http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/nicobar-pigeon-central-park/

The door to the interview room burst open, and an officer in plain clothes entered. He dropped onto the table a pigeon corpse. Its feathers were a curious mix of grey and green. He dragged a chair close to the table with a horrific screech across the floor.

“What am I looking at?” asked his boss, already seated at the table. He took a sip of coffee, grimaced at the taste, then took another sip.

The plain clothes lifted an eyebrow. “Strange that you phrase it that way.” From his jacket’s inner pocket he produced a voice-disk.

“You have a recording.” His boss didn’t sound impressed.

“Yes. And a dead pigeon. That,” he pointed to the corpse, “Is the dead pigeon.”

“You have ten seconds to convince me not to make you eat it,” his boss said before taking another sip of coffee. “Or worse, make you finish this coffee.”

“This recording was not easy to get,” the officer defended. “Our informant won’t go back to the building where the lab is hidden. Wants a free pass out of the country.”

“Unlikely.”

“Doesn’t matter. Lab’s abandoned now. He never stays in one after his experiment is done.” The plain clothes officer leaned to his right and loaded the voice-disk into the ancient, massive disk-player. The wood is warped, but not quite enough to justify scrapping it.

“How are we still using this thing?” he grumbled.

His boss snorted. “You want to buy a new one?”

“I’ll buy it, as long as you pay for it.”

“Then that’s why we’re still using this one,” the boss deadpanned.

Eventually, the voice-disk clicked into alignment. The officer flipped a switch, and the disk slowly started to rotate, accelerating.

“The first voice is the scientist. The second, accented voice is unidentified. So it’s either the money guy or his representative.”

“Still no idea who it is?”

The officer shook his head. “It’s someone exceedingly smart and exceedingly careful. Beyond that, it’s a puzzle.”

The disk reached the proper speed and clicked into a steady rhythm. The officer flipped another switch, adjusted the volume, and sat back.

Two voices came out of the twin speakers embedded in the old machine’s wooden base. Despite its age, the sound was still clear, the volume reasonable.

“What am I looking at?” This from the accented voice, the one representing the investor.

“Pigeon.” The scientist.

“I understand that. I meant why am I looking at this particular pigeon?”

“Well I did ask nicely.”

“You’re in a mood,” the money guy noted.

“The meter maid got me again this morning. Three times in the last two weeks. I can’t handle these people anymore,” the scientist complained.

“We pay you more than enough to cover parking fines.”

“I don’t have a problem with the fine. I have a problem with the entrapment.”

“You put in coins, you get time.” The money guy’s accented voice sounded smooth but searching, like he enjoyed egging on the scientist. “If you come back too late, you get a ticket. How is it entrapment?”

“11 minutes per quarter, and there are as many meter maids as there are patrolmen. They hover like so many pigeons over a spilled bag of rice.” The scientist spoke with an edge to his voice.

“Don’t pigeons explode if they eat too much rice?”

“I’ve done a number of experiments on exploding pigeons,” the scientist admitted. “Never thought to use rice.”

“Charming,” the moneyman replied with thinly veiled disgust. “Let’s get back to task.”

“The task. Success on some fronts, progress on others, failure on some.” There was some excitement in the mad scientist’s voice.

“How very typical of the scientific process.”

“All the money in the world can’t convince an experiment to deliver the desired result.”

A wordless scoff. “Of this I am all too aware.”

“Do you want to talk or do you want to do five minutes on the scientific method?”

“Apologies. Talk.” The money guy did not sound in the least bit sorry.

The microphone picked up a slight ruffling of papers. And a low coo sound. The bird, presumably an earlier version of the decomposing table pigeon, was alive at the time this recording was made.

“Cammy here-”

“You named it?”

“Her. Cammy. For chameleon,” the scientist explained.

“Of course.”

“Cammy was an ideal candidate for this round of tests. Her feathers were a very uniform grey. From what I can tell, the serum in its current form works best transforming something uniform into something less so.”

“For what we need, it cannot be so limited. Hair, eyes, varying skin tones, freckles, everything must be targeted.”

“We’re getting there. Rome wasn’t burned in a day.”

“Built in a day,” the accented voice corrected.

“Depends on your objective.”

A heavy sigh. “I want to leave here in 90 seconds. Please, just tell me how it’s going.”

“The serum did, in essence, exactly what it was supposed to do. As you can see, the head, underbelly and tail feathers all remain a solid, homey grey. Very chic, very modern. But the wing feathers altered almost entirely to shades of green.”

“And it’s not the same as dying them?”

“Only in the same way the moon is made out of cheese,” the scientist answered in a biting tone.

“It’s… it’s not?” Perfect deadpan. The scientist laughed, and it was so genuine and hearty the police officers forget it’s coming from someone certifiably insane.

“Maybe we’ll do that next,” the scientist chuckled, evidently still recovering. “No, it’s nothing like a dye job. This bird’s feathers are now green. As far as it’s internal mechanisms know, that’s all they’ve ever be, all they ever could be. If Cammy mated with another green-winged pigeon, she’d have green-winged babies. She is, however, much too prude for such nonsense.”

“What does this mean for our long-term schedule?” The money guy’s patience sounded as if it was about to expire.

“We’re on pace,” the scientist answered. “The next step is fleshing out the serum instructions with more complexity. Probably on pigs – very similar bone and flesh structure to humans.”

“Side effects?”

There’s a long pause. Uncomfortable.

“She won’t live very long. A few more days.”

“That’s not as big a problem as you might think. Can you increase the length between ingestion and expiration?”

“Probably.”

“Let’s work on that also,” the moneyman said, the casual tone of his voice in stark contrast to the content. “I have a train. Good job so far.”

“Cammy and I thank you for your hospitality. We shall, of course, require another lab for the next phase.”

“That’s fine. Call me when you’ve picked the spot.”

“And so I shall.”

There were no pleasantries. Hollow footsteps followed. Moments later, the ancient player’s speaker spit out the muffled sound of a door opening and closing. Then the voice-disk spun to its end and the power switches clicked off.

“Well that’s something, I guess,” the boss said. “But no names, locations, not even a mention of a chemical compound.”

“I said exceedingly careful, yes?”

“You can keep using the department resources. But without a crime committed or a conspiracy to commit a specific crime in the future, you have no cause to investigate.” The boss exhaled heavily. “If we caught this maniac tonight, we wouldn’t have enough to hold him for more than jaywalking.”

“I know.”

“Chin up. You’re closer than the Europeans. They’re still operating on the assumption he’s too crazy to finish any project he starts.”

“But we know differently, don’t we?”

The boss stood and pointed to the dead pigeon on the table. “Yes. The three of us do.”