So he hacked into the security system on his office – after all these years, it was a skill that had been honed by long practice – and set it up to pick up, not what was really happening in his office, but a nondescript paperwork sequence. Even his VR telemetry was faked, so that he could tend his unblemished rookies as needed, and keep them out of harm’s way.
Once that was arranged, he began setting up the paperwork to get Ashton safely out of IPD headquarters and into Maia’s care…while looking like he went elsewhere. When that was finished, he sent a message to Ashton through VR, directing him to go off on a wild snipe hunt, to keep him out of harm’s way until it could all go through. It wasn’t a useless mission; he directed him to carry a piece of evidence to a city office on the other end of the continent. It was needed for a case being prosecuted there, by a perp from Imp City, and it would serve the purpose of diverting Ashton out of reach of those who would want his hide.
Then he began tweaking the report on the burglary…just a little bit.
Scrambling for Position
“Where’s Dominick Ashton?” Gorecki demanded, as soon as he entered Carter’s office.
Right. No greeting, no, “How ya doin’, Lee,” no nothin’, Carter thought, hiding his disgust carefully.
“Uh, lemme think,” Carter said, pretending to rack his brain. “Oh! That’s right. That murder case on the far side of the continent – what city was that? Was it Hobarth? Anyway, they wanted some pieces of hard evidence, since the perp is from Imp City, and Ashton was free, so I sent him on a shuttle with it in a case. He won’t be back until…” Carter checked the time in VR, “wow, until close on my getting off shift.”
Gorecki glared at him.
“What did you want to see him for?” Carter asked casually. “I can see about handling any matters, seeing as how I’m his shift supervisor…”
“He undercut Inspector Thomas this morning,” Gorecki noted, “and Ron ain’t real happy about it.”
“Ohh, that thing. Yes, I saw that in the reports when I came on duty this morning,” Carter said, tsking appropriately. “Don’t worry. I’ll have a little talk with him. He’s not picking up on some things like he should; I’m thinking about sending him for some remedial training. There’s this retired detective on Pritani that should do well for our purpose; he used to work at Headquarters and knows the ropes around here. But you know what? I started looking, and there were no messages sent down to the beat cops’ line management about that situation. Kid had no idea that anything else needed to be done but what he did, because nobody in our department had a clue.”
“What?! You’re shittin’ me!”
Carter shrugged. He’d double-checked on that aspect about as soon as he’d ended the meeting with Maia. There had, in fact, been nothing obvious, though there had been a slight hint in a message…which he’d promptly hacked so he could delete the hint. Fortunately, no one else seemed to have seen it either. Which, he considered, really only supported what he was telling Stash.
“Nope. Not a word. I dunno if somebody forgot, or if they just thought we didn’t need to know, or what, Stash,” Carter said, helpful, friendly and familiar, when he really wanted to vomit. Preferably in Gorecki’s shoes. “Granted, Ashton didn’t handle it the way you might expect, but I really don’t think the fault was his. Somebody didn’t pass the word. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was Ashton or any other of the rookies – remember, he hasn’t even been here a full year yet!“ That was a flat-out lie, he thought. “– Or hell, it coulda been some of our experienced beat cops. They’d probably have done the very same thing.”
“That so?”
“Without any heads-up? Sure,” Carter said, shrugging again. “If I was in your shoes, I’d be looking to see who flubbed the dub on the communications end of things. Not passing on essential information to the appropriate shifts is a great way to get somebody blown to dust bunnies on the street. Somebody you don’t want blown to dust bunnies.” Carter glanced around, then leaned forward and murmured conspiratorially, “And I don’t mean somebody on the obvious side of the force.”
“Hm. You got a point,” Gorecki decided. “Maybe I need to dig into this a little further, make sure where things went wrong, so it don’t happen again.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Carter agreed. “Meanwhile, I can promise you, you won’t be having any more trouble out of Ashton. I’ll see to that personally. He’ll be gone for a while, here, and if and when he comes back, oughta be a little more…in line.”
“Right,” Gorecki all but snarled. “See to it. Or I will.”
Carter drew a deep breath and let it out in surreptitious relief as Gorecki stalked out of his office.
“…I’m sorry, Nick,” Lee Carter, the Imperial City office captain over the local Imperial Police beat cops, told the young police officer when he finally returned, toward the end of his shift. “You’re a good kid, and a good cop. Idealistic. What some call a ‘boy scout,’ though I’m not sure where that old term comes from. Unfortunately, this is the wrong organization for that.”
“So…what? I was supposed to let a thief – of a valuable, historic heirloom – go free?” Ashton said in shock.
“Keep your voice down, son,” Carter murmured, glancing at his closed office door and hoping it was sufficiently soundproofed…especially when added to the surreptitious hack he’d performed on the surveillance equipment
