Kindred Spirits - Part 4, Remembrances

The Chief floated back and forth, if he were human, he would have been 
wearing his feet out with worry.  His circuits were in a blitz as he made 
an effort to try to understand the human tendency to be late for meetings. 
He told him to be here at 6 am. Where in the world was he?  The hiss of 
the dual doors announced his arrival, the Chief somersaulted ready to chew 
a hole as big as the Grand Canyon through that egotistic detective. Then 
again, was there ever a detective who wasn't egotistic?

Zack and Ivy froze at the sight of the Chief ready to do murder, admittedly 
that would be a bit difficult without arms. His mouth hung open about to 
belittle a San Francisco detective but instead there were his two favorite 
detectives.  He gave them both an abashed grin and approached them slowly. 
Zack smiled in greeting and took his usual seat on the swivel chair. Ivy 
stood stiffly as she watched the Chief approach, deliberately; she turned 
her back on him and stared expressionlessly at the blank monitor. 

The Chief stopped and winced slightly. Ivy was taking being reassigned to 
practically a desk job pretty hard. He heard almost all of the Acme 
detectives whispering that catching henchmen was child's work and degrading 
to them. There were no challenges and way too easy clues. Nothing to hone 
their detective skills. An exasperated Tatiana had mentioned that she would 
have preferred working with Lee Jordan rather than catching those klutzy 
henchmen. From Ivy's stony expression, she probably would have agreed.

Now, Zack was another matter. Zack was spending his 'free time' perfecting a 
computer program for the Pentagon. It was top secret but he hinted that it 
was a security program to stop maniacal hackers from crashing the system. 
He also offered to install the same program in Acme's mainframe when he 
overheard the Chief complaining about someone breaking into Acme and cracking 
an encoded file. Of course the Chief accepted the offer but he did not say 
what the encoded file contained. Not that Zack would have pressed the matter.

Since all of Acme's agents were concentrating on catching henchmen, about 65 
percent had been put in jail.  Including Sara Bellum, Minnie Series, Moe and 
Lars and other top henchmen. The Chief sighed; such a situation should have 
been a celebration event in Acme. Which brought him back to the present.

"Have any of you seen Detective Derek anywhere?" he asked, letting his ire 
through.

Zack answered, "Nope. Ever since he bailed on us at Tokyo. We tried his 
answering machine but he doesn't answer."

Ivy, "Isn't it strange that Derek and Carmen share almost the same talents? 
And why wasn't Derek recruited into the Acme program, Chief? He has the 
otential."

The Chief had pondered that question over the years. He had spotted Derek's 
potential to be a detective ever since Derek was ten but Psychological 
Studies had proposed that Derek needed a few extra years to recuperate from 
his mother's and sister's deaths and being severed from his father. When 
Derek reached thirteen, he was asked by Acme's Director to enter the program 
but he refused on personal reasons, which he did not, disclosed. 

"Derek was too traumatized over being separated from his father and his 
sibling's and mother's demise. Even though I don't technically have a heart, 
it would have been inhumane to thrust him into an unfamiliar environment," the 
Chief responded blithely. Ivy actually smiled before she remembered whom she 
was smiling at. That frosty stare could freeze the Bahamas.

Zack gave the Chief a shrug though his eyes betrayed his censure about his 
sister's behavior. What was wrong with Ivy, surely she wanted to spend more 
time with Joshua ever since he made his feelings known to her? Zack's 
irritation did not go unfelt; Ivy shifted her stance to a more defensive one 
and her ire faded under the Chief's hurt expression. She didn't want to keep 
on carrying this chip on her shoulder and besides; it wasn't exactly the 
Chief's fault. The words struggled to come out.

"I'm sorry, Chief," Ivy haltingly apologized.

The Chief came up and gave Ivy a smooch on the cheek. Ivy looked a bit 
embarrassed at his display of affection. Zack grinned broadly at the both of 
them. An incoming email sounded. The Chief read it and tried to quiet Zack's 
and Ivy's perk up curiosity. 

"It's an email from Carmen addressed to Detective Derek. But he isn't here yet."

Derek's voice interrupted Zack's response, "What does it say?"

Ivy stiffened as she prevented herself from leaping a good foot up in the air. 
Zack swallowed and managed only to shift his feet. The Chief went flying up into 
the ceiling with a scream. When he returned to the control room, he spared no 
expense in directing his anger at Derek.

"Wait a minute, Mister Hotshot. Our meeting was for 6 am. You are 1 hour and 43 
minutes and 12 seconds late. Where were you and don't give me any flippant 
excuses?"

Derek smiled smugly, "I was tracking down the clue Carmen had left at Tokyo, turns 
out it was a decoy. Since I'm not used to using computers, it took me longer to 
crack the clue completely. I just came from touring Europe."

The Chief had the sudden suspicion that Derek was lying but he felt that Derek was 
only hiding the truth from Zack and Ivy. The Chief could reveal his suspicion but 
that would be indicating that he didn't trust Derek.  A CrimeNet alert interrupted 
his line of thought.

"Zack and Ivy, C5 to the leaning tower of Pisa. It seems Hannah Lulu is trying her 
hand at architectural thefts."

The blue halo winked out.
**

There was an uncomfortable silence. Unlike Carmen, the Chief had not forged a 
family relationship with Derek. He did need a father in his life but he had a 
distant relative to make some compensation for the void in his life. When the Chief 
had first met Derek at his graduation from the Police Academy, he found a young man 
full of pulsating anger that he released at anyone and anything.  It was a wonder 
that this turbulent man could have graduated from the Academy but despite his 
untrammeled ways he did have a cool and calculating mind. Derek was the one that 
proposed that he might be Carmen's brother when the Chief approached him at the 
Police Academy. When the Avalon case came up, the Chief was all for revealing that 
Carmen had a brother but Derek was hesitant about it. It took a lot of cajoling 
from the Chief to convince him to work on this case.

When he was headed for a mental breakdown after seeing too many homicide cases, the 
Chief begged him to come to Acme. The once hotheaded detective had cooled down and 
had changed into a calm, confident man. He refused with the stinging retort, "What? 
And become like my sister?" They both regretted his words and grew distant until now.  
The chance that Derek and Carmen were siblings was only a suspicion but there was no 
denying that there was a bond between the two. The Chief wondered if assigning Derek 
to the case was the solution to catching Carmen after all.

With his best Texas accent, the Chief said, "Ah wahnt dah truth dah whole truth ahnd 
nuthing but dah truth."

Derek grimaced at the Chief's horrible imitation of a Texas accent. He told him that 
he spent Sunday and until now doing in-depth analysis of Carmen's character. The Chief 
was relieved; it was good that Derek was not letting his personal feelings get in the 
way of solving the case. The Chief gave him the email and watched him leave. Another 
similarity between Carmen and Derek was that they both vehemently hated the C5. Derek 
was going to lose valuable time flying to Grandfather Mountain where the Scottish 
annual gatherings were held.  

Thinking about Derek the Chief could not help feeling slightly depressed. If Derek 
had joined Acme, Carmen might have stayed, as Derek would have presented her with all 
the competition she desired. Though both would never have worked together as a team. 
A remembered conversation with Derek before he was put on the case floated through 
cyberspace.

"Are you sure, that you can retain your integrity if I put you on the case?" the 
Chief pressed, his concern evident.

Derek whirled to face the Chief, his eyes blazing with anger, "What Carmen does is 
wrong, no matter how she does it." The Chief added a hint of skepticism to his 
concerned visage.

Derek kept silent, regaining his control. He was so close to meeting her! He needed 
to be put on the case. Soothingly, "I will catch her no matter what. And no, our 
supposed kinship will not affect how I do my job. No, I will not become so obsessed 
with catching her that I will fall off the deep end and become a turncoat. I will do 
nothing to jeopardize the case. Trust me, please." The last part was what clinched 
Derek into the case.

Though his worries were soothed, the Chief had one last question. "What about a 
partner? Zack or Ivy? Any of the detectives in Acme?"

Derek was walking for his apartment door. The Chief's question stopped him. The 
Chief could see Derek's muscles tense before he answered curtly, "No."

The Chief queried him. Derek's reply was soft and filled with sorrow and anger:

"Because I will always be alone."

An incoming message brought him back to the present. It was Lee, the detective from 
China. Lee's message filled the Chief with dread.