1. Should only be a couple more sections before I finally put this one to bed. It's been a hell of a ride... at least it has been for me.
2. Tiny bit of backstory as to how Enara and Khalid got teamed up in the first place.
3. The bit about the rocket plane, etc. is stolen from Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.
4. Poor Anomen seems to get beat up a lot in this one. Oh, well, it happens again. More than once, actually.
Davidson Park
“I’ve heard that the M.C.U. will be getting a new detective,” Anomen said, trying to make small talk. He sat on one of the park benches, hunched forward, his hands clasped together and hanging between his knees. “They say she made quite a name for herself down in Robbery and that Commissioner Akins himself authorized her transfer.”
Enara had been pacing anxiously for the past few minutes. She finally stopped, leaning against a nearby lamppost, with her arms folded across her chest. “Yeah, I heard something about that,” she said. “First person on the M.C.U. that wasn’t handpicked by our previous Police Commissioner.” She sighed. “End of an era, I guess… or something like that.”
“You were the last one… before Akins began his term, I mean.”
She sent a sad nod in his direction. “Yeah, only a couple of months before our old boss…” she nearly choked on the word, “retired.” She stared up at the moonless sky, not seeing much in terms of stars thanks to all the smog and clouds that always seemed to inhabit Gotham’s skies. She looked wistful for a moment. “Back then, Khalid was working a multiple murder that crossed over with a robbery I was looking into. He suggested we work the two cases together. ‘Teaming up to fight crime,’” she joked. “Or at least whine about it.”
“What happened?” Anomen asked, as gently as he could.
“We closed the case after a couple of weeks… or I guess, he did.” She snorted. “I was basically just along for the ride. He recommended me for transfer to the M.C.U. after that, though. Guess he thought he saw something in me. Damned if I know what.” She brushed a lock of brown hair away from her face and wiped something out of her eyes. “Anyway, after I got the bump, he needed a partner, since his old one had moved to Blüdhaven. I got the job…” she trailed off abruptly.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think I saw something over that way. Let’s check it out…”
The two detectives made their way through the row of short hedges, trying not to wince as brambles and thorns tugged at their clothes and skin. Enara pulled her arm in closer towards her body and wrapped the end of her sleeve around her hand, then used it to push a weighty branch out of her path.
Behind her, Anomen whispered a question. “Do you see anything?”
She shook her head, momentarily bemused. “I thought I saw some rustling… maybe it was a bird or something.” She held a flashlight in her right hand, and she played the beam around the area. They’d walked into the middle of a semi-clear patch of grass, but tall tree trunks around the edges of the clearing obscured their vision. She pushed past another bush, on a path that would lead them deeper into the park, which had proven to be oddly cluttered for such a seemingly small parcel of land.
“I suppose this is only helping to further convince you that there -is- no homeless person.”
She turned and shrugged, aggravation evident on her face. “Well, if there is, where the hell is he? Does he have a job? Work the late shift?” She sighed, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose. “I just… I wish we had something else to go on… but we don’t. Not a single lead except this one, and it doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere at all. Anomen, this girl is just dead. And nothing jumps out at me and says why…”
“Then why are we still here?” he asked, as gently as he could.
She turned to face him. “Why have our spirits been incarnated into physical bodies in this world generally? Or specifically, why are we here in a Swedish forest, standing on the wreck of a mysterious German rocket plane while a homosexual mathematician from Leipzig sobs over the cremated remains of his Italian lover?”
Anomen did a double take. “Excuse me?”
She sighed. “Sorry. I’m just getting frustrated.”
He smirked. “Might I suggest, then, that we go talk to this Mrs. Kurtzbaum you mentioned earlier? It’s possible that she might have some useful information.”
“Maybe we should… I don’t know…” Almost as a pro forma gesture, she swung her flashlight around one last time, but this time the beam stopped on something she hadn’t expected to see. “What the hell is this?”
“What is what?”
She flicked her finger at something a handful of yards away. At first glance, it didn’t look very dissimilar to an ordinary bush, but upon closer inspection…
“It almost looks like some kind of fort…” said Anomen.
Enara had to concur. The walls were grafted out of thick, straight, wooden sticks, all cut to roughly equal lengths and bound together with barely noticeable lengths of rope. Leafy branches had been stacked on top of the structure, providing a barrier against wind and rain, but also serving as excellent camouflage against anyone who wasn’t looking too closely. Unfortunately, someone apparently -had- been looking closely. Enara walked over to the makeshift hovel, her steps slow, careful, and deliberate, and as she did, she could make out the faint smell of some kind of fuel – gasoline, kerosene… she wasn’t sure, but it made her nose itch. Looking more closely, she could see that half of the far wall had been torn down, and there were scorch marks across many of the homemade support beams. “Anomen, check this out…” she said, kneeling down near the entrance, “somebody was living here.”
He nodded. “I believe the emphasis is on ‘was.’ The fire damage on this side looks extensive.” He had circled around to the other side of the rough lean-to, and was kneeling down examining some of the shack’s contents. “There is a cardboard box full of clothes in that corner over there.”
“Got something over here, too… it’s a book.” Enara kept a pair of latex gloves in her suit-jacket so she could handle evidence without destroying fingerprints. She donned them now, picked up the book, and began to leaf through the pages all the way to the back cover. At the back of the book, on the inside back cover, was a stamp in red ink that read “Gotham City Public Library.” She frowned. “Sounds like the locals got tired of their own little homeless problem-“
The light from the periphery of her flashlight’s beam was dim at best, but it was enough to illuminate a distinctly human-like shadow approaching the two officers from the side. Enara whirled around, and so did Anomen, the latter spinning around just in time to catch sight of a club-like wooden branch descending towards his head. He threw up an arm to block the attack, but the blow was solid. He grunted in pain, but managed to keep his composure long enough to wrench the branch away from his attacker and throw it aside.
The assailant, however, wasn’t willing to end his attack just yet. He closed in, trying to grapple with the police detective, and forcing them both to the ground. From that close, Delryn could easily smell the alcohol on his breath. “GET OUTTA MY HOUSE!” the man slurred, launching wild punches that bounced off of Anomen’s shoulder and the ground behind him.
“Get off of me!” the cop growled, trying, so far in vain, to force the drunken man away.
“Cover your eyes!” came Enara’s shouted warning, and Anomen did exactly that, temporarily halting his counterattack to bury his face in the sleeves of his jacket. He could hear as Enara rushed in and emptied half a canister of mace into the man’s eyes, nose, and mouth.
*FSSSSSSSSHHHHHH!*
“ARRRRRRHHH!” He staggered away, his hands clutching at his face “BURNS! EVERYTHING BURNS!”
Anomen clambered back to his feet, and searched for something he could use as a weapon. The stick that had nearly broken his arm found its way into his hands. He lifted it, testing its weight, and then took one swing, cleanly cracking his drunken attacker across the back of the head.
The man groaned once, then collapsed, unconscious.
Enara stared down at the unmoving body. The drunk was still breathing steadily, and odd babbling noises escaped from his mouth. “You realize that we’ve gotta carry this walking urinal cake to the car now, right?” she said, grimacing at the thought of it.
“I doubt he would have gone voluntarily.”
-----
“Oh, God, Anomen… that’s disgusting… he’s… drooling snot all over the seat…”
“What would you like me to do about it?”
The two cops had just finished manhandling their unconscious drunk into the backseat of the squad car when the sound of an engine revving drew Anomen’s attention. He turned, watching a dark red S.U.V. speed by. The driver of the vehicle looked familiar to him. “That looked like Raymond Combs in that S.U.V.”
Enara looked up from the insensate mess collapsed in the backseat of her car, and just barely managed to catch sight of the maroon Sport Utility Vehicle before it disappeared down the end of the street. “Huh. Wonder where the hell he’s going in such a hurry this time of night.” She massaged the back of her neck with her hand, trying to ease out the knot that had formed there. “I wish I could think of a good reason to bother him again. There’s just something about him and his wife that gets under my skin.”
Anomen raised an eyebrow in mild amusement. “Oh? Why is that? First self-centered yuppies you’ve ever met?”
She stuck her tongue out at him. He grinned.
“Detective Car Twelve, come in…”
Anomen picked up the radio handset. “Detective Twelve here…”
“Delryn, Kell, it’s Patton. Sarge and I are putting together a unit to take down this Firebug dirtbag. You two want in?”
Enara shot a glance at Anomen, who shrugged. She reached in from the passenger’s side door and took the mic from his hand. “Yeah, sure thing, Nate… we uh… just need to drop a package off at Central first…”
-----
“It just seems… a little strange…”
“I don’t know, Anomen… I mean, it kinda happens all the time, doesn’t it? You work with someone for a while, you get to know them… sometimes… well, sometimes stuff happens. And sometimes it’s a good thing, and sometimes it’s not… but I think that’s true of just about any relationship, really.”
“You don’t think it’s unprofessional?”
“Well, I guess it could be, but it doesn’t always have to be, does it? Most of us, not me, of course, in the M.C.U. are adults. They’re mature enough to handle that sort of thing, don’t you think?” She shrugged.
“I suppose. I just worry about Nathaniel sometimes.”
Enara nearly choked on her coffee. She sheepishly dabbed at her chin with a paper napkin, then grinned. “‘Nathaniel?’ You’ve been partners for like two years, and you don’t even call him ‘Nate’? Isn’t that just a little weird?”
“I wouldn’t say so. It’s his name.”
She rolled her eyes and threw her hands up in a “Ok, whatever…” gesture. “Pfft. If you say so. Anyway, I’m just saying… sure, there was something going on with him and DeVir… fine… but they never let it interfere with their work, as far as I could see. You can’t really fault him for that. Besides, from what I heard, when they got ‘outed’, she transferred to Missing Persons, and he got teamed up with you. Right?”
“True.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t my intent to start an argument, I was just asking.”
“No, I know. It’s fine. So… how about you? You ever sleep with any of your partners?”
He raised a quizzical eyebrow at her. “Mine have all been men.”
“What’s your point?”
“That’s cruel.”
She broke into an evil grin that wrinkled the skin on the bridge of her nose. “What’s your point?”
-----
“Good, you’re here,” said Anchev as Delryn and Kell walked through the door of the apartment the cops were using as a staging area for their raid. “We were getting tired of waiting,” he told them, handing each of them Kevlar vests with the letters “G.C.P.D.” written across the front and back in big, white letters.
Enara took off her blazer, folded it neatly, and laid it down on the backrest of a nearby chair. She took the proffered vest, slipping her arms through the holes, and cinching the protective garment tightly around her frame. The Velcro straps scritched as she pulled them taut. “So, what’s the deal, Sarge? Where is this guy?”
Sarevok pointed down off to his left. “He’s right down the hall,” he said, making sure his handgun was fully loaded and the backup magazines were kept within easy reach at his belt. “Apartment G. The lights are off, but the TV is on, so he’s probably still awake.”
“It seems Bullock’s tip was good, then,” Anomen commented.
Enara nodded. “Looks like. There’s just one thing, though, Sarevok. Don’t you think this place is kind of a dump for someone who’s been taking down serious bank the last few weeks?” She flipped her hand into a brief wave, encompassing the entire apartment with her gesture. The place was a dive – cracked walls, the molding around the doors and windows kept on by spit and glue. Exposed wiring poked from the wall outlets and ceiling. The floors were grimy and would probably never be clean again, no matter how many gallons you bought, of that orange-based cleaning stuff they hawked late at night on basic cable.
Anchev snorted. “The thought had crossed my mind. But you never know where these sickos are gonna decide to hide out, right? But enough small talk.” He clicked the safety off his pistol. “Let’s go bust this dirtbag.”
-----
“Strike team in position…” Patton whispered over his hand-held radio.
He immediately got back a response from the units stationed on the ground floor of the apartment building and on the street outside. “Perimeter is secure, Detective. Ready when you are.”
“Copy. All units, move in.” He gestured with his hand, and the two G.C.P.D. Tactical Officers standing by the door to Apartment 3G nodded in reply. Working in unison, the two officers heaved their arms back, bringing with them a solid, metal cylinder, capable of delivering 26,000 pounds of kinetic energy in a single blow when utilized properly.
The impact of the battering ram threw the door off its hinges. Sarevok was first through the now-empty doorway.
“G.C.P.D.! Joseph Rigger, you are under arrest! Place your hands slowly behind your head!”
