Supositions: Continued ii

If you went to the police station and approached the desk clerk and said "I'd like to speak to Fletcher Gerald or a member of his team" the officer on duty would have probably stared at you blankly and said "Who?" It was true. Even though he was one of the oldest officers still on active duty, and he was favored by the Captain and quite a few big muckety-mucks at City Hall, he was virtually unknown by those who didn't get out in the field. And then not many of those field officers could have told you his name. He was a living urban legend: his name sounded vaguely familiar but was soon forgotten by more urgent things. Of course there were a few detectives who remebered that his existance was fact and who were brave enough to take the long trek to the basement whenever they were faced with a particularly challenging case. But not many were that willing to admit such a weakness.

He never entered through the front door. Always the secondary fire access located at the back of the basement parking garage. Down the long, empty, sterile, white hall to the door marked Records Review Annex. He was never called up to the chief's office. Joan always came to him.

Whenever a media camera would appear at a scene, when there was a scene, he would turn and walk away. He was never at a press conference. And the brass had long given up trying to make him, or his team, give any statements. "It's none of their business," he had mumbled the last time when Joan had pleaded for "something, anything! Just wave at them once in a while, Fletch. Fine. If you won't do it, then Calvin will. They'll eat him up!" "Exactly," he had mumbled. "I need Calvin here. On this planet." "I could order him." Joan had declared without any heart. That caused the old man to look up, a knowing smile furtively perched on the corners of his mouth, high humor for him.

And his "team"? It didn't exist. At least not officially. He was the only member of the group that was even on the city's payroll. His position, as recorded on the duty roster, was: Gerald, Fletcher; records clerk. The other three were funded by a blind trust managed by an anonymous oversight committee. There was no "Cold, Unsolved, and Bizarre Cases Task Force" on the books. He liked it that way, though he would never boast about it. Anonymity. Relative independence. Minimal outside control. Freedom to follow the leads wherever they ran, no matter the door they disappeared under.
Fletcher sat at his desk, hunched over the papers that covered the sagging, formica particleboard top. Every wall of the small room was lined with gray, three drawer filing cabinets, slightly more rusty than would have been expected of a government run facility.

He looked like a vulture that had given up hope of ever finding another carcass to harass. His hat sat brim down at the top of the desk, facing him, where he could see it out of his peripheral vision. It was so nice of Cindy to send it to him.
His cheap plastic swivel chair creaked as he leaned back without reclining, elbows tucked to his sides, hands folded in his lap. The lights from Felicity's desk caught his eyes and he focused, briefly, on the fashion models that marched up and down the runway that was her computer screen. Her desk was spotless and bare, except for the stapler and tape dispenser that stood guarding the base of the plasma screen monitor. His eyes flicked sideways, unconsciously, to Isabele's desk, a mountain of papers and binders and post-it notes, ominously threatening avalanche. A puppy lay curled in the corner of her monitor's screen, occasionally stretching himself before wobbling to a different corner, turning three circles and laying back down with an enormous caricature of a yawn.

He smiled at that. He always smiled at that. But he never knew it.

Just beyond the two desks, closest to the door, was a chair, much like a dentist's chair, only streamlined, and lacking that knuckled swivel light that either blinded or brained you alternately. It was a clever contraption, Fletcher thought to himself. He thought that every time he looked at it. But he didn't know it.
It was Calvin's office. At least that is what the kid jokingly called it. "Everything a nerd could need, at the touch of a sensor" he had informed everyone that first day, as he sat down and demonstrated by pressing his left thumb over a receptor in the left armrest. A panel had instantly opened on that side of the chair and a pencil thick hydraulic arm extended out, bending at four all-way servos over his lap, presenting a touchpad keyboard that looked like it had been molded over the top of a basketball. With a stroke of his finger on the keyboard a digital holo-monitor had appeared before him.

Fletcher wished that he had just a fraction of the kids talent and genius. He always thought that, when he thought of Calvin Harper. He always knew it too.