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Z a c k -- corpus delicti
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He drank the last of the bittersweet, ultra-caffeinated liquid in one long draft and then crushed the cold can in his hand. After years of experience with C-5 travel, and the ins and outs therein, the ride had lost most of its ability to cure him of drowsiness. Even the rough landing in a tree on the lawn of the Vienna Naturhistorisches Museum had been simply par for the proverbial course.
The museum was a magnificent structure, the exterior resembling a Renaissance-era academy of some sort more than anything else. Inside, hundreds of priceless relics of the ancient past reposed. It was not the first time the young detective had been called there.
He stood not far from the clear case where the Venus of Willendorf had once been kept. A perfectly round hole had been cut out of the glass, and a black and red business card had been placed where the small stone statue was supposed to be.
"Nothing," Ivy announced as she strode back into the room, speaking of her conversation with the security guards. "All they've got is some fuzzy surveillance tape of Carmen breaking into the case. By the time they got down here, she was already long gone."
Zack frowned. That wasn't like Carmen. She usually gave the local law enforcement a nice little show before disappearing into thin air. That was part of the fun for her.
"Well, let's take a look at the clue," his sister continued, stifling a yawn, and gingerly removed the card from the compromised glass compartment.
The side that had been placed up contained only Carmen Sandiego's personal logo: her profile, in silhouette, against a red background. The reverse had nothing at all.
They stared at the business card as if waiting for it to explode, talk, fly away, dance a jig, something. But after several long moments, wherein nothing happened at all, they could almost hear the gears in their heads come to a grinding halt.
As their desperation mounted, the siblings found increasingly creative trials to perform on the little piece of paperboard. They tried shaking it vigorously, rubbing it, holding it up to the light, chilling it, and heating it up; but the business card stubbornly remained just that -- a normal business card, with no secrets to tell.
Zack obtained another can of soda from the nearby vending machine and slumped into a corner as Ivy continued her mental interrogation of the hapless card. This whole scenario was off, Zack observed. Carmen Sandiego stealing a priceless artifact without fanfare or drama, and then leaving behind only a meaningless calling card. He would have seriously suspected that Professor Bellum had been snooping around Carmen's laundry again, had he not known for a fact that she was currently working on her tenth masters degree in a maximum security prison.
Well, staring at Carmen's logo wasn't helping them solve this case. Warp speed to 'nowhere,' Mr. Sulu.
Zack strolled over to Ivy, where she was frowning deeply at the card, a snarl rising in her throat. He snatched it away playfully and held it up to her eye level. "'I didn't do it, I tell ya! I want my lawyer!'" he squeaked in a high falsetto for the card.
Ivy glared daggers and opened her mouth to speak, but before she could utter a word both of their communicators beeped. "Come in, Chief," Ivy spoke, a hint of the annoyance intended for her brother seeping into her voice.
"Hot tip, gumshoes! Our good buddies Moe and Lars have just made off with a famous Japanese writing box in Tokyo!"
The kids exchanged befuddled glances, their respective mood swings immediately discarded. If there was anything about the card Carmen had left them that indicated a Japanese box, it must have been hidden in the molecular structure of its fibers.
"Uh, we're on it, Chief," the blonde boy replied, and opened up a C-5 corridor. With one last mental shrug, he and Ivy jumped into the sparkling blue void.
- - - - - - - - -
Several hours and many time zones later, Zack was ready to admit that he was beaten.
After their initial false start in Vienna, Carmen had resumed her usual courtesy of leaving real clues behind. However, it seemed that as soon as the detectives could solve them, Crimenet informed them that the item in question had already been stolen. As the night wore on and then turned to day, the rate at which world treasures were exchanged for cryptic clues only increased, until the boy felt that he was caught up in a mad dance with an ever-changing and ever-quickening beat.
Zack and Ivy had begged the Chief for some help, and gratefully received Tatyanna....and then Armando, and then Jasmine. Given that this was the first Carmen crime spree in months, word spread like a wildfire in Yellowstone. Before long, the siblings had all the help they could ever need -- and then some.
In theory, having an entire detective agency work as one to solve a caper should mean a swift victory. In reality, only so many detectives can huddle around a clue at once, and when said agency is comprised mostly of excited young adults who have been bored and idle for months, the equation equals chaos.
By mid afternoon, Acme's detectives had clearly segregated themselves into two camps. The more serious-minded agents (like Ivy) managed to stay focused on the case, although their morale was low; they could be recognized by their stumbling sleepwalk and the Styrofoam coffee cups they held in vice-like grips.
The other group of agents had lost their heads completely, and in their euphoric excitement had seemingly forgotten what they were so excited about in the first place. They were easily identifiable by the semi-circles they stood clustered in (usually in cumbersome, inconvenient places, like the main entrance of the Louvre) while gabbing and gossiping with each other, and the impromptu parties they tended to create.
A whole gaggle of them had virtually taken over the main control room of the San Francisco headquarters that evening. The Chief finally kicked them out when Detective Marco had tried to bring in a 24-pack of Mountain Dew and a family-size bag of Doritos.
Normally, Zack would have put himself with the latter camp, but he had a niggling, worrisome feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something's not normal about this case, his gut told him, and he could not ignore it.
Popping open his ninth can of Pepsi, he ducked into an empty conference room to give the matter some serious thought. He had always needed solitude to do any sort of deep thinking, even as a toddler. He chuckled privately to himself at the memory of his parents' looks of relief and anger at having finally found their towheaded son after an hour-long search, curled up in a broom closet contemplating the Pythagorean Theorem.
Starting at around four a.m., Carmen has been pulling off robberies like they're going out of style. It's now almost ten p.m., and she's still going strong. This, in and of itself, was not worrisome. It wouldn't be the first time she had pulled off an extreme crime spree, and it wouldn't be the last. But after thirty-six stolen items, there was still no discernible theme to her thefts. Modern paintings, ancient sculptures, famous busts, obscure historic landmarks....
This looks suspiciously like a bit of early Christmas shopping, Zack thought wryly. I wonder if I could subtly let it slip to Carmen that I've had my eye on Deep Blue... Zack rubbed his face wearily, deciding that the lack of sleep and super-doses of caffeine were definitely starting to get to him.
He reached into his coat pocket and produced the root of his unease. In the hustle and bustle, the little card had been promptly forgotten, but Zack had instinctively held on to it. He gazed at it intensely, his keen analytical prowess gleaming through bloodshot eyes. He had given up on it being a clue long before his sister had, but there was still something about it...something important.
Why would Carmen leave something behind at a crime scene for the express purpose of letting them know she had been there? If there was one thing Zack knew about the master thief, it was that she never felt the need to make anything perfectly clear. Besides, after years of chasing her around the globe, she certainly knew that they could decipher the signs of her handiwork without such an obvious hint. It was almost as if...
Exactly. It's like she's sending a message to somebody else, not me and Ivy.
The boy got to his feet agitatedly. He had the feeling he might be on to something, but it was impossible to convey such vague, intuitive knowings to his sister. For whatever reason, she did not always see what he saw. It frustrated him sometimes.
Determined to get back on the trail somehow, Zack quickly returned to the control room, where now only Ivy and the Chief remained. "Heya, Zack-meister! I thought you had gone to the Polynesia HQ with the others to shoot 'Acme Agents Gone Wild,'" the holographic head greeted, a touch of disapproval seeping into his voice at the last part.
"Naw! My lil' bro wouldn't abandon us like that," Ivy mock-admonished, tired but good-natured.
"Of course not. Unless it was spring break..." The blonde boy took a seat beside his sister at the terminal she was working at. She tousled his hair affectionately.
"So, did everyone really give up and leave?"
"Yes and no. The party-goers" (Ivy stressed the term and rolled her eyes) "left with Marco after the Chief kicked him out, and I have the feeling they're not exactly doing research. Armando and Jasmine are catching some much needed z's, and the others are working on clues back at their home bases."
Ivy had created a detailed list of all the stolen items and was studying them determinedly. Zack leaned back in his swivel chair and put his feet up. Despite his extreme fatigue, a slow smile crept across his face. He liked it like this; just his sis', the Chief, and him. They made an unbeatable team, and together they would solve this case. The only uncertainty was how many more cases they would get to work on.
His smile withered and died. From the time he and Ivy had been awoken in the wee hours of the pre-dawn morning by an exuberant Chief up until now, he had been too caught up in the case to give much thought to the revelation that their jobs were in danger. In a small corner of his mind, he had rather welcomed the diversion, and had thrown himself into the clue-busting with more gusto than he might have otherwise. If this is gonna be my last case, I might as well make it my best case, too, he thought, solemn and sardonic at the same time.
His mental monologue was interrupted by the static that suddenly danced on the computer monitor the siblings had been using. The Chief only had time to shout, "Gumshoes, someone's breaking into Acme's frequency--" before he was pushed off the screen entirely by Carmen Sandiego's smirking, half-obscured face.
"You look a little tired, detectives. Maybe you should get some rest," the master thief taunted in a dulcet tone.
Ivy looked like the devil herself, glaring at Carmen's image with red, puffy eyes, her lips pressed into a thin white line. The empty Styrofoam cup she had been holding was crushed into oblivion as she made a fist. If looks could kill, we'd be inheriting V.I.L.E. right now, Zack thought wonderingly.
"Nah, we've just been having a nice little slumber party with Acme's finest," he deadpanned. Zack had his own style when it came to taunting.
The thief chuckled softly, barely audible. "I would expect that kind of cavalier attitude from you, Zack. In any case, I've had a wonderful time. But it only seems fair to give you two a little time to catch up...if you can. Hope to see you soon, kids." With a nod of farewell and an incongruously kind smile, she vacated the screen as swiftly as she had taken it over. In its place appeared a Pictionary-like puzzle and a timer counting down three minutes.
"Whoa! When she said a 'little time' she wasn't kidding!" Zack exclaimed, adrenaline rushing unmercifully to his already over-taxed system.
The screen displayed a non-descript illustration of a mountain, the plus sign, an abstracted spearhead-like shape, another plus sign, and a photograph of Michael Jordan.
Ivy fell heavily back into her chair, scowling. "Mountain plus...thingy...plus Michael Jordan. Perfect."
The younger boy ran his fingers through his floppy bangs, a nervous habit. "Okay, mountain...hill...Everest..."
His sister piped up, "What about that second thing? What's that supposed to be, a spear? Chief, infoscan that symbol!"
A cheerful chime sounded, and the insignia in question popped up on the control room's huge main screen. "That 'thing,' Ivy, happens to be the team logo of the New Orleans Saints. Y'know, football? Good thing there aren't any Louisiana sports fans in here..." the Chief joked.
Ivy snapped her fingers in an 'aha!' sort of way. "Now we're getting somewhere. So it's mountain, plus New Orleans Saints, plus Michael Jordan -- kinda sports themed, isn't it?"
"Maybe..." Zack trailed off doubtfully. "But what could a mountain, a football team, and a basketball player add up to? Besides, a simple puzzle like that is way too straight-forward for Carmen. I dunno, Ive. Maybe we're looking at the clues in too broad a sense." They had used up almost an entire minute.
"Care to elaborate?"
"Maybe the second 'thing' isn't supposed to mean the real New Orleans Saints, but just 'saints,' period."
"O-okay," Ivy stammered, panicked and clearly frustrated, but trying valiantly to follow her little brother's train of thought. "So, it's 'mountain,' plus 'saints,' plus...Jordan. Or Michael.......Oh!"
The siblings both saw it at the same time. "Mount Saint Michael."
"Better known as Mont Saint Michel!"
"B-I-N-G-O, and Bingo was his name-oh!" the Chief celebrated, sing-song. "You guys are taking a round-trip to France!" He opened a C-5 corridor for them and decorated his computer-generated image with a party hat. "Hey, bring me back a nice souvenir; how about a Carmen Sandiego?!"
Zack and Ivy leaped enthusiastically into the bright blue light.
As he sped through the darkness of the C-5 corridor, Zack realized that Carmen's last clue had created new mysteries, and not solved any old ones. She had delivered it to them personally, a detail which seemed to indicate that she wanted them to come and play. Carmen had set up heists for the sole purpose of matching wits with the two detectives many times before, but the way she had gone about this spree up until now seemed downright antithetical to that intention. And there was still the matter of why Carmen had wanted the thirty-six items she had stolen in the first place. If Mont Saint Michel was the thread that connected them all, it must have been the carbon monofilament kind, because he certainly couldn't see it. And it didn't explain the business card either...
Oh, well, the young detective thought dismissively. They would just have to wait and see.
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A/N: Devoted fans may have noticed that Mont Saint Michel features prominently in the episode "Split Up," and may be wondering why no one mentions it in this fic. The reason is simple: I goofed. Actually, when I began writing this story, I hadn't seen that episode in a long time, and did not remember that Mont Saint Michel was in it. By the time I did see Split Up again, I was almost finished with the fic, and couldn't find a way to incorporate that episode into it gracefully.