(Scene continues from Detective Pagasmo)

I glared at the author of my doom, which just stood there all gleaming metal and innocence. Either particle accelerators come in a mini, portable size or the thing on the tripod wasn’t one. The more I stared at it, the less it looked like it could accelerate anything. But what did I know?

A silver tube jutted out at one end and on the back side, where a control panel should have rested, there was nothing. A black square of plastic hung out in that spot and it served no purpose other than to frustrate me. I toed the unconscious Sherpa. Perhaps I’d decked him too soon.

Next to my fur-trimmed prisoner lay a red walkie-talkie and it was squawking. So I picked it up and gave it a listen. I had nothing else to do. It wasn’t grade a hold music on the other end not and not anything that helped my situation any. Bursts of coded communications filled my ears and left me more confused. Was that German? And that Chinese? Had I heard a ‘da’ mixed in there? What had I stumbled onto–an international crime syndicate?

Nah my luck wasn’t that good. I toed the hunk of fur vanishing under a blanket of snow. Had I done him a real injury? Squatting down, I checked for a pulse and found a good strong one. And then everything blackened as a two by four smashed my skull in.

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book. After a nice long nap in the snow, I awoke to my walkie-talkie holding captor fiddling with his device. He noticed me rubbing my head but continued to turn the screw in his hand.

“You really shouldn’t have interfered.”

“Yeah that’s what they all say but we both know that you’re not saving the world here.” No need to play opossum now that he knew I was awake. So I sat up real slow. When consciousness remained friends with me, I chanced standing. Vertical worked for me. It removed any advantage the lean murderer had.

The Sherpa sighed. “And how do you know I’m not? Don’t let my rugged attire fool you. I hold three doctoral degrees.”

“That’s what they all say. Well minus the part about the degrees since I haven’t had the pleasure of taking down a doc before now.” I brushed snow off my now wet clothes while I waited for the bad guy to monologue about why he’d done what he’d done. But only silence followed. “You going to enlighten me doc?”

“Why should I bother? You’d need a PhD to understand.” His shoulders slumped and the fur-clad fellow caved into himself.

“It’s your lucky then. I hold two PhDs–one in criminology and one in forensic science. So I doubt there’s anything you could say that I haven’t heard a dozen times before.” I pulled a set of handcuffs out of my pocket. They flashed in the weak winter light of  this frozen hell hole.

“You do?”

“Yeah, modern crime fighting isn’t solely about brawn. You need brains to track down the real bad guys.” I liberated my wallet and held up my credentials.

The gold eagle winked at the Sherpa as he mouthed ‘FBI’.

“You’re under arrest bub. You have a whole slew of rights, or rather  you will when you return us to our proper place in the timeline. Until then, according to section 995B, your ass is mine to do with as I please. So let’s make this snappy. Fire up that machine and take us back to the future.”

I’d finally figured out where on the timeline he’d dropped us–WWII Europe. The B-52 flying overhead kind of gave it away. I did mention that I majored in history in college didn’t I?

“Oh and I can speak Mandarin and Russian. So no funny business or I’ll give your friends a call.” I held up the walkie-talkie. It had fallen out of my hand and landed under me in the snow. The darn thing still worked too, wonder of wonders.

 

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More Detective Pagasmo stories: The Boxes Are Doors, Descending into Trouble, Epistemology, Novitiate, Lulled by Rhymes, News, Clues and Howitzers, Mixed Media, No Truth in Quotes, Haiku Hunt, Random Risks, Freeze Frame, The Mark of Destiny, Detective Pagasmo in Playing Dead, Detective Pagasmo.