Title: L Falls Ill
Rated: K+
Summary: L is working what ought to be a simple case but, for some reason, the solution isn't coming to him. Could it be that he's…? No, how ridiculous. Under the weather, perhaps. A little. Preseries, Clean, NO slash! Enjoy!
Timeframe: Pre-series: About two years before the Kira case.
Dedication: For Oneesan, for getting me into anime, buying me "L: Change the World", and (on top of that) being the totally awesome big-sister that she is. :D Watashi no Nee-san wa daisuki desu! Arigato!
Feedback: Feedback? For me? Golly, I don't know what to say... that's just too sweet! Yes, I take feedback of all kinds: sparkly praise, grave criticism, and those flames you roast hotdogs on! Actually, I've never gotten those, so if you're in a flaming mood, go right ahead! ;)
One, two, three, four, five…
How long had it been? About twenty minutes since he'd last thrown up?
Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen… sixteen across.
He was definitely getting the urge again.
One, two, three, four, five, six, sev -
L sat (mostly) upright, leaned over the porcelain toilet bowl, and vomited twice. He then dropped back on the floor and resumed counting.
Eight, nine, ten…
This was bound to stop eventually; he'd refrained from eating anything for the past… hour perhaps? Well, closer to half an hour. This case required a fair amount of brain-food.
Twenty - one, twenty-two, twenty-three down.
Three hundred sixty-eight tiles on the bathroom ceiling. That was odd, since he'd counted four hundred eighty-two on the floor. What was the size differential?
L sat up again and repeated the familiar process. For a moment, he hovered over the rank bowl with one hand gripping the edge, other on top of the cistern.
At any rate, the best thing he could do now was phone the installation crew and ask them why they'd put in two different types of tile when he'd chosen only one.
He slid down next to the toilet in thought.
Immediately following this phone call, he would return to Warehouse 57, the building Deputy Phelps had chosen as HQ for the Kongouseki case. After a great deal of reflection (at least the past five minutes) he'd come up with some vital information on the identity of -
"L?"
The mild voice carried from the apartment door, down the hall, and rattled off the bathroom walls. Only two people had access to this floor and one of them was L himself. But he knew in an instant who it was, anyway.
"L? Where are you?"
He glanced from the doorway to the toilet several times without moving his head. Then in on rapid, ungraceful movement he pinched the flush lever between his thumb and forefinger and pulled, jumped to his feet, wiped his face on a towel, shoved his hands in his jean pockets and strolled nonchalantly (stumbling only once) out of the bathroom.
His guest was already there, standing in the hall.
"Hello, Watari."
Watari smiled, his white mustache prickling with the movement. "Hello, L. It's good to see you." Then seeing L's ashen face, the smile suddenly vanished. "Are you well?"
"Actually, I'm in an abnormally pleasant state of health. Tea?" L turned a little too quickly toward the kitchen and Watari followed.
He paused in the doorway. "L… is there something you want to tell me?"
L didn't look at him.
He never withheld anything from Watari.
Ever. "I'm very well," he said mechanically.
Watari nodded, letting it go for now. "I'm glad to hear it. Though I am not as glad to hear of this case you're working on. No leads?"
"Several. I'm sorry to have bothered you." L lifted the tea pot down from atop bread box (or doughnut box, what-have-you) and dropped in a tea bag.
"You didn't. Deputy Phelps called me yesterday. I came on the red eye from Japan. What's troubling you?"
L paused but didn't answer. He filled the teapot from an instant-boiling-water tap in silence.
What was troubling was that he was troubled. Why would an ordinary case like this be so difficult?
Watari didn't speak again until he was sitting with his cup in the living room. L set his own on the side table, dropped a handful of sugar packets next to it and leapt up to crouch on the sofa.
"Why not begin by telling me the facts of the case?"
Yes that was always a safe place to start… always assuming he didn't retch halfway through…
L tore open three sugar packets and dumped the contents into his cup. "Thirty-eight hours ago, two middle-aged men held up Manhattan Depository Bank and stole eighteen hundred thousand USD worth of diamonds. Six hours and seventeen minutes later the bank manager, Gordon Wellington, was shot to death in in his home. He is believed to have orchestrated the heist." He split open four more packets.
"Is that all?"
"Not quite, the diamonds were apparently laundered through an unknown source and the currency is being wired from an untraceable account somewhere in the states, to Algeria. Deputy Phelps believes that one of the perpetrators murdered Wellington and fled the country. He thinks the second is still in the US handling the transfer."
"And… what do you think?"
"Hm? Oh, I'm sure he's correct." L twirled his finger in the cup, mixing the twelve packets worth of sugar with the half cup of tea. "I've discovered the identity of the man who shot Wellington. He is a hirable thief by the name of Joseph Callahan, he's taken jobs of this sort all over the nation including the Rostov Kidnapping case in Wyoming."
"The last I heard, the Rostov case was still unsolved."
L went on without answering and Watari allowed himself a proud smile. "Callahan was one of the men who held up Manhattan Depository. I don't know the identity of the other but he is likely the one transferring currency out of the country."
"Then, if I may repeat myself," he leaned forward, lacing his fingers. "What is troubling you?"
L took his time before answering. He drank the tea in miniscule sips, trying not to let too much into his roiling insides while at the same time, keeping Watari from catching on.
"Wellington wasn't in charge of the heist," he said slowly. "The bank's video tape was stolen, however not by him. He was also responsible for alerting the police to the situation while the criminals were still inside."
"I see." Watari leaned back in his chair, gazing into the teepee of his fingers. "Who stole the video tape, then?"
"Mm, that I don't know. Though the fact that it was stolen before the two men entered the building suggests one of the security guards on duty at the time."
"When do you return to police headquarters?"
L looked at him. "You intend to join the case?"
"I am here as long as you can use my help. I enjoy the occasional vacation, too, you know."
L considered that, then took another small drink of tea as a show of thanks. "Very well, they are headquartered at Warehouse district C in Manhattan, number 57. I'll meet you there in forty minutes."
Watari nodded and stood up. "Forty minutes," he repeated, then smiled. "It is… truly good to see you, L."
He turned, walked back to the hall, and reset the door censor. It slid noiselessly shut behind him.
L returned to the bathroom.
L L L L L
In a matter of two days, Deputy Howard Phelps had transformed Warehouse 57 into a makeshift, but functioning command center. Most of the man power assigned to the case were rookies and bored phone-sitters.
All the same, Kai Tasaki was impressed with the constant flurry of motion and excitement. Kai had been in the evidence basement for too long; he was dying for some real action.
The Kongouseki case wasn't… exactly action, but it did involve a murder! That was something. Though it just figured that he would wind up on a case with a strange, unorthodox (and in Kai's opinion, not altogether stable) twenty-two-year-old detective half-in-charge.
But whatever. It was still better than sifting through dusty piles of other people's junk, that was for sure.
"Tasaki! Bring me the file on Gomez!"
"Yes, Sir! Right away, Sir." Kai ran to his desk (a card table in the corner) and scooped up a pile yellow folders. He flipped through them hastily, congratulating himself again on how good his English had become.
He'd only been a United States resident for four years, yet he could speak without an accent, and he'd picked up all the slang and lingo necessary to hobnob at office parties and laugh at American sitcoms.
But Deputy Phelps wasn't impressed by that. He was concerned only with how fast Kai could hand him folders and bring him coffee. Phelps intended to solve this case. Now. By himself, if need be. Superman. Wacko.
"Here it is, Sir."
Phelps took the folder without looking at him. "Latte. Decaf."
"Yes, Sir."
"And Tasaki?"
He whirled back. "Yes, Sir?"
"This is the police, not the National Guard. You don't have to 'sir' me all the time."
Okay, a wacko… but apparently not without his human side. Kai almost grinned. "Understood."
He was halfway to the coffee maker when he nearly slammed into Gene Christophe, the forensics guy assigned to the case.
"Whoa, dude, put some brakes on," he said good-naturedly. "Hey, the kid's back, by the way."
"Where?" Kai turned in time to see the ware house door open, letting a blast of sunlight. A minute later the door closed, bringing the high-ceilinged room back to normal lighting and revealing an oddly shaped figure followed by an old, white-haired man.
That was him, alright; the weirdest detective Kai had ever seen. Jeans pooling on bare feet, overlong-sleeved, white t-shirt (did he own anything else?) and an insane mass of black hair framing his sunken-eyed, pale face.
He looked dead. In fact, today in particular, he had an air of post-mortem about him which made Kai want to throw a book at his head and see if it went all the way through.
He walked practically doubled over, hands constantly either in his pockets or shoving junk food in his mouth and he always spoke as though discussing the weather, even when describing the gory details of a murder.
But he was brilliant. That's what Phelps said, and who was Kai, the evidence-basement-dweller to argue?
L, the only name he gave, slouched over to Phelps' desk chair and hopped up on it, hands on knees.
"I trust you received my information regarding Callahan.
"I did. We also found the owner of the diamonds. His name is Peter Gomez, but we can't seem to track him down. It's defiantly his name on the deposit form, though."
"I see." L pushed a hand against the desk, spinning his chair. "When did he make the deposit?"
"Several weeks ago. Let's see…" he flipped through the folder Kai had given him. "May eleventh. Then he tried to withdraw it last Friday, two days before the heist."
L stopped spinning rather abruptly and blinked hard at the floor. Then he looked back up. "Tried."
"Yeah, apparently his withdrawal form was rejected by the bank manager. That seems to point to Gomez as our killer."
"Perhaps." L chewed the nail of his forefinger for a while. "Gomez and Callahan hold up the bank together to retrieve Gomez's property, Callahan shoots Wellington and flees the country… Gomez launders the diamonds and sends the money to Callahan… they rendezvous in Algeria."
"That's my theory." Phelps crossed his arms. "We're making progress on tracing the account in America, but we're having communication problems with the Algerian Banking Institute. It'll help when we finally get the forensics report from Wellington's house. "
"However…" L continued on his own thought line. "Why would Gomez go to such lengths to retrieve what rightfully belongs to him?"
"Maybe the diamonds were stolen in the first place."
L looked up at him. "Very well deduced, Deputy Phelps." Nothing in his face gave away that he'd already known that. Watari only smiled. "But that brings us to Gordon Wellington. Why murder him if he didn't organize the theft?"
"If he didn't - wait a minute…"
"Furthermore, why would Callahan be the one to kill him? Gomez has a motivation."
"Hold on, how do you know Callah -"
"I believe you forensics report will show evidence of that."
Phelps's frustration turned to confusion and he glanced at Gene Christophe.
"Well -" Gene hesitated. "…L, we haven't gotten the forensics report back yet. Uh… I thought - didn't Deputy Phelps say that just now? "
There was an overlong pause.
L's finger was sliding away from his mouth. "Turn on the cameras, then," he muttered.
"What?"
"L?" Watari leaned over his shoulder. "What's wrong?"
L's head shot up. "I have a file on Callahan in the car," he said to Phelps, climbing (rather than hopping) off the desk chair. "I'll bring it to you."
"I can do that," said Watari.
"Certainly not, I'd like Deputy Phelps to show you the video feed leading up to the robbery." L made his way, swaying slightly, toward the warehouse door.
"He's a strange kid, isn't he?" Phelps said when he was out of earshot. "You're his legal guardian, right?"
Watari didn't answer.
His gaze didn't leave L till the rusted door was closed behind him.
L L L L L
TBC