“You think you’re really smart, don’t you, boy?” he said, grinning.
Artemis grinned back. “Compared to you? Definitely.”
Kurt bent over, hands on knees, until his eyes were level with Artemis’s. “I was watching you from the security booth. You didn’t do a thing. Your kind never does.”
“How do you know?” asked Artemis. “I could have been breaking into those safe-deposit boxes.”
“I know all right. I know because I could see your feet the whole time. You barely moved an inch.”
Artemis grabbed his ring of keys from the tray and ran after Butler to make the lift. “You win this time. But I’ll be back.”
Kurt cupped a hand around his mouth. “Bring it on,” he shouted. “I’ll be waiting.”
CHAPTER 3
NEARLY DEPARTED
Police Plaza, Haven City; The Lower Elements
Captain Holly Short was up for a promotion. It was the career turnaround of the century. Less than a year had passed since she had been the subject of two internal affairs inquiries, but now, after six successful missions, Holly was the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance squad’s golden fairy. The Council would soon meet to decide whether or not she would be the first female major in LEPrecon’s history. And to tell the truth, the prospect did not appeal to her one bit. Majors rarely got to strap on a set of wings and fly between land and stars. Instead, they spent their time sending junior officers topside on missions. Holly had made up her mind to turn down the promotion if it were offered to her. She could live with a smaller paycheck if it meant she could still see the surface on a regular basis.
Holly decided it would be wise to tell Commander Julius Root what she planned to do. After all, it was Root who had stood by her through the inquiries, and it was Root who had recommended her for promotion in the first place. The commander would not take the news well. He never took any kind of news well: even good news was received with a gruff thank-you and a slammed door.
Holly stood outside Root’s office on that morning, working up the courage to knock. And even though, at three feet exactly, she was just below the average fairy height, Holly was glad of the half inch granted by her spiky auburn hair. Before she could knock, the door was yanked open, and Root’s rosy-cheeked face appeared in the doorway.
“Captain Short!” he roared, his gray buzz cut quivering. “Get in here!” Then he noticed Holly standing beside the door. “Oh, there you are. Come in. We have a puzzle that needs solving. It involves one of our goblin friends.”
Holly followed Root into the office. Foaly, the LEP’s technical adviser, was already there, close enough to the wall plasma screen to singe his nose hairs.
“Howler’s Peak video,” explained Root. “General Scalene escaped.”
“Escaped?” echoed Holly. “Do we know how?”
Foaly snapped his fingers. “D’Arvit! That’s what we should be thinking about, instead of standing around here playing I Spy.”
“We don’t have time for the usual sarcastic small talk, Foaly,” snapped Root, his complexion deepening to burgundy. “This is a PR disaster. Scalene is public enemy number two, second only to Opal Koboi herself. If the journos get wind of this, we’ll be the laughingstock of Haven. Not to mention the fact that Scalene could round up a few of his goblin buddies and reactivate the triad.”
Holly crossed to the screen, elbowing Foaly’s hindquarters out of the way. Her little talk with Commander Root could wait. There was police work to be done. “What are we looking at?”
Foaly highlighted a section of the screen with a laser pointer. “Howler’s Peak, goblin correctional facility. Camera eighty-six.”
“Which shows?”
“The visiting room. Scalene went in, but he never came out.”
Holly scanned the camera list. “No camera in the room itself?”
Root coughed, or it may have been an actual growl. “No. According to the third Atlantis convention on fairy rights, detainees are entitled to privacy in the visiting room.”
“So we don’t know what went on in there?”
“Not as such, no.”
“What genius designed this system, anyway?”
In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Root chuckled. He never could resist needling the smug centaur.
“Our horsey friend here designed the Howler’s Peak automated security system all on his own.”
Foaly pouted, and when a centaur pouts, his bottom lip almost reaches his chin. “It’s not the system. The system is foolproof. Every prisoner has the standard subcutaneous seeker-sleeper in his head. Even if a goblin manages to miraculously escape, we can remotely knock them out, then pick him up.”
Holly raised her palms. “So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that the seeker-sleeper is not broadcasting. Or, if it is, we’re not picking up the signal.”
“That is a problem.”
Root lit a noxious fungal cigar. The smoke was instantly whipped away by an air recycler on his desk. “Major Kelp is out with a mobile unit, trying to get a fix on a signal.”
Trouble Kelp had recently been promoted to Root’s second in command. He was not the kind of officer who liked sitting behind a desk, unlike his little brother, Corporal Grub Kelp, who would like nothing better than to be stuck behind a nice safe desk for the remainder of his career. If Holly was forced into promotion, she hoped she could be half the major that Trouble was.
Holly returned her attention to the pl
asma screen. “So, who was visiting General Scalene?”
“One of his thousand nephews. A goblin by the name of Boohn. Apparently that means of noble brow in Goblin cant.”
“I remember him,” said Holly. “Boohn. Customs and excise think he’s one of the goblins behind the B’wa Kell smuggling operation. There’s nothing noble about him.”
Foaly opened a folder on the plasma screen with his laser pointer. “Here’s the visitor list. Boohn checks in at seven fifty, Lower Elements mean time. At least I can show you that on video.”
A grainy screen showed a bulky goblin in the prison’s access corridor, nervously licking his eyeballs while the security laser scanned him. Once it was confirmed that Boohn wasn’t trying to smuggle anything in, the visitors’ door popped open.
Foaly scrolled down the list. “And look here. He checks out at eight fifteen.”
Boohn left swiftly, obviously uncomfortable in the facility. The parking lot camera showed him reverting to all fours for a dash to his car.
Holly scanned the list carefully. “So you’re saying that Boohn checked out at eight fifteen?”
“I just said that didn’t I, Holly?” replied Foaly testily. “I’ll say it again slowly. Eight fifteen.”
Holly snatched the laser pointer. “Well, if that’s true, how did he manage to check out again at eight twenty?”
It was true. Eight lines down on the list, Boohn’s name popped up again.
“I saw that already. It’s a glitch,” muttered Foaly. “That’s all. He couldn’t leave twice. It’s not possible. We get that sometimes, a bug, nothing more.”
“Unless it wasn’t him the second time.”
The centaur folded his arms defensively. “Don’t you think I thought of that? Every one who enters or leaves Howler’s Peak is scanned a dozen times. We take at least eighty facial points of reference with each scan. If the computer says Boohn, then that’s who it was. There’s no way a goblin beat my system. They barely have enough brainpower to walk and talk at the same time.”
Holly used the pointer to review the entry video of Boohn. She enlarged his head, using a photo-manipulation program to sharpen the image.