EMPIRE: Imperial Detective

by Stephanie Osborn

  “Yeah. Need a rain check?”

  “Maybe a couple,” Carter said, annoyance palpable. “Not only have we got a glitch with the damn garage door, there’s a plumbing leak in the master bath upstairs, and it’s really screwed up the downstairs ceiling and wall, running down the inside along the studs.” He shook his head. “The drywall is a disaster, warping and peeling and discoloring. It’s going to have to be ripped out and replaced, then repainted.”

  “Damn,” Ashton said, his eyebrows shooting up. “That sounds like a mess. You gonna go back on the builders for shoddy work?”

  “Probably. It depends what the repair guys find out when they get into it.”

  “Well, it won’t be as fancy a setting, but you and Maia are welcome to come over to our place instead.”

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “Nah. You know Cal. She loves to cook, and our new place is big enough that we like to entertain. If you want to – if you’d feel better about it – we can make it a pot-luck and you guys can bring some stuff, and we’ll make some stuff, and we’ll all eat together, then we can spend the whole evening planning more of the new-org stuff. Then, when you get everything that’s been damaged ripped out and replaced, we can try again for an evening at your place.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Carter decided. “That way, we don’t slow down our planning. But I really want you two to see the new house décor, and so does Maia. The repair guys are supposed to show up tomorrow morning. Once I get an estimate from them as to how long it’ll take, we’ll set a date for you two to come over.”

  “That’s fine. So you and Maia come on over to our place tomorrow night and we’ll hang out, see what we can get accomplished.”

  “It’s a date.”

  “So it sounds like there’s gonna be a little delay before we can get ‘em all,” Bradly noted that night at the next ‘oldies’ meeting in the Cool Breeze Pub. “Pity we can’t get something set up at Ashton’s place, but that might be pushing our luck. You don’t think there’s gonna be a problem with the garage door, do you? We don’t need repair guys nosing around the garage and seeing everything you two set up.”

  “Nah,” Hennig said, dismissive. “We can sure verify that the garage door is borked, though. It was wide open, and would only close halfway, then open right back up! An’ it shook like it was gonna tear itself apart! But no worries. It’s a big two-car garage with a little woodworking shop at the back left-hand side – I guess Carter likes to tinker with wood – and the garage door controls are on the opposite side o’ the garage from the water heater an’ the charging unit, both. And a repair guy would have to take either one of ‘em apart to notice anything was different, anyhow.”

  “We know what we’re doin’,” Brandt averred. “From here on out, Joe an’ I are gonna take turns keepin’ an eye on the place, to make sure nothin’ happens ‘fore we’re ready, anyhow.”

  “Right,” Hennig confirmed.

  “Okay. So all systems are go for the next little dinner party at the Carter place?” Carr asked. “Whenever that turns out to be?”

  “I’d say so,” Bradly decided. “Peabody, what do you think?”

  Peabody raised an eyebrow… then scowled.

  “I think it can’t happen soon enough to get rid of that sophomoric altar boy in my office, but I guess I’ll have to wait a while longer,” he all but growled, sounding cold and intensely annoyed.

  The next day, as Brandt watched, a white panel van – Harcourt Plumbing prominent on the side, and no one but a driver sitting in the cab – pulled up to the gate of the Carter residence. It sat there for a few seconds, then the automated gate unlocked, and the driver eased through, headed down the driveway to the big house. The van pulled into the garage – the door was apparently still wide-open from the day before – and the driver got out and entered the house through the garage door.

  Five minutes later, Brandt saw another vehicle pull up to the Carter driveway entrance, this one a truck marked Cleveland Automated Systems, with a driver and passenger, both in what looked to be coveralls. It, too, paused at the gate for verification of some sort before the gate opened to let it into the property. It parked next to the panel van inside the garage, and both men got out. One went to the garage door itself, the other to the control panel nearby. They pulled out some hand tools and went to work.

  Five minutes after that, the garage door closed fully – and stayed closed.

  Three minutes later, the door opened again. Within thirty seconds, and at the command of the worker at the control panel, it closed once more and remained closed.

  Five minutes after that, the garage door opened once more and the Cleveland Automated Systems truck exited, leaving the Harcourt Plumbing van inside. The garage door closed behind the truck, as it was supposed to do; the Cleveland truck trundled down the drive and opened the gate, then exited, as the gate closed behind it.

  Brandt, hidden behind and between several cubes of brick for construction on the adjacent lot – which had been temporarily halted due to intermittent thunderstorms in the area, brought about by a large tropical storm that had moved inland over the Imperial City – watched it go.

  Then he turned back to Carter’s house and stared at the blank façade.

  When the next rain storm came in, he scuttled for the nearest cover, looking to stay dry and avoid the lightning.

  The van driver was, in reality, ICPD detective and disguise expert Adrian Mott, fully undercover, and he was anything but alone in the van. As soon as the automation truck came along and ICPD detectives Peter Rassmussen and Timothy Jones ‘fixed’ the garage door and got it closed, several other members of ‘The Team’ from the ICPD Investigations division piled out of the back of the van. These included Alan Compton, John Smith, and Roger Armbrand. They joined Mott inside the house, while Rassmussen and Jones completed their subterfuge and departed, leaving the garage door closed, and the interior therefore invisible to anyone from without who might be surveying the premises.

  “And we already know, ‘cause Tim watched while they installed the packages, they weren’t smart enough to set video cameras to keep an eye on things,” Mott noted. “Alan, you’re our electronics guy. I’m here for set dressing, and John and Roger are here to help you. So you three get to it.”

  “Okay, guys,” Compton said. “I’m thinking what we want to do first is to verify that the gas isn’t already leaking...”

  “Done did,” Smith noted, waving a small gas detector, identical to what the gas systems inspectors used. “We’re clean. They haven’t triggered that one yet.”

  “Good,” Armbrand averred. “Otherwise, we might have to try to do this with the garage door partway up for the sake of ventilation, and that runs the risk of our work being detected. Alan, you’re the guru on this. Where shall we start?”

  “I want to get the gas line on the hot water heater disconnected from their timer device, first,” Compton decreed. “They’ll need to set that one early, to get the gas levels in the house high enough for an explosion, so we want it disconnected as soon as possible. Adrian, jack into the breaker controls in VR and shut down the power for the circuits in the master bathroom – I dunno if it’s got windows or not, but we want it to look dead, if it does – and in here, just in case the lighting shows around the garage door. Ping Lee if you can’t locate which ones they are.”

  “Got it,” Mott said, his gaze going distant. “There.”

  The lights in the garage died, and Armbrand promptly switched on a special lantern, setting it on the worktable nearby. It illuminated their entire workspace nicely, but the positioning Armbrand had used ensured that the van blocked it from shining on the garage door. The fact that they’d already set up some special partitions expressly brought along to block the light also helped.

  “Good. That’s perfect. Let’s get started,” Compton noted.

  “Okay,” Armbrand said. “Alan, you’re the surgeon; Johnny, you’re the head nurse. I’m the go-fer,
and Adrian, you see if you can’t VR into the Director’s security system and keep an eye on things outside.”

  “All over it,” came the joint response.

  “Johnny, can you get out the mini tool kit, while I look at this…?” Compton wondered, bending over the gas linkage to the water heater.

  “On it…”

  An hour later, Compton and his cohorts had managed to detach the sabotage package from the gas line of the hot water heater, ensuring there would be no leaks, and they prepared to begin on the electric car charger.

  “How’s things looking outside, Adrian?” Armbrand wondered.

  “Fine, Rog,” Mott replied. “I’ve spotted the lookout; based on the imagery Maia forwarded me, it’s one of the two saboteurs. He’s over in the adjacent lot, where they’re doing the construction, so he’s not too close… and he’s outside the fence. Which got mysteriously repaired overnight, right?”

  “Right,” Armbrand confirmed.

  “Okay. That means he can’t get onto the property today, and he’s too far away to see a whole lotta detail,” Mott told them. “Which is good, not that he could see anything but the outside of the house anyway. He’s alternating between hiding among the cubes of bricks, standing under a tree, and ducking into the front porch of the house under construction, depending on whether or not it’s clear, raining, or if there’s lightning popping.”

  “At least he’s smart enough not to stand under a tree with lightning in the area,” Smith said. “Other than that, the saboteurs’ intelligence seems to be rather missing in action.”

  “Their installation skills are pretty good, though,” Armbrand remarked. “Somebody sure taught ‘em well.”

  “Right,” Compton agreed. “And thanks for the heads-up on the storm clouds approaching, too, Adrian. That helped a lot. Knowing when to back off on fiddling with the electrical stuff was handy. Otherwise, we could be the ones getting zapped.”

  “Not a problem,” Mott replied. “Speaking of which, you might want to get a move on. There’s another thundercloud approaching from the southwest.” He shook his head. “Dang, but that tropical system just won’t give up and die. I guess that’s what we get for being so close to the coast.”

  “Yeah, never mind the bay, the harbor, and the river finding ways to funnel the things at us from time to time,” Smith agreed. “The weather gurus say it’s the local terrain making subtle effects in the steering currents. We’re still about a hundred miles inland, but damn! That hurricane that came through around six or seven years back was just bad.”

  “No shit,” Armbrand said. “The folks down on the coastal bedroom communities were in a bad way during that mess. I thought it was a nice thing that the first Empress Ilithyia did, though, providing the monies for repair, then upgrading the stormbreaks.”

  “Yup,” Mott said. “I’ll sure be damn glad when this storm system finally moves through, though. The winds have mostly played out, and I’m glad of that. But the level of lightning and thunder is just stupid ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, no argument, but I think that’s just part and parcel of the whole ‘tropical’ thing – that and the torrential rainfall. The whole region is under a continuous tropical storm warning until the damn thing goes through anyhow! And it doesn’t do me any favors when the lightning hits close, either,” Smith declared. “That whole flash-KABOOM! thing is prone to making me hit the ceiling.”

  “No shit,” Armbrand agreed. “Especially when a body’s sneakin’ around tryin’ to do a clandestine operation. Like this one.”

  “Alla that,” Mott asserted. “Let’s see how much we can get done before the next thunder boomer arrives on top of us.”

  “Ooo-kay,” Compton said – he had never diverted his full attention from the car charger through the entire discussion – as Smith handed him tools, Armbrand put away others, and Mott kept a virtual eye on the approaching storm, occasionally glancing at the advanced radar mapping and comparing it to the view outside.

  “Mmph,” Compton grunted as he worked; a while back, he’d donned a special headband and pulled the attached magnifier in front of his eyes in order to make the fine detail more visible. “Those two perps really did know what they were doing on this one, sure for certain. It’s gonna take a bit of doing to get this package cut free of the charger itself. Did anybody bring the spare charger, just in case?”

  “Yeah, I got it,” Armbrand confirmed. “Not a problem. I told Maia that I thought she and Lee probably needed to use the spare anyway, until this whole bag o’ shit is over.”

  “Point,” Mott agreed.

  “Can they do that, and the perps not know?” Smith wondered.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Compton decided. “I’ve been thinking about that for the last ten minutes. See, all I really gotta do is to have power running to their timer; the charger itself doesn’t have to have power running to it at all. And we don’t want power running to the rest of the package at all. In fact, I’ve been thinking about maybe just ensuring the timer has power, then completely unplugging this charger. I think it might be easier and quicker to do that now, than to try to undo the whole mess. I can worry about that later. What do you guys think?”

  “Or, Lee and Maia can just trash that charger and use this one,” Armbrand brainstormed, patting the other charger, which he’d set on Lee’s workbench in the corner. “After all, this happened on account of work, and we bought the new charger on the expense account, so it’s really just a replacement…”

  “‘Nother good point,” Mott agreed. “I say, make it as easy on yourself as you can, Alan, while keeping our people safe, here. Don’t worry about trying to save that charger. Just do what you gotta.”

  “Yeah,” Smith agreed.

  “Go for it,” Armbrand threw in his opinion.

  “Okay, in that case, lemme back up and punt,” Compton said, considering. “I think I’ll just go that way with it, then. It’ll be marginally faster and easier that way, anyhow.”

  “Alan, how are you coming there, pal?” Mott asked.

  “Slow, in reverse,” Compton replied, tinkering with the tampered charger. “Why?”

  “‘Cause that thunderstorm will be moving in here pretty quick now. I give it maybe another ten minutes, max.” Just then, a blue-white flash lit the edges of the garage door, as the lightning bolt shone in through even those minuscule cracks; this was instantly followed by a titanic BOOM! that shook the house, even rattling items on shelving. “Whoa! Make that ten seconds! Can you take a break from working on it, Alan, while the storm goes through?”

  “Sure. In fact, after that little electrical display, I think that’s a really damn good plan.” A mildly-unnerved Compton pushed back and swiveled the magnifiers away from his eyes. “Anybody bring any coolers or water bottles or something? I could use a drink.”

  “No, but only because Maia told me right before we came over that we were welcome to raid the fridge,” Mott noted. “She said she and Lee got bottled water and sodas for us last night, and she mixed up a pitcher of fresh lemonade expressly for us. All of which is in said fridge. With stuff to snack on sitting on the kitchen bar.”

  “Now that sounds good,” Smith said. “I’m up for some lemonade. The garage isn’t as well air-conditioned as the rest of the house, and those storms are making it stuffy and humid in here.”

  “No shit,” Compton agreed, taking off the headband. “You think they’d mind if we went into the house proper and cooled off? I’m about to start dripping sweat, here. That’s half my problem; I got sweat in my eyes and I can’t see for shit.” He pointed at the headband, which he’d discarded on Carter’s workbench. “And I swear, that thing there just funnels it right down into my eyes.”

  “Let’s go,” Armbrand ordered. “Air conditioning, here we come.”

  “Hallelujah,” Smith said with a grin.

  “Amen,” Compton agreed.

  While the storm raged, the four men took refuge in the kitchen’s dining nook, watching the storm
through one-way picture windows overlooking the back yard. Meanwhile, between them, they knocked back water, sodas, and at least half the pitcher of lemonade – without anyone needing a restroom break, thanks to dehydration – as well as most of a truly huge platter of cookies, as well as another of sausage biscuits, that had been left with a coded note identifying it as for them. When the storm finally let up and the skies lightened, they headed back to the garage to try to finish their work before the next feeder band brought another wave of storms.

  Compton sat on a stool, wiped his forehead on his sleeve, donned the headband again and pulled the magnifier down, then studied the device that had been placed within the case of the car charger. “Lessee. Um, Johnny, can you fish out that double-ought Phillips-head screwdriver?”

  “Yeah, Alan,” Smith replied. “Lemme have a look-see in the tool case...”

  Half an hour later, the original car charger was completely disconnected from the power, but the timer inside it still had power – though none of the rest of the sabotage package would work.

  “That ought to do it,” Compton said. “The package on the gas line has been completely detached from the line – though they won’t be able to tell – and the charger package isn’t live, just the timer. Now all I gotta do is hook the new charger back into the circuitry.”

  “Pity it isn’t a plug-in like some,” Armbrand noted. “But Lee wanted to have it attached so it couldn’t go walkabout, or worse, get lost.”

  “Yeah, Maia can be kinda absent-minded, if she isn’t careful,” Smith said with an affectionate chuckle. “She may be a colonel, and she may be our division lead, but she has her moments.”

  “She does, but the only person I’d trade for her might be Nick,” Armbrand determined, and the others agreed. “Still, she’s got more experience.”

  “No argument there,” Smith agreed. “I don’t think even Nick would disagree; he told me he’s figuring on stepping back as soon as Lee decides things are full-up and running. Hey, Adrian, how’s the weather looking?”