"I just can't fire a guy for stacking merchandise like that, Detective," Disney told Adrian. They were standing by the door to the underground catacombs, being jostled by a myriad of people going into the bathroom next to it, "Besides, Anthony's been a hard-working employee here for almost a decade."
"Can't, can't you at least give him an informal reprimand?" Adrian proposed.
"So Detective, you said Chalmers came back this way?" Kight inquired him.
"He was in a five minute window," Adrian glanced up Main Street to the platform the executives had all been standing around when he'd entered the park, "Judging by the crowd volume at the time, he'd be down here in about thirty-three seconds. Does either of you have a second hand watch?"
"I do," Kight held up his.
"Start the clock; we've got four minutes and twenty-seven seconds left," Adrian nodded to Disney, who slipped a card key into the door's lock. Opening it, he waved the detective in. Adrian jogged at a brisk pace down the stairs to the underground halls, his rack clattering down the steps behind him. "Castle this way," he noted a sign on the wall and turned right, "He was running fast but not too fast on his way to kill Faulk, but he ran hard coming back."
"And you know this because….?" Disney was huffing to keep up with the detective.
"He had two distinct layers of sweat on his forehead when I saw him around Faulk's body," Adrian called over his shoulder, "One dryer layer on the inside, and one thicker, wetter layer on the outside. He'd barely had time to catch his breath before he…WHOA BOY!"
He recoiled as he bumped into a performer wearing a Brer Fox costume that had appeared around the corner out of nowhere. The detective pressed himself against the wall, an unhappy look on his face, until Brer Fox had passed. "You OK there?" Kight asked him, clutching a stitch in his side from the jogging.
"I'm, I'm not terribly good with guys in big costumes, Mr. Kight," the detective informed him, "Not a top 10er, but it's, it's pretty bad, right between glaciers and moss, I think…ACKK!"
More characters in costume were pushing him aside. "What is this supposed to be?" Adrian shouted out loud as Cogsworth brushed by him.
"Why don't we press on?" Disney led his associate past the characters, "As you said, we're still on the clock here."
"Right, Chalmers would be at three minutes and fifty-seven seconds now," Adrian jogged further down the corridor…only to stop and stare in wonder into a room on the right side. "What now?" Kight pulled up alongside him.
"Look at it," Adrian pointed in awe into the costume department, with numerous costumes set up in perfect order on moveable racks as far as the eye could, "It's a dream! It's absolutely immaculate! Everything's labeled and ordered. You can't possibly forget where anything is. I could live here if…."
"Detective, the case," Disney pressed him with just a hint of impatience in his voice.
"Right," Adrian snapped out of it and continued his run. "You know," he told the men, "If you were to ever open a park in San Francisco, and I'm no longer consulting, I'd love to work in the costume department—even though I don't like people in costumes—it would….hello, what's this?"
He'd stopped again. A large crumpled-up piece of paper lay behind a trash receptacle to the left near the stairs leading up into the castle. Adrian picked it up with his claw. "How often is the trash pick up down here?" he asked, holding it toward Disney.
"It wouldn't be for another three hours down here," Disney unfolded it, "We take out the trash more sparingly down here than up there. Yep, this is Roger's handwriting. But I can't make out any this. What do you think of it, Detective?"
Adrian was already dashing up the stairs into the castle. He pushed down on the door handle with his forearm and emerged right at the bottom of the steps leading up to the tower in which Faulk had been killed. "How are we, Mr. Kight?" he called down as the head of the amusement park division staggered up to meet him, gasping.
"Counting those briefs stops you took, three minutes and two seconds," Kight informed him, holding the watch in his face.
"So Chalmers got through that fairly quickly; I'm guessing there was no traffic," Adrian jumped up the steps two at a time to the top room. He was starting to tire himself. "I don't get why he didn't just lay down after he killed him, running like this. But here we are."
He stumbled into the room, the door having been left open from the last time they were in there. "And so he got into position here," he told Disney and Kight once they joined him, getting into Chalmers's position behind the door, "It mustn't have taken too much longer before Faulk walked up, no more than forty seconds. They probably agreed on meeting at a specific time. Chalmers knew he was down to just two minutes after he killed him. He only had enough time to set up Faulk to fly and make a single quick attempt to burn the documents before he had to go back with the rest of the executives."
He was breathing hard when I saw him again after he left," Kight remembered, "I thought it was a little strange. This explains a lot."
"So what does this mean then?" Disney held up the paper Adrian had found for him to analyze. Adrian examined it closely. It looks like a blueprint for what he did with Faulk's body," he mused, "It's clear these drawing are supposed to be the castle here and the Treasure Planet ride here."
"What are these numbers supposed to mean?" Kight pointed at them.
"This is the distance between the castle and the ride," Adrian gestured at the number 507 next to an arcing line between the two buildings, "And 295 here (which was written at the top of another line drawn from the ground to what had been Faulk's zenith in the sky) is the height he needed the body to go to. He had to figure out the exact distance for his plan to work perfectly. This paper was his reference."
"How about this number, 1,787?" Disney pointed to the number written right by the castle window, "I'm not sure how this would fit in."
"Hmm," Adrian frowned at it, "If we knew exactly how he made Faulk fly, I could probably tell you, but there's no evidence of anything yet. I think we can rule out an internal combustion engine, though; there was no roar and no exhaust."
"It's certainly not wires, either," Disney glanced out the window, "There's no rigging out here. But then what could he have used?"
"I'm still working on it," Adrian was beginning to freeze up again from being in the air, "And, and could, could you not lean out the window like that? We are pretty far up, you know."
"Well, we'll have to keep looking for those documents, then," Kight shrugged as they walked back downstairs, "Maybe he's hidden the means of propulsion with them."
"I doubt it," Adrian shook his head, "He had the means of propulsion destroyed by Faulk's fall. He wouldn't have had enough time when the body landed to retrieve it without being seen, so he had to destroy it in the fall."
"Well, you've been doing a fine job, if I may say so, Detective," Disney commended him, "I think the answer's right in front of us if we just look hard enough. How about we meet up again after dinner and see if we can seal the bag on Roger?"
"Uh, that's fine, but I'd rather not be alone right now," Adrian said. He told them about Chalmers's threat of an accident if they didn't drop the case. "Dear me," Disney cringed, "And with his technical background, he's just the man to cause an accident. Where's the rest of your group right now?"
Adrian related to him the Teegers' and Kopeckis' current whereabouts. "I'd better check personally to make sure they're all right," the old man said, starting to walk off toward the Frontierland branch at the Hub now that they were outside, "Tim, you stay with Detective Monk and make sure nothing happens to him while I'm gone."
"And what am I supposed to do?" Adrian called after him.
"How about you go on some rides that are open and can't be rigged?" Kight suggested, "I'll keep a watch out."
"And what could I possibly ride?" Adrian protested, "I've seen most of the things here; they're all for daredevils."
"How about Dumbo? That's nice and calm," Kight pointed the ride, just visible from their vantage point inside the castle. Adrian gulped at the sight of it. "That, that goes up in the air, there's a definite no," he said quickly.
"Well there's a bar on the inside you can push in to make it stay down if you want," Kight told him.
"Oh, well, in that case, I may escape with my life," Adrian perked up. He cautiously walked into Fantasyland toward the ride. "Like Mr. Disney said, we appreciate what you're doing to help us," Kight told him, "If there's anything we can do for you in return, please name it."
"Anything?" Adrian remarked.
"Yes."
"Well," Adrian thought long and hard, "I've heard you're planning on starting one of those law enforcement type shows on ABC this fall. If, if it's not too much of a hassle, I wouldn't mind if you profiled my wife's murder on one of the shows. I figure, if the whole country gets to help out, maybe, just maybe, we can finally bring whoever killed her to justice."
"Yeah, I've heard about what happened," Kight shook his head, "I know just what you're going through. About six years ago my oldest son was killed in a hit-and-run near the baseball field. They still haven't found the guy yet. It's heartbreaking, it really is. You feel like you've failed the person you swore to yourself you'd never let down."
"Exactly," Adrian nodded. He'd felt often that he was failing Trudy every day her case went unsolved. "Well, the one thing you can do, Mr. Kight, is still be the man your son loved. That's all you can ask for, really."
"I'll keep that in mind," Kight nodded. They'd reach the Dumbo ride. Adrian was still a bit unnerved at the sight of the elephant cars sailing around high in the air. He took deep breaths and reassured himself mentally that he didn't have to go up. He dug wipes out of their own briefcase before locking the rack to the fence again. Slowly the line moved forward. "One passenger?" the operator inquired when he reached the front of the line.
"As far as I know," the detective admitted.
"Due to excess capacity we'll have to team you up with someone else," the operator informed him. Before Adrian could protest that teaming up was not something he'd ordinarily do, he was led to the blue-hatted Dumbo, where a young boy was already seated. "What are you doing?" he asked suspiciously as the detective wiped down the safety bar and then the lift bar.
"Making sure the two of us don't get killed on this thing," Adrian said, polishing off the lift bar. Satisfied it was germ-free, he pushed it in as far as it could go as the ride started moving.
"I don't want to stay on the ground!" the boy protested, "I came on this to see the whole park!" He grabbed the bar and yanked it forward. The elephant started rising upward into the afternoon sun.
"Why see it all here?" Adrian whimpered in protest, pushing the bar back again, "There's plenty of….high places to see the whole park here. I think we'll be safer down near the ground."
"And this is one place I want to see the whole park!" the boy pulled the bar forward again.
"Well some of us aren't too keen on that, so if you kindly wouldn't mind!" Adrian pushed it back in again.
"Yes, I do mind!" the boy pulled it back out again. The two of them engaged in a heated battle for the bar that caused their Dumbo car to noticeably jerk up and down. Onlookers alternately stared in shock at the sight before them or burst into laughter. Near the front of the ride, the operator had his hands over his face. "Is he crazy?" he asked a bystanding Kight.
"No," Kight stared in wonder at the battle in the air, "But I think it's clear now why Detective Monk's never had a day of fun in his whole life."