Three.
Author's Note: YES I KNOW IT'S BEEN LIKE A YEAR. /s-sob. I am sorry. It's been a very hectic one! But I do love this story and appreciate everyone who reviewed/favorited/subscribed, so I'm bringing you more… finally.
I've come across a couple clerical errors in my story. One, Bitsy Carrigan should be a detective, not a simple officer. Two, it's come to my attention via the Death Note wiki that Watari was reportedly born in 1933 (or 36, in the anime), putting him at the ripe old age of 11-14 when World War II ended. I totally imagined him at least a decade older than this, in order for the backstory I have for him to work. So we're just going to pretend that's the case. It's fanfic, after all. JUST GO WITH IT. _
Also in the realm of "just go with it," there are some physics references in this chapter that probably aren't terribly accurate if you look too hard. I did the best I could, but I'm awful at science and math, so I wanted to give a disclaimer.
Anywho, that's all. Onward!
The doors to the parlour burst open with violent force, and an angry Detective Carrigan stormed out. Wammy, waiting surreptitiously down the hall, checked his watch. She had been speaking to L for all of six minutes.
He attempted to intercept her, although she shot toward the front door.
"Is everything all right, Detective?" Wammy asked, as benignly as he could muster.
She blew past him with a whoosh of her trenchcoat, still wet from the driving rain that fell outside on that particular day.
"It's what I thought, Quillsh," Carrigan barked at him without stopping. "Useless. Absolutely useless. Get the kid into some counseling. We're done here."
Roger barely had a chance to open the door for her before she was gone. A gust of wind blew the rain into the foyer in her wake, ruining the polish job a maid had just given the floor. Wammy sighed and told Roger to arrange for a clean up, then went to check on L.
The parlour was a modest-sized room near the front of Wammy's House. The walls were wood-paneled, lined with bookshelves along one wall and a handsome archaic world map on another. The only window faced the street. Plush furniture faced the fireplace, in side which flames crackled – an attempt to combat the dismal December chill.
This particular room was designed for meetings between children and prospective parents, so that they might have a chance to get acquainted, and administration and prospective parents, so that the staff could decide if the parents were a good match for an intellectually gifted orphan. Between the waning desire to adopt older children, and the rigid process parents had to undergo to acquire a Wammy's child, the room was seldom seen by anyone other than housekeeping. Wammy had thought it a sufficient place for L to meet with Detective Carrigan to discuss what he had seen the night of his parents' murder. It seemed Wammy's fears that the meeting would not go well had been confirmed.
L perched on a sofa, with the only toy he'd wanted to bring with him: an Etch-a-Sketch. It was an odd contraption, donated with dozens of other modern toys by a clueless benefactor who'd no idea that the children of Wammy's House were dissuaded from playing with toys without an educational value. Wammy himself could find no beneficial qualities to an Etch-a-Sketch: it resembled the face of an old-fashioned TV but the two knobs along the bottom allowed for the drawing of lines, either vertical or horizontal, on its dusty screen. Its design left no room for artistic accuracy and anything inscribed could be erased by brandishing it vigorously. But as the donator also often wrote cheques inscribed with lofty figures that were not erasable, Wammy had allowed the Etch-a-Sketch and others like it – animatronic talking bears, baby dolls supposedly grown in a cabbage patch, and board games with insipid titles such as Guess Who? – to float about the playroom for the younger children. He was surprised L had any sort of interest in it.
When Wammy entered, the boy had the Etch-a-Sketch placed on the coffee table in front of him. He turned knobs with the same rapt attention he had given Wammy's computer game the night before. He saw Wammy in the doorway, picked up the toy without looking at it, and gave it a sound shake. Then he replaced it on the table and twisted the white knobs anew. He returned his gaze to it as if Wammy was not there.
"L," Wammy said sternly, "you upset the detective."
L seemed not to hear.
"What did you say to her?"
L stuck out his tongue at the corner of his mouth in concentration. The knobs of the Etch-a-Sketch gave an odd sound of tension, as if a spring was being wound too tightly.
Wammy sighed in exasperation. "L, please."
He crossed the space between them and seized the toy. L rocked back on his heels and stared up at Wammy with those alarming owl-like eyes. Given L's recent behaviour in the classroom, Wammy had a sudden suspicion L had treated Carrigan with the same kind of derision.
"L." Wammy would say the boy's unusual name as many times as it took to get him to listen. "Answer me or you will find yourself in a peck of trouble."
L's depthless eyes reflected the orange flickers from the fire. His expression remained still and blank.
"I told her that I wasn't done thinking." He spoke as if it should be obvious and held out his pale hands for the toy. "Please give it back."
There was an urgency to the request that surprised Wammy. He suppressed a sigh; perhaps even he was going too roughly on L. Maybe the boy did need counseling, if there was so much thinking going on in his head that he couldn't share. Coupled with the nightmares, and tripled with the staggering display of intellect he had shown the night before. Wammy should get the ball rolling on that sooner rather than later.
He reluctantly returned the Etch-A-Sketch, although he hesitated when he saw what had been drawn on it: long rectangles, connected with smaller ones. Crude and with a child's shakiness, but it bore a suspicious resemblance to a blueprint.
"L, what is this? May I ask?" Wammy said, handing the strange implement back.
"Oh," L said. "It's my house. This is the upstairs, see?" He put it flat on the coffee table and pointed. "My room, the study, my parents' room." He also identified smaller squares as doorways and windows, a thin rectangle as the hallway.
Perhaps it should have struck Wammy as odd, but in the moment of L's explanation, all he felt was sadness. The boy was recreating a space that would never exist again, home to a life he would never be able to return to. And in the form of a blueprint, besides. As if he wanted to commit it to something tangible, in case the memory ever failed him.
"Come, L," Wammy said. He held out his hand. "It's time for lunch."
L picked up the toy and grabbed Wammy's hand in his free one. Wammy helped him to his feet and led him out of the room. In the distance, the Winchester Cathedral's bell tolled noon.
That could have been the end to the story. Violent crimes remained unsolved all the time, and it was not the first time a child at Wammy's House was the product of one. The police generated no leads through the Christmas holiday, and inevitably everyone became sidetracked that time of year.
It wasn't until Boxing Day that Wammy even became aware of more peculiar behaviour in the case of L Lawliet. It was a day of rest, not only for the children but everyone involved. The festivities of Christmas Day tired everyone out, and each child would be occupied with a present of his or her choice, delivered to them by a Father Christmas who looked oddly reminiscent of Roger in profile. The atmosphere was, overall, a subdued one.
Wammy was in his office, going over various complaints that had been filed before the holidays. Teachers, noting behavioural problems, often submitted such complaints in writing – although they were sometimes delivered by hand with an incensed verbal story to go along with it, in the case of Mrs. O'Hannihan. Due to the break of classes and various demands of the holiday, they had fallen by the wayside. Most were minor infractions at best, although two complaints in the pile stuck out to Wammy today, while the snow fell steadily outside.
A boy in sixth form had reported his Physics book stolen. Theft was not common at Wammy's House, as the staff strove to provide children with everything they needed and teach the values of honesty and integrity. So this was a concern. But the boy in question, a ginger-haired imp called Thomas Granger, was notoriously forgetful. It was likely that he had simply misplaced the volume, although the boy himself denied it.
Several pages down in the pile, the name L Lawliet emerged again. Wammy held back a sigh; he had been hoping he wouldn't see that name again, although it didn't surprise him. This complaint was not filed by Mrs. O'Hannihan, or Wammy was certain he would have heard about it long before now. Instead, it was by the maths and science teacher, who noted that on the last two days of school before the holidays, L had not made it to her classroom. She had checked with the nurse and L had not been sick; he'd merely vanished for both afternoons and gotten a stern scolding each day at dinner.
Wammy put the report aside and frowned as if he'd eaten something disagreeable. He did not like the evolving pattern of L's behaviour; it had nagged him these past couple of weeks despite attempts to push it aside to deal with the Christmas rush.
He put the whole mess of reports on his desk and stood. He'd been wondering how L had fared with the psychologist that had been set up for him but hadn't had a chance to check those files, either. However, a quick rifling through the appropriate filing cabinet showed that the woman Wammy hired to counselor his children, Jennifer Morse, hadn't yet submitted the report. She too was likely swamped by the holidays.
He sat back down at his desk and gazed thoughtfully at the telephone. Morse wouldn't be back on duty for another few days, but by then Wammy would likely be distracted by a hundred other issues that came with running his orphanages. He consulted his Rolodex, then picked up the phone and dialed her at home.
"L Lawliet?" she asked, with sounds of family gaiety in the background. "Oh God, yes, I remember. He's at the top of my pile, actually. You'll have a fat little page-turner about him after the new year."
"Could you give me a brief summary of your diagnosis?" Wammy asked, tapping a pen against a prepared pad of paper.
"Other than post-traumatic stress disorder, which is a given, he's definitely on the autism spectrum. I want to talk to him some more before I decide where."
That surprised Wammy so much he let his pen drop and leaned back in his seat. That strange, delicate boy. Autistic. He'd been hoping L's eccentricities were simply a side effect of his trauma, but Morse was an impeccable psychologist and Wammy believed her analysis. Still, it was disheartening; being a special needs child would make things all the more difficult for L in the long run.
Morse continued, "There's also something he's hiding. Something big, although I haven't been able to find out what yet. He doesn't trust me by a long shot. Can't say I blame him, after what he's been through."
"Mmmhmm," Wammy said, although by the end of her statement he was no longer listening. He had sensed the same, of course. Ever since he'd seen the Etch-a-Sketch blueprints it had been bothering him. L was a child of many secrets.
By pure chance he looked down at the complaint files strewn hastily on his desk. L's lay side by side with the one calling attention to Thomas Granger's missing Physics book, and the dates were clearly written at the top of each.
L had begun disappearing from his maths and science classes the day after Thomas Granger's Physics book disappeared from his bag.
"Quillsh? You there?"
"Yes, sorry, Jenny. I was momentarily distracted." There was no way there could be a connection. He was leaping to sensational conclusions and again giving a small child too much credit.
"I was just saying I want to give L an IQ test. I think that might be part of why he's having trouble in school. He's much smarter than he looks."
Yes, he was. But Wammy already knew that. He hadn't mentioned L's astonishing puzzle-solving performance to anyone, not even Morse. In his experience, the more people who knew of child prodigies, the more the child was exploited.
"That won't be necessary," he cut in sharply. He did not want L's intellect quantified at all, and certainly not in writing. "I'll handle it."
Morse sounded confused, but dropped the issue. "Well, all right. If you're sure."
"Sorry to bother you on your holiday," Wammy said. The more he learned the less he wanted to continue speaking to her. Shortly thereafter they said their goodbyes and he hung up.
Wammy stared at the dates at the top of the peculiar complaint files. As much as he wanted to blame his hunch on paranoia or an overactive imagination, the truth of the matter was he suffered from neither. If L was as keenly brilliant as his foray into Myst had suggested, Wammy could not put anything past him. The classes he had skipped were the last of the day. Already having caused friction with Mrs. O'Hannihan, he would have had to plan his vanishing act carefully. Otherwise, he would have been found out long before now. All of this struck Wammy as a plan that had been deliberately conceived. Even the book had disappeared from a notoriously unreliable student. If L could analyze complex puzzles on a computer screen, nothing stopped him from applying the same shrewd eye to reality.
But what could L possibly want with a rendering of his destroyed house and a sixth form science textbook?
Wammy stood. He adjusted his glasses, pulled on a jumper vest, and left his office to find out.
It took Wammy longer to find L than he expected. The orphanage was impressive in its size, but he had plotted out all the nooks and crannies to use to his own advantage, rather than a rambunctious child's.
Or so he thought. L could not be found in the playroom, the dining hall, neither the east nor west study, or even his own dormitory. He checked both the front yard and the back garden, where other children of varying ages built snow people and carved angels into the white, wet ground with their bodies. Roger raised an eyebrow when Wammy popped his head out to scan the rosy-cheeked masses for a mess of black hair and a cream-coloured scarf. Wammy nodded to him and offered no explanation. Roger didn't ask.
Then he searched the areas no child in his right mind would want to visit over the winter holidays: the classrooms. But the halls stood silent and there was no glimmer of movement inside any room.
Finally, Wammy checked the library.
The library was often considered the cream of Wammy's House. It spanned two floors and stretched longer than the dining hall. Bookshelves covered every available wall space. Polished oak tables populated the floor, so the children could do their homework or just enjoy solitude and a good book. Twin spiral staircases wound up to a balcony with more shelves and more places to study. A skylight shone down in the middle of the room, and today filtered in the weak light of midwinter.
It was the one place L might be able to hide successfully. Given the holiday, it was deserted. The only sound was Wammy's clicking footfalls on the wood floor.
He didn't dare call out L's name. He had a hunch that if he announced his search the boy might startle and then slink off somewhere unnoticed. If L was being sneaky, Wammy would respond in kind.
Wammy found L on the second floor, under a table. He might not have found the boy at all if not for the furious scratching of crayon against paper. Wammy, who considered himself spry for his age, still groaned as he forced himself down on all fours. There L was, scrunched up with his knees to his chest, in the middle of what looked like a serious academic endeavour. His materials included that blasted Etch-a-Sketch, a pack of crayons and a drawing pad – the only gifts he'd requested for Christmas – and a sixth form Physics book that undoubtedly belonged to Thomas Granger.
L looked up when Wammy's face appeared in the space between the chairs. His small hand froze; he was in the middle of drawing something on the pad in purple crayon. He must have known he was in trouble because the whites of his eyes grew so large they threatened to drop right out of his face and onto the floor. The rest of his face, as always, remained unnervingly blank.
"L Lawliet," Wammy said, stern but not unkind, "you have a bit of explaining to do."
L tilted his head and glanced down at his pad of paper. He paused thoughtfully, like a criminal weighing his options in an interrogation room. The unfortunate child; his life for the past few weeks had been nothing but adults demanding information from him.
"I'll show you," L said finally, in a tone much too solemn for a prepubescent voice, "if you promise not to laugh."
Nothing about this situation had struck Wammy as funny. Bizarre and worrying were the words he'd use. But of course this was an eight-year-old boy he was dealing with. There could be no worse fate at that age than being mocked.
"You have my word," Wammy said. "Now why don't you come out here? We're all alone."
L reluctantly left his makeshift cave and climbed into a chair. Wammy sat beside him and helped spread out the strange cache the boy had collected. The wrought-iron grille of the nearby window cut decorative patterns of shadow onto L's work and made it all the more surreal. The boy pointed and explained.
"See, the Etch-a-Sketch is my house. It's a blueprint. Here, here, and here are where the bombs were placed, I think. On the windows. Based on the tra– trajectory."
He stumbled over the large word but didn't move on until he'd pronounced it correctly. He pointed then to the pad, upon which he'd copied several physics formulas. His math, Wammy noted, was flawless.
"If I can determine the velocity of the explosion, I might be able to narrow it down to what chemicals had been used to build it, but…" He frowned at the paper. "I can't make it… connect."
L brought a thumb to his mouth and chewed at the nail worriedly. "Dad never taught me that part," he admitted in a whisper.
Wammy nodded. He understood now; the boy thought he could glean the right formula from a Physics book. So that he could solve the puzzle.
"And this is what you've been thinking about all this time?" Wammy asked.
L craned up his neck, still gnawing on his thumb. He nodded.
A thrill shimmied down Wammy's spine, a duel feeling of excitement and fear. He had seen nothing like this before, in all the children he'd cycled through Wammy's House. L Lawliet was so far above the rest that it was comical.
He just didn't have the proper tools. That's what scared Wammy. Leave a child like this alone and he did whatever it would take to solve the puzzle. Schoolyard theft was forgivable, but if the boy grew and lacked guidance, he could be in danger. And become a danger.
Wammy had once stood in a room of scientists and watched the first atomic bomb explode. He had a similar cold feeling in his gut now as he had then, when he wanted to turn to them and demand, What have you done? Wammy had become an inventor to save the world, not obliterate it, but he had stood idly by while colleagues created the deadliest weapons known to mankind.
He often wondered what sort of childhood Oppenheimer had had.
And now, with L Lawliet watching him with that grave little-boy expression, Wammy had a choice. He could confiscate the drawing pad, shake the Etch-a-Sketch until the blueprint vanished, and punish the boy for stealing. He could beat this child down one more time, like Detective Carrigan and Mrs. O'Hannihan had done, and hope this time it stuck. He could turn a blind eye the way he had from that beautifully horrific mushroom cloud on a scorching hot desert day in 1945.
Wammy leaned forward and pointed to the drawing pad. "I know why you can't connect it, L. It's because you're trying to solve the problem with the wrong formulas."
L stopped biting his thumb. His expression barely changed, but his lower lip protruded just a bit more than usual. He was pouting. "I found the best ones I could."
"Yes, you did. But you see, the equations you'll need won't be in a Physics book this basic. You need something far more advanced."
L rocked back on his heels. He gripped his hands on his ankles and watched his toes. He wriggled them as they hung just slightly off the edge of his chair.
"How do I get one of those?" he asked.
"I have them," Wammy answered, without hesitation. "I'm an inventor. I likely have everything you need in my private collection."
That made L's head snap up. "Could I really—?"
"On a few conditions," Wammy said. "Are you willing to hear what they are?"
L nodded, saucer eyes unblinking.
"First, I want you to be completely honest with me from here on out. Let me ask a few questions. Why do you want to do this?"
L said, "I want to find who murdered my parents."
"You do know that's what the police do. Why don't you trust they'll do their jobs?"
L took a deep breath. "Detective Carrigan is mean. She won't believe me."
"Believe you about what?"
"I-I…" The grip on his ankles tightened and he began to shake. "S-some was wrong that night. I don't know what it was. But I got up when Mum and Dad were asleep and went to look outside. And then … the house just…"
"It's all right," Wammy said, cutting him off before he felt he had to speak further.
It was a strange thing to report. What could have the boy possibly noticed, even subconsciously, that caused him to go outside on a winter's night? It also shot the popular theory out of the sky, that L had been seen and spared by the attacker. Somehow that made everything more chilling: L had been a target as well.
"So you didn't see anyone inside the house that night?" Wammy asked, just to confirm.
L shook his head. "We came home from a party and went to bed."
Wammy sat back in his seat, mulling all this over. He knew right away that he should report this to Carrigan, but L wasn't wrong in saying that the woman had been combative. She was a tough skate, hardened to skepticism from many years on the force. If Wammy told her any of this, he couldn't be sure she wouldn't dismiss it entirely as a child's fantasy.
"Also," L said, interrupting his thoughts, "I'm… I'm scared it's going to happen again."
"Don't worry, L," Wammy said, "no one will be able to touch you here, I assure you." Wammy's House had tighter security than most of its staff realised.
The boy shook his head. "That's not what I mean. I mean… I'm scared it'll happen to someone else."
Wammy frowned. "What makes you say that?"
"I don't know." L shrugged his bony shoulders. "A feeling."
Now Wammy was afraid they were going too far into the imaginative realm of a frightened child, so he steered the conversation elsewhere. "Let me tell you what. You return this book to…" He took the time to flip the Physics book to the front so he could read the name on it. "Thomas Granger and apologise for taking it, and I will see if I can help you solve the problem. That way, we'll have a clue to go on, and Detective Carrigan will be forced to listen to you."
L considered. "When?"
"Whenever you want to. Just come to my office. After you've returned the book," Wammy intoned, tapping lightly on its cover.
L was silent for a moment, then nodded.
The next day, L appeared in the doorway to Wammy's office shortly before noon.
"Thomas Granger called me a wanker," he said calmly. "I'm not sure what that is."
"Never mind," Wammy said, standing up from his desk. "Come, L, there's much to show you."
Wammy closed and locked the door, then walked to the interior corner of his office. He moved a coat rack and opened a small compartment in the wood paneling. A click of a button caused a lock to disengage, and Wammy swung open part of the wall – really a secret doorway.
L stared. He spoke in a hushed whisper. "Just like the Batcave."
Wammy chuckled. "Not quite. Hurry, please, we mustn't dawdle."
L broke into a run. Wammy caught him by the stairs and made sure he used the banister so that he wouldn't fall. Then, they descended into Wammy's inner sanctum, the section of Wammy's House no one had ever seen but himself.
