Three: Scene
There were police cars outside the building. Lawliet and Quillsh weren't surprised. "So, what do you intend to do? There's no way they'll let you inside." Quillsh looked at the boy, then clamped his mouth shut, realizing he was treating Lawliet like he was his boss.
Lawliet chewed on his thumb and twiddled his toes. "Let's see… I suppose I should have been thinking about it on the way over here, but, well… I allowed myself to get distracted by that doughnut shop's sign…" He rolled down the window and peeked his head out, seeing a few officers standing around. "Excuse me, what happened here?" He asked as innocently as he could muster.
"Uh, this isn't a place for little boys. Move along."
"…but… my babysitter lives in this apartment. My grandfather here was just about to drop me off. Is something wrong?"
The cops seemed dumbfounded. "Uh…"
Quillsh wasn't too pleased with the whole 'grandfather' remark, even though he was quite aware of his age, but he decided to play along. "Yes, is there an issue? Please sir, I must know because I have to be at work soon, right La--"
"Grandfather," Lawliet sang, using the guise of a normal boy's voice. On any other boy it would have been cute. On Lawliet, it was kind of creepy. "Lawford is older brother! I'm Eraldo, remember?"
Apparently fake names needed to be used… though Quillsh saw no reason for it. Perhaps Lawliet was planning ahead for some later event, though he couldn't imagine why the boy was thinking so very far ahead. He sighed, feigning befuddlement, and said, "I'm sorry, Eraldo, my boy. You look just like Lawford when he was your age."
Lawliet seemed pleased that Wammy played along, and played his part oh-so-well.
The officer approached the car, raising an eyebrow. "Name of your babysitter?"
Quillsh couldn't remember the name on the file, but it seemed to come right to Lawliet. "Phillip Gray, sir. He's real nice."
"Uh…" The cop grew awkward before he spoke again. "Well, I'm sorry, but it appears that Phillip Gray was murdered last night."
"What does 'murdered' mean?" Lawliet asked, faking dumb, blinking his big, dark eyes innocently, which made more than Wammy and the cops uncomfortable. Quillsh momentarily mused over the fact that Lawliet resembled an owl.
"Uh… well…"
"Murdered?!" Wammy explained, putting on the guise of one who had heard devastating news about a friend.
"I don't understand!" Lawliet whined. Wammy had to force himself from looking at Lawliet, considering the boy probably understood better than everybody else combined.
"Err… Eraldo, dear…" Wammy said, touching the boy's shoulder. He wondered where this was going. "That means that Mr. Gray is gone… He's not coming back… He…" Pause for dramatic effect… "He's dead."
"DEAD?!" Lawliet screeched, turning his face towards the old man. "NO!!!" He cried, bolting out of the car and running into the apartment. "I DON'T BELIEVE IT! NO! Mr. Gray!"
The police and Quillsh were right behind the boy. Lawliet burst into the man's room, sobbing, though Quillsh saw absolutely no emotion in his eyes. "NOOO!" He moaned, staring around at the empty apartment (since they had already taken the body for autopsy and were most likely just finishing up when they arrived).
That was why… Lawliet had quick eyes. He was getting his look of the apartment, even as Quillsh picked him up, trying to "console" him. "There, there, my boy…" Lawliet's tiny hands clenched to the back of Quillsh's coat, and he already knew what that meant.
Let's go. I've seen everything.
Quillsh carried the boy out, muttering apologies to the police who too easily fell for it, sending sad expressions in their direction as they climbed back into the car and left.
"Keep going," Lawliet said, and the boy was back to his crouched, emotionless state of mind. "My previous residence is down this street two blocks, take a right, travel for four more blocks, left, one block. It's on the right."
Wammy made sure to focus exactly on Lawliet's words so he wouldn't seem completely incompetent, since he was the adult after all. Just because Lawliet had already proven his ability to outwit him, he certainly didn't intend to be outclassed.
When he arrived, he had to stop and stare for a moment. This was where the boy had lived? It was… enormous!… It was probably one of the most beautiful Victorian-themed homes he'd ever seen.
"It's been awhile, so it's most likely already been cleaned up and forgotten about," Lawliet mumbled, though that didn't seem to be what was on his mind. "Either way… there may still be something…"
Lawliet crawled out and wandered through the quickly overgrowing yard until he got to a window that only a resident would know had been broken. He pushed it up with a little force, using his tiny, bruised and bitten hands and scuttled himself in through the crack. "There's no point in trying the door. I know it's locked, and I never had a key."
A moment later, he'd unlocked the front door and allowed Quillsh inside. The furniture was still there… and the burgundy blood stains were still visible on the hard wood floor. Lawliet, again, was unaffected.
"Do you see what I mean?" He asked. "Entirely too clean for a murder scene. Gray's apartment was just as clean. I may not have known him personally… but from his habits that were shown to me by his photographs, I can tell he really wasn't what one would refer to as a 'clean freak'. For example," He held up a finger to indicate, "One. His yellowing teeth showed me that he smokes cigarettes. There was not one box of cigarettes in the house that I could see… given that I didn't get to search drawers. Two. The clothes he was wearing were dirty and stained. Again, I didn't get to see anything in the drawers, but since all I can do is assume, I'm going to assume that most of his clothes were in the same shape."
"It makes sense, I guess…" Wammy shrugged.
"Of course it does," Lawliet replied blandly, wandering through the house as if he'd never lived there, as if he'd never slept there…
While the boy was perusing everything he possibly could, Quillsh found himself looking around at the other side of the story… the remnants of a home… There were still pictures on the wall, still food in the refrigerator… He examined a large picture above the fireplace.
Lawliet's family… The mother was young and beautiful with an exuberant smile… The father was a strong-looking, healthy young man that seemed so very filled with pride… and then there was Lawliet. Gaunt, pale, and unsmiling. "This boy couldn't possibly have been from these two parents…" He whispered. It wasn't possible! Truth be told, Lawliet was not a very pretty little thing. He looked more like a stray cat that had been left out in the rain.
He turned and started quietly up the stairs, looking at the many, many framed pictures throughout the house as he traveled upwards. There were so many pictures of this unattractive little boy, his dark eyes, and his frown. Pictures of him reading. Pictures of him eating. Pictures of him, as a toddler, investigating the grass. Pictures of him at a piano or holding a violin.
These parents had loved this boy so much… and yet Lawliet had shown no remorse to their dead bodies. Not one tear shed. Not one wailing cry. Nothing…
He made it to the top floor and found himself standing in the attic, Lawliet's room. There were stacks of books everywhere, and a computer on a very nice desk. In the corner there were toys that looked to have been fiddled with but very seldom if ever played with. There was a drawer filled with new clothes of the finest brands. Quillsh ran his hand over them gently. As he walked about the room, he saw the spines of Sherlock Holmes novels, of textbooks, of all sorts of very advanced tomes. Some of the books were in Latin, some in French, and some were in languages he couldn't immediately identify.
"What are you looking for up here?"
He turned and saw Lawliet standing in the doorway, looking out of place in this rich, beautiful home. "I was just…" He sighed, not really sure how to answer. "Don't you want to take some of your things back with you, Lawliet?"
"They're part of a crime scene. These things belong to the police, not to me. In the end, none of it was ever really mine…" He turned away, starting back down the stairs.
"Wh… What does that mean?" Quillsh asked, going after him.
Lawliet didn't look back at him as he said, "Well… everything was for their son, not for me. The woman lost her son in childbirth. I was adopted as a replacement. When they looked at me… all they saw was him, or what would have been him had he lived."
"You were in an orphanage before, Lawliet?"
"No," He replied. "I was adopted from the hospital. I was an illegitimate birth, and the woman who had me didn't want me. She left me there." He splayed these sad things with no remorse whatsoever. To Lawliet, the sad circumstances of his life, and the happy ones, were nothing more than facts.
"But…"
"I didn't find anything that I hadn't already discovered before… Let's return and gather our findings. Afterwards, I intend to contact the police."
It took Wammy a moment to realize the boy had changed the topic. He followed the boy out of the attic and down the stairs, all the while feeling completely miserable. What on earth was this boy? Was he so caught up in the logic of everything that he could harbor no feelings of affection?
-
While Lawliet was 'gathering his findings', Wammy sat back, watching the boy in the gray light streaming from the window behind him. He was just so very small… and so very strange… Was it wrong for him to feel angry at the child for not caring about his parents, regardless of whether or not they were his blood kin? As a child, he would have given ANYTHING for parents… and he was pretty sure his fellow orphans would have felt the same way… and yet this child couldn't care either way.
Lawliet used a magic marker to sketch out the main rooms as he remembered them, drawing details that were terribly accurate for the mind of a child. He placed an X where the body or bodies were found on each drawing. "These aren't the first deaths."
"What?"
Lawliet looked up, eyes burning with what almost resembled anger. "The police, I noticed it when we were there today. The police are covering up this killing spree. I knew they were fools, but not to the extent that they wouldn't notice the sanitation of the residencies. They wouldn't have moved the bodies so quickly either." He gnawed on his thumb for a moment. "No matter. I need to contact them though. I don't feel like spending hours scouring for the previous crimes. I'll just get them to tell me themselves."
"They're not going to believe you," Wammy told him frankly. "I mean, you're only seven."
"I'm aware of that. I'll contact them some other way… At first I thought of sending you, but they'll recognize you from earlier today."
"So, what do you intend to do?"
"Fake it," He replied simply. "I'll go under a pseudonym and force them to cooperate with me. As far as they know, I'm the greatest detective who ever lived. I can prove it by explaining some of my previously solved cases, I'm thinking, and I can do it all in private with the use of a computer and a voice changer. Do you have a microphone by any chance? You know, one that can be hooked up to a computer?"
"A microphone? Well, no…" He wanted to ask him why he thought he would have such a thing.
"No matter, I'll just rewire something and make it work. If not, I'll just have you make something. You're an inventor, after all, so it shouldn't be too difficult for you, right?" He jumped out of the chair and skulked out of the room to find whatever this 'something' was. "Could you make something sweet for me? I have a feeling it's going to be a long day, and I'm going to need a pick-me-up. Put strawberries on it, will you? I do enjoy strawberries."
Quillsh opened his mouth to complain about being bossed around by a child was something he wasn't going to do, but he knew it was useless. He'd been following orders all day, so what was one more? "Right then."
Lawliet stood in the hall, watching as Wammy left the room, and for a split second, Quillsh thought that maybe, just maybe, Lawliet had turned to look back at the pictures of his parents on the computer screen…
But it was probably just his imagination.
