EMPIRE: Imperial Detective

by Stephanie Osborn

  He never saw the other figure that slipped out from the shadows beneath a tree to follow him.

  But when Cally and Nick arrived, both Lee and Maia were in obvious distress. Lee was very pale and solemn, and Maia’s eyes were red-rimmed, as if she had been crying.

  “What’s wrong?” the younger couple asked in unison.

  “C’mon in,” Lee murmured, stepping back to allow them inside. He closed the door. “You wanna tell ‘em, Maia?”

  “We just got word from the hospital, kids,” Maia said, very quiet. “Alan… he, he didn’t make it.”

  Nick felt like he’d been shot in the gut, and Cally looked like she wanted to cry.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Nick cursed under his breath. “The bastards got somebody after all.”

  “And he wouldn’t even have been here if it hadn’t been for us,” Cally pointed out.

  “Oh, we’ve been beating ourselves up over that aplenty, before you two even got here,” Lee said.

  “You bet we have,” Maia agreed.

  “When did you get the word?” Nick wondered.

  “About ten minutes before you got here,” Maia noted, her voice shaky. “Fortunately, I already had dinner prepared, or there’s no telling whether you’d even have gotten something edible tonight.”

  “Shit,” Nick cursed once more. “Well, guys, the only thing I can think of is this. Let’s not let his sacrifice go to waste. And for tonight, this dinner is in his honor, and his memory. Every time we lift a glass, we remember him. Every time we savor a dish, we remember him. How does that sound?”

  “I think it sounds good, honey,” Cally murmured, taking Nick’s arm and leaning into him, seeking comfort. “Alan wouldn’t want us to grieve him. He was doing his job, and it was a good job.”

  “Yeah, it was,” Lee agreed. “It didn’t take Nick and me any time to do the last little things, once he’d gotten off to the hospital.”

  “I’m all for it,” Maia decided. “He loved my jerk chicken, and that’s on the menu tonight. So… yeah.” She ran to the kitchen and pulled a tray of mixed drinks – already poured over ice into goblets – out of the refrigerator, then passed them around. “Here we go. To Alan Compton – a great detective and a good buddy, taken from us way the hell too soon.”

  “To Alan,” the others echoed, and they drank.

  Maia had concocted a delectable tropical-island-style meal based on her own heritage, much as Cally tended to do. But hers had a bit more kick. For an appetizer, she served a plantain dip with crudités for dipping, accompanied by the same fruity rum punch they had used to toast the greatly-missed Compton.

  Jerk chicken on a bed of bacon-sautéed greens with baked sweet potatoes slathered with butter and cinnamon sugar comprised the entrée, with glasses of the chardonnay that Nick and Cally brought, and dessert was homemade mango ice cream with home-canned sliced mangoes in syrup.

  They all sat down at the formal dinner table – out of which several leaves had been taken, to make it the right size for the foursome – and tried to enjoy the meal. It wasn’t too hard; it was utterly delicious, spicy and flavorful.

  But now and then someone would sigh. The conversation would falter at that point, and they would all look downcast for a few minutes. Then someone would remember and tell a funny story about Compton – who was somewhat prone to inadvertent pratfalls – they would all laugh, and the mood would lighten once more.

  They were just beginning on the dessert when a loud buzzer sounded from the garage. They all jumped, startled by the sound.

  A ground-shaking explosion lit up the night.

  Reckoning

  Several of the conspirators, including their hired saboteurs, had collected in a penthouse restaurant south and slightly west of the location of the old Headquarters building, to nosh, drink, and watch the darkened western horizon from the excellent vantage of their open-air patio. It was a slightly more upscale area than that of the old Headquarters, which suited Bradly, who was beginning to feel entitled as the culmination of the plot neared.

  “I wonder where Peabody got off to,” George Holland wondered, as they all surreptitiously checked the time in VR.

  “No idea,” Bill Carr said with a shrug. “Cap’n Bradly and I saw him earlier today, as he was going out for a late lunch and we were coming back. He was friendly enough. But I never saw when he came back, and I don’t remember seeing him around all afternoon.”

  “Maybe he was called out on a case,” Hunter Williams decided. “If he’s swamped on some case, and trying to make sure he’s got an alibi, that could explain it. Stay put, working the case, until it’s all over but the shouting. Then waltz in and take the head office.”

  “Likely,” Bradly agreed. He had decided not to tell any of the others that Peabody was a dead man walking in any case; Bradly wanted the Director’s office for himself. He had already worked out the hit contract with Hennig in private VR; Hennig had struck him as the smarter of the two enforcers. “We’ll probably find out in the morning.”

  “Coming up on time, guys,” Holland noted.

  “Hennig?” Bradly asked. “How’s it looking in VR?”

  “Perfect,” Hennig responded, and Brandt, beside him, nodded concurrence.

  “And five… four… three… two… one…” Carr murmured.

  Suddenly a bright yellow-white glow erupted perhaps five miles away, and almost due west of their position. This was quickly followed by a yellow-orange fireball rising into the night sky, then the slightest of vibrations in the building under their feet. The other guests of the restaurant cried out in alarm, jumping up and running to the western side of the building to gaze at the conflagration.

  “Congratulations, gentlemen,” Bradly murmured then, in intense satisfaction. “Objective obtained.”

  “What now?” Carr wondered.

  “Simple,” Bradly replied, calm. “We all drink up, enjoy ourselves a while longer, then go home and to bed. After all, we were nowhere near the scene of the dreadful accident, and we’ll have to pick up the pieces at work tomorrow, from the unexpected decease of our dear director and the head of Investigations.”

  They raised various libations, ranging from beer bottles to old-fashioned glasses, clinked them together, and drank.

  “WHOA! That fairly rattled the house!” Maia Peterson said, startled, as they all sat in stunned amazement over their dessert.

  “It was supposed to,” Lee Carter noted with a grin, digging into a large bowl of mango ice cream smothered in mango slices and syrup. “It had to mimic an entire house blowing up, and our house isn’t small. I told you to secure all the cabinets, while I safed the windows, earlier. You did it, didn’t you?”

  “Sure, I did it,” Maia said, as Nick Ashton and his wife, Callista Ames, stifled snickers. “I just didn’t know it would be that big!”

  “That was the concussion munition, back on the lake, right?” Nick asked then.

  “Yup,” Lee confirmed. “We made sure it would be plenty big, and Stefan and Gene helped us set it up about midnight, last night. The Emperor’s staff helped us get it, so we could do it with nobody in the IPD structure the wiser. The Emperor’s secretary said something about Trajan’s old Imperial Marines contacts, and training munitions…”

  “Wow,” Cally murmured. “Then it really was a big boom.”

  “Yup. The Team will be outside in about two more minutes,” Lee continued, “running crime scene tape around the outside of the fence, and setting up screens to keep curious buggers from being able to see inside.”

  “What about drones, and flying craft?” Cally wondered.

  “About now, Gene and Stefan should be setting up a hard no-fly zone over the property,” Maia said with a grin. “Just in case there are more explosions, you know. Can’t know for sure something won’t go blooie again until you find out what caused it, and all that, after all.” They chuckled.

  “What about fire and ambulance and whatnot?” Nick asked.

  “All from our
people, or run by our people, through the local precincts,” Maia replied. “We’ll hear the sirens any moment now.”

  “And there they go,” Cally noted, as sirens sounded in the distance, growing closer.

  “Now, did you two bring overnight bags like I told you in that VR message?” Lee asked the young newlywed couple. “You’ll have one of the guest bedrooms tonight. It won’t do to have someone see you sneaking back home. Not tonight. We’ve all gotta be ‘dead’ until further notice.”

  “We did,” Nick confirmed.

  “We’ll have to deal with the flashing emergency lights through the windows for a while, not to mention the occasional bullhorn announcement and such, to make sure it all looks legit to anybody who might be watching, never mind the media,” Lee said, “but in a couple hours or so, The Team will send ‘em all off so that they can set up the ‘crime scene,’ and then we can all go to bed.”

  “Are the windows all set to one-way viewing?” Maia asked. “We don’t need anybody – like the media – accidentally getting a video shot in here.”

  “Yup,” Lee averred. “Did that when I secured them against the blast. And closed most of the shutters anyway. That said, if anybody in the media gets a shot of the house still standing at all, it’s ruse over, whether they see us through the windows or not – but The Team isn’t gonna let that happen, anyhow. We’re good. Nothing will give us away before we’re ready.”

  “I have a wonderful husband,” Maia declared then, and they all grinned.

  “Now what?” Nick asked.

  “Relax and finish dinner. Then we’ll go in the den with drinks and chat for a while, and show you two around the house after that,” Lee said. “After all that, we can probably go on to bed.”

  “Good,” Nick said. “Sounds like a wonderful, quiet, enjoyable evening of being dead.”

  “Yup,” Lee and Maia said in unison, nearly identical smirks on their faces.

  “In that case,” Cally decided, looking intensely satisfied, “I’m gonna kick back and just savor this delicious ice cream.”

  “There’s plenty for seconds for everybody, if you want it,” Maia said with a grin.

  “That sounds positively decadent, and yes, please,” Cally declared, and they all laughed.

  Outside, the entire Team – minus their lost member and his injured compatriot – organized the emergency responders… in a special, restricted VR channel.

  “…And you’re sure no one’s dead or injured?” one of the ambulance crew asked in that channel.

  “Positive,” Detective Rassmussen informed them. “This was a carefully planned event, people, intended to fake the assassination attempt you were told about this afternoon. The explosion was caused by a concussion device set well away from any structures, on the shore of the lake to the rear of the property, and protected to ensure no one wandering the area could get near it.”

  “And no fires?” the fire marshal asked.

  “No,” Rassmussen noted. “That’s why we positioned it on the lakeshore – our team members put down a special pad in the mud, pretty much on the edge of the water, and set the device on it. If we could have gotten it on a raft in the lake proper, we would have, but we didn’t have quite enough lead time to arrange for that. I’ve already checked the statuses of everything in a classified VR telemetry channel, and everything went off exactly as planned. No fires, no injuries, no problems. And most of all, no legitimate police personnel blown up.”

  “Understood,” the fire marshal said, then grinned. “But I bet there’s a helluva hole in the beach!”

  “Most likely,” Rassmussen said with a laugh. “And mud everywhere! But mudholes can be filled in. Now, I need you all to do your usual things, or at least look like you are, and then go back to your stations – and keep your mouths shut about this. We’ll notify you once it’s all over and you can discuss it. And we’ll want your statements for the record. But for now, we hope to catch the perpetrators and conspirators red-handed, once they try to take over… presumably tomorrow morning.”

  “Right, got it,” came the responses, as they all dropped out of the VR channel and went about securing the ‘crime scene.’

  As the sun came up, Rassmussen checked the time in VR.

  “Ah, there we go,” he murmured, as he sent a message to Adrian Mott.

  To: Det. A. Mott

  Subject: ‘Enforcers’

  GO.

  Det. P. Rassmussen

  Several miles away, standing in the lobby of an apartment building, Adrian Mott checked his messages in VR, then looked up at the ICPD police officers around him.

  “They’re in there,” he said, indicating a particular apartment within the building, on a map in VR; the others saw it in the lower part of their vision. “Go get ‘em. We have them, dead to rights, on security footage. Consider them armed and dangerous, because they probably are. If they resist, feel free to take ‘em out, if you have to.”

  The beat cops flooded up the stairs and elevators.

  Moments later, Peter Brandt’s body was carted out on a stretcher. Close behind, and escorted by no less than four beat cops, was Joseph Hennig in handcuffs, pale and shocked, thoroughly smeared and spattered in Brandt’s blood and babbling like a child.

  “But it was orders!” he claimed. “You know how that works! Orders! From higher up!”

  “We’ll need to interrogate him,” Mott noted to the lieutenant at his elbow, as Hennig passed. “But somehow, I don’t think it’ll be too hard, the way he’s yammering on.”

  “No, sir, I don’t think so, either,” came the response.

  The next morning in IPD Temporary New Headquarters, Director Carter did not arrive.

  Nor did Investigations Lead Detective Ashton.

  This was the subject of much concerned discussion… until the large vid screen in the corner of the beat-cop bullpen, kept muted but with scrolling captions, depicted a gigantic fireball in the night as viewed from a distance, with the huge, emblazoned caption, ‘IPD DIRECTOR AND HEAD OF INVESTIGATIONS BOTH KILLED IN EXPLOSION.’ This was accompanied by nighttime scenes of fire and medical response, with uniformed but unrecognizable police officers interspersed throughout, as they swiftly raised screens and crime scene tape around a fenced estate.

  The bullpen fell silent, and the investigators drifted over in twos and threes, as – almost – everyone watched in shock and dismay.

  “Damn. What the hell do we do now?” Jim Hackett wondered.

  “Where’s Winston Peabody?” Carl Hogun wanted to know. “He’s probably the next most experienced person on the force.”

  “Haven’t they reported on that yet?” Ted Bradly said then. “He got attacked this morning on the way to work. Old perp ambushed him. Died en route to the hospital.”

  “Damn!” several more exclaimed.

  “Shit, Ted,” Hogun noted. “That makes you the most experienced person in the place.”

  “It would seem so,” Bradly said with a shrug. “That was why I was called about Peabody.”

  “What shall we do, Director, sir?” Hackett asked.

  “Let’s see. I’ll want Carr, Holland, Warner, Seeger, Williams, Wang, and Lowe – those are the most experienced officers we have, right? Good – you seven meet me in the Chief’s office in five minutes.”

  “Don’t you mean the Director’s office, sir?” Hackett wondered.

  “No, I mean the Chief’s office,” Bradly said, blunt. “Let’s get a few things straight, gentlemen. Whatever kind of half-assed, cock-eyed structure Carter and Ashton were trying to bring in here, we experienced sorts all knew it wouldn’t work. We know what does work, and that’s bloody damn well what we’re going to use.”

  “But the Emperor–”

  “I’ll deal with him later,” Bradly said, dismissive. “Some young guy from a backwater planet? He doesn’t know how something like the IPD should be run, and he needs to let those of us who do, run it. Now, gentlemen, five minutes, my office.”

  And B
radly headed into the Director’s office.

  Moments later, he was followed by Lowe, Carr, Seeger, Williams, Holland, Wang, and Warner.

  Warner closed the door behind them.

  “Well, that worked nicely,” Bradly said from the Director’s chair, once the others were seated in the visitors’ chairs.

  “What happened to Peabody?” Seeger wondered.

  “None of your damn business, Seeger,” Bradly snapped. “He’s gone, and he’s not coming back, any more than Carter or Ashton, and that’s the end of it. Unless you’d like to join them.”

  “Um, no, sir.”

  “Good. Now, we have control of things again. So now it’s our turn to plan. How do we want to re-establish the IPD?”

  At the request of Director Carter to ICPD’s Chief Harold Quan, Joseph Hennig was interrogated by Inspector Eugene Demetrius in the special interrogation room in ICPD headquarters. Inspector Stefan Gorski sat in the observation room with Doctor Peter McCray, who happened to be the staff physician on duty at the time, though Dr. James Martin usually handled interrogations. Together the two men would record the interrogation and monitor the accused’s bodily functions to ascertain if he were telling the truth or not.

  Hennig was brought into the interrogation room by two burly police officers and seated in a chair that was bolted to the floor, on the far side of a table with two more chairs, only those were free-standing. His wrists and ankles were handcuffed to the chair, and the officers left. Seconds later, his attorney arrived, which settled an agitated Hennig a little. The attorney, Harcourt Chase, took one of the free chairs and moved it beside his client before sitting.

  After several minutes, an older man in a tweed jacket, tie, and trousers entered the room. He sat in the chair across the table and studied Hennig for long minutes.

  “My name is Inspector Eugene Demetrius,” the older man noted. “You, Mr. Hennig, are being charged with the following counts: manslaughter in the first, sedition, conspiracy to subvert a government organization, conspiracy to murder, and treason against the Throne.”