As Jo drove Henry away from Abe's Antiques and over to the crime scene, he could hardly contain himself, thinking that a famous artifact may have finally been rediscovered. He couldn't help grinning from ear to ear when she'd granted his request and activated the sirens for a while. "How old are you?" she'd asked after seeing his boyish excitement over being in her police car. All he offered her in response was a wide grin.

Henry's exciting thoughts darted around in his head, each with a theory of its own as to the sword's probable journey from going missing after the Second World War and winding up in New York City.

"It's sticking out of some guy's chest over on 32nd and Park," she'd told him.

It utterly appalled him, though, that someone would have used it instead of an ordinary weapon to murder someone.

"Are you certain that this is the legendary Honjo Masamune sword?" he asked her.

"Well, it looks like it from what Hanson found on the Internet," she replied. "But I can't even pronounce it so ... don't take my word for it. He watches a lot of History Channel so he's pretty sure it is."

History Channel. Hmmm. "I, ah, appreciate you asking me along, Detective," Henry told her.

"Sorry to have interrupted your chess game," she apologized, smiling softly.

"Oh, no problem. The game can keep," he assured her. "My absence should give my worthy opponent a chance to plan his next move - albeit futile."

"Ouch. Well, if your skill at chess is anything like your skill at crime-solving," she began, "I'd say that your opponent doesn't have a prayer." Having arrived at the crime scene, she parked the car and turned off the ignition. "His name is Abe, right? Is he your father?" she asked.

"His actual name is Abraham," he replied. "He's not my father but he's my oldest and dearest friend."

"Oh. Abe's Antiques," she said more to herself while recalling the name of the shop. She wanted to question him more about the elderly shopkeeper but they were at the crime scene now.

They exited the car and walked closer, ducking under the yellow crime-scene tape. Jo told him that Hanson had already texted her the victim's identity: Hideo Tanaka, a private collector. She started to offer him an extra pair of blue gloves but saw him already donning his own. It didn't surprise her that this guy would come prepared.

Henry snapped the gloves into place covering his wrists, and slowly approached the body of what appeared to be a man in his late 50s, resting on his right side with the sword's blade protruding eight inches out of his chest. The rest of the blade that was visible, protruded out of his back near his spine and just below his left shoulder blade, the hilt resting on the sidewalk.

"You'd think there would be more blood than this," Jo commented regarding the sparse amount. "Which means he was killed somewhere else."

Henry looked up at her from where he was bending over the corpse to examine the wound and rested back onto his heels. "Very good, Detective. That most certainly appears to be the case." He looked down at the victim again with brows knitted, lips pursed, and muttered, "No defensive wounds on his hands, no tears to his clothing other than where the blade entered and exited."

"Meaning ... ?"

He stood up but kept his eyes trained on the corpse. "Meaning he was attacked from behind. Blindsided. He had no chance to run away or to even fight back." His eyes took in the building's facade while he entertained a memory of how the building had looked in the early 1900s. Not much different from its present appearance. But despite the differing styles of dress and modes of transportation, the hustle and bustle of a determined mass intent upon turning the next dollar differed very little from that of the present. The memory washed away after a few seconds.

"Notice the blade," he pointed out, returning his awareness to the crime scene. "It lacks the signature mark of a Masamune sword."

"A fake," Jo said.

"Not exactly," he replied. "You see, there are some very good replicas out there such as this one."

"And you know this is not the real deal, how?" a skeptical-sounding male voice asked.

Henry snatched his head to his right to see Jo's dark-haired official partner, Det. Mike Hanson, approach.

"None of the replicas carry the unique Masamune signature," Henry began. "You see, 700 years ago, when he plunged the hot blade into cold water, he gave birth to a razor-sharp weapon. It was customary for centuries for an artist to meticulously draw the unique pattern called a hamon on the edge of a fine sword."

Jo bugged her eyes at Hanson and opened her mouth slightly, then returned her attention to Henry. Hanson frowned at Henry as he spoke, not really sure if he should believe him but very sure that this curly-haired ME was a know-it-all. And he wasn't too fond of know-it-all's.

Henry continued, lost in information-sharing mode. "In 1939, the Japanese declared the Honjo Masamune a national treasure and such finely detailed drawings of the hamon were made. If the actual sword ever appeared at an antique fair or auction, there could be no mistake."

"This hamon was like a fingerprint or an artist's signature," Jo offered.

"Precisely, Detective," Henry replied, impressed once again at how quickly this female sleuth absorbed and processed his admittedly sometimes complicated explanations. "I'll get the body back to the lab and get to work on the autopsy as soon as possible. Might I trouble you for the use of your cell phone?"

"Yours out of commission?" she asked as she handed it to him.

"Er, you might say that," he replied. He stepped a few paces away to call his young assistant, Lucas Wahl, and alert him to the impending arrival of a very interesting corpse.

("Aren't you officially off today, Boss?")

"I was but I am officially back 'on'," Henry replied. "See you soon." He ended the call and handed Jo's phone back to her, thanking her.

"You're definitely going to have to get yours working, you know," she told him as she pocketed the phone.

Henry chose not to reply as he knelt once again beside the body. Grasping the sword's hilt (handle) and holding the body in place with his knee in its back and his other hand on its shoulder, he pulled slowly at the sword until it was completely removed from the victim's body. He handed it off to one of the CSU team members and oversaw the proper packaging of it for transport back to the lab. He walked back over to Jo and removed his gloves, stuffing them into a plastic bag and depositing it into his jacket pocket.

"Weren't you afraid he would bleed out if you removed that?" she asked him.

"I took a chance that he wouldn't since he had already somewhere else," he replied to Jo.

"Why not just cut the blade on either end?" Hanson asked. "His expensive threads are already ruined," he added.

"Expensive and quite tasteful; a blue Donegal sport jacket from the Paul Stuart line, Detective," Henry replied.

Both Jo's and Hanson's eyes swept over Henry's style of dress, realizing they'd just learned where the always dapperly-dressed ME did his clothes shopping.

"But it would have been a shame to have ruined such a remarkable weapon. We don't have the luxury of a swordsmith who could successfully rejoin the blade if it had been cut away from him."

Jo nodded as she and Hanson exchanged looks again and processed the expert information that their new ME had shared with them. Jo and Henry got back into her car and drove them back to the precinct. Since no apparent witnesses to the crime had been found yet, she and Hanson had not been able to gather much information about it. One thing she had recently learned, though, was that Henry's observational skills and well of knowledge should prove just as invaluable as any eye witness account.

vvvv

Later on that afternoon in the morgue, Henry stood over the sword, admiring it as it lay on a steel examination table as if it were an expensive bauble from Tiffany's. Lucas' eyes swept over the five-foot length of the sword from hilt to blade tip in jaw-dropped wonder. Although Henry's outward reaction to it was more contained, his admiration for it was still evident.

"What's so special about this sword if it's a fake?" Hanson asked. "You two are acting like it's the real deal."

"Granted, it is not the actual Honjo Masamune," Henry conceded. "But it is still an intrinsically beautiful piece of art. Simply stunning," Henry breathed out, his mouth hung slightly open while his mind conjured up the original weapon's majestically-forged form. So balanced, it was. Light. Perfect. But very, very sharp and terrifying. And more ancient and eternal than he, himself.

"What have you been able to find out about the provenance of this weapon?" Henry asked the detectives.

Jo shook herself out of examining his slightly open mouth. "It was, um, last purchased by our victim at an auction," she replied with a gulp. "Still working on who previously owned it. According to Tanaka's son, Donald, the blade is over 600 years old."

"Masamune was the swordmaker," Henry marveled. "Although not the famous Honjo," he quickly added. "Still ... a remarkable weapon, nonetheless."

"We only have his word that it's that old," Jo pointed out. "Best to have it examined by another expert in ancient weaponry to confirm it."

Henry hid a grimace at the thought of The Frenchman with her sly smile. She was the best expert in this area that he knew, though. "I, ah, believe I know just such an expert." It was his turn to gulp.

vvvv

The Frenchman's weaponry shop on Reade Street ...

"Where did you get this?" The Frenchman asked Henry and Jo in a breathy tone as she examined photos of the sword.

"It was used to kill a man," Jo replied.

"That jerk outbid me for it last week," the woman gnashed out in a harsher tone, thrusting the photos back at them.

Jo took the photos and showed the small, intensely confident Asian woman a morgue photo of the victim. "This the 'jerk' who outbid you?" she asked her.

"Oh. My. Hideo Tanaka," the woman replied. "Yes. Claims ... well, claimed he was a private collector but he just turned up every few months at an auction, outbid everyone on a particularly exceptional item, and resold it almost immediately." She handed the photo back to Jo and as if anticipating Jo's next question, she said, "I have no idea what rock he crawled out from under every now and then to disrupt our auctions."

"Sounds like he'd made a lot of enemies," Jo ventured. "I have to ask you ... where were you last night between 8:30 and midnight?"

"St. Vincent's ER," she replied, pointing to her heavily-bandaged left wrist in a dark blue sling trimmed in white. "Suffered a clean break when I fell while ice skating. Members of my skating club and the hospital staff can vouch for me. Class started at 6:30, I broke it a little before 7:00. My niece, Dianne, drove me to Bellevue's ER. She's one of the skating instructors and stayed with me the whole time. We finally left the ER a little after 11PM and she drove me home. Stayed there with me until morning."

"Must have been around 11:30PM when we got to my house. Those pain meds were so strong that they knocked me out until the next morning," The Frenchman replied. "Believe me, Tanaka may have been a jerk but murder is not my thing."

"We'll need your niece's contact information to corroborate your story," Jo stated. The Frenchman complied and Jo gave her a card with her own contact information on it.

The Frenchman playfully eyed the uncharacteristically silent ME. "Nice to see you again, Doctor," she said. "Give my best to Abraham, won't you?"

He sheepishly nodded with a polite smile and the unofficial partners left and headed for the 11th Precinct. During the drive, Jo acknowledged that at least, besides a name for their victim, they had an occupation for him and a positive ID from The Frenchman that would explain how he may have come in contact with the sword. "Just have to find out where he lives or works and who his last customer was," she told Hanson over the phone.

("Ran him for priors," Hanson told her. "He's clean. But get this - last time he was the highest bidder at an auction a week ago, cops had to be called to get another guy he'd outbid off of him.")

She nodded. "We got a name of this outbid guy?" she asked. She nodded and said, "Okay, great." She ended the call and dropped her phone into the well of the key caddy between them, wheeling the car up to the light instead of parking at the precinct. "Possible suspect," she explained to Henry. "Parker Donaldson. World History professor at NYU. Threatened to kill Tanaka a week ago in front of a crowd of people at an auction house."

"Let me guess. Tanaka outbid him for the replicant sword," Henry said.

"You got it," Jo replied. After a few moments of silence, she spoke again. "Quite a woman, this Frenchman," Jo said. "Really knows her stuff, too."

"Right on both counts," Henry replied.

"Known her long?"

"She's actually known Abraham a long time," he replied. "This was my first time meeting her." At least in this century, he said to himself.

"What's her, um, real name?" Jo asked as they paused at another red light.

"The Frenchman." Jo looked at him with a frown of disbelief and confusion. "That is her legal name," Henry chuckled. He felt it best not to share what he knew was her birth name. He was afraid he'd have to also explain how he knew it.

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Notes:

Information on the Mystery of The Enigmatic Honjo Masamune Sword found at

mystery-of-the-enigmatic-hanjo-masamune-sword

Information on Paul Stuart mens clothing found at .