High Road

Chapter 3
Fit for Purpose

Chapter Description: Peter LaCrone struggles with his own psyche, but comes out better for his trouble.

Peter looked down as the electrical box on his chest, no bigger than a couple square inches, crackled to life.

“Elsie, you ready for your first real mission?” the box asked of him. LaCrone cringed at his nickname. It was a phonetic for both the capital letters in his name as well as the abbreviation of his rank: Lance Corporal. Needless to say, Sergeant Callahan thought he was endlessly witty. In truth, Peter had cringed for a second reason as well, because for the first time since joining the military, he questioned if he was ready. He hesitated before answering, and decided to give the correct answer, instead of having to decide what the truth was, and reported back in a trained voice, “Sir, yes sir!” Inside the hull of the tank, the USAF Goliath, Callahan grinned, thinking, “We’ll make sure those damned Kurds remember the year of ’91 whether they like it or not!”

Peter sighed and began to consider his true answer when the unexpected occurred. Approximately one quarter mile short of the location the tank crew was ordered to reinforce, a mine detonated under the right tracks of the tank. A firestorm consumed the vulnerable underbelly of the tank, as well as the entirety of the track and wheel set on the right hand side of the tank. Peter ducked as his world vibrated, trapped in the gunner’s hatch located on the port bow of the glacis plate on the tank. The hatch slammed closed above him, darkening his tiny, metal world. He was cut off from his crewmen in sight, but he heard their haunting screams of agony as the fire breached the main hull and filled the confines of the main hatch. The metal avatar and LaCrone’s stomach turned over in unison. As Goliath was struck by fire conjured not by David, it flipped off the sand bank into a dune. Peter slammed his head against the metal frame, and the world darkened.

He awoke in a cold sweat before a doctor. The world became fuzzy around Peter, as the doctor told him that his unconsciousness had slowed his breathing just enough that he had not suffocated in the hatch, but his fellow crewmen were dead, burned or broken by the mine that hit the soft underbelly of the USAF Goliath. The world once again began to twist and turn...

---

When Peter opened his eyes again he was looking up at his father. Though it was his tenth birthday, his father had decided that double digits made a man too old for parties. Peter was not particularly offended: he wanted to please his father.

“I have something for you...” his father stated quietly. He was a blunt and stern man, though Peter knew that there was affection there, even if it was hard to detect. He was handed a box, which he opened solemnly. A watch! The rim had numbers on it, but there was no actual face. One could see past the hands of the watch and see the gears of the watch turning over and over, passing time mechanically, and Peter was fascinated. He nodded and hugged his father. The first thought that came to him... “How does it work? I must solve this mystery...” And before he had time to think again, the world twisted once more.

---

“I’ll just leave you alone. Call me if he gets too worked up.” A woman above him was speaking. He opened his eyes in time to see a woman leaning over him, cutting off the flow of some sort of IV that was flowing into his own left arm. The woman withdrew herself back to his right, and he followed her with his gaze. There, standing at the side of his bed, fully decked out in his field retinue, was Jeremy White.

“I saved your ass again LaCrone. I don’t know why people call you a hero.” The elder Inspector chuckled at himself. “You know, LaCrone, this time you almost died.”

Peter looked up at Jeremy weakly, and offered, “You’re... not a memory...”

“So is that what you’ve been doing while you were sleeping there? That’s what the great Peter LaCrone does when he sleeps? He lives in the past instead of thinking of the future? I’m disappointed.”

“No I... Never mind. What happened?”

Jeremy explained that after he had received Peter’s call, he had the call traced immediately and sent in an ambulance and two squad cars, but it would have been too late if the neighbors hadn’t heard his gun and decided to try to save him. The bullet wounds had killed Coel immediately, but Peter’s own wound was bound in cloth, preventing extreme blood loss, until professionals could take over.

“You’re not going to court either. The DA dropped the charges,” Jeremy sighed dramatically.

“What?”

“After the techies made sure your little tape recording checked out with the scene, the district attorney decided the case wasn’t worth a trial. I can’t believe that you were dying and you still had time to make sure you wouldn’t get court marshaled!”

Peter grinned weakly. “I do my best. Where do I go from here though?”

Mr. White just shrugged though. “You’re supposed to be the master detective, not me. On that note, the techies decided there was something coated on that knife. We have no idea yet, but it was so damn diluted and dissipated that we can’t tell if it was a chemical, or just blood from the fresh ham Coel was cutting in the other room. That’s how bad it is. Upside is that if it was truly bad for you, doctors would notice. Also, you’re not dead right now, so it wasn’t poison. To be honest, I think what’s more interesting is the kid she had. We have his adoption papers from an orphanage that doesn’t exist, and a copy of his birth certificate from York Hill Hospital.”

“You’re kidding me... It’s from York Hill?” Peter sighed. That hospital was for the most part a legitimate operation, but it was notorious for falsifying certificate documentation and corrupt employees. In the past, it had always been death certificates to let criminals try to get off the hook, never a birth certificate. Still, he’d bet his badge that it was a fake.

“Yeah, but you can’t act on it for a few days. You got cut up something fierce. Doctor said you fought it like a champ though. Almost as if you were mending the thing actively on your own, he said.”

Peter frowned, and replied that he actually felt better than ever. As if to punctuate this, he threw off the covers and leapt onto his feet, standing before an aghast Jeremy White.

“You shouldn’t be doing that! What if...,“ his more tenured officer started, before being cut off by Peter shifting the hospital gown so that Jeremy could see his wound reduced already to a scar.

“To be honest, I’ve never felt so good in my life. I should let the case rest a day or so though, that’s good advice. I think I’ll run a few laps in that time, maybe get back in shape. I really think this stabbing gave me more perspective... I should take care of my physique.” He followed this up with a chuckle: He hadn’t trained for half a decade, when he was thirty. Still, it felt like the right thing to do... he couldn’t afford to be in that situation again. He smiled at Jeremy before walking to the front desk to check out, “I need to go get fit, for I have a new purpose.”