Chapter 10: The Best Part of Waking Up

Chloe parked The Taxi across the street from the Sefton house. She eyed the drab, brown one-story before she fished her phone out of the pocket of her trench coat and tried Joseph Thompson's number again.

Voicemail. Still.

She hung up and swiped through her contacts and found a number she had, but didn't like calling. There was still more than a sizeable strain of teenage punk rock fuck-offishness within Chloe to hem and haw and hesitate before calling who she was about to call. But someone burned her mother's diner to the ground, and bedfellows didn't get any stranger than the mayor of Arcadia Bay.

"Chloe!" Mayor Newman said, and Chloe could see his warm girth open up arms first like The Ghost of Christmas Future. Come in, and know me better, man!

"Good morning, Mayor Newman."

"Now, Chloe," Mayor Newman said. "You know good and well you can call me Seth. Now… Is everything going okay?"

"Yeah," Chloe said. "I mean, all things considered…"

"Of course," Mayor Newman said. "What with the… incident yesterday. And I'm sorry to hear about the Two Whales. How is Joyce handling that?"

"The insurance will cover everything," Chloe said, and she inwardly shuddered. Eighteen-year-old Chloe would have kicked about ten unique colors of shit out of twenty-five-year-old Chloe for talking to a politician about insurance. "Plus, y'know… it helps having a detective in the family. Kinda why I wanted to talk to you right now."

"Of course," Mayor Newman said.

"Um… Have you heard of an outfit called Trident Construction?"

A pause from the other end of the line. Chloe couldn't tell if Newman was trying to remember, or if he was trying to be cagey.

"I have," Newman said. "I think the city sub-contracts out to Trident to do the things around town that need doing."

"Well," Chloe said, "the reason I ask is because Mom had been in touch with a lawyer for Trident named Joseph Thompson. They wanted to do construction on the Two Whales. She said something about, like, changes to the building code or something?"

"Hmm… I think there was a vote on that last quarter. I can't say I remember, and truth be told, the Department of Works doesn't fill me in on everything."

"Okay," Chloe said, "but isn't it weird that Arcadia Bay is giving out free construction to businesses? I mean, that usually comes out of the pocket of the business and not the city, doesn't it?"

"Chloe," Mayor Newman said, "look around you. Our little town is on the rise. Tourism? Revenue? Both up considerably. And combine that with the fact that we got rid of a ton of crooked cops and waived their pensions, Arcadia Bay has more money than we know what to do with. If we paid for construction, we did it in the best interests of the town. Just because I keep running unopposed, it doesn't mean I don't like it when people vote for me."

Chloe scratched her forehead under her fedora. "I didn't know small towns were in the business of legislating 'being nice.'"

"Well, you would if you came to the City Council meetings. Now I hate to be rude, but I have an appointment in five…"

"Oh, no," Chloe said. "Go ahead. Don't let me keep you."

"Thank you," Mayor Newman said. "And keep me posted on whatever you find."

"I will."

They said their goodbyes and Chloe hung up, and stared at her phone.

There were a great many things off about that conversation, not the least of which was that Arcadia Bay was handing out free construction work like it was candy. In any other town she wouldn't believe it, but Arcadia Bay? Under Seth Newman? She'd met the guy, talked to him, and he seemed like the real deal. So… maybe?

It was yet another thing she'd have to keep her eye on.

Chloe checked her hat in the rear view mirror of the The Taxi before she got out. The wind blew her trench coat back as she crossed the street and made her way up the sidewalk to the front door of the Sefton home.

She rang the doorbell and waited a few moments before a husky man in his early thirties wearing a Seattle Seahawks jersey answered the door. He seemed a polite fellow, but must have been caught off guard by Chloe's signature mode of dress.

"Nice hat," the man said.

"Thanks. You Paul Sefton?"

"Yeah," Paul Sefton said.

"My name's Chloe Price. I'm a private investigator. Is it alright if I ask you a few questions?"

Paul Sefton's living room was a damn sight tidier than the man himself. Much like her own coffee table on the day she moved in, his was a glass number that had nary a fingerprint or smudge. The carpet looked like it had been vacuumed earlier that morning. The scent of lemon Pledge slithered its way into Chloe's nostrils.

"Coffee?" Paul asked.

"No, thank you."

"You're, uh… You're that one girl who, like, saved a kidnapped girl some time ago? Or put a whole bunch of cops away?"

Chloe smiled. "Both, actually."

"Yeah," Paul said. "I thought your hair would be blue."

"It was," Chloe said, "but the sun does funny things to the brand of dye I used unless I kept reapplying it, and it just got to be a pain in the ass."

"I wouldn't know what that's like. So… How can I help you?"

"Actually," Chloe said. "I'm here about your car."

Paul tilted his head. "What about it?"

"Well… It was stolen."

"Yeah?"

"It's the damnedest thing," Chloe said. "Usually when a car is stolen, the owner, y'know, tells someone about it? Preferably a law enforcement agency, who files a report. You didn't do that."

Paul straightened up. Chloe saw that he could feel pressure coming on. Chloe never prided herself on her tact, but even if she had, a detective coming into a guy's house to ask questions would raise said guy's hackles. Chloe had her hand ready, itching to rewind time if she fucked up.

"I live in Arcadia Bay," Paul said. "I don't think you could blame me if I said I didn't trust the cops around here."

"You're right," Chloe said. "I couldn't. The thing is, though, the ABPD tells me that the car was stolen while you were on your shift at work over at the Haverford Asylum. That's, what, two hours away? You would have been reporting to the Highway Patrol or the County Sheriff. There's no need to bring in the ABPD at all. The only reason they got involved was that the car was found wrapped around a tree within the city limits."

Paul put his hands in his pockets. "Look, um… I'm not insured. I didn't want to run into any trouble.

Chloe folded her arms and looked down her nose at him. He's lying. But why? Chloe opted not to press it.

"That's… certainly a reason," Chloe said. "Hell of a thing about that crash, though. They tell you about it?"

"They did," Paul said. "It's… weird."

"And you wouldn't know anything about it, would you?" Chloe asked.

Paul Sefton seemed to cringe. It was brief, almost subliminal, but it was there. "No," he said. "Can't say I do."

Lying again. His keys were in the ignition. Chloe opted to soft-pedal the guy to make him a bit more comfortable.

"I see," Chloe said. "Is it alright if I ask you a personal question? Just out of curiosity?"

"Well," Paul said, "that depends on the question."

"It's just… It's a hell of a commute from here to Haverford. Two hours. You couldn't find a job in town? Leonard International has a lot of spots to fill."

"Yeah, they do," Paul said, "but Haverford's a private hospital. I'm an orderly, and even I make bank. I can make decent money sweating my ass off on a loading dock, or I can make decent-and-a-half emptying drool cups and keeping people from hurting themselves."

"Okay," Chloe said. "That's about it on my end. Thanks for your time."

Chloe turned toward the door.

"That's it?" Paul asked.

Chloe stopped and turned back again.

"Yeah," Chloe said. "That's it. Weird stuff like this? It's interesting. But hey, you have a good day. Sorry I took up so much of your time. You have a good one, now."

"Yeah," Paul said. "You, too."

Chloe turned and started to walk to the door.

As soon as she had gotten her private investigator's license in Washington, Chloe made it a point to binge watch Columbo on her laptop (using Max's Netflix account, of course). It just… felt like something she had to so. As though there were private detective bars or message boards or something, and she didn't want to miss any of the inside jokes. She only made it to the end of the first season because, as good as the show was, seventies television was slow as hell, but there was one cool thing that Columbo did on the show that she'd always wanted to try out, but Chloe had never had the opportunity.

Until now…

Chloe turned back to Paul. "Oh, one more thing."

Paul Sefton, who had visibly relaxed at the prospect of getting Chloe out of his house, tensed up again. His eyes went a little wider, and Chloe flattered herself that she could she a vein in his temple start throbbing.

Chloe took a brief moment to fangirl over herself before starting in.

"Haverford? That's where you work?"

"Yeah," Paul Sefton said.

"Cyrus Haverford Memorial? That the same Haverford?"

"You know any other Haverford Asylum?" Paul asked. Chloe could see that he was getting impatient.

"So you know Nathan Prescott."

Chloe dropped that bomb, not even raising her inflection to make it a question. She kept her eyes peeled on Paul, making sure to note every last detail of his response.

He blinked a couple of times, and then looked up, like her was trying to remember that name from a sea of names that his daily work routine brought him into contact with. But it was a little too pronounced. Like he was a third grader in a school play being told by his beleaguered English teacher/drama director to "look like you're remembering something!"

Whatever came out of Paul Sefton's mouth next was going to be a lie.

"I can't say I'm on first name basis with the patients," Paul said.

Chloe kept the smile off of her face. She didn't say that Nathan was one of the patients at Haverford, but she didn't want to raise any red flags. Paul Sefton going to the guy who was telling him (or paying him) to lie and telling that guy what was up would have put a serious wrench in things going forward. In the pursuit of solving the increasingly elaborate mystery at her feet, Chloe took it upon herself to play dumb.

"I knew him back in the day," Chloe said. "Again, you have a good one. I'll let myself out."

"Have a nice day," Paul said, slightly slouching in relief.

As she walked to the door, Chloe went over her conversation with Paul in her head, trying to see if there were any points of ingress for which to use her powers and gain any more relevant information. She found none. Chloe closed the front door behind her and started to walk back to her car, marveling, not because she had found a steady job on the right side of the law, but a job that she was good at and held her interest. She took the advice she had read in another timeline, in another life, and said to herself…

"If this isn't nice, then I don't know what is."

Hindsight being twenty-twenty, Chloe could have kicked her own ass for saying such a thing, even if just to herself. Chloe was in the middle of the street when her phone rang.

It was Trevor.

"Hello?"

"Chloe," Trevor said, "something's happened to Max…"

Thirty minutes earlier…

Max clawed at Lorraine's hands. She had clipped her nails earlier that morning and Max, whose supply of oxygen to the brain was dwindling by the second, couldn't find it in her to curse herself.

Lorraine gave the extension cord a savage jerk, and Max was momentarily lifted off of her feet, only to land crookedly on one ankle, which could not support her weight. She dropped to one knee, and Lorraine had to bend over to finish the act.

Max's temples throbbed, her vision started blurring, whatever breath she could exhale came through her nose in stifled and abbreviated snorts. She could feel herself turning purple. Lorraine lowered her mouth to Max's ear and whispered…

"I've waited years for this…"

And another sharp jerk, bringing the extension cord painfully under Max's jaw, digging into her windpipe.

Max's thoughts were leaving her. The baser parts of her brain used her eyes to scan her surroundings, these last sights of her life on Earth before the long, cold dark, hoping for some kind of opportunity.

She spied the sink.

Max got one foot underneath of her, grabbed Lorraine's wrists, and pulled forward as hard as she could.

She banged the side of her head against the wooden doors underneath the sink, but she managed Lorraine into impacting her own forehead with the sharp edge of the counter, which stunned her, knocked her off of her feet, and released the extension cord from around Max's throat.

Max breathed in, and for the briefest of moments, it was as though color came back into the world, but the inevitable exhale came with a battalion of ragged coughs that sent her chest into spasms, over which she barely heard Lorraine saying "Awwww, fuck."

As Max saw Lorraine get back to her feet and advance on her, Max's hand pawed at the surface of the counter, looking for any kind of advantage at all.

She found it.

In the first violent act of Maxine Caulfield's life, she grabbed the handle of the pot of coffee that she had freshly made a few minutes before, and swung with all of the strength she could channel into her arm.

The coffee pot exploded across Lorraine Foster's face in a storm of broken glass and boiling brown fluid.

Lorraine shrieked in ungodly pain as she was knocked onto her ass. She scrambled to her feet, still screaming, and bolted for the door.

After a moment, Max dropped the handle of the coffee pot. She felt tired all over, and the sudden influx of oxygen was making her woozy. Her breathing sounded wheezy and her arm was killing her. Max didn't work out, and she was convinced she had pulled a muscle breaking the coffee pot across Lorraine's face.

It was as though an animal had taken control of her brain for the past… what… minute? Minute-and-a-half? Max was a pacifist, and though she had often wondered what would happen if violence came to her door, she had always stopped shy of carrying pepper spray, or taking self-defense classes.

But this? Even though Lorraine was trying to kill her for whatever fucking reason, Max had inevitably disfigured this girl for life, and no doubt pissed her off further. Max's action hero moment didn't make her feel badass. She felt… sick.

Max looked at the mess that she and Lorraine had made, and in the middle of the sea of glass shards and rapidly cooling coffee, she saw a drop of blood, Lorraine's blood, spreading its crimson tendrils outwardly into the puddle of cheap Folgers.

I did that…

Max passed out. The contact her head made with the linoleum made sure she stayed that way for a while. The last thing she saw before the world swam away was Warren's feet entering the room.