Rating: PG

Pairing: None

Teasers: None

Disclaimer: Ray Vecchio, Benton Fraser and the 27^th Precinct folk all belong to Alliance; Arly Hanks and the good citizens of Maggody are the property of Joan Hess (and if you've never read one of her "Maggody" series of mysteries, I strongly advise you do to so ASAP!). I own only two original characters (you’ll be able to tell which ones) and the plot of this story, which was written strictly for fun and not for payment or profit.  

 

 

 

One day in Chicago...

 

 

Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP, was seated in his usual place while at Chicago’s 27th Precinct, which was a chair on the other side of Detective Ray Vecchio’s desk. However, the Detective was ignoring his friend, concentrating instead upon his telephone.  Scowling at the instrument’s unoffending buttons, Vecchio fiercely punched in some numbers.  Waiting impatiently for someone to answer, he drummed his fingers impatiently on his desk. As soon as he heard the click on the other end of the line, the Detective began to speak.

 

"Yeah, is this the Maggody Police Station? Maggody, Arkansas, right? My name is Ray Vecchio, and I'm a detective with the Chicago P.D.," Ray, his expression tight, said into the receiver. "P.D.," he repeated. "Police Department. Yes, ma'am, just like on T.V...." green eyes rolling expressively, Ray sighed and continued. "I need to speak with Police Chief Hanks. Is he there?"

 

A pause, as over the long-distance line, someone in the far-away Arkansas town explained that, no, Chief Hanks wasn't there at the moment. "Is there someone else there I can talk to?" Ray, having heard another female voice in the background (with a twang loud enough so that he could tell that the Canadian could hear it, too; hell, Canadians still in Canada probably could hear it), asked impatiently. "OK, you're...what did you say your name was? Marjorie? OK, Marjorie, you're the secretary, and she's the receptionist, and..."

There was another pause for a long distance explanation; Ray, leaning on one elbow, chin propped in cupped hand with the other hand gripping the 'phone with knuckles that became whiter and whiter, waited it out and then plowed on. "You sometimes both do different jobs. OK, I see. Is either of you police officers? There are no other police officers, just Chief Hanks. OK. Then, would one of you, no, ma'am, I really don't care which one, will one of you please inform Chief Hanks that Detective Vecchio, V-E-C-C-H-I-O, of the Chicago P.D....yes, ma'am, Police Department... and Constable Benton Fraser... no, ma'am, no i  in Fraser, of the..." here he didn't even try the initials "...Royal Canadian Mounted Police - yes, ma'am, that's the R.C.M.P., the guys in red who ride horses - will be in Maggody tomorrow," here Vecchio paused again, checking the names typed on the form in front of him, " to question a Kevin Buchanon and a Dahlia O'Neill Buchanon. Yes, ma'am. Tomorrow, about three in the afternoon, your time." Again Ray paused, as the unknown secretary wrote his message.

 

"Ray, I think that Arkansas is on Central Standard Time, the same as Chicago," Fraser pointed out helpfully.

 

"No, Benny," Ray informed him, his hand over the mouthpiece, "Arkansas is, for all we know, in an entirely different century and maybe on an entirely different planet and I don't care, anyways. Yes, ma'am," he said, removing his hand and continuing his conversation with the unseen Marjorie of Maggody, "I know Arkansas and Chicago are both Central Time. Well, both Constable Fraser and I will be in your town tomorrow, and we'll need some place to stay. Can your office arrange something for us? Yes, my department will be picking up the tab. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am, and y'all have a good day, too."

 

Barely waiting until the woman on the other end hung up, Ray slammed his own phone back onto the cradle. He then bowed forward over his desk and began banging his head.

 

"Ray?"

 

Thunk

 

"What?"

 

"Are you all right?" Benton Fraser, concerned, asked his friend. Diefenbaker, seated within donut-snatching distance of the desk, scuttled back a few paces.

 

"Yes, Benny, (thunk) I am perfectly all right. Can't you tell?" (thunk)

 

"Ray?"

       

"Ray."

 

Thunk

 

"RAY!"

 

"WHAT!"

 

Heads in the squad room turned. Embarrassed, but glad that at least Ray had stopped beating his head against the desk, Fraser continued in a much lower voice, "Ray, the behavior that you have just exhibited is not indicative of a person who is just, and I quote, 'perfectly all right.' While I have never made a formal study of psychology -"

 

Ray raised his head; there was a neat, round red splotch in the center of his forehead. "But I'm sure you read everything Freud wrote that you could find in your dear old granny’s library," he said grumpily.

 

"Actually, my grandmother had a complete collection of Jung's works and only one of Freud's," Fraser noted, "and as I did read that work, I suppose you would be correct in your assertion that I had read everything she possessed of Freud's. Also, I don't remember calling my grandmother granny, but that's not important right now. What I am trying to say is that you are exhibiting what can only be described as irrational behavior."

 

Ray looked at his friend through half-closed eyes. "Actually, Benny, I am not exhibiting irrational behavior," he said, echoing (or maybe mocking) the Mountie's pedagogical tones. "What I am exhibiting is perfectly rational behavior for someone's who’s been ordered, not to arrange for the extradition of a couple of suspects who live on the last jumping off spot at the edge of the world but who happen to be involved in the illegal weapons trade in Chicago and question them here in Chicago but instead, go to the last jumping off spot at the edge of the world and there question same suspects who live there and are involved in the illegal weapons trade here in Chicago." Depressed, Ray folded his arms on the desk top and buried his head.

 

"Don't you mean alleged suspects involved in the illegal weapons trade here in Chicago? Fraser, who really worried about such minute legal points, asked. "Or," he said, reconsidering, "perhaps, suspects allegedly involved in the illegal weapons trade."

 

"Here in Chicago," Ray, voice muffled, added for him.

 

"Yes, Ray. Here in Chicago."

 

"Benny?" Ray raised his head to look at his friend.

 

"What, Ray?"

 

"Do you know what alleged means?"

 

"Of course, Ray," the Mountie assured him. " As a verb, according to Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, it means 'to state, recite, assert, or charge; to make an -'"

 

"No, no, no," Vecchio contradicted, his hands making erasure motions in the air. "No, Benny, allege is a word they use in newspapers and on television news shows that means 'hey, you can't sue my butt, because I didn't come out and say you are guilty, I'm just saying that the police and everyone else on earth says you are guilty, and I'm quoting them.'" He looked at his friend, and concluded, "And that, my Canadian friend, is the meaning of noun -"

 

"Verb, Ray."

 

"Verb," Ray said testily, "allege in the American judicial and legal system. And on the networks and cable, too."

 

"Ray," Fraser, cautious, said, "I think you are missing the point."

 

"No, Benny, I am not missin' the point, you, you are missing the point. And the point that you are missing," said Ray, full-blown whine mode revved up again, " is the point that we have to fly out from O'Hare tomorrow morning and take some crop duster or whatever they use down there to Little Rock and take something worse, probably a Sopwith Camel, schlep over to some small city in northwest Arkansas and then drive a rent-a-wreck, probably a Model T or a pair of pack mules, to some even smaller place where they don't even have a damn airport and probably no roads, either. But if I remember correctly," he concluded, "you once did say that you could probably fly a Sopwith Camel, so, hey, I guess I can feel really, really good about this after all."

 

The Mountie had waited, patient as always, for his friend's tirade to wind down. Then, "Ray?"

 

"Yes, Benny?"

 

"Why am I going to Arkansas with you? And what makes you think that the Inspector will be willing to grant me leave to do so?"

 

"Ah, finally, you ask something smart. The Dragon Lady and Lieutenant Welsh have already, in a fine show of international and interagency cooperation, gotten together on those two little items, and everything, every little detail, has been taken care of. So you and I, my friend, are off to the backwoods really early in the morning."

 

"Ray?"

 

"Yes, Benny?"

 

"You haven't answered my question. Well, maybe you did answer one question, and now I know that I am to travel with you, but, why?"

 

"You're gonna love it," Ray Vecchio grinned. As it was not an exactly cheerful grin, Fraser felt at liberty to doubt his friend's words. "You remember our good friends, the Bolt brothers?" No verbal reply needed; the particularly nasty shade of green that suffused the Mountie's face was affirmation enough. It is kinda hard to forget someone who hijacked an entire trainload of Mounties and their mounts, intending to use them as detonators for nuclear meltdown. It's even harder if the someone in question and his brother had hijacked you and your friend and tried to use you, your friend, a particularly cranky judge and a bunch of jurors as human bombs. People, regular, just plain old ordinary people tend to remember these things. So, naturally, someone who knew the thousands of words the Inuit used to name dog poop would, too. It just stands to reason.

 

"Oh, yeah," Ray, looking down at Diefenbaker, added, spreading more sunshine, "you're going, too."

 

Diefenbaker, a truly wise being, went and hid under Elaine's desk.

 

 

 

Same time (Central) as the above.

 

In the tiny (but not particularly picturesque) hamlet of Maggody, nestled sullenly in the Ozark Mountains just shy of the Missouri border, the (unofficial) secretary of the Maggody P.D. and her (so far) unindicted co-conspirator and best friend, the (also unofficial) receptionist, were sitting on either side of the police chief's (at that moment, cold and vacant) desk. The phone (receiver still warm) and its answering machine (which had been left on to record and so was blinking away inanely), were sitting smack in the middle of the desk. The two women stared first at each other then turned their attentions over to the answering machine, looking at it as if it were a ticking bomb.