I'm back ... and someone else is making a brief appearance ...
After his solving of the wildlife crime that involved the genetically modified sweet gum trees, Chief Inspector Jean-Paul Dubois's position at Interpol did not change officially, but ...
"If we had a weird crime category," he overheard someone saying, "he would be the ideal person to put on it."
The inspector thought on this all day ... it had only been two cases ... neither of them official to Interpol ... he had gone and solved the case in Alleaume on a weekend run at the behest of the French government, and of course, the countries involved in the sweet-gum problem had been too late to have a team sent out ... but Versailles was just a short plane ride from headquarters.
Both were weird, but both involved an element of crime that was creeping up again in the 21st century ... terrible evil, disregard for human life, tampering with things and toying with powers that ought not to be toyed with.
It was an honor to be considered capable to handle all such cases in a leadership position.
It was also terrifying.
But, somebody had to do it.
That night, the inspector had a dream ... a return to him wandering under the blue, blue skies of his South Louisiana childhood, but on a surface as different as that seedpod he had handled the day before ... the Gulf of Mexico in the distance, and he, unafraid, wandering its somehow warped shores.... his life had actually prepared him, for surely he had taken a course in life that seemed "warped" compared to the expectations there had been for a "colored boy" born deep in rural South Louisiana in 1968.
So be it. Why not?