The Liberty Puzzle

My brother wrote this story and I thought it was rather good, so I posted it here. Its not finished, though.

 PROLOGUE

A limousine was rolling down the almost empty street towards the White House sometime during midnight, passing a few people who were jogging or taking a leisurely walk at the hour, who halted and saluted. The limousine continued along the smooth driveway up to the White House before being halted at the gate for verification. A man inside flashed a card and the solider at the gate saluted as they continued…
         The next morning, the White House was found in ruins. The President was not in his bed, officials said. There were rumors that the President had been murdered. The man who had come as a visitor was nowhere to be seen. His driver had been taken into custody by the police, who claimed that he was the reason the President and the visitor had disappeared. This case was watched by the people all over the country. Little details were seen clearly and were speculated by many newspapers and shows. The investigation raged on through the night and the next morning. Private detectives were hired throughout the country to find clues. Clues that could solve the mystery…

      Edward Watson, a private detective, had been stalking down a corridor, tapping on the walls, in the White House when he noticed that a part of the wall sounded hollow like there was a space there. He moved his hands along the wall, looking for a small indentation, button, and lever, something that might indicate the presence of a hidden door. After failing to find anything of interest, Watson was about to leave the corridor when his foot kicked something into the darkness behind the floor way lights. He groped around in the darkness and found a small stick. He picked it up and found it intricately carved with a dragon’s head and its tail swirling around and around until the end. Better than nothing, he thought. Then an idea struck him. What if there was a trap door on the ground? He noticed there was a fold in the rug that followed the corridor. This meant that the rug wasn’t attached to the ground in the corridor. He lifted the rug up and threw it aside. He saw a small hole nearby the wall which had been concealed by the rug. He fitted the stick into the hole and turned the head of the dragon. He watched the wall next to him as it began to move sideways into the wall next to him, revealing staircases…

CHAPTER ONE

Gordon Norman, the police chief, head of the investigation to find out where the president was and his whereabouts, was sitting in his chair, brooding about the happenings that were past. He looked around in his office, taking in all the medals, the awards, the recognitions and wondered why he couldn’t solve this one mystery. He took in the last medals and awards he had gotten in the recent years.

     “Sir! Sir!” someone shouted from behind him.

     Norman turned around and saw one of his officer-in-commands running towards him. He stopped and offered a hasty salute.

     “Sir! We have news that a private detective,” here the officer looked at a paper, “by the name of Edward Watson, has found the whereabouts of the President and along with him, the visitor. However, they were both found dead.”

     Norman buried his face in his hands when he heard that his friend had died. The President himself had been killed! He knew he had to find out how, even if it meant competing with that Watson!

     Watson had entered the corridor after sending an SMS to his employer that he was on to something. As he crept down the dark stairs, he noticed that there was a faint light coming from in front of him. And it was moving! He quickly dodged to the shadow of the corridor and watched as a quick person darted through the open door. He wasn’t able to get the details of the man but he knew he was a middle-aged man with some pepper hair. He continued down the staircases until he reached a door. He opened it and found a sitting room. The unearthly sight that met his eyes unsettled him like no other. The visitor was found gaping in a last scream of pain with a harpoon driven through him into a wall. The President, on the other hand, was found killed with a single dagger thrust through the heart, severing the lungs and right through the back of the President! How had the murderer gotten down here at first? Watson thought. Perhaps he came down with them, trapped them in the room, and killed them, then running away from the scene of the crime. Or maybe the President and the visitor were strolling around in the White House and they found that a door was open in this corridor. They went down the stairs and found this empty sitting room and decided to have a small drink in here. Then the murderer crept up on them and killed them both. To me, it seems that the President was killed first, considering the gentle way he was killed and then the visitor when he tried escaping. The murderer must have seen the danger and grabbed the weapon nearest to him and killed the visitor with one of the harpoons on the wall. After contemplating this, Watson turned away from the gruesome scene and stepped towards the door.

     The next morning, at a news conference in front of the White House, the vice president of the United States of America was addressing a large crowd about the news of the President. The crowd was sitting uneasily in their seats watching and hanging on to every word. Norman was behind the vice president, watching every one carefully. The one he paid most attention to was a strange man, with an Italian look, covering himself with a hat from the sun, a long overcoat with one hand in a pocket and another holding his water bottle, which was constantly drunk from. A man who keeps drinking from his water bottle even with a hat on must be nervous about something. But why does he even wear a long overcoat then? Who wears a coat and then pretends as if they’re hot without taking off the coat? He’s hiding something. Norman deduced. The man had a strange hawk nose and a huge brow with sunglasses. I don’t think he’s very interested with the news. He’s probably here for something else. Norman’s eyes kept turning over to the hero of the meeting: Edward Watson. His eyes narrowed as he took in Watson. Watson seemed quite sure of himself, with his detective clothes still on. Something he could move around quietly in. Norman turned back around when he heard the crowd get in some unrest. The vice president was finishing his speech.

     “We will not be disclosing any more information to the public as we do not know enough to deduce what actually happened that night.” he said, “Now, I turn it over to the detective who discovered the scene, Edward Watson.”

     The vice president shook Watson’s hand and moved aside, his body guards covering him up. Watson had just stepped up to the microphone when the strange man stood up and threw the item in his pocket. The item flew up, its flight path leading it to go toward the vice president. The crowd was in a big unrest, trying to stop the man from leaving. The second the man had thrown the item, Norman had yelled to his men to run after the man. After Norman yelled, Watson jumped backward, pushed the vice president out of the way and took off his coat. He caught the item with his coat and disassembled it. It was a grenade. Watson looked up at Norman. They gave each other a small nod.

     After Watson had disassembled it, Norman and Watson had gone to the seat where the man had been sitting, looking for anything he may have dropped. All they found was one small hair and his water bottle. The vice president, who had just gotten up from his fall when Watson had pushed him, called for them. Watson put the hair in his handkerchief, which went into his pocket. The water bottle was given to one of the policemen by Norman. The two got up and trotted to the vice president.

     “Well, hello again, Norman and Watson. Have you guys been introduced to each other yet?” he asked.

     Both men shook their heads.

     “I’ll do the honors. Come on to my limousine. I suppose you two need a ride to a laboratory.”

     Watson took the lead as the three, along with the bodyguards, marched down the hill towards the vice president’s limousine, which was currently surrounded by tons of media. The vice president was repeating his last line in the speech to everyone who asked a question as the troupe made it through the sea of people to the limousine. The vice president smiled and waved at everyone once more and then got into the limousine. Norman and Watson followed after him.

     Once they were inside the limousine, the vice president shed his happy smile and took on a more serious look. He introduced the two, and as they shook hands, he sat back and instructed the driver on where to go.

     “I want you two to work together on solving this problem. It may go beyond the murder of the President,” the vice president said.

     The limousine turned into the driveway of a laboratory.   

     Inside the laboratory, Watson presented the handkerchief in which the hair was contained. The bottle could be examined by Watson at his office. The scientist, Morgan Moore, took the hair and placed in a test tube.

     “We will bring news to you by tomorrow,” Morgan said.

     Just then a big honk came outside. Watson looked outside a window.

     “It’s a car,” he said, “a police car.”

     Norman and Watson rushed out of the laboratory just in time to see one officer step out of the car… with a dagger to his throat. They only relaxed when another police officer stepped out of the car holding the dagger.

“S-s-sir,” the first policeman pleaded.

“Be quiet. Take him away,” the second added to the body guards of the vice president.

Three of them separated from the group and took the first policeman at a signal from the vice president. The remaining four surrounded the vice president.

“Explain this at the White House, Tom,” Norman said and looked to the vice president for confirmation.

     “Now, Tom, why did you send that officer away?” Norman asked.

     “There’s a whole story behind that, sir,” Tom said, “I’ll start telling it now.”

     “Go ahead.”

     “The moment you yelled to chase that man, me and my colleagues jumped into action. Some of us ran to a car and others ran behind him on foot. I was one of those men. We kept up with him as he ran through the city. Then one of the police officers in the car, John was his name, the one who I brought to you, pointed us in the direction in which he saw the man running. We were misled by John and that set us back on the chase. Mick, one of our men, tracked the man down and trapped him. He yelled that he needed some backup. But to me it seemed that we got there a second too late. We found Mick lying on the ground in his own blood, his throat slit and multiple stabs in his back. We spotted the man running north towards the construction site. We started chasing him once more. The men behind me, there were eight left, since Mick was one of them, quickly spread out and combed the neighboring area. It was me who spotted him first. I yelled into my radio that I needed some help nearby the rundown building. My men came to me. We surrounded the man. He pulled a flare gun out of his pocket and we readied our guns. He shot a flare up into the air. Then we sprung into action. We were fighting off the range of bullets coming out of his guns, when another group joined the fight. They surrounded him and began shooting. My men were a match for them and we began a full out shooting spree. As we were winning with his men disappearing shot after shot, I noticed that my men were disappearing suddenly too. I spun around and saw John shooting bullets at my men. I slipped away into an alley way. The man, who may have noticed my disappearance, looked up and saw a silent helicopter floating above the battlefield. It had no blades, the reason why it made no sound, and yet it floated above ground. A ladder dropped from the side and the man jumped on to it, along with the remainder of his men. The helicopter flew away, and the strange thing that happened was it became invisible. The bullets from John killed the rest of my men. John came out when he thought that there were no more of our men left. He saluted to the helicopter and turned around. He found a dagger at his throat. I had slipped out and crept up behind him, and the moment he had turned around, he had a dagger at his throat. I forced him to show me where the other vehicles were. I saw that they were all dead too. I first thought that John had killed them, when I noticed that our enemies from the shooting spree were on the ground. Then only I realized that there had been two battles, one where we won and one where we lost. I forced John to take me to a car and drive me to the White House. He drove me there. Once we got there, I was told that you were at the laboratory. We drove to the laboratory and stepped out.”

     “If John is part of this group that is bent on using violence for everything, then just imagine all of the information he has passed on to them,” Watson said, “This is an amazing problem. They have technology no one has ever heard about. And the speed with which they kill is impossible, considering that you guys were right around the corner. That man is part of that group because he was in the shooting spree and he fled on their helicopter. He threw a grenade at the Vice President of America and then ran away. That group may also be the one who murdered the President and that visitor. The brutality with which they were killed indicated great strength and sleuthing skills, because I’m pretty sure that the President didn’t line up like a lamb at a slaughter house.”

     “Speaking about the grenade, do you still have the parts?” Norman asked.

     “Of course I do. They were in my coat, which I folded up and put somewhere,” Watson began, rummaging through the pockets of his pants, “and here they are! As you can see, I have disassembled the grenade into many parts. But what’s this?”

     “It looks like some sort of tracker. If this belongs to that man, he knows exactly where you are!” Tom said.

     “Hmm. If I could dismantle this, I could probably use it to track the man. This is possible because all trackers have a receiver which the person, in this case the man, can use to interpret the signal of where the tracker is, along with his prey. If I could take advantage of the fact that this tracker uses signals to send its data to the receiver. Instead, I could locate the place where the signals are going and slowly track the man himself!” Watson said triumphantly.

     “We’ll leave you to your work then,” Norman replied, getting up, “I’ll check in sometime around seven to see how you’re doing. Come, Tom. You must show me the area of this fight you had.”

     With that Norman and Tom left Watson to his work, leaving for a short walk in the city.

     Tom and Norman were strolling the streets as they slowly made their way to the scene of the fight. They watched as kids played on the street, oblivious to the world around them.

     “Tom, we must really hurry. We have to get back before seven,” Norman reminded him.

     “Yes, we must.”

     At that, the two men began jogging toward the site of the fight.

     Nearby the jail of Washington D.C., where no one was there because they were out on their lunch break, the bodyguards of the vice president were escorting John to a well fortified jail cell on the orders of Norman. One of the bodyguards showed his identity card to get past the extreme layers of security for that one cell.

     As the bodyguards entered the cell, there was a blur of movement from John, and all of a sudden, the guards were unconscious. John cut a hole in the ceiling of the cell and jumped out with inhuman strength.