"You cover the 'paranormal crime' beat around here, I understand." Edwards put a sneer inside his quotation marks.

"I don't think you do understand," I answered. "What…bureau are you with?"

"Office of Rural Security. We handle uncooperative farmers on the mad cow disease issue, fertilizer thefts, anything that involves national safety. So all suspect incidents are a federal case. Media rights bow to national security nowadays. We demand your discretion."

"I know I have to give it, but that doesn’t mean you can't tip me off early in return."

He nodded. Not a real "yes." As if I hadn't noticed.

" Miss Street, you know this community, this terrain. What do you think?"

What I thought was that Agent Edwards was a stupid tight-ass, but that didn't mean he couldn't be one of the still-closeted supernaturals. He broadcast an air of "other." Maybe it was just East Coast ego toward heartland hicks, not the arrogance the supers often felt toward us mere mortals. Then again, he could just be the usual officious bureaucratic prick.

What I thought about the corpses would get me a strait jacket in the state hospital, but I tested him. "The bodies have been turned into creamed corn in a can, Agent Edwards."

"Interestingly put, Miss Street. Why? How?"

"We've had a lot of crop circle activity lately."

"Rubes with rider lawn mowers. Pranks." I might have told him. What I'd seen. What I'd put together. The "rubes" comment killed it. I lived here. Worked here. Maybe had been born here. Suck grass, Fed.

I sat in my car while everyone else peeled away into the darkness, riding a pair of blazing headlights. Werner and his partner were last. He leaned on my open car door. Between the '56 Cadillac's width and the wide door, we nearly blocked the two-lane road. Dolly and me. That was the car's name. Dolly. She was built like a fortress. I often needed one.

"You don't want to hang around out here, Del. Could still be dangerous."

"Just gotta record a few notes while they're fresh." I held up my lipstick-size machine. "I'll be okay. It's all over out here, whatever it was."

"The Agri bastard is probably right."

"Aren't they always?"

Werner laughed. He was just looking out for me. That's what was nice about living in a smaller city. A buzz came from the police radio screwed onto Dolly's humongous drive-shaft hump.

Werner nodded at it. "You're wired into us if you need anything."

"I'm okay, you're okay. Good night, Leo."

I watched his taillights fade into the absolute country night.

I'm not a particularly brave woman, but I am determined.

Once me and Dolly and the dark were an uncrowded three-way again, I left the car, toting a heavy-duty flashlight. Dolly's trunk could hold everything, including the kitchen sink.

The flashlight spotlighted the corpses' massive profiles. Three dead cows, their huge carcasses pulverized to broken bones floating in precious bodily fluids inside intact cowhides. Those intact hides were most unusual for livestock attacks; they usually involved cryptic mutilations.

I played the intense light over the ground markings. What Edwards had described as "moo-cow hooves wandering into a scene of punk prankery," I saw as local livestock blundering into a mysterious crop circle creation incident.

I'd also spotted some very non-bovine marks on the rough soil. Maybe the spooked animals had been stampeded into the crop circle by something.

My flashlight hit the highs and lows of the alien footprints. Not "moo-cow" hooves, but huge heavy footpads. Way too big for werewolves, but what else pulled down adult cows except were-packs, or even natural wolves; of which very few were left?

I squatted to measure the tracks mixed in with the milling hooves.

Dinner-plate size. Clawed. Almost wiped away by some trailing…appendage.

Okay. Cow tails are scrawny and just long enough to swat away horseflies and not much else. This was almost a…a reptilian trail, making a long, S-shaped swath. Cows with lizard tails? Not even a rare were-cow could leave marks like that.

I stood. The cows had been attracted to the activity at the crop circle. Lights. Action. No camera. Something had followed and then slaughtered them. I’d get another station videographer out here in daylight to film the footprint evidence without the prying eyes of the authorities present. Even the local cops had a stake in not stirring up the populace with alien invasion or supernatural slaughter stories.

In less than half an hour, I was back in my rented bungalow, jubilant, rerunning the audiotaped second version of the stand-up I'd sneaked in under the noses of the local cops and the Fed.

"Authorities are perplexed by a crime scene where local cows apparently have been cooked inside their hides by forces beyond conventional firearms or other weapons. Found dead yesterday in a field outside of Wichita, Kansas…"

Found dead.

Found live was the story of my life so far: I'd been found alive, from birth, but just barely.

Found dead always made a much better story hook.

After work the next day, the latest report on my story safely digitalized and under wraps for a debut on the evening news at ten, I crashed at home by seven that night. How does a weird-phenomenon TV reporter relax? By watching national network forensic crime shows, natch.

So there I am, sucking up microscopic forensic details on TV with the rest of the country, when wham-o!

It all happened so fast. The camera zoomed in closer than the world's best lover. A maggot writhed like a stripper from the dark cave of a deadly pale…but delicately shaped…nostril. With a tiny blue topaz stud.

The camera dollied back. Hmm. Not a bad-looking nostril at all. In fact, it's a dead ringer for mine. Tiny blue topaz stud and all. A very dead ringer. Literally.

I can feel my cold sweat. This is the same old nightmare: me flat on my back, unable to move, bad alien objects coming at me. Except I'm not dreaming, I'm watching network TV on a Thursday evening, like eighty million other people in America.

The object of the camera's affection is a body on the hot TV franchise show, CSI Las Vegas V, Crime Scene Instincts, what I nickname Criminally Salacious Investigations. Media is my business. I have a right to mock it. I am not in a mocking mood at the moment.

Who has tapped my very personal nightmares for network exposure? While my stomach starts to churn, the camera retracts farther.

Holy homicide! The turned-up nose is mine! And the chin, the neck, the collarbones, the discreet but obvious cleavage, the muscle-defined calves visible past Grisham V's burgeoning backside…

Even the toenails are painted my color, Glitz Blitz Red.

I look down and wiggle my bare toes shimmering blood-bright in the living room lamplight. I'm alive but I'm alone, in all senses of the word.

Me with a body double? A doppelganger. A replica. A clone?

My heart was pounding as if I'd actually undergone a recent brush with scalpel and saw and had lived to tell about it. I'd never "felt" the presence of a missing birth twin, like you were supposed to. I'd never sensed an absent "half." Yet the detail that really unnerved me was the tiny blue topaz nose stud on the televised body. Hardly a genetic similarity.

Separated twins were supposed to be so alike that they often held the same jobs, married men who shared a profession, even dressed alike. Long distance. Without one knowing about the other. That small blue glint on the corpse's nose made me shiver. Facial resemblance might eerily echo some stranger's features. But the exact same impudent touch of nose jewelry?