Michael opened heavy eyelids and glanced around. Ah, yes – his current home, a small motel on the edge of a tiny western town. Well home was stretching it a bit, he intended to be out of there in at least an hour. Just enough time for a hot shower and a bit of breakfast in one of the joints in town.
He had barely stepped out of the shower and got dressed when the com-link bleeped. Sighing he picked it up and strapped it on his wrist before answering.
"Yeah, what is it Kitt?"
"Devon's calling, he has another case. He says to find Jessica and we can use it to show them the ropes."
"Oh….."
Michael swore inwardly. This whole Karr business had him on edge, and everyone else it would seem. Strangely enough, Kitt was one of the only two who were rather calm about the situation. He seemed to have accepted Karr as an ally pretty quickly, and Karr had done the same.
'Happy families I suppose' he thought.
Five minutes later he trudged out of the motel and yanked open the trunk. Kitt half shrieked at the sudden contact and fired the engine. Michael jumped slightly and muttered sorry quietly before shutting the trunk as gently as possible. Kitt swung the driver's door open for his partner and shut it when Michael was inside.
'So Bonnie didn't fix the perceptors' he thought as they pulled out of the park.
"Where are Jessica and Karr?" he asked, revving the Pontiac's engine out of habit at a stoplight.
"If you would care to use the rear-view mirror once in a while Michael, you would have seen them perform an incredibly illegal u-turn and stop half a metre behind us" replied Kitt, snickering quietly as his partner jumped.
Looking around, sure enough there was a black and silver Trans-Am with a young woman behind the wheel. She grinned and waved manically until the windows blacked out. Slowly they cleared again to reveal the woman talking to the dashboard in an irritated manner. The scanner of the front of the car lit up once and faded again as though embarrassed.
"Do you want me to call them, Michael?" asked Kitt, taking the controls from his partner.
"And beating your head against my steering wheel is more likely to give us both headaches than anything else."
Michael muttered something incomprehensible and shrugged.
"I'll take that as a yes then" sighed Kitt, sometimes he really didn't see the point in being able to talk if his partner was going to reply like that.
The line gave its customary bleep and the screen came on, giving Michael a front seat to a rather one-sided argument.
"…..I really don't appreciate you waking up at half bloody three in the morning either, we made good time anyway and we're early too. I'm never early!"
"Maybe you should start then."
"Nooo way, boyo. If you're early people might ask you to do extra stuff or volunteer you for something. Believe me on this, OK?"
"Really."
"And another thing, I do not need you tapping into the heating computer thing and making the water freezing in the middle of me having a shower."
"You needed to hurry up, and as far as I can tell your hair is perfectly clean."
"Says you. I hadn't put any conditioner on it and my hair tangles really bad if I don't use conditioner and…… the monitor's on ain't it?"
"Affirmative."
"So I have been yarping on like that, and they've been listening?"
"Yes, most definitely."
"Well thanks for telling me!"
"You are welcome."
"Oh ye various gods!"
Jessica flashed an embarrassed smile at the link and continued,
"Sorry about that…"
Michael tried to raise an eyebrow but gave up and sat back in his seat,
"So what's Devon got for us this time?"
Jessica picked up a bunch of papers from the passenger seat and ruffled through them for a second.
"I got Karr to write it down and print it out so I wouldn't forget. Unfortunately he took it a bit too literally and wrote the entire conversation with Devon out. Including the bits where Bonnie barged in," she explained and pulled one sheet out of the pile.
"Yeah this is it. Apparently you have already met this bloke. 'Acid' John Byroc or something. You guys had a little encounter with him that probably isn't so little judging by your expression and he got locked away for a bit, which, still according to your expression wasn't half as long as it should have been."
"Yeah, we had a case involving him at one point. He was a big person in the chemical disposal industry, until we drew the fact he wasn't storing the chemical properly and allowing it to leach into the ground," Michael made a face. "It wasn't nice, I can tell you that."
"You weren't the one who nearly got dissolved by those chemicals," muttered Kitt under the hiss of the turbines. Michael either didn't hear or ignored the snappy statement, but Jessica winced and bit at her lip. Karr's reaction didn't seem to be relevant at all. He revved his engine and shunted the other Trans-Am forward.
At once the other three yelled "What the hell'd you do that for?" only with more cursing in some cases than others.
"You have been sitting at the light for over three minutes now, and there is a quite extensive queue of people sitting behind us now. Since you're not very likely to pay any attention to me, I felt I should take more immediate action," Karr replied smoothly, not missing a beat.
"There're three" said Jessica dully.
"Three what?"
"Three cars. Three cars? An extensive queue of people? You do that to your brother when you very well know he's in agony, just because of three people?"
Karr didn't say anything at first until Jessica began to open her mouth again.
"All right! I'm…." he paused until she glared at him again, "I'm sorry, Kitt. There - happy now?"
"No, because that was addressed more to me than Kitt but it'll have to do", said Jessica pulling her car in beside Michael's in a parking lot. "Come on, Michael, we can go and get some breakfast or something and I'll tell you about what's going on."
Michael didn't complain – he was starving after all. They wandered silently along the street for a bit and stopped outside a small café.
"Shall we?" said Michael, holding the door open.
"Oh my, what a gentleman!" replied Jessica, pretending to curtsey and walking inside.
They chose a booth and ordered before Jessica continued.
"Right. As I was going to say. Mr. Byroc got out early on good behaviour as far as we can tell, but it's just as likely his new business partner bribed the prison management."
Michael glanced up from his newly arrived steaming cup of coffee and fry.
"New business partner?"
"Yep," Jessica sipped her orange juice and nibbled at a slice of toast, turning slightly green as Michael shovelled the greasy food into his mouth. "A Mr. Stephen Cochrane. Huge oil baron person. Tonnes of the stuff. But it's mined or drilled for or whatever on illegal ground or something, so no one will buy it. He's figured out that if he smuggles the oil into other shipments no one would be any wiser. So, he's given Byroc the legal part of his oil fields and adds his illegal oil in with it before it gets to the refinery. All it does to Byroc is making him look like he's turned over a new page."
"How's the ground he's drilling for oil on illegal?"
"Part's nature reserve, part's Native American heritage ground. If we prove he's drilling there, he goes down and you get to see Byroc in jail yet again."
"Yeah, but how come no one's proved Cochrane's drilling there yet if they have the evidence to say what he's doing?"
Jessica looked shifty for a moment,
"See the problem is it's only suspicion. There have been oil pumps and towers appearing in these sites for ages but they haven't been traced to anyone yet. And there's been rumours swarming around Cochrane for ages but nothing's been proved. But now, one of his employees has come to the Foundation to say that it's Cochrane drilling there after all. But we have to get the hard proof because this guy's family used to own the land Cochrane's meant to have drilled on, and just recently got fired."
"Ah right," said Michael, "Well sure we can figure something out. Where does this guy live?"
Sorry that took so long and sorry if the plot's a bit shaky. Thank you to Storm Dracona - it's your fault I've kept on going.