Day 52: Intercom, Evening

[damned_intercom]

The intercom jingle was slightly different for this shift, almost as if it had gone up in quality. The Head Doctor gave a sigh of relief, his own voice clear as a bell despite the usual electronic buzz

Comments

M50

[unheroed]

Surprisingly enough, Harvey's chat with Mr. Gavin had gone rather smoothly. The man's age and general appearance had made him skeptical at first, but they'd both cut to the chase rather quickly and had been open with their information, which had served him well. Even though Gavin's information had been somewhat dated, it had showed his persistence and his attention to detail, and had opened him up as someone else Harvey could work with.

It was surprising, how well he got along with the majority of the attorneys here. He hadn't been one to get buddy-buddy back when he was on the job, but he wasn't given much of a choice here. He wasn't about to cough up his whole life story to any of them, but in terms of business dealings he was making some headway.

Granted, everything that Lana had told him at lunch had also proved that he didn't want to get too entrenched in it all. Gavin seemed somewhat disconnected, in that Lana hadn't mentioned him during their talk, but that didn't mean that he was devoid of secrets or even some courtroom drama. It was starting to feel like everyone here was connected to a murder in one way or another. Himself included.

And he also had to wonder if Lunge would want to discuss this. The man had clearly seen the bulletin note, considering he'd responded to it, but Harvey would leave it to his roommate to bring that up. He was first back to the room, so he let himself get as comfortable as was possible (in other words, not very comfortable) in the desk chair and took periodic sips at his "dinner" as he reviewed his notes once more.

Re: M50

[herr_inspektor]

The shock of L's night had more or less worn off by the time dinner came about, replaced instead by an odd background hum of emotion that Lunge didn't feel he had the time (the inclination, you mean, Heinrich) to unravel. It was only natural, he decided, that he was getting his own experiences tangled into L's, given how closely they worked together and how alike they were in many ways- but part of him seemed set to remind him that it wasn't just that. That he was concerned for the man's wellbeing. That he was genuinely relieved to see him safe. That maybe, just maybe, he felt responsible for the man.

It was all baseless conjecture, of course. Wouldn't stand up in court. Time to move on.

As he entered the room he focused the magnifying-glass beam of his attention onto the rest of his night instead. He'd be out with L and his associate -"S.T."?- for most of the night (not to keep an eye on L, that was completely irrelevent and could only detract from their ability to progress tonight), but first he would be stopping off to deliver Venom's metal pole back to him. Curious, he moved to take the weapon out of his cupboard- and then he saw that it wasn't a pole at all, but a cue. A metal pool cue. How bizarre. Still, returning it to its rightful owner could only improve his standing with the man, and good contacts were always worth having. At any rate, he wanted to catch Venom's opinion on what had happened.

Only after he'd rested the cue back against his desk- he could always slip it under the bed if a nurse turned up- did he greet Dent. Truth be told, he'd only barely registered the man's presence. Understandable, of course, his attention was on his plans. "Good evening. Did your contacts from the bulletin board come through?"

His voice sounded normal rather than distracted, so he allowed himself to sit down to eat. Or rather, pluck mechanically at his meal with his chopsticks- the use of which was one skill he certainly hadn't expected to make use of here. A loss of appetite wasn't unusual, though. Not at all. He almost always skipped meals.

[unheroed]

When Lunge had first come in, he had been quiet, distracted. More like how he'd acted during their first few nights together. Harvey turned to watch him as he pulled some sort of long stick out of his closet. Raising an eyebrow, he continued to watch as he set it against his desk, and only then realized that it was some sort of pool cue. What the hell? Where had Lunge found something like that? Not in the Game Room...

He didn't get a chance to ask before Lunge greeted him with a question. So he wasn't being weird and giving him the silent treatment, then. Good.

"You mean the people I tried to set up meetings with? Yeah, I was able to talk to them. Exchanged some notes and brushed shoulders with another prosecutor. It went well." As well as could be expected, anyway. Harvey didn't know if Klavier was going to be any more of a help in getting out of here than Jones or anyone else, but it was better to make connections when possible. Even though his image had been shattered, he still knew how to do that. If people didn't judge him for his face, then that probably meant they were worth keeping around.

"But I have to ask... what's with the pool cue?" Harvey motioned to the item as he took another sip from his dinner shake. Not that it tasted any different from the lunch or the breakfast one. Damn nurses.

[herr_inspektor]

A prosecutor? "That would be Klavier Gavin, wouldn't it?" Lunge answered, glancing back up from his meal as he abandoned the chopsticks on his desk. Blond hair, blue eyes, casual confidence. He hadn't had the man pegged as a prosecutor at all but that was what his note had said, and he also didn't have him pegged as the sort of man who would lie for- well, in this case it would be attention, or a sense of importance. That according to those notes he'd also known Edgeworth before was encouraging; they'd both struck him as unusually young, so perhaps they both came from a world in which that sort of thing was normal for law enforcement. Strange, but not a detail he was especially concerned with for the moment. "We met, briefly. Did his survey provide any further insight into the types of people here?"

Part of him felt that he knew what to expect and was almost on the verge of resenting having to ask- the results would show a heavy leaning towards those strongly involved in crime or combat, the fighters and investigators and victims- but the far greater portion of his common sense and experience told him that the worst possible thing to do was blindly jump to his own conclusions. And never mind that, he was genuinely curious about the outcome.

Overly-hasty predictions aside, though, Lunge couldn't say that he was especially surprised when Dent brought up the pool cue- it was a tad obvious. "It isn't mine. Someone I was working with dropped it during a fight last night." Speaking of which. Dent was likely to want to know about the note they'd found in the nurse's lounge, given that he was one of those investigators. He glanced across at the man, mouth just widening into a sliver of a smile. There was something wonderful about holding hidden cards, regardless of whether or not they turned out to be someone else's trump or a simple bluff. "We were looking into last night's radio clue."

Besides. L hadn't crossed his thoughts once since they'd started speaking. More than enough reason to smile.

[unheroed]

So, someone had decided to use a pool cue as a weapon. Harvey couldn't say that it was the first thing that would have come to his mind when he thought of makeshift weapons, but he was just glad he had his gun. Not that he'd been given a chance to fire it since the night when he'd found it, but that was probably a good thing. He'd endured a few injuries without it, but he had to make sure to save those bullets as best he could.

Either way, the most interesting thing that Lunge mentioned was what he had been up to the night before. If he'd been following the radio clue and had gotten into a fight as a result, that probably either meant he'd found something and then had had to pay for it, or he'd been led into a trap. But judging by the way that Lunge was smiling, Harvey was pretty sure it was the former.

He would give his information first and then ask his own question. "The survey was about two weeks old, but it still supported my theory of there being a significant number of attorneys and detectives here when compared to the other options. The other two large categories were military officers and students." One of those fit better than the other, but Harvey had already traveled down that train of thought. He'd leave it to Lunge to think on for himself.

But Harvey hadn't been expecting to hear that Lunge had also met Klavier. Considering how strange and hermit-like he had been when they'd first met, Harvey had figured the guy kept to himself. But now that he was starting to talk to him more, it was really quite the opposite.

"Anyway, did you find it? The clue, I mean." Now that Lunge had brought it up, it wasn't as if he could skimp on the explanation. Harvey leaned his arm onto the back of his chair and sipped from his shake with his other hand, waiting for his roommate's response.

[herr_inspektor]

Survey first. The results were more or less as Lunge had expected, with those related to crime and the military topping the patient job lists, though the apparent number of students caught his attention. "Students, hmm?" He tilted his head, frowning slightly for a moment, then shook his head. Or not- perhaps they were the victims? At any rate there were certainly a lot more people here under the age of eighteen than anywhere else he'd been short of a school, so perhaps it shouldn't have been such a surprise.

The question, however, was why? The other two made sense, to some degree- the sadist in charge wanted people who'd be willing to come out and play at night rather than take shelter. How else would he get to see all of his hard work paid back in blood? But even that answer was fairly simplistic, and he knew that if he was going to get anywhere in explaining any of this he needed more evidence. More fact.

And speaking of fact, he had another one to add to the pot. Well. Almost. He still had to fully discuss with L whether or not the note could be a fake in some way, but even so it was still worth discussing. Who knew. Maybe Dent would be able to give a different spin on it.

"Naturally," he answered, still smiling. "It turned out to be a note in the nurse's lounge- ostensibly an old one from Martin Landel to Alec Doyle, regarding a Lydia Thayer. Apparently, she uses the alias Jill Lowry." Lunge paused, almost nonchalant. "Do you want a copy?"

[unheroed]

It turned out that Lunge was as perplexed about the student aspect of it as he'd been. But his roommate didn't ask anything specific, and Harvey really didn't have any way to explain it himself. There weren't any theories for why Landel preferred children that didn't get wildly inappropriate, and yet there had to be something. Young people were useful because they still had a lot of years left in them -- so maybe they were needed for something long-term?

It was possible that Landel wanted to watch the effects of his experiments through a patient's lifetime, although it wasn't as if he could live forever himself. Unless--

No. That... that was just too ridiculous. Harvey remembered some of the ages he'd seen on Gavin's list, but he refused to take that as fact.

Luckily, he was soon distracted by Lunge's report about the clue. He didn't know why the man was acting like it had been easy to find, seeing how Harvey certainly hadn't had that experience. Granted, he really hadn't been that interested in the radio until recently, but it seemed to be a hot enough topic that he couldn't ignore it any longer.

And now he was hearing more of the radio drama. Alec Doyle was the original radio voice, the one who'd died. And Lydia was the name of the head nurse who Landel was always jabbering to, usually during the day. But Jill...?

"Jill is the one who spoke to us over the radio, right? Or... she was, anyway," he said, half to himself as he tried to puzzle through the new information. "So are you saying she was a plant all along?" Well, that pretty much proved that people's suspicions about the radio had been well founded, and Harvey couldn't say he was too shocked about that. The question now was if the current DJ was worth listening to -- although his clue had certainly yielded results, and outed his predecessor. A point in his favor, then.

l-lol, like I need to link it

[herr_inspektor]

While Dent thought that one through- and he would need to- Lunge, only half-listening to the man when he spoke, busied himself with making a paper copy of his memory for the man to read. Not out of the sheer goodness of his heart, of course; he didn't know if L was in the right state of mind to consider the increasingly complicated web of Institute politics spun out in front of them, and wanted someone else to bounce ideas off of for now. Hmm. If he wasn't careful he'd end up reliant on a partner to walk him through the mental aerobics.

There was something still not right about that, though. An implication in there that didn't sit well with him. It didn't feel right discussing the matter with someone other than L, somehow, as though he were crossing some hitherto unseen line. Was it too previous, perhaps? As though the man were already dead rather than temporarily down when they'd discussed everything else.

... no. Don't be so illogical. This isn't a matter of 'duty' or 'allegiance'; you need answers. You will find answers. 'Temporarily down' is as good as dead. Why waste your time?

Why waste his time indeed.

The write-up was complete. Lunge tore the page out of his notebook, flexing the fingers idly on his other hand before they cramped up, and held it out for Dent to take. "That's what it seems to suggest- though not from the point of view you're thinking," he explained. "Here. Look at this. If it's to be believed, it could mean there are more people out there."

oh god so late. ;_;

[unheroed]

Once again, Lunge had decided to write something down. It seemed like the man was fond of communication on paper, even if the last time it had been because he'd had no other choice, with the language barrier to get through. That whole situation had been so bizarre, and it was still strange to think that everything he was saying to his roommate right now was heard by him in German.

But that was completely unrelated, and so Harvey quit musing about it the second that he was handed the paper. He read it over quickly yet carefully; enough time working as an attorney trained you to do that sort of thing.

If the message was to be believed, then Lydia had started out as a member of some resistance group; most likely, the same one that "Jack" and now "Marc" belonged to. If that was the case, then why the hell was she going along with Landel now?

Still, judging from her sparse announcements and the way that Landel talked to her... he wondered if there was something shady going on with all of this. Maybe Landel had gotten sick of her rooting around in his business and had decided to take matters into his own hands. It was an unpleasant theory, but Harvey was used to those.

"So... you think she overstepped her bounds and got her mind tampered with as a result?" Permanently, even? And what, then Landel had turned around and used her as a decoy to mock what she'd once been involved in? Yeah, that sounded like Landel to him.