Ok, kids, here we go:
Next to last section. One more after this should wrap everything up. Have fun.
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“Don’t be an idiot, man…” Nate had his gun out in front of him, the barrel pointed directly at Joseph Rigger, the man suspected of being the arsonist known as Firebug. The barrel of the nine-millimeter handgun barely wavered as he and the other cops gathered around him stared their target down.
Rigger was standing next to an old, beaten-down recliner chair. The upholstery was old, ratty, and this close to falling apart. A TV-dinner tray sat on a foldaway table propped up between the television and the chair. The man was rail-thin and balding, patches of scarred skin standing out all across his arms and bare legs. He trembled, the remote control in his hands shaking as his fist quivered around it. He slowly stepped backwards, away from the chair, towards the window behind him.
He flipped the television remote into the air and dove for the window.
“Screw you!”
The Q.R.T. officer crouched next to Sergeant Sarevok Anchev made to pull the trigger on his submachine gun, but the Sarge’s loud, rumbling voice stopped him. “Hold your fire!” he yelled, and the half-dozen officers still in the hallway behind him lowered their weapons and stood down.
Enara, still in disbelief over what had just happened, moved to the shattered window. “He… he just jumped out the window…” she said, clearly in shock. “Wonderful.”
Sarevok grunted. “Guess no one likes us anymore, Enara.”
By this point, Delryn and Patton had finished sweeping through the other rooms of the apartment. They hadn’t had enough time to complete a detailed search, but they didn’t seem too optimistic about finding anything important. “No luck on the super-villain suit, Sarge…” Nate said, shaking his head. He holstered his department issue and scratched the back of his neck. “Has to be stored at another location. Question is, where?”
Anomen had joined Enara and Sarevok by the broken window. He looked down. Two stories below, the broken body of Joseph Rigger, dressed only in an undershirt and loose-fitting boxer shorts was lying sprawled out on the roof of a car. The windshield had shattered, and the metal roof had caved slightly from the impact. Rigger himself wasn’t moving. “Is… is he still alive?”
A radio transmission from one of the units down below answered his question. “Suspect is still alive,” came the reply, only slightly garbled by transmission static. “Looks like he broke some bones, though. EMTs are pulling up now…”
Anchev snorted. “Score one for the good guys…”
-----
Holding Cells
Gotham Central
June 27th – 6:45 P.M.
Enara scribbled her signature down on the sign-up sheet (It was still kind of difficult to write with her hands bandaged) and handed the clipboard back through the grill-covered window that separated her and Anomen from the officer working inside the “Cage.”
“Heya, Detective… your ‘package’ is in Cell Three.”
She nodded and flashed a brief smile at the older police officer. “Thanks, Jerry. How’re Phyllis and the twins?”
He smiled. “Just fine. Nice of you to ask. You take care today, all right, Detectives?”
“We always do,” said Anomen, reassuringly.
Once out of earshot, however, Enara looked up and smirked at her partner. “I don’t.”
He chuckled. “True. But no need to trouble Officer Bertinelli with that. He would only worry about you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Can’t have that. Guy’s only six months away from retiring. He’s got enough problems. So,” she said, nudging him in the ribs. “What’s the deal with you and the Feds?”
He shrugged. “I was never an actual Federal agent. Only a cadet.”
“Okay, but why did you give it up?”
“I got to know a few agents, they warned me about the boredom level and such.”
She shot him an incredulous expression. “Couldn’t be worse than being a cop.”
“Much, actually. For every time they come barging into our affairs, claiming jurisdiction over them, they’re required to file hundreds of reports and forms beforehand.”
Enara snickered. “I can barely get my reports in on time as it is.”
He chuckled at the small joke. “Precisely. Besides, if I wished to spend my days typing, I would have joined the I.R.S.”
She made a “gun” motion with her hand. “Except those bums can’t carry firearms.”
Anomen barked out a laugh in response to her comment. “Enara, they hardly need to.”
She grinned. “You’ve got a point.”
By this point, she and Anomen had arrived in front of Holding Cell # 3. The lights were still mostly off, so it was difficult to see inside the cell, but there was just enough illumination to make out a human silhouette draped across the cot inside. Enara rapped the side of her coffee mug against one of the bars to get the prisoner’s attention. “Good evening, Mister Yancy,” she said, smoothly, “I hope a day in lockup has cooled you off.”
William Yancy cracked one eye open and stared at the two cops just outside his cell. Sober now, and far more lucid than he’d been the previous night, he easily recognized them. He sat up, then moved to the edge of the cot to get closer to the bars. He scratched at his thick, brown beard with one hand, and pointed accusingly at the two detectives with the other. “You… you’ve got no right to keep me here,” he said, his voice sounding mostly in control with only a slight bit of strain. “No right. I renounced my citizenship in ’87,” he announced. “The American government’s got no authority over me.” He folded his arms across his chest.
Anomen and Enara traded amused expressions out of the corners of their eyes. “Well, Mister Yancy,” said Enara, “I’m sorry to inform you that even non-citizens like yourself get thrown in jail when they attack police.”
He shook his head and growled. “Aw, that’s bunk. I didn’t know you were cops.”
“Given how high your blood-alcohol level was last night, I do not doubt that at all,” Anomen quipped. He flipped through the file folder he held in his hands, confirming a few things on the sheets of paper stored away inside. “So that begs the question: who did you think we were?”
“People who wrecked my house last week… tryin’ to drive me out’ve my own home.”
Enara asked the next question. “Local yuppies don’t want you in their park, is that it?”
“Screw what they want.” He jerked a thumb at himself. “I grew up there, they just showed up after the developers ruined everything.” He got to his feet and turned his back at them, closing his eyes, and facing the far wall, seemingly having nothing more to say.
Anomen’s next query got Yancy to open his eyes again and turn back around. “Is that why you killed Bonnie Lewis?” the detective asked. “To get back at them?”
“What’re you talking about?” He had turned back around, slowly, and when he did, the two officers could see his eyes were wide with shock. He walked to the front of the cell, leaned his chin against one of the horizontal bars, and wrapped his hands around two of the vertical ones. “Someone killed her?”
“Yeah, you know, that girl who used to bring you food?” Enara said, ramping up the accusatory tone in her voice. “Her brains got bashed in last Thursday night. We found one of her library books buried in the remains of your house.”
Clearly stunned, Yancy stepped back from the bars of the cell, his hands held high and spread wide. “Whoa… whoa, just a minute. She lent me that book. I swear it.”
Anomen looked skeptical. He scratched at his beard. “Really?”
“Yeah, she borrowed books for me all the time. She wasn’t like the rest of them… she understood my cause. She would bring me books, and food and stuff on her way through the park.” His hands clenched into angry fists as he spoke. “She’d talk to me about how much she hated the hypocrites she was working for. She couldn’t stand those people any more than I could.”
“What about last Thursday?” Anomen continued his questioning, “The night of the 15th… did you see her that night?”
“No… she was supposed to pick up that book on her way home. But she never showed up. I waited for her, too. Then the next day some son of a bitch sets my house on fire.” He shook his head and grumbled. “I should be the one filing the complaint here. But I swear to you, I would never’ve hurt Bonnie… don’t you understand? She was the only ally I had.”
-----
Squadroom: Major Crimes Unit
Gotham Central
Lieutenant Probson leaned back against a row of metal file cabinets. He folded his arms across his chest and sighed wearily, having just been briefed on the results of William Yancy’s interrogation. “So, where does that leave us?”
Enara put her head down on her desk and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know, Lieutenant. He says he’ll take a polygraph if we want, but I’m pretty sure he’ll pass it.” Annoyed, she thumped her fist against the wooden surface of her desk.
“Still holding him just in case?” Probson asked.
Anomen was half-sitting, half-leaning backwards against the edge of Enara’s desk. He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, then nodded in response to Probson’s question. “We figured it would be best to keep him in custody. At least until we decide what to do about the assault charge.”
The Lieutenant grimaced. “This sucks, Detectives.”
Enara had folded her arms across the surface of her desk, and was resting her head on them. Her reply came out slightly muffled. “It does. But I just don’t see this guy being able to do the whole bogus E-mail ransom fax, either.” She sighed. “He’s just some kook, thinks the government’s screwing him in the ear.” She trailed off, and the room was silent for a few minutes, each of the three police officers lost in his or her own thoughts, until two more of their squadmates walked in.
“Anchev, Patton… I hope you’ve got some sunshine for me this evening…” Probson said, with more than just a dash of sarcasm.
Nate shrugged. “Well, we’ve got something… not sure how it stacks up, though. We just got back from St. Luke’s,” he said. “Joseph Rigger, you know, that Firebug creep? He broke both arms and a leg during his little swan dive, so now he’s in traction in a hospital bed. We’ve got a guard on him 24/7…” Nat snorted, humorlessly, “not that he’s going anywhere. Anyway, despite the painkillers and crap, he’s pretty lucid. Sarge and I figured we ought to try questioning him, and when we did… well, he’s all hard-luck stories…”
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Intensive Care Unit
Saint Luke’s Medical Center
Earlier
“Seriously, man… just look at me. That freakin’ suit ruined my life… I almost died.”
Anchev rolled his eyes at Patton, who merely shrugged. “Right. And when would this’ve been?” asked the Sarge.
Joseph Rigger took a deep breath, inhaling through the tubes stuck into his nose. The movement hurt. “Almost two years ago,” he said. “Mob doc saved my hide, but he couldn’t do anything about the scarring. I couldn’t exactly waltz into the E.R., though, so who was I to complain?”
Anchev snorted. “We’re certainly in agreement that you’re an ugly piece of work, Joey… but how does that prove you’re not our perp on these arson robberies?
Rigger would have pointed if he could, but both his arms had been casted-up and were completely immobilized. “I don’t even have a Firebug suit, anymore,” he told them. “I sold my backup online a year ago.”
Nate frowned, not at all sure he believed what he was being told. “You can do that?” he asked, still dubious about this whole matter, “Just sell your super-villain junk on E-bay or some place?”
Sarevok’s tone positively dripped with scorn. “Seems to me like that would be some kind of a felony.”
“It’s an underground auction house,” Rigger explained, “started out of Keystone City. Anyway, my merchandise was clearly advertised as being for collectors only.”
The Sarge didn’t look very happy with that argument. In fact, he looked to be rather galled by it, actually. “Let me get this straight. You sold your totally illegal flying arson suit, but it’s okay because you said it was for collectors only?”
Either Joseph Rigger was too stupid to hear the dangerous tone seething behind Anchev’s words, or he simply didn’t care. He, was, after all, already an invalid. “Yeah, I sold it. As memorabilia.” He put extra emphasis on those last two words. “I fought Batman in that suit once. People pay good money for that.”
The Sarge scoffed at that one. “Fought Batman. For all of three seconds.”
Rigger glared back at him. “More’n you.”
That was the last straw. “I don’t need to fight Batman, asshole.” His big, muscular hands wrapped tightly around Joey’s rather scrawny neck and shook. Hard. “I get to fight morons with freeze rays and fear gas all year long.”
“Ukkk!”
Patton forced his way between the two of them. “Ease off, Sarge!” He tried to push Sarevok back and away from the hospital bed.
“That’s police brutality!” Rigger was still trying not to choke on his own saliva.
Nate might not have wanted Sarevok to throttle the man to death, but other than that, he didn’t much care about the little punk’s welfare. He whirled around, clearly not at all sympathetic to the complaint. “Shut up, Joey, and listen to your options. You can either do hard time for selling an illegal, dangerous weapon, or you can give up the guy who bought the suit. It’s your choice.”
“I… I don’t know his name. It was a blind auction.”
Nate shrugged. “Guess we can’t help you, then-“ He flipped his blazer over his shoulders and pulled the door to the hallway open.
“Wait! Wait! I can identify him! I don’t know his name, but I did meet him once… just… just to show him how everything worked…”
Sarevok glared bullets at him. “… to show him how the memorabilia worked?”
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Squadroom: Major Crimes Unit
Present
“… anyway, he swears on his mother’s grave – and she’s still alive, I checked – that the guy who bought the stupid suit is some rich white guy. So it looks like we’ve got some new wannabe out there making good.”
“You going to sit him down with an artist, Sarge?” asked Enara.
“Yeah, they’re wheeling him in later on, I think. Got a guy coming by to do a comp…”
The Lieutenant frowned and turned to head back to his office. “Well, I’m glad to see both our biggest investigations are getting nowhere,” he grumbled backwards, over his shoulder. “I can hardly wait to tell the Commissioner.”
Silently, Anchev, Delryn, Kell, and Patton watched Lieutenant Probson disappear through the door of the squad commander’s office. Nate spoke first. “I didn’t know better, I’d think The Probe just made a funny.”
