Gotta Catch The Pretty Ones
© 2011-2014 by Mr. David R. Dorrycott
Chapter Forty Nine
Inspector Dell Leopold stepped into Sara’s little shop a bit over a week later, looking up from her newest Poketech magazine Sara gave him a smile and set her magazine aside. “So the Men In Green have finally come for us, will you please at least put us in the same cell.”
Leopold gave Sara a forced smile, pulled the ‘Inspection’ card from his jacket pocket, placing it in her window then carefully locked the door. “Who is here” he asked gently.
“Patricia is making dinner at the house” Sara reported. “Penny is, well Penny is in her bed crying, she’s certain that we are going to vanish forever.”
“Seal this building, then will you show me” Leopold asked gently.
In answer Sara walked to the side door that had been put in, seeing Patricia walking towards her she waited until the other woman made it to the door. “Tell Penny that they are here, please try to keep her from killing herself but no matter what, we are not to be bothered.”
“Yes Mam” Patricia answered, turning around to head quickly back to their home as Sara locked the door.
“Does she know?” Leopold asked from behind her.
Still facing the door Sara told the truth, “No more than the Constable does, she was making lunch when the man came in. If that Jackass hadn’t gone to Penny she wouldn’t know any more either, now lets get this over, you did bring a silenced firearm yes?”
“For you or her” Leopold asked, his voice still soft, still kind.
“Both I guess, Penny and Patricia too I think.” She turned around to face a man that she really liked as a friend. “I’d like to watch as you shoot me, if you don’t mind” she held up the stump of her hand. “And I was supposed to get my new hand this Winter.” She started walking to the basement access, a disturbed Dell Leopold walking behind her.
Down in the basement sitting in one of two simple wooden chairs reading waited a pudgy but still attractive woman in her late forties, grey was just beginning to enter her hair but being a natural blond it was hard to see. “Inspector Dell Leopold, Mrs. Kara Graham, Mrs Graham, Inspector Leopold.” Walking to stand beside the seated woman, her back still to the Inspector Sara asked one simple question. “Are you ready Kara?”
“I guess that I am” a surprisingly rich voice answered.
Kara closed her book and set it aside as Sara turned around to face Leopold, then she sat in the chair beside Kara. “Penny and Patricia are in the basement next door waiting exactly like this” Sara explained, “You may murder us now.” She locked gazes with Dell, staring into his eyes. “As I said upstairs, I prefer to see my death coming this time, if you do not mind too much.”
Dell sat on the worktable, unheeding of the dirt on its surface. “No begging, no offering anything I might want?” he asked with a thin smile on his face. “Sara, you have this completely wrong, you are not going to die today and no one else is either. Do you really think that this is the first time that someone has discovered the one way to catch human beings in a pokeball?”
“Knowing it can be done is dangerous” Sara answered. “Knowing it can be done others will find out how, then all hell will break loose. You will have perverted people making collections of those that they desire, soon this nation will fall and after it the world. Eventually there will be nothing left but Pokemon and millions of balls, each one eventually releasing its captive into a new wilderness when the battery reaches a specific discharge level. Inspector Leopold this is a small town, it will be simple to explain that some terrible infection killed everyone. A small town wiped off the map, certainly a cheap price to pay to stem the madness that would otherwise destroy our world. I will happily die to keep that secret away from those who would abuse it.”
“And you Mrs. Graham” Leopold asked, his voice still the same that it had been when he entered the shop.
“My husband has gone mad thinking me lost when he was arrested. Anyway Bill could never have kept such a secret.” She too shrugged. “I think that I would rather join him.”
Leopold sat the case he had brought with him on the work table. “No one is going to die today but you Mrs. Graham, you must vanish I am afraid.”
“Kara?” Sara asked softly.
“Child, you have a long life ahead of you. Bill and I, we were going downhill by the time this happened though it is interesting that I am no longer an alcoholic. Find out how that ball does that and you will save so many, many lives. Do it child, before I lose my own nerve.”
In answer Sara withdrew a pokeball from her skirt, opening it towards the woman beside her. When it was done she closed the ball and tossed it to Dell. “I’m sorry, we talked about it a lot but she couldn’t remember how she was captured, only that they had partied very hard that night then retired to their room. That means that I do not have a ball of my own.”
“Would you like to know what the secret is?” Dell asked.
“No” Sara answered. “Not even a hint.”
“Then as long as you keep telling people that they can’t catch so and so with a pokeball your life is your own. Oh, nice touch with the plastic drop cloth.”
Sara looked down at the floor, they had spent good money on these expensive drop cloths. “Penny thought that it would make cleaning the blood up easier” she explained. “Unlike men, women don’t like the idea of leaving a mess behind for others when we die.”
“So, you are aware of yet another secret” Dell said, carefully setting the ball into his case. “I will guarantee you that by the time you make Guild Mistress you will be aware of many more and these two workstations? They have to be fifty years old.”
“I refuse any position but this one” Sara replied. She stood, a bit unsteadily but stood, “I love it here, I love the lifestyle, the quietness. Now excuse me a few minutes, I need to call Penny and tell her that cold earth will not be our shared bed tonight.”
As there was a phone now in her secure work area the call took only a minute or two, then Sara returned to find Leopold folding the drop cloth. “We had found those stations while cleaning up, Patricia had asked for a computer to write her great fairy story on and Penny thought those might work. Sadly the crystals are gone and everything else is so old that I sent her to Warren Hill to purchase new ones. I don’t know what to do with this garbage, the crystals and O/S Identity cards were missing anyway.”
“My brother collects this junk” Dell explained, “May I ship it all off to him?”
“Why not, I’ll ask Penny to re-pack the parts, when it comes to packing always ask a Librarian.” She managed a weak smile then waved at the case.
“Time doesn’t pass in a pokeball” Dell explained. “There is a place she will be taken where she can live the rest of her life.”
“You’re wrong Dell” Sara corrected. “Kara told me that time did pass, that she could sense her husband and he her, she could even see him sometimes. If your planning on putting her in some museum do her a favor, shoot her.”
“It’s out of my hands Sara” the Inspector admitted. “I’ll pass her request on, but...” He shook his head. “Hundreds, there are hundreds of these balls holding the secret.”
“If we ever open our mouths three more will join them” Sara said, it was not a question.
“Yes, and if you had asked how it is done you would now be laying on that plastic cooling slowly, I don’t know why but my orders were to take the three of you if you asked.”
Looking around her the Poketech closed her eyes for some time. “I hereby officially request to resign” she abruptly announced. “I don’t want to know anymore truths that are lies.”
“Emotional breakdown because of the loss of your hand?” Dell asked. “No longer mentally stable so nothing that you say can be even thought of as the truth?”
“That sounds good” Sara agreed. “Patricia is unstable, she admits it herself and the Doctors agree that what she went through unhinged her, we are her only anchor to reality now, take us and she is lost. She is starting a research project on fairies, claiming that they took care of her those years she was missing. That makes anything that she says useless as well and with Penny helping her...” She looked at Dell, her body language that of defeat, “All three of us so easily become basket cases just like those machines, we might as well be left on an island somewhere for the safety of those around us.”
“I’ll use that if you ever talk about this” Dell warned. “But I’ve already been told that you and Penny are too good of a team, nothing is going to happen to you and no one is going to come looking for you. By the way, Graham had been approaching Poketech’s for months about this, you are the first one to follow the rules and make the call. The others will be disciplined, you? You did exactly what you were trained to do. Now has your dear sweet wife been cooking lately?”
“No, Patricia has been handling that, Patricia is what you will hold over us isn’t she?”
“Not I, the big boys will” Dell agreed. “I don’t threaten my friends, never my friends.” He gave a massive theatrical sigh. “Then I must suffer Patricia’s cooking then.”
“Penny has been training her” Sara offered, walking slowly towards the stairway.
“Then there is hope yet” Dell laughed, following her. “Oh, I’m going to be doing your annual inspection while I am here as cover for this, that isn’t a problem is it?”
Penny shook her head no, her hair flipping in counterpoint. “Since I fully expected to be cooling on the floor in a pool of my own blood right now no. Is your assistant with you?”
“New woman, Gidget Johansson. Wiz with numbers.”
“What happened with what’s his name?”
Dell laughed. “A very terminal case of marriage I’m afraid, he’s due back from his honeymoon tomorrow, if he survived.”
“He should, after all I only lost one hand” Sara countered, her heart working again.
Dell stopped, screwed up his face then suddenly softly said “No, don’t go there.” Looking up at Sara a few steps above him he gave her a weak grin. “I am not going to tell you the image that came to my mind.”
“Don’t” Sara replied with as soft yet stern voice. “You don’t ever go there and we stay friends.”
“Then we stay friends” Dell agreed.