The Long shot

Gene?”

The big man shrugged. “Four years, I guess.”

“How come you don’t try to get out?”

“You mean why don’t I lose the weight? Hell, Cole, I’ve tried. I don’t even eat that much.”

Howard walked over to a wastepaper bin and looked down. There were several Burger King wrappings lying there, along with two empty packs of cookies. “Yeah, right,” he said.

“Besides, this isn’t too bad, you know? It’s regular hours, it’s clean, it’s safe, and it all goes towards my pension just the same. You were different, Cole. Your time in The Tomb was just a slap on the wrist, for me it’s an exile.” He wiped his forehead with the handkerchief. “So what’s with the tape?”

“I’m trying to track down the guy, I’m hoping that the conversation will tell me where he is.”

Eldridge looked at the clipboard. “According to the notes Tiefenbacher made, the call was placed from a public phone in Long Beach.”

“Yeah, that’s what it said, all right. Kelly’s out there.”

“But you think different?” asked Eldridge. Howard winked. “I suppose that means the ice maiden has rushed off on a wild goose chase?” Howard grinned. “What a fucking shame,” said Eldridge. “I guess she’ll be mighty pissed at young Tiefenbacher?”

“Okay if I borrow this tape for a while?” asked Howard.

“Hey, hold on a minute, Cole, you know as well as I do that the tape has to stay within the building. You can taint it as evidence if it leaves our jurisdiction.”

“It’s not evidence; we’re just trying to track down the guy, that’s all. I’ve a couple of experts I want to listen to the tape, and then I’ll bring it right back.”

“Today? You’ll bring it back today? On my shift?”

Howard nodded. “By lunchtime, Gene, I promise.” Back in his office, Howard dialled through to the Image Processing and Research Labs at Clayton Electronics. It was answered by McDowall, who sounded as if he was drawing on a cigarette. “This is Cole Howard, of the FBI,” said Howard. McDowall coughed and Howard smiled. “Is that a joint?” he asked.

“Jeez, you guys know everything,” said McDowall. “So what can we do for you, Special Agent Howard?”

Howard explained what he wanted and arranged to go round to the lab immediately. There was another message from Jake Sheldon on his desk, but Howard ignored it. Thirty minutes later he was in the laboratory with McDowall and Wyman. The sweet smell of marijuana still lingered in the air and McDowall had a slightly spaced-out look about him.

“That the tape?” asked Wyman.

Howard nodded and gave it to him. “The quality is good, but it’s the background I’m interested in.”

Wyman went over to a tape deck and motioned for the FBI agent to join him. “You’d better show me which bit you want,” he said.

They played the tape through to the point where Schoelen had called his mother. “This is it, from here on,” said Howard. “There’s some noise in the background as if he had the radio or TV on. Can you bring that up for me?”

“No problem,” said Wyman. “Compared with what we do with video, this is Stone Age stuff.” He looked over at McDowall, who was biting a thumbnail. “Bill, can you digitise this for me?”

“Sure thing,” said McDowall, who sat down at a computer. He pecked at a few keys. “Okay, run it,” he said.

Wyman pressed the play button and the conversation was replayed over a loudspeaker. When it had finished, McDowall gave Wyman a thumbs-up. “Got it,” he said. He hit more keys and the conversation played over the speaker again. “This is in the computer, not on tape,” Wyman said to Howard.

Wyman pulled a chair over next to McDowall and sat down. The two men talked together in rapid jargon, leaving Howard in the dark as to what they were doing. For all he knew, they could be speaking another language. McDowall’s fingers played across the keyboard, with Wyman offering advice, and lines of numbers scrolled across the screen. After ten minutes, Wyman nodded and sat back, a big grin splitting his face. “Try it,” he said. McDowall pressed a key and the speaker crackled into life. This time there were no voices. There were some musical notes, then a burst of what could have been static, then muffled voices.

“Sounds like TV, for sure,” said Wyman.

“Can you enhance the voices?” Howard asked.

“We can take out the higher frequencies, that should take the edge off it,” said McDowall. He bent over the keyboard, his hair swinging forward, and his head moved in time with the pecking of his fingers like a small boy during a piano lesson. When he replayed it, there was a noticeable improvement, though Howard still couldn’t work out what was being said.

“Keep playing it,” he said.

“Put it in a loop,” suggested Wyman.

McDowall pressed more keys and the section was repeated over and over as the three men listened.

“That sound, the electronic noise, it’s sort of familiar,” mused Wyman.

“I’ll try to enhance it,” said McDowall. “I’ll mute the lower frequencies first, see if that helps.”

The three men listened as McDowall played on the computer keyboard. It came to Howard in a burst of inspiration, and he laughed out loud. “It’s a phaser!” he cried.

“Man, you’re right,” said McDowall.

“Beam me up, Scottie!” cheered Wyman.

“Guys, I can’t thank you enough,” said Howard. He took the tape and headed back to the office. On the way out, Wyman pointed out that phasers were used both in Star Trek and its successor, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

When he arrived back at FBI headquarters, there was a third message from Sheldon on the desk, a note saying that Bill McDowall had called, and a series of faxes from the State Department listing overseas VIPs who were due to visit the United States in the coming months. As he called McDowall, he screwed up both notes and lobbed them through the air and into his wastepaper basket. McDowall answered, and gleefully told Howard that he had done some further work on the end of the phone call, which was still stored in their computer, and that they were reasonably sure that they could pick out Spock’s voice — it was Star Trek and not its successor. Howard thanked him. Knowing that Star Trek had been on television when Schoelen made his phone call was a major step forward. At first he’d planned to ring around all the television stations but on the drive back to his office he’d had a brainwave and instead he rang the publishers of TV Guide, the weekly magazine which published television programme listings throughout the country. He found a co-operative editor there who took only a few minutes to identify those stations which had been playing the science fiction show. There were six in all. The phone company gave him the numbers of the stations, and he called them one at a time, identifying himself as an FBI agent and asking for the programme controller. In each case he asked if they would run the tape of the show broadcast the previous evening and see if a phaser had been fired at about twenty past the hour, the time of the call. Most thought at first he was joking, but Howard gave them the number of FBI headquarters in Phoenix so that they could call back and check that his request was genuine.

Eventually he had arranged with all six stations to check their shows and call him back. The first two calls reported no phasers at the time Howard was interested in, but he struck gold with the third. Captain Kirk had indeed fired his weapon, and seconds later he’d had a conversation with Spock before beaming up to their starship. The station was WDCA-TV which served the Baltimore-Washington area. Howard smiled as he hung up. He had a good feeling about the way things were going. The remaining three stations rang back within ten minutes of the WDCA-TV call and all were negative. Howard was elated. He finished his coffee and then called up to Jake Sheldon’s office. Sheldon’s secretary told him to go right up.

Sheldon raised one eyebrow when Howard entered his office. “Been out of the office, Cole?” he asked softly.

“Yeah, sorry about that, but I was chasing up the Lou Schoelen telephone tap,” he said, dropping into the chair opposite Sheldon’s desk. “I didn’t get your message until a few minutes ago.”

Sheldon adjusted the cuffs of his immaculate blue suit. “I understood that Kelly was chasing up that lead,” he said.