Hey! Look who's finally updated! (waves) Terribly sorry. But I have free time again, which is super fun. Huzzah! For waiting so long, you get a really long chapter.
This story alternates by chapter between present day and flashbacks. So seeing as chapter 1 was a present day, this is a flashback. Woo.
Disclaimer: This would only be mine in an alternate universe in which my name is the late Walt Disney. And frankly, that would be too weird even for me.
Chapter 2 – Flashback: The Archives Calls
It had been an insidiously boring day.
For most of it, we had been forced to work on one of the most cliché crimes of all time by one of the most cliché criminals of all time. It was a bank robbery, where the robber's face was covered by a ski mask, he made a loud, dramatic getaway and then immediately went to his mother's house. Oddly enough, we had seen it so many times, groans of "not again" mingled in our throats; however, those were quickly eradicated upon our discovery that the criminal's mother was a skilled robber as well.
"Well that's just perfect!" Hendrix sighed. "Now the guy's got help. How fair is that?"
While Hendrix grumbled and complained, the rest of us got down to business—one, at least for a moment, hummed a chorus or two of the applicable Mulan song to help keep morale up. Rucker soon gave it up after Dawes shot him a bewildered look that screamed, "OK, what the hell? We're not in a Disney movie." Her nimble fingers sifted through a pile of yellowing newspapers.
"The search computer's on the fritz," she muttered, clearly implying a question of why. We glanced at Hendrix briefly, who had a very empty mug of coffee before him which, until recently, had been very full. "Anybody know anything about this guy's mother? I hate searching by hand."
We told her everything we knew, which took no time at all considering we knew absolutely nothing. Instead our gazes fell to the conference room's window with a spectacular view of the sky—it was inky black, dotted by the occasional airplane and featuring a full moon that lit the sidewalks where the streetlights could not reach. We wanted to be out there so badly that it hurt, but the boss had told us hours ago that our squad had been mandated to stay until we managed to produce some useful information.
Anybody up for a sleepover?
"I am not spending the night here," Michaels stated, leaning back in his chair. "Sleeping here one night, I guarantee, will cost thousands in chiropractic care down the road. These seats just suck."
"They're not…bad," Rucker sighed. "Just a bit stiff, is all." We often wondered what would pop out of Rucker's mouth if one of us dropped a hammer on his foot; it would probably be something quite unsatisfying, like "phooey." On the other hand, we all knew what we would say—same beginning sound of "phooey," different ending, the word whose existence Rucker liked to deny.
"So…what are we supposed to be looking for?" Hendrix said.
We stared. Dawes handed him a couple dollars. "Go make yourself useful and buy a stash of Snickers, OK?"
As soon as the door clicked behind him, we remarked how she was lactose intolerant, Rucker was allergic to nuts, and Michaels had an aversion to delicious, fluffy nougat. She simply rolled her eyes.
"Exactly. Haven't you ever heard of buying time? He'll have to go back and get something else."
Unless, we suggested, he wants Rucker to have a near-fatal allergy attack like he had at the Christmas party last year.
"Can we please not bring that up?" Rucker said quickly.
But Hendrix was the one who later commented how Smurf-like you had become.
"Seriously, guys," he sighed, ruffling his papers suggestively. "Stop."
OK, fine. We returned to our skimming—excuse us, reading—but occasionally had to stifle a chuckle: bringing up Rucker and a Smurf in the same sentence conjured up many an entertaining mental image. Later Michaels told us his included the boss dressed up as Papa Smurf playing whack-a-mole, the last detail confusing us quite a bit. Why whack-a-mole?
"I like whack-a-mole," he said.
Anyway. After a while, we noted that Hendrix had been gone a long time. How long does it take for someone to buy four candy bars? The machine must have eaten him.
"Please don't get my hopes up," Dawes muttered.
"You know the machines here, though," Michaels said. "They have to be the most finicky things in Washington. Demonic, more like it—"
Yes, Michaels. We all know how its LCD screen supposedly taunted you for picking the wild berry over the regular Skittles. Heard the story a thousand times. Hired an exorcist, even.
"You never told me that," he said.
We're kidding.
"Oh."
And then, without warning, Hendrix was suddenly sprawled over the conference table, papers flying into the air like confetti and Dawes' face twitching up a storm. The door behind us was still shivering from the force that had been used to shove it open.
"Yes, Hendrix?" Rucker said pleasantly as the younger agent collected himself.
"The boss—no Snickers—all upset—big deal…" he panted, having obviously run here.
"OK, OK, calm down," Dawes said. "What is going on?"
Picking a green Post-It out of his solid block of hair, he took a few deep breaths and smoothed the creases out of his suit that had bunched up in his crash landing. "All right…" he sighed, still very fidgety. "I was at the snack machine by the boss' office, since, y'know, the one down the hall is full of tofu and vitamin B-twenty-four, and the one where I was is huge and I couldn't find the Snickers—"
God, Hendrix, get to the point.
"Right, right. The boss got a phone call and we have a case to respond to, 'cause we're the only people here."
A case? Our interest was immediately perked. About what?
"That's the thing."
OK, you could not be more vague.
"He wanted to be the one to tell you—it's a big deal. Like big, big, big, big."
"That's a lot of bigs," Rucker said.
"Understandably so! Y'know," he sighed. "Once you hear what's gone down."
Instantly thoughts of the family of robbers drifted into our mental bin that was labeled "unimportant drivel"—it was getting to be quite full, fuller by the second. Hendrix's nervous mutterings as we dashed (he dashed; we barely kept up) to the boss' office were becoming less coherent, diving right into that overflowing bin. We were sure he began to mention the Declaration of Independence. How incoherent can you get?
"—and the Declaration…" he kept murmuring.
"Hush," Rucker said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "You're not making any sense, all right?" The two locked eyes, Rucker raising his eyebrows after a moment. "It's just another case, probably nothing out of the ordinary. Hakuna matata!"
Despite our clearly embarrassed expressions behind them, this seemed to force some normalcy into Hendrix's breathing. Rucker fell back next to Dawes, who rightly shot him another "what the hell was that?" look. Really, Rucker, we murmured to him. You're thirty years old. Cut the Disney.
"I was just trying to help!" he hissed under his breath. Dawes simply smiled in a way that urged him to find new methods, and fast. We couldn't have agreed more.
"Dude, can't you give us a clue?" Michaels sighed. "We can act surprised when the boss tells us so you won't get chastised." We knew there were some flaws with that idea. One: Hendrix is never chastised in the normal sense of the word, and two: Dawes can't act.
"Can too," she muttered.
"You always overdo your reactions, though," Hendrix sighed, desperate to switch the subject but clearly unsure how to do so. "He'll see right through it and kill me with one of his duck decoys!"
Yeah, we had to admit that being bludgeoned to death with a wooden water fowl would pretty much suck. Sorry, Michaels—your plan's down the drain.
While we not-so-consolingly consoled him over the tragic death of his scheme, Hendrix continued to look antsy. "Guys?" he finally said as we rounded the corner. "You don't think the boss would really hit me with one of those things?"
"Don't think I would what?"
Taken off guard, we nearly flew out of our shoes. The boss had a strange habit and ability of popping up at the most timely yet inconvenient occasions in a conversation. After much discussion, we had concluded that he was either a ninja, had been a ninja in a past life, or was watching Naruto reruns late into the night like they were a how-to manual. None seemed likely.
"Not important, sir," Rucker said quickly. "Hendrix said something about an important case…?"
The boss pushed past us like a giant running through a toddler's game of red rover, his cell phone ringing. "Sadusky," he muttered. "We're on our way, sir." There was a pause. "Three minutes, tops. All right? I know." He hung up, and we waited with baited breath. "I know you aren't deaf. We have to be at the National Archives in two minutes and fifty-seven seconds."
Hurrying after him, all we could do was call out confused inquiries jarred by our feet's quickening pace. Why the Archives?
"The Declaration of Independence has been stolen."
Damn.
The news smacked us in the face so hard that we were forced to a standstill, only Hendrix keeping on. Nothing was becoming clear, except Hendrix for once. Even still, after this case sank in and the boss snapped at us for "dilly-dallying" (as he put it), it was still difficult to fathom that our rookie had been making sense.
"You know," he said, frowning, as we climbed into the police car. "It's been known to happen."
With Rucker and the boss in the front and Hendrix squeezed between Dawes and Michaels in the back, things were mighty uncomfortable. As soon as the boss flicked on the sirens and slammed on the gas, Rucker covered his eyes and went to his happy place, and understandably so. The boss drove like a psychopath—it was remarkable that he hadn't killed anybody.
Yet.
But the back seat we all knew was the worst. Nobody liked being sardined like that, especially when one of the parties involved has been offended and hurt. Guilt shoving butcher knives into our stomach, we all sneaked brief glances at Hendrix but failed to come up with something to say. So he was new and adjusting to the Bureau, which takes a lengthy amount of time. Our jibing wasn't making things easier, right when these things were about to get a lot harder.
"Hey—" Dawes started, cut off by one of the boss' screaming turns. "Hendrix, uh…did you get the, er…" What she was planning we had no clue, but our confusion was masked by our shock that she, for once, was not articulate.
"The Snickers? Yeah," he said, pulling one from his coat. "Being hungry tonight would not be ideal." An unsure, halfway-grim smile flashed across his face.
"Thanks, Hendrix," she said with a clap on his shoulder, and at once she began to unwrap the thing in all its milk-product goodness. What the hell was she thinking? Tonight, we could be facing the biggest case of our lives, and she was over there munching on a stick of intestinal dynamite.
While Hendrix leaned back on the headrest and shut his eyes for a moment of elusive peace, the rest of us sat waiting for an epiphany in regards to Dawes' reasoning. Finally Michaels got tired of sitting around.
"Just what are you doing?" he mouthed across Hendrix, just as Dawes had put a chunk of the bar between her teeth. "This is so counterproductive that it's not even funny!" At that, his hand came down in an emphatic motion, and right onto Hendrix's right kneecap.
The rookie flew to attention and gazed curiously over to Michaels, who feigned innocence while keeping an eye on Dawes' mouthed reply.
"I'm trying not to make him feel useless!" She, too, somehow managed to whack Hendrix on the shoulder, and his attention was diverted once more.
"He would've never known the difference," Michaels insisted silently behind the befuddled agent. "How are you going to help us on the case with an upset stomach?" And, as we should have guessed by now, the back of his hand made contact with the back of Hendrix's head. The process continued incessantly, as did their silent debate.
"I think he would have noticed the four candy bars in his jacket!" Smack.
"You're overanalyzing!" Whack.
"You're underanalyzing! And aren't you supposed to be his best work friend?" Slap.
Suddenly they both found their foreheads smacked and pushed back, so their skulls were against the windows. "And Hendrix retaliates on the unofficial 'Let's Hit Hendrix Day'!" he declared triumphantly with a huge grin. We were shocked, but there was still a resistible urge to chuckle. Rucker even peeked through his web of fingers to arch an eyebrow at us via the rearview mirror.
"What are you doing back there?" the boss snapped, thankfully not taking his eyes off the road and thereby committing a manslaughter. Still, we in the back sobered up immediately and muttered "nothing" under our breaths.
We all oddly felt that we were ten years old again, going on a road trip with an irate, road-raging father. All that was missing was…
Hands back covering his face, Rucker said, "Are we there yet?"
Yeah, we were officially ten again, but our relived childhood was cut short with the squealing brakes and onslaught of inertia. Hendrix even made some choking sound because of the seat belt over his neck.
"Get out of the car," the boss mumbled.
Although we occasionally enjoyed the wasting of time, we made every effort to almost teleport out to soothe the boss' nerves. It was apparent, though, that we weren't his brand of aloe.
"Listen," he said to our circle as more police swarmed the impressive Archives steps. "I know you're not stupid, but I can't emphasize enough: this is huge, life-altering, the difference between employed and unemployed should something go wrong." Letting that last point sink in, he gazed at each of us significantly. "There hasn't been a case so far in any of your careers where your country has been counting this much on you. Don't let it down."
He turned and started up the steps, met halfway by an Archives official, a larger black man with silver hair whose hands were cemented on a walkie-talkie. Being the intelligent agents we were, we took this as our cue to follow. All the while we leaped up the grand steps, the boss was fifteen steps ahead, physically and mentally. Who knew what thoughts were flying through his brain as he conferred with this security advisor; as he caught wind of the confused mutterings wafting from inside; as he realized he had to depend on us? Sometimes we wished huge events like this could come with a twenty-four hour notice, just so we could get in the right state of mind.
"How'd we go from Smurfs to this?" Dawes muttered, much to our amusement, but Hendrix's bemusement, as he had been on his Snickers run.
Upon entering the building and falling into ranks with our fellow law enforcers, we instantly felt like party crashers. All the gala guests, in their formal garb, were milling about, staring expectantly up at the boss.
"So…what?" Michaels breathed to us. "You dress in uncomfortable clothes, eat funny food, listen to stuffy music, and examine old documents? Geez, look at all the fun we've been missing."
Not trying to hide a smile, Rucker shot him a look with a roll of his eyes to shut him up. Not that we didn't share his sentiments—what a bunch of stiffs. One, still clutching a tall glass half full of champagne, stood anxiously by our group.
"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," the boss said to the crowd. "My name is Peter Sadusky: I'm the agent in charge."
Wait—he has a first name? And it's Peter? What the hell…we would so not peg him for a Peter. And it was at that point we realized we didn't know anyone else's first names, either.
"I want to reassure you that you are not in danger in any way," he continued. "And if we all cooperate, we can get through this with as little frustration as possible. Thank you."
Even though he wasn't looking at us when he said that, we knew that it was us he was alluding to. A smidgen of guilt passed over us, and Hendrix visibly fidgeted and twitched, shifting his weight from foot to foot until Dawes put a forceful hand on his shoulder. But it didn't really help all that much; as the boss and the top stiff turned from the gala guests, we began to wonder if he would actually skitter away.
"Get positive IDs and search everyone, including the security staff," the boss said in a lower tone; we flocked close to his side immediately and were afraid to move an inch too far away and thereby miss our orders. Screwing something up by going solo for even a second was not worth the risk. Who knew?—maybe the boss kept those decoys on his person for times like these. What an embarrassing story to tell…how'd we get these bruises, you ask? Flying, psychotic, wooden ducks!
"If they refuse," he continued. "Detain them and get warrants." Well, we thought to ourselves. That sounds like fun.
Our trains of thought were interrupted as Hendrix cleared his throat in a very uncomfortable manner. Instantly we knew that whatever he felt the need to say would not be worth celebrating—we could tell these things.
"Yes, Agent Hendrix? You have something?" the boss said with an edge of impatience.
"Um…" We could almost feel his planned words evaporate under the boss' expectant gaze, our eyes soon joining his. Of course, this wasn't making the rookie's ordeal any better.
"This isn't a day for 'um's."
Sighing, he allowed another brief pause to ensue. "We got a tip several days ago that someone was going to steal the Declaration of Independence."
Whoa, whoa, whoa—we? We don't remember anything of the sort. We're pretty sure we were out at Subway for lunch that day when you came in late after that migraine. You must have gotten that tip. Don't bring any of this "we" business in here!
"Name on the tipster?"
Maybe Hendrix could redeem himself…maybe, hopefully, please—
"There was no file opened—"
What?
"—we didn't find the information credible."
You mean you didn't find the information credible, you dunce! What the hell! For a moment, we considered that perhaps a bit of pity was due for him after a brief glance at the boss, but our sheer incredulity overpowered everything. We wondered if Dawes had saved that Snickers—it'd make a wonderful, less-lethal-than-a-duck-decoy projectile.
But much to our surprise, the boss only sighed and spoke with a most uncharacteristic, obvious sarcasm. "How about now?"
"Yes, sir," Hendrix said quietly, his gaze on the tiled floor. "I'll keep this in mind in the future."
Many of us doubted the usefulness of such a reassurance after this slip-up of his. But he still owned up to it. That was something, wasn't it? Maybe he didn't have to be let go, but on second thought… We silently debated back and forth, as regular as a giant, humanoid pendulum.
"Agent Hendrix," the boss said after a moment's pause. This was it—if he was getting the sack, the boss wouldn't beat around the bush anymore. "I believe there is another exit to this building along the back, by the souvenirs. Would you mind running some checks back there?"
He heartily agreed and dashed off down the grand stair case, disappearing before we barely had time to register what was going on, and most definitely before he had been able to decrypt the request. Most likely this was the precursor to the ever-feared sack, a way to comb him out of our hair for the time being. The only one of us who didn't look back at him as he departed was Dawes.
"Now," the boss kept on. "Some of the security staff said they found some unusual items in the hallways below." Without a word to Dr. Herbert, he strode off to the same staircase that Hendrix had just used, only taking a different direction. We remained in our spots, trying to remove the metaphorical glue from our soles.
"Excuse me," the stiff said to us suddenly. "Have any of you seen Dr. Abigail Chase? She was just here a few minutes ago."
Like we had any idea who that was. But we—politely—told him that we had absolutely no freaking clue what he was talking about, and he proceeded to scurry back to his circle of stiff friends rather awkwardly. His question, however misdirected, stuck with us for some reason—it looked as if Dawes was filing it away for future use, since she did that a lot with random tidbits of information, like the prices of jumbo packs of her favorite ball-point pen.
"Maybe we should, um…" Rucker said with a jerk of the head to the stairs.
"Remember," she replied curtly, already halfway there. "This isn't a day for 'um's."
"He's not going to appreciate you quoting him like that," Michaels said as he jogged after them. "You might find yourself in the gift shop next to Hendrix."
"Heaven forbid," she muttered.
Following the sounds of confused murmurs issuing up from the bottom of the staircase, we soon found ourselves in an ornate hallway flooded with our comrades. The boss sidestepped all of them as he took in little details silently. Could the criminals, who must have gotten past the oodles of security, really have been as careless as to leave evidence strewn all over the hallway?
"Apparently," Rucker sighed. "But don't complain. We haven't had a somewhat idiot criminal in a while."
"If they stole the Declaration," Dawes muttered. "then they aren't idiots." As soon as her last syllable escaped her mouth, a light tinkling came from her shoe, and she bent down. "Hm…" When she came back up, a brass-colored cylinder was pressed between her thumb and first finger carefully. "Aha," she said with a smile, gazing back toward the floor. Upon a second examination, five more similar objects laid in her palm. She turned to Michaels. "Do you have a Ziploc bag?"
"Yes," Michaels sighed sarcastically. "Because I keep a box of those in my suit pocket just for occasions like these. No, of course I don't have any!"
"Just wondering…" Rolling her eyes, she began to inspect the cylinders in more detail and proceeded to ignore us as she walked down toward the far right end of the corridor.
After she was out of earshot, Michaels muttered to Rucker, "Do I seem like the kind of guy to have an emergency stash of those bags? Seriously?"
Rucker simply shrugged and avoided committing either way. "Hey…" he sighed, swiveling his companion around to the other end of the hall, where some lower-level police were regarding a large, metal case with too much curiosity to be safe. "Go over there and take control before those guys break something." It had been known to happen—in the serial bank robbery case a few years back, they completely obliterated a vase with the suspect's fingerprints on it and thereby lost the case.
"It'd be amazing if they broke that," Michaels mumbled with a subtle jerk of the head at the box. Still, he wasted no time in going over and shooing away the flies that were those ignorant non-FBI officers. Didn't they have better things to do than ogle? Ooo, a giant glass case! How incredibly common in this particular building!
While Rucker ran off to make sure nothing else could be unintentionally harmed, Michaels seemed to have taken to filling the officers' ogling position. From what we could tell a good distance away, he looked rather unproductive just staring at it, stroking his chin and so forth. Watch out for that duck decoy! But we really didn't say that, so his little reaction-twitch appeared unnecessary—unless he found something…
Nah.
Meanwhile, the boss had circled back around, Dr. Stiff—er, Herbert—and the security official that he met up with when we first arrived here close around him. While they meandered around the others lining the corridor, he kept his gaze, determined and grave, straight ahead, only turning to the official and Dr. Herbert when necessary. "There's a copy of the Declaration on display now?"
"Ye—" Dr. Herbert started.
"Leave it." Ha. He couldn't even get a whole syllable out, the stiff (none of us had any idea just why that was such a fun moniker to assign him). "The guests know something happened, but they don't know what."
By then, Dawes had caught up with him after having apparently spoken with the medics by an ailing security guard. By now she was all-business and all-scary. Bother her now and you just might find yourself having emergency nose repair surgery within twenty-four hours.
"They got him with a taser at the service entrance," she informed him, motioning to the groaning man. "He doesn't remember a thing."
Wow, the rest of us instantly thought to ourselves. Tasers can do that? We recalled the last time the Bureau tried out issuing apparently low-powered tasers for us to use in the field. Of course, they had the incredible foresight to do this right after a new, highly-caffeinated coffee machine was put in the break room; within ten minutes of the boss' leaving us alone, a taser-tag fight erupted, teams somehow splitting along gender lines.
Poor Dawes wouldn't come out of the bathroom for three hours.
And when she finally surrendered, Hendrix shocked her in her writing arm, rendering it—and thereby her—useless for a good portion of the day. To think sometimes we actually wondered why she had some inklings of hostility toward the guy!
"Also, we found bullet casings," she continued as she held up a Ziploc bag. Where the heck did she get that? Did they have baggie dispensers by the water fountains or something? Man, this place was weird.
As soon as she completed her sentence, the four of them had made it back over to where Michaels was holding vigil, but we could see that they were quite intent on finishing their briefing. "Did we get a description from the other guards?" the boss asked with a look at the official.
The man fought back a grimace and shifted his gaze. "Which guards?" he countered.
"The guards that—" Somehow the boss managed to trail off into complete gibberish for which we had not compiled a mental dictionary yet. But we kept silent, since apparently the man understood him, and that was all that mattered, really. It didn't change the fact that we really wanted to know, being insatiably curious and all.
Again, the man becomes another level of nervous. "There weren't any other guards on patrol down here."
The boss didn't even bother to reply to that, and we didn't blame him. We mean, if you don't have guards guarding what needs to be guarded, then you can't blame anybody but yourself when it gets stolen—case in point. Turning back to face Michaels, he raised his eyebrows with much exaggeration, but all funny expressions we lost once we all eyed the case.
As our eyes took in what was indeed something and our minds grappled to pluck out the right words, we slowly realized that no words were necessary. Crunched circles of glass resembling hailstones dotted the gleaming surface with web-like tendrils lining their edges.
Someone must have gotten very angry at the document.
"Who was shooting, who were they shooting at…?" the boss asked aloud. Agents in other squads found this practice of his irritating. We, on the other hand, loved it. It was like an oral school worksheet with everything laid out perfectly. This way we didn't operate like a giant chicken with its head cut off, like some other squads around the Bureau. "And why weren't they getting along?"
"'Cause they were trying to steal the Declaration of Independence!"
With all of our focus aimed specifically at the evidence, we didn't have enough reaction time to berate Hendrix for answering a rhetorical question. Clearly he didn't pay enough attention in English class, but for the record, neither did we…except for Rucker, maybe. He seemed like the type.
"I thought"—despite the obvious emphasis, Hendrix remained unfazed—"I told you to run checks in the gift shop." The boss' mustache twitched ever so slightly, and we had to fight the urge to duck and cover.
"I did," he replied with a misplaced grin. The goofy thing stayed on his face much longer than we ourselves would have deemed safe.
Instead of saying anything, the boss simply raised his eyebrows. Deep within our Boss-Sensors, we knew that if any words were going to come out of his mouth, they would not be very nice.
"I found something," Hendrix elaborated. "And if you don't believe me," he appropriately added. "come talk to the clerk herself."
Oh boy, here we go again. With a quite obvious look down at the pockmarked case, the boss arched his eyebrows even higher, so high in fact that we thought they would mesh with his hairline. And even more obviously, he turned his head to give a long stare at the tasered guard. Only then did he return his glance to Hendrix. "Could you summarize it? We're a bit busy down here."
"You're going to want to come see for yourself, sir," he said quickly. "And there are some videos that aren't nearly as effective if I just describe them to you."
We could see that this was not heading in a good direction; for one, Hendrix used the phrase "you're going to want to," which the boss detested with every fiber of his being. And secondly, the rookie was already in such deep metaphorical doo-doo that it almost had a non-metaphorical stench.
"Well, Hendrix," Rucker said suddenly. "Let's put it this way: if this were an e-mail, what would the subject line be?"
It didn't take long for him to answer. "Possible suspect."
"Damn, Hendrix," Dawes exclaimed. "And you were only up there for only how long?" And she was supposed to be the one who was hard to read (as long as she wasn't lying). Not this time, we all thought.
"Agent Dawes, watch your language," the boss said with an air of forced calm. "And Hendrix—" Pausing to find the words in the mess of this case, he added, "Good job." The break in the sentence hardly allowed him the time to erase the clear confusion of the last bit. At any rate, we ran back up the stairs, two at a time (Michaels knew from experience that three at a time was not worth the medical bills) until we found ourselves facing a young, befuddled cashier in the gift shop.
"Um…hello," she said carefully.
"Were you the one who talked to Agent Hendrix?" the boss asked, and she nodded. "So what's this I hear about a suspect?"
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, that same official from before arrived in the small room. "Excuse me, Agent Sadusky," he stated. "But we need Tanya here to come down to the security area with all the other employees. You're free to use the monitor room down that hallway." Motioning to said hallway, he promptly left, and Tanya followed close behind.
"Sorry," she mouthed over her shoulder. The boss sighed with frustration.
"OK, then, let's see this footage, Hendrix." The walk to the monitor room was mercifully short, for we were soon hating this tension of the case and Hendrix's possible loss of employment. Let's just get it over with. Oh wait. That would be too easy.
This room was even more cramped than the souvenir shop with all of us crammed in it. Hell, even two fairly large guards would get inklings of claustrophobia in here. The daunting atmosphere was not helped by the wall of square screens in front of us, all showing the same image. It was like an extremely cheap Walmart electronics section.
And just to make things even more hunky-dory, there were already people in there. We could feel Rucker tense up at the sight of the place. He hated crowded spaces, so why he was living in a big city confounded us, but we dealt with it. Why else would we tolerate giving him the front seat every time?
"This the guy?" the boss asked shortly, pointing at the figure in the screen. He was relatively tall, with an average hue of brown hair that was escaping him, and—from what we could tell—a bit of a dominating nose. He was dressed in a sharp tux.
"I assume so," Hendrix replied. "He matches the description she gave me."
"So what's the story?" Dawes probed, leaning up against the far wall.
He sighed. "Dr. Herbert said Dr. Chase introduced him as Mr. Brown—not on the guest list." We shifted at that information: "sketchy" was written all over it, and then some. And even Dawes, who was not the fidgety one, stirred more than usual. "She said he seemed, well, flustered…said he tried to walk out with a copy of the Declaration."
Someone towards the front tapped a button on the control panel, and the screen zoomed in on Mr. Brown's face. "Paid with a Visa. Charge…to Benjamin Gates."
There was silence as we took in the news. We had a suspect—there should have been much rejoicing. But at the same time, this fellow was intimidating, a force to be reckoned with. How was this one guy able to do all this, to steal the unstealable? Though we liked cases (why else would we have signed up for the Bureau?) this one was threatening to be a doozy, and not the good type of doozy.
"Hold on," Dawes said quietly. "You said 'Dr. Chase,' right, Hendrix?" He nodded. "Dr. Herbert asked us earlier where she was, remember?"
"Oh yeah," Michaels added. "He said that she had been there until just then."
"Hey," Dawes called over to the other non-agents in the room. "Do you know Dr. Abigail Chase's position here?"
"She's the, uh…" one sighed. "Oh, what is it? I know it's important…"
"The Director of Document Conservation," the other supplied.
"Would she, by chance, have access to the preservation room?" the boss asked, breaking his silence. And much to our dread, they murmured their affirmations definitively. "Well…looks like we have a possible accomplice." Without another word, he rose to his feet and left, and we scrambled to keep up with him. Michaels and Rucker ran on ahead, but Dawes waited a moment for Hendrix.
"Nice work, rookie," she said with a fleeting grin, only to halfway shove him out the door so they didn't run the risk of irking the boss any more that was necessary. As we darted back to the police car, the boss talking hurriedly on his cell phone, we felt the sack of unemployment get shoved back into one of the boss' many file cabinets. Hopefully he wouldn't find it again for a while.
XXX
Behind the scenes are fun. And that bit about Nicolas Cage's nose? I'm sorry, every time I look at him, I look at his nose. (shrugs)
OK: updates. I really hope that it won't be a couple months long again, but I'm not sure how long it will take. Sorry! (hides)
Review! It's fun! And now it's in a different location and no longer purple! (GASP) I can't tell you how much that threw me off.