It rained again. A giant front carrying rain hit the city and should transform in the next days to an intensive snow shower. That was strange because even in the colder months Petropolis was loved by the suns warm rays. That was a reason why Herbert Dumbrowski has transferred here 25 years ago. He liked the warm climate. Much better than this cold that was slowly crawling into his bones right now.
A terrible feeling. But luckily the chief had a cup of coffee in his hand which helped against the cold. He drank it black without sugar or milk. It came in handy that the coffee mug in his hand had a plastic cap so the rain couldn´t fall into the coffee. The chief really forgot his umbrella. Okay, to his defense it has to be said that the rain made a little break as he began his walk to work and that the chief thought that the long craved weather change would begin.
But now he walked in a soaked brown trenchcoat through the pouring rain.
Preoccupied with his coffee he almost hadn´t noticed the foot that came towards him from above.
"Oh my god watch out!" were the only things he could shout. It was pure luck that his almost killer had not only good ears but also fast reflexes.
The shoe was pulled up and the chief looked into a dog´s face. He somehow looked familiar but the chief couldn´t remember from where he knew him. Also the sunglasses he wore made it hard to recognize him.
"Oh sorry" meant the dog smiling. "I haven´t seen you."
The chief has heard this sentence so often that he could just answer it with a tired smile. "It´s okay. Nothing happened."
"Oh good. Maybe I can invite you to a cup of coffee just to excuse myself?"
The chief pointed his index finger on the little mug in his hand. "I think I´ve got enough. But would you do me a favor?"
"Sure."
"Watch your step."
"I´ll do." Laughed the dog and continued walking.
"Nice guy." Thought the chief as he entered the T.U.F.F. building. "It´s a shame that you meet such people less and less often. These young people are so rude. Someone should teach them manners. Someone…" he held the doorknob of his office door in his hand as a terrible thought came into his mind. "… damn, that´s exactly what my father once said… May he rest well in hell." Not often broke memories of his father in Herbert´s mind.
Seymour Dumbrowski, or how he always called him, the old bastard was a cruel and sadistic person. He tortured him and his sister with pointless punishments the whole day, just for his whole amusement. The chief always asked himself how an accountant could be so ambivalent, or if he could be so ambivalent.
That definitely had to do with some aggressions he brought from work back home, even if it was still confusing where someone with this job could get angry. His mother died after his birth so his Dad was alone with him and his sister. She moved out as soon as she was eighteen and left little Herbert and the old bastard alone.
Something he still couldn´t forgive his sister. The five years after she left were terrible for him. Sometimes he wondered how his life had changed if she had taken him with her. He probably never launched his career at T.U.F.F., he probably never made such big mistakes.
After years of working with other agents and knowing their background stories he realized that a broken family was somehow an employment criterion. He had his father, Dudley also had something with his father and now of course with his mother now, Keswick´s parents never accepted what he did and Kitty… well, he didn´t know what Kitty brought her here.
Lost in these thoughts the chief read through a stack of files that an agent must have laid on his table as he was already at home. Definitely Rick, the young boy was more a pencil pusher than a real field agent but he tried. And it amused the chief how he tried. It was cute to watch him. He was so helpless sometimes.
A file struck his eye, the bank robbery. Maybe some new information about Scratch? The chief opened the cover of the file. In it lay just one photo. The corpse of a young girl, she was lying on a field somewhere near the city. Her arms were folded on her chest and someone laid two coins on her eyes. "To pay the ferryman." Mumbled the chief.
He saw this kind of work before. It was five years ago and he was called to Greek to reinforce the local T.U.F.F. agents there. A mysterious killer killed a few people. The agents believed it was a serial killer because of the missing connection between the victims.
Could it be that one of Scratch´s team or maybe himself is this killer? But that behavior would be odd for a killer because if Kitty´s report was true it was Dudley who shot this girl. Not one of these guys. The chief leaned back in his chair and took a sip on his coffee. So many questions but no answers.
His eyes wandered to the drawer of his desk. Beside his badge, a few bullets and an old coupon book there was this announcement. A letter for all T.U.F.F. agents that would inform them that he will retire. It was still not official but already completed. Only the line for his signature was still empty.
During the last weeks he thought a lot about quitting at T.U.F.F.. It was time for him to go, he was too old for this job and he didn´t want to continue. Someone new had to come and he knew who this person would be. Well, it would be a shame if Kitty didn´t get honored for being the best T.U.F.F. more than 12 times. She deserved it and the chief deserved to life the rest of his life in peace without getting annoyed by villains.
He would go fishing on this little lake near his house. Just sitting in a boat and enjoying the silence all around him. Being alone with his thoughts and maybe finally coming to terms with himself. But he hesitated to sign this paper. This job was everything he had. T.U.F.F. was curse and blessing for him at once.
He had some kind of weird family he really cared about but over the last 40 years this was also the only family he got. He never had the time to find a girl found a family and stuff like that. Also he had the suspicion that the same fate would happen to Kitty if he would pass the chief´s badge to her. He was afraid that she would end up here on this chair old and bitter like he was.
"Uhm… chief?" her voice suddenly startled him.
"Agent Katswell? Why haven´t you knocked."
"I did." She said defensive. "But you haven´t answered."
"Oh… Sorry." He must have been so deep in his thoughts that he overheard her knocking on the door. "What can I do for you Kitty?"
A bit surprised that the chief called her by her first name she waved a piece of paper. "A strange note from Keswick lay on my table. Come to the lab immediately it says."
The chief rummaged through the pile of files in front of him and found the same note.
"That sounds serious. We better go." The chief hopped onto Kitty´s head and they both went towards the lab. They met Dudley on their way who had the same note in his hand and an confused look on his face.
The three together stepped into the lab and became more perplex as they saw Keswick handcuffed to the radiator. Kitty and the chief rushed of course to him and tried to unchain him while Dudley just laughed. "Ha! Looks like some sex practice went wrong."
"Ah s..s..shut up asshole." Meant Keswick as Kitty and the chief detached him from the radiator.
"Pardon?" said Dudley and built himself up in front of the small Keswick.
"Oh, haven´t you h..h..heard me agent Puppy? I´ll r..r..repeat it for you. ASSHOLE!"
Dudley grabbed Keswick angrily by the collar and lifted him up. "How about a little beat up nerd? RIGHT HERE!"
Keswick stayed unimpressed by those threads replied just by whispering. "Oh, are you angry Mr. Bill Young?"
Like seeing a ghost Dudley let Keswick go and backed away two steps. "I..I.. don´t know what you mean."
"Really, Bill Young?" Keswick asked but this time so loud that the chief and Kitty could hear it.
"Bill Young?" They asked in unison.
"Yes. This man isn´t a..a..agent Puppy."
"Keswick, what are you talking about? This is Dudley." Said Kitty in disbelieve.
"No. That isn´t a..a..agent Puppy and I can prove it. I did a bit research and I was able to follow the trace of the real Dudley from P..P..Petropolis over Spain to Russia. I f..f..found a few credit card billings of him. He paid there for a hotel, a bagel and two coffee. I checked a few old camera r..r..recordings from that time, or what was left. I mean that´s seven years ago! It´s amazing that there are still recordings left."
"Come to the point." interrupted the chief.
"Okay okay. Anyway, there was a street camera r..r..recording from Dudley sitting with a guy in a café. I followed the two for a while u..u..using as many recordings as I could find. I lost them for a while but two weeks after this little meeting in the coffee I saw this man walking into a hospital, alone. Two days l..l..later Dudley walked out of it alone. To say that right away I checked all the entrances of the hospital. Dudley never entered it and the other man never left it. I began to wonder what h..h..happened there so I called the hospital that they should transmit all the files of this time to me. In this little period of time seven appendectomies, one heart t..t..transplantation and one plastic surgery took place." Keswick walked to a stack of files and showed them a photo which lay on top of it.
The photo showed the face of a dog on the left side with the word before under it. On the right sight was a picture of a swollen face that looked very similar to Dudley´s face. Under Dudley´s face the word after was written. For a second Kitty watched the photo confused until she understood.
"The surgery! Keswick do you mean that…"
"Exactly." Keswick turned to Dudley and pointed with his index finger at him. "This m..m..man isn´t agent Dudley Puppy. His name is Bill Young!"
Young suddenly began to laugh so hard that it was creepy and started to speak with a different voice. "That was really impressive Keswick, really. But how did you get my real name? And how did you even got the idea?"
"Just some more s..s..searching nothing more… And the idea that you´re not who you are came as I realized that the chameleon was gone for a while now. So I let you fill this papers, do you remember?"
"Oh, yes… I made a mistake right?" asked Young interested.
"Yes, your blood type. You wrote that you have A negative but the real Dudley had AB positive and…"
"So it´s true?" intervened Kitty finally shocked. "You´re not Dudley?"
"That´s true. My name is Agent Bill Young. NSA."
"What happened to the real Dudley then?"
Young´s smile turned into a frown and he sighed. "Agent Puppy died seven years ago in a fire in Moscow."
The message hit Kitty like a hammer but it explained so much. It explained why Dudley was such an asshole all the time, it explained why he not stayed in touch with them and why he never returned in the meantime. But even all these answers and the clarity they brought couldn´t take away the pain that arose in Kitty.
She got sick, she wasn´t able to stay in this room with this fraud anymore. She ran out of lab with no concrete direction. She just wanted to be as far away as possible from this madness. She left the chief and Keswick alone with agent Young in this room.
"But why this mascaraed?" the chief asked the NSA agent skeptically.
"I was to known in this whole criminal scene. I needed a new face and sadly Dudley didn´t need his old one anymore. And that helped me to get Scratch."
"So you somehow continue Dudley´s mission?"
"More than that, I´m avenging him." Again Young had this sad expression on his face. "It was Scratch who killed Dudley."
"What!?" Keswick and the chief asked in unison.
Young nodded approving. "Yes, and I´m sorry for my recent behavior. I just had a slight idea how to play this role. The Dudley I got to know was a bitter and sad person eaten up by anger and hate. It´s a shame that his life ended in this phase of sadness." He turned to the door and walked towards it saying.
"And how did you manage to imitate his voice so p..p..perfectly?" Keswick wanted to know.
"No trick behind that. I´m just very skilled in imitating voices. Anyway, if you still have questions, I´m on Mr. Puppy´s former desk."
The chief and Keswick were alone now in the lab and exchanged confused looks. "Do y..y..you trust him?" asked Keswick.
"Not further than I can throw him but his story sounds somehow plausible."
"I have the bad s..s..suspicion that I´ll find Dudley death certificate if I search a bit more."
"I feel that too… By the way, why have you been handcuffed to the radiator?"
"That was Scratch, this bastard caught me sniffing around in some of his stuff. He had left not long ago… You haven´t had the chance to catch him on your way here, have you?" in Keswick´s eyes hope and hate flashed up.
"No…" said the chief and realized something. He knew now where he had seen the dog who almost smashed him almost an hour ago. This smile. He had a conversation with Scratch and he survived.
-Ha! Have you seen that coming? No seriously, have you? Was it obvious or not? I´d really like to know, tell me in the reviews.-