Heathens Chapter Fourteen

WARNING: GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE AND VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN

xiv. Lamb To The Slaughter

MONIKA's OS startup greets him cheerily when he boots up his laptop. He frowns at it, waits for the few seconds it takes for it to go away until his desktop is in view. In the corner of the screen, his notifications say that he currently has a lot of unread emails. 

Hadn't A taken his last case for him? 

He clicks the tab open anyway. A is puttering around in the kitchen, after having locked themself up in their room for most of the day. B’s decided to fully commit to the whole ‘injured’ thing and has taken up residence on the couch, his crutch on the floor beside him, laptop on the coffee table that he's had A nudge close, only his good arm doing the work for him.

“You really kept the detectives waiting, huh?” 

B closes his eyes at the voice that filters through his speakers. He sees the tiny ‘incoming call’ notif at the corner too late and, as he is stretched out on the couch, turns his face so it's buried on the inside of the couch’s armrest. 

He sighs. “Matt. “

“Bet you thought you'd heard the last from me.”

“Don't - what the - no. No. Don't ever say that again, that was terrible. More awful than anything you’ve ever said ever.”

“Toe juice.”

“...I rescind that and recognize you are even more terrible than I initially thought, well done.”

Jeevas laughs. There's a popping noise and then the sound of something jostling about in a can. Then a crunch. Disgusting boy. 

“What do you want?” B asks. He turns so he can see his screen and scroll through his mail. All of them are new. A hasn't read his emails, then. Maybe MONIKA had just updated them on things. 

“Do I have to have a reason for bothering you?” 

“When you're wasting my precious time, yes,” B says. “I have a case to solve.”

“Hmm, MONIKA says you haven't been on that, A has,” Jeevas says. 

“Did they ask for the files?” B asks. 

“It was their case before you got it, they just asked MONIKA what you already did and let their input go through your channels,” Jeevas says. “And then I asked.”

“I see; well, MONIKA, what has A done?”

“Confirmed that only one family owned an axe but it was unused for years - and also it wasn't missing, but there were several items missing from the house. Some of them worth quite a lot.”

A robbery? Then why the murders, and why incredibly...for lack of better word to his painkiller-addled brain, well-decorated murders? 

Jeevas seems to be thinking the same thing. “So it's one or the other.”

“I hate it when they do that.”

“At least they're not asking to be caught,” he says. 

“A would probably smack you for that, especially since these are child murders,” B says. “The thing is, it's probably that they don't want to be caught or they want to play. Those are also possibilities.”

“Oh, right.” Jeevas pauses. “Why is it always so complicated?”

“Because then the house you're in wouldn't be standing, Matt,” B says. “And the human psyche is a lot more complicated than we would like it to be but then again, we benefit from the complication, it just goes awry sometimes.” 

The emails are confirmations of what Jeevas had said A had found out. He's got no way of knowing what their input has been, though, since his sent folder is clean from any new mail. 

“MONIKA, what has A had law enforcement do?” 

“Interview everyone that's been around the victims in the past four months, why?” A walks into the room with two plates of food. They set one beside his laptop and then go to turn the television on, setting the volume on low. They flip through the channels until they get to the news. 

B pulls his plate close. “You still watch the news?”

“Why not? You can find some really interesting things there. It's always good to see from someone else's perspective too,” they say.

“It's the news, it's supposed to not have a perspective.”

“It's got the perspective of the one who wrote the report, who probably would be able to find something I’ve accidentally missed. Don't underestimate them,” A says. They sit on the loveseat. “And it's good white noise sometimes.”

B snorts and digs into his food. 

“Hey Matt,” A says, even with their attention on the television. It's currently covering some store break-in gone wrong. No one died but several were injured. 

“Hey, where are you?”

“Can I have a sticky note?” B asks suddenly, glancing at his laptop camera. A's house doesn't have any cameras he can see, but his laptop sure does. 

A points under the coffee table. There's a wooden box there with a tiny handle. He lifts it. There's several pads of sticky notes. 

He rips one out and tapes it over his camera. 

“Hey!”

“Go invade someone else's privacy, idiot.”

“We're certainly somewhere, Matt,” A says. “Why, satellite signal too weak?”

“Yes,” he says. “And MONIKA just connected to the  wi-fi, her reach was weak earlier.”

“Hm, maybe I shouldn't have given B the password.” 

“You're no - ” Matt stops suddenly.

“Matt?” A hazards. 

“...hang on, gotta go.” There’s several noises, a couple of keyboard clicks, and then silence.

“Sir Matt has put his device on standby, A.”

“Oh,” A says, frowning. “I do hope he’s okay.”

“Probably a roommate,” B says, “He’s not supposed to know we’re both alive, remember?” He continues reading the rest of his mail, cleaning off his plate as he does so. Once he's done, he turns to A. “Have you gotten any of the interviews back yet?”

“I have, but I've been busy looking into the cult,” A says. “You want your case back?”

B does a flourish with his hand. “If you could kindly.”

A snaps their fingers. “MONIKA.”

“Yes, A.”

Two seconds later, there's a little ping from his laptop.

“Ugh, the future.”

A giggles. “It's amazing, I wanna keep snapping and have things happen.”

“Like what?”

“Lights. Curtains. TV. Doomsday devices - ”

“I knew you were gonna say that.”

They just tap their spoon on their plate with a grin. 

He reads through the files quickly. There are only a few for now, with more coming later, but a quick skim seems to give him nothing but the usual ‘there was no one suspicious, and we never saw this coming’ from the parents and the relatives. 

He's finished his plate before he's done reading through them. The hour has passed quickly. The news, though, is still on, but the commercial breaks have been getting longer. 

“So, no one knows what happened,” B says. “Do you have audio files? Wait, nevermind, found them.”

“I've got investigator notes if you want them too.”

“Are they competent?”

“You're such an ass.” A says, but snaps their fingers, looking smug while they do it. His laptop pings. “So, we've got - “

“We?”

“You've got seven kids in the same neighborhood dead in their bedrooms in the span of two months. Murder methods varied from victim to victim. Some of them knew each other, but some of them were strangers. Families were mostly gone when the murder was done as they came home to the dead bodies. Didn't know their kids were dead until they checked the rooms - “

“Unlocked,” he adds. 

“No murder weapon found. Very clean bedrooms.”

B pauses. “Bathrooms.”

“You're thinking they were killed there?”

“Victims were children, the oldest at fifteen,” he says. “Kids’ strength suck. That would make dragging them and dumping them in a bathtub easy.”

“If they didn't have a bathtub?”

He frowns.  “Most of the victims were from a suburb, who doesn't have a bathtub? And I saw the house plans, ass.”

A snickers. “What do you think a suburb looks like?”

“I don't know, like the movies. I lived in shit L.A. for a couple of months, what do you think suburbs look like?” 

“I have no idea, I grew up in an orphanage,” A says. “Don't laugh, ass - keep going.”

“Doing the mutilation in the bathroom would make the clean-up easier. Pour some cleaner down the drain, let the  water run.” He motions with his hand. 

“There weren't much defense wounds on the younger ones. The older ones suffered blows to the head.” A sighs, closing their eyes for a moment, but then suddenly snaps them open as something on the TV catches their attention. “Oh,” they say, “Look at that.”

On the television is the photo of a man who appears to be unconscious on a hospital bed. The reporter is going on about someone finding him tied to a fence and how there was blood at the back of a building -

Oh. 

“Familiar building,” A says.

“Shit.”

They turn to him, expectant, already putting the pieces together.

“I forgot to tell you something.”

“You forgot to tell me something,” A repeats. “You can tell me now.”

“I knocked a guy out at the church - the one you were last seen at, I forgot what it was - you know, the Anglican one,” he says, “I thought I knocked him out enough to either kill him or give him a lot of damage. I was in a hurry.”

“You did give him a nasty concussion, apparently, but he’s very alive,” A says. 

He presses his lips to a thin line. “To be fair,” he says. “You said I’m no longer involved in the case.”

A sighs and pinches the bridge of their nose.

The report drones on about the deficiency of evidence on the scene except for the blood of a man B remembers the name of, as he'd shot him in the Red House basement (so that wasn't A's blood after all - he was probably the one to take them from the church and to the bar) and a stray piece of hair that was unidentifiable. 

A looks up.

“It was hair! Do you know how hard those things are to clean when you're hurrying?”

“I expected better from the infamous Los Angeles Locked Room Killings murderer.” A sniffs dramatically. “You're lucky we're both completely off the grid.”

He pauses. “Completely?”

“Yeah, our only records are in Wammy's now, I took…extra precautions when I arranged for your uh, circumstances?”

He pauses again, thinking. “Basically, what you've done is - the fourth victim in the Wara Ningyo cases was arrested, and then... “ He motions something exploding with his hand. “Poof?”

“You'll be on a conspiracy board, don't you worry, unless you want me to say you died. I can make that happen.”

“Yeah, you're good at that,” he mutters. He sits for a moment, letting the information sink in. He's not quite sure how to feel about it,  he finds. On one hand, it's close to what he'd originally intended but on the other, the intended player wasn't affected by it. The unwanted audience was.

To the world, the case was a mystery. To the one who solved it, it wasn't,  which wasn't the aim of the murders at all. 

B hadn't wanted an audience. He'd wanted a game. 

“Did I mess it up?” A asks, leaning an arm on the loveseat while their free hand is fishing their phone out to text someone, maybe to take care of the situation. They don't look too bothered at the thought of butchering a murder design, but he supposes that's fair for them. 

“You did,” he says. He motions to the television, diverting the topic. “So, what do we do with our new… news problem?”

A looks down.  They finish sending their text first and pocket their phone before they speak again. “I think we need to talk,” they say, “We keep putting conversations for later but obviously, this case involves both of us now. We need to talk. And I think, if Wickerton’s got people who can wipe CCTV footage and shut gas station employees up, he can try to get that piece of hair and try to kill you with it.”

“Finally,” B says, grinning. “That’s on both the threat of death and the fact that you had to concede on letting me on the case, by the way.”

A sticks out their tongue. “I'll print out files for you later. I know you read things from MONIKA and Matt, but maybe you'll see something else with my notes.”

“...Thanks,” he says. 

A just nods. They stand and go over to pick his empty plate up before going to the kitchen. “So,” they call out, the water in the sink running, “Your murder case?”

“L.A. or the suburb one?”

“The suburb, B,” A says. He can hear the eyeroll in their voice. “What do you think?”

He moves back so he's leaning on the armrest, sitting up properly. It wasn't unplanned, obviously, not with the detail and the presentation. The fact that some of it happened in a well-to-do neighborhood should have made it easy because of all the cameras, but somehow, it just so happened that all the cameras caught nothing, although suburbs weren’t banks or museums. There were blindspots. 

“I think it was done by someone familiar with the neighborhood,” he says. “Either someone new who's looked around enough or someone who's lived there all their lives.”

He hears the water shut off. A stops by the doorway, already deep in thought. They cross their arms.

They're quiet, though. 

“You look like you want to take a crack at it,” B says. 

They glance at him briefly. “It's your case.”

Well. Technically not anymore. 

He lifts a shoulder. “If we solve this before we solve the cult one, it'll be training wheels. We never really got to work together officially back at Wammy's.”

“That would have defeated the purpose of the first generation,” they say. “But if only the second and the third could see us now.”

“Oh, sod the second gen.”

A laughs. “Sod the second gen,” they agree. They sit on the carpet across him. “Set the scene for me then.”

B snorts. He clicks through his files until he finds the one on the child murders. 

“This is the set up,” he says. “A respectable neighborhood, the most crime that has happened here are a few thefts and lawsuits from irate, feuding families.  Two months ago, Annamae Gilmore was killed.”

“Tell me about Annamae,” A says. They've read the files, but he's heard them talk to themself like this when they used to review things. 

He hunts for the victim's profile until he finds her photo and then turns the laptop for A.

“Annamae Gilmore was four years old,” B says. “She was the youngest child of Edward and Annamarie Gilmore. She had two siblings; the eldest Eric Gilmore, the middle Geraldine Gilmore.”

A nods, looking at the laptop and not him. 

B tries not to remember another face as he continues. “She was blonde,” he says, “She had brown eyes. She was, according to her parents, a kind and friendly child. Very, very trusting.”

When he turns the laptop around, another face stares up at him. Older. More familiar. Kind and friendly and trusting. He pushes the memory aside. 

“Annamarie was found mutilated in her room. Cause of death was determined to be bloodloss from a cut that ran from under one ear to the other. Autopsy reports say she was alive for some of the other wounds she sustained, but most of her wounds were done post-mortem.”

B finds the photos of the body and turns it around for A again, who reaches over to click through them. When they nod, he takes it back. 

“Tell me which is which.”

“She sustained seventeen injuries from her killer in total. The cuts on her neck, sternum to abdomen - which was possibly the second wound sustained - left outer thigh were done when she was alive. The rest were done post-mortem. There were three stab wounds on her left thigh.”

“She was going to kick.”

B pauses. 

A is looking at the floor but their eyes are far away. 

“The cut on her neck was deep, precise, purposeful. To hurt her, but to tell her to be quiet. Don't make any noise,” A says. “Little girl doesn't like this. Little girl hadn't imagined this in all her life. She is losing blood fast. Then, the stabbing to the abdomen, because that takes time, that takes careful aim, would wanna do it when the victim is disoriented. Open her up like a stuffed toy, see?”

Something clicks. 

“And then she realizes what's happening,” A says. “She tries to kick. Don't like that. Show her what happens when she kicks.” They pause. “That teaches her.”

“Also kills her,” he says. 

A looks up, a bit of focus returning.  “Don't - don't distract me, I've got a good mind palace thing going here - and you said she died of bloodloss.”

“She did, but you were going off the deep end.”

A takes off one of their pink fluffy bunny slippers and tosses it over his head. He laughs. 

They rub the heel of their palms into their eyes. “Alright, continue. This is a murder investigation, don't laugh.”

He slides off the couch, careful. A moves his crutch away so he can sit on the floor easily. Careful, he stretches his bad leg out in front of him. 

“Annamae’s room was found free of blood,” B says. “Her parents were not in the house at the time, neither were her siblings. In fact, Annamae was not supposed to be at home then either. She was supposed to be staying at a friend's, because her father had a business trip and her mother was visiting her sister, Annamae’s aunt. Both siblings were in school, but Annamae was sick. With no one to take care of her, she stayed at a friend's. The kids were all supposed to stay the night there.” 

He clicks to another page. “Nobody knew when Annamae was taken. The next day when her parents came home, she was dead in her room. She was not in her guestroom at the friend's. They thought she'd been kidnapped during the night prior. Or ran off. Or sleepwalked. Maybe she was delirious.”

“They knew this,” A says. “The sickness. The staying over. Of course. It was perfect. It was too perfect, and opportunities rarely come by again, so it had to be that day.” A closes their eyes. “Annamae is kind, is - is friendly, is trusting. She is sick, too. She is four years old. She is small and defenseless. She is the perfect practice target. She is easy to take from her friend's house, especially when she is supposed to be asleep the whole day.”

He's only heard them mumbling like this before when they were younger, but to actually hear it out loud and working off of what he's dictating is fascinating. He'd taken a different approach back in their school days, of course, but he had, initially, asked them for notes on their way of solving things. There had to be a reason they had the A code. 

He never really quite got it because A just made a couple of hand motions and said something about, ‘it's all about the feelings’.  Years later, he learned he simply had difficulty with emotions. 

It must be freaky in their head. Which is funny to say, but they are doing a murder investigation right now. 

“She doesn't know what is going on, but... “ A pauses. “She… trusts…”

B closes his eyes. Of course. 

“She knows who killed her,” A says. “She makes no noise. She thinks it's just her friend being her friend, and she is sick. She is taken someplace. Maybe it's her house. Maybe her bedroom. No one is home and no one will be home, because everyone is going to go to the friend's house for the night. This is a golden ticket.”

B nods, slowly. He looks down at the laptop and flips through the photos. Reports said no drugs were used. No one had heard anything. No one had seen anything. 

Annamae was just dead. 

“She thinks it's just going to be fun.” A presses the heels of their palms into their eyes again. “She does not know she is a target today.” They draw in a breath, and then let it out. “We know the rest. Did - the friend she was with was killed later, right?”

“The one whose house she stayed with, yes. The parents were investigated, and then their son was found with his head bashed in.”

“List me the murder methods, or the mutilations.”

“Mutilation. Shooting. Head bashed in. Decapitation. Flaying. Exsanguination.”

“The missing objects you were looking for, were any of them potential murder weapons? Hammers, sledgehammers, bats, kitchen knives, guns?”

He does a quick run through of what he'd read earlier, finds he's forgotten a few (irritating - stupid pain meds),  and goes back to check. 

Annamae Gilmore. Items missing: her mother's necklace. 

Jonathan Carver. Items missing: none. 

Ferdinand Sotto. Items missing: father's wristwatch, mother's handbag, mother's earrings, sister's shoes, sledgehammer no one ever used. 

Harris Quezon. Items missing: Circular saw. 

Alona Sanchez.  Items missing: none. 

Dean Tilling. Items missing: none. 

He lists them out for A. 

“Nobody really counts kitchen knives,” he says after, looking up. “Utensils go missing all the time.”

A nods. They put their face in their hands. “All the murder weapons were from the house. You were right. It's an Axe Man situation.”

“Without the jazz.”

“This is a murder investigation.”

“In your vacation house,” B points out. “It's an Axe Man situation. So, we found the murder weapons. What's the motive, who's the killer, why did they kill them - where are the items?” At that thought, he opens up his email. “I'm gonna have them look for anything sold on pawnshops close by.”

“That'll be good. Anything close to what's been stolen,” A says. 

“Are you thinking robbery or murder?” he asks, fingers hovering over the keyboard. “Which is it?”

A takes a while to answer. Then, “Murder,” they say. “They wouldn't have planned for Anna to get sick, after all.”

“Opportunity.”

“Yes. Notice how all the things stolen were usually items from the parents too, not just any random expensive trinket around the house.” A says. 

B isn't good with feelings, but he does remember his lessons. 

“...you think it's someone around their age, you think it’s a kid, someone who would immediately think parent.”

“Maybe not four years old,” A says. “Older. Around the age of the oldest victim.”

“That would cover for the lack of finesse. Maybe the knowledge is there but not the experience.” He pauses as something occurs to him. “They cut her like someone would an animal. A game caught.” He looks for the photo of the kid flayed alive. Finds it. Clicks it open. “Or a frog at a chem lab.”

A sighs again, weary. “We're looking for a kid, B,” they say. “A really smart kid who murders the way they know how things are done. Not perfect, but, enough.” They run their hands over their face and press them into a steeple. “And they're killing all their friends.”

B nods. Slowly, if only because he doesn't know what to say to that. There is no fascination. No disgust. He's not going to offer empty platitudes he doesn't mean. 

“Alright,” he says. “I'm going to tell them to look into the victims’ friends, at the schools they go to, their backgrounds, their interests if possible.”

He looks at A for a moment. They're staring at the carpet. 

“For the record,” he says. “It's one theory from one victim, but I think we do well with training wheels.”

-

Questions come from B’s latest e-mail, of course - it’s ridiculous to think about, for most people, children being murderers; or, well, maybe not ridiculous. Terrible. Too terrible. Children are the picture of innocence, in the stereotypical take of it. They remind people of their own childhoods, of when times were ‘easier’ (debatable by a long shot by a lot of people, himself included), and they are expected to know less than adults, who, when you actually think about it, know very little too. 

To think of children not as this epitome of wonder and laughter and all things good is something that sits in the uncanny valley of the human psyche. It is odd, out of place, wrong, and therefore when people can, they try not to think about it too much. 

“I swear to god, if you’re monologuing in your head again,” A mutters as they pass by. 

“You’ll what?” B asks, looking up at them from where he’d been staring blankly at his monitor waiting for the last of the reports to finally be downloaded into it. 

“Salt your coffee,” they say, sliding a mug to him. “What do we have?”

“Haven’t read it yet,” he says, “It’s still at 67%.”

“Ugh, slow connection today,” A says. They’ve got their own laptop tucked under their arm, and they open it up as soon as they sit down. They type in a strings of commands, and seconds later, another loading bar pops up in B’s screen. It loads faster than the other one. 

The folder is titled praise the lord and pass the ammunition.

“I hate you,” B says, even when he laughs at it and moves to rename it. A just crosses their legs and leans back in their seat primly. 

“I’m great at names,” they say.

“Doubtful.”

“I’m way better than you, I can say.” Their bit of fun done, they turn so that their legs are swung over the armrest, and they’re leaning back on the opposite one. B eyes the bandages on their arms, wondering if the pressure on the wounds are going to make them start bleeding again. At least their injured cheek is lightening now. “That’s everything I have on the Wickerton case.”

“How much have I not read?”

“I’m not sure, what do you know?”

“Eleven victims with no connection to each other got killed in the world’s most gruesome roadtrip bullet list. Presentation was stigmata.”

A wrinkles their nose. “B.”

“What?”

They give him an exasperated look.

“Eleven victims,” he starts again, “Were found dead with their corpses mutilated in a fashion mimicking stigmata.” When A doesn’t complain he continues. “Each victim was from one state, and when put in order, the murders seemed to travel from Massachusetts to Los Angeles - ” He motions to them. “Because you were going to be the twelfth.”

“Only,” A says.

“Only,” he repeats, “You weren’t. You were never going to be. That’s why they drove you from Los Angeles to Massachusetts, because you’d mess up the order of what they’re planning. You just stuck your nose in too much.”

“Right, well, aside from the stigmata, do you know the victims’ histories?”

He raises an eyebrow. “No, I don’t, enlighten me,” he says, even as he grabs his laptop to look through the files.

“Devron was actually in and out of jail for years. He’d gotten caught shoplifting several times. He’d assaulted someone unprovoked. His latest sentence was attempting to rob a store,” A says. “Laxon - that’s the second one - was also a repeat offender.”

He scrolls through the files on each of the victims, combing through mug shots and crime scene photos of previous offenses. “Third and fourth were also criminals?”

“All of them were,” A says, “From the first to the eleventh.”

“Huh.” B looks up. “So they were all killing criminals? A vigilante cult.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that, why would they only settle for one person in every state?” 

“Because they only had operations in those states?” B asks. “Come on, you have to consider it - someone was ready to drive you from L.A to Massachusetts.”

“Fair enough, but having bases of operations means that the work should have been done faster. More people dead. Why only one?” A asks. “Does it have to be one?”

The wording. It’s the wording. Why does there have to be one, why is it necessary for it to be one, why just one. Does it have to be just one, or, is one the bare minimum?

In his case, he had four Wara Ningyos on each wall not only to serve as a pulley system but also to count down the number of victims. It was an obvious piece of the puzzle. But for these guys, why does it only have to be one person in each state?

“Necessity,” B says. “It could be necessity. They’re a cult, it could - it’s a ritual.”

“Oh,” A says. “Oh, it is, isn’t it?”

“Except usually, in rituals of sacrifice, it’s the purest and the best that is chosen to be the victim. The firstborn. The best of the crop. The healthy calf or dove,” B says. “No blemish or stain. No faults.”

“It’s not an offering, then,” A says. “Perfection is asked for in an offering, but - these people are dirty. They are flawed. They’re criminals, and in their view, sinners - ”

They falter.

They’d snagged on something.

“It’s penance,” A says. 

Oh.

“Stigmata is associated with saints,” B says, connections linking fast in his head. “Crucifixion wounds. It’s divine blessing - well, it’s considered to be, but I think it’s just nasty painful - it’s believed to have come from an overwhelming amount of faith that you carry the marks of the crucifixion wounds.”

“But these people didn’t get the stigmata from any faith, it was forced on them,” A says. “They were made holy, in a sense. Made pure. It’s - it’s a cleansing.”

“They’re making saints out of sinners,” B says.

A nods.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never been part of a cult,” A says.

B frowns. “We were doing so well, detective.”

A laughs. “I don’t know, but I think they’ve been doing this for a while. There’s several similar cases that date, way, way back,” they say, “I think they might be trying to revive a tradition.”

“That fell out of wayside from nearly being caught?”

“That might be the case,” they say. “But why indeed would they try to make saints out of sinners?” 

B pauses and tries to recall every piece of doctrine he’s learned back at Wammy’s, which isn’t a lot since he’d sat at the back of the pews with A idly taking note of the students in front of them. 

“Isn’t the goal of the faithful supposed to be to turn sinners to the light?” he asks, waves a hand. “Or one of them, anyway.”

“Do you think they’re trying to redeem these people by killing them?”

“Could be.”

“That’s still the saints to sinners theory,” A says. “Unless - they were the sacrificial lambs, in the end. Made pure by their suffering.”

“Now able to take on the burden of an entire people - saints are flawed people too,” B says. He frowns a little. “Are we reaching too far?”

“Could be, but that’s what theories are, we can prove this when we get evidence,” A says. “We’re looking at the abstract end of this telescope anyway.”

“At least we know their modus, they’re looking for criminals,” he says, “Which does not narrow it down to anything manageable.”

“Maybe that’s the beauty of their presentation,” A says, flopping down on the chair and huffing. “We never know who’s the target, because they just need someone who’s broken the law. Not the worst criminal. Not the least awful. Just a criminal.”

“That’s why they didn’t kill you in Los Angeles,” B says. He clicks through files until he finds the one where A’s compiled evidence on the previous string of murders they’d mentioned earlier - oh, 1910’s to 20’s, almost a century ago. “You’re not a criminal.”

A looks thoughtful. “I mean - not with a record, but I’m also a terrible person.”

“It’s self-aware, holy shit.”

“Shut up.”

“Was there a pattern in the previous string of murders - oh, nevermind, I found it.” He skims through the list. “They usually really start in Massachusetts.” 

“And move from state to state,” A says. “We’ve got people on the lookout for anyone with a criminal record who’s suddenly gone missing, don’t worry.”

“So we’ll know when they’ll strike but - they know you’re around too,” B says, “They have been quiet.”

“They’ll be pissed soon,” A says. “Very soon. I don’t think they quite like it that they have to tiptoe around their proceedings because people are looking into it. Tough luck. We now have better forensics than we did in the 20’s.”

“Should you egg them on?”

A raises an eyebrow. Since they’re hanging their torso upside down on the edge of the armrest, it’s not that effective. “I don’t play games, B, I just solve things.”

“You can spook them out.”

“They’re not spooked, they’ve got a network of people that needs to be carefully divided and eliminated,” A says. “And like I said, I don’t play games, I just solve things.”

“You’re boring.”

“Maybe so.” A shrugs. “But playing games is the best way to tell someone they’ve gotten in your head. You’re interested enough to stage that. You know what pisses people off? Cold, unwavering indifference. Gives a whole ‘this is the platform I stand on, games are for children’ vibe.”

His jaw tightens at that, a surprising spark of irritation going off in his head.

A seems to sense it. They wince. “Sorry,” they say, pulling themself up. 

“It’s fine,” he says. It’s not fine. His head is getting loud, and it’s getting loud really, really fast.

He frowns, not in anger, but in confusion. 

What is he really angry about?

“B?” A sounds concerned now. 

His eyes flick to the photo frames at the corner of the room for a second. 

“I’m fine,” he says, “I’m fine.”