Working on a Case, chapter 11: Watch and Listen
Characters: Titans as of the end of the Family Lost paperback, starting with Bart Allen (Kid Flash) and Tim Drake (Robin). This installment also includes Vic Stone (Cyborg) and Conner Kent (Superboy).
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing? As the U.S. Marshals, the Alcatraz staff, and some Titans assemble to track down the escaped convict, Bart has decided that this is his chance to shine as a detective.
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.
Chapter 11
Watch and Listen
“First thing,” says Warden Easton, and he has one of his staff guys pass out the photocopies that Susanna brought in, and I recognize them as the same papers I was reading last night at the JLA archive. “All our files on Eli Crossley were incomplete. The Titans delivered these pages to me this morning.”
And I zip up beside the warden and say, “See, what Robin and I found out was-”
“Son, it’ll go faster if we read,” says Deputy Chief Alioto, and I know that’s not true, I can talk much much faster, and the only problem is he can’t listen fast enough. But Vic points to my chair, so I sit back down and pout.
Chief Marshal Rawlins looks up from the last page and says, “So Crossley had a link to Baumhaus.”
And I stand up again to tell everyone about how Cross Cut met the psychologist back when she had another name, but the warden is saying, “And that case links him to Margie Ignatieff. You probably all know that she testified against Baumhaus.”
The three marshals say they remember, which leaves me with nothing to tell them, so I slump back in my chair and grumble until Kon whispers, “Stay cool, will you?”
Then Vic says, “Somebody working with Crossley from inside the JSO diverted communication between the Titans and Alcatraz last night. Our people are tracing that back right now.”
Easton nods and tells the mashals, “That person got us to ask your office to bring Crossley in early this morning. We’ve got surveillance video of what happened next.”
One of the technicians clicks on her keyboard, and the biggest monitor changes to a dark picture of the Alcatraz roof with a clock at the bottom that says 06:17:45, and I’m deducing that it came from early this morning, and that’s why the picture is so dim and foggy, when suddenly a helicopter fills the screen from the top. And I jump up and say, “That’s a Haumann model S-140, developed for the Air Force in-”
“It’s our chopper, son,” growls Alioto. “We know what kind it is.”
And Vic shakes his head at me and says, “Watch and listen.” Which is totally unfair ’cause I was watching, which is how I recognized the helicopter, and the rotors are so loud that there’s nothing to listen to, and I’ve read a lot of stuff that could be useful, and you should not tell your only detective to be quiet, and-
“There’s Margie,” says the warden. “Dr. Ignatieff.”
So I missed seeing the helicopter land, but now I’m paying attention ’cause a lady with short wavy brown hair has walked into view at the bottom of the screen, and the pilot’s window opens, and the lady and the pilot start talking.
The warden adds, with his voice kind of strained, “Margie came in early this morning to oversee the intake. After we changed the schedule.”
I watch the pilot hand Dr. Ignatieff some papers, and she hands him a paper coffee cup, but the helicopter blades are still too loud for us to hear what they’re saying to each other. Then Dr. Ignatieff walks around the front of the helicopter to the right side, which is where the Haumann model S-140 has its big door for letting people in and out.
Rawlins asks, “Any footage from the opposite angle?”
The tech shakes her head, and the warden grumbles, “We’ve got more cameras in our budget request for next year.”
“We know how it is, Sam,” says Alioto.
“Who else was inside that helicopter?” asks Vic.
“Marshal Spencer West. Marshal Virginia Parley. Pilot Salman Mirani,” says Rawlins, and I’m imagining that I’m reading those names so I’ll remember them while she adds: “Spencer flew in from Texas with Crossley. Parley and Mirani are based with us.”
“Ginny and Sal,” says Alioto, still watching the screen.
And now it’s 06:24:13, but we can’t see what was going on then ’cause the picture shows nothing but the helicopter with its blades still twirling until there’s a little movement toward the top of the screen when the door slides open. And twelve seconds later the blades speed up again, and the helicopter lurches into the air and rises out of the screen, and now we see a prison guard lying on the helipad with a big red puddle coming from his throat, and the wind from the helicopter is spreading the puddle across the roof, and over the roar of the rotors we hear the Rataratarat! Rataratarat! of an automatic weapon.
“Other cameras caught the gunshots out of the helicopter-from a distance. And one tracked it flying west into the fog,” says Easton.
Kon clears his throat. “I could hear someone shouting just before the takeoff. I couldn’t make out the words, though.”
I’m proud of Kon for his superhearing, and for figuring out the shouting might be a clue, and then I remember that Vic’s always fooling around with sound stuff, and I go, “Oooh! Cyborg-”
But Vic gives me the same look as before while he pops the cover off a jack in his arm and pulls out a wire, and he tells the technician at the keyboard, “Let’s run the audio feed through my system. I’ve been working on a program to wash out background sound.” Which is just what I was going to say if he’d only let me.
So we wait a minute while the technician rewinds the video and Vic runs his program, and then we see the helicopter on the roof with nothing happening again, but the blades don’t sound so loud this time, and there’s a kind of mumble in the background, and then suddenly we hear someone shrieking, “No! No! Don’t take me! Help! Help!”
And then the helicopter takes off, and we see the dead Alcatraz guard, and the gun goes Rataratarat! Rataratarat! at other guards even louder than before, and we can hear the scream of “No! No! Don’t take me! No!” getting farther and farther away.
Suddenly no one in the room is talking at all, ’cause we’re all thinking about Dr. Margie Ignatieff and the marshals and the pilot trapped on that helicopter, and Cross Cut shooting the guards, and I try to think about how to solve the case-but I can’t think of anything! I can’t think of any clues, or any leads, or any trails! All I can think about is Dr. Margie screaming from the helicopter, and now I don’t feel like a detective at all, and I just want to run and run as fast as I can ’cause I know l can do that.
So I yell, “I have to go to the bathroom!” and I run straight at the locked doors and vibrate through and head for the warden’s office to talk to Tim.
Continued here.
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing? As the U.S. Marshals, the Alcatraz staff, and some Titans assemble to track down the escaped convict, Bart has decided that this is his chance to shine as a detective.
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.
Chapter 11
Watch and Listen
“First thing,” says Warden Easton, and he has one of his staff guys pass out the photocopies that Susanna brought in, and I recognize them as the same papers I was reading last night at the JLA archive. “All our files on Eli Crossley were incomplete. The Titans delivered these pages to me this morning.”
And I zip up beside the warden and say, “See, what Robin and I found out was-”
“Son, it’ll go faster if we read,” says Deputy Chief Alioto, and I know that’s not true, I can talk much much faster, and the only problem is he can’t listen fast enough. But Vic points to my chair, so I sit back down and pout.
Chief Marshal Rawlins looks up from the last page and says, “So Crossley had a link to Baumhaus.”
And I stand up again to tell everyone about how Cross Cut met the psychologist back when she had another name, but the warden is saying, “And that case links him to Margie Ignatieff. You probably all know that she testified against Baumhaus.”
The three marshals say they remember, which leaves me with nothing to tell them, so I slump back in my chair and grumble until Kon whispers, “Stay cool, will you?”
Then Vic says, “Somebody working with Crossley from inside the JSO diverted communication between the Titans and Alcatraz last night. Our people are tracing that back right now.”
Easton nods and tells the mashals, “That person got us to ask your office to bring Crossley in early this morning. We’ve got surveillance video of what happened next.”
One of the technicians clicks on her keyboard, and the biggest monitor changes to a dark picture of the Alcatraz roof with a clock at the bottom that says 06:17:45, and I’m deducing that it came from early this morning, and that’s why the picture is so dim and foggy, when suddenly a helicopter fills the screen from the top. And I jump up and say, “That’s a Haumann model S-140, developed for the Air Force in-”
“It’s our chopper, son,” growls Alioto. “We know what kind it is.”
And Vic shakes his head at me and says, “Watch and listen.” Which is totally unfair ’cause I was watching, which is how I recognized the helicopter, and the rotors are so loud that there’s nothing to listen to, and I’ve read a lot of stuff that could be useful, and you should not tell your only detective to be quiet, and-
“There’s Margie,” says the warden. “Dr. Ignatieff.”
So I missed seeing the helicopter land, but now I’m paying attention ’cause a lady with short wavy brown hair has walked into view at the bottom of the screen, and the pilot’s window opens, and the lady and the pilot start talking.
The warden adds, with his voice kind of strained, “Margie came in early this morning to oversee the intake. After we changed the schedule.”
I watch the pilot hand Dr. Ignatieff some papers, and she hands him a paper coffee cup, but the helicopter blades are still too loud for us to hear what they’re saying to each other. Then Dr. Ignatieff walks around the front of the helicopter to the right side, which is where the Haumann model S-140 has its big door for letting people in and out.
Rawlins asks, “Any footage from the opposite angle?”
The tech shakes her head, and the warden grumbles, “We’ve got more cameras in our budget request for next year.”
“We know how it is, Sam,” says Alioto.
“Who else was inside that helicopter?” asks Vic.
“Marshal Spencer West. Marshal Virginia Parley. Pilot Salman Mirani,” says Rawlins, and I’m imagining that I’m reading those names so I’ll remember them while she adds: “Spencer flew in from Texas with Crossley. Parley and Mirani are based with us.”
“Ginny and Sal,” says Alioto, still watching the screen.
And now it’s 06:24:13, but we can’t see what was going on then ’cause the picture shows nothing but the helicopter with its blades still twirling until there’s a little movement toward the top of the screen when the door slides open. And twelve seconds later the blades speed up again, and the helicopter lurches into the air and rises out of the screen, and now we see a prison guard lying on the helipad with a big red puddle coming from his throat, and the wind from the helicopter is spreading the puddle across the roof, and over the roar of the rotors we hear the Rataratarat! Rataratarat! of an automatic weapon.
“Other cameras caught the gunshots out of the helicopter-from a distance. And one tracked it flying west into the fog,” says Easton.
Kon clears his throat. “I could hear someone shouting just before the takeoff. I couldn’t make out the words, though.”
I’m proud of Kon for his superhearing, and for figuring out the shouting might be a clue, and then I remember that Vic’s always fooling around with sound stuff, and I go, “Oooh! Cyborg-”
But Vic gives me the same look as before while he pops the cover off a jack in his arm and pulls out a wire, and he tells the technician at the keyboard, “Let’s run the audio feed through my system. I’ve been working on a program to wash out background sound.” Which is just what I was going to say if he’d only let me.
So we wait a minute while the technician rewinds the video and Vic runs his program, and then we see the helicopter on the roof with nothing happening again, but the blades don’t sound so loud this time, and there’s a kind of mumble in the background, and then suddenly we hear someone shrieking, “No! No! Don’t take me! Help! Help!”
And then the helicopter takes off, and we see the dead Alcatraz guard, and the gun goes Rataratarat! Rataratarat! at other guards even louder than before, and we can hear the scream of “No! No! Don’t take me! No!” getting farther and farther away.
Suddenly no one in the room is talking at all, ’cause we’re all thinking about Dr. Margie Ignatieff and the marshals and the pilot trapped on that helicopter, and Cross Cut shooting the guards, and I try to think about how to solve the case-but I can’t think of anything! I can’t think of any clues, or any leads, or any trails! All I can think about is Dr. Margie screaming from the helicopter, and now I don’t feel like a detective at all, and I just want to run and run as fast as I can ’cause I know l can do that.
So I yell, “I have to go to the bathroom!” and I run straight at the locked doors and vibrate through and head for the warden’s office to talk to Tim.
Continued here.