Murder in New Eden

by Charles C. Cole

Table of Contents

Chapter 29: Pelkey Controls the Countdown Clock

In his basic two-bedroom, shoes-optional apartment, Chief Leo Schiavelli settles back into his favorite recliner, with a reassuringly familiar creak. He should be more nervous about current events, but he has Sergeant Cody at his disposal. No unarmed man in New Eden will be able to take him one-on-one, not even Dom Delumbria.

Both eyes are closed, and his right hand is dutifully wrapped around a sweaty glass-mug of beer. He mechanically retracts his forearm for a sip, without sitting up and without opening his eyes. It’s a lonely man’s drinking game, or exhaustion. Without interruption, he is minutes from drifting off, even if it means relaxing his grip and spilling what remains of his drink.

Sergeant Cody enters. He is sloshing in his shoes. He walks stiffly, because he is soaked. Schiavelli glances over his shoulder at the new company. Whatever happened wouldn’t have happened if the chief had been around, that’s sure.

“I take it you’ve been in the mayor’s pool,” says Schiavelli. “I’m warning you now: you get too close to that one, well, some dirt doesn’t wash off.”

“I wasn’t in the pool. I was in the pond. And it wasn’t by choice; the snack truck took a dip as well.”

“It did? How’d that happen? You forget how to drive?” Cody doesn’t answer, out of politeness. Instead, he removes his wet shoes and socks. “That’s something you don’t see every day. You try to rescue somebody?” ask the chief, confused.

“I was attacked, rammed by a stolen police car. Guess they didn’t know how shallow the pond was. I sure as heck didn’t know.”

“Attempted assassination?” asks the chief. He pulls himself up to a sitting position, knuckle to chin. “On my watch?”

“Not a very thought-out one. He panicked and ran before finishing the job.”

“Did you get a look at the guy?” The chief is already moved beyond the crime to the arrest.

“No, I was swimming in the water, with boxes of ice cream on my face.”

“Sorry. What about Nakamura? Was she able to get an ID off one of her cameras?”

“Apparently, your enemies know where the cameras are and how to skirt around them. I tried to track them, unsuccessfully. I didn’t know where I was going, following my instincts. And I got lost. But while I was lost, I saw lots and lots of lamp posts with big red X’s painted on them.”

“Graffiti?” asks Schiavelli, wishing against logic. “High school kids are usually more creative than that.”

“A blazed trail to be avoided. I’m thinking we should shuffle our surveillance and put our own big red X’s where we have no cameras. Maybe we can manipulate them away from certain roads and onto others.”

“Good idea,” agrees Schiavelli. “I like it.”

“I’m probably making work for Lucy.”

“She won’t mind,” blurts the chief. Cody reactively arches a demonstrably doubtful eyebrow. “She won’t mind if it’s to keep you safe. You can help.”

“The point is: if they get me, if they take me out, they don’t have to kill me. It’ll take too long to get your act together and thaw out the rest of my guys. And you’ll be vulnerable in the meanwhile. They’ve forced our hand, Chief. We need to get a hold of Wayne and get the other boys up and out of bed. I’m not asking. This is my town now, too. You know this is the best way. If we wake them up, at least we won’t have to worry about somebody unplugging them, or kidnapping them and using them against us. As for Mayor Brandt—”

“Don’t worry about Brandt,” says the chief, standing, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand melodramatically. “I can take care of him. And don’t worry about Wayne. She’ll back us up.”

“And Director Petrillo? Will he behave?”

“Nicolas is in time-out right now. But I think he’ll come around.”

“Do I want to know what he did?” asks Cody. “Practicing self-defense moves with an unwilling partner?”

“We thought we’d confiscated all those nuisance pills that Valdez had fabricated but, apparently, we missed a few. And that’s all it took, just a few, to turn a civilized pseudo-gentleman into a raging homicidal maniac. I think he was about to open Toby Pelkey up like an old watch when I separated the two of them.”

“That might not have been a bad thing,” muses Cody.

“I can’t explain it, I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but Toby’s a changed man. I think he knocked something loose in his fall from grace. We’re lucky to have his eyes and ears in the water treatment plant. He told Lois he would kill anyone who harmed Tabitha, even sacrifice himself to protect her. I’m not going to lie: I got a chill down my spine. And that’s without a pill. Imagine him consumed by rage. We wouldn’t need your friends after all.”

“Interesting. This is going to sound wrong. What if the pills are the answer and not the problem?” asks Cody.

“I’m listening.”

“We collect every bit of the drug we have, maybe ask Wayne to manufacture more, if we have time, and give it all to Pelkey to smuggle into the water treatment plant, then we lock all the exits and wait for them to turn on each other.”

“Would that work?” asks Schiavelli.

“I think there’s a good chance.”

“I wish Wayne were here; she’d know,” balks the chief. “It wouldn’t be a question. Find her. Ask her. If she gives her approval, then I’m all in. I think this is the way to go.”

“And my team? What about them?”

“They’re our insurance. If anybody makes it topside, we’re going to need help. You’ve done a great job with my boys in blue. And the girls: Nakamura and Wayne, too. I just don’t know how most of them would react if they had to actually hurt someone. Without question, every single one of them would give their right kidney if it would save a life. But I think the only ones willing to take a life are you and Pelkey. And that probably won’t be enough.”

“If only we knew how much time we had.”

“Maybe we do. As I understand it, Pelkey controls the countdown clock. We’ve got until Pelkey says go, and not a minute before or after. If we can get the meds into their bloodstream fast and in a high enough dose—”

“Like through the overflowing libations at a warrior’s sendoff,” rhapsodizes Cody.

“Use civilian terms, if you don’t mind.”

“Like adding alcohol to a party punch bowl.”

“That’ll do just fine,” Schiavelli agrees.

“And then they fight like Kilkenny cats, until the aggression’s worked its way through their systems. The battle’s over before they make it to the surface.”

“I like it. That way the battle can start any time, so long as they start with fighting each other,” says the chief.

“So long as we keep them locked together.”

“Find Wayne,” instructs the top cop. “Find the drugs. And get your men out.”

“Gladly.”

“Any chance you still have a target on your back?” asks the chief.

“Let them try. I would love for them to try.”

“Guess I won’t worry.”

“How do we reach out to Pelkey?” asks Cody. “Sounds like he’s crucial.”

“Let me think of something. In the meanwhile, why don’t you finish drying off and change your clothes. Right now, they’ll hear you squeaking a block away.”

* * *

Behind closed doors, Nakamura and Wayne, dressed in their gray sweats with their hair pulled back from their faces, stand on opposite sides of the chief’s desk. The center of the room has been cleared. Wayne has her headlamp on. She is rarely without it of late.

Nakamura can’t help herself: “You’re such a geek.”

“Go!” shouts Wayne, as she and Nakamura lift the desk and carry it far enough to block the door. They shove it flush. “That’ll give us some privacy. Nobody’s getting in.”

Nakamura jokes, “If you need extra weight, I can always stand on top.”

“A lovely offer, but you’ll be busy downstairs with me.”

Fishing for a compliment. “You’re supposed to say I wouldn’t add enough to make a difference.”

“That, too.”

Nakamura shakes her head in mock disgust. They roll the rug back just as far as they need to, then Wayne pulls open the trapdoor.

“So the chief sits right on top of the door?” asks Nakamura. “I’d be afraid of falling in.”

“A light thing like you? I can’t imagine,” scoffs Wayne. “Follow me.” They make their way down a steel ladder, Wayne first. “Use the hand rails.”

“I will if you lend me a pair of latex gloves,” gripes Nakamura. Wayne pauses but says nothing, then continues her descent.

“When did you get squeamish?” asks Wayne. “One of these soldiers could be your future best man, maybe all of them.”

“We’re just friends.”

“The chief and I are ‘just friends’. You and Sergeant Cody are something else.”

Showing off, because she’s been here before, Wayne slides down the rails the last five feet or so. She waits for Nakamura to join her, then she turns off her headlamp. Damp darkness.

“What are you doing?” asks Nakamura.

“Watch this!” Wayne whispers. She claps twice rapidly, and the overhead light snaps on. “The chief loves it. It’s some gimmick from another time. Makes him happy.”

There are two great doors on opposite sides of a passageway, each looking like an old-fashioned steel bank vault.

“Why two?” Nakamura wonders.

“One is the armory. I’ve never seen inside it.”

“Can we look?”

“It should be locked.” They step closer. It is wide open, from the chief’s earlier visit, and still very much empty inside.

“This isn’t good, is it?” asks Nakamura in a hushed tone. “I hope the guys are still in the other one.”

Wayne rushes by her to the opposite vault. She enters the memorized combination and yanks on the heavy vault door. The hum of the machinery within hits her like a wave of sound. Her cheeks, her palms, her teeth seem to soak in the vibration.

The bare, motion-activated overhead lights welcome her back. Slightly larger than a 2-car garage but twice as tall, the room is alive with purpose, with the committed purr of life-sustaining electronic equipment. Six cryogenic pods, all in a row, take up most of the floor space. They appear small, sarcophagus-like, industrial, built for function.

“Glad they’re okay,” is all Nakamura can manage after the shock of the other vault.

“You want me to make one of these?’ asks Wayne, as if she’s being requested to create a “simple” one-person flying machine that’s operated by the tongue’s position in the mouth and consumes dust-bunnies as a power source.

“Or we can wake up all the good guys, invite them to join our little party in space, so that we have a place to store our most violent offenders in future.”

“Or we build a prison,” Wayne proposes.

“New Eden’s founding fathers didn’t believe in prisons.”

“When the water was working, they didn’t need them.”

Nakamura approaches the one empty chamber, now open and dark, off. “This was Cody’s?”

“Yep. Sorry, only room for one.”

Nakamura scowls, but manages to move on. “We might be able to fit Dom in there,” she says, trying unsuccessfully to convince herself. “I’m sure they built these so one size fits all. Sure, it might be tight, but he doesn’t need room for reading or tossing-and-turning.”

“Or comfort.”

“That’s why it’s called ‘confinement’.”

“I don’t know, Lucy. You’re asking for miracles, and I’m all out.” Wayne feels like the bottom of her class at Genius University.

“Let’s take one of these puppies apart and see what makes it tick.”

“In our excitement and stealth, we forgot to bring tools,” admits Wayne, strangely relieved.

“Oh,” says Nakamura, realizing for the first time that their mission was doomed to failure. “We come back tomorrow, refreshed and with all the tools we need.”

“So we’ll just say, ‘Don’t mind us, Chief. We’ll put your desk back when we’re done. Just don’t sit over the hole while the trapdoor’s open. PS: We’ll be a while because we don’t have any idea what we’re doing.’ Like that?”

“I get it; it was a waste of time to come over here,” says Nakamura.

“I’m sure they had a team of their brightest scientists. I’m no slouch, but I’m only one person.”

“Thanks for humoring me.”

“Can we go now?” asks Wayne.

“Sure. ‘Bye, guys.”

Wayne follows Nakamura into the passageway and starts to close the vault door when everything goes dark, everything except her trusty headlamp.

“Very funny,” says Nakamura. She claps twice: nothing. She tries again.

“It’s not me,” says Wayne. “Listen.” Inside the vault they’ve just left, there is blackness and silence.

“This isn’t good, is it?”

“We’ve got to get them out, now,” says Wayne. “They’ll suffocate for sure. This is Dom’s doing. He’s trying to change the balance of power.”

“Then it was a good thing we were here.”

“It was a great thing we were here. Thanks for being a stubborn dreamer. They may not want to wake up, but these dudes owe you their lives. Come on.”

Proceed to Chapter 30...

Copyright © 2018 by Charles C. Cole