Synth, p.41
Synth, page 41
3:11 pm
Warren turned, motioning for Hawthorne and me to follow, and the three of us darted across the rocks until we reached the mouth of the cave. I blinked as we crossed the threshold, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dull glow from a smouldering fire as Hawthorne removed his helmet and Warren lingered just a few feet from my side.
“I appreciate you both coming out here so quickly.” Orion’s familiar voice filled the hollow space.
“It wasn’t a problem,” I said, my eyes finally having adjusted enough so I could take in Orion’s appearance.
He looked the same as the last time I had seen him, except there was a tear in his jacket along the sleeve and a stain of blood had dried into the material. I glanced at Warren, but he didn’t seem concerned about his father, and I couldn’t smell the blood, so I decided I would ask about it later.
“So what’s going on?” I asked, looking around the cave and taking in the other familiar human faces.
It was the usual crew, the rude monotonous female, the male with the long black hair tied into a braid, and the extremely silent one with the scar on his neck, but this time their rifles were simply gripped tightly and not directly aimed at our faces. It wasn’t a huge change, but it meant the world to me and made my heart flutter with hope.
“Did something happen?”
“Yes.” Orion nodded as he took a step forward. “They’re on the move.”
I stiffened as a rush of different emotions surged through my veins. It was happening. The moment we had been working toward—the one I could hardly wait for while simultaneously dreading.
“As of when?”
“Yesterday,” Warren answered, and both Hawthorne and I turned to look at him. “We got the confirmation a few hours ago, and our team was able to flag the trucks. All three of them.”
“Three of them,” Hawthorne repeated, and Warren confirmed with a nod. “Is that – were you expecting that many? Can we handle that amount?”
“We’re working on it,” Orion said. “It’s more than we were expecting, but it’s not something you need to worry about.”
“Then what do you need from us?” I asked.
“A contact of Eridanus got a lead through a potential buyer. Eridanus interrogated him this morning. We couldn’t verify the warehouse or the dock, but we’ve confirmed the times and the company. The trucks are stamped with a logo for Sante Lumen Limited. Are you familiar with them?” Orion looked at me, but I shook my head in response. “We need you to dig into them as quickly as possible to determine if this is a one-time thing or if they’re tied deeper into this mess. When we cut the head off the snake, I’m not interested in six more popping up, so we need a full list of anyone involved in the business and ties to other companies that might have their hand in the pot.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “Hawthorne and I can do that, but we’re not going to have much time.”
“You’re right,” Orion agreed. “Eridanus confirmed the arrival – the trucks are slotted to arrive this Friday, late evening before the sun goes down, and they’re leaving the following day.”
“What time?”
“Boat arrives at 3:00 pm Saturday,” Orion said. “That gives us a window of fifteen hours to get in, find our people, and get out before they start loading the boat. I can take care of organizing our end, but that means you have to confirm the warehouse.”
“3:00 pm,” Hawthorne repeated as he ran a hand through his hair. “Boats are scheduled. They can’t just show up unannounced. You’re sure it’s 3:00 pm on Saturday?”
“Positive,” Orion confirmed. “Eridanus was very thorough during questioning.”
“Okay.” Hawthorne passed me his helmet, then slid off his gear bag. “I have a copy of the boat routes for this week.”
“I pulled them from the Federal Coast Guard Register, and we looked at them before,” I said, setting both our helmets on the ground as Hawthorne opened his notebook. “But without knowing the date, the shipping company, or anything else, the information was pretty much useless to us.”
Warren moved closer, all but leaning over my shoulder, as Hawthorne began flipping until he found the page where he had written down the weekly arrival times for Lionetti’s docks. I watched him scan down the page until he reached Saturday, then his finger paused by a cluster of entries.
“Dock 57d – 12:30 pm arrival, dock 62b – 1:45 pm, dock 59b – 2:55 pm, dock 58c – 3:15 pm, and dock 60d – 4:45 pm arrival,” Hawthorne read out. “There’s nothing else on the piers Lionetti owns until 8:00 pm.”
“Then it has to be dock 59b,” I said. “Which means warehouse 236A.”
“Wait.” Warren turned, lowering his voice as he glanced between his father and me. “We have to be certain – you’re sure Eridanus’s contact is reliable? That the information is sound?”
“It’s sound,” Orion said quietly, nodding to his son. “Eridanus is reliable – I would trust them with my life.”
Warren frowned, a brief moment of unspoken communication passing between the two before he finally nodded in submission.
“It aligns with everything we’ve already established, Aries,” I said quietly as I removed my own gear bag. “Piers 57 and 62 are shared docks. They’re way too close to uninvolved parties. Even if the boat times did align, it would be an unnecessary risk to load anything illegal there. They have no control over the other owner’s security or dock presence. Too many things that could go wrong – it wouldn’t make any sense for Beckette to use them.”
I dropped my bag to the ground, kneeling before it as I rapidly unzipped the smallest compartment.
“We can eliminate 57 and 62 based on that alone,” I said as I pulled out a copy of our map and unrolled it across the ground. “And 61 is out because there are no scheduled arrivals that day. The only other pier with a boat arrival near the time Eridanus gave is 58, but the warehouses associated with it aren’t a good fit.”
“Most of them are too visible from the road,” Hawthorne explained as he crouched down on my left and helped me hold the map flat. The others in the cave moved closer, their curiosity seeming to outweigh their caution. “The ones closer to the dock are boarded up and don’t look like they’ve been used in decades. Warehouse 236A is ideal. It’s perfectly located – not visible from the main road, close to the pier, access door facing south, and it looks to have new cameras on the building exterior.”
“And the boat time confirms it.” I looked up, meeting Warren’s warm brown gaze. I thought about everything I had learned back at the Academy, all the training I’d done to become a detective, my partner and the way he seemed to see things that I couldn’t—and I found myself nodding in reassurance. “If I wanted to conduct illegal activity, this is the warehouse I would pick.”
The others remained silent as Warren looked down at me, then he let out a breath.
“Alright,” Warren sighed, and he kneeled by my side, much closer than I would have expected. “So how best would we get into it?”
“The best place to enter would be the northeast corner,” I replied as I tried not to think about how close his face was when I turned to look at him. I swallowed, my gaze dropping to his lips before I forced my eyes back to our map. “It’s tucked behind warehouse 235, and from what we can tell, there’s a gap in the cameras and no security on the roof. We can climb the fire escape on the northeast side and make our way across it.”
“Across the roof to where?”
“To the southeast side,” Hawthorne answered. “Here.”
He tapped the map, and Orion crouched down beside his son, his eyes darting across the paper and intently consuming all the notes that I had scrawled along the edges.
“There’s a door to the office unit on the roof,” Hawthorne explained. “They would likely bring the trucks in the south bay doors facing the pier. They’re just below the office unit, which will make a roof entry ideal. I can’t see that they would leave the trucks outside. Fifteen hours is too long, and even with these warehouses being sheltered from the road, it’s too risky. They’ll pull them inside and wait, then drive them right down the dock and load them on the boat.”
“It’s possible they may even change vehicles inside or load them into a shipping container,” I said. “Pier 59 has a crane. It’s one of the bigger docks along the river. They might not be driving them onto the boat at all.”
“True.” Hawthorne nodded. “Another layer of changing hands to make it more difficult to track the shipment. They could put anything on the side of those containers and load them with a hundred others. We’d never find them.”
“Which is exactly why we have to get to them before they leave the warehouse,” Orion said. “And if possible, get to them before the trucks are unloaded.”
“That might be difficult.” I frowned, looking up to meet Orion’s gaze. “You said the trucks are scheduled to arrive Friday right before sunset, which is right before traffic will hit and business hours resume. We won’t have time to go in. Those docks are busy at night. The roads will be crawling with trucks, security, staff – Carneth is a main port. A lot of boats swap crews here and take up port for several days. It will be impossible to get in without someone seeing us.
“We’ll have to wait until sunrise, go in after the regular shift has ended, and get them out before 3:00 pm. The best way to get to the warehouse would be cutting in from the road between warehouses 235 and 234, where the camera gap is, then making our way south between 236A and 236B,” I said, tracing my finger along the narrow road that ran between the two massive buildings. “I’m not sure how you’re planning to get them out, but there are some cameras between 236A and 236B – and I’m sure there will be even more still by the bay doors on the south. We can probably disable a few just before we make our move, but there’s security at the main entrance to all the docks. You can’t just drive back out. They’ll want papers, IDs, and dockets.”
“If it’s so difficult to get down there, how do you know so much about the warehouse and dock activity?” the monotone-looking woman asked as she stepped forward and glared down at me. “How did you get down there without being seen?”
“We crawled through the ditch,” I said, ignoring her tone and simply answering the question. I moved my finger, pointing to the thick line along the left side of the map to the north. “This ditch catches runoff from the hillside here, prevents the docks from flooding with mud and debris during the rainy season, and it’s a storm sewer for part of Carneth. The forest that borders the docks is protected land – part of the Federal Forestry Reserve. There’re hiking trails that run through it. We park our car in the lot here, a few kilometres from the main dock entrance, and pretend to go for a run, cutting through the trees, down the hill, and into the ditch that runs along the docks. We use it for cover as we crawl our way along the main road and investigate the warehouses. Then, when the weather is particularly bad, we sneak across the road, keeping to the bushes to scope out the buildings as closely as possible.”
“But that only works because it’s just the two of us,” Hawthorne said. “It’s not difficult for us to avoid being seen, but we’d never be able to get your people out that way. Even if we manage to pull this off without drawing attention to ourselves at the warehouse, you can’t get that many people across the road and up the hill unnoticed. They have regular security patrols.”
“Do you have those documented?” Orion asked.
“Yes.” I reached for my bag, digging out my own notebook. “They’re not always on time, but this is the rough pattern that they follow.”
I ripped the page out, knowing Hawthorne had a copy of the guard schedule in his book too.
“Thank you,” Orion said as he took the paper. “I’ll speak to Eridanus about the patrols and cameras. We already have a few different evac plans, but we were waiting on this break to set anything definitive. Our biggest issue is timing. We don’t have room for mistakes – we have to make sure we get our people out before anyone calls for backup. The Beckette family has allies and clients in the CPD, among other places within the city, so there’s a good chance they’ve already stacked the patrol routes in the area. We’ll need you there to help us get inside the warehouse, but you’ll have to get out just as quickly if anything goes wrong.”
“Understood,” I said, wondering how many of my colleagues might actually be bought-and-paid-for cops. “We’ll be there, and Hawthorne and I can move pretty quick if we need to. There are a bunch of routes we could take after we cross the ditch into the woods, so I’m not worried about that. The bigger issue is my partner. If he calls me in, I have to answer.”
“Can’t you just take the day off?” the monotone-looking woman asked, but I shook my head.
“It doesn’t work like that,” I answered, turning to look at Orion. “I’m on call indefinitely, twenty-four hours a day it seems. If something happens and he calls me in, I have to pick up and go. Even if the execution is flawless and people don’t find out what happened at the docks until after it’s done, they’ll know the window that it occurred in, and my partner will know that I was missing. This is exactly the sort of case my captain would assign him to, and that will just cause problems. The last thing I need is for him to become suspicious – he already doesn’t like me and is holding me at arm’s length. I can’t give him any excuse to let me go. If I lose my position as detective, I won’t be able to do this kind of work for you, and we can’t afford that. So I’ll do everything that I can to be there that night, but I can’t guarantee what will happen.”
“Unless you’re already working,” Hawthorne said slowly.
“What do you mean?”
“The OT shifts for patrol.” Hawthorne turned to look at me. “Sign up.”
“That won’t help,” I argued. “I might technically still be Patrol and Street, but Vogle’s all but formally transferred me. He’d never allow it.”
“I know, but they would if they knew there’s going to be a protest.”
“Hawthorne, I don’t know if that’s—”
“No, hear me out – I’ll call my contact and tell her to have some of her partners let the plans slip. The second someone on city council finds out they’re planning to flood the downtown core, the CPD will have to start upping the staff. As it stands, Mallick is already concerned.”
“Mallick is concerned about Halloween OT every year,” I countered. “But that’s beside the point. There’s no guarantee that your contact will agree to let it slip, and even if she did, and even if I signed up, they’d station me in the city centre where it’s going to be the most crazy. That will make it even harder for me to get to the docks.”
“No, that might work,” Orion interrupted. “Eridanus has a contact at the CPD.”
“What?” Warren sounded surprised, and his displeasure was clear, but his father ignored him.
“They can get you stationed near the docks – I can set that up,” Orion continued. “Then you can just pretend to have responded to something suspicious in the area, and you can call it in after we’re clear.”
“That could work,” I said, nodding as I thought it through. “I could identify it as a disturbance. Maybe someone on your side can fire their weapons or do something else to create some commotion just before you leave. I’m sure Beckette’s men will be armed. It won’t be hard to create a scene – the more difficult part will be trying to prevent one until we’re ready for it. We’ll have to be careful and manage that, but calling it in would force them to open an investigation. The docks are federal land, so they can’t just bury it as they did with the girls at Scott’s house. If I call it in to dispatch from my radio, they’ll have to respond, and that will give you the media attention that you wanted.”
“It’s done, then,” Orion said as he turned to look at Hawthorne. “Contact your ally and have her leak the details of the protest today before 6 pm, but make sure she speaks directly to Kenneth at the Carneth Free Press. That will get it in the news before your regular shifts start tonight. Your friend is involved with the wildlife conservation efforts, correct?”
“Yes.” Hawthorne nodded.
“Then tell her, ‘the sun is rising, and soon the birds will sing’. She won’t hesitate. Corvus, sign up for the additional patrols. Once the news breaks tonight, the CPD will scramble, and no one will question it if you add your name to the list. You won’t be the only detective who does so.”
I nodded.
“I’ll contact Eridanus and tell them to make sure their contact gets you both posted close by.”
“It shouldn’t be too difficult,” Hawthorne said as he folded up the map. He stood from the ground, towering above everyone. “I switched my patrol route. It’s already down by the north side of the docks. I’ll be placed there for the OT shifts regardless, so if this Eridanus person’s CPD contact can pair Corvus with me, it’s a done deal.”
“What about Hernandez?” I asked.
“Our shifts got out of sync a few weeks ago with all those days I was working. He’s still stationed downtown core. I’ve mostly been running solo.”
“Alright.” I nodded again, standing from the ground with Warren and Orion. “Then we have a plan. We’ll focus our efforts on warehouse 236A, put the sensors near the road, compile a typical timeline for the security and staff, come up with a definitive plan of entry, and figure out the best way to get from Hawthorne’s patrol route to the warehouse. I’ll cross-check Sante Lumen Limited with the data we’ve collected so far. I’m sure 236A is the right place, but we’ll see if we can link it to the company and find any ties back to the Beckette or Lionetti family. We’ll put everything together on a disk and print some extra maps and plans – but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make any drops this week.
“My partner pulled me onto surveillance for another case,” I explained. “I’ll do what I can, but I have no idea how much time he plans to keep me out. As it stands, Hawthorne will be doing most of the work by the docks. I also can’t do anything about weapons or gear for the night of, aside from the sort of stuff I’ve already been bringing. Our ammunition is counted and logged, so Hawthorne and I won’t be able to fire our weapons if anything goes wrong unless there’s a way to explain it, which isn’t easy to do.”
Warren turned, motioning for Hawthorne and me to follow, and the three of us darted across the rocks until we reached the mouth of the cave. I blinked as we crossed the threshold, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dull glow from a smouldering fire as Hawthorne removed his helmet and Warren lingered just a few feet from my side.
“I appreciate you both coming out here so quickly.” Orion’s familiar voice filled the hollow space.
“It wasn’t a problem,” I said, my eyes finally having adjusted enough so I could take in Orion’s appearance.
He looked the same as the last time I had seen him, except there was a tear in his jacket along the sleeve and a stain of blood had dried into the material. I glanced at Warren, but he didn’t seem concerned about his father, and I couldn’t smell the blood, so I decided I would ask about it later.
“So what’s going on?” I asked, looking around the cave and taking in the other familiar human faces.
It was the usual crew, the rude monotonous female, the male with the long black hair tied into a braid, and the extremely silent one with the scar on his neck, but this time their rifles were simply gripped tightly and not directly aimed at our faces. It wasn’t a huge change, but it meant the world to me and made my heart flutter with hope.
“Did something happen?”
“Yes.” Orion nodded as he took a step forward. “They’re on the move.”
I stiffened as a rush of different emotions surged through my veins. It was happening. The moment we had been working toward—the one I could hardly wait for while simultaneously dreading.
“As of when?”
“Yesterday,” Warren answered, and both Hawthorne and I turned to look at him. “We got the confirmation a few hours ago, and our team was able to flag the trucks. All three of them.”
“Three of them,” Hawthorne repeated, and Warren confirmed with a nod. “Is that – were you expecting that many? Can we handle that amount?”
“We’re working on it,” Orion said. “It’s more than we were expecting, but it’s not something you need to worry about.”
“Then what do you need from us?” I asked.
“A contact of Eridanus got a lead through a potential buyer. Eridanus interrogated him this morning. We couldn’t verify the warehouse or the dock, but we’ve confirmed the times and the company. The trucks are stamped with a logo for Sante Lumen Limited. Are you familiar with them?” Orion looked at me, but I shook my head in response. “We need you to dig into them as quickly as possible to determine if this is a one-time thing or if they’re tied deeper into this mess. When we cut the head off the snake, I’m not interested in six more popping up, so we need a full list of anyone involved in the business and ties to other companies that might have their hand in the pot.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “Hawthorne and I can do that, but we’re not going to have much time.”
“You’re right,” Orion agreed. “Eridanus confirmed the arrival – the trucks are slotted to arrive this Friday, late evening before the sun goes down, and they’re leaving the following day.”
“What time?”
“Boat arrives at 3:00 pm Saturday,” Orion said. “That gives us a window of fifteen hours to get in, find our people, and get out before they start loading the boat. I can take care of organizing our end, but that means you have to confirm the warehouse.”
“3:00 pm,” Hawthorne repeated as he ran a hand through his hair. “Boats are scheduled. They can’t just show up unannounced. You’re sure it’s 3:00 pm on Saturday?”
“Positive,” Orion confirmed. “Eridanus was very thorough during questioning.”
“Okay.” Hawthorne passed me his helmet, then slid off his gear bag. “I have a copy of the boat routes for this week.”
“I pulled them from the Federal Coast Guard Register, and we looked at them before,” I said, setting both our helmets on the ground as Hawthorne opened his notebook. “But without knowing the date, the shipping company, or anything else, the information was pretty much useless to us.”
Warren moved closer, all but leaning over my shoulder, as Hawthorne began flipping until he found the page where he had written down the weekly arrival times for Lionetti’s docks. I watched him scan down the page until he reached Saturday, then his finger paused by a cluster of entries.
“Dock 57d – 12:30 pm arrival, dock 62b – 1:45 pm, dock 59b – 2:55 pm, dock 58c – 3:15 pm, and dock 60d – 4:45 pm arrival,” Hawthorne read out. “There’s nothing else on the piers Lionetti owns until 8:00 pm.”
“Then it has to be dock 59b,” I said. “Which means warehouse 236A.”
“Wait.” Warren turned, lowering his voice as he glanced between his father and me. “We have to be certain – you’re sure Eridanus’s contact is reliable? That the information is sound?”
“It’s sound,” Orion said quietly, nodding to his son. “Eridanus is reliable – I would trust them with my life.”
Warren frowned, a brief moment of unspoken communication passing between the two before he finally nodded in submission.
“It aligns with everything we’ve already established, Aries,” I said quietly as I removed my own gear bag. “Piers 57 and 62 are shared docks. They’re way too close to uninvolved parties. Even if the boat times did align, it would be an unnecessary risk to load anything illegal there. They have no control over the other owner’s security or dock presence. Too many things that could go wrong – it wouldn’t make any sense for Beckette to use them.”
I dropped my bag to the ground, kneeling before it as I rapidly unzipped the smallest compartment.
“We can eliminate 57 and 62 based on that alone,” I said as I pulled out a copy of our map and unrolled it across the ground. “And 61 is out because there are no scheduled arrivals that day. The only other pier with a boat arrival near the time Eridanus gave is 58, but the warehouses associated with it aren’t a good fit.”
“Most of them are too visible from the road,” Hawthorne explained as he crouched down on my left and helped me hold the map flat. The others in the cave moved closer, their curiosity seeming to outweigh their caution. “The ones closer to the dock are boarded up and don’t look like they’ve been used in decades. Warehouse 236A is ideal. It’s perfectly located – not visible from the main road, close to the pier, access door facing south, and it looks to have new cameras on the building exterior.”
“And the boat time confirms it.” I looked up, meeting Warren’s warm brown gaze. I thought about everything I had learned back at the Academy, all the training I’d done to become a detective, my partner and the way he seemed to see things that I couldn’t—and I found myself nodding in reassurance. “If I wanted to conduct illegal activity, this is the warehouse I would pick.”
The others remained silent as Warren looked down at me, then he let out a breath.
“Alright,” Warren sighed, and he kneeled by my side, much closer than I would have expected. “So how best would we get into it?”
“The best place to enter would be the northeast corner,” I replied as I tried not to think about how close his face was when I turned to look at him. I swallowed, my gaze dropping to his lips before I forced my eyes back to our map. “It’s tucked behind warehouse 235, and from what we can tell, there’s a gap in the cameras and no security on the roof. We can climb the fire escape on the northeast side and make our way across it.”
“Across the roof to where?”
“To the southeast side,” Hawthorne answered. “Here.”
He tapped the map, and Orion crouched down beside his son, his eyes darting across the paper and intently consuming all the notes that I had scrawled along the edges.
“There’s a door to the office unit on the roof,” Hawthorne explained. “They would likely bring the trucks in the south bay doors facing the pier. They’re just below the office unit, which will make a roof entry ideal. I can’t see that they would leave the trucks outside. Fifteen hours is too long, and even with these warehouses being sheltered from the road, it’s too risky. They’ll pull them inside and wait, then drive them right down the dock and load them on the boat.”
“It’s possible they may even change vehicles inside or load them into a shipping container,” I said. “Pier 59 has a crane. It’s one of the bigger docks along the river. They might not be driving them onto the boat at all.”
“True.” Hawthorne nodded. “Another layer of changing hands to make it more difficult to track the shipment. They could put anything on the side of those containers and load them with a hundred others. We’d never find them.”
“Which is exactly why we have to get to them before they leave the warehouse,” Orion said. “And if possible, get to them before the trucks are unloaded.”
“That might be difficult.” I frowned, looking up to meet Orion’s gaze. “You said the trucks are scheduled to arrive Friday right before sunset, which is right before traffic will hit and business hours resume. We won’t have time to go in. Those docks are busy at night. The roads will be crawling with trucks, security, staff – Carneth is a main port. A lot of boats swap crews here and take up port for several days. It will be impossible to get in without someone seeing us.
“We’ll have to wait until sunrise, go in after the regular shift has ended, and get them out before 3:00 pm. The best way to get to the warehouse would be cutting in from the road between warehouses 235 and 234, where the camera gap is, then making our way south between 236A and 236B,” I said, tracing my finger along the narrow road that ran between the two massive buildings. “I’m not sure how you’re planning to get them out, but there are some cameras between 236A and 236B – and I’m sure there will be even more still by the bay doors on the south. We can probably disable a few just before we make our move, but there’s security at the main entrance to all the docks. You can’t just drive back out. They’ll want papers, IDs, and dockets.”
“If it’s so difficult to get down there, how do you know so much about the warehouse and dock activity?” the monotone-looking woman asked as she stepped forward and glared down at me. “How did you get down there without being seen?”
“We crawled through the ditch,” I said, ignoring her tone and simply answering the question. I moved my finger, pointing to the thick line along the left side of the map to the north. “This ditch catches runoff from the hillside here, prevents the docks from flooding with mud and debris during the rainy season, and it’s a storm sewer for part of Carneth. The forest that borders the docks is protected land – part of the Federal Forestry Reserve. There’re hiking trails that run through it. We park our car in the lot here, a few kilometres from the main dock entrance, and pretend to go for a run, cutting through the trees, down the hill, and into the ditch that runs along the docks. We use it for cover as we crawl our way along the main road and investigate the warehouses. Then, when the weather is particularly bad, we sneak across the road, keeping to the bushes to scope out the buildings as closely as possible.”
“But that only works because it’s just the two of us,” Hawthorne said. “It’s not difficult for us to avoid being seen, but we’d never be able to get your people out that way. Even if we manage to pull this off without drawing attention to ourselves at the warehouse, you can’t get that many people across the road and up the hill unnoticed. They have regular security patrols.”
“Do you have those documented?” Orion asked.
“Yes.” I reached for my bag, digging out my own notebook. “They’re not always on time, but this is the rough pattern that they follow.”
I ripped the page out, knowing Hawthorne had a copy of the guard schedule in his book too.
“Thank you,” Orion said as he took the paper. “I’ll speak to Eridanus about the patrols and cameras. We already have a few different evac plans, but we were waiting on this break to set anything definitive. Our biggest issue is timing. We don’t have room for mistakes – we have to make sure we get our people out before anyone calls for backup. The Beckette family has allies and clients in the CPD, among other places within the city, so there’s a good chance they’ve already stacked the patrol routes in the area. We’ll need you there to help us get inside the warehouse, but you’ll have to get out just as quickly if anything goes wrong.”
“Understood,” I said, wondering how many of my colleagues might actually be bought-and-paid-for cops. “We’ll be there, and Hawthorne and I can move pretty quick if we need to. There are a bunch of routes we could take after we cross the ditch into the woods, so I’m not worried about that. The bigger issue is my partner. If he calls me in, I have to answer.”
“Can’t you just take the day off?” the monotone-looking woman asked, but I shook my head.
“It doesn’t work like that,” I answered, turning to look at Orion. “I’m on call indefinitely, twenty-four hours a day it seems. If something happens and he calls me in, I have to pick up and go. Even if the execution is flawless and people don’t find out what happened at the docks until after it’s done, they’ll know the window that it occurred in, and my partner will know that I was missing. This is exactly the sort of case my captain would assign him to, and that will just cause problems. The last thing I need is for him to become suspicious – he already doesn’t like me and is holding me at arm’s length. I can’t give him any excuse to let me go. If I lose my position as detective, I won’t be able to do this kind of work for you, and we can’t afford that. So I’ll do everything that I can to be there that night, but I can’t guarantee what will happen.”
“Unless you’re already working,” Hawthorne said slowly.
“What do you mean?”
“The OT shifts for patrol.” Hawthorne turned to look at me. “Sign up.”
“That won’t help,” I argued. “I might technically still be Patrol and Street, but Vogle’s all but formally transferred me. He’d never allow it.”
“I know, but they would if they knew there’s going to be a protest.”
“Hawthorne, I don’t know if that’s—”
“No, hear me out – I’ll call my contact and tell her to have some of her partners let the plans slip. The second someone on city council finds out they’re planning to flood the downtown core, the CPD will have to start upping the staff. As it stands, Mallick is already concerned.”
“Mallick is concerned about Halloween OT every year,” I countered. “But that’s beside the point. There’s no guarantee that your contact will agree to let it slip, and even if she did, and even if I signed up, they’d station me in the city centre where it’s going to be the most crazy. That will make it even harder for me to get to the docks.”
“No, that might work,” Orion interrupted. “Eridanus has a contact at the CPD.”
“What?” Warren sounded surprised, and his displeasure was clear, but his father ignored him.
“They can get you stationed near the docks – I can set that up,” Orion continued. “Then you can just pretend to have responded to something suspicious in the area, and you can call it in after we’re clear.”
“That could work,” I said, nodding as I thought it through. “I could identify it as a disturbance. Maybe someone on your side can fire their weapons or do something else to create some commotion just before you leave. I’m sure Beckette’s men will be armed. It won’t be hard to create a scene – the more difficult part will be trying to prevent one until we’re ready for it. We’ll have to be careful and manage that, but calling it in would force them to open an investigation. The docks are federal land, so they can’t just bury it as they did with the girls at Scott’s house. If I call it in to dispatch from my radio, they’ll have to respond, and that will give you the media attention that you wanted.”
“It’s done, then,” Orion said as he turned to look at Hawthorne. “Contact your ally and have her leak the details of the protest today before 6 pm, but make sure she speaks directly to Kenneth at the Carneth Free Press. That will get it in the news before your regular shifts start tonight. Your friend is involved with the wildlife conservation efforts, correct?”
“Yes.” Hawthorne nodded.
“Then tell her, ‘the sun is rising, and soon the birds will sing’. She won’t hesitate. Corvus, sign up for the additional patrols. Once the news breaks tonight, the CPD will scramble, and no one will question it if you add your name to the list. You won’t be the only detective who does so.”
I nodded.
“I’ll contact Eridanus and tell them to make sure their contact gets you both posted close by.”
“It shouldn’t be too difficult,” Hawthorne said as he folded up the map. He stood from the ground, towering above everyone. “I switched my patrol route. It’s already down by the north side of the docks. I’ll be placed there for the OT shifts regardless, so if this Eridanus person’s CPD contact can pair Corvus with me, it’s a done deal.”
“What about Hernandez?” I asked.
“Our shifts got out of sync a few weeks ago with all those days I was working. He’s still stationed downtown core. I’ve mostly been running solo.”
“Alright.” I nodded again, standing from the ground with Warren and Orion. “Then we have a plan. We’ll focus our efforts on warehouse 236A, put the sensors near the road, compile a typical timeline for the security and staff, come up with a definitive plan of entry, and figure out the best way to get from Hawthorne’s patrol route to the warehouse. I’ll cross-check Sante Lumen Limited with the data we’ve collected so far. I’m sure 236A is the right place, but we’ll see if we can link it to the company and find any ties back to the Beckette or Lionetti family. We’ll put everything together on a disk and print some extra maps and plans – but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make any drops this week.
“My partner pulled me onto surveillance for another case,” I explained. “I’ll do what I can, but I have no idea how much time he plans to keep me out. As it stands, Hawthorne will be doing most of the work by the docks. I also can’t do anything about weapons or gear for the night of, aside from the sort of stuff I’ve already been bringing. Our ammunition is counted and logged, so Hawthorne and I won’t be able to fire our weapons if anything goes wrong unless there’s a way to explain it, which isn’t easy to do.”
