"High tech, my logic gate," Kowalski scoffed after telling the operator he wished to call New York, "I haven't had to put up with this kind of waiting since I was doing unofficial ops for Tim Jones."
"An' 'ey said 'walski was a genius." Rico concurred, "Ah say 'e jus' got lucky."
"It wasn't just luck," Kowalski countered, "There's benefits to this system – with manual control over the wires you can play a lot of tricks – but the wait's still… Rico, I've solved it…!"
"I'm sorry but the party you've been trying to reach is unavailable." The operator's voice interrupted Kowalski's moment of glory, "Would you like me to…"
"This may sound a little forward of me, but when do you get off shift?" Kowalski asked suddenly.
"Listen Mr…" came the rebuttal.
"I could have phrased that better," Kowalski tried to backtrack, "but it's for a case I'm working on, really…" Click. Kowalski turned around to see Rico doing little to disguise his laughter.
"Stymied b' a dame," he managed to form the words through his laughter, "Th' grea' detective."
"If I can work out how Van Dorn escaped a locked room surrounded by cops I can work out when she gets off shift," Kowalski replied, defending his pride. That didn't stifle Rico's giggling, though.
"So you were connecting calls for the entire duration of the robbery?" Kowalski questioned, "Ms…"
"Helga," the surly red head who's pale pallor testified to the fact she didn't see the sun much from her basement job replied, "Helga Bluestone. And yeah, I was."
"What was your relationship with the suspe… Agent Van Dorn, Miss Bluestone?"
"Johnny never did anything wrong!" She snapped, flushing slightly, "And you aren't getting anything out of me that would incriminate him!"
"I didn't realize you'd see him much," the investigator questioned. His eyes locked on the golden watch that encircled her wrist, "Nice little trinket. How long did it take you to save for it?" Around 40 years if he'd calculated her salary and cost of living accurately.
"A close friend gave it to me." She replied covering the watch hurriedly with her hand.
"Nice friend. And your relationship with Agent Van Dorn?"
"The most I've ever talked to him is when he places long distance calls," the woman replied reproachfully. But Kowalski wasn't falling for her dumb act. Her statements sounded rushed and emotional, but there were pauses between them and Kowalski could see her eyes glittering with intelligence, something only another person of a superior IQ like his could notice. There was something about the ease with which she thought he was fooling him that made it clear she'd fooled a lot of people with her act as she slowly manipulated them towards her goals, "Everyone I know 'll swear to that and he's been going steady with that Kitka tramp for years! He's just got a reputation as a good guy, that's all."
"You don't seem to think much of this Kitka."
"I've heard a couple of conversations, and she doesn't treat him right." She sniffed, realizing her mistake and cleverly backing away. Or was it a mistake? What was it she was trying to cover up? Suddenly the pieces clicked together in Kowalski's mind. What was it she was doing when he'd entered? Removing her hand from the tea pot. Odd thing for a girl to be doing: fishing around in an empty tea pot.
"Oh, so you listen to his personal conversations?" Kowalski asked. He'd string her out a little longer while he tried to think of a suitably dramatic way to expose her, "Have you listened to any of the more recent ones?"
"No." She was starting to feel safe in her little alibi. Now the time had come to send it all crashing down.
"Miss Bluestone, the game is over, you lose," Kowalski spoke. Bluestone frowned like a person who didn't quite understand the situation but he figured she was panicking inside, "You've been quite desperate to have me come to the conclusion that you and Van Dorn were closer than the average telephone operator and field agent as well as that he gave you the watch. I probably would have brushed your melodramatic story aside if it hadn't been for that watch."
He waited for Bluestone to protest – his favourite part of unmasking suspects – but she said nothing. She probably knew it wouldn't do her any good, "When I first entered the room you were fishing about in the empty tea pot. I have a feeling if I looked in there I'd find a couple of other valuable trinkets similar to your watch you'd dropped in there. Obviously, you didn't have time before I walked in to conceal everything so you had to convince me that the watch, the necklace and the brooch were presents from Van Dorn, which would also cover up your regular conversations with him," that was guesswork, but the girl's curious expression confirmed it as true, "In reality those were presents you'd bought yourself from the money he paid you as I would have found out if I'd become suspicious and investigated.
"I don't think it was until quite recently you connected the dots between Van Dorn's 'little favour' and the robbery. He probably figured you never would. Well, let me add to what you've been an accomplice to: in the early hours of the morning a man named…"
"Lloyd Parker was murdered in Marlene Adler's office," Bluestone finished for him, "I knew, I listen to a lot of conversations which is what you were going to trap me on if I'd denied knowledge of it." She was good.
"Now I'm pretty certain of what Van Dorn asked you to do, but explain it to my friend here and I'll check myself on it." Kowalski ordered and without resentment or constant attempts to convince him that she was a victim of circumstance Bluestone calmly complied. She walked back to her workplace, removing her bracelet and earrings from the teapot.
"I assume you'll want both a signed statement of this and you'll want me to explain it to your boss," she spoke. Spot on, "It'll save time if I call him and your friend takes down the statement based on what I say now so I only have to explain it once." Kowalski nodded and she placed the call to New York with the cool efficiency that was the real her, "Alright, it was pretty simple, the money was more for me to keep my mouth shut," She explained, "My instructions were that when a call from England came in instead of connecting the party with the office I was to connect the line to an outside number."
"What did that do?" Skipper's crackly voice in New York asked.
"It means your tracking device was fooled because the call did go to Washington; I stalled long enough while I was connecting it for the tracer to tell you Washington before I connected you to New York."
"So Van Dorn talked to me while he was photographing documents." Skipper concluded, getting an arrogantly exasperated sigh from Bluestone.
"Did you take down the number you were supposed to connect…?" Kowalski began to ask, but the telephone operator was already scribbling a number on a piece of paper.
"It was an unlisted New York number," She replied reading the number aloud for Rico's benefit before handing the piece of paper to Kowalski, "I did a little poking around in Van Dorn's address book and the number went to an office in the Consolidated Amalgamated Building, and I don't need to say whose office."
"Wha' the 'umber again?" Rico asked, looking up from his notepad.
"Miss Bluestone?" Kowalski prompted.
"'s on the piece of paper." She replied, an odd kind of half smile flashing on her face. As Kowalski unfolded it he saw why.
"There's two numbers on this."
"I know one of them's mine," She replied, "You know, you're the first guy who didn't fall for my act."
"There's no doubt he's guilty, sir," Skipper informed his boss who was looking back at him with a mixture of shock and thoughtfulness. The whole plot from the faked phone call, to the unused escape route, to the confession was a lot to digest.
"You've known all this for some time." Rockgut stated, "that's why you wanted to search the office, you were after motive. I'm guessing you didn't find it." his frown deepened, "I wanna know why you didn't tell me."
"I wanted it kept as quiet as possible." Skipper replied. Rockgut had apparently picked up on what could be inferred from this statement, and Skipper knew he was going to have to get his mind off it fast, "The point is, what can we do about it? We don't know where he's got the files and we probably never will. I've had Kowalski on this for the last thirty six hours and he seems to be stuck."
"We wait a couple of weeks, claim there's been a structural fault or we can bring one of his enemies back from the dead and claim we need to move him for his own protection. Meanwhile, we can find out who kidnapped Tim Jones."
"But we don't have weeks!" Skipper pleaded, "I'm a specialty on insane geniuses – I was trained to become one – and when they've got their master plan you don't have weeks."
"Well what do you suggest we do cupcake?" Rockgut snapped in reply, making it clear he wasn't particularly interested in the murder case and didn't think Skipper should be now he was cleared. But Skipper's gut said it wasn't just an ordinary agent going rogue and stealing plans for Blowhole or something and his gut was something he listened to, "I guess we can ignore the parking ticket; make him think he's really gonna be charged with murder. Then when he tries to escape we shoot him down."
"He'll be in the next state before you realize he's gone." Skipper muttered. Rockgut stood up from his desk, throwing his hands up in a dramatic gesture.
"You seem to have a hell of a lot of reasons why we can't do something, but nothing we can do," his superior exclaimed, "I guess Van Dorn'll keep for twenty four hours, I'm gonna sleep on it." And like that he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Well, that could have been handled better. Skipper thought, only stopping himself short from voicing it out loud. He leaned back in his chair opposite the desk, his hand clawing into the arm rest and he allowed himself to express his frustration in a stream of curses in Latin and Sanskrit. When he sat back up again he noticed another agent was staring in through the window probably wondering whether he was speaking Martian. He stood up and made for the door giving enough of a pretence of leaving and locking up to convince the random agent to continue on his way before re-entering the office, turning off the lights and locking the door behind him so he wouldn't get anymore peeping toms. He didn't mind the dark.
He had the method down pat. The problem was still the motive. If he knew that he could thwart the renegade agent's plan and buy himself some more thinking time. It would satisfy his own burning curiosity too.
A twist in Skipper's uncanny gut made him jump to his feet, gun pointed at a dark corner of the room. At first he thought it was just a run of the mill attack of paranoia and was about to return his weapon to his pocket when he heard the sound of footsteps and barely a second later the familiar silhouette slowly appeared out of the darkness.
"Sorry if I startled you, Skipper, it's become a bit of a habit," the warm Chicago accented voice spoke as genial as ever, "Took me weeks to work out how Kowalski did it, but you have no idea how many confessions I've gotten scaring the living daylights out of crooks by appearing out of the darkness behind them." Van Dorn was as cool and collected as ever in the same way as his tone was no different than when Skipper had seen him as a kind of possible mentor, "You're good, working out how I did it, but then you were trained by the best."
"It's no good if you plan to kill me," Skipper replied, recovering from his surprise though a new fear gripped him. Skipper knew if Van Dorn had been blindly angry at him he would have had a chance, but odds were if he'd been standing there the whole time saying nothing he already had a fool proof plan – maybe even one of Kowalski's – on how he was going to kill him, "Rockgut and the team know everything I know."
"Yeah, and you're pointing a gun at me," Van Dorn concurred with that kind of half joking tone that made him a good conversationalist. That had made Skipper believe his every word, "I wouldn't get too far."
"It's not loaded." Skipper countered.
"Why'd you tell me something I could use to my advantage?"
"You already knew. I'm guessing you picked my pocket while I was talking to Agent what's-his-name," Skipper replied. As of his unsuccessful fight with Kowalski he knew what a gun missing its clip felt like. Skipper knew he probably had one chance: he was going to have to try to take Van Dorn. He was in a locked room – Van Dorn had probably taken the key along with the clip – with no weapon and someone who obviously had a plan. Well, if Skipper had been playing the genius detective maybe his opponent wouldn't expect him to simply return to his favourite way of solving problems: full frontal assault.
"I know it looks bad, and I'm not going to deny any of what I did," The agent continued in that understanding tone that had made Skipper tell him a lot of things he wouldn't tell his oldest friend, "but would you just hear me out first?" Skipper eyed him cagily before replying:
"Alright. Talk." He replaced the gun in his pocket and returned to his seat as if he completely believed him.
"Didn't expect that." Van Dorn commented, casually advancing as Skipper figured he would. Skipper didn't think he'd walked into the room unarmed, and he was going to pull exactly the same trick on Van Dorn he'd pulled the last time he'd walked unarmed into a room with someone who wanted to kill him: he'd take Van Dorn's own weapon, or at least his clip.
"You're playing whatever remaining trust I've got left for you," Yeah, he was playing into Skipper's hands, "Let's hear your story." Skipper's hand was already clasped around the barrel of his useless gun intending to strike out with it as a club as soon as Van Dorn came into range – he could see the killer was carefully protecting his pocket.
Suddenly Van Dorn came into range and Skipper threw himself forward just as he heard a click and he was jerked right back, a sharp pain in his wrist. He looked around to see his right hand securely handcuffed to the heavy oak desk that wouldn't be going anywhere. He looked up at Van Dorn, desperation in his eyes.
"Sorry, Skipper," the older agent spoke with an odd kind of pity in his expression, rounding the chair on which his captive was seated with slow deliberation until he was stood directly behind skipper, "but it's about time you got some justice."
Van Dorn's hand moved from his side in a blur and Skipper's form went limp. Little trick he'd picked up from a friend in New Orleans.
I think I've planted enough of Van Dorn's motive it can be worked out (I hope so, I try to make sure my plots can be solved). As 'Helga Bluestone' she's the Blue Hen.