Lightning Strikes Twice, Chapter 7
Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Rating: R
Genre: Angst
Summary: AU from near the end of the Yotsuba arc. A tissue of coincidence and an obsessive heir to a criminal syndicate half-unearth the name of a dead teenager and a corresponding event in L’s past, and both L’s shaken mind and Light’s curiosity won’t allow it to be simply reburied afterward.
Author’s Notes and Warnings: This is in the same continuity as two fics on the Death Note kink meme - “Because No One Will Believe What They Say,” written by yours truly, and “Remorse,” the sequel written by a different anon. Reading those beforehand shouldn’t be necessary to understand this one, but FYI, especially if “should” doesn’t line up with “is.”
Contains language, violence, rape, general dark themes, etc. Please note that the views of characters herein certainly don’t always match my own.
Chapter Seven
The naming scheme, L recalled, had developed almost by accident. He’d been the first, setting precedent. The first X through Z were named because each of the first auxiliaries selected had, entirely coincidentally, a corresponding letter in their original names - Xiangyue Sun, he recalled, Sofia Ybarra, Irene Zimmermann - and it had lined up neatly after the W for Watari, at the time too neatly to resist. And then the successors, A and B, with their alliteration - Arvad Alexander, Beyond Birthday - to start the alphabet over. K slotted in nicely, especially as it came immediately preceding L. They would know enough to be aware there was much they didn’t know, and the idea of a specially-trained and reclusive auxiliary would explain why they wouldn’t remember him. Because these two wouldn’t remember him; his brief stay in the main House ended at ten, before recruiting began in earnest, before either of them arrived.
Only a decoy, or Watari’s apprentice or something...
Very alphabetical.
Where had he gotten the name Kay Ellis? Had he been feeling whimsical at the time he was devising that batch of identities, or had he simply assembled name and surname to inadvertently ironic result? With all that he remembered excessively and against his will, he couldn’t seem to remember that.
All of them were seated now, with Watari waiting in the next room over in the event of an emergency. He occupied a chair, while they sat across from him on the sofa. Taddeo was dressed somewhat more casually than Snow, but both were dressed more formally than him, a circumstance he was used to. Snow had a notebook out and opened on her lap, pen in hand. Taddeo leaned forward, a mug of coffee in his hands, and asked “So, what brings you here? And what brings us here?” He’d held out his hand to L shortly after entering the room, then put it away after several awkward seconds. They both seemed rather awkward, as might be expected.
He let himself take one more breath as he dropped cube after cube of sugar into his own mug. “I’ve experienced sleep disturbances and intrusive memories for three weeks,” he began. “I was sexually assaulted eight years ago. Eight and a half years ago. It hasn’t been a problem until recently. I believe these symptoms were triggered when I was abducted last month.”
Snow spoke first. “You seem very straightforward about this.”
“I gain nothing by evasion.” Not in this area, at least.
“That’s true.”
Taddeo said, “All right, before we go any further, we should probably get introduced. I mean, we know what to call each other, but we should probably explain now what we’re all about, how we do things, in case you decide you want to send one of us back.”
He’d already decided there was a low probability of sending back either of them. “Then, please explain.”
Snow spoke first, then Taddeo. What they said about their particular styles was nothing he didn’t already know from his research, though he listened attentively all the same in case some novelty slipped in. There was none for quite some time.
“In a situation like this,” said Taddeo after a while, “I’d usually talk about full disclosure right about now, but in a situation like this... well, we’re not going to ask for your real name or anything, and we can work on it as we go, but I think it’s still important to say what we can.”
“Of course.”
“Let me add,” said Snow. “This could have its own problems. Conventionally we might be too close to the situation for proper treatment, depending, but we believe that’s balanced by our improved capacity to understand the truth. Otherwise, you may as well go to a regular psychologist.”
“Yes.”
“This is a cooperative effort,” Snow continued. “It’s not like other doctors, where you’re certainly not expected to help with surgery. We can’t hand a panacea from on high. I’ll be honest with you, this may take as long as years to get sorted.”
He nodded after a moment. Of course he wanted it gotten over with now, but reasonably speaking a few years was acceptable, not too bad when he knew he would continue to have cases to work on throughout (But how he could be sure that Watari wouldn’t decide again that he shouldn’t -). And if it passed naturally before that, of course he could finish this off.
“Which brings us to scheduling. If we’re to continue to meet together like this, then as far as I can see it should be on the weekends. We can’t claim emergencies every week. Would that work for you, or would you rather arrange something separately?”
“Weekends are adequate. I understand this meeting is an exception. I wouldn’t want to deprive your regular clients.”
“Taddeo, do you think you could give up yours?”
“For this? Sure. I have the other five days.”
“All right then. As far as the time per day, the usual session is fifty minutes duration, but that should probably be adjusted.”
“Yeah,” said Taddeo. “It seems a bit stupid to spend so much time on getting to and from less than an hour of talking a day. What did you have in mind?”
As the question was being asked, he hadn’t had much of anything in mind. He quickly put something there. “Is four hours per day reasonable, with breaks? At a rate of -” He named figures in pounds and dollars that seemed reasonably high. From their expressions perhaps it was unreasonably high. “I will also fund the necessary travel. Perhaps locations should be alternated, so that only two of us will need to travel on any given week. I believe my schedule is much more flexible.”
They discussed the logistics of this for a while longer. Then Snow asked him about the circumstances of the intrusions.
“There have been disturbances nearly every night,” he told her. “For the most part, the connections while awake appear to be tenuous.” He thought back. “Though they’re predictable in retrospect. Certain body positions, for example. Names that are vaguely similar to those involved, visual patterns, and an item of food similar to one I ate that day. Trivial things.” But at least they were trivial; they might take him by surprise but he’d be even worse off if he developed a similar fear of, say, automobiles, wedding bands, his own unchanged wardrobe. Or for that matter, if he developed outright agoraphobia. It was true he wasn’t often out of doors, but he had entirely legitimate reasons for it. And it wasn’t as though he used beds that often to begin with.
Snow nodded, jotted in her notebook. “So these are unpredictable, before they happen, and they’ve been interfering with your daily life, is that right?”
“It’s been brought to my attention.”
“Could you explain what you mean by that?”
“It’s been brought to my attention that, left unaddressed, it has the potential to interfere with my work.” He didn’t like the expression that flitted over Snow’s face as he said this; he couldn’t quite explicate what it contained, but what he could glimpse of its contents unsettled him. “I already found it somewhat troublesome. It was suggested that further measures were called for, and I found the suggestion had merit.” He was interested in cooperating, he tried to say underneath the words. He wasn’t being dragged in kicking and screaming. He wasn’t sure whether Snow believed it or not.
After a few more questions they were moving on to taking a history. Maybe if it had been a legal pad balanced across Snow’s knees, or a word processor, or a laptop, or even if the notebook’s cover had been a different color, he wouldn’t have responded in quite the way he did. But as it was he looked again at what he could make out of the black cover, and after Snow asked for his age he said, instead of his age, “This information will be secured?”
“Very much so.” Snow proceeded to explain how much so. L had the vague suspicion she’d explained it once before, though she’d likely done nothing more than touch on the matter of confidentiality. She showed him the lock on the briefcase propped against her feet, talked about passwords and precautions, and then got Taddeo to explain his own security measures. And then she looked back at him.
“I turned twenty-five in October,” he told them. In October; it sounded, he thought after he said it, almost as though his birthday was nestled comfortably in the middle of the month, instead of at the absolute tail end.
And so on, and so forth. His parents died when he was about six. He’d entered Wammy’s House in early 1988. The sexual assault had happened in May of 1996. He’d been in the United States at the time, in the course of his work (as an auxiliary in training, he didn’t need to say, didn’t need to outright lie, they’d fill in mentally). He had been sixteen, sixteen and a half. There had been five men, one to four years older than him. It had proceeded for several hours. A look on Taddeo’s face, now, and this time he pointed it out.
“It might be just me,” said Taddeo, glancing over at Snow, “but what stands out to me right now is the term ‘sexual assault.’ It sounds like a clinical term, a legal term. I was wondering if there was any reason why you chose it?”
“The influence of my work, I suppose.”
“Well, yes,” said Taddeo, “there’s that. And also, it’s a pretty broad term -”
“Would you like specific details?” He hadn’t intended the note of challenge, but there it was. “Would you like a more specific term? All right. They raped me.”
It wasn’t at all hard to say. It was only after the words left his throat that it seemed to inexplicably close off, nearly choking him for no reason whatsoever.
Details, more details. Anal sex, oral sex, penetration with objects. On his knees, splayed flat and prone, supine with his legs in the air. In Terrence Redding’s house, on the floor, the table, the counter, the bed. He wanted suddenly to scream it, vomit it, get it over with, but his throat was still closed, and a moment later he was thankful for it. There was really no need for hysterics. When his throat reopened, he added, “They were convicted. Those still alive remain in prison.”
Taddeo gave him another slightly longer look.
“It’s true.” He’d made sure of it. “I did well for myself after, Nothing else of the kind happened until recently. I was abducted in late October. This incident was more directly related to my work.”
“This wouldn’t happen to be related to-”
“To Kira? Yes.” Go on, out with it. “Early on, one of the participants drugged me and attempted to...” Go on, you can say the word, you know you can. “... to rape me. I persuaded him not to.” He supposed Taddeo wouldn’t believe that either, that this time he’d managed to stop it. At least part of it.
***
Juliette Frye, Jane Doe Four, “call me Julie,” taught history at a small university about two hours’ drive from Milwaukee, where she had recently received employment as an assistant professor. She met with them at a local restaurant, attached to a hotel, where she offered to treat them but was overruled with little protest on her part.
“I wasn’t a totally crazy party animal,” she was telling them now at their corner table, “but I did cut loose. I drank that son of a bitch Thompson under a table once. I wonder if that was why they picked me out.”
Thompson, Light recalled. Mark Thompson. The victim accounts agreed on his violence and vicious behavior, which stood out even in that vicious group. He’d died in prison in 2001, he’d learned from Ms. Foxfield, several days after being knocked into a coma by a fight with several other inmates.
Frye was slightly taller than Light, well-dressed, her thick hair slung in a ponytail over her shoulder. Her necklace and bracelets glittered in the dim light of the restaurant. She imposed on her surroundings as much as Mercado had faded. Ms. Foxfield had asked if she would be comfortable discussing this in public; explicit details most likely wouldn’t come up, but all the same... “Why not?” Frye had replied, on speakerphone. “I’ve talked about it in public already. No need to get shy now. You can put it in your book either way. And I’ve wanted an excuse to go there.”
“Yeah, I dated a lot,” she said. “Still do, actually. I kind of took a breather for a year after that, but no way was I going to let those assholes permanently fuck up my social life too.” Light wondered if she swore this much while teaching. At least her voice stayed low, so no askance glances from other diners. “I believe in trying things out. And if they don’t click, then they don’t click. Why waste time on a rigmarole with someone who doesn’t click? Actually, I think I had unrealistic standards, back then. And then that fucker Walker tried to make me out as a gold-digging skank. Sure, I appreciate a date who pays for shit, but if that guy wanted to see some gold-digging he should’ve looked in a fucking mirror.” Light noticed also that despite her harsh language, her voice didn’t seem at all heated, almost as though she were going through long-practiced motions of anger. “Okay, tired old lawyer joke, but the guy was not a stellar example of his profession.” A touch of heat entered her voice. “And then what he did to that kid. That poor kid.”
Ms. Foxfield nodded.
She added, her voice abruptly cooled again, “And Cole - that dick.” She probably meant Joshua Cole, the older of the pair of brothers involved, and the one who’d asked her out to a New Year’s Eve party under false pretenses. “Driving me back like nothing happened.”
In her statement in the file, Light remembered, she’d said that Cole had gone so far as to wish her a happy new year and try to kiss her goodbye when they were back to the doorstep of her on-campus dormitory. It was even more audacious than Redding, who’d dropped off Ellis after a final assault two blocks away from the hotel where he’d been staying with his grandfather. Frye had added, in the statement, I wish I’d punched him right there.
“Cost him zip to act nice,” said Frye, “except maybe ten minutes and a dime’s worth of gas, and it paid off for him, because after that the asshole cops and his fucking lawyer kept asking if he and his friends really raped you all night why’d he bother to drive you back? Well, when they weren’t asking, are you telling us you said ‘no’ this time? The summer before I went to Chapel Hill, I found his obituary in the Gazette. Threw myself a little party. The decorations were all black, of course.”
Joshua Cole had hung himself in prison in 1998. It was the same method Kay Ellis had used for his suicide two years previous. Light wondered if that had been intentional on Cole’s part, some attempt to exorcise his guilt, or if his sheets had just been the most convenient method to hand.
The interview moved on. Frye, like Mercado, talked about her meeting with Sergeant Lorenzo Carella, who had been far more supportive than the officers involved in her previous encounters with the Glass River Police Department. Sergeant Carella, now Lieutenant Carella, had been L’s eyes and ears in the police for both of the cases he’d taken in the city. Ms. Foxfield was still trying to line up an interview with him.
“It doesn’t usually happen the way it did for me. I guess I was pretty lucky there were other people to back me up. I mean, it shouldn’t have happened to more people, they shouldn’t have had a chance to keep on doing it to as many people as they did, but with all those stories together the courts and so on didn’t just brush it off like I found out happens a lot of the time, especially since most of them weren’t party girls like I was. Hell, a bunch of them weren’t even girls. I wish that last kid had stuck around long enough to see the jury come in. I think that after he saw that, he might’ve kept sticking around. But he didn’t.”
With further questioning, she quickly got talking on her own view of Kay Ellis’s deposition. Her voice had definitely become heated now. “He had the best story so they fought dirty. Delaney was all right as a person can get working for that slime, but Walker -” She remained especially scornful of Calvin Walker, who had been the Cole brothers’ attorney. “He hit so below the belt he was just about pounding on the floor. He tore into me, too, but it’s a lot worse watching it happen to someone else, especially when you know the ending. A year ago I read in the newspaper about a slimeball in California still pulling the same kind of shit, and someone in that jury fell for it so there was a deadlock. God were we lucky, besides the obvious.
“Poor kid,” she said again. “He was, what, sixteen, seventeen? And I think his grandfather said he was an orphan, too. God, what a short shitty life to have. He probably had no idea what he was getting into when he went to the police. For a while what kept me going was mostly plain spite, and I guess he was too nice for that.”
***
Snow and Taddeo would be back in the evening, it had been decided, after taking a few hours to confer and discuss approaches. L supposed that was another good reason to employ them simultaneously; they might require someone to talk to as well. He’d almost wanted to tell them that approaches could be discussed then and there, with him present, but he’d already pushed them considerably and he himself had been in no mood to continue after they’d taken his abbreviated history.
There was another request from Light to see to, and then Watari had, as pledged, a compilation of cases in the Ontario area ready for him. He sank himself into one involving suspicious deaths at a Toronto hospital, and emerged from it with some reluctance five minutes before the appointed time. He used the next five minutes to secure the laptop computer, concealing it in a desk drawer, and then focused on mental preparations for the next session. When the time arrived, they came in promptly (perhaps they had been dithering outside the door even as he’d been dithering inside it) and went on a brief round of greetings before they reseated themselves on the sofa and moved on.
“As I said,” he told them, “all the perpetrators involved are incarcerated, and are certain to remain so. If they were to be released I would receive notice. Rationally, I’m aware I have nothing to fear from them. The symptoms continue.”
Snow said, “That’s a common response.”
“That doesn’t make it a beneficial one.”
“No. It doesn’t. But it’s not necessarily about the original perpetrators, though they certainly figure in from time to time. It can also be about a fear that -”
“That events will repeat themselves. Yes. I suppose there is a degree of pattern recognition involved,” he reasoned aloud. “There is some risk of another such incident, especially when I’m in public.”
“So far as that,” said Taddeo, “how often have you been out in public recently?”
“On two occasions since my release on the eleventh.” He’d told them, a few hours ago, that Gabriel Foxfield had him kidnapped thinking he was L. He saw no need to tell them that Gabriel Foxfield was correct in at least that thought. “My current work doesn’t call for frequent excursions.” He thought of something, thought of the open case in progress. “As for that, I don’t intend to give it up. At this point, if I do, while my productivity will drop the risk will not.”
“Is your work very important to you?”
“It’s nonnegotiable.” Coming on too strong, maybe, showing them too much, but it was. If he were at all willing to negotiate that matter, he would have accepted Watari’s ultimatum and had done with it. And before this is through how much will I show them? Next to all that will this be so much? “If this particular fear has a legitimate basis, how do you suggest it should be controlled?”
Snow spoke up again. “The first step is your safety.”
“I’m already as safe as I will ever be. What is the second step?”
“K,” she said, and he recognized it as a cushioning word, as buildup, “right now, do you feel you’re safe?”
He was about to fire off of course. That wasn’t true, though, was it? While the syndicate had made the snatch at some distance from headquarters, a distance he’d gone out to himself, it wasn’t too much of a stretch from there to imagine someone else coming closer, or even being able to break in. The Kira investigation’s skyscraper was extremely secure, as was all his previous made-to-order construction, and it was of course important criteria for selecting the various hotels, but still, but still... “No. I can’t say so.”
“I can’t tell you that really you have nothing to worry about,” said Snow, “since I don’t know the details and your job appears to be dangerous in itself, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll do what we can inside your situation. Now, here’s what I suggest. We can work on those other reactions you’ve described, the ones that go off looser associations, and we can work our way outward, into -” Into another false sense of security? “- dealing with this underlying fear, making that manageable. We’ll also see what we can tweak about the situation itself. Sometimes terribly small things can be helpful. Time can also help.” I already told Watari that, and did he listen? “Most people are going to be rather unsettled, so soon after an event like this. Once you’ve got yourself settled, we can go deeper. That sort of work stirs things up, and it can make things worse if you’re not properly settled beforehand. We wouldn’t have perfect security, but who does have it? How does that sound to you?”
***
As they’d slid into the taxi outside the restaurant, Ms. Foxfield had asked “Can you do me a favor?”
“That would depend.”
“Well, yes, it would depend. Okay, here’s the favor. Can you try your hand at Carella?”
“One agent to another, you mean?”
“Yes, exactly.”
Now, hours later, Light listened to the just-dialed phone ring in the Milwaukee hotel room. He’d called L earlier, and gotten a voicemail saying that there was now a ninety-eight percent chance of getting Carella to hear them out; after that, they were on their own as far as that went. He’d gathered from L’s notes that Lorenzo Carella was an extremely reserved person, something of a loner within the police, though an extremely competent one; Light supposed both qualities were part of the reason L had selected him as liaison. He also seemed to be naturally succinct with the press, a master of the “No comment,” and Ms. Foxfield’s experience so far bore that out.
Someone picked up on the other end. “Hello.”
“Hello? Is this Lieutenant Carella?”
“Speaking.”
“I’m Asano. My employer called earlier?”
The tone of the voice on the other end shifted with such immediacy that Light, practiced at inducing such shifts, was nonetheless a bit startled. “Oh, Asano. I did get his call. Code?” Light rattled off the string of digits L had instructed him to memorize. “Got it. I’ve got to say, I was damn shocked. Thought I might be getting tapped again. Well, what’ve you got?”
“Actually,” said Light, “I was wondering if you could do us a favor. My employer’s helping someone with research on a book -”
If he’d cold-called and gotten the same result, he might’ve ended up rolling his eyes at her lack of success. As it was, he could probably chalk up Carella’s sudden enthusiasm to his admiration of L. Even the questions about the writer’s credentials, the most pointed ones he had, were rather blunted (“She’s new at this,” Light replied, “but she’s good at it,” and he saw Ms. Foxfield’s expression become gratified as she watched from an armchair). They settled on an appointment time, scheduled after the meeting with Mrs. Redding in Syracuse.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” said Ms. Foxfield after he’d hung up.
“If we’re going to hang over your shoulder like this,” said Light, “we might as well do something while we’re there, right?”
***
After claiming a Winchester junior tennis championship in 1995, L had decided he wasn’t going to compete further; to him, what enjoyment he got from the sport, and doing very well at the sport, wasn’t worth the fuss over everything from security to dress. Then and now, Watari had been undeniably relieved. Then, while he couldn’t imagine L abandoning detective work altogether in favor of tennis, he was aware how precarious such a double life had the potential to become. Now, it meant fewer photographs circulating out of control.
It was impossible to be rid of all the photographs, though they’d made a vigorous effort since the appearance of the Second Kira. They weren’t a two-man Ministry of Truth, with the power to recall them all, and there might always be a few floating about out there, especially since the photograph policy had by no means always been so restrictive (he remembered, on one of his visits back to the House the previous year, watching one of the children who’d had aspirations to become a photographer running around taking snaps of nearly everyone with his new camera, including the second and third in line for the succession).
He could hear nothing from the next room; he’d pick up on yells or gunfire or the like, and there was a system rigged up to contact him with the push of a button, but otherwise L was alone with the two graduates, and all he had to do was sit and wait.
At least there shouldn’t be too many people with reason to keep that particular photograph, let alone sentimental reason; if they did it would be a matter of simple record. The name attached to it would be false, and carefully unconnected to the House. In the photograph itself, L had worn tennis clothes in lieu of his favored combination. Considerable effort had been made to tame his hair, though most of that effort had been undone during the tournament.
And he’d been smiling. The smile in the photograph proved nothing in itself, especially as he could no longer remember how forced or non-forced it had looked, but he did remember how exuberant L had been coming back from the tournament, how he’d laughed as he told Watari the news, joked (though at the time Watari hadn’t been so sure it was a joke) that he would aim for Wimbledon; it would be a week before he announced his decision.
Watari had clipped out a copy for himself once, along with the corresponding article on the tennis tournament. Of course it was destroyed now, but he had a sudden desire to see it again, to be certain he hadn’t imagined it all, to see photographic evidence that L had once smiled like that.
***
The bed in the suite was still neatly made. Taddeo had suggested they make use of it, saying it was a possible benefit of using a hotel room. L thought of declining but then thought he might as well see to that, as well. So he agreed, and then insisted on it, and then very deliberately lay back, very deliberately closed his eyes, very deliberately flattened his legs against the covers. He even briefly considered opening his legs, forcing them wide into an obtuse V, but decided against it, and they stayed pressed together as Taddeo began to talk about relaxation.
“It hurts less if you relax.” This said when there was already blood smearing the insides of his thighs.
“It’s all right. Relax.”
L opened his eyes, and kept them open until Taddeo finished talking. Then he closed them again, ninety percent, with light seeping in through his lashes, and followed the directions, working from fingers and toes inward, letting his extremities go slack muscle by muscle.
“That’s it, dear.” The nurse sounded uneasy. He surmised she wasn’t entirely sure how to handle him. “That’s it.”
The paper rustled beneath him with the slightest of movements, crackling against his bare skin. They’d taken his clothes, as evidence. Watari had another set waiting for him in the car, but he couldn’t put it on until the exam was finished.
This was necessary, he told himself. A bit of flinching was all right, to be expected, but he had to stay in control. He couldn’t let an uncontrolled, panicked response jeopardize evidence collection. One more time he drifted outward, locking up his body while he was away, taking in and processing sensation from a distance. Sometimes, as appropriate, he would manipulate a limb, or his voice box and tongue.
“K?” Snow was saying now. “K?”
“I’m here.”
“You -”
“I know.” He had unrelaxed in the meantime, while distracted, his fingernails pressed into his palms. He needed to repeat the procedure.
That done, time for the next step. Positive imagery, safe places, so that he could learn to pretend for a while that there was no danger. Sweets? Perhaps not. Watari would probably not be happy if he ended up with his consumption doubled through using sugar as a coping mechanism. And that seemed, on the whole, rather too facile for his purposes. What else?
Perhaps instead he could draw off the satisfaction derived from solving a major case. The Kira case was still gaping open, the clock ticking on the test of the thirteen-day rule, otherwise he would have seized on it. But there were others. The Winchester Mad Bombings, his very first? The Los Angeles B. B. Murders? No, he thought abruptly, it was too tangled up with the Kira case and its resulting frustrations. B had succumbed to a heart attack in prison, and Naomi Misora remained missing and almost certainly would not be found alive. That wouldn’t do. The Mad Bombings, meanwhile, were certainly significant, he could acknowledge that well enough, but he couldn’t quite seem to tap his memory of them; it might be those memories were too old, too faded. What else, what else...
Mello leaned forward in the chair. “X through Z?” he echoed. “The first X through Z?”
“Yes.” Their codenames had been reused for three of the next set of auxiliaries, who had names not nearly as apropos. He’d decided, after B’s departure, that there wouldn’t be a third set, not under those names.
“I thought they all left.”
“They did,” L told him. “They were induced to return.”
Yes, he decided. That might suit, the other of the stories he’d told Mello, more than a year ago now. He thought back to the summer of 1999. He’d been just short of twenty and he had just become the three best detectives in the world and he’d seated himself in front of the computer and considered the first action he might take as Eraldo Coil...
And what had been the circumstances, when he’d told those three stories? It had been in mid-October of 2003, not long after he’d put the finishing touches on Redding’s surprise and checked on his arrangements with the incarcerated safecracker and the newly released marijuana dealer. Could that work as well? He could be a little proud, perhaps, proud of how he’d slid everything into place. He didn’t usually concern himself with his catches after he handed them on to the judicial machinery to confirm what he already knew. It had taken a good deal of advance preparation, some months of it working on the side, to insert the safecracker into the state prison system and secure the dealer’s pardon from the governor and all the rest of it. Technically the payoff would have come with the results of the parole hearing, and later with the scheduled accusation in February followed by the predictable results, but what he thought of first was when it was all set to go, the night before the hearing, when he’d explained things to Redding. L remembered how he’d gaped, how he’d gasped, rendered incoherent. The first thing he’d said had been “Kay?”
He’d still called him Kay. Such a farce of familiarity. Kay. It wasn’t his real name, let alone his real first name, but the intent remained the same. Redding had been undeniably startled by the sight of him, and he probably wasn’t being intentionally mocking, but the sense of unconscious mocking was perhaps worse. It had been very enjoyable to correct him, and to inform him of what awaited.
L’s hands had clenched again. Again he forced them slack. Even his victories didn’t seem to be suitable subject matter. Instead he tried to envision generic relaxing imagery. Cumulus clouds, meadows, beaches combined with placid stretches of sea. Most of it ended up pastoral, though he had never particularly favored the pastoral, himself. He ended up imagining himself floating. Not floating away from anything this time, simply bobbing up and down in the water. He had learned to swim basic strokes when he was six, but rarely made use of them. His father had taught him. His father had been a strong swimmer, he remembered, or had that only been true to a six-year-old in the same way nearly all adults were tall? There was no one left to ask, to confirm. The objective he knew: His father had eyes the same color as his. His father signed things in a scrawl that resolved to J. Lawliet, the J short for a name he wasn’t very fond of which was why he wanted L to choose one for himself, when he was old enough. His father taught him to swim and wanted to start him on the violin. The subjective: His father, seemingly an ungainly scarecrow on land, became a dolphin to a child with his feet kicking in the shallow end of the swimming pool -
Should he be thinking about this? Why was he thinking about this? He should probably note it. It might come up later, even though this wasn’t psychoanalysis. Of course then he would have to substitute the Lawliet. With Kelleher, perhaps. The identity he was using for the trip was in the name of David Kelleher (David, he remembered now, had been his paternal grandfather’s name, but he was fairly certain that was coincidence). He might as well make that K’s true name.
He was drifting astray again. He forcefully imagined himself alone in the sea, imagined a cloudless sky, imagined himself without tension. Then he imagined drowning.
Finally he envisioned a cube, built up around and under him. Cubes impressed him as safer than eggs, which had been one of his related ideas. Eggs were known for breaking. The sides of the cube, he decided, were one-way mirrors. He could see out, if he wanted. When he was ready to come out he could press a hand to the inside of the cube, and then it would swing open. That particular vision lasted longest.
He kept working on it after their departure; there was no point seeing them again tomorrow if they would have to do nothing but repeat the process until it was pounded into his muscle memory. He tried moving to a chair, and then moved back. An hour later he took a break to finish the hospital case and eat what Watari delivered. After that he returned to the bed.
It wasn’t as though he’d been exactly trusting of Snow and Taddeo, but somehow being alone in the room made things even more difficult. He couldn’t close his eyes; it gave him the feeling of throwing open all the windows and doors the instant they shut. He’d called in Watari, and asked him to stay in the room. That seemed to help somewhat. Watari was silent at first and L asked him to read, use a computer, anything that would produce a little noise. That helped a little more.
He managed to slacken himself once more, piece by piece, and for now it was holding. He stayed in the cube, listened to the soft clicking of the keyboard until he fell asleep, and dreamed he was swimming.
Rating: R
Genre: Angst
Summary: AU from near the end of the Yotsuba arc. A tissue of coincidence and an obsessive heir to a criminal syndicate half-unearth the name of a dead teenager and a corresponding event in L’s past, and both L’s shaken mind and Light’s curiosity won’t allow it to be simply reburied afterward.
Author’s Notes and Warnings: This is in the same continuity as two fics on the Death Note kink meme - “Because No One Will Believe What They Say,” written by yours truly, and “Remorse,” the sequel written by a different anon. Reading those beforehand shouldn’t be necessary to understand this one, but FYI, especially if “should” doesn’t line up with “is.”
Contains language, violence, rape, general dark themes, etc. Please note that the views of characters herein certainly don’t always match my own.
Chapter Seven
The naming scheme, L recalled, had developed almost by accident. He’d been the first, setting precedent. The first X through Z were named because each of the first auxiliaries selected had, entirely coincidentally, a corresponding letter in their original names - Xiangyue Sun, he recalled, Sofia Ybarra, Irene Zimmermann - and it had lined up neatly after the W for Watari, at the time too neatly to resist. And then the successors, A and B, with their alliteration - Arvad Alexander, Beyond Birthday - to start the alphabet over. K slotted in nicely, especially as it came immediately preceding L. They would know enough to be aware there was much they didn’t know, and the idea of a specially-trained and reclusive auxiliary would explain why they wouldn’t remember him. Because these two wouldn’t remember him; his brief stay in the main House ended at ten, before recruiting began in earnest, before either of them arrived.
Only a decoy, or Watari’s apprentice or something...
Very alphabetical.
Where had he gotten the name Kay Ellis? Had he been feeling whimsical at the time he was devising that batch of identities, or had he simply assembled name and surname to inadvertently ironic result? With all that he remembered excessively and against his will, he couldn’t seem to remember that.
All of them were seated now, with Watari waiting in the next room over in the event of an emergency. He occupied a chair, while they sat across from him on the sofa. Taddeo was dressed somewhat more casually than Snow, but both were dressed more formally than him, a circumstance he was used to. Snow had a notebook out and opened on her lap, pen in hand. Taddeo leaned forward, a mug of coffee in his hands, and asked “So, what brings you here? And what brings us here?” He’d held out his hand to L shortly after entering the room, then put it away after several awkward seconds. They both seemed rather awkward, as might be expected.
He let himself take one more breath as he dropped cube after cube of sugar into his own mug. “I’ve experienced sleep disturbances and intrusive memories for three weeks,” he began. “I was sexually assaulted eight years ago. Eight and a half years ago. It hasn’t been a problem until recently. I believe these symptoms were triggered when I was abducted last month.”
Snow spoke first. “You seem very straightforward about this.”
“I gain nothing by evasion.” Not in this area, at least.
“That’s true.”
Taddeo said, “All right, before we go any further, we should probably get introduced. I mean, we know what to call each other, but we should probably explain now what we’re all about, how we do things, in case you decide you want to send one of us back.”
He’d already decided there was a low probability of sending back either of them. “Then, please explain.”
Snow spoke first, then Taddeo. What they said about their particular styles was nothing he didn’t already know from his research, though he listened attentively all the same in case some novelty slipped in. There was none for quite some time.
“In a situation like this,” said Taddeo after a while, “I’d usually talk about full disclosure right about now, but in a situation like this... well, we’re not going to ask for your real name or anything, and we can work on it as we go, but I think it’s still important to say what we can.”
“Of course.”
“Let me add,” said Snow. “This could have its own problems. Conventionally we might be too close to the situation for proper treatment, depending, but we believe that’s balanced by our improved capacity to understand the truth. Otherwise, you may as well go to a regular psychologist.”
“Yes.”
“This is a cooperative effort,” Snow continued. “It’s not like other doctors, where you’re certainly not expected to help with surgery. We can’t hand a panacea from on high. I’ll be honest with you, this may take as long as years to get sorted.”
He nodded after a moment. Of course he wanted it gotten over with now, but reasonably speaking a few years was acceptable, not too bad when he knew he would continue to have cases to work on throughout (But how he could be sure that Watari wouldn’t decide again that he shouldn’t -). And if it passed naturally before that, of course he could finish this off.
“Which brings us to scheduling. If we’re to continue to meet together like this, then as far as I can see it should be on the weekends. We can’t claim emergencies every week. Would that work for you, or would you rather arrange something separately?”
“Weekends are adequate. I understand this meeting is an exception. I wouldn’t want to deprive your regular clients.”
“Taddeo, do you think you could give up yours?”
“For this? Sure. I have the other five days.”
“All right then. As far as the time per day, the usual session is fifty minutes duration, but that should probably be adjusted.”
“Yeah,” said Taddeo. “It seems a bit stupid to spend so much time on getting to and from less than an hour of talking a day. What did you have in mind?”
As the question was being asked, he hadn’t had much of anything in mind. He quickly put something there. “Is four hours per day reasonable, with breaks? At a rate of -” He named figures in pounds and dollars that seemed reasonably high. From their expressions perhaps it was unreasonably high. “I will also fund the necessary travel. Perhaps locations should be alternated, so that only two of us will need to travel on any given week. I believe my schedule is much more flexible.”
They discussed the logistics of this for a while longer. Then Snow asked him about the circumstances of the intrusions.
“There have been disturbances nearly every night,” he told her. “For the most part, the connections while awake appear to be tenuous.” He thought back. “Though they’re predictable in retrospect. Certain body positions, for example. Names that are vaguely similar to those involved, visual patterns, and an item of food similar to one I ate that day. Trivial things.” But at least they were trivial; they might take him by surprise but he’d be even worse off if he developed a similar fear of, say, automobiles, wedding bands, his own unchanged wardrobe. Or for that matter, if he developed outright agoraphobia. It was true he wasn’t often out of doors, but he had entirely legitimate reasons for it. And it wasn’t as though he used beds that often to begin with.
Snow nodded, jotted in her notebook. “So these are unpredictable, before they happen, and they’ve been interfering with your daily life, is that right?”
“It’s been brought to my attention.”
“Could you explain what you mean by that?”
“It’s been brought to my attention that, left unaddressed, it has the potential to interfere with my work.” He didn’t like the expression that flitted over Snow’s face as he said this; he couldn’t quite explicate what it contained, but what he could glimpse of its contents unsettled him. “I already found it somewhat troublesome. It was suggested that further measures were called for, and I found the suggestion had merit.” He was interested in cooperating, he tried to say underneath the words. He wasn’t being dragged in kicking and screaming. He wasn’t sure whether Snow believed it or not.
After a few more questions they were moving on to taking a history. Maybe if it had been a legal pad balanced across Snow’s knees, or a word processor, or a laptop, or even if the notebook’s cover had been a different color, he wouldn’t have responded in quite the way he did. But as it was he looked again at what he could make out of the black cover, and after Snow asked for his age he said, instead of his age, “This information will be secured?”
“Very much so.” Snow proceeded to explain how much so. L had the vague suspicion she’d explained it once before, though she’d likely done nothing more than touch on the matter of confidentiality. She showed him the lock on the briefcase propped against her feet, talked about passwords and precautions, and then got Taddeo to explain his own security measures. And then she looked back at him.
“I turned twenty-five in October,” he told them. In October; it sounded, he thought after he said it, almost as though his birthday was nestled comfortably in the middle of the month, instead of at the absolute tail end.
And so on, and so forth. His parents died when he was about six. He’d entered Wammy’s House in early 1988. The sexual assault had happened in May of 1996. He’d been in the United States at the time, in the course of his work (as an auxiliary in training, he didn’t need to say, didn’t need to outright lie, they’d fill in mentally). He had been sixteen, sixteen and a half. There had been five men, one to four years older than him. It had proceeded for several hours. A look on Taddeo’s face, now, and this time he pointed it out.
“It might be just me,” said Taddeo, glancing over at Snow, “but what stands out to me right now is the term ‘sexual assault.’ It sounds like a clinical term, a legal term. I was wondering if there was any reason why you chose it?”
“The influence of my work, I suppose.”
“Well, yes,” said Taddeo, “there’s that. And also, it’s a pretty broad term -”
“Would you like specific details?” He hadn’t intended the note of challenge, but there it was. “Would you like a more specific term? All right. They raped me.”
It wasn’t at all hard to say. It was only after the words left his throat that it seemed to inexplicably close off, nearly choking him for no reason whatsoever.
Details, more details. Anal sex, oral sex, penetration with objects. On his knees, splayed flat and prone, supine with his legs in the air. In Terrence Redding’s house, on the floor, the table, the counter, the bed. He wanted suddenly to scream it, vomit it, get it over with, but his throat was still closed, and a moment later he was thankful for it. There was really no need for hysterics. When his throat reopened, he added, “They were convicted. Those still alive remain in prison.”
Taddeo gave him another slightly longer look.
“It’s true.” He’d made sure of it. “I did well for myself after, Nothing else of the kind happened until recently. I was abducted in late October. This incident was more directly related to my work.”
“This wouldn’t happen to be related to-”
“To Kira? Yes.” Go on, out with it. “Early on, one of the participants drugged me and attempted to...” Go on, you can say the word, you know you can. “... to rape me. I persuaded him not to.” He supposed Taddeo wouldn’t believe that either, that this time he’d managed to stop it. At least part of it.
***
Juliette Frye, Jane Doe Four, “call me Julie,” taught history at a small university about two hours’ drive from Milwaukee, where she had recently received employment as an assistant professor. She met with them at a local restaurant, attached to a hotel, where she offered to treat them but was overruled with little protest on her part.
“I wasn’t a totally crazy party animal,” she was telling them now at their corner table, “but I did cut loose. I drank that son of a bitch Thompson under a table once. I wonder if that was why they picked me out.”
Thompson, Light recalled. Mark Thompson. The victim accounts agreed on his violence and vicious behavior, which stood out even in that vicious group. He’d died in prison in 2001, he’d learned from Ms. Foxfield, several days after being knocked into a coma by a fight with several other inmates.
Frye was slightly taller than Light, well-dressed, her thick hair slung in a ponytail over her shoulder. Her necklace and bracelets glittered in the dim light of the restaurant. She imposed on her surroundings as much as Mercado had faded. Ms. Foxfield had asked if she would be comfortable discussing this in public; explicit details most likely wouldn’t come up, but all the same... “Why not?” Frye had replied, on speakerphone. “I’ve talked about it in public already. No need to get shy now. You can put it in your book either way. And I’ve wanted an excuse to go there.”
“Yeah, I dated a lot,” she said. “Still do, actually. I kind of took a breather for a year after that, but no way was I going to let those assholes permanently fuck up my social life too.” Light wondered if she swore this much while teaching. At least her voice stayed low, so no askance glances from other diners. “I believe in trying things out. And if they don’t click, then they don’t click. Why waste time on a rigmarole with someone who doesn’t click? Actually, I think I had unrealistic standards, back then. And then that fucker Walker tried to make me out as a gold-digging skank. Sure, I appreciate a date who pays for shit, but if that guy wanted to see some gold-digging he should’ve looked in a fucking mirror.” Light noticed also that despite her harsh language, her voice didn’t seem at all heated, almost as though she were going through long-practiced motions of anger. “Okay, tired old lawyer joke, but the guy was not a stellar example of his profession.” A touch of heat entered her voice. “And then what he did to that kid. That poor kid.”
Ms. Foxfield nodded.
She added, her voice abruptly cooled again, “And Cole - that dick.” She probably meant Joshua Cole, the older of the pair of brothers involved, and the one who’d asked her out to a New Year’s Eve party under false pretenses. “Driving me back like nothing happened.”
In her statement in the file, Light remembered, she’d said that Cole had gone so far as to wish her a happy new year and try to kiss her goodbye when they were back to the doorstep of her on-campus dormitory. It was even more audacious than Redding, who’d dropped off Ellis after a final assault two blocks away from the hotel where he’d been staying with his grandfather. Frye had added, in the statement, I wish I’d punched him right there.
“Cost him zip to act nice,” said Frye, “except maybe ten minutes and a dime’s worth of gas, and it paid off for him, because after that the asshole cops and his fucking lawyer kept asking if he and his friends really raped you all night why’d he bother to drive you back? Well, when they weren’t asking, are you telling us you said ‘no’ this time? The summer before I went to Chapel Hill, I found his obituary in the Gazette. Threw myself a little party. The decorations were all black, of course.”
Joshua Cole had hung himself in prison in 1998. It was the same method Kay Ellis had used for his suicide two years previous. Light wondered if that had been intentional on Cole’s part, some attempt to exorcise his guilt, or if his sheets had just been the most convenient method to hand.
The interview moved on. Frye, like Mercado, talked about her meeting with Sergeant Lorenzo Carella, who had been far more supportive than the officers involved in her previous encounters with the Glass River Police Department. Sergeant Carella, now Lieutenant Carella, had been L’s eyes and ears in the police for both of the cases he’d taken in the city. Ms. Foxfield was still trying to line up an interview with him.
“It doesn’t usually happen the way it did for me. I guess I was pretty lucky there were other people to back me up. I mean, it shouldn’t have happened to more people, they shouldn’t have had a chance to keep on doing it to as many people as they did, but with all those stories together the courts and so on didn’t just brush it off like I found out happens a lot of the time, especially since most of them weren’t party girls like I was. Hell, a bunch of them weren’t even girls. I wish that last kid had stuck around long enough to see the jury come in. I think that after he saw that, he might’ve kept sticking around. But he didn’t.”
With further questioning, she quickly got talking on her own view of Kay Ellis’s deposition. Her voice had definitely become heated now. “He had the best story so they fought dirty. Delaney was all right as a person can get working for that slime, but Walker -” She remained especially scornful of Calvin Walker, who had been the Cole brothers’ attorney. “He hit so below the belt he was just about pounding on the floor. He tore into me, too, but it’s a lot worse watching it happen to someone else, especially when you know the ending. A year ago I read in the newspaper about a slimeball in California still pulling the same kind of shit, and someone in that jury fell for it so there was a deadlock. God were we lucky, besides the obvious.
“Poor kid,” she said again. “He was, what, sixteen, seventeen? And I think his grandfather said he was an orphan, too. God, what a short shitty life to have. He probably had no idea what he was getting into when he went to the police. For a while what kept me going was mostly plain spite, and I guess he was too nice for that.”
***
Snow and Taddeo would be back in the evening, it had been decided, after taking a few hours to confer and discuss approaches. L supposed that was another good reason to employ them simultaneously; they might require someone to talk to as well. He’d almost wanted to tell them that approaches could be discussed then and there, with him present, but he’d already pushed them considerably and he himself had been in no mood to continue after they’d taken his abbreviated history.
There was another request from Light to see to, and then Watari had, as pledged, a compilation of cases in the Ontario area ready for him. He sank himself into one involving suspicious deaths at a Toronto hospital, and emerged from it with some reluctance five minutes before the appointed time. He used the next five minutes to secure the laptop computer, concealing it in a desk drawer, and then focused on mental preparations for the next session. When the time arrived, they came in promptly (perhaps they had been dithering outside the door even as he’d been dithering inside it) and went on a brief round of greetings before they reseated themselves on the sofa and moved on.
“As I said,” he told them, “all the perpetrators involved are incarcerated, and are certain to remain so. If they were to be released I would receive notice. Rationally, I’m aware I have nothing to fear from them. The symptoms continue.”
Snow said, “That’s a common response.”
“That doesn’t make it a beneficial one.”
“No. It doesn’t. But it’s not necessarily about the original perpetrators, though they certainly figure in from time to time. It can also be about a fear that -”
“That events will repeat themselves. Yes. I suppose there is a degree of pattern recognition involved,” he reasoned aloud. “There is some risk of another such incident, especially when I’m in public.”
“So far as that,” said Taddeo, “how often have you been out in public recently?”
“On two occasions since my release on the eleventh.” He’d told them, a few hours ago, that Gabriel Foxfield had him kidnapped thinking he was L. He saw no need to tell them that Gabriel Foxfield was correct in at least that thought. “My current work doesn’t call for frequent excursions.” He thought of something, thought of the open case in progress. “As for that, I don’t intend to give it up. At this point, if I do, while my productivity will drop the risk will not.”
“Is your work very important to you?”
“It’s nonnegotiable.” Coming on too strong, maybe, showing them too much, but it was. If he were at all willing to negotiate that matter, he would have accepted Watari’s ultimatum and had done with it. And before this is through how much will I show them? Next to all that will this be so much? “If this particular fear has a legitimate basis, how do you suggest it should be controlled?”
Snow spoke up again. “The first step is your safety.”
“I’m already as safe as I will ever be. What is the second step?”
“K,” she said, and he recognized it as a cushioning word, as buildup, “right now, do you feel you’re safe?”
He was about to fire off of course. That wasn’t true, though, was it? While the syndicate had made the snatch at some distance from headquarters, a distance he’d gone out to himself, it wasn’t too much of a stretch from there to imagine someone else coming closer, or even being able to break in. The Kira investigation’s skyscraper was extremely secure, as was all his previous made-to-order construction, and it was of course important criteria for selecting the various hotels, but still, but still... “No. I can’t say so.”
“I can’t tell you that really you have nothing to worry about,” said Snow, “since I don’t know the details and your job appears to be dangerous in itself, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll do what we can inside your situation. Now, here’s what I suggest. We can work on those other reactions you’ve described, the ones that go off looser associations, and we can work our way outward, into -” Into another false sense of security? “- dealing with this underlying fear, making that manageable. We’ll also see what we can tweak about the situation itself. Sometimes terribly small things can be helpful. Time can also help.” I already told Watari that, and did he listen? “Most people are going to be rather unsettled, so soon after an event like this. Once you’ve got yourself settled, we can go deeper. That sort of work stirs things up, and it can make things worse if you’re not properly settled beforehand. We wouldn’t have perfect security, but who does have it? How does that sound to you?”
***
As they’d slid into the taxi outside the restaurant, Ms. Foxfield had asked “Can you do me a favor?”
“That would depend.”
“Well, yes, it would depend. Okay, here’s the favor. Can you try your hand at Carella?”
“One agent to another, you mean?”
“Yes, exactly.”
Now, hours later, Light listened to the just-dialed phone ring in the Milwaukee hotel room. He’d called L earlier, and gotten a voicemail saying that there was now a ninety-eight percent chance of getting Carella to hear them out; after that, they were on their own as far as that went. He’d gathered from L’s notes that Lorenzo Carella was an extremely reserved person, something of a loner within the police, though an extremely competent one; Light supposed both qualities were part of the reason L had selected him as liaison. He also seemed to be naturally succinct with the press, a master of the “No comment,” and Ms. Foxfield’s experience so far bore that out.
Someone picked up on the other end. “Hello.”
“Hello? Is this Lieutenant Carella?”
“Speaking.”
“I’m Asano. My employer called earlier?”
The tone of the voice on the other end shifted with such immediacy that Light, practiced at inducing such shifts, was nonetheless a bit startled. “Oh, Asano. I did get his call. Code?” Light rattled off the string of digits L had instructed him to memorize. “Got it. I’ve got to say, I was damn shocked. Thought I might be getting tapped again. Well, what’ve you got?”
“Actually,” said Light, “I was wondering if you could do us a favor. My employer’s helping someone with research on a book -”
If he’d cold-called and gotten the same result, he might’ve ended up rolling his eyes at her lack of success. As it was, he could probably chalk up Carella’s sudden enthusiasm to his admiration of L. Even the questions about the writer’s credentials, the most pointed ones he had, were rather blunted (“She’s new at this,” Light replied, “but she’s good at it,” and he saw Ms. Foxfield’s expression become gratified as she watched from an armchair). They settled on an appointment time, scheduled after the meeting with Mrs. Redding in Syracuse.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” said Ms. Foxfield after he’d hung up.
“If we’re going to hang over your shoulder like this,” said Light, “we might as well do something while we’re there, right?”
***
After claiming a Winchester junior tennis championship in 1995, L had decided he wasn’t going to compete further; to him, what enjoyment he got from the sport, and doing very well at the sport, wasn’t worth the fuss over everything from security to dress. Then and now, Watari had been undeniably relieved. Then, while he couldn’t imagine L abandoning detective work altogether in favor of tennis, he was aware how precarious such a double life had the potential to become. Now, it meant fewer photographs circulating out of control.
It was impossible to be rid of all the photographs, though they’d made a vigorous effort since the appearance of the Second Kira. They weren’t a two-man Ministry of Truth, with the power to recall them all, and there might always be a few floating about out there, especially since the photograph policy had by no means always been so restrictive (he remembered, on one of his visits back to the House the previous year, watching one of the children who’d had aspirations to become a photographer running around taking snaps of nearly everyone with his new camera, including the second and third in line for the succession).
He could hear nothing from the next room; he’d pick up on yells or gunfire or the like, and there was a system rigged up to contact him with the push of a button, but otherwise L was alone with the two graduates, and all he had to do was sit and wait.
At least there shouldn’t be too many people with reason to keep that particular photograph, let alone sentimental reason; if they did it would be a matter of simple record. The name attached to it would be false, and carefully unconnected to the House. In the photograph itself, L had worn tennis clothes in lieu of his favored combination. Considerable effort had been made to tame his hair, though most of that effort had been undone during the tournament.
And he’d been smiling. The smile in the photograph proved nothing in itself, especially as he could no longer remember how forced or non-forced it had looked, but he did remember how exuberant L had been coming back from the tournament, how he’d laughed as he told Watari the news, joked (though at the time Watari hadn’t been so sure it was a joke) that he would aim for Wimbledon; it would be a week before he announced his decision.
Watari had clipped out a copy for himself once, along with the corresponding article on the tennis tournament. Of course it was destroyed now, but he had a sudden desire to see it again, to be certain he hadn’t imagined it all, to see photographic evidence that L had once smiled like that.
***
The bed in the suite was still neatly made. Taddeo had suggested they make use of it, saying it was a possible benefit of using a hotel room. L thought of declining but then thought he might as well see to that, as well. So he agreed, and then insisted on it, and then very deliberately lay back, very deliberately closed his eyes, very deliberately flattened his legs against the covers. He even briefly considered opening his legs, forcing them wide into an obtuse V, but decided against it, and they stayed pressed together as Taddeo began to talk about relaxation.
“It hurts less if you relax.” This said when there was already blood smearing the insides of his thighs.
“It’s all right. Relax.”
L opened his eyes, and kept them open until Taddeo finished talking. Then he closed them again, ninety percent, with light seeping in through his lashes, and followed the directions, working from fingers and toes inward, letting his extremities go slack muscle by muscle.
“That’s it, dear.” The nurse sounded uneasy. He surmised she wasn’t entirely sure how to handle him. “That’s it.”
The paper rustled beneath him with the slightest of movements, crackling against his bare skin. They’d taken his clothes, as evidence. Watari had another set waiting for him in the car, but he couldn’t put it on until the exam was finished.
This was necessary, he told himself. A bit of flinching was all right, to be expected, but he had to stay in control. He couldn’t let an uncontrolled, panicked response jeopardize evidence collection. One more time he drifted outward, locking up his body while he was away, taking in and processing sensation from a distance. Sometimes, as appropriate, he would manipulate a limb, or his voice box and tongue.
“K?” Snow was saying now. “K?”
“I’m here.”
“You -”
“I know.” He had unrelaxed in the meantime, while distracted, his fingernails pressed into his palms. He needed to repeat the procedure.
That done, time for the next step. Positive imagery, safe places, so that he could learn to pretend for a while that there was no danger. Sweets? Perhaps not. Watari would probably not be happy if he ended up with his consumption doubled through using sugar as a coping mechanism. And that seemed, on the whole, rather too facile for his purposes. What else?
Perhaps instead he could draw off the satisfaction derived from solving a major case. The Kira case was still gaping open, the clock ticking on the test of the thirteen-day rule, otherwise he would have seized on it. But there were others. The Winchester Mad Bombings, his very first? The Los Angeles B. B. Murders? No, he thought abruptly, it was too tangled up with the Kira case and its resulting frustrations. B had succumbed to a heart attack in prison, and Naomi Misora remained missing and almost certainly would not be found alive. That wouldn’t do. The Mad Bombings, meanwhile, were certainly significant, he could acknowledge that well enough, but he couldn’t quite seem to tap his memory of them; it might be those memories were too old, too faded. What else, what else...
Mello leaned forward in the chair. “X through Z?” he echoed. “The first X through Z?”
“Yes.” Their codenames had been reused for three of the next set of auxiliaries, who had names not nearly as apropos. He’d decided, after B’s departure, that there wouldn’t be a third set, not under those names.
“I thought they all left.”
“They did,” L told him. “They were induced to return.”
Yes, he decided. That might suit, the other of the stories he’d told Mello, more than a year ago now. He thought back to the summer of 1999. He’d been just short of twenty and he had just become the three best detectives in the world and he’d seated himself in front of the computer and considered the first action he might take as Eraldo Coil...
And what had been the circumstances, when he’d told those three stories? It had been in mid-October of 2003, not long after he’d put the finishing touches on Redding’s surprise and checked on his arrangements with the incarcerated safecracker and the newly released marijuana dealer. Could that work as well? He could be a little proud, perhaps, proud of how he’d slid everything into place. He didn’t usually concern himself with his catches after he handed them on to the judicial machinery to confirm what he already knew. It had taken a good deal of advance preparation, some months of it working on the side, to insert the safecracker into the state prison system and secure the dealer’s pardon from the governor and all the rest of it. Technically the payoff would have come with the results of the parole hearing, and later with the scheduled accusation in February followed by the predictable results, but what he thought of first was when it was all set to go, the night before the hearing, when he’d explained things to Redding. L remembered how he’d gaped, how he’d gasped, rendered incoherent. The first thing he’d said had been “Kay?”
He’d still called him Kay. Such a farce of familiarity. Kay. It wasn’t his real name, let alone his real first name, but the intent remained the same. Redding had been undeniably startled by the sight of him, and he probably wasn’t being intentionally mocking, but the sense of unconscious mocking was perhaps worse. It had been very enjoyable to correct him, and to inform him of what awaited.
L’s hands had clenched again. Again he forced them slack. Even his victories didn’t seem to be suitable subject matter. Instead he tried to envision generic relaxing imagery. Cumulus clouds, meadows, beaches combined with placid stretches of sea. Most of it ended up pastoral, though he had never particularly favored the pastoral, himself. He ended up imagining himself floating. Not floating away from anything this time, simply bobbing up and down in the water. He had learned to swim basic strokes when he was six, but rarely made use of them. His father had taught him. His father had been a strong swimmer, he remembered, or had that only been true to a six-year-old in the same way nearly all adults were tall? There was no one left to ask, to confirm. The objective he knew: His father had eyes the same color as his. His father signed things in a scrawl that resolved to J. Lawliet, the J short for a name he wasn’t very fond of which was why he wanted L to choose one for himself, when he was old enough. His father taught him to swim and wanted to start him on the violin. The subjective: His father, seemingly an ungainly scarecrow on land, became a dolphin to a child with his feet kicking in the shallow end of the swimming pool -
Should he be thinking about this? Why was he thinking about this? He should probably note it. It might come up later, even though this wasn’t psychoanalysis. Of course then he would have to substitute the Lawliet. With Kelleher, perhaps. The identity he was using for the trip was in the name of David Kelleher (David, he remembered now, had been his paternal grandfather’s name, but he was fairly certain that was coincidence). He might as well make that K’s true name.
He was drifting astray again. He forcefully imagined himself alone in the sea, imagined a cloudless sky, imagined himself without tension. Then he imagined drowning.
Finally he envisioned a cube, built up around and under him. Cubes impressed him as safer than eggs, which had been one of his related ideas. Eggs were known for breaking. The sides of the cube, he decided, were one-way mirrors. He could see out, if he wanted. When he was ready to come out he could press a hand to the inside of the cube, and then it would swing open. That particular vision lasted longest.
He kept working on it after their departure; there was no point seeing them again tomorrow if they would have to do nothing but repeat the process until it was pounded into his muscle memory. He tried moving to a chair, and then moved back. An hour later he took a break to finish the hospital case and eat what Watari delivered. After that he returned to the bed.
It wasn’t as though he’d been exactly trusting of Snow and Taddeo, but somehow being alone in the room made things even more difficult. He couldn’t close his eyes; it gave him the feeling of throwing open all the windows and doors the instant they shut. He’d called in Watari, and asked him to stay in the room. That seemed to help somewhat. Watari was silent at first and L asked him to read, use a computer, anything that would produce a little noise. That helped a little more.
He managed to slacken himself once more, piece by piece, and for now it was holding. He stayed in the cube, listened to the soft clicking of the keyboard until he fell asleep, and dreamed he was swimming.