Chapter 8

Nemesis began to wonder if there was some rule that they couldn't win. This thought came to her when she realized that most crooks were diurnal, just as were most other humans. In other words, most crooks worked during the day time and slept in night, and that was interfering with the normal operation schedule of Nemesis and Nightmare. It looked like they were going to have to work during the day if they were going to have many crooks to chase.

Well, there seemed to be no way around the problem, the two superheroines were just going to have to start working the day shift instead of the night shift. There were no two ways about it: they were going to have to start driving around in the "Batmobile" during the daytime. Fortunately, their Taurus rarely attracted any attention at all, and that was mostly because somebody nearly ran into them because they weren't seen soon enough.

The windows were tinted so that it was very difficult to see into the car, though there was no problem seeing outside. Therefore, Nemesis and Nightmare could ride around the city in their full uniform and not be stared at. This made it very convenient when it became time to chase crooks. They kept their police scanner turned on and heard a lot of garbage around the kind of messages they were looking for. They chalked that up as a hazard of the job and continued about their business.

The city was large enough that they rarely went more than three or four days without hearing something interesting on the scanner. Unfortunately, all of the excitement was often over by the time they heard about it on the scanner, so they did miss out on a lot of fun.

The problem with working the day shift was that most of the cops also worked the day shift. That meant that they had a lot of competition, and they considered going back on the night shift. Nemesis felt so frustrated that she asked Phil if he could come up with a small scanner that she could wear on her belt. She could try wearing that on night patrol. Maybe that would improve her chances of finding some excitement. Nightmare chimed in that she thought that was a good idea, and Phil promised to see what he could do about it.

Actually, with all of the marvels of miniaturization in electronics that were taking place, Phil was certain that his R&D Department could come up with a solution to Nemesis' request in very short order. Phil was able to solve the problem with stock parts, so Nemesis and Nightmare had their prototype scanners in only four days. Of course, that did come about from some overtime, but Foster Enterprises could afford the slight bump in the budget.

The scanner ran off a single micro-battery and was no larger than a fashionably sporty wristwatch. The women carried the scanner in a pouch on their Utility Belts and had a tiny earbud for listening. The first night they had the scanner, they never had a chance to use it.

That night was opening night for the city opera company, and the muggers were bound to be out in force for the occasion. There was too much loose money and loose jewelry floating around for them to ignore such a tempting target. Nemesis and Nightmare seemed to live for this sort of opportunity, and they were at the opera house an hour before the doors opened.

They wanted to make sure that they had time to refresh their memory of the layout of buildings, dumpsters, and junk that surrounded the opera house. Both of the women had excellent memories so they had no trouble seeing that very little change had taken place in the environment since the previous opera season.

The opera house was three stories tall at the corners and had a dome that rose two more stories. There was a very large parking garage next door to the opera house and separated from it only by a small gap that served as a fire break. The parking garage was six stories tall, and it was usually able to handle the entire parking requirements of the opera goers.

The women figured that the majority of muggings would take place in the parking garage, rather than on the street or in the alleys adjacent to the opera house. Unless the people were delivered by chauffeured limousine to the front door of the opera house, it was almost certain that they would use the parking garage. Therefore, no mugger with enough intelligence to know which end of the knife to hold would want to work anywhere except in the parking garage. Nightmare joked that there might be so many muggers in the parking garage that they would have to take a number before they could work there.

In any case, the women noted that the parking garage had been cleaned up in anticipation of a large number of users, so they would not have to worry about junk or trash getting in their way. It would also cut down on the number of potential hiding places for muggers, and that would certainly simplify matters.