EMPIRE: Imperial Police

by Stephanie Osborn

And I can probably use this to command a surveillance team, he thought, zooming in and out of the model by grabbing this or that storefront. I just need to set it up so their VR triggers their location in here, and I can follow their movements, and even tap their markers to communicate with ‘em. Huh. This is pretty cool.

  Ashton decided to take the newbies, by way of providing some on-the-job training, along with Timothy Jones to help him “wrangle,” as Jones put it…grinning as he did so. This meant his team consisted of relative rookie investigators John Smith, Hugo Weaver, Callista Ames, and Alan Compton.

  “Now, the first thing we need to do is to go undercover and see exactly where he’s hanging out,” Ashton noted. “Ray Murphy, a.k.a. ‘Droppoint,’ is a known pickpocket, but he’s good and he’s fast, so he’s hard to catch out. Which means that the reports we have in don’t have any hard locations – the victims only know where they discover they have a missing item, and sometimes that’s not until they get home. But he’s been at it this time for a couple of months, and not only are the locals starting to complain, he’s scored a couple of really expensive items, one of which was an heirloom bracelet from the wife of the university chancellor, so the beat cops – who are frustrated as hell – handed it off to us. The pressure’s on from higher-ups, guys, so we need this collar.”

  “What do you need us to do, Lieutenant Investigator?” Ames asked.

  “No, no, no,” Ashton said with a smile, holding up a hand. “We’re a team, here. There’s no formality required unless we’re in one of the chiefs’ offices, or a department briefing or something like that. I’m Nick, and this is Tim.” He indicated Jones.

  “Or you can call me ‘Wrangler,’” Jones noted with a smirk. They all laughed.

  “Um, okay,” a flushing Ames said with a slightly shy grin. “What do you need us to do, Nick?”

  “We’re going to all get into disguises and go scope out his activities in the arcade,” Ashton explained, even as Jones gave him a surreptitious elbow nudge, which he ignored. “Once we have a good feel for where he’s most likely to be, when, one or two of you are gonna become bait and see if we can’t get him to fall for it. It’s called a sting operation. Everybody good, so far?”

  A chorus of “uh-huh” came back to him.

  “Great. I brought in an expert in disguise to help us go undercover.” Ashton waved an invited bystander from the doorway; he was average in height, with a clean-shaven face and shaved head. “This is Detective Adrian Mott; he’s going to help us with this.”

  “Hi, guys,” Mott said, moving to stand beside Ashton. “Call me Adrian. The key to working undercover is to look nondescript, to look ordinary, not stand out. If you’re going to be undercover for a long time, you have to be your character, but for our purposes today, and for the next few days, we just want to make sure you don’t stand out...”

  While Mott worked with the rookie investigators, Jones was giving Ashton a good ribbing in the corner.

  “Man, she likes you,” he murmured. “She’s hardly taken her eyes off you the whole damn time. She likes you.”

  “I’m running this show,” Ashton pointed out. “Of course she’s watched me. She’s paying attention to the plan. There’s every indication she’s gonna be a good cop, if her academy record is any judge.”

  “C’mon, man. With all those blond streaks and that tan, never mind those golden-brown eyes of yours, you got the whole ‘golden god’ thing goin’ on. She all but drooled.”

  “Lay off. I do not, and she did not.”

  “Did too. Didn’t you see her blush and drop her eyes when you told her to call you Nick? Dude, she’s got a thing for you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We have jobs to do.”

  Exasperated, Jones eyed Ashton.

  “I’ve never seen you with anybody, man or woman, the whole time you’ve been with us, Nick. And that’s been – what? A couple of years now, man. Yet I’ve seen you eyeing that VR actress you think is hot, so you’re not, like, asexual or something. What gives?”

  “What gives,” Ashton told him, mildly irked, “is that my last girlfriend turned out to be the kowtowing, crooked-cop niece of the guy that runs IPD Headquarters, over in the south quadrant. And, near as I was able to tell, she was sicced onto me, rather than really being interested. She sure as hell didn’t waste any time hooking up with somebody else after I got moved over here – she’s on her third live-in since – nor yet try to contact me after my old apartment blew, to find out if I was okay. I’m just glad I found out before it got as far as one of us spendin’ the damn night. My old mentor told me, once I got old enough, ‘never stick it in crazy, son,’ and as far as I’m concerned, dirty cop is even worse than crazy. But I came close, before I found out who and what she really was. I was serious. She wasn’t.”

  “Oh. Shit. I...I’m sorry, Nick. I had no idea.”

  “Yeah, well. Now you do. So...”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll lay off. Sorry.”

  Soon the members of Ashton’s team were all dressed and made up as fairly ordinary pedestrian shoppers, neither poor nor rich, and their hair was covered by either caps or wigs, depending on the officer’s preference.

  “Okay, good,” Ashton declared, looking them over. “Good job. At a glance, I don’t think I’d recognize any of you without staring at you for a few seconds. And I know you! So we should be able to fool Droppoint, who’s never met any of you. Tim? Do you have the grid worked out based on what I gave you?”

  “Sure do, Nick,” Jones averred. “Can everybody join me in channel 227? I want to go over the areas of the arcade each person is responsible for, as well as the store fronts...”

  They arrived at the arcade by ones and twos, to avoid drawing attention to a group. Each investigator moved casually to his or her assigned area using the slidewalks, and began to “shop.”

  No sign was seen of Droppoint Murphy until mid-morning. Then he appeared in one corner of the arcade, not too far from the west archway to the people-movers. Compton spotted him first, and used VR to send a vocal alert.

  “He’s here, guys,” Compton notified the others. “Over by the dry cleaners.”

  “Right,” a disguised Ashton responded in kind, sitting by the central fountain and pretending to read in VR; in reality, he was keeping track of each member of his team in a special virtual control room he’d worked out – the entire room comprised that same three-dimensional space that modeled the arcade in miniature. He had spent some time in his off-duty evenings updating and enhancing it, and now it had the capability of tagging any given pedestrian in the arcade’s security system, which currently fed even more data into the control room. He identified which pedestrian was Droppoint, and reached out with his avatar to tag it. “There we go. I’m seeing him pop up on my display, here. Keep an eye on him, but don’t let him see you doing so. John, looks like you’re up next in his path; keep your eyes peeled for him.”

  “I see him, Nick.” Smith sounded calm.

  “Good. He’s probably moving to a particular location with lots of people; the busier the area, the more he can do without being noticed.”

  “That means there’s an ebb and flow to the crowds of shoppers in the arcade,” Ames mused.

  “Right, Cally. And remember that, guys – there’s a pattern, a flow, to every shopping arcade like this, and it pays to know what it is. He’s studied it already and worked it out, so we’re going to cheat: we’ll watch his actions to tell us what that is.”

  “Ooo, Nick, nice call,” Jones said. “I hadn’t thought of doing that before.”

  “I had a detective mentor as a kid,” Ashton explained. “My homeworld didn’t have a lot of violent crime, but there were a reasonable number of pickpockets in the cities. That – and a chance to run the show and see how I do – is why I got the lead on this assignment.”

  “Gotcha,” Jones said. “That’s great. No wonder you got fast-tracked.”

  “But why did he come in the west entrance?” Ames wondered
. “I thought his dossier said he lived in Imperial Park South.”

  “He does,” Ashton explained. “But the majority of people coming to this arcade will be coming in from the residence structures in Imperial Park West. So he goes around and joins them by coming in the west entrance so he doesn’t stand out.”

  “Ohh, that makes sense. Ah! Here he comes my way,” Ames said, as she walked between adjacent storefronts. “Oh, but he’s going right past. Hugo, heads up!”

  “I got it,” Weaver noted. “I think I’m gonna go over to the food cart and get a snack and a drink. I can wander around and window-shop, and still look busy, while I keep an eye on him.”

  “Good plan, Hugo,” Ashton agreed. “Everybody, just relax. We’re gonna be here for a while. If you actually see him do something, well and good, but from what I read in this guy’s dossier, you probably won’t, ‘cause he’s damn good at what he does. Right now, we’re just here to get a feel for his movements, so we’ll know where to set up our sting. Tomorrow, we’ll rotate through the arcade areas, so he never sees the same face in the same area. Not to mention, you’ll have different clothes and hair each day...”

  After several days of this, they had a good feel for Droppoint Murphy’s pattern. He arrived around ten in the morning each day on the west people-mover cars – which, as Ashton had pointed out the first day, comprised the main entrance from the residential district in the area – after which Murphy made his way to the far side of the arcade, stayed there until around noon, then meandered over to the higher-end restaurants off the food court, usually picking up a small, inexpensive wrap to eat himself, from the same food cart that Weaver had patronized. When the lunch rush passed, he moved back toward the west arcade entrance, where he’d be sure to catch all of the departing shoppers. His preference seemed to be the south side, Ashton noted, since most of the jewelry stores were there, also.

  “...So based on all that, here’s what we’re gonna do,” Ashton said the next morning, as he briefed his little team. “Cally, are you up for playing target?”

  “Sure am, Nick!” she decreed with a cheerful grin.

  She was a petite little honey blonde, adorably cute at times, very pretty without being a drop-dead beauty, spunky and strong despite her small stature, and definitely not someone to underestimate in any sense – not only did she take down most of her classmates in the sparring-combat class at Academy, she’d accepted the instructor’s challenge and fought him to a stalemate. She also had more than her fair share of gray matter, so she was taking to investigative work like jam to bread. Ashton had to admit, if he hadn’t been soured on relationships by Tabby, he might consider asking her out. Fortunately the whole ‘fraternization’ thing went out in police work a long time ago, he thought. As long as we’re aboveboard about it, and neither of us plays faves, nobody would blink twice. But that’s a moot point. He got his train of thought back on track.

  “Good. I brought Adrian back in to turn you into a hoity-toity rich chick,” Ashton said with a grin of his own. “Complete with some nice shiny baubles and everything.”

  “Ooo, sounds like fun,” she decreed, grin growing wider. “Tell me more.”

  “The rest of the team is going to go in during lunch, while he’s busy, and set up in the hiding places we discussed yesterday after we finished the surveillance,” Ashton explained. “Cally is gonna come in after lunch, in her disguise as Ms. Pampered Rich-Priss, and Cally, you’re gonna hit up all the high-end stores, starting with Bianchi’s first.”

  “You mean the big, top-end jewelry store?”

  “Exactly. Colonel Peterson has already worked something out with them for us, at my suggestion, and they have a set of excellent simulated diamonds for you to ‘buy’ and wear – ring, earrings, necklace, maybe bracelet, I dunno – but all matching, and all looking really ritzy...but not. And you’re gonna put ‘em on and waltz around with ‘em, in and out of the clothing stores, where – since he doesn’t actually enter the stores – we also have some undercover cops waiting, disguised as shop clerks. They’ll have shopping bags for you, with junk in ‘em that will look like designer clothing and stuff, in case anybody gets a look. None of it is real; it’s some of the better knock-offs that our counterfeits division encountered and confiscated over the last, oh, year, maybe. So you’ll sashay in, spend twenty or thirty minutes there, waltz out with a bag. Go over to another, spend an hour, come out with two more bags. Back and forth. Try to make sure you get Murphy’s attention without seeming like you’re trying to.”

  “Got it,” Ames said, still cheerful and pleased about the assignment. Ashton promptly decided he’d found a kindred spirit.

  “Along about four in the afternoon,” he continued, “you’re gonna meander back toward the west entrance, but you’re gonna have slowed down a lot, even on the slidewalks. You’re tired; you’ve been shopping all afternoon, you’re dead on your feet. You’re gonna walk right past Droppoint nice and slow, without looking at him or seeming to even notice him, and if he doesn’t bite, I’ll be surprised.”

  “But Nick,” Compton asked, “if he’s that good, she might never feel him swipe the jewelry.”

  “Which is why it’s rigged,” Ashton said with a huge grin. “Bianchi’s installed what they call a ‘thumper’ on each piece. Murphy won’t know, but Cally will feel it. And as soon as he makes a grab, we bust him.”

  Everything went according to plan. Ashton, Jones, Smith, Weaver, and Compton all got into position – as themselves, this time – within no more than fifty feet of Murphy’s afternoon position during lunch, and were well hidden by the time he arrived over an hour later.

  Half an hour after that, Cally Ames arrived, haute couture and all, looking like she could be the young trophy wife of a Council member, and headed straight for Bianchi’s Jewelers as if she had an appointment – which, in fact, she did. Ashton zoomed in and watched from his VR surveillance room as Murphy’s eyes followed her into the jewelry store. She was inside some twenty minutes, then emerged into the arcade’s main thoroughfare, delightedly holding out her hand to watch the sparkle of the gemstone on it in the bright, full-spectrum lighting. Her ears, wrist, and throat also sparkled.

  Next came a designer dress shop, then a fur-and-leather store, then the highest-end department store in the arcade. Each time Ames emerged, she had more packages and bags in hand.

  This went on for fully three hours. As the afternoon wore on, Ames got slower and slower, appearing to tire. She went from a brisk walk on the slidewalks, to a slower walk, to finally standing and waiting for it to deposit her near where she wanted to go. Murphy began to watch her more closely, though the observation was surreptitious; if the investigative team hadn’t been keeping all eyes on him, they might not have noticed.

  As the clock on the jewelry store façade neared four, Ames and her packages started to amble toward the west entrance of the arcade. She appeared to be dragging pretty badly by this time; she stared at the slidewalk in front of her, walking very slowly and seeming almost in a daze. She then managed to stumble on her high heels – they were emphatically not “sensible shoes” – and thereby step off the slidewalk, appearing to almost fall, just as she got even with Murphy.

  Perfect, thought Ashton, pleased. Cally completely gets this.

  Murphy put out a hand and caught her before she fell, steadying her on her feet.

  “There you go, madam,” he said smoothly, his manner suave and persuasive. “Perhaps you should sit down soon, and rest.”

  “Perhaps I–” Ames began with a smile, then jerked back, dropping the shopping bags and drawing her concealed carry weapon in one move, revealing the fake-diamond bracelet sparkling in Murphy’s hand. “POLICE! You’re under arrest!”

  And Ashton and the rest of his team descended upon their quarry.

  It was while Ashton was handcuffing Droppoint Murphy and loading him into an arcade cart to take him up to street level and a waiting police transport that a certain off-duty IPD officer, on a
shopping run for her current live-in boyfriend, saw the bust going down. Tabby Koch stopped, hiding her startlement, and watched the bust along with several other pedestrians, trying to fade into the crowd.

  Then, as Ashton drove off with his perp, she pinged her uncle in VR.

  “Wait. Ashton was seen? Here? In Imperial City?” a disbelieving Chief George Stanier, head of the entire Imperial Police, asked General William Kershaw, head of the Imperial Police on Sintar.

  “Yes, George, he was. By my niece, who spent some time dating him and hoping to coax him into compliance, a couple of years back, if you will recall.”

  “Mm. So that’s definitive; she’d recognize him if they used to see each other. And that’s the kid that caused all the problems for Ron Thomas a few years back, too, right?”

  “The very same, George. We sent Stash’s people out after him, but missed, because apparently the kid really did leave Sintar. We even got security video at the spaceport of him saying goodbye to his parents and boarding a shuttle. I guess at some point, he came back to Sintar.”

  “Wait. Saying goodbye to his parents?” Stanier said, startled. “I thought the kid was from some podunk backwater planet… Flanders, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh,” Kershaw said, paling as he realized the error his subordinates had made…and that he had not caught. “Perhaps they moved with him, at least initially? And he’s only recently returned, but decided to work for ICPD instead?”

  “Or maybe we’ve been had, and that bastard Carter laughed at us all the way,” Stanier snarled.

  Kershaw dropped all pretense at familiarity.

  “What do you want to do, sir?”

  “See if you can get somebody on Ashton’s tail, find out what he’s doing now,” Stanier ordered. “He can still get us in dutch if he’s told anybody about the Sigil…which, thanks to that little muffed operation, we never did get our hands on. And send somebody to find Carter and take him out.”