When Naomi returned the next day, she found Beyond Birthday balancing a cherry on his tongue. He raised his head slightly in greeting, then popped the cherry in his mouth.
"They send my food through an elevator there," he said, shifting the cherry to one cheek and indicating a small panel on the back wall.
"Nothing with wrappers or peels, of course," he continued casually, as if it was a perfectly ordinary conversation, "and nothing I can't eat with just my hands. You never know what I might do with an empty pudding cup." This may have been sarcasm, but it was hard to tell with his quick, half-muttered speech and the cherry in his mouth. Naomi wondered if it was possible to suffocate yourself with a pudding cup, then shuddered at the thought.
"But it seems someone up there made a mistake, giving me a cherry," B went on, "what with the stem and pit. Do you think I could choke myself with them?" He wasn't addressing Naomi with this question, however – now it seemed he was talking to himself.
"Won't it be something when I send them back up – or is it down? They'll be thrown into hysterics. Unless of course the one who sees is the one who gave me the cherry, and he hasn't realized his mistake- "
"B." He looked up, startled, as if only now remembering Naomi's presence in the room. "Can we continue with the investigation, please?" Naomi said, in a tone much more biting than an actual request would have been – and yet it was a request, of sorts, considering no force besides Beyond Birthday's willingness would allow him to continue.
"Certainly, Miss Misora," he said, sticking out his tongue. On the end of it was the cherry stem, tied in a perfect knot. Naomi made a face when she remembered what that was supposed to mean about a person. At the sight of her disgusted expression, B grinned.
***
"Since you have arrived just as I've finished lunch, it appears that you are late, Miss Misora." Naomi shot him a glare, not recalling them ever agreeing on a time to meet. But it was true; she'd gotten here later than she intended. Naomi had had a restless night. Her dreams – nightmares – had been full of Wara Ningyo, fire, and the day of her biggest blunder in her history as an FBI agent. Staring down the barrel of her gun but unable to fire.
"Have you thought of any possible leads since yesterday?" she asked, half in interrogation-mode, trying to focus the conversation and B back on the matter at hand.
"Ah, yes. It seems to me, Miss Misora, that the method of the killer will reveal itself easily, after we deduce his or her identity." B bit his thumbnail, settling back into his sitting position against the wall, waiting for her response.
"Okay," Naomi allowed, "So let's focus on finding the killer. The problem is, as the FBI has already encountered, we are lacking a common link. Someone who had something against Danny's family, his little sister's school teacher, a random doctor who had never met any of them…"
"A doctor at the hospital where Daniel's sister was attending therapy sessions," B said flatly. Naomi looked up, first surprised, and then skeptical. It was an odd sort of skeptical, almost like the beginnings of denial.
"Daniel's sister is six years old." Naomi said, trying to imitate – no, top, B's flat, matter-of-fact tone. He was not fazed, and he sounded bored with his next response (a condescending sort of bored, like a teacher explaining some simple thing for the hundredth time, a sort of bored that made Naomi want to reach for her gun again).
"You are familiar with Sherlock Holmes, are you not, Miss Misora?" he asked, another rhetorical question. "When you eliminate the impossible…"
"…whatever remains must be the truth," she finished, automatically.
***
Short and half-arsed, but serves to bridge the gap to the next chapter okay.
