and putting it down on the other side of the cell to go back to bed. Of course, after not enough hours more sleep, the sun traveled through the sky far enough to get her there too, and she had to move back to the cot.

The police weren't talking to her, so there was nothing better to do than catch up on sleep. Detective Fog hadn't made her one phone call yet, and no one considered the call answered by Inspector Prince from Dexter Mars to be said phone call, but no one had come by to escort her to the payphone at the end of the hall either. Breakfast had come by, English muffins that were surprisingly good, and the state paid for meals would make it easier to meet her grocery budget for the month.

Inspector Prince came by with her lunch. "Second-degree murder, no bail," he said as he put down a tray with an ambiguous sandwich and a glass of water.

"Oh, water. During the drought? For little old me?" said Detective Fog.

"The charge will drop to voluntary manslaughter, bail $100,000. Once you call your lawyer."

"You think I'm going to ask someone to pay $100,000 to get out of luxury free housing in San Francisco, with meals included? Are you crazy? This cell is more square-footage than what I share with four other people in the Tenderloin. The only downside is no bathroom. That's is barbaric. You keep bringing me water in the middle of a drought, and there's nowhere to tinkle."

Inspector Prince gestured toward the toilet in the back left corner with a nod.

"Oh no, no no. I can't believe that's a real thing," said Detective Fog. "Sure, make the cold hard murderers go wee in front of each other. But to expect law-abiding citizens to urinate and dare I say though it's beyond considering within the realm of possibility, defecate, in a toilet in the corner of a cell in an open cell block in the holding area of a police station is cruel and unusual expectations, y'all are crazy."

Inspector Prince looked around. "There's no one else here. You will have complete privacy."

"I'm not eating until you take me to a proper bathroom, with four walls and a lock on the door. I'm not an animal. Reserve this treatment for members of the San Francisco mafia."

He met her demands, and after taking her to a staff bathroom, Inspector Prince returned her to her cell to eat her sandwich.

Two bites in, and she still didn't know what it was.

"Ham and avocado," said Inspector Prince.

"Golly. Gross. Only in California." Detective Fog opened the pieces of bread that made up the sandwich to reveal and brown sludgy slime. "Bit oxidized, isn't it?" she said. The browned fruit was difficult to identify.

"I don't run the kitchen," said Inspector Prince. "And they don't feed me."

"There's no kitchen," said Detective Fog. "Don't give me that malarky. All your cells are empty. You don't arrest mafiosos, you don't keep the law-breakers you do arrest here, and you don't feed anybody. This is somebody's forgotten lunch from yesterday. Someone's forgotten avocado and ham sandwich."

"Now that you've eaten, it's time we had another interview. Would you like to call your lawyer?" asked Inspector Prince.

"I don't need a lawyer to get off on self-defense, Inspector. Can't we skip this whole song and dance? I mean, I'll keep the cot and this cell as my place of residence, but you can hand over the keys so I can begin the investigation of the murder of Paul Aniston. You know, because you've arrested the wrong man, and the authorities in this city aren't interested in incarcerating criminals. Look at all these empty cells. It's beautiful. I can see the investment in building them has paid off. Maybe I'll cancel the rent on my office as well, work from here. Can I have visitors? Since I'm innocent of criminal wrongdoing, I'd like to continue business as usual."

Inspector Prince smiled and nodded through her diatribe and unlocked the cell to lead her to the interview room. Detective Fog kept on talking. "I have a hard time understanding how you can even arrest someone for a self-defense murder. These always get a walk when it goes to court. There's no chance of holding me once it gets to court, so why even inconvenience me, the real victim, with jail time?"

"You murdered Nick Minardos," said Prince.

"On second thought," said Detective Fog, "I will call my lawyer. Let's both waste each other's time while mafia hitmen continue to walk free. So that's three dead bodies last night, a bit more than the average 1.5 homicide rate for the past twenty-eight months. I hope it's a fluke and not an increase in the trend. How many more bodies can you hold at the morgue? Oh wait, the bodies aren't going to the morgue."

She stopped in her tracks and added, "The bodies are vanishing."

Prince led her on, gesturing the way to the payphone on the way to the interview room. He watched Detective Fog make the call, no concern for privacy. She didn't address the lawyer by name. The nameless lawyer would be on his or her way.

Next stop was the interview room. "Can I get you a cup of coffee?" Prince asked as she settled in facing what was a two-way mirror.

"No," said Detective Fog.

"I've got a question for you to think about while you wait for your lawyer. You ready?"

"Yes," said Detective Fog.

"How did you get the locked door of the warehouse off its hinges to come to Paul Aniston's rescue?"

He left her alone, now in a different room but not much of an improvement. The seat cushion she sat on was as little a cushion as the mattress had been a mattress. At least he hadn't brought in a weak coffee brewed with stale beans to stink up the place. Instead, it smelled of cat urine. Maybe as a prank, someone had replaced cleaning ammonia with real cat whiz. Detective Fog didn't want to know what had been cleaned up from the interview room with ammonia of one kind or another.

Fifteen minutes later, her attorney arrived. Bernie Meyers was a comical character on most days. A short, fat, bald cartoon with impeccable dressing habits to make up for the fact that one eye was larger than the other and his hair, which had to be grown to a business rather than buzz length, was a cotton candy puff. The buzz might be a better call.

Today steam burned off through his ears when he came through like a locomotive and swooped to his client's rescue. "Get these handcuffs off," he demanded, and to Detective Fog's surprise, a uniformed officer complied.

"You aren't even going to be charged," he said as if that explained everything. Or anything. "The paperwork submitted tells a fairly straightforward story, considering what a clusterfuck this is. Nick Minardos couldn't speak last night. Want to know why?

"His vocal cords had been removed.

"The police already inside the building when you fired, not leaving much room for doubt that the homicide was an act of self-defense since both officers at the scene are adamant that it was an act of self-defense. The removal of Minardos's vocal cords had to have been done by someone skilled enough to keep him alive during the procedure. Which makes a lot more sense as a frame-up job than for you to have removed his vocal cords, tied him up, shot him, and then claimed self-defense. Plus, you're not a surgeon, and you're a crummy shot."

"Now wait here," Detective Fog argued. "If I did remove his vocal cords as a frame-up, it sounds like the perfect crime. Now I walk. Plus, if someone were going to frame me, why would they use surgical skills well beyond my abilities and also expect me to be able to shoot straight in the dark? It doesn't add up. It sounds to me like I'm still good for this."

She couldn't resist continuing her bit about living in custody for the near future.

"Tell that to Judge Condon. Wait, no," said Bernie Meyers. "Please don't tell that to Judge Condon." He gestured apologetically to the officers in the room and put his finger to his lips in a "shh" sign, turning the same gesture to the security camera in the room, before telling the two-way mirror, "Don't listen to her."

Then to Detective Fog, "Let's go, kid."

"Okay, Uncle Bernie," said Detective Fog.

No one looked particularly displeased to see the detective walk on this crime. There was a real murderer on the loose. Inspector Prince followed her out and wasn't ready to let her leave until he had asked again, "How did you blow open the door, Ms. Alafogiannis?"

Thank you for reading Detective Fog. Hope everyone is enjoying the mystery that continues to unfold, and if you are, I'll take some stars, please. They help fuel the magic of the Constellations universe. Obviously.