Another Suspect

Gems and rocks exhibit, Everleason museum, 9:31 A.M

The trio of men, Daniel, Damien and Ryan, finally made it back to the exhibit.

They all noticed Percy sleeping away. He must have been up all night answering questions.

"Poor fellow," Damien remarked.

"I feel bad, we will have to wake him up eventually," Daniel remarked.

"Not necessarily," Philece Prandal remarked, she was a female officer close by. She was quite tall, taller by over 10 centimetres than Dan. Her hair was a gorgeous violet colour that shined in the museum's lights. Her bosom was around a c-cup size. Her face was remarkably pretty with no signs of make-up upon it. She was wearing a light blue police uniform, an almost sky-blue in fact. There were green lines on the sleeves of her police shit, and her tie was gold with a black Y at the bottom. She was a member of the Yville Police Department. "I have a lot of notes! I recorded his conversation when lieutenant Storm spoke with him a little earlier."

Daniel read the woman's badge. "You're Philece Prandal, you're just a senior constable, right?"

"Detective Second class D. S. Smith, at least your eyes haven't gone bad." Philece replied with a giggle.

"My badge actually has my first and last name on it." Daniel remarked.

"Oh silly, I was reading your hat." Philece let out a laugh.

"Oh, well, I'm going to be investigating now, so I'll talk to you in a bit." Daniel proclaimed and went over to the glass case.

Damien whistled. "Wow, they must have taken a file or a chisel and hammered away."

Daniel examined the bolt, and he looked at the key hole. "I think you're right; this sort of damage would be caused by what you described. Ryan, do you have a key to this?"

Ryan passed Dan the key to the display, Daniel noted it looked old and pretty beat up. Daniel used the key and the cabinet opened. Daniel paused.

"Is there a locksmith on site?" Dan asked.

"Kyle is good with locks." Philece announced.

"Would you call him in here please?" Daniel stated.

Philece picked up her walkie talkie. "Captain, can you send in Luke Fibre."

A few minutes later a man around Damien's height and stature entered the room. This man had light brown hair, almost the same colour as a squirrel. He had a short beard and a barely-there moustache. His uniform was the same as Philece's uniform. His badge was as clean as Daniel's car.

"Somebody call for me?" He asked in a deep cowboy accent.

"Yes, I did." Daniel replied.

"Now, Daniel, a man like you can be a great asset to the force as a whole, so I will gladly assist you, now you just tell me what you need." Luke stated.

"Will you remove this lock?" Dan asked.

"I sure will," Luke said and turned to face Ryan. "That is if the sheriff allows it."

Ryan nodded. "Go ahead, I'll have to buy a new one anyway."

Luke lowered himself down and looked at Dan, Daniel moved out of the way and Luke removed some lockpicking tools from his pockets. He searched through them and found a follower and used it to get the main part of the lock removed. He emptied the pins neatly into a tray that he had placed on the floor which also had been in one of his pockets.

"Wow." Luke exclaimed; he was so excited that he misplaced his deep cowboy voice with a more jovial and lighter tone. "This is some really tough stuff to get through. Even someone at my level would take at least three minutes to pick it." He cleared his throat as he realized that he had stepped out of his faux persona. "At least that's what I reckon." He added, using his cowboy tone again.

"Wow, this guy is just like David." Daniel stated to Damien, who shrugged in response.

"I'm not anything like that chain-smoking, full of himself man." Luke responded with some anger.

"What I mean to say is that you are both using false personas because it makes you seem cooler." Daniel elaborated.

"Oh, and I suppose he told you he had a false persona?"

"No, but I have worked with the man, he's like a rollercoaster. Some times he's true to himself and easy to work with, other times he lets his 'fake self' take charge and communicating with him is harder than eating food while standing on your head."

"So, the lock takes ages to unlock." Stated Damien in an attempt to break the tension. "So what?"

"I know the answer to that!" Ryan announced.

"I thought you might." Daniel stated.

"There are two alarms, a main alarm for each exhibit and a backup alarm for the whole building." Ryan explained.

"A backup alarm? what is its purpose?" Dan asked.

"The backup alarm is there in case of a blackout, it does the same thing as the main alarm, if during a blackout it detects something amiss it will sound, but with no power it just sounds without lowering any of the shields. The backup generator just isn't up to that task. But if the main power is cut in a certain area, it could take a minute for the backup alarm to sound." Ryan elaborated.

Daniel nodded. "I see. So, the alarm also responds to a main alarm losing power, but why does it take a minute?"

"The computer here is pretty old, as you may not be aware, Rhombodians made a lot of things before the Earth people even came up with it. You're familiar with that sound that used to play when you were trying to connect to the net?"

"Yes. It was such an irritating sound."

"When we heard that we were confused, because here, that sound hadn't played for over 200 years. My computer obviously isn't that old, but it's definitely close to kicking the bucket. So, it takes its time to check things before trying to alert anyone there was no issue found."

"You mean to say that the computer tries to trouble shoot the issue to try and see if it can get power running back to the main alarm boxes?"

"That's the gist of it, that process itself takes 30 seconds, and if it can't find an issue it can fix it flashes red lights informing the guard that a main alarm is out of service and that the error causing its outage couldn't be resolved."

"Philece, where was Percy during the one-minute period before he heard the alarm?"

"According to my notes, he was in the kitchen." Philece replied.

"There are no red lights in there." Ryan explained.

"Really? why not?" Daniel asked.

"Usually, only kitchen staff are usually in there, the only ones who would know how to fix the issues that occur with the main alarms are the maintenance personal, my security guards and of course the computer connected to the alarm system. I didn't see any reason to add those lights to the kitchen since the humans that know how to fix the main alarms are never in there. Percy is an exception as he prefers to make his own meals on shift rather than eat something the kitchen staff left for him to warm up in the microwave, which is in an area where the red lights are clearly visible." Ryan explained.

"So, our thief had to know four things before committing the crime. First, they had to be aware of the location of the box that controls the alarms in this room. Second, they needed to know about the quarks that come with the computer and the backup system, in order words they had to be aware that they would have sixty seconds to escape once they disabled the main alarm. Third, they also had to know that it was faster to break the bolt then it is to break the glass or the lock or to pick the lock, and forth, they needed to be aware that Percy would eventually be in the kitchen."

"But, Daniel," Damien proclaimed. "The only person who currently fits those criteria is someone who gave us their word that they didn't comit the crime, and they already said that they had no motive."

"There's no reason to refer to me as 'they,' I know you are talking about me." Ryan announced.

"Ah ha!" Philece proclaimed. "So, you took it for insurance!" She pointed her beautifully manicured finger at Ryan. "Let's arrest him."

"Let's not." Daniel stated.

"Oh, and why not?" Philece asked, she was visibly reaching behind her to get her handcuffs.

"He told us himself that he was getting a lot of donations from the display that was taken. Ryan, do you keep a record of all your donations?" Daniel asked.

"Of course, I have to so I don't get into to trouble with the Rhombodian Taxation Board, our planet's version of the IRS." Ryan replied. "They're all in my office, they should prove beyond a doubt that I had no motive."

Philece kept her hand behind her back and nodded toward Luke. Luke understood the message and headed off. He returned a few minutes later with all of the donation records from the last six years in his hands. "His right Philli, these here papers show that he was earning a bunch of money from that gemstone. He's made over triple the amount for which the gem was insured for already."

Philece made her hand visible again, but there were no handcuffs in it. "I suppose, I jumped the gun. Sorry."

"Thank you. Can you put those back now?" Ryan asked.

"You can have it back when our notary is finished recording all of the details of this." Luke announced.

"I don't think you need to do all that hard work, Luke." Dan announced. "Ryan stated that he keeps copies for the RTB, so it's likely they have copies of those documents already."

"Oh, you're right, friend. I suppose this cowpoke shall pay them a visit once I take these documents back home." Luke announced and he proceeded to take the papers back to whence they came.

"So where does that leave us? We have no suspects now." Philece announced angerly.

"Remember, Damien said that Ryan was the only person we know that fit the four criteria I provided. But if he's not the one responsible then we should start knowing others who fit the criteria." Daniel proclaimed.

"Oh, I get it. We currently don't know anyone else who fits the criteria, so we should go find someone that we don't know and see if they do fit the criteria." Damien replied.

"Those were my words, you just put them differently." Daniel noted.

"Maybe it was John Kelvin." Philece announced.

"John who?" Daniel asked.

Philece removed a brochure from her pocket that came from Chaston Museum. "John Kelvin, he's a curator too."

Daniel looked over the pamphlet.

Come see a duplicate of 'Rhombodian's largest diamond!'

There was a picture on the brochure similar to the one on the pamphlet that was presented to him earlier. The rocks in the background and the colour of the curtains were two differences that jumped out to him immediately, there were other smaller differences, but Daniel didn't want to give it more than a cursory glance.

"There's no small print." Daniel noted.

"That's right." Philece announced. "He doesn't know that it's not a diamond, but an emerald."

Daniel nodded. "Damien, your ability to detect abilities extent to signatures, right?"

"That's right, but I can't personally tell you who the signature belongs to." Damien replied.

"I Don't care about that right now. Could you check the emerald for a signature, if John stole the emerald, then there wouldn't be an illusion signature on this fake gemstone." Daniel stated.

"Oh, flawless logic. We might be done before lunch." Damien noted, he then opened the case and reached in to touch the emerald. "Uh, Daniel. You're not going to like this."

"There's an illusion signature on that gemstone isn't there." Daniel stated downheartedly.

"Sorry, there is. Well get a System officer to see who made it, but what we're seeing isn't the real thing we should be seeing." Damien stated.

"Yes, I'm aware of what an illusion is." Daniel retorted.

"Ooh!" Philece announced. "I have stickers that can temporarily pause the effects of a power signature without destroying the signature."

"Well, let's see." Daniel stated.

Philece gently moved Damien aside and reached into the case and placed a blue sticker in the middle of the top of the glass gemstone, why she chose the middle will forever be a mystery to everyone but her.

The gemstone became a brilliant green in a few seconds. Bill noticed the gem change by looking over the cardboard wall at the right time. He entered with a gem examining microscope in hand and checked it. He shook his head. "The illusion is gone, but it is still a fake." He stated.

Philece peeled the sticker off with a sad look on her face and the gem's colour shifted back to clear like a diamond.

"We'll, we are back to square one." Damien announced with a sad look on his face.

"Not necessarily." Daniel announced. "Would the Chaston Musuem happen to have a power cancelling crystal in its gems and rocks exhibit?" He directed his question toward Philece.

"It's inside a PCC field, just like we are inside one now, the only reason that gem is unaffected is because the metal of the container it is in is magnetic, everyone Rhombodian knows that magnets can disrupt a PCC field." Philece.

"Then there is still a chance that he did take the gem." Daniel stated with a smile.

"How so?" Damien asked.

"I believe we already heard that when an object with an illusion signature enters a PCC field the illusion is removed and unlike with that sticker, the illusion doesn't return when it's removed from the PCC field. John's case had no reason to be magnetic, his faux crystal was a replica of what he believed to be a diamond and the glass diamond he made was made to reflect that. No illusions were required to keep up the facade. So, if he took the gem and put it on display in his museum because he was jealous, he'd immediately see his huge mistake. So, what could he do? He came back here and put an illusion on the crystal he swapped with the original, and when we paused the illusion, he was watching and used magic to make the gem appear green. The sticker only cancelled the power, not magic." Daniel deduced.

"Maybe we should talk to this John Kelvin." Damien stated.

"I think that's a good idea, but it could take us ages to get back through those other officers." Daniel noted.

"That's ok." Ryan announced. "Just use the fire exit under the stairs, it will take you out back and you'll just have to walk around to the front, it will only take you two to three minutes."

"Thank you, Ryan." Daniel announced. "Oh, my." He said checking his watch. "Time sure goes fast. Looks like you only owe me $12.50."

Ryan paid Daniel for his off hour and Dan and Damien made their way back to Daniel's car.