“It rings reasonably well, I think. They’re all previous staff of the old Headquarters regime. I specifically remember Hunter Williams; he came into the beat cops division about the same time you did, Nick,” Carter noted. “I wondered, at the time, if we were gonna have trouble with him. I hoped he’d kept his ass clean, because apparently he got away with telling the Marines that he was one of the ‘straight shooters,’ as you like to put it. But it sounds like that was all a lie. Probably for the lot of ‘em.”
“Oh hell yes,” Peabody agreed, vehement. “He was one of the guys that they used to send over to a place called the Fire Water Bar whenever they needed to hire a hit man. Well, there were a couple of hit women, maybe half a dozen or so, but the biggest lot of ‘em were male. You know what I mean.”
“Yes, and I think some of us have some familiarity with that location,” Peterson said, voice dry, as she shot wry glances at Ashton and Ames.
“No shit,” Ames muttered, and Peabody raised a surprised eyebrow. “That place oughta be shut down, at least.”
“It is,” Peabody noted. “We had to meet last night at an alternate location called the Cool Breeze Pub.”
“Why did you go?” Carter demanded to know.
“Call it investigator’s instinct,” Peabody said, pulling a face. “Carr came around and invited me, since I’m one of the – since I used to be one of the ranking ‘oldies,’ as they’re putting it. I had a feeling something was up, and that I needed to find out what. I took Detective Ashton’s little talk the other day very seriously, sir – he more than earned my respect in the doing, let me add – and I understand what the difference is, now, between his management style and my own. And I can honestly admit to you, his is better – and with all due respect, sir, you need to hang onto him, as hard as you can. And let me add that he’s good where he is, heading up Investigations. But I thought maybe I ought to find out what was going down so I could report it to him. It was only when I realized the magnitude of what was happening that I thought the rest of you needed to be in on this.”
Carter studied him for a long moment. Then he looked at Ashton, querying. Ashton nodded, calm, and Carter nodded in turn.
“All right, Peabody,” he said. “Let’s all sit down here so you can debrief to us in detail on what happened, and what they’re planning.”
Once they all had a good understanding of what Peabody had witnessed, they began a preliminary plan. When that was complete, Carter gave Peabody explicit instructions.
“Keep going to those meetings, Peabody. Look like one of them, sound like one of them, as much as you need to, to keep them from cluing in on the fact that you’re our informant. But whatever else you do, keep us four apprised of anything that comes out of them, any intelligence information, anything that can help us not only stay alive, but nail these dirty cops to the wall… along with their henchmen. I’ll outfit you with some special equipment to tap into your VR and record everything, in order to help with that.”
“Yes, sir, Director Carter. Thank you,” Peabody said. From force of habit, he started to salute, then caught himself and shook his head. “Sorry, sir. Old habits die hard. I don’t think that’s something you’d want.”
“Well considered, and no, I don’t,” Carter said, then patted Peabody on the shoulder. “And one last thing.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Thank you.”
“You’re more than welcome, sir.”
He dropped the channel, and they were all at home once more.
But before Nick could even finish his now-cold breakfast, he got a ping from Carter, and dropped into another VR simulation. This time, it looked like a workshop, rather than a nondescript meeting room.
“There you are,” Carter said. “Given that intel we just got, there were a couple of things I wanted to show you how to do right away, son. Things we might need.”
“Such as?”
“How to hack the Headquarters VR system, so you can pick out mail messages and the like. That way, you can know who’s doing what, when.”
“Oh. Right now, that sounds like a very good plan, Lee.”
“I thought so, Nick. And it won’t take long, the things I’m going to show you to do. We’re not going to actually do them until tonight, after we get off shift.”
“Can we do it from home?”
“Some of it, yes. But we’ll need to do a couple of things today, at the office, in order to allow for it. That said, just close the door to your office and do it, and nobody’ll be the wiser. Neither you nor I have surveillance on these offices, like we did in the old HQ.” Carter gave a wry chuckle. “In that respect, this’ll be way the hell easier.”
“Let’s see, then.”
“Right. Now the first thing you need to know…”
Skulking
Just because Carter and Peterson didn’t live in a gated community didn’t mean they didn’t have any security at all. If the truth be told, Carter had been tucking away his salary for years with the idea of buying a place with some land – given his former position in the IPD, he hadn’t had a lot to spend it on anyway – and Maia Peterson had had notions of retiring in the country, as well. When Carter became the revamped IPD director, he’d gotten a salary commensurate with the position, and combined with their joint savings, suddenly they found they could acquire their dream house. The fact that there was a new
