The Hidden Throne

by Charlie Cottrell

  “Gotcha. Good luck, boss.” She signed off, the vid window going blank.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  I pulled to a stop outside the office for Pithman Construction, LLC, a burgeoning contractor business that had recently moved to fancy new digs just on the edge of Downtown. As the nicest part of Arcadia, anything with a zip code in the Downtown area was highly preferable to the more shambolic Old Town. Pithman was building a reputation for razing old apartment buildings on the edge between the two districts and replacing them with modern, upscale condos for the up-and-comers of the city. The gentrification was pushing the residents of Old Town further into the lower districts, were things got progressively worse the further from the city center one got. In the meantime, Pithman was making a proverbial killing.

  It helped that his wife, Margaret Pithman, was a real estate mogul who’d bought many of the buildings her husband was razing for pennies on the dollar and then jacked up the price for the new condo space. It was a nice, legal little racket the two had going, and they had all but cornered this particular sector of the housing market.

  Pithman Construction, LLC, was headquartered in a small, temporary-looking building on Euclid Avenue. It was brand new, but looked like no one was really bothering with landscaping or amenities, probably because the people who owned it were too busy doing work to bother with making this particular place look nicer. The reception area of the Pithman Construction headquarters was empty with the exception of the receptionist, an older woman with close-cut, curly old lady hair, a wide face, and glasses on a string hanging around her neck. A small bell rang somewhere as I walked through the door. The receptionist seemed to ignore me until I got right up to the desk.

  “Oh!” she said with a start, scrabbling for her glasses and perching them on her nose. It didn’t seem to matter, though, since she proceeded to peer at me over the top rim of the glasses anyway. “I didn’t see you there, young man. Can I help you?”

  “Yes,” I said, digging my license out of my pocket and flashing it at her to little effect, given her vision difficulties. “I’m looking for a man named Walter Ellicott. He applied for a job here today, I believe.”

  The woman fiddled with an old-fashioned physical computer interface, pulling up a calendar and examining it closely. “Yeees,” she said, drawing out the syllable, “he came by late this morning. Looks like he sat with my son for about forty-five minutes, then left. Don’t know where he went, but he should be back again tomorrow morning, since we hired him.”

  “Great,” I said, “do you have a contact number for him, by any chance?”

  “I’m afraid not,” she replied after typing at her keyboard for a few moments. “Do you want to leave your name and a message for him?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” I replied, a wave of frustration washing over me. A dead end, then. The best I could do was wait until Ellicott went back to the hostel tonight, and there was no guarantee the guy would do that or even be willing to talk to me.

  A sudden thought occurred, though, another possibility to keep the lead alive. “Could I talk to Mr. Pithman, by any chance?”

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  Jonathan Pithman was a large man. He was tall, broad-shouldered, but running to fat around the middle. His hair, once dark, was thinning and going salt-and-pepper. He had once been quite handsome, probably, but age, sun, and wind had weathered his skin to the consistency of old leather. He was an overwhelmingly pleasant man, with a voice as big as he was as it boomed across the room, bouncing off the walls and buffeting you from every angle. “Come in, come in,” he said, pumping my hand vigorously and gesturing to a chair in front of his desk. He sank slowly into another chair opposite me, squeezing his bulk in between the narrow arms of the chair while I tried to shake some life back into my hand. Pithman’s chair groaned with the strain of his weight, but held. I took a chair opposite him. “So, what can I do for you, Detective Hazzard?”

  “Do you mind if I record our conversation?” I asked. “It’d be helpful to have something to refer back to later.” Pithman nodded, so I pulled up a vid window and set it to record audio and video. “What can you tell me about your new hire, Walter Ellicott?” I asked.

  Mr. Pithman frowned. “Is there a problem with the young man, detective?” he inquired, suspicion tinging the normally-friendly voice.

  “No, no, none that I’m aware of,” I replied, waving the concern away. “I’m just curious what you could tell me about his personality and character.”

  Mr. Pithman nodded, the dark cloud seeming to lift off him. “Oh, he’s a swell kid, really, just a great guy,” he boomed. Pithman was a good ol’ boy, the sort who still used terms like “swell” and probably “keen” and “wowie.”

  “Very responsible, very smart, seems like a respectable sort,” Pithman continued.

  “Anything seem strange about him?”

  “Oh no,” Pithman said, shaking his head with a look of inquisitive surprise, “he’s about the most honest, sincere kid I’ve ever met. Is there something I need to know about?”

  “Nothing, really, sir, just some routine questions,” I replied smoothly. “What sorta skills is he bringing to your company?”

  “Well, he’s pretty good with demolition, apparently. I’ve got plenty of buildings need comin’ down, and he’s got the experience to bring ‘em down safely,” Pithman replied, back in his element. “Figure his background in the army makes him pretty well-suited to take directions and get a job done without fuss.”

  “True, true,” I said. “Have you had a chance to look at his military record?”

  “No, can’t say that I have, detective,” Pithman replied. “I asked about it, but I was told it was classified.”

  Weird. Ellicott’s military service should’ve been a matter of public record, unless he’d been involved in some black ops stuff. Nothing in Vera’s files indicated this was the case, but it was entirely possible her datamining had missed that detail. I pondered that for a moment, then continued with my questions. “Any sense that he might have some…issues, under it all? I mean, guy’s been basically homeless since he came back stateside. Surely he’s a little frustrated by that, maybe a bit angry?”

  “Not that I could see,” Pithman replied, frowning again. Making this man frown felt a bit like kicking a puppy; a really big puppy, mind you. Pithman seemed like a fairly kind and innocent guy. “A little frustrated, sure, but who wouldn’t be?”

  “True enough,” I said, standing and stopping the recording on my vid window. I figured I’d gotten about as much from Mr. Pithman as I was likely to get. It was time to regroup and consider my next step. “Well, if you get a chance, give me a call and let me know when he gets in tomorrow,” I said. “I’d like to have a chat with him, if I could.”

  “Oh, sure, sure,” he said, taking the card I proffered to him. “And if there’s anything else I can do, let me know.” He shook my hand again; I could feel bones grinding against one another in ways bones should never do, and cringed a little bit. Pithman didn’t seem to notice.

  III.

  With Walter Ellicott’s trail temporarily dead-ended, I proceeded to the next suspect, Alex Maxwell. He was a research chemist for Shurburg Chemicals, specializing in explosive compounds. The receptionist in the lobby got me an appointment with his supervisor for 3:30 that afternoon.

  The Shurburg Chemicals building was a large, brand-new steel-and-glass affair on the opposite edge of Downtown. It was rather upscale and had only just been completed a few months earlier. Some of the furniture in the lobby still had price stickers on it, and the whole place smelled of antiseptic and talcum powder. “It’s the gloves, you see,” the receptionist had mentioned. I nodded vaguely, not particularly caring why the place smelled like it did.

  “You’re lucky you can see Dr. Korpanty today,” she said primly. Everything this woman did seemed prim and proper. Her desk was spotless, her hair and makeup were immaculate, and her movements seemed almost roboti
c in their precision. “She’s usually tremendously busy, but she happened to have an appointment cancel earlier today.”

  “That is lucky,” I said, trying to dazzle her with my most charming smile. There was something oddly sterile about the woman; she seemed to have very little actual personality. Maybe that’s what working at a big bio-chemical firm does to a person. Or maybe they put something in the water around here, who knows.

  Regardless, my smile didn’t have any appreciable impact on robo-receptionist. “Yes, well, you are welcome to wait in the lobby, if you would like, or you may come back at 3:30,” she said flatly.

  “Uh, I’ll wait here, thanks,” I said, taking a seat on a couch that was not at all broken in yet. One of the cushions was still wrapped in plastic. I found a small pamphlet on the end table next to the couch and read up on the history of Shurburg Chemicals.

  Founded between the Second and Third World Wars by Elias Shurburg, Shurburg Chemicals has been a leader in the biochemistry and exotic compounds fields for nearly a century. With current CEO and Head Researcher, Timothy Shurburg, guiding the company, Shurburg Chemicals has recently expanded its efforts, building the new state-of-the-art research facility on Kickapoo Street at West 11th. We look forward to serving the scientific community for decades to come!

  The rest of the pamphlet was given over to smiling men and women wearing bright white lab coats holding test tubes filed with what I supposed were fancy chemicals of some type. They might have been full of water and food coloring, for all I knew.

  I passed the next half hour scanning through the files Vera Stewart had given me. There wasn’t a whole lot to go on, beyond the three suspects I’d already decided to investigate. The explosives that were used in two of the explosions looked like standard military-grade physical explosives, while a third explosion looked to have been chemically-induced. If Maxwell was involved in any of them, it was probably that third one, though the chemical connection was tenuous at best. If this lead didn’t pan out, maybe I could contact Xavier about it. Vera Stewart’s former Number Two was still convalescing after his experiences getting brainwashed by Wally Stewart and programmed as a murder machine. He’d been out of the game for a few months, of course, but he might have something that could help. He was worth reaching out to, at least.

  Alex Maxwell’s supervisor, Dr. Alissa Korpanty, turned out to be a slight woman in her mid-50s, slender, with hair going distinguished gray at the temples. She made no effort to hide her age, telling me it actually helped earn her a bit of respect in the science field. “No one takes the young very seriously,” she said, “and it’s hard enough in this field of work just being a woman.” She seemed very clever, but then I assumed people with PhDs in Chemistry had to be clever. Dr. Korpanty was also quite polite and charming and rather friendly.

  She had nothing to say about Alex Maxwell except positive things.

  “He’s one of my better researchers,” she said, launching into techno-babble of the sort you usually hear on one of those sci-fi programs set on big spaceships. Words like “peptides” and “nucleo-genesis” bubbled to the surface occasionally, but it was really all just one big amorphous blob of big words I didn’t have a prayer of understanding. My eyes started to glaze over a bit as she ran through her spiel. “His work with *insert technical mumbo-jumbo here* and *other gobbledy-gook I didn’t understand here* is unsurpassed by anyone else in the field,” she said, rolling to a conclusion with a hint of pride in her voice. Though I didn’t understand everything Dr. Korpanty said, I understood that the gist of it was that Alex Maxwell seemed like a good egg.

  “Except for that one incident last month,” she said, looking slightly pensive.

  “Care to elaborate on that, Doctor?” I asked, tuning back in.

  “Well…” she seemed very hesitant; my finely-tuned private detective instincts could sense that much. The awkward, pregnant pauses helped a bit, too.

  “Go ahead, you can tell me,” I coaxed. “He’s not in trouble, I just want to help him.”

  “Alex has been very…distant of late,” she said hesitantly. “I mean, he was always a little distant; you expect that sort of thing from most scientists. But he wasn’t standoffish or anything, usually…until about six weeks ago.”

  That fit the timeline of the bombings, I mused, but kept it to myself. “What happened six weeks ago?” I asked.

  “He just…” she stared down at her hands, unsure of how to continue. “He…kept snapping at people. He seemed…off, you know?” She sighed, frustration clear on her face. “I’m not one for vagueness, detective,” she continued. “In my line of work, you have to be as precise as possible. But there was something about his attitude, some subtle change that’s hard to pinpoint…”

  “I know the sort of thing you’re talking about,” I said soothingly. “In my business, catching things like that without being able to fully explain them is par for the course. Did anything come of it?”

  “No…not really,” she said. “After a week or two like that, he went back to basically normal. Seems a little less trusting now, I guess, a bit more guarded, but normal aside from that.”

  “Can you elaborate on that?” I pressed. It felt like I was close to an important piece of information, but I wasn’t sure exactly what shape it was going to take yet. “How does he seem less trusting? Is he trying to hide things from coworkers, getting agitated when someone comes by and he’s busy working, things like that?’

  “He’s been very secretive with his work,” she confirmed. “He hasn’t even let me see what he’s doing lately. And he insists on doing his own ordering for supplies now.”

  “I take it that’s not normal?” I asked.

  “No,” Dr. Korpanty replied, “though it’s not unheard of if you need some chemical before the next big order for the whole department. Usually, though, we all go through Peter Corley, the Supplies Manager for the R&D Department. But Peter tells me Alex hasn’t placed an order with him for four or five weeks, at least.”

  “That does seem odd,” I agreed, “and significant. Do you have access to his work terminal? Could I see things like his email or anything he’s been working on lately?”

  Dr. Korpanty nodded. “Yes, we can access all of that in-house, but it’s a closed system and everything here is proprietary. None of it can leave the building, and you’ll have to sign an NDA agreeing not to reveal any company secrets you might see, assuming we can get you cleared to look at it.”

  “I can do that,” I replied, “I’m good at keeping secrets.” Not to mention the fact I wouldn’t understand a damn thing about most of the work they did here. The good doctor nodded and picked up an old-fashioned physical phone from her desk, dialed a number, and spoke in hushed tones to the person on the other end for a few minutes. When she hung up, she turned back to me and told me to wait there for a few minutes. Dr. Korpanty walked out of the small office and disappeared down the hall.

  To amuse myself, and in the off chance there might be some clues there, I started poking at her computer. It was just a terminal workstation, a touchscreen monitor and keyboard that granted access to the central computer’s massive processing and storage power. I thought I might be able to dig through some email correspondence between Korpanty and Maxwell, but she had the machine password-encoded and I didn’t want to chance locking her out. That might set off alarms with people who’d want to have cruel, monosyllabic words with me while they did unpleasant things with my kidneys.

  I settled back in for what proved to be a long wait. Half an hour went by with me amusing myself by playing solitaire in a vid window. After losing three hands in a row, I pinched the window shut in disgust and sat with crossed arms and restless feet. Eventually, Dr. Korpanty returned, accompanied by a skinny middle-aged man in a lab coat and spectacles. “Follow us,” she said, leaving the small office once more. I stood and did as she’d asked.

  Dr. Korpanty and her coworker led me to a small cubicle where I was subjected to triplicate hell. Forms
and more forms had to be signed, initialed, and check-boxed, all just to grant me access to Maxwell’s basic files. “You won’t be able to see anything proprietary or related to active projects,” the skinny man told me after thirty minutes of paperwork.

  I nodded my understanding. “Wouldn’t do me any good anyway, but I get it,” I said.

  “We’re very serious about preventing our data from walking out of the building,” Dr. Korpanty said by way of apology as she escorted me to another cubicle with another physical computer terminal hardwired to the desk.

  “You’ll need to turn over your personal computer for the duration of your time at this terminal,” the skinny lab coat said. I dug into my pocket and handed over the small box, which he placed in a small lead-lined container and tucked away in a filing cabinet in the cubicle. Dr. Korpanty locked the cabinet and activated the terminal for me, logging in and pulling up Maxwell’s emails for me as we took seats and the skinny man departed with my paperwork. Dr. Korpanty scrolled through page after page of inter-office communication from the past two months about amino acids and chemical chains and things that were way over my head. After an hour of scientific chatter started to blur into one big chunk of nonsense, I sat back with a sigh. “This isn’t even trying to find a needle in a haystack,” I said, “because that would imply I knew what the hell I was looking for. Hell, I’m at a loss to even know if what I’m looking at is perfectly normal or highly suspect.”

  Dr. Korpanty leaned in toward the monitor, scrutinizing a particular line of an email. “I think I may have something,” she said, pointing at the screen. “It looks like he requisitioned three liters of Compound 15 four weeks ago.”

  “What,” I asked slowly, “is Compound 15? And remember that I don’t know a damned thing about any of this, so use small words.”

  “It’s an experimental explosive we’ve been developing. I can’t say much, except that it creates a chemical reaction that obliterates inorganic matter, but is completely harmless to organic. Doesn’t create an explosion, per se, so much as it generates a chemical chain reaction. Great for inner-city demolition. You apply some Compound 15 to any load-bearing walls and let gravity do all the real work.”