The Hidden Throne

by Charlie Cottrell

  “Is there something I can help you with, sir?” she pressed.

  “Well, that is, I’m here to see, um,” I stammered, becoming more and more flustered as the seconds dragged by. Any minute now, she was going to ask me to present my book report to the class, and I was going to have to admit I hadn’t read the damn book.

  “Oh, good, you’re here!” A deep voice boomed from deeper within the office. Mrs. Pithman’s face changed instantly, the scowl she wore replaced with a grandmotherly smile of benevolent grace and wisdom without any sort of in-between facial movement as far as I could tell. Jonathan Pithman came thundering into the reception area, his broad red face plastered with a massive grin. “I’m glad you could make it, Detective,” he continued. The smile on Margaret’s face froze; there was a microscopic twitch under the left eye, the only crack in her facade. A less-observant individual would’ve missed it, but hard-boiled detectives have a lot on the ball. I stuck a proverbial pin in the reaction, determined to return to it when I had the time. Mrs. Pithman had something to hide, and I’d figure out what it was when I had some time to spare, which, at this rate, would probably be about a week after I was dead and buried.

  Mr. Pithman didn’t notice at all, of course. He was too busy grasping my hand and pumping it up and down, nearly dislocating my shoulder in the process.

  “Glad to see you, Mr. Pithman,” I replied, smiling back up at him. “Is Mr. Ellicott here?”

  “Yes, yes, come right this way,” he answered, leading me back into his office.

  Walter Ellicott turned out to be a broad-shouldered young man in a pair of worn jeans and a plain white t-shirt. “This is Mr. Ellicott,” Mr. Pithman said as Ellicott extended a hand to me. I shook it, taking the man in as I did so. He was average height, but built solidly, like a brick wall or a Mack truck. His hair was kept close-cropped, as though he were still in the military, and his face was clean-shaven and smooth, much like what I imagined a face carved from polished granite might look like. He was probably something like the Platonic ideal of a soldier. He had wide, deep eyes that were completely open and terrifyingly sincere. This was a man without subterfuge, without guile. He wouldn’t be capable of lying or tolerate those who did, you could tell just from the eyes. The military would’ve seen this guy as a round peg for a round hole, and slotted him in right where they wanted him. And he would have thrived, I was sure of it.

  “Mr. Ellicott, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, trying to match the firmness of his handshake and failing miserably. “I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

  “Certainly, Detective, though I don’t know that I’ll be of much help to you,” he replied politely.

  We settled into Pithman’s office, sitting around his desk with mugs of weak, day-old coffee brought to us by his secretary, whom he actually called “Momma.”

  “So, Mr. Ellicott, what has Mr. Pithman told you about my investigation?” I asked, cringing as I took a sip of the murky water that Pithman passed off as coffee. Admittedly, I was a bit spoiled by the strong, dark brew Miss Typewell usually provided me, but this was pretty awful by anyone’s standards.

  “Not much, I’m afraid,” Ellicott replied. “He said you were investigating those bombings that happened a while back, but that was about it.” He stared at me, his face open and his posture slightly defensive. “You don’t think I had anything to do with those, do you?”

  “Mr. Ellicott, I think I can safely say, having met you, that your possible involvement in these crimes is the furthest thing from my mind.”

  Walter Ellicott seemed to relax at that, and a defensiveness I don’t think he’d even been fully aware of dropped away as his shoulders released some tension. “What can I do for you, then?” he asked.

  “Well, you were a demolitions expert for the military, right?” I asked, leaning forward in my chair and tapping the button on my computer for a new vid window. It popped up and I said, “Record,” which it did with a faint beep and a flashing red light.

  “Yes, for the 45th Reconnaissance Battalion,” he replied.

  “And in your time with the 45th, what sort of work did you do, exactly?”

  “I was responsible for clearing enemy IEDs, maintaining the preparedness of our own explosive supply, and devising and detonating ordinance in pursuit of mission objectives.” He recited the list as though he were reading it off an invisible cue card taped inside his head, a list he’d memorized and recited hundreds of times in the past few years without hesitation or even thought at this point. That list was a part of him, as built-in to his being as the knowledge of the fact that gravity makes things fall down or light moves faster than sound.

  “Any particular, um, ordinance you guys used routinely?” I asked, digging around for any scrap of anything to make this jaunt worth my time. Ellicott may not have been my bomber, but maybe he could equip me with some knowledge that’d make it less likely that I or someone innocent might get blown up in the future.

  “Well,” he said, then launched into a description of what I have to assume were names of explosives, though I couldn’t really follow any of it except for one thing.

  “And towards the end of my last deployment, we started using an experimental chemical explosive to destroy enemy bases,” Ellicott said. Wheels spun, gears meshed, and my brain lurched into action.

  “Wait, was it known as Compound 15, by any chance?” I asked, my eyes refocusing after the barrage of information.

  “Yes sir, that’s the one,” Ellicott replied.

  “Like, developed-at-Shurburg-Chemicals-by-Alex-Maxwell Compound 15?” I pressed.

  Ellicott nodded. “Maxwell was a civilian contractor working with the Department of Defense on the explosive, and the 45th was conducting field tests.”

  “Interesting,” I said. Compound 15 was a military-sponsored chemical? It made a certain amount of sense. The military had made lots of technological advances over the years. It would make sense that something as dangerous and versatile as Compound 15 would have its impetus with the military.

  Sometimes, detecting did work like a puzzle. This particular puzzle piece wasn’t quite in place, but I definitely had the shape of it, at least. “Did you know Alex Maxwell? Have any personal interactions with the man?” I asked Ellicott.

  “Yes sir. In fact, I was point man on the project for the 45th. Mr. Maxwell and I were in regular contact.”

  “And since your return stateside, have you had any further interactions with Mr. Maxwell?” I asked. This was starting to feel like it might be a corner piece.

  “Actually, he was a reference for me for this job,” Ellicott said, looking rather confused. “Do you think he had something to do with all of the explosions?”

  I leaned back in my chair again. “I’m not sure yet,” I responded, “but I think you might be able to help me find who is behind them and bring them to justice. I don’t think it’s Maxwell, though, what with his being dead and all.”

  “Alex is dead?” Ellicott asked, his face a rictus of horror.

  “Yeah. He died yesterday. A man named Kirkpatrick sent someone to his lab at Shurburg Chemical to make sure he never told anyone anything about the bombings or Compound 15.”

  I’d read Ellicott right. He was a man who cared very deeply about right and wrong, and saw the world in fairly black-and-white terms. Either you were on the side of the angels, or you weren’t. He scowled in anger and concentration.

  “So this…Kirkpatrick is using Compound 15, you think?”

  “That’s my current theory,” I replied.

  “If he is, and he’s using it correctly,” he said, “then there’s only about a dozen or so soldiers in the country—hell, in the world—who could do it for him. But I can vouch for almost all of them personally; they were my squad, my team. They wouldn’t do things like this.”

  “What do you mean, ‘almost all of them?’” I asked.

  “Well,” he said, and…did he suddenly look embarrassed? I got the feeling sham
e was a strange emotion to this guy, while it was my poker partner on Wednesdays. “There was one soldier in my squad, Florence Michaelson, who was dishonorably discharged a few months back for insubordination during a mission when we were testing Compound 15.”

  “Florence Michaelson, you say?” I said thoughtfully, pulling up a new vid window and opening the files Vera Stewart had given me. “I think we may have a winner, folks,” I said as I stared at the third name on my list of possible suspects: Florence Michaelson.

  VIII.

  I drove across Old Town to the apartment building where Florence Michaelson was staying. Walter Ellicott sat in the passenger seat next to me. He’d insisted on coming along.

  “She’s my responsibility,” he’d said, his muscular arms folded across a chest that would’ve made a Renaissance sculptor throw down his hammer and chisel and quit because they’d never match that perfection. “She was part of my squad.” I’d fought and argued the point, saying it was no longer a military matter, but he wouldn’t budge, and I decided a little muscle on my side couldn’t hurt.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said as we drove.

  “We were testing Compound 15 in live-fire situations. We wanted to make sure it was only going to damage buildings and inorganic matter, not hurt people. Maxwell and I wanted to use tissue samples, because we weren’t certain there wouldn’t be harm to actual people yet. Michaelson…well, she always had her own ideas about everything. She stole some of the explosives, hunted down a terrorist cell we’d been tracking, and used Compound 15 on their base.

  “Their base was in the bottom floor of a tenement house. Probably 200 people living inside of it. When the bomb went off, it wiped out all the support structure in the ground floor. The weight of the rest of the building just…” He paused, anger and frustration plain on his open, honest face. “No one survived the building’s collapse. Florence was given special consideration thanks to her years of service and because she did take out some terrorists, but the army still gave her a dishonorable discharge. She got off pretty light, all things considered. She should have been thrown in a military prison for the rest of her life.”

  “What sort of impact would the dishonorable discharge have when she came back stateside?” I asked.

  “For one thing, she’d have a hell of a time finding a job, sir,” he answered grimly. “No one would let her anywhere near explosive ordinance, for one thing, and most employers see a dishonorable discharge as the blackest of black marks.”

  “So, legitimate employment would probably be out of the question, huh?” I asked.

  “Definitely.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “Well, when my tour was up, they told me they were discharging me. Honorably, of course. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I hadn’t kept tight-enough rein on my people. Brass were leery of anyone and anything that’d been involved with the Compound 15 debacle, so I was quietly swept aside and left to my own devices.”

  We drove in silence for a few minutes. “I’m sorry to hear about that, Walter,” I finally said.

  “Not your fault, or your concern,” he said. “I served my country, and did all that was asked of me. Now, I’m just going to make sure the loose ends get tied up.”

  We pulled up in front of a decrepit apartment building at the t-junction of Infantino and Goodwin. As we got out of the car, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my revolver. “You comfortable with a gun?” I asked Ellicott. He nodded, so I tossed the piece to him and said, “Good, I’m not.” I then reached for the holster under my left arm and pulled out the popgun. Checking the safety, I started for the front door of the building, Ellicott trailing close behind.

  As we walked in, I noticed two things about the place: one, from the outside, it looked pretty shabby, but on the inside…it was even shabbier. Peeling wallpaper, threadbare carpets, water stains on the ceiling, burnt out light bulbs up and down the hall, and a couple of derelict bums passed out in the lobby.

  Two, the shabbiness was all surface. Beneath the pealing wallpaper, the building was solid. The superstructure of the building looked like it’d be reinforced, a fact Ellicott remarked on as we entered the lobby.

  “There are a lot of titanium braces around the support pillars on this floor,” he said.

  “It is a bit strange, isn’t it?” I replied as we stopped in front of the elevators. I hit the call button and stood there, my eyes unfocused and my brain off the hook for a few moments. I find it helps to unfocus right before walking into what is probably a terrible trap that might very well kill me in some horrible fashion. Stops me from feeling anxious about getting shot at. As we waited in front of the elevator, Walter kept checking the safety on his revolver. “Nervous?” I asked, bringing the world back into focus.

  “No,” he replied, “just habit.” He checked it one last time, then tucked it into the waistband of his pants.

  The elevator arrived and carried us up to the 34th floor, where Vera Stewart’s file indicated Michaelson was currently living. We stepped out into an empty hallway in a state of disrepair similar to what we’d seen in the lobby downstairs. Florence Michaelson’s apartment was number 341, with a dingy, badly-in-need of paint wooden door with an old-fashioned peephole and manual deadbolt and knob. Walter Ellicott and I stood on either side of the door, both of us with our weapons drawn. “You ever done this before?” I asked him in a whisper.

  “All the time,” he replied just as quietly. “You?”

  “Nope,” I said, grinning, “first time. Always wanted to do this.” I moved to face the door and lashed out with my foot, shattering the wood around the deadbolt and flinging the splintering door inward.

  At least, that was the intention. Doors are made of sterner stuff than you’d think. I kicked, rebounded off the intact door, and fell to the ground, pain shooting up my leg as it vibrated from the impact. Ellicott looked down at me in surprise, then flicked his eyes to the door. “There’s someone on the other side of the door,” he whispered, grabbing me by the collar and yanking me off to the side just as a hail of gunfire tore through the wood and buried itself in the floor where I’d lain.

  I scrambled back to my feet and hefted the popgun. Ellicott paused for a moment, waiting for the gunfire to stop, then swung out in front of the door and put the boot in.

  This time, the door burst inward, lock and hinges giving way like flimsy papier-mâché. Florence Michaelson, who’d been standing on the other side of the door looking through the peephole, was now pinned to the floor by the heavy wood, her submachine gun several feet away where it had fallen when it was knocked from her hands by the ballistic door. Michaelson struggled to extract herself from under the door until Ellicott placed a foot on it and pressed down slightly, causing her to gasp and lay perfectly still. He had his gun cocked and aimed right between her eyes, and his hand did not waver at all.

  “Flo,” he said, his voice calm but strained. She didn’t respond, but having a door pressing down on your chest can have that effect. “Give me a reason I shouldn’t pull this trigger and end you.”

  A tap came on my shoulder. I turned around to find three men with machine guns trained on us from the hallway.

  “Um,” I said quietly from behind him, “I can think of at least one or two.” Ellicott turned around, and the thugs brandished their weapons in a very clear “don’t try anything, punk” sort of way. Ellicott dropped his revolver and raised his hands behind his head while I did likewise. The thugs came into the room and one pushed Ellicott away from the door, then helped Florence Michaelson out from under it while the other two kept their weapons trained on us.

  “So,” I said conversationally, “this probably could have gone better.”

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  “Don’t worry, I find myself in this sort of situation all the time,” I told Walter Ellicott a short while later. We were in an undisclosed location, tied to chairs. A single, bare light bulb cast a hazy, yellowish pool of what could charitabl
y be called light over us. If I had a wheelhouse, this was clearly it.

  As a hard-boiled detective, it is true that I’ve found myself tied to more chairs than I’d care to mention. Usually it’s a consequence of having been knocked out, though, thankfully, that had not been the case this time. Head trauma, even minor, was far too serious. I’d had a couple of concussions, and they leave you feeling like everything between the ears might never work as intended ever again. In this case, we’d been bound and had hoods thrown over our heads, then stuffed unceremoniously into the trunk of a car, then dragged out and tied to chairs in some empty warehouse-type building, from the sound of it. The hoods came off, and we blinked at our captors, which pretty much brings you up to speed.

  “The trick,” I continued, trying to focus on the guys who’d bagged us, “is to keep talking until your captor gets so sick of it, he either puts a bullet in your brain or lets you go just to get away from the noise.” One of the thugs leaned in and punched me, hard, across the jaw. I saw stars for a moment, and my vision swam slowly back into focus as the thug backed away, rubbing his fist. “Of course, there is the third option, I guess,” I muttered, my jaw aching with each word.

  “Detective, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for us to meet,” a voice said from the darkness. I craned my head around, trying to see the speaker and failing. Sound bounced around the large, empty room, making it impossible to find the source.

  “Well, I’ve had a busy schedule lately,” I said mockingly. “Next time you want to meet, why not just set up an appointment with my secretary?”

  The voice chuckled menacingly. “You’ve got a mouth on ya, Detective Hazzard. I’ll give ya that.”

  I sighed, tiring of the exchange already. Some guys can do villainous banter, but this guy clearly didn’t have the chops. I decided to hurry the script along. “You’ve kinda got me at a disadvantage, guy, and I don’t just mean the whole got-me-tied-to-a-chair thing. Who the hell are you?”

  A short, squat man in a pinstripe suit, which he probably thought made him look quite menacing but actually made him look like he was playing dress up with daddy’s clothes because it was two sizes too big, stepped into the circle of dim light. He’d attempted to slick back his hair like a gangster from a Humphrey Bogart film, but his hair clumped together in thin, lanky hanks that kept falling forward into his eyes whenever he moved. He was constantly pushing his hair back, coating his hands in oils and pomade and giving his skin a greasy sheen. “I’m Roger Kirkpatrick, and you’ve been stickin’ your nose in where it don’t belong,” he said, affecting the worst tough guy tone I’d ever heard.