“Got it,” Ames said, still cheerful and pleased about the assignment. Ashton promptly decided he’d found a kindred spirit.
“Along about four in the afternoon,” he continued, “you’re gonna meander back toward the west entrance, but you’re gonna have slowed down a lot, even on the slidewalks. You’re tired; you’ve been shopping all afternoon, you’re dead on your feet. You’re gonna walk right past Droppoint nice and slow, without looking at him or seeming to even notice him, and if he doesn’t bite, I’ll be surprised.”
“But Nick,” Compton asked, “if he’s that good, she might never feel him swipe the jewelry.”
“Which is why it’s rigged,” Ashton said with a huge grin. “Bianchi’s installed what they call a ‘thumper’ on each piece. Murphy won’t know, but Cally will feel it. And as soon as he makes a grab, we bust him.”
Everything went according to plan. Ashton, Jones, Smith, Weaver, and Compton all got into position – as themselves, this time – within no more than fifty feet of Murphy’s afternoon position during lunch, and were well hidden by the time he arrived over an hour later.
Half an hour after that, Cally Ames arrived, haute couture and all, looking like she could be the young trophy wife of a Council member, and headed straight for Bianchi’s Jewelers as if she had an appointment – which, in fact, she did. Ashton zoomed in and watched from his VR surveillance room as Murphy’s eyes followed her into the jewelry store. She was inside some twenty minutes, then emerged into the arcade’s main thoroughfare, delightedly holding out her hand to watch the sparkle of the gemstone on it in the bright, full-spectrum lighting. Her ears, wrist, and throat also sparkled.
Next came a designer dress shop, then a fur-and-leather store, then the highest-end department store in the arcade. Each time Ames emerged, she had more packages and bags in hand.
This went on for fully three hours. As the afternoon wore on, Ames got slower and slower, appearing to tire. She went from a brisk walk on the slidewalks, to a slower walk, to finally standing and waiting for it to deposit her near where she wanted to go. Murphy began to watch her more closely, though the observation was surreptitious; if the investigative team hadn’t been keeping all eyes on him, they might not have noticed.
As the clock on the jewelry store façade neared four, Ames and her packages started to amble toward the west entrance of the arcade. She appeared to be dragging pretty badly by this time; she stared at the slidewalk in front of her, walking very slowly and seeming almost in a daze. She then managed to stumble on her high heels – they were emphatically not “sensible shoes” – and thereby step off the slidewalk, appearing to almost fall, just as she got even with Murphy.
Perfect, thought Ashton, pleased. Cally completely gets this.
Murphy put out a hand and caught her before she fell, steadying her on her feet.
“There you go, madam,” he said smoothly, his manner suave and persuasive. “Perhaps you should sit down soon, and rest.”
“Perhaps I–” Ames began with a smile, then jerked back, dropping the shopping bags and drawing her concealed carry weapon in one move, revealing the fake-diamond bracelet sparkling in Murphy’s hand. “POLICE! You’re under arrest!”
And Ashton and the rest of his team descended upon their quarry.
It was while Ashton was handcuffing Droppoint Murphy and loading him into an arcade cart to take him up to street level and a waiting police transport that a certain off-duty IPD officer, on a shopping run for her current live-in boyfriend, saw the bust going down. Tabby Koch stopped, hiding her startlement, and watched the bust along with several other pedestrians, trying to fade into the crowd.
Then, as Ashton drove off with his perp, she pinged her uncle in VR.
“Wait. Ashton was seen? Here? In Imperial City?” a disbelieving Chief George Stanier, head of the entire Imperial Police, asked General William Kershaw, head of the Imperial Police on Sintar.
“Yes, George, he was. By my niece, who spent some time dating him and hoping to coax him into compliance, a couple of years back, if you will recall.”
“Mm. So that’s definitive; she’d recognize him if they used to see each other. And that’s the kid that caused all the problems for Ron Thomas a few years back, too, right?”
“The very same, George. We sent Stash’s people out after him, but missed, because apparently the kid really did leave Sintar. We even got security video at the spaceport of him saying goodbye to his parents and boarding a shuttle. I guess at some point, he came back to Sintar.”
“Wait. Saying goodbye to his parents?” Stanier said, startled. “I thought the kid was from some podunk backwater planet… Flanders, wasn’t it?”
“Oh,” Kershaw said, paling as he realized the error his subordinates had made…and that he had not caught. “Perhaps they moved with him, at least initially? And he’s only recently returned, but decided to work for ICPD instead?”
“Or maybe we’ve been had, and that bastard Carter laughed at us all the way,” Stanier snarled.
Kershaw dropped all pretense at familiarity.
“What do you want to do, sir?”
“See if you can get somebody on Ashton’s tail, find out what he’s doing now,” Stanier ordered. “He can still get us in dutch if he’s told anybody about the Sigil…which, thanks to that little muffed operation, we never did get our
