April O'Neil was looking forward to getting to work that day. She was pretty sure she was near a breakthrough on the crime wave - if only she could pin down Chief Sterns.
First, however, she had to cope with her boss. Charles Pennington had shown up at her apartment while she was getting ready for work. He had a lot on his mind, too, and none of it was helping April. He was just getting in her way while she combed her hair. Charles had even brought his teenage son, Danny, who was sitting quietly in her living room. Danny was a troubled boy. April thought Charles had brought him so he could keep an eye on him.
"You could have called me last night, you know?" Charles began. "Call it a quirk, but I like to know when one of my best reporters has been mugged."
April combed her hair as she answered. "I wasn't mugged, Charles." Strictly speaking, she hadn't been mugged. She'd just been attacked by four thugs who were in the middle of a robbery. And then she'd been rescued by - whom? She remembered the funny three-pronged dagger in her bag. There was more to this story than anybody knew.
Charles seemed genuinely concerned. "From now on, Security's escorting you out to that beat-up van of yours at night."
"Yes, sir," April said, saluting. Some things weren't worth arguing about. They went into April's living room.
Charles sighed. "What's going on out there?" he asked, looking out the window. "There's so much crime!"
Now this was something April wanted to talk about with Charles. "I'll tell you this," she began. "I've talked to a lot of people in the Japanese community here and I'm awfully suspicious about the crime wave. Sterns is going to have some answering to do at the press conference this afternoon!"
April realized that might not make Charles happy. He was friends with the mayor and every time she gave Sterns a hard time, the mayor called Charles. She decided to change the subject. "Say, how's school going, Danny?" she asked the sullen teenager. Danny began to answer, but Charles answered for him.
"Oh, wonderful," Charles said sarcastically. "So wonderful, in fact, that I have to drive him there every morning now just to make sure he goes!"
Danny pulled his headphones over his ears. "That's what he does when he wants to ignore me," Charles said. "I don't even know where he got the headphones!"
April knew from the look on his face that of all the things that worried Charles, Danny was the most worrisome, and the one he felt most helpless about. She felt sorry for Charles. She also felt sorry for Danny.
However, two hours later, when April had to pay a taxi fare and found her wallet was empty, she wasn't so sure she felt sorry for Danny. Although, like Charles, she didn't know where Danny had got the headphones, she suspected she knew how he had got them.