A Hard Rain Part 20

"We've been a.s.suming this theft of the golden Heart had a purpose," Dix said, laughing. "We thought someone took the Heart because it looked like it was valuable. That's where we went wrong. That was our false a.s.sumption."

"What else could it be?" Bev asked, staring at Dix.

Dix stopped in front of Mr. Data and scratched Spot's right ear, making the cat purr loudly.

"A toy," Dix said. "The Heart looked like a toy ball."

In both rooms everyone froze, silent. The sound of thinking had never had such energy.

Dix smiled and strode through the outer office and into the hallway.

"Spot?" Bev asked after a moment, running after him. "You think Spot took the Heart?"

"When all other options have been eliminated, the remaining option must be the truth," Dix said. "I heard that somewhere." He held up his hand for Mr. Data to stop giving him the exact reference and wording. They had work to do.

"So where would a cat, playing with a ball, take it?" Dix asked, looking both directions down the hallway, then down the stairs.

"Back to its home," Bev said as she and the others filed out into the hallway with him.

"Possible," Dix said. "Mr. Data, take Spot home and check anywhere Spot may have hidden a ball there. Have Mr. Riker start a full search as well of everything else, especially anything between here and there. Then, if you have no luck, come right back."

"Understood," Mr. Data said, heading quickly for the door, Spot still purring in his arms.

"Mr. Whelan, go get us a dozen flashlights."

"Will do, boss," Mr. Whelan said and followed Mr. Data out the door.

"Now, everyone else," Dix said, "spread out, starting on this floor and working down and out around the front steps. Be quick, but don't miss anything. Our lives depend on thinking like a cat right now."

"I didn't know that was possible," Bev said.

"We have thirty minutes to make it possible," Dix said.

Section Three: Where Oh Where Has Spot's Ball Gone?

It took Mr. Whelan just a minute to come back with the flashlights, but in that time they had scoured the hallway carefully, checking all the corners and working down the staircase, looking for anywhere a cat might have knocked a ball it was playing with.

Dix and Bev took two of the flashlights and went up to the next floor, stopping at the top. All the doors were boarded up and there was dust everywhere.

"Careful," Dix said, "the floors out here are still pretty solid, but step lightly and test your footing. I'll go right, you go left."

"Will do," Bev said.

Using the flashlight to sweep the edges of the hallway and all the cracks, he moved slowly down the hall. The boards creaked under his feet, but remained fairly solid. If Spot had brought the Heart up here to play with, it would be in plain sight. Everything else was boarded up tight, too tight for the Heart or a cat to fit through.

"Nothing this way," Bev said just after Dix had checked to make sure the window leading to the fire escape outside was still locked and boarded. That fire escape was more dangerous than the floor in the hall.

"Okay," Dix said, turning to meet Bev. "We go back down. Nothing up here. No hole big enough for the Heart to go through."

Bev nodded and headed down, s.h.i.+ning the light along the edges to make sure they hadn't missed anything on the way up.

"Anything?" Mr. Whelan asked as they met on the landing where the Adjuster had sat.

"Nothing up there," Dix said. "How about down here?"

"Only one possibility on this floor," Mr. Whelan said. He pointed with the beam of his flashlight down the hall toward the two boarded-up offices.

"Show me," Dix said.

Whelan led the way, but instead of turning toward the two other offices, he turned and pointed toward the end of a short part of the hall. There was a crack at the base of the wall and a board had been knocked aside at one point in the past, leaving a triangle-shaped hole big enough for the Heart of the Adjuster and Mr. Data's cat Spot to fit through.

"I tried to s.h.i.+ne my light in there," Mr. Whelan said, "But I couldn't see anything. You might want to try."

Dix nodded and got down on his hands and knees and directed his light in through the hole, squinting to make out anything golden in there. The light was blocked by something that was about arm's-length inside the hole. Spot could easily have rolled the ball down the hall while playing with it, and knocked it in there, then sideways.

Dix stood and stepped back, staring at the dead end in the corridor. "I wonder what this used to be?"

"Maybe a walled-over dumbwaiter shaft," Bev said. "Or a closet? Or a service elevator."

"Or a regular elevator that someone in the past gave up on," Mr. Whelan said.

Dix nodded. All of that made sense. He s.h.i.+ned his light over the wall. It clearly had been boarded up and patched to make it look like the other walls, but time had broken some of the plaster and warped a few of the boards to show where the fix had been made.

"I wonder why anyone would do that?" Mr. Whelan asked.

"I have no idea," Dix said, "There's nothing in the records of the building about anything here, but we need to get in there to make sure the Heart isn't back there."

"Mr. Data," Bev said, calling down the hall. "We're here. We could use your help."

Dix stepped back so that he could see down the hallway as Mr. Data, without Spot, walked toward them. "Any luck?"

"No, boss," Mr. Data said. "But the search is continuing."

Dix pointed at the walled-over end of the short corridor. "Can you pull enough of those boards off so we can see and get in there?"

"I can," Mr. Data said.

He moved forward and then, his fingers pointed, jammed his hand into the wall, sending plaster dust and wood flying.

Bev coughed and stepped back as Mr. Data pulled on the board, ripping it free and setting it aside.

Then he pulled on the next one and the next one, until there was an opening in the wall large enough for a man to step easily through.

Dix, his flashlight in hand, moved up through the plaster dust and stuck his head inside the wall. What greeted him wasn't at all what he expected.

The s.p.a.ce was small, no more than two steps deep. On the back wall were some coat hooks. This had been an old closet, that was clear.

And sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, was the skeleton of a man wearing a black suit and a black hat and matching black shoes.

"Fascinating," Dix said, s.h.i.+ning his light over the skeleton. The white of the skull seemed to glow and grin at Dix, like an actor in the spotlight.

"It seems that if we find the Heart, I might have a new case," Dix said.

"What?" Bev asked.

Dix backed up a moment to let Bev and Mr. Data glance through the opening, then he went back, crouching down so he could s.h.i.+ne his light easier through the dust and search the floor area of the hole.

Around the skeleton's chest hung what looked like a sign, but it was so covered in dust, Dix couldn't read it. Clearly this body had been here a very, very long time.

He shone the light along the base of the left side wall, then the back wall, and finally along the skeleton's old suit, looking for anyplace a cat might have shoved a ball.

Something glinted near the skeleton's knee, just under the edge of his pants.

Dix reached in and pulled up the old cloth. It came apart in his hand, exposing bone.

Beside the skeleton's upper leg bone was a golden ball.

The Heart of the Adjuster!

"Found it!" Dix shouted.

The cheer behind him sounded like a much larger crowd than the few people helping him.

Dix eased through the hole Mr. Data had created and picked up the Heart, then eased back and stood. He held the Heart of the Adjuster up for everyone to see, s.h.i.+ning his light on it.

Then he handed it to Mr. Data.

"Oh, thank heaven," Bev said, the weariness in her voice very clear.

"We found it!" Whelan shouted, then ran to the stairs and called down to the others still searching. "We found it!"

"Get this in the Adjuster and get it working," Dix said to Mr. Data. "Quickly. There can't be much time left."

Mr. Data held up the Heart. "So this is what a McGuffin looks like."

He turned with the golden ball and trotted down the hallway toward the doorway. It was one of the first times Dix had seen Mr. Data run.

"So Spot really was our criminal," Bev said, leaning against the wall. The dust and the relief on her face made her seem pale and weak, far from what Dix knew she really was.

"Amazing," Mr. Whelan said. "You really are a great detective."

Dix laughed and pointed his light into the hole. "It seems I solve one case and another appears out of the wall."

"What are you talking about?" Mr. Whelan asked.

"Take a look in there," Bev said, gesturing toward the torn-up wall.

Mr. Whelan moved past her and shone his flashlight in the hole. "A skeleton behind a wall? Isn't that an old idea?"

Mr. Whelan then stepped through the hole and eased the sign off the skeleton's neck. He came back out, blowing lightly on the dust covering the sign, sending swirls of particles through the flashlight beams.

"What does it say?" Dix asked, s.h.i.+ning his light on the rudely cut piece of cardboard.

"I think," Bev said, leaning over Mr. Whelan's shoulder and studying the lettering, "it mentions your name."

"What?" Dix asked.

Whelan shook the sign, then Bev carefully brushed off the last of the dust with her sleeve.

Then she read, " 'Hah, hah, Dixon Hill. Next time this will be you.' "

"It seems you have an enemy out there from a long time ago," Bev said.

"After tonight," Dix said, "I think that's the least of my worries. Let's go see if the Adjuster is working. This case can wait just a little longer. Not going to hurt that guy."

He took Bev by the arm and they headed for the door.

As always, it felt good to solve a case.

Clues from Dixon Hill's notebook in "The Case of the Missing Heart"

Case solved. The Heart of the Adjuster recovered. Spot, the cat, was the bad guy.

However, there is a skeleton in the wall of my building, with a sign on it threatening me.

Cyrus Redblock is still missing.

Chapter Eleven.

A Big Loose End Twenty-four hours after the Heart of the Adjuster was found Captain's Log.

The Enterprise is slowly backing away from the Blackness. Little did I know that when I left the holodeck, our problems would be far from over.

The first few minutes after finding the ball of Auriferite, what we had been referring to as the Heart of the Adjuster, Mr. Data and Chief Engineer La Forge had the Adjuster working, focusing on blocking the chaotic waves coming off the four quantum singularities that formed the Blackness.

The Adjuster worked as their tests on the holodeck had shown it would, before the Heart was used as a cat toy. This allowed them to do an emergency restart of the impulse engine.

The restart was successful, but the Enterprise was so close at that point to the edge of the Blackness, that the thrusters had to be pushed to maximum within seconds to stop us in time.

The Adjuster, blocking 99.9 percent of the effects of the Blackness, still allowed some of the chaotic subs.p.a.ce waves through, and Engineer La Forge informs me that one such leakage caused the impulse engine to fail just moments after we stopped our forward momentum and reversed course. We started away from the terminal edge of the Blackness only two minutes from our sure destruction.

However, it then became a race against time to repair the impulse engines and again restart them as our momentum away from the Blackness was slowed and then stopped by the gravitational forces at play from the four quantum singularities.