A/N: The Chibi's Are Stalking Me, ChloeIsMe, Cordelia-Lear, Isis the Sphinx, Jessa L'Rynn, Kathryn Shadow, NewDrWhoFan, Olfactory-Ventriloquism, and SilverWolf7 are proud to present the Third Annual Doctor Who October Project.
For this year's story, each author is writing a different character with Jessa L'Rynn editing it all together so that it makes some semblance of sense.
Disclaimer: The entire month of November was taken up with some extensive wrangling, fretting, arguing, losing, finding, filing, refiling, debating, and positive reams of paperwork. Then, we find out that the guy asking for this paperwork is some shyster called "Het Asterm", and not really going to get us the ownership of Doctor Who at all. Thus we come to you, battered but unbowed, with a new chapter, and still without owning the Doctor.
Dead Men Don't Regenerate
Chapter 11: Going On From There
Starring: Det. Factor and Dr. Guessom
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to call someone in this town?" asked the voice on the line, the cheer so obviously fake it was brittle.
"After tonight, yes I do," Gayle replied, trying not to sound as put off as she felt.
"I'm sorry," Factor apologized. "It's insane here. Every single time I went to call you, someone else turned up, claiming to be a doctor..."
"As in 'The Doctor'?" Gayle asked.
"I've asked," Factor admitted. "Most of them sort of deny it... kind of... It's really complicated."
"I did ask," Gayle offered, feeling much more magnanimous toward her friend now that she knew she wasn't being deliberately snubbed. "Tell me everything."
"I said that, tonight," Factor mentioned, her tone utterly exasperated. "It may be the last sane words I uttered."
Now, the curiosity was going to kill her. "Tell me," Gayle demanded.
"You'll be sorry!" Factor sing-songed, punctuating it with that strange over-stressed giggle she only ever gave when things got too crazy. Gayle had heard it twice in their entire lives, once when seventy-five impossible things had all happened simultaneously, and once when Factor was working simultaneously on seven ten-page papers for unrelated subjects (and couldn't go out with Gayle to a party that neither girl actually wanted to attend).
"Go on, you know you want to," Gayle coaxed, almost grinning, now.
"Right. You asked for it."
"I did," Gayle agreed.
"When they're fitting you for a straight jacket..."
"Dammit, Factor, tell me!"
"We have to go back, then. Hang on." There was the sound of a door being bolted, and Gayle wondered if it meant the Detective had just locked herself into the women's bathroom. She rather thought it might. "OK, when I talked to you before, I mentioned the one guy, right? The one in the rainbow suit?"
"The clown, yeah…"
"Well, he wasn't the first guy. The first guy was this white-haired gentleman in an opera cape. I wish I was kidding, but it actually suits the guy. He was mad as hell at me, at us, at everything, and I may have made that worse by poking at him a bit. I mean, honestly, who the hell expects to be asked the year, anyway?"
"The year?"
"The year. I thought the guy was a leftover from your party, but he wasn't on the list or anywhere else. Then, get this, I mention the body and he not only calms down, he asks to see the corpse, and accuses said corpse of being behind... well, you got me, now that I think about it. I'd better make a note to ask him. And no, he hasn't left yet; last I heard, he was wandering around the place looking for locks that hadn't been picked yet.
"Oh, and the great big blond guy in the stolen rainbow suit, he was pissed off, too. Probably because I said several very inappropriate things about that coat of his. I can't help it! You can see the damn thing from space! He didn't seem to have any idea when he was, either. Made a few suspicious comments, we hurled questions and our vocabularies at each other, he tried to pretend like it being Halloween was soooo important, and then I told him who was dead. Apparently, he also believed Mr. Master to be very interesting -"
"Oh, actually -" Gayle started, hoping to relieve some of her friend's worry. She had just heard what was unmistakably the sound of the clip being removed from Factor's gun.
Factor just talked right over her, sounding completely oblivious to anyone else now that she'd gotten started. "- and then asked me something that sounded like he expected this man to be from outer space or something if he was actually Mr. Master."
"Outer space?" Gayle decided to let the need to pass on the facts of the matter go for the moment. It was only very rarely that Factor ever needed to vent, but Gayle was not going to deny her now that it had finally happened.
"Or something. So far, he's the most suspicious of the lot - not as the murderer, though. Something else."
"You're suspicious of his not-murdering activities?" Gayle asked, genuinely baffled, but realizing almost immediately that it probably sounded like sarcasm in Factor's current state of mind.
"I'm suspicious of his tailor," Factor complained.
"Who wouldn't be?" Gayle said agreeably. "So come on, what happened then?"
"Okay, so you called right after that guy. Then, there was another pissed-off guy. I know, I'm a detective, I'm not supposed to make people like me, but it's really annoying when everyone you need to talk to has to be talked down before you can get through to them. Anyway. This guy was... damn, I dunno. He was like Mr. Tinkerly, that tutor you had growing up?"
"Oh, no. Seriously?" Mr. Tinkerly had been the first person to make Gayle wonder if there really were aliens, or time travelers, at least, because he was impossible in the modern world.
"All arrogant and so polite it made your teeth itch - alright - my teeth itch. I expected him to whip out a neat little primer any second. Anyway, he actually knows someone called Ian, and someone called Master, but apparently they're two different people, and the latter is not to be trusted. He was shiftier than the first two, and when I actually confronted him with something really weird that he'd said, he started explaining our laws to me. He's British - I'm sure their laws are different. Oh, and I scared a rookie."
"Wha - ?"
"Couldn't be helped," Factor claimed breezily, as if it was completely irrelevant. Gayle knew she'd have to pry this story out sooner or later. "So then, the chief called. He got my name wronger than usual. And accused you of being a boy, this time."
"'Kay…"
"I still think it's an improvement over the time he thought you were his sister. He ordered me to arrest somebody, and he didn't seem to be too fussed about who I arrested for this."
Gayle snorted. "You should arrest his sister," she suggested dryly.
"Don't tempt me," Factor agreed playfully. "So, I get off the phone with the chief, I'm about to think about giving up my morals and hexing the man, when this guy just appears. He wasn't there, I swear he wasn't, and then he was, just walked out from behind a bookshelf. I'm already in a foul mood, and there's a dead body, of course, so I had the cuffs on him like... well something ridiculously fast, I'm too tired to be creative. He has the scariest eyes. I know, I know, they're perfectly normal, just exceptionally blue, but... damn. He starts arguing with me about the existential nature of coincidences and the mathematics of my name, and also whether or not I believed in the beann sidhe and whether or not he or I had heard it.
"Tell me you didn't just say 'banshee'."
"No, that's exactly what I said. He didn't, though. He went on about Clarke's Law and attributed the murder to the being or beings impersonating the howling critter. Then, I mentioned the dear departed's name, and suddenly it wasn't a perfectly natural supernatural creature any more, it was in fact Mr. Master's own doing that got him in this state. I happened to mention that for a guy who builds hospitals, doctors don't seem to get on with him, and was about to get to the bottom of it when I got interrupted by - you guessed it - another damn Doctor!"
"That's, what, four? Five? How many Doctors have you got over there?"
"Seven. So far. But I had the uniforms take the little magician down –"
"Thought he was a Doctor."
"He got out of my cuffs and conjured flowers, what else should I call him? The really weird thing - and if you tell a living soul I said this, I will deny it with my last breath - I was already starting to believe the guy. He's just... convincing or something?"
Gayle started and said absolutely nothing. There was no way she could say anything that wouldn't make Factor nervous or upset at this point. The woman adored chaos, thrived in it, and the more wild the scene, the better, up to a point. She was also a witch and believed in the supernatural or something like it – but she didn't believe it had anything to do with her. This was a major step. Gayle just waited sympathetically while Factor cleared her throat, probably straightened her dress and, more than likely, took her gun to pieces.
"Anyway. This next Doctor, they found in the middle of the sealed crime scene - just like the body, I might add, not a trace of blood on him, and the only hint he's even been in the place is the cobwebs from that spiral staircase. He apparently came down it?"
"Get me some and I'll check it," Gayle offered. "Spider silk and the polyester stuff they were using everywhere else are different. You could probably tell by feeling it."
"Was the stuff in the room with the corpse real?"
"Yes, thanks so much for reminding me."
She could hear Factor's grin. "Anyway, I gave him the same spiel I'd given everyone else: Welcome to Who's Your Body, I'm your host, Detective Factor. Then, I made the mistake of asking him to tell me everything. Apparently, it's like the truth, the whole truth, etc. You don't really want them to tell it. He gave me the definition of philanthropist, ate a jelly baby, and asked me if my corpse was married or had a beard. He also suggested that our body should be strange if it really belonged to the suspect... is it a suspect if it's suspected of having been murdered? I'm starting to sound like him. He also mentioned something that I'm almost certain I've heard of, and can't remember, and he stole my photos of the dead guy. It had to be him. I was just about to figure out the thing I couldn't remember when I got interrupted. As usual."
"By another doctor."
"Actually, no. Not yet. Seems they found out about the office manager, but I'll come back to him. I was going to call you about him, but I ran into yet another person who had no business being there. I mean it literally, this time. He called me Susan Sto Helit, if you can believe it. He is the prettiest thing..." Gayle grinned. That tone was very rare. Factor cleared her throat again and rushed along. "But never mind that. He has to have been the nuttiest in this fruitcake. I asked him if he knew what he was doing there and he gave me the weirdest birds-and-bees lecture I have ever heard. I asked him if he was smoking crack. He asked me about you."
"Me? Like forensics in general, or by name?"
"'Ms. Guessom', he said. Come to think of it, I have absolutely no idea how he knew your name. But he was like a fortune teller at a bake sale - the last thing you expect to see and completely in outer space."
"That's not the first time you've mentioned outer space. Have you actually ruled out little green men?"
"The only thing I've ruled out right now is a simple solution to any of this." She paused, there was a click, and Gayle knew her gun was back in one piece. "Oh, but let me tell you! He blames his problems with his not-a-friend Master on Brownian motion and then let it slip that the guy might be some sort of hypnotist. And I just had this thought that, wouldn't that explain how everyone seems to think they know him and no one actually does? I was about to drag that out of him, when Manor called."
"I was trying to have him call you about ID'ing the DB, but he said something about an error message."
"I was trying to call you, I promise. So I figured I'd call you, be right back, and find out more."
"As if that was going to happen."
"Yes, I was wrong. I was on my way to call you, honestly I was, when my poor rookie comes charging up to me to tell me they've arrested someone. I'd tell you all about him, but I still cannot believe... he's very convincing, all right? Oh, but he was wearing the bowtie we found on the corpse. And - get this - I have never seen anyone treat a pair of handcuffs like this before. The guy's covered in goo - not blood, ichor - and he's just sitting there like it happens to him every day, and wearing the handcuffs as casually as a pair of bracelets. I swear to you, I had a perfectly logical reason for letting him go. I promise."
"You must've, what with the big, important chief telling you to arrest somebody. Or you're afraid he'll arrest whoever's standing closest…"
"That's more likely, actually."
"Did you get me a sample of the ichor to analyze?"
"No, and you can't have one. Sorry." Gayle blinked at how quickly Factor dismissed the request. "But I really, really need you to come out here. I need a basic mental health eval on a couple of these guys and, frankly, if even one more doctor who isn't you turns up, probably on me as well."
"I've gotta see these guys," Gayle admitted. "I'd say it can't be as bad as you're describing, but you really sound like it is. But before I go, about the ID." This couldn't be a complete griping session, not when there was some solid, new information to pass on. "We found him, and your Doctors were actually right. It's not Master at all."
"That's what I was afraid of."
"I was getting ready to pester you for the actual name of his next of kin, when we got a hit in CODIS."
Factor breathed something that might have been a sigh of relief. "And?"
"Positive match for a missing person reported a week ago in Frederick, Maryland. I'd say he's no longer a John Doe, but his name is actually Jonathan Doe. Retired Navy, that's why his DNA was on file. Do you want me to send an officer to do the notification? It's not like the family can ID the body… he had a tattoo in his records, but I checked where it's supposed to be, and there's just a scar now."
"Someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure we couldn't be sure who this guy was," Factor answered. "He's the office manager here, or he was. We'd been looking for him to get all the keys to the place. Guess that's not happening."
"Guess not. And the family? Are they actually in Maryland?"
"No, his mother is the delightful Mrs. Antoinette Doe. I'm sure you remember her? She comes by your office from time to time, asking you all the details about specific dead bodies."
Gayle grimaced, suddenly making the connection. "The crazy doll lady? Hang on." Her computer hadn't gone to sleep yet, was just running the screen saver. "I can't figure out…" She trailed off as the program she needed came up and she rapidly tapped out the relevant number in the relevant boxes. "His address was in Maryland 'til three years ago... looks like he moved back in with Mom then?"
"Yep, and Mom's a nut job. She always wanted someone to make her dolls that looked like real people – but dead ones. And from what I understand, she and junior did not get along at all. I'll send Maynard in a little while. He'll hate me forever, it'll be so worth it. Is that everything?"
Gayle paused, then her eyes fell on the open file with the crime scene photos still showing. "I still can't get my head around the scene. I mean, going back over the photos and all, there's no explanation I can think of for how Doe ended up in that room."
"I know. Or how anyone managed to find that room and put a body in the middle of it without disturbing what's got to be years and years of dust. It doesn't look like anyone's been in there before today, and even then, it's like the guy was beamed in."
"That's it!" Gayle announced. "You cracked the case!"
The two roommates shared a calming moment of mutual humor, and then Gayle sobered and cleared her throat.
"And we still don't know what's up with Master, do we? Is he a suspect, now? Or are we waiting for a ransom note or something?"
"Well, if these Doctor guys are right, we're looking for an alien deathray and a plot to take over the world. I'm going back to question them, see how all this started. Get here as soon as you can."
To be continued...
