Freudian Slip
Drake Mallard Junior and his adoptive daughter had disappeared from Agent Grizlykoff's surveillance radar with none other than Darkwing Duck's assistance. How his independent operative had done it without using a vehicle was fascinating. But in short there was no way to trace the prime suspect unless S.H.U.S.H. traced Darkwing Duck.
Director J Gander Hooter grinned in guilty pleasure for a moment with this mystery as he sat in his office. Before accepting the director position at the St Canard division of S.H.U.S.H. he'd been a detective himself, engaged in unravelling international intrigue. He missed that push, the urgency, and the hard core analysis. It was only for people like Doctor Sara Bellum and Darkwing Duck that allowed him to visit that world again.
Hooter was intrigued by this 'house of cards' as Grizlykoff had put it. Darkwing Duck was certainly convinced that Mallard wasn't guilty in order to have hidden him away like this. He never treated someone suspicious this way. What had Darkwing seen that Hooter had missed?
So a house of cards, whoever Drake Mallard was.
Hooter spread out the duplicate files across his table. The son's duplicate file was now three times thicker with surveillance reports and conversations since giving the original to Darkwing. Those conversations. Hooter picked up Drake Mallard Junior's wad of paper again and skimmed through it. The boy wasn't academic so he didn't have a lot of options open to him when it came to a career.
Young Drake Mallard was a security guard, plain and simple. Grizlykoff's description of this job was 'contract service' and the boy had taken on the job at Hamil Corp to help his existing income flow.
Well, now ... Hooter rethought. That sounded like a diversionary tactic! Actually, the whole thing sounded like too much of a coincidence. Had Mallard realised S.H.U.S.H. was looking at him already? Why would he need another job to deflect an inquiry?
"What does a job do?" Hooter asked the empty room. There was money. But there was also 'identity' in that equation. There were two questions that got asked. "Do you have a job? What do you do for a living?" Hooter then answered his question with the information on the table. "Contract service security guard." It sounded very odd when he said it out loud. Security guards were hired from security companies; there were no independent contractors per sec...
"Independent?" Hooter jumped up from his chair, clasping his hands to his beak. That word was very familiar to him since that was the term he used to have Darkwing Duck on S.H.U.S.H. payroll. Of course there were no independent contract security guards. On the other hand Darkwing Duck was on an independent contract with S.H.U.S.H. and while it was a massive downplay on his versatility and expertise to call Darkwing a 'guard', one could place him in the loose definition of 'security'...
Hooter sat down at his desk, taking this astonishing idea and playing with it. He handed Darkwing bearer cheques, so nobody could know the bank account name. Hooter wasn't about to trace bank accounts without a warrant and especially not on an innocent person, so he put that line of inquiry aside as a last resort. He looked down at the folders, putting father and son side by side, now comparing them both to Darkwing Duck.
After Grizlykoff's phone call just earlier, Hooter now knew that Senior was in the army for a brief time before he headed an insurgence on ethical grounds against his platoon leader Storkein Harris. The father had followed rules up to that point. Junior had had an obsession with rules. It was only about a month since the last time Darkwing Duck picked someone up for a parking metre violation.
Junior had disappeared straight after school. Quite possibly he'd gone overseas to study to be a crime fighter; Hooter knew Darkwing's eclectic range of skills could only be the result of years of training under different instructors from across the globe. Aerobatics, Quack Fu and base jumping were only to name a very few. So then Darkwing Duck made the scene and finally accepted the offer for a contract. It was only a short time later that Drake Mallard returned to St Canard and the first thing he'd done was adopt Gosalyn Waddlemire ...
"Oh." Hooter pulled out a picture of the ten year old and recalled her as the very same child whom Darkwing had rescued from Taurus Bulba. "All things considered this is rather too much of a coincidence."
Darkwing had been very stubborn against joining S.H.U.S.H. before meeting Gosalyn. If before he might be living on the interest off his inheritance, with a daughter in tow he no longer could. Why, he'd probably put all that was left of his inheritance into that house.
The intercom bleeped.
"Sir?"
"Yes, Terri?"
"I have a phone call on line ten for you from the mayor's office."
Next door from the courthouse was the police department. It was always bustling as Attorney Rex Euston found the station co-head at interview room three. "So, what's the big problem, Irv?" Euston raised an eyebrow.
"He's S.H.U.S.H., Rex."
"What difference does this make?"
"It means if we put this guy in the other inmates will eat him alive."
"If he's guilty he belongs-."
"Yeah, but he's S.H.U.S.H., Rex. This is serious. I don't want to put him in. Okay, sure if he really is, but if he's not guilty then it could unravel every case he's ever touched and that would be-."
"Alright! I hate it when you panic, Irving. I'll talk to him."
Euston twisted the knob on the observation room door and went in.
Attorney Rex Euston flicked on the recorder unit. "State your name for the record."
"Agent Vladimir Goudenov Grizlykoff." The bear said emptily.
"Do you know why you are in here?"
"I shot him through the heart." He answered in a lost voice.
"Who did you shoot?"
"Storkein Harris." Grizlykoff sighed. "Calisota Corps. 473rd infantry platoon leader."
"Can you explain to me why you did it?"
"He said he had killed him, and he would kill again; kill Darkwing Duck. He pull out his weapon. If he has killed, he would kill again, and he pull out his weapon as yes correct."
Euston frowned for a moment. The S.H.U.S.H. agent's English had clearly deteriorated from the emotional flaying he'd clearly suffered. If not that Grizlykoff's aim had met such a precise target, Euston would have been happy to go for manslaughter at this point. "Are you saying Storkein Harris was going to kill Darkwing Duck?"
"Yes, he ... that's why he pull out weapon, he say this: 'I kill you again'. It was Darkwing Duck he speaking to." Grizlykoff put his head in his hands on the table. "Ach. This impossible. I do not blame you not believe me. But this, my understand, I acted on."
"Okay, agent. Steady on." Euston flicked off the recorder.
"Sir, how could he kill Darkwing Duck before? What is he to survive one death?"
"Of course he didn't, agent." Euston reassured him. "Obviously Storkein Harris' deranged mind imagined Darkwing Duck as someone familiar. That often happens when a killer turns into a serial killer. They string their paper hearts together to form their line of reasoning although it never holds up to water. You know that just as well as I do. He saw what he wanted to see." Euston sighed and stood up.
"You don't believe me, sir, do you? I would not believe such flimsy story as true."
Rex Euston reluctantly shook his head. "You're obviously in shock from what has happened earlier."
"But I am not imagining Darkwing Duck." Grizlykoff made a final insistence. "He was there in my living room and Harris was to kill him."
"Darkwing Duck was nowhere at the scene, Grizlykoff!" Euston gritted in frustration. "If there was a gunshot, he would've stayed! Don't you think he'd have stayed?"
"I do not understand either, sir!" Grizlykoff moaned and slumped back in the chair. "I see this Duck. Is too real to be dream. Perhaps I go crazy. What I am seeing? Is this same ghost?"
Euston watched Grizlykoff for a long moment. "I'll talk to Director Hooter. We'll see what he can come up with."
"Harris saw his ghost return. He was certain and he was his killer. Darkwing Duck was ghost he saw."
Rex Euston walked out, closing the door behind him.
"So, what do 'you' think, Rex?" Irving asked him.
"Has he been babbling about ghosts the whole time?" Euston asked in concern.
Irving looked into the one way window. "Rex, Storkein Harris might still have let off a shot if he'd just been wounded. He was a soldier."
"I agree with the line of reasoning except for the one sublime fact that doesn't fit the argument, Irving. There was no Darkwing Duck."
Hooter put down the phone privately riled by his short conversation with the mayor. "Disgraceful."
He returned to the more enjoyable task of solving Darkwing Duck.
In the beginning before he'd signed the independent contract service papers, Hooter had tested the youth. It hadn't taken Darkwing Duck much effort to solve the cases while sitting, bound to the wheelchair as he had been. The boy had very narrowly escaped from that ripping explosion. Hooter asked how, and it was at that point that Darkwing had showed him that fascinating gas gun of his. From this moment, Hooter realised inducting Darkwing fully into the ranks of S.H.U.S.H. was far beyond the boy's comfort zone. Darkwing was a maverick and his need for independence was beyond reasoning with. Hooter had decided to provide the favour of confidentiality and resisted his urge to match up hospital records and find out what name he was going in under. And it was just to see that gas gun. It was ingenious and unique.
The gas gun? Indeed! Hooter was delighted at this new connection as he pulled out the autopsy report on Drake Mallard Senior. Darkwing Duck didn't like guns. Here was a very good reason why. Instead of Grizlykoff's idea of copying the crime, apparently Drake Mallard had done the exact opposite.
But still here, there was no preoccupation with an old unsolved case as one might expect. Drake must have simply spent all that time before becoming a vigilante to studying ... entirely believable, consider his portfolio of tricks and aerobatic skills. Hooter picked up the rejection letter. " 'All the kings and horses.' " He repeated Darkwing's early comment. "No, that's not quite right ..." He searched his memory. It had been a long time since he'd heard the children's poem. The nursery rhyme ... what was the next bit?"
"Maybe I should do better and just ask someone."
The phone rang, distracting him from his triumph. Hooter pressed the button. "Yes, Terri?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but Mr. Attorney Rex Euston is on line two for you. He says it's urgent."
"Oh, certainly." He pressed the button.
"J Gander Hooter."
"Mr. Attorney Euston, sir."
"I'll be truly amazed if you can get your boy out of this one."
"Who?" Hooter asked in concern; "Darkwing Duck?"
"No. I thought you said you pulled Grizlykoff off the Firebug Murderer case?"
"I did, sir."
"Well, somehow I don't think he quite got the message. You'd better come over here to my office."
"Sir?"
"Irving's really nervous about the idea of putting him in a cell with the regular chainsaw wielding maniacs. Personally I'm leaning more towards a cell of the padded variety. Since he's your officer, I thought I'd pay you the courtesy and discuss the matter with you first. I'd like to discuss this with you in person at my office."
Hooter stood straight up. His feathers were prickling. "I'll be there immediately, sir."
Hooter stopped at Terri's desk, remembering her psychology degree and her young boys. "Terri, I have a puzzle for you. Do you remember the nursery rhyme that goes ' "All the kings and horses'?"
"Yes, sir. 'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall and all the kings' horses and all the kings men, couldn't put Humpty together again'."
"You have a psychology background, Terri. What does that all mean, exactly?"
"It basically outlines the principle that some things in life can never be repaired and despite all our best efforts, sometimes we just have to accept the damage that has happened and live with the consequences of it. Not all stories end in 'and they all lived happily ever after'."
"That seems the pinnacle of disenchantment for a four year old."
"Reality is often a dark place, sir. The poem helps teach the child to take it in their stride. What we learn from Humpty is that after tragedy the inevitable is that the tragic poem ends and we carry on with our own lives."
"A Freudian Slip." Hooter blinked unseeing at her. "I thought it was an odd statement for Darkwing to make."
"Were you going somewhere, sir?" Terri gently alerted him to the real world.
"Huh? Oh, yes. Unfortunately, yes, I am. I'll be at the courthouse."
(While we're on the subject of eggs here's an ancient and silly little poem I don't want to lose:)
Title Unknown [two eggs being romantic whilst sitting in a dessert spoon]
"Oh, spooning in a spoon!
We don't need a moon!
Poached or fried or on the side
Morning, night or noon!
Scrambled in a tune,
Devilled with a croon!
In a cup, you're sunny side up,
Spooning in a spoon!"
by Carl W. Stalling