Peabody and Carter laughed, but Ashton simply gaped at them both.
“Wait just a damn minute, here,” Ashton interjected then. “Win, are you saying I should be the permanent division lead? Not just the temporary, ‘let’s get everything in place’ guy?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Nick,” Peabody said, earnest. “I’m finding out that I’m really happy where I am, without all the leadership duties, without having to watch my back, learning to be the best damn detective I can be. Learning to be the best damn husband to a wonderful wife I can be. I’m finally living the dream I had for so many years, the dream that was always just out of reach, that turned me bitter for the sake of what might have been. That bitterness, though I didn’t show it outwardly, did me no favors in terms of being a good cop. I’m finally happy. Truly, honestly happy – I think, maybe, for the first time in my adult life. I like reporting to you, Nick, like having you and Director Carter for bosses. I’m good with this. Because you, my younger friend, have distinct, strong and very capable leadership abilities, despite the fact that you’re younger. And for the first time, I can honestly say: That does not make me jealous. I want you in this role, Nick. You’re the one we all want, running this division. And,” Peabody addressed Carter once more, “I’ve been keeping an eye on the pulse of that division. Director, sir, everybody’s afraid you’ll remove Ashton and replace him with someone else. They – we – don’t want anybody else, sir. We wanna stay ‘Ashton’s Gang.’ For as long as Detective – and one day, Inspector – Ashton is willing to run it.”
Carter sat back in his chair and thought for long minutes. Peabody had just dropped a crap-ton of information into his lap, and it took him some little time to process it all.
Finally he came up for air and looked at the two men.
“Peabody, you’ve just made so many excellent points, I lost count along the way. Yes, you’re right; we need to modify those regs, and for just the reasons you enumerate. And yes, you’re right; Nick does have the dual experience, and you have only the singular experience, though yours is somewhat longer…”
“But I still have to make sure that everyone here trusts me, sir,” Peabody pointed out, earnest. “That’s one of the hugest differences between Nick and me. And I don’t want to run a division if my people don’t trust me. I don’t want to run a division if the people in other divisions don’t trust me. Not in this current organization. I want to know everyone trusts me – and with Nick, they already do. And we all know it.”
Carter turned to Ashton. “Nick, are you okay with that?”
“With… with staying the division lead?” Ashton asked, uncertain and apparently slightly boggled.
“With being made the permanent division lead,” Carter corrected. “As in, you don’t get replaced unless and until you choose to step down from the job.”
Ashton turned to Peabody.
“You sure you don’t want it, Win? ‘Cause with those as the criteria, there’s really only us two, at least right now. Maybe if somebody transfers in…”
“There won’t be any more transfers into the Investigations division,” Carter said. “We ran out of those invitations a while back. Those who were going to accept have already done so, and transferred to Sintar. We’ll get newbies out of the Academy, and Maia’s told me the Team is available if we need extra hands. But no. It’s just you two at the top of the ladder.”
“And yes, I’m sure,” Peabody said softly, putting his hand on Ashton’s shoulder. “I don’t want it any more. You’re better at this, more understanding of the people under you, than I ever was. And maybe more than I ever could be. Though I plan to watch and learn.”
“You show promise, Peabody,” Carter said. “And you’re not really so very much older than Nick, here. You never know what’s in the future, and I’d like to see the two of you working together on a couple of little projects, I think. Nick? What’s your answer?”
Ashton scratched his head, then shrugged.
“I’ve been doing it this long,” he decided. “I guess I’m kinda used to it now. It’s starting to smooth out more and more, as we get things more organized and running. The fact that you’ve finally got a good leader over the beat cops took a big-sized rock off my shoulders, anyhow. Investigations, I can handle… I think.”
“And it will smooth out a great deal more in another couple of months, when we move into the new building,” Carter pointed out.
“True.”
“If it helps at all, Nick, I’m always around if you want to pick my brain on anything,” Peabody offered. “I think I can at least tell you how not to do a thing!” They laughed.
“Good. Yeah, Win, that helps,” Ashton admitted. “More than you know. So… yeah, Lee, I guess I’m all right with it.”
“And that’s just what I was hoping to hear,” Carter said. “What I think would be good, if I might suggest, is to make Peabody the backup, the assistant lead, if that’s all right with you both. That way, Nick – well, we all know that being a new parent takes it out of you, and there’s times you’re going to need to stay home with the baby, even with child-care…”
“That’s really true,” Ashton agreed. “I sort of wanted to take some parental leave after the baby is born, but there hasn’t really been any way…”
“I’d be glad to help out that way,” Peabody agreed. “And for that matter, so would Pete Stone.”
“True,” Ashton confirmed. “Backup to the backup, maybe. Or dual backups, sorta.”
“Excellent,” Carter decreed. “I like that even better. You put in for that parental leave, Nick. I’ll put out the official word tomorrow on all of this, at the same time I announce the revamp for the regs on who can run what, when. I’ll probably want to ping Consul Saaret, if not the Emperor, but it’s only a courtesy; I think it needs doing, and doing immediately. And I intend to rewrite those regs, personally, before I leave today.” He nodded at Peabody. “My compliments, Winston, if I may be so familiar. You are indeed a man of honor, and it shows.”
“Thank you, sir, and I’d be very pleased to have you call me Winston, or Win, as my friends do, on a regular basis,” Peabody said, shooting an aside smile at Ashton, “though I know that probably needs to be an off-duty designation. In all honesty, I don’t understand any longer how I managed to get along as well as I did under the old regime. Even with the various conspiracies, this is so much easier!”
“Well, then, Win,” Carter said with a smile of his own, “when we’re off-duty or otherwise out of sight, my friends call me Lee.”
“Thank you, Lee.”
“Nick, are you doing okay after Cally’s little debacle yesterday?” Carter asked. “Do you need to take today off and spend some time with her at home? Is she okay?”
“No, sir, I’m okay this morning, and today she’s cool as the proverbial cucumber… though she did cry for a little while last night,” Ashton said, shaking his head with a wry grin. “The female of the species is, arguably, deadlier than the male.”
“It sure seems like it sometimes,” Carter agreed with a chuckle. “Especially with our females.”
The three men laughed.
Upgrades
The next morning, about mid-morning, Director Carter called a meeting of the Investigative division. Once everyone was in the briefing room, he tapped Ashton, Peabody, and Stone on his way down the aisle, and gestured them to the front of the room with him, pointing to his right; they rowed up there and stood quietly. Carter stepped to the podium.
“All right,” he said. “We have a few matters of business in the division, and I felt it behooved me to call a little meeting to tell you about them.”
Curious, slightly uncertain murmurs went around the room.
“Now, now,” he said with a little smile, holding up both hands. “Hear me out.
“First off, there’s a little matter of some promotions. As you may or may not know, Winston Peabody was promoted to Investigator Level 3 some months back, after r
isking his own life to infiltrate the ‘oldies’ conspiracy and bring us back intelligence information on their activities. This kept me and Detective Ashton, here, alive, along with our wives, who are detectives for ICPD.”
Polite applause went around the room.
“Now, I know that his background may make some of you uncomfortable, but Ashton, here, and myself have been very pleased with his performance and his trustworthiness. I think it is safe to say that you can trust him as much as you would us. And I do not make that statement lightly.”
The applause grew more pronounced.
“So today I would like to announce that Mr. Peabody has officially been promoted to Detective, Level 1, as of yesterday,” Carter announced.
The room clapped enthusiastically, and a few whoops and calls of congratulations went up. Then suddenly, it all stopped, as the possible ramifications hit them. The room grew dead quiet.
“Oh, I’m not done,” Carter said with a mischievous grin. “Because Detective Ashton, who has been showing some excellent work, not only in investigation, but in leadership, is coming up soon on time in grade, and I’ve made the decision to move that up a bit. As of yesterday, he was promoted to Detective, Level 2.”
Thunderous applause rattled the room.
“And no, it’s not time for Mr. Stone to be promoted quite yet, though it’s closer than he thinks, because he’s been doing good work as well,” Carter said, “but he’s up here for a reason, too, and you’ll all see in a moment. Because the next announcement I have to make is that it was recently called to my attention that some of our regulations are outdated, despite a recent overhauling in the light of the new org chart. Specifically, we have had an issue with the regulations pertaining to the requirements for placing an officer into a division or branch lead. The regulations are written far too inflexibly for the circumstances in which we have found ourselves, and that has proven to extend down to at least the sector level, as Detective Ashton could tell you from firsthand experience.
“So I spent a good deal of time last night, working with Consul Saaret and his excellent advisor, the Lady Empress Amanda, on updating those regulations, and those updates were formally approved this morning, by both of those worthies...and His Majesty himself. We now have new regulations governing who may be placed in charge of a division or branch, and that information will be going out to all divisions at the end of this meeting. In fact, we’ve decided that the entire body of regulations needs reviewing, revising, and drastically cutting, and we’ll start that next week… though probably not with the Consul and the Empress involved.”
Carter paused, and a hand went up.
“Yes, Ms. Thomas?”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand the regulations changes, sir. What were they like, and what do they say now?”
“All right, let me use the Investigations division as an example. Under the old regime, to run the Investigations branch – which included several other groups, such as Forensics and Crime Scene and Evidence, so it was indeed more like our Field branch, sort of – you had to be at least a major. To run ‘just’ a division, such as Forensics, you had to be at least a captain.” He paused, while they all took that in. “Now, when the Emperor wiped out the previous regime – save for a few of our more trustworthy sorts,” he glanced at Peabody and smiled, “it left us in a bit of a bind. We ended up making everyone prove him-or herself, and busting those who had worked in that old regime down several grades, just to be sure. The equivalent of the ranks in the old regime would mean that the Investigations division would need to be run by, at a minimum, an Inspector, Level 1. And a branch would need at least an Inspector Level 2, if not Level 3.”
“But we didn’t have any of those,” Johnson Burke observed. “And we still don’t.”
“Exactly. So what we have done is we have removed hard rank or level from the requirements in the regs,” Carter continued. “Now it reads, ‘The position may be filled by the highest level candidate available with adequate and sufficient experience, at the time the position becomes open or otherwise available.’”
“So what does that mean for us now?” Jim Carson wondered.
“It means, my friends, that ‘Ashton’s Gang’ is going to be run by Dominick Ashton, from now on until he gets tired of the job,” Carter said with a grin. “And for the time being, he is also the Field branch lead – and that could end up being a permanent assignment, too, given we’re still short of personnel, and likely will continue to be for the next few years. He will be supported by Winston Peabody as his assistant and backup, and by Peter Stone as what we might call the ‘backup to the backup.’ Effectively we have a partnership backup, if you will. Which is why, Mr. Stone, you are up here with us,” he said, turning to the trio on his right. “Gentlemen, are you good with this?”
All three nodded, and said, “Yes, sir,” in near-unison.
“So,” Carter said, grin growing wider, “how does it feel, ladies and gentlemen, to truly be ‘Ashton’s Gang’?”
The room erupted in a raucous roar of delight. Papers and styluses got thrown in the air, and the atmosphere was one of general celebration for long minutes.
Peabody leaned over to Ashton and murmured, “And that’s why you have to be the division lead, Nick. You’re loved by these people – by us – in a way I’m still learning to appreciate. Thank you for the chance. On so many levels.”
“What he said,” Stone agreed, chiming in.
“Amen,” Carter pronounced benediction, much to their surprise; they hadn’t realized he was listening, or could even hear, given the racket going on in the room. “Oh come on, guys! I’m not as young as I used to be, but I’m not blind, and I’m not deaf. Now you three go handle ‘Nick’s Gang,’ for the latest cases – don’t forget to stay on their asses about packing for the move – and we’ll meet at the Laughing Cat tonight to celebrate. I’ll ping Maia and she and Cally can join us. Peabody, don’t forget to invite your wife, and Stone, do you have a girlfriend, boyfriend, or significant other?”
“I do, sir. Mary and I have been together for several years now.”
“Bring her. It’s time we unwound a little together, for a change.”
Two months later, and at long last, the new building was ready for IPD Headquarters personnel to move into it.
The contracted moving company arrived and began loading the equipment, documentation, and furniture from the rental building as the IPD staff packed it. By the end of the day, the rented building out of which they’d operated since the Emperor reconstituted the IPD Headquarters was empty, and the custodial crew was called in to clean it one last time.
Carter notified ICPD Chief Brigadier General Harold Quan that IPD would be ‘down’ in the Imperial City for a few hours during the move, and Quan told him that the ICPD would hold the fort as the two men had planned.
The next morning, everyone showed up in the spanking brand-new building, ready to help the movers determine where everything went, and unpack in preparation for resuming work.
Changes
The IPD’s New Headquarters building had a total of seventeen floors, both above and below ground. The top two of the three sub-basements comprised the Imperial City’s principal morgue; the bottom sub-basement was the lockup and interrogation area – one of New Headquarters’ two lie detector chairs was located there. A single elevator reached it from the ground level, and that was coded both in VR and biometrics to a small and select group of officers.
The standard basement was Police Medical, comprising an ER-level infirmary, a couple of operating suites, and two ICU-style rooms, as well as around ten standard hospital rooms. There was also a tiny ambulance hangar, with a ramp leading up to the arcade level.
The first floor – the arcade level – was comprised of Reception and the Oath Ceremonial Room; the other lie detector chair was here, and the room was decorated to look exceedingly distinguished. It also had a small area of raked seating for any guests the new officer might wish to
observe his or her swearing-in ceremony. The back of the floor held the long-term Storage facility.
The second floor was Dispatch, along with the computer records and hardware required to make it work for such a huge metroplex as the Imperial City. The next two floors housed Accounting, including Payroll and Procurement. Procurement was also responsible for maintaining the storage area on the arcade level. The fifth floor housed what was still called the ‘Evidence Room’ despite its size, and all of the archiving required for it. The sixth floor housed Facility Maintenance, and the seventh was the Equipment Maintenance Division and Arsenal, and was heavily reinforced on all six sides. These seven floors comprised the Administration branch of IPD New Headquarters.
The eighth floor housed one of the special teams, the emergency response team, called in for especially violent situations; this team had been completely gutted and replaced, as Gorecki had originally headed it, and it now would be used to combat the very sorts of people Gorecki’s goons had been. It had been decided to place that team close to the armory for speed of access, even if the other special teams were elsewhere.
The ninth floor consisted of what Ashton considered ‘odds and ends,’ things like a large auditorium, a gymnasium and locker rooms, a heavily-armored practice range, and several conference rooms.
The next three floors housed the ‘field officers,’ more commonly known as beat cops, with the division lead’s office on the middle of the three floors.
EMPIRE: Imperial Detective Page 22
