Jack followed this as closely as Noriko was. “Is that your first inclination? Sabotage?”
“No, can’t tell anything as of yet. Unless someone up here has found an incendiary device? Or the remains of one?”
Shaking his head, Jack denied, “Not that I’m aware of. And I made sure they understood to notify me if they did find something of that nature.”
“Well, like I said, if that’s the cause it might be difficult to find in all of this rubble. But I’m not sold yet that it’s sabotage we’re looking at. Could be an accident. First things first, we need to sketch up the structural damage and collect any fragments we can that look like wiring, circuit boards, and the like.” Goudie suited words to action by taking out an old style touch screen and a stylus. As comfortably as a police sketch artist would, he drew out the scene in front of him.
Noriko kept an eye on both men, but her main concern was making sure the area didn’t have any power they could trip over. She went through it very carefully, not wanting to disturb any of Goudie’s evidence, but still tried to be thorough. Their safety depended on her observation skills. The thought was more than a little nerve-wracking.
She only stepped away from them twice, heading for a nearby Dwol-Mægen pair that kindly helped her take all of the power she had gathered and divert it into the nearly drained ley line.
After Goudie finished sketching and taking pictures, he pulled out a pair of plastic gloves and snapped them on. From the same bag, he took out a large variety of evidence bags and started scrounging for anything that he deemed ‘interesting.’
Her crash course had taught her at least one solid fact: don’t contaminate the evidence. “Mr. Goudie, should I be wearing gloves too? I need to shift a few things, as I’m feeling residue of power just past where you’re working.”
He paused and glanced up at her. “That would be best, Miss Arashi, if you would. I have a spare pair?” he pulled them from a side pocket and offered them to her.
She accepted them, snapping them on, and strangely felt as if she had just joined a criminal investigative team.
Jack did not join them as they shifted carefully through the rubble, bagging anything that looked remotely electronic, but kept in communication with every team working. He did so flawlessly, never once having someone repeat a sentence or losing track of where they were. Noriko had to keep an eye on him as well as Goudie, and she admired the efficiency of how both men worked.
Goudie showed her how to tag evidence and label it. Sometimes, for a smaller piece, she borrowed a ruler from him to lay next to the object and take a picture of it before bagging and tagging it. For the larger pieces, she actually put her initials and the date on it. The rest were tagged. Noriko’s handwriting was not normally neat so she tried very hard to make it legible.
The sky shifted from dark blues to steel greys and white as pre-dawn came upon them. Noriko paused and looked out over the hill. They had worked their way out of the crater and to the piles of debris scattered all around, going in an ever growing spiral outwards. From where she knelt, the view was spectacular. She could see the whole desert floor without anything obstructing her view. It almost made up for the fatigue that pulled heavily on her body.
“Noriko.”
Her head snapped around, twisting to find Cameron bent over her. “Cameron. You’re done?”
“For now, yeah. Cap says we’ve done all we can up here and wants us to go home, get some sleep.”
That sounded blissful. She creaked up to her feet, catching up the pile of evidence bags that she had gathered as she moved. “Mr. Goudie?”
He stood from behind a twisted hunk of metal and waved at her. “Done for today?”
“My captain is calling us in,” she explained, making her way carefully toward him. “I’ve checked the area three times, I believe it’s safe for you to continue working.”
“I’m basically done as well,” he assured her, accepting the bags from her. “Ah, nicely labeled. Thank you, that was helpful. The camera?”
She’d nearly forgotten it in her sleep-deprived state. Taking it from her jacket pocket, she handed that over as well. “I dictated notes. I’ll type them up and send them to you later.”
“That will be fine. I’ll head back after bagging all of this up. I think I need to spread all of this out on a table, take a good look at things, before I know better what to look for. Right now I just have a lot of jumbled pieces that don’t seem to fit together.” Goudie frowned at the area as he spoke, brows drawing together. “Miss Noriko, you’re stationed in Tehachapi?”
“Yes sir, that’s right.”
“I’ll have to see where I’m setting up shop. I’m close enough to home they might have me stay in the office. But since I requested your team’s help, I might have to set up in the station. Is there room for me to do that?”
“There are empty conference rooms you can use.” Well, she knew there were conference rooms, at least.
“I’ll ask your coordinator before you leave.” Goudie packed everything into a large bag with smooth efficiency.
“Then I’ll see you later.” She gave him a faint, tired smile, before turning to join up with Cameron.
Her partner waited on her, and even to the naked eye, he looked tired. Dirt had seeped into his skin and made lines on his face, aging him ten years. There wasn’t a clean patch of skin or clothing anywhere on him. On a magical level, it was obvious too. Cameron’s energy flow was very consistent and smooth on a normal basis. This might be the first time she had ever seen it rough. It almost stuttered, like a hiccup in the flow. She wasn’t about to say any of this out loud for the simple reason that Noriko was absolutely certain she looked just as bad.
“Was it alright, working with Charlie?” she asked him as they walked toward the van.
“Meh.”
His reaction made her laugh silently. “Meh?”
“It’s not like partnering with you. I had to constantly tell her how much energy I needed.”
Noriko’s head cocked as she looked up at him. “That’s normal.”
Shaking his head, Cameron denied, “You don’t do that. Not since the time you taught me that climbing trick of yours. You give me what I need, then double check sometimes to make sure it’s enough. But always, you read me well enough to know what I need.”
Well. Maybe she did, at that.
“You’re spoiling me, Spidey.” He gave her a charming, boyish grin. “Keep this up, and I’ll never want to let go of you.”
“You’re making too big a deal of this,” she dismissed. “I’ve got more practice in reading you, is all.”
“That right.” Cameron’s tone was clear. He didn’t agree with that at all.
He was praising her for something that didn’t really deserve praise. It was making her want to blush and Noriko did not believe in blushing. It was embarrassing. So she set her focus on climbing into the van. Cameron changed their positions so it was him sitting right next to the door, leaving her sitting in between him and Lizzie, which she didn’t mind.
As people settled, Lizzie asked her, “You were working with the explosives analyst, right?”
“Frank Goudie is his name.”
“I heard he formally requested our team to help?”
“Yes, he did. He said we’ve got enough expertise to be helpful in unraveling the mystery.”
“I’m glad,” Lizzie admitted. “Being up here really bothered me. I want to understand what happened to cause this.”
She wasn’t the only one. “Mr. Goudie doesn’t have any theories at the moment on what happened. He said that the rocket engine in the test cell complicates things. Normally, there’s something about the scene that will tell him if it was an explosive and maybe what type, but this time, because of the engine, he’s not sure. Apparently they’re unstable and can act like a bomb if something goes wrong.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize all of that. But that does make sense, it’s why they’re up here testing the engines t
o begin with. Did the two of you find any clues?”
“We found a lot of electronic fragments, and some wiring that we weren’t sure how to identify, so we bagged all of that. But I’m not sure if it belonged to the test cell, the engine, or the bomb. If there was a bomb.”
“The firemen think that there was a minor earthquake that happened just as they were firing up the engine for testing,” Cameron informed them, slouching back in his seat. “Having the test cell go sideways is what set the engine off and caused the explosion.”
Noriko twisted to look at him. His face gave no clues to how he felt about this theory. “We both were here six days ago. There wasn’t a large enough buildup in the ley lines to cause an earthquake, even a minor one.”
“Yeah. But we’ve also seen a ley line that went bonkers for no reason in a short amount of time.”
That part was also true. Cameron shook his head slowly. “I don’t think anything we’ve seen is natural. I think it was sabotage or something.”
She was inclined to agree. But who would be insane enough to do something like this?
9th Merlin
Noriko trudged up the small flight of stairs leading up to her apartment, groceries in her left arm, freeing up her right to key open the door. The day had been horrendously long, so much so that her brain felt like it would just cramp up before melting out of her ears. It felt like she had returned to her student days. Hours upon hours of working with fluctuating power, that she’d had to feed to multiple people, and then documenting everything that she’d done in the process felt like juggling six balls all at once. And she had never learned how to juggle. Were all investigations like this?
Reaching out, she put her hand flat on the screen to unlock her door. Instead of making a pleasant ding, it zapped her with a mild shock and made a sound akin to a dying airplane.
That…that was not good. She knew that sound. Swallowing hard, she tried again, but the door pad now felt a little spongy. Melted spongy. Eyes closing in a fatalistic gesture, she started praying. Then, when she couldn’t take the suspense any longer, she looked at her wrist.
Her phone no longer flashed a pale light, showing that it was on. It also looked a little singed around the edges. Reaching up, she picked out the Bluetooth earpiece and looked at it carefully. Also a little singed with black around the rims of the plastic.
This was so not good. She had no way inside her apartment with the door literally melted shut, her phone was busted so she couldn’t call for help, and at this hour of the morning the manager was surely home and not in the office. Her only other option for help was…wait. Didn’t Cameron live on the floor above her? He’d mentioned this before. That his apartment was directly on top of hers, which was how he knew when she was home or not.
As much as she hated to impose on a man that, while technically her partner, was barely an acquaintance, she had no choice. In her sack of groceries was ice cream. In this heat, it would melt shortly and she did not want melting ice cream in her hands thankyouverymuch.
The ice cream decided her. Raising it up to rest better on her hip, she marched for the stairs.
Now came the tricky part. Knowing that Cameron was above her and knowing which door to knock on were two different things. Was he right above her? Next door to that apartment? He could hear things either way without being exactly next to her. At seven thirty in the morning, hopefully people weren’t still in bed.
Marshalling her courage, she timidly knocked at the first door that was probably Cameron’s.
To her utter relief, the man himself promptly opened the door. “Spidey! Hey, what’s up?”
“I have…a situation,” she admitted morosely. “Um. My door lock is not working.”
To his credit, he immediately stood back and gestured her inside. “Not working how?”
“I might have fried it,” she grudgingly stated. Instead of looking at him, she looked in every other direction. For some reason, she had assumed that Cameron’s apartment would look like hers—half unpacked. That was not the case. It looked pristine, actually. There was an overplush chair in the corner, a leather couch along the wall with the usual holoshade headsets and speakers for television watching. A picture above the couch featured what she assumed to be his parents. There were others, too, of friends and presumably family, all branching out from that main picture. There were bookshelves, knick-knacks, everything exactly in its place. “You’re unpacked already?”
“Yeah, Amy did it. She’s borderline OCD, so she took one look at my place and went haywire. Works for me, I didn’t have to kill myself unpacking.” Cameron took the groceries out of her hands and set them on the table. “Now, you fried the door? Seriously?”
Who was Amy? No, a question for another day. Noriko heaved a resigned breath. “I might as well warn you now. I’m bad with electronics. When I’m tired, my energy levels go a little haywire, just enough to mesh badly with anything electrical. I touch them, they go poof.”
“So door and…” his eyes trailed down to the phone still strapped to her wrist.
“And phone, yeah,” she growled, vexed with herself.
“Got it.” In an unexpectedly gentle gesture, he took her by the shoulders and led her to the couch. “Sit. I’ll handle the door.”
While that sounded wonderful, letting him fix her problems, Noriko didn’t begin to see how he’d manage it. “How? By breaking it in?”
“First, I call the expert.” Cameron tapped his phone, brought up the holoscreen, and scrolled through a short contact list before double tapping the person he wanted. She could see it, of course, but from this angle it was nearly impossible to read. K-something. It rang twice before Cameron’s face lit up in a smile. “Hey, man. Yeah, something’s up. Tell me how to break into an apartment. No, dead serious, and it ain’t criminal. Well, if I have the consent of the owner, it can’t be criminal, right?” To her, he mouthed, He doesn’t believe me.
Well, with that kind of explanation, she wouldn’t believe him either.
Cameron took the Bluetooth out of his ear and set it on his palm between them, switching to speakerphone so they could both hear and talk.
“—next thing you’re going to say is that you’re playing white knight for some cute damsel in distress,” a male voice was saying, tone rich with laughter. “Come on, man, don’t josh me.”
Taking that as her cue, Noriko tried to perk her tone up a little so she didn’t sound like death warmed over. “Hi. I’m Noriko, Cameron’s partner.”
The phone went silent for a long second. “You really have to catch me up on things, Cam. Hey, Noriko. My name is Kirk. Are you the damsel in distress this evening?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I, um, have bad luck with electronics when I’m tired. I tend to accidentally melt them.”
“...Well that’s dandy. So Cam, as I see that you really do have permission from the lady in question to do a little B&E, I shall tell you forthwith how to storm thy yonder castle gate.”
“I am ready, my general. Give me your orders.”
Did they regularly go into mock-archaic language like this? The ease with which they did so made her think it was normal.
“First, Sir Knight, find thee a stout card. Something you don’t mind destroying.”
Cameron leaned over onto one hip, taking out a wallet from his back pocket, and started rifling through them. “Old library card?”
“That’ll work. Now, march thee to the castle gate in question.”
He immediately stood and headed for the door. Noriko started to follow, belatedly remembered her groceries still sitting on the table, and doubled back to fetch them. Cameron paused in the doorway to wait for her, talking to Kirk as he did. “I gotta ask, General, how does an old library card help in this situation? I mean, don’t I need a screwdriver, or a hammer, or something?”
“No, actually, you don’t need any of that. See, the security and the locks for these doors have improved by leaps and bounds over the years, right? I mean, we’ve
even gotten to the level of palm prints and dual passcodes in one system. But the actual lock itself is still mechanical. Nothing electronic to it.”
Only as she listened did the question occur to her: who was Kirk? A criminal? Cameron was completely the type of personality to have friends from all walks of life and not question what their occupation was.
“I see. So?”
“Before I continue, as an officer of the law, I must make you swear an oath. Harmony Cameron Powers, do you so solemnly swear to use what I am about to teach you only for mischief and not evil?”
“I so swear, officer,” Cameron intoned with a grand, rolling tone.
Wait, officer of the law? Was this perhaps the same friend that was a highway patrolman? The same one that had also reported the surging ley line to them?
“Excellent. Alright, are you at her door?”
“I am.”
“Take the card and slide it between the lock and the door frame. What you’re aiming to do is jiggle the tumbler in the door just enough to give it the pressure it needs to open. Slide from top to bottom, angle it as you go.”
Sensing this was not the moment to ask questions, Noriko set them aside. She watched with her breath in her throat as her partner bent to the task. Cameron followed the instructions precisely, but it didn’t work on the first try. He did it again, jamming the card in a little further, jiggling it back and forth as he did so. There was a mechanical click, but the door stayed shut.
“No luck so far?”
“Not yet, but I think I almost had it.”
“Oh, I forgot to ask. Hey, Noriko? Did you deadbolt the door on your way out this morning?”
“Ah, no, I only deadbolt it at night.”
“Sweet, okay, we’re still good, then. If it was dead bolted, I would have suggested that Cameron pick up the bill for the inevitable brick through the window that you would have had to do instead.”
Call to Quarters (A Gaeldorcraeft Forces Novel Book 1) Page 10