by Dave Renol
“No, it shouldn’t concern anyone else, and if it does, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Then I’ll let it be… for now. Just give me a hand with this weird thief and we’ll call it even.”
“Fine,” he said, sounding a bit disgruntled. “We’ll do what we can.”
“Excellent… let’s sit down somewhere more comfortable and I’ll fill you in on all the gory details. This might take a while.”
I could tell he wasn’t too thrilled about it, but he would do what was asked of him. I was a pretty fair judge of character, and I knew he was a man of his word. He might not be able to figure it out either, but I knew he would try; he was hooked.
Chapter 8
Mark: Unexpected Complications
“… and then he pulled the ‘you owe me one’ card and dumped it in our laps,” I said, filling Linda in on what she missed while she was out.
“I knew it was coming eventually,” she replied.
“Yeah, but to be honest, I figured Maria would’ve been the first one to call in a favor… and probably several times as well.”
“I’m sure that’ll be coming eventually, but let’s not add too much to our current job list. The sheriff might have shanghaied our services, but our number one priority is still our node problem.”
“I didn’t go into details with him, but I told him we had a problem of our own that was time-sensitive.”
A knock at the door interrupted us, causing Linda to jump up and race to answer it. I looked out the window and saw it was the delivery truck finally getting here with Carl’s package. Linda had been checking the tracking info twice daily, impatient for it to arrive.
“Hey Carl,” I shouted. “It looks like your package is here.”
“Coming,” he answered from the back deck where he was working on a node fragment.
I opened up the garage door and went to help the delivery driver unload it. As we picked it up from the back of the truck, I was surprised at how heavy it was for its size. The poor girl was struggling quite a bit with it, so I gave her end a little mental lift to help her out as we carried it over to my workbench.
Carl arrived just in time to take care of the paperwork, leaving Linda and I to start tearing it open. He sure wasn’t messing around when he packaged it up; he used packing tape, duct tape, plastic wrap, and rope to make sure it wasn’t going to fall apart during shipment.
Altogether, it took us over half an hour to get the ancient codex out of the unit. Even though it had probably been handled by dozens of generations of Mayan priests, Linda made us all put on rubber gloves before touching it.
When Linda finally picked it up, she held it out in front of her with a look of awe on her face. “This is absolutely incredible. It’s a completely intact Mayan text that nobody outside their secret society has ever seen before.”
“You like?” Carl asked.
“I’m happy, happy, happy!” she replied, solemnly carrying it inside to the office like she was carrying a sacred relic in a religious procession.
She carefully laid it out on the paper and foam covered table waiting for it before reverently opening the covering. It looked like some sort of handmade paper that was coated, painted, and folded accordion style.
I was amazed the pages could actually still turn since they didn’t exactly look like your typical modern bound book. It was impressive that it hadn’t actually disintegrated over the years, since several of the ‘modern’ books in my library had started to fall apart after a mere decade or so.
Even though we had set up an additional table in the office, it was clear we wouldn’t be able to lay the entire thing out at once. As Linda got to some of the later sections it also became obvious that there was some damage to the text, but it gave me an idea.
“Let’s digitize the thing,” I said, breaking the silence that had prevailed since we started flipping through it.
“Huh,” Linda said, coming up for air.
“Let’s take some high resolution pictures of the thing and piece it together in the computer. With some of the filters we have we might be able to fix some of the problem areas, plus we won’t have to handle it as much so we won’t cause any new damage.”
“Good idea,” she said after a moment. “I can make translation notes right on each page that way.”
“So you can translate it then?” Carl queried.
“Maybe. Even if I had an ‘Ancient Mayan for Dummies’ handbook, it won’t be quick and easy. It’s fairly long, but this codex only has writing on one side. That’s a little odd, but will simplify things.”
“Just remember we’ve got a time limit. I think Mark and I should keep working with the node while you work on translating the thing.”
“Trust me… I’m painfully aware of our time limit, but if we want really good images we should get a better digital camera than the ones in our phones.”
“I have to head to town to take a look at some surveillance footage with the sheriff, so I can pick something up,” I said, happy to have a plan we could act on.
“I’ll go with you,” Carl said. “I’ll shop around for a camera while you appease Sheriff Baker.”
“Cool, that’ll save some time. Hopefully this thief thing won’t take too long, but if it does, every minute we can save will be to our advantage.”
“Let’s do it. Call me if you think of anything else we need,” I said to Linda.
“Um hum,” she replied, not even looking up from the manuscript.
I was smiling all the way to town. Linda was like a kid with a new toy and even without clairvoyance I knew she would be ‘playing’ with it all day and wouldn’t even miss me.
***
“There!” the sheriff said, pointing to the frozen corner of the video. “If that’s not a foot in the top corner, then I’ll eat my hat.”
It was a little dark and blurry, but I had to agree with him. “Ok, we either have someone swinging from the rafters, or else they’re flying.”
“Not that a single blurry foot helps us much in identifying the perp, but at least we know we’re on the right track.”
“This kind of work isn’t exactly my specialty, but I think you’ll need to look at the footage from before the break-in. If I was a thief, then I would be mighty careful about being caught on tape once I started, but it’s possible they might be seen while looking the place over.”
“Not a bad idea,” he agreed, going back to the beginning of the video.
It took longer than I was hoping, but we eventually got an image that looked somewhat hopeful. It wasn’t anything we could use for positive identification, but it was our first clue.
“I can’t take the time to watch the rest of the videos with you, but let me know if you find anything we can use. I’ll have a powwow with Linda and Carl and see if we can come with some ideas to help.”
“I’ll keep you posted on any new developments,” he said, turning back to the videos.
As I stepped out of the station I pulled out my phone to see how Carl was doing, but before I could call him, I heard a horn honk from off to my left. Carl was in his truck, waiting for me out of sight from the station. I guess he didn’t want to attract too much attention from the sheriff.
I gave him a thumbs-up and headed to my truck. My duty to the sheriff discharged, it was time to head home and get started on the real work of the day.
***
My neck and arms were stiff and sore by the time we finished taking our pictures of the entire codex. Linda made us take close to a thousand pictures of the thing in order to make sure we had the best possible image of every square inch.
Some areas didn’t turn out so hot, but Carl had an idea of using different kinds of lighting to help bring out the faded and damaged sections. We would go over those areas of the manuscript tomorrow after picking up the lights, but for now, I needed a good long soak in our newly commissioned hot tub.
It was with great relief that I slid into the hot water and sank down unti
l one of the jets was beating on the back of my neck. It felt so good that I was completely lost in the moment and didn’t even hear Carl until he plopped into the tub himself and handed me an ice cold beer.
“Thanks,” I said, taking a good long swig. “I needed that.”
“Soaking up hot water on the outside and cold beer on the inside in approximately equal amounts will cure whatever ails you,” he replied with a grin.
“I’ll take your word for it, but reserve judgment on the ratio; if I tried equal amounts, then I would have a whole new set of ailments tomorrow morning.”
“Just make sure you drink plenty of water so you don’t get dehydrated.”
“That’s an even better idea than the different lighting idea you had for the manuscript. By the way, how come you know so much about it?”
“Some parts of the prospector’s journal I took from the cave in the mountains were badly faded. I had to try a variety of different lights in order to make the whole thing legible. To make matters worse, he must have run out of iron gall ink halfway through, since the latter parts were written in blood.”
“In blood? Who’s blood?”
“I think it was animal blood, not his own or someone else’s. He was a hunter, so there was no shortage of animal blood available to him.”
“I’ll have to get the whole story from you some day.”
“It was quite the amazing tale and I think you’ll enjoy it, but transcribing it is on the back burner for now.”
“Mark it down as item number four hundred and eighty seven on our to-do list,” I said, chuckling.
“Sadly, you’re not too far off with that number. Speaking of our to-do list, I’m going to try playing with the node section here in the back yard while we’re relaxing.”
“While you’re taking the easy job of figuring out the node, I’ll tackle the harder problem of getting Linda to leave the codex.”
“Good luck with that. Lacking a herd of wild horses, about the only thing that’ll drag her away from it is if you use a little telekinesis and bring her out yourself.”
“Tempting, but I might not survive the aftermath. We have enough complications at the moment, so I think I’ll try persuasion first. If that fails, then I’ll try kinesis and blame it on you.”
“Give me an hour or so to relax and I’ll throw some steaks on the grill. Not even an ancient Mayan codex can compare to one of my medium rare morsels of awesomeness.”
“Tell me… have you ever heard the word ‘wager’?” I said, trying to keep a straight face.
“You’re on… loser does the dishes.”
With that I took another sip of beer and sunk back down into the tub. I tried sending Linda a couple of messages, but she was too engrossed to notice. It looked like I was in no danger of having to do dishes tonight.
Chapter 9
Claire: Disaster
“All units report,” I sent to my friends on lookout duty.
After getting the all clear from them, I slowly approached my next target. I was a little nervous about this one since it would be our largest heist yet, but my friends were all counting on me so I pressed forward.
It was that time of year when the shelter did their big food drive, and we got the idea to help stuff the pantry using the donation bags distributed throughout the community. Not only were we gonna lift a huge pile of canned goods, but we had to get them spread out over the whole valley tonight. It was a lot of work, but it seemed the best way to keep our ‘donations’ anonymous.
To make matters worse, I wouldn’t actually be inside to see what I was lifting, so I had to play it by feel and hope I was grabbing the good stuff. Not that it mattered much since Gladys and her cooks could make practically anything taste good, but there were some things none of us liked much, like lima beans or stewed spinach.
With one final look around, I pulled my cap lower over my face and pulled my hoodie up before stepping out of the trees and sprinting to the spot I picked for tonight’s work. Fifteen minutes later and I had a steady stream of cans floating back to the bushes where they were rapidly bagged and taken away.
I was concentrating hard on handling so many things that I forgot to keep updated from my lookouts and almost missed Billy’s frantic warning.
“Clear out! The cops are heading your way,” he frantically sent me.
We had planned for something like this happening eventually, so almost without thought I dropped everything I was lifting and flew into the trees. I barely made it in time, as the cop car turned the corner and began sweeping a floodlight around where I had been just moments before. The light hit me briefly, but it kept moving so I did too.
I didn’t have much time, so I sent the ‘scatter’ message to my friends and got moving myself. The trail of cans I had dropped would lead them straight to me and my packers, so I ignored the pile they hadn’t gotten to yet and lifted my friends up next to me instead. Flying three people was a lot harder than just me, but I managed to get us all away in time.
It was a full moon out tonight so I had lots of light to steer by; I kept flying all the way back to our flop, not wanting to take any chances after our close call. Once I was able to lower my friends to the ground I went back into the woods to the little spring that flowed cold and clear.
I hadn’t had to work so hard before, and it was with great relief that I came to ground and greedily sucked up handful after handful of the delicious water. Once I started feeling better again, I went to see what we managed to get before being interrupted.
Two half-full sacks were all we managed to get away with. That was fairly depressing since we were hoping for a dozen times as much. There were a total of six of us in our ‘merry band’ now, and the cans we managed to filch would barely be enough to feed us, with no extras for our big donation campaign.
I wasn’t sure how the cops got there so fast, but it must have been an alarm or camera I missed. Cursing my bad luck, I went out front to see if my lookouts were on the way back or if they got picked up by the cops.
I sat down on the curb and closed my eyes to help me focus before sending my mind out in search of my friends. It took a while to find them since they were still a ways off, but I eventually did, and was relieved that everyone had made it without getting caught.
I thought about sending them a message, but was too tired after so much effort in such a short amount of time. I went back inside and flopped down onto my blankets instead. I had about a half hour to recover before they got back, wanting some answers on what went wrong.
“I don’t know what happened,” I said, interrupting their barrage of questions. “I must have missed something when I cased the joint, but if I knew what it was then I wouldn’t have missed it, right?”
“Can’t you just wave your hand and figure it out with magic?” Billy asked.
“It don’t work that way, you stupid dummy,” Joey scornfully replied. “It ain’t magic from no fairytale and she has to use her brain just as much as her powers.”
“How the hell am I supposed to know how it works? It looks like magic to me.”
“Nobody asked the most important question yet,” Sue said, putting her hands up and interrupting their argument before it got too heated. “Did they manage to get a look at you?”
“I don’t think so. I got the warning a little late, but once I got it, I took off like a bat out of hell. If they saw anything, it was just a view of my backside.”
“Even that’s too close for comfort… even a glimpse will help them figure it out.”
“I doubt they got that good of a look, but so what if they did? They’ll still have to prove it and I can guarantee they won’t find any fingerprints or real evidence anywhere.”
“You’re probably right, but this whole thing makes me super nervous.”
“You know what it makes me?” Charlie said, around a mouthful of canned something-or-other. “Happy. I’ve got a full belly, dry feet, clothes without any holes, and friends around me. I may not be the
brightest guy around, but I got my head on straight about what’s important.”
“You’re not worried about all this hocus-pocus stuff? Or the cops?” she asked.
“Nope. I trust Claire not to turn me into a turnip or something with her magic, and what can the cops do to me? As far as they can prove, all I was doing was standing at a corner minding my own business.”
“Leave him alone, y’all,” I said. “He’s got it exactly right, and for what it’s worth, I get the clearest sounding thoughts from him out of everyone here.”
“Really?” Joey asked, suddenly intrigued. “Maybe he’s developing his own super powers.”
“I hope not,” he replied, sounding disgusted. “I’m happy to be the faithful sidekick. I don’t want no responsibility.”
“I don’t think you’re getting powers of your own, you just got a clear and uncluttered way of thinking about things. With everyone else, their minds are a big jumble of crap and each thought gets overridden with two others before they even finish the first one.”
“That sounds a lot like you just called all of us lookouts shitheads,” Billy said, sounding offended.
“No, not at all,” I laughed. “What I meant is that DC thinks fewer thoughts at once, and what he does think of, he thinks loud and clear. Even though he’s the strongest physically out of all of us, that’s the reason I kept him as a lookout rather than being a bagger tonight.”
“I was wondering about that,” Sam said. “He’s a lot stronger than I am, plus he can move through the woods easier. If you hadn’t given me that boost, I would be either caught or lost right now.”
“Nobody got caught and nobody is gonna get lost while I’m around. The only thing I’m worried about is that tonight was pretty much a disaster, and we might need to lie low for a while. What do y’all think of going to my little cave in the hills for a few weeks?”
“Do we have to?” Sue asked, sounding squeamish.
