Chain Gang

Wrote this towards the end of Season 5—saw Fred and Mikey coming, but not the Donald Mann revenge plot, so this assumes Mikey was just buried quietly, without the drive-in funeral home or bombings.

"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots."—Memento Mori, Jonathon Nolan.

Missing

"So he's been missing three days, and you have no idea where he might have gone? None at all?" Ty sounded sceptical, talking to the mother while the two of them took a look about the kid's room.

"Well no—he comes straight home from school and studies all evening."

"All evening?" Sully caught the raised eyebrows from his partner and the look that said, that doesn't sound right. "What about weekends?" They were drawing blanks at everything except that the kid was a freak—a seventeen-year-old with a spotless bedroom? That ought to set alarm bells ringing in anyone's head.

"Didn't you study when you were in high school?" she challenged—going at this from opposite ends of the world, Sully thought—the kid's sock drawer could probably tell them more about him that the mother—then again…he shook his head at the clothes pressed and hanging in the wardrobe or neatly folded in drawers. Nothing obviously missing—it didn't look like he'd run away—at least, not unless he'd thought to tidy up after himself to cover his tracks.

"He doesn't have any friends he might be staying with, or family?" Ty suggested, and drew another blank. Nothing on the wall planner except assignment dates—did this kid not have a life at all—and nothing to suggest he was up against a deadline he couldn't meet. The desk was something else, though—practically lifted out of a stationer's shop window.

"Is this normal—" Sully couldn't keep himself from asking, "For him to have his desk so tidy?" Maybe he'd planned this—maybe he knew he was going away and wanted to leave the place in order? Yeah—he scoffed—or maybe the kid just takes after his mother; the rest of the house was a good clue to where he'd picked up the anal-retentiveness. And her look—the kind of put-down parents save for their misbehaving kids—that said, of course, like he'd known it all along and was asking her just to be wilful.

To Ty she said, "He's so busy studying, he doesn't have time for friends—and the other boys in his class aren't really up to his calibre," and drew a snort from Sully, looking at the perfectly made bed…and he lifted the mattress on a whim—the cynic in him wanting to destroy the mother's perfect image of her son by finding a dirty magazine after her last—

"Hello."

"How long's Simon been smoking weed, Mrs Lockyer?"

She looked at them like she didn't understand the question, a shaky, "I don't know what you're talking about…" her face—a shade paler than it had been—all but saying, don't say things like that—and then it hardened and she glared at Ty; "My son's missing, and all you can do is make accusations?"

"We're going to need a picture," Sully stepped in—time to be leaving anyway; they weren't exactly getting anywhere talking to the mother.

"Can you believe that woman? Up to his calibre—" Ty shook his head outside, crossing the street back to the car. "The kid sounds like a real stiff to me."

"Oh c'mon—bet you were the class swot too," Sul laughed, and got a glare—get out of it—that softened into well okay, what if I was?

"I had friends, you know—and you can talk, Mr LSAT-ace—"

"But I'm not seventeen and gone AWOL."

"No," Ty conceded the point. Then, "There's no way a kid's that perfect."

"He wasn't," meaning the Weed, and Ty frowned.

"D'you believe her?" his face saying, that she really has no idea—about the Weed, or where he's gone?

"I don't know," Sully paused at the driver's door, then shrugged and climbed in. "But a mother like that? I'd run away."

"So where to?" Ty asked. Nine million people and we're looking for one of them—where the hell do we start?

"There was a sweater from the Downside Wharf in his wardrobe—maybe he's a member?"

From Ty, a distracted, "Yeah, maybe," as they pulled away, watching the house through the window like he was still thinking, can you believe that woman?

"Got to start looking somewhere, I guess."