Shad was back to chewing on his wing. I found a sudden need to rub my eyes. “Flanagan’s autopsy,” gasped Shad, “it showed that he’d been drinking quite a bit before he was killed.”
“A wee touch o’ the dew, eh?”
“He was pissed,” I insisted.
Tommy Shay raised his right wing. “God’s honest truth, detective, I never seen young Darcy take a drink on or off duty.”
“So, the last time you saw him was at the beginning of the patrol, three PM, and the last time you heard from him was before four.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of transmission range you birds have?” asked Shad.
“About twenty-five kilometers before there’s a noticeable drop in signal strength.”
“That narrows it down,” he said sarcastically.
Shay looked from Shad to me. “What’s he mean?”
“Hell, man.” I held out my hands. “Flanagan could’ve been in bloody Exmouth for those two transmissions for all you knew.”
Although Tommy Shay felt bad about young Darcy, we got nothing more useful out of him. We detained him, however, until we had a chance to brief Parker.
After we delivered our report through the open toilet door in Room 914, our aromatic leader said, “There are nine gas guns registered in England. The Manchester Worker’s Museum has one, the Imperial War Museum in London has one, the British Museum has two, all four inoperable according to museum curators. The police force museum in Bristol has two, one of them possibly operable. The Royal Diane Museum here in Exeter has one, functional according to the curator. Of the remaining two, Morton Geller, an antique weapons dealer in Leeds, has one. Mr. Geller believes that with the investment of just a few hundred quid the gas gun he has in inventory might be made operable, although he hasn’t a clue where to obtain ammunition for it. The remaining gas gun belongs to the Office of the Bishop of Exeter.”
“Whoa!” said Shad, looking at me. I faced the door to the WC.
“Parker, what about that last?”
“The lord bishop, Dr. Reginald Koch. His secretary will get back to us about the gun. Apparently they cannot locate it. No one recalls seeing it ever and the last record of its existence is a century old.” Parker punctuated his finding by flushing the toilet.
Shad looked at me. “That might even be a clue.”
While Parker continued his investigations and sorting through the surveillance videos, Shad and I arranged with Flight Leader Tommy Shay, 712 Squadron Leader Patricia Kwela—a.k.a. “Mother Goose”—and Pureledge Exeter Manager Lucinda Martini for Shad and me to go undercover that evening as ledge marshals, Puss in Boots Flight, 712 Squadron, Royal Pigeon Air Force.
Since we were new to the service, Shad and I had to arrive at Pureledge two hours early for flight training. Shad put the cruiser down on High Street at Castle, we climbed out, then he sent it back to Heavitree Tower. Castle Street there is a wide park-like thoroughfare given over to foot traffic, mercilessly hard stainless steel benches from another age, the occasional tree, and the obligatory busker or three. That afternoon, despite the chill, entertainment was provided by a kangaroo bio singing “Charlie Is My Darling” with a Scottish accent to the accompaniment of a banjo played by a joey bio located in the ‘roo’s pouch. Shad actually coded a fiver into the creditron in the open banjo case at the ‘roo’s feet.
“Tough business,” he explained as he waddled up past Musgrave Row toward the rounded white south-facing side of the Pureledge building. Castle went up the left side of Pureledge, a narrower street named Little Castle went up the right. The pigeon chasing company’s building was the southernmost of the buildings bounded by the two Castle streets and on the south by the doglegged joining of Musgrave Row and Bailey. The building itself was a five-story Neo-Georgian structure with multi-paned double-hung windows above and larger display windows at street level the panes of which displayed graphics mostly of Exeter’s various buildings and monuments, pristine and pigeon free. A lone “before” graphic showed a beer stone statue of some king, lord, or martyr from the west facade at St. Peters Cathedral, a furtive-looking pigeon behind the statue’s right shoulder guarding a huge black nest that extended behind the statue’s head and to its left shoulder. Pigeon waste coated the statue’s shoulders and folded arms. At the bottom of the poster was printed, “Don’t let this happen to you.”
The top floor of the building was set back, the windows forming part of a metal roof. Those windows were open and a group of about forty pigeons exited one of the windows on the left and took a westerly heading. There was something strange about how they were flying. “Shad?”
“I see it. Don’t know what it is.” He glanced back at me. “It’s like they’re doing a continuous stadium wave in different directions with their wings but I can’t follow it with my eyes. Weird.” He waddled the semicircle to the Castle Street entrance and entered.
The receptionist was a rather attractive human nat in her early thirties named Naomi Foon, according to her illuminated plastic desking accessory. She appeared quite normal in lavender pantaloon and vest business attire, spiked black hair with lavender tips, and matching lavender communications array plugged into her right ear. In fact everything about the sales floor of Pureledge was traditionaclass="underline" liquid crystal walnut paneling, virtual gaslight, plush red algae carpeting, hand-painted ties on the sales agents, and the reek of preserved Albion, which is what they were selling, after all.
Receptionist Foon took our names and looked over her desk down at Shad. “I don’t believe we’ve ever before had a ducky as one of our flyers.” She batted her feather extended eyelashes and flashed Shad a smile.
“I’m already in a low paying job and I thought I’d explore some of the other options available in poverty,” he said.
She nodded vacantly. “We once had a wildebeest bio.”
“Why would a wildebeest want to be a pigeon?” I asked.
“He was a very old wildebeest,” she explained. Her lavender streaked eyebrows went up. “Not that I’m implying either of you gentlemen are very old.” She looked at me. “I would say, Mr. Jaggers, that you look very young to be one of our flyers. How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“The bio was grown forty-five; I’ve had it twelve years. The engrams are...” I had to think for a moment. “The engrams are ninety-three.”
“You look just like Sherlock Holmes—you know, in the old telly flicks? That actor, Basir Redbone?”
“Hadn’t noticed it myself.”
She looked at Shad. “I would say you are a young-looking duck.”
“Ducks never show their age until they find themselves plucked, glazed, and surrounded by chopsticks,” responded Shad curtly. “Where do we go?”
“Second floor,” she answered. “Good hunting, fellows.”
As we went to the elevator, I asked Shad, “Are you looking for a fight or has that fellow from the Chinese restaurant been lurking around Rougemont again?”
“Sorry there, Holmes. Things on my mind.”
“Things theatrical?”
We entered the elevator, the doors formed and hardened, and Shad barked “Two” at the control panel. He looked up at me as the car elevated. “I guess I’m a little torn between work here and going back to doing commercials.”
“Ever since that lizard bumped you out of your advert slot and you wound up in ABCD you’ve been unhappy, Shad. Now they want you back. I’d think you’d be quite pleased.”
The car stopped and the doors softened and faded. Shad didn’t move. “I know. But I’ve had a ball working with you, Jaggs. I kind of like Exeter. There’s Nadine, of course. Hell, Jaggs, you saved my life out at Hangingstone.”