A Collaborative Effort: Part 3
“All things come to him who waits – provided he knows what he is waiting for.”
--Woodrow Wilson
“Well, well, well, how interesting,” Thera said suddenly, putting down her sandwich. She dropped the rest of the transcripts she was holding on the table.
William looked up. “Find anything?”
“Definitely, just gotta find the next conversation.” She started rifling through the rest of the stack. “Yes, here it is! Blast, that’s what I thought. The other scientist just went missing. I’ve got surveillance reports on his house indicating no sign of him. A wrecked lab, possibly indicating forced entry and retrieval. And a set of phone calls between our suspects corroborating that possibility. This is a problem.”
“You don’t say. So we have the next step.”
“Don’t tell me you were expecting this,” Thera snapped. “Why didn’t you say something? We could have had Joe’s cousin shadowed.”
“No need,” William replied, leaning back in his chair. “This ups the situation enough to get the Danger Kiwi fully involved. Whoever has one scientist took the other, and that will lead us to them both. Or rather, *they* will help lead us to Joseph.”
“I hate it when you get sneaky. Besides, you’re taking one heck of a chance, these guys really don’t strike me as professionals.”
“Not all of them, maybe, but I’ve dug up some interesting stuff on our potential allies. Some of them do seem to know what they are doing. It’s the cops I’m interested in right now. They may be our best chance.”
“The mouse and the bluebird? Maybe. The bluebird has an impressive record, but the mouse is a mystery.”
“Makes one curious to find out more.”
Thera was about to respond to yet another of Williams wonderfully cryptic comments when a starling appeared with the next batch of transcripts and reports. William managed to snag the field reports before Thera, who grumblingly accepted the rest them and kicked the messenger out. Both were silent as they read.
“So you want to know more about the cops.” Thera tossed him a cell phone transcript. “Here’s our chance. They’ll be out of their office, so we could poke around. I know how much you like breaking and entering.”
William paused for a moment then looked up with a grin. “Actually, I think I have a much better idea.”
************
Drew took a moment to look in on Zeke, who was still laid up in the infirmary. “Hey,” he called. “How are you feeling?”
The Russian blue shrugged. “It itches like crazy, but that’s supposed to be good, right? How’s the search for our resident mad genius? Any progress?”
“A little,” Drew solemnly replied. “Mostly dead ends, but Thera and William are working on something that may pan out. There’s been a second kidnapping and the two are definitely linked.”
Zeke frowned. “I feel bad abandoning the guys like this. I know they could use me right now.”
“It’s okay, Z. Thera’s a professional, and William’s far more clever than the rest of us. Sometimes I think he may even be smarter than me.”
Zeke started snickering at the slightly disgruntled look on the chipmunk’s face. “William knows more then the rest of us combined, that’s for sure. I have to remind myself he’s been at this a lot longer then even you, and from the other side. Sometimes I think he knows tricks we’ve never even heard of.”
“I know, I know. Occasionally though something reminds me that William tends to keep his own agenda. But keeping the faith is part of the job, right?”
************
“Amazing,” Bishop said, “Who knew Squeaks had family? Boy’s as close-mouthed as they come.”
The white furred, bespectacled mouse (who appeared to be in his early teens) smiled back charmingly and cocked his head to just the right angle for maximum innocence. “Uncle Squeaks comes from the more distant side of the family,” ‘Willie’ politely informed him. “I wanted to surprise him cuz it’s been years since the family had any contact with him, but I guess I can’t if he’s not here.”
“ Well,” Bishop drawled. “He and his partner left an hour ago to work on a case, but I could get a hold of him for you.”
Willie pondered the offer for a minute, then shook his head with a sheepish grin. “I really wanted to surprise him, you know? He was always my favorite uncle; he’s just so much fun.”
“Hmm. Well, I guess you could wait here,” the desk sergeant dubiously replied. “If you really wanted to surprise him. He might be back in a few hours. I hate to leave the two of you just hanging around waiting, though.”
Next to William, Thera struggled to keep her extreme impatience from showing. “We don’t mind,” she said, attempting the same tone of virtuous innocence that her partner so effortlessly achieved.
The graying pigeon behind the desk, however, didn’t look too convinced.
“It’s too bad you don’t have a visitors’ room so we could hide while waiting to surprise my uncle,” Willie put in, tone filled with dejection. “I guess we’ll have to come back again. Does he have some sort of schedule? Maybe you could tell me when he’ll be here again?”
Bishop hesitated, torn between helping the poor young lad and being honest with him. Considering the normal schedule that pair kept, the poor kids could be waiting for hours. “Well, I suppose you could wait….”
“In Uncle Squeaks’ office,” Willie finished for him. “Oh, Mr. Bishop ,sir, that would be wonderful!”
Before he could explain how that really wasn’t a very good idea, a small crisis caused enough of a distraction that he just waved the kids on back.
An orange finch ran by shouting, “Stop! Someone stop it! For the love of god, don’t let that thing out of the precinct!”
The coffee was making its bimonthly break for the door.
The two passed into the precinct’s inner office area, taking a moment to glance after the commotion being caused by a swift-moving blur of brown ooze attempting to escape a group of cops wielding mugs, bags, and empty wastepaper baskets. ‘Willie’ led the way, weaving through a maze of desks, cubicles, and partitions before locating their target office towards the back of the station.
The room was small, windowless, and dark, the light from the outer offices barely permeating the dust-covered blinds. It housed the usual array of office necessities – two desks back-to-back, an outdated computer, and a collection of filing cabinets and shelves. A worn couch and beaten chair were crammed into the room as well, and piled onto nearly every last horizontal surface were stacks of files, reports, summonses, printouts, and photographs, as well as evidence bags, spare handcuffs, and numerous other bits of paraphernalia. The computer was buried beneath a layer of dust under the desk, its monitor valiantly fending off encroaching dossiers and legal documents, and a handful of candid snapshots of friends and family dotted the corkboard stretching along the side of the wall. A battered newspaper clipping, bent and battered from being repeatedly torn down and crumpled, was taped to the front of the computer monitor, trumpeting the cops in question and some strange event or other.
“Good lord, doesn’t anyone in this group believe in organization,” William snapped, surveying the chaos that consumed the office.
“This may take forever,” Thera replied with a sigh.
“Impossible, we don’t have that long.”
“Okay, you take the desks, I’ll take the filing cabinets, and we’ll meet in the middle,” the skunk quipped with an evil grin.
William shot her a look but conceded, turning to the desk. The easiest route was to pick a corner and begin.
However, rifling through an office requires privacy.
“Hey, Blue,” a voice called as the office door burst open, “I thought it was your turn to feed the cof-” The orange finch halted as the officer took in the two youths before him. “Oh. Ah…” the bird looked puzzled. “Are you two looking for someone? This is a private office, after all, and I’m certain its occupants wouldn’t want you-”
“You mean my uncle,” William put in, cutting off the finch. “Oops, sorry. The sergeant said we could wait in here for Uncle Squeaks to come back. It’s sort of a surprise, you see.”
“Uncle?” the finch asked, quirking an eyebrow, “Fancy that, the mouse has family!” he smiled. “Casey Redwall, at your service. Where’re you from, kid?”
“Just about everywhere, actually,” the young mouse replied, settling a hip against the desk. “Military family. We never seemed to stay in one place, yanno?”
“Got that right,” Redwall laughed, “Still, we’ve never managed to get so much as a port of call out of Squeaks. I’ve met plenty of sailors down dockside, but your uncle’s the first navy man I’ve met that doesn’t jump at the chance to share a war story or two. Won’t even give us a ship name. Though I have to ask – do you know the story behind the triangle tattoo? Always wondered about that one…”
“Personally, from the way mom always talked, I figured it was one of those drunken dare type things.” William snickered. “Never got a straight answer, probably because she didn’t want me getting any ideas.”
The finch smirked. “That’d explain why it practically takes an act of God to get him to take a drink. Ah, well,” he sighed, looking back over his shoulder as someone bellowed from within the outer office, “Hey, I’ve got to be getting back to work, but if you need anything, just give a yell, we’re right next door. And there’s donuts across the hall in the lunchroom if you get hungry.”
“You know,” Thera began, after the finch left, “after the coffee incident, I don’t think I want to touch those donuts.”
“Cute. Get back to work just in case we get interrupted again. We need to find everything they have on both kiwis.”
Thera sighed and nodded, pulling open the next drawer and scanning file names. So far she all she had found was the usual police reports, evidence logs, and various bits of paperwork that law enforcement seemed to accumulate. Meanwhile, William was sifting through the next stack when someone knocked on the door, causing both of them to twitch.
“Hey,” a green finch poked his head in, “Casey tells me you’re Squeaks’ nephew? I was wondering if you’d help us settle a bet. I’ll even split the winnings with you.”
“Sure,” William replied easily, sitting down in one of the office chairs. “It’s been awhile since I saw my uncle, but ask away. Mom’s told me all sorts of stories of stuff when they were kids.”
“Ah,” the finch replied, frowning. “Maybe you couldn’t help, then. See, your uncle has a habit of going missing for days at a time – I thought he might be visiting your side of the family. Oh well,” he sighed. “Say, you wouldn’t know the war story behind that tail, would you? No, I suppose not,” he frowned to himself. “Anything you’d like to know while I’m here?”
William smiled. “Well I am starting to think my uncle is a real loner. Isn’t he close to anyone in this place?”
“Ferdia, certainly,” the finch nodded, “And us by association. Bishop, too, I think.”
“I guess it must be a close-knit group around here. That’s nice. We don’t see him much, so it’s good to know he has friends. I bet you have a lot of stories.”
“More than our share, and that’s just the ones they let us in on. They carry the heaviest caseload here; always working on something or other, and half the time they seldom breathe a word of any of it. Those tend to be their most interesting cases, too. I’m still waiting on an explanation for what happened to the statue uptown. Marble isn’t supposed to melt…”
Thera raised an eyebrow. “Marble, melted? Fascinating. Sounds like those two specialize in the weird. Maybe your uncle will tell you some stories, Willie. I’d love to hear about some of their more infamous cases.”
The finch laughed. “Yeah, well, if you do get him to talk, drop by and let us in on the secrets before you leave. We’d love to hear them. Have fun waiting, though. They’re out working on a case right now, and it might be a while before either thinks to check in. There’s a public computer in the lounge if you get bored,” he added, nodding at the antiquated machine on the desktop, “I’m afraid you won’t find any games on that thing, it’s too old. A slight drawback to routinely demolishing property, monuments, and entire sections of the city is that they tend to pass you over when it comes to hardware upgrades.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” William replied. “It was a pleasure to meet you.”
Nodding, the finch waved goodbye and left. Thera breathed as sigh of relief and yanked open another file drawer, muttering under her breath.
“Friendly bunch, aren’t they,” the mouse commented dryly.
Thera rolled her eyes. “Bloody annoying is more like it. None of them seem to know a thing and so far, anyway, these files have been useless. I’m almost through the ongoing cases now. Hopefully there won’t be anymore interruptions.”
“Oh, I imagine someone else will walk through that door any moment.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well you *did* tempt fate.”
“Oh, stuff it and get back to work.”
Snickering beneath his breath, William went back to thumbing through evidence logs. By accident his gaze fell on the antiquated paperweight on the desk and he had a sudden idea just as Thera muttered something that sounded like, “Eureka!”
Of course, that’s when Fate decided to pounce on them yet again as someone knocked sternly on the door. William snorted, covering his laugh and called for whoever was behind the door to enter.
The middle-aged sparrow that came in, however, didn’t seem to find anything amusing at the sight of the two ‘visitors’. “Just like those two to leave guests unattended,” he frowned. “I’d say you’re not supposed to be back here unsupervised, but if you’re anything like your hosts, I’d be wasting my breath. Always running off on some lead or other, dropping out of sight for days without any sort of explanations - and the damages! Why my precinct? Why, why, why?!? At this rate, I’ll never make captain!” The sparrow fumed for a moment before regaining what passed for professional composure. “Bah. Don’t touch anything, you hear me? And when your uncle gets back in, send them to my office! Requisitioning performance vehicles for use in the force? Of all the-” he stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him. The two could hear him ranting as he crossed the hall.
Thera began slowly banging her head against the file cabinet.
“Want me to lock the door?” William inquired.
He decided to ignore the rude gesture that composed her response.
“They do sound like an interesting pair,” he pointed out, resuming his searching. “Although the tendency towards random and mass destruction reminds me of someone.”
“I’m going to disregard that last statement,” the skunk haughtily responded. “Anyway, before the Prozac candidate walked in, I was about to say I found something.”
William dropped the files and was beside her in an instant. “Excellent, because I was having no luck. What did you find?”
“An open file, referring to a case that involved the detectives and, among others, both Danger Kiwi and a certain Dr. Periwinkle.”
“Really,” William drawled. “Interesting coincidence. Why is the file still open? Case never solved?”
“Not exactly. It seems they never identified the good mad doctor’s financial source. However, they did turn the case over to the Bob Kiwi Detective Agency.”
“How come you never found *that* in their files?”
“Because I got locked in a steel cage, okay!? That tends to distract me. I would have found the file eventually.”
“Okay, so the open file refers to a closed case,” William said, reading over her shoulder. “See if you can find that one.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Thera replied, moving to another cabinet and searching for the appropriate drawer. “Here it is. Let’s see, case #546657.” She pulled out a slim file folder that contained only a small stack of papers, including an incredibly vague incident report concerning the murder of a butler. “Geez, this thing reads like a kids book! This can’t be the full report.”
“The wise agent never lets his superiors know the full truth.”
Thera sighed in disgust. “You think they might keep a more detailed report somewhere,” she inquired.
“It would depend on how much time they spend in the office. Our best bet may be that frighteningly ancient piece of technology over there.” Fortunately, he caught the files Thera dumped on him as she dove for the terminal.
“Hey, ancient I can do. Maybe this thing actually has DOS, that would be wicked,” she crowed, searching for the on switch.
William just shook his head and set the files down on a clear spot on the desk. “You worry me.”
While Thera waited for the computer to make its valiant attempt at booting up, William went back to scanning files.
Fate, deciding now was as good a time as any to play catch with a spare monkey wrench, again intervened, and there was yet another knock at the door. The desk sergeant, Bishop, reappeared, chuckling at the sight of Thera at the computer. “Afraid you won’t find much of interest there, dear. That old thing doesn’t have any of those fancy operating systems you kids are used to. It’s not good for much more than word processing and database checks – hardly entertaining activities, I’ll admit. You’re not too bored, I hope?”
“We’re fine, thank you for asking,” Thera sweetly replied. “It was so nice of you to let us wait in here for Willie’s uncle. You don’t know how long he’s been looking forward to this.”
“It should be quite a surprise,” William added, trying desperately not to either roll his eyes or gag at his partner’s innocent act. Casually, he nudged the files they wanted out of view.
“I certainly hope so,” the graying pigeon smiled, “Considering how much effort you’re putting into it. Are you sure you don’t mind the wait? I’m certain we could come up with some sort of excuse to call your uncle back here. Vernon, at least, is raving about some grave procedural sin or another.”
“Oh no, no, no,” Thera hastily replied. “Please don’t interrupt them. I’m sure they have important police business to take care of. We honestly don’t mind waiting.”
“Don’t worry, we’re keeping ourselves entertained,” William added. “Terry and I are just so excited to see a real police station.”
Bishop laughed, “All right, all right. Sorry if we come across as a bit over-eager, but this is the first time Squeaks has had any family drop by, and it’s a trend we’d like to see continue.”
“Look Willie, it seems we’re causing a stir,” Thera said with a painfully fake laugh. “You’re uncle must be one secretive guy.”
William shrugged. “Must be. That side of the family has trouble staying in touch, so maybe he’s just used to being on his own. Sorry to be so much trouble. It just really means a lot to me, getting to see Uncle Squeaks after all these years. I really appreciate all of you letting us wait for him. Don’t worry, I promise we’ll stay out of trouble.”
“A likely story,” the cop deadpanned, shaking his head and lightening the remark with a smile. “But try to, nonetheless.”
“We’ll be good, we promise.”
When he was gone, William grabbed Thera’s pack, both to stash the files and to keep her from blowing something up.
“I swear,” Thera growled, “the next person who barges in is going to get shot!”
“That should go over well in a police station,” William replied with a look. “Try to calm yourself and see if that archaic heap holds any secrets. If you can ever get it to work, that is.”
Thera stuck her tongue out at him. “Shows what you know, it’s working just fine. DOS is such a wonderful thing.”
“I stand by my earlier statement: you worry me.”
“Yeah well, quit bothering me. Finish hunting through those case files or something. It’ll take me some time to navigate through these word files.”
“Okay, just try not to maim anyone if that door opens.”
Thera grumbled something that vaguely sounded like ‘death to all heathens who dare disturb me’ before beginning her search. William turned back to the boxes of files stacked haphazardly on the floor and half-glared at the overflowing containers. This was going to take hours.
************
“I find it perversely fitting that the day after a pair of speed demons with questionable badges show up to question our resident scientific genius, said genius disappears without a trace,” Ferdia grumbled, stomping into the precinct house with barely a nod at the mouse holding the door for her, “If I were Ferdie, I’d probably be screaming ‘conspiracy’ by now.”
“It does look suspicious,” Squeaks agreed, turning to follow his partner as she stormed down the hall, “But barring a trip to the Hawthorne corporate building – which would probably end with us getting shot at, if their manners in person are anything like they are over the phone – we’re not likely to learn anything else about those two. Newt, on the other hand –“
“- ought to be easier to track down,” Ferdia finished. “Assuming yesterday’s visit had anything to do with Newt’s disappearance, we’re gonna need to find out more about this look-alike scientist, Joseph, and how he knew the codename. Not to mention, what the heck did they mean by pixi-“
“Stop the coffee!”
Squeaks continued on to their office as Ferdia ran to aid Casey and Trevor in heading off the coffee’s second escape attempt of the day. He reached the door just as the disturbingly sentient beverage snarled from within its corral of paper towels. The discussion during this display was equally strange.
“Hey, Blue!” Casey grinned, herding the coffee into an oversized mug, “You’ve got company!”
Ferdia frowned. They certainly weren’t expecting any visitors, and their regular contacts almost never dropped by the station. “Who?”
“We’re not supposed to say,” the orange finch shrugged, “It’s supposed to be a surprise.”
“Case, then why’d you tell me?”
“Uh…”
It could be argued that the mouse was relatively distracted by this display, and in truth, Squeaks’ attention was on his fellow officers as he opened the office door. The shriek of frustration and telephone that came whizzing by at escape velocity remedied that situation, and it was only his quick reflexes that spared him from a potentially serious blow to the head.
“What is with this office and phone missiles?!”
“Hey!” Ferdia yelled indignantly, “I’m over here! And I was never aiming at you!”
“Never mind that,” he partner informed her, smiling wolfishly, “Come take a look at our ‘visitors’.”
************
William, deeply absorbed in one *very* fascinating case file, heard the shriek as the door started to open once again and whirled around one second too late. He saw the phone get launched full force through the air, hurling straight towards the unsuspecting white mouse. Thankfully the intended victim dodged in time, however that still left them with one huge problem.
They’d been caught.
“This is absolutely the last time I work with amateurs,” he grumbled, leveling a glare at a frozen Thera.
That remark seemed to bring her around as she snapped, “Just whom are you calling an amateur? I’ve been an agent longer than you!”
“Focus on the larger issue,” William replied, indicating the two cops who had just entered the room. “We seem to have company.”
“Excellent, you finally showed,” Thera said to the new arrivals as she stood and causally flicked off the computer. “We’ve been waiting hours for the two of you to turn up. It’s been decided, in the interest of interdepartmental cooperation, that we should combine forces.”
“A logical step seeing as you two also have a missing scientist on your hands now,” William added.
“Ah, yes,” the bluebird purred, “And, in the interest of interdepartmental cooperation, you’re posing as Squeaks’ nephew and tossing our office.”
“My what?” the mouse blinked, then scowled at William as the surprise faded. “I have no family. I’ll thank you not to go about pretending otherwise.”
“Besides, we can handle this ourselves,” the bluebird sniffed. “We’ve handled missing persons cases before with less evidence.”
William raised an eyebrow. “Tossing? Hardly. The office was like this when we arrived. Actually, we debated straightening up until you finally arrived. Then my partner got distracted by the obsolete piece of equipment over there masquerading as a PC.”
“As for the subterfuge, we have a perfectly legitimate reason,” Thera added, tone defensive. “The agency we work for does not usually allow cooperation; however, this time it’s a special case. But, in order to save face as it were, William was presented as your nephew.”
“You must admit it’s a suitable explanation for our presence,” William concluded. “As for handling this yourselves, are you really that foolish? We both have a stake in this; it makes more sense to work together. This is no simple missing persons case, and if you are even half as good as you think you are then you already know that.”
Thera stood and faced the detectives, William walking over to stand at her side. “Besides, if you won’t cooperate, if you continue to get in *our* way during *our* investigation, I promise you it will get very ugly.”
William laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. “All threats aside, I think you get our point. An alliance would be beneficial for everyone.”
“Ugly?” Ferdia seethed, “Sister, you don’t want this to get ugly!”
“All grandstanding aside,” Squeaks stated, crossing his arms and sending his partner a look that read ‘calm down’, “I’d rather face a familiar enemy than work alongside an unknown ally. You’ve done nothing so far to inspire trust on our part, and frankly at this point I’m more inclined to believe you think we know something you don’t than buy into the story that you’d like to join forces.”
“We’ve worked with too many feds that use us as information gophers, give us nothing in return, and then leave us hanging, making the arrests and taking the credit for themselves,” the bluebird squawked, “You know how many of those investigations have gone sour because your side hasn’t held up its part of the bargain? People have died! I’m not about to be a part of this if that’s the sort of treatment we’ll get!”
The door opened a crack behind them. “Say, you two,” the orange finch began cheerily.
“Stay out of this, Casey!” they rounded on him.
“You know what, this is a bad time,” the finch smiled nervously, ducking back out the door, “I’ll call you later.”
“Right,” resumed the bluebird, “Now where was-“
Her partner silenced her with a placating look, then turned back to meet William’s eyes. “What it all comes down to is a lack of trust,” he explained calmly, a flicking tail belying the checked anger, “Perhaps a gesture of goodwill on your part…?”
“Gesture of goodwill,” Thera tried to snarl, but William calmly clamped a hand over her mouth.
“While I could point we have no reason to trust you either, I won’t.” William loosened his hand a little. “Personally I could care less about credit, our agency doesn’t operate that way. Moreover, our main priority is rescuing Joseph. Not only is the kiwi an important member or our agency, his disappearance creates a huge security risk. We know he was set up, the plane he boarded vanished without a trace and the coded message he sent was addressed to his cousin, who I’m willing to bet is XYZPDQ. Right now we still don’t know what the message means, but, given that they are both scientists and in a similar field, logically it may refer to a project they collaborated on. Correct, Thera?”
After giving her partner an extremely evil look, Thera sighed in annoyance and conceded. “It’s one possibility, anyway. We did some checking and there’s only one known project that the two ever worked together on. Unfortunately the most we have is a roster list and a project name.”
“If it had anything to do with XYZPDQ, it was probably a weapons gig of some kind,” the bluebird chirped, flashing them a cheese grin that clearly read ‘If she can be civil, so can I’. “It’d be old, too. He got out of the teamwork phase years ago. Less backstabbing all around,” she smiled, looking pointedly at Thera.
“You won’t find anything useful in Newt’s lab,” Squeaks put in before the fighting could begin anew, “If you can’t work your way through our organized piles, the scientist’s highly sophisticated system of tossing old notes and peer journals into corners and under desks is probably more than you’d want to manage. The numerous times he’s burned the lab to the ground won’t help, either; even if he hasn’t lost the file, he may have accidentally incinerated it.”
“Still, I’ve got people working that angle,” the bird added, “As well as several promising leads on the code used in your message.”
“If we’re relying on his memory,” her partner muttered.
“It’s better than you might think,” she shrugged. “Especially with a Magi around to help jog his memory. It’s only a question of when, I’m told.”
“Anything else you’d like to know?” Squeaks asked. “Or should we flesh out the rest of our leads while you work on yours?”
“Well the good news is we probably won’t need to rely on Newt’s lab, given that Joseph was a pack rat,” William informed them. “I know for a fact he still has paperwork on theories he proved invalid decades ago. Also, you may actually be able to dig up information on Project Puffer as well. The roster list alone is interesting reading. I know your agent Double-Oh-Zero is no longer active, but perhaps he still has some contacts in the trade.”
Thera jabbed her partner in the side before he could spill anything else. “If we can get you guys security clearance, we’ll share what we’re able to.”
“Always a kicker,” Ferdia muttered, “At any rate, as long as we’re playing nicely, you might as well pay my brother a visit. Bob Kiwi’s detective agency might seem laughable, but they’re actually quite capable – especially in unorthodox cases. They’ll be working the case anyway – as you no doubt saw yesterday, Newt’s a friend of theirs. I concur on Puffer - Ferdie’s looking into it, but details are still hard to come by, and Zero wasn’t involved more than peripherally.”
“I would like to see the roster, though,” Squeaks added. “We haven’t tracked down a copy yet, and Zero’s memory is…shaky, at best.”
“We’ll get you a copy,” William replied. “This detective agency has three members correct? The kiwi, your brother and… my mind goes blank, of course. We’ll speak to our boss about having official information sent your way. We’ll need to know everyone who will be connected to the case. For security reasons.”
“You’ll want to get Beak a copy, then,” Ferdia nodded. “He’s not on their list, but he’s a recent addition.”
“I doubt he’ll recognize the names, though,” Squeaks pointed out.
“True,” his partner nodded, “And if Iiwi doesn’t have a copy by now, she will by sundown. If she gets involved, that is.”
“She’ll get involved,” the mouse grinned, “She likes Newt.”
“Everyone likes Newt,” Ferdia shrugged. “He’ll gladly give you any gizmo you ask for. Probably invited his kidnappers in for tea, a tour, and the possibility of securing more funding. I’ve got Beak doing an inventory to see if anything’s missing.”
“I think that’s about all we can help each other with,” Thera announced while she picked up her backpack and slung it over one shoulder. “We’ll get that list to your operatives and add what you’ve given us to the next status update. However, for now we’d better go.”
“We’ll also get those security clearances started through our boss,” William put in, following Thera to the door. “It may take a day, government paperwork and all that. In the meantime, good luck to you both and we’ll be in touch.”
“Locke,” Squeaks called after the departing mouse, who obligingly slowed, “Ease off on the ‘Uncle’ routine. It…hits a nerve, all right?”
William chuckled. “No problem, it was all just an act to get by the desk sergeant anyway. A very nice fellow, but you might want to teach him that appearances can be deceiving. He almost patted me on the head a few times! I have to go wrestle the keys away from my partner now, before we run into anymore of you guys. By the way, the Diablo’s gone now. Didn’t want you wasting time looking for something that doesn’t exist anymore.” He strolled out the door calling, “Thera, I get to drive now. Don’t give me that look!”
Ferdia leaned back, a mischievous grin playing across her features.
“What?” her partner queried.
“Just wondering if his advice about appearances might’ve been better applied to himself. Bishop was running their plates when we came in.”
Squeaks blinked.
“Hey, Bish may look like a teddy bear, but he’s still one of the best detectives on the rolls. Believable story or not, our ‘friends’ couldn’t dodge that one. I don’t doubt the car’s a rental or throw-away, but either of those’d put us closer to figuring out how to keep tabs on them.”
“Speaking of which,” Squeaks sighed, “You mind checking the place for bugs? I get the distinct feeling I need to get out there and do some damage control.”
“Telling them your nephew has a penchant for fiction will only get you so far,” she called after him. “And we need to keep up the pretense of familial ties in case they call on us again.”
“I’ll work around it,” came the grumbled reply.
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| Back to Part 2 | Onwards to Part 4 |
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