Click. Clack. Click. Clack.
Mello is no computer genius like Matt- he is slower, less adept and (most importantly) far less interested in codes and systems - but he is a decent hacker, and while Matt wheedles with professors to borrow equipment, he sits, hacking into the Eynsham police system and collecting their data on the victim.
Sam Elborn. Seventeen, not quite finished with high school and sixth form. Never to finish. Birthday: August 3rd. Cause of death: exsanguination.
He was all over the newspapers, now, the attention that had eluded the shy boy in life now suddenly thrust upon him in death. Already, the tabloids were proclaiming it another Zodiac murder; already, there were speculations, whispers, rumors on the competence and trustworthiness of the police. Fear was already begin to seep.
Frankly, though, Mello didn't care.
This was, after all, his case, and if some deluded psychopath decided to try and kill him, let him try. Mello would rip him from limb to limb -
Well. He'd try to capture him first, of course.
So Mello types. And waits.
Matt comes in long past ten, goggles askew and circles beneath his eyes. Throwing his keys onto the kitchen counter, he flops onto the couch next to Mello and closes his eyes.
"Chinese?" he asks, without opening his eyes.
"Yeah," Mello replied. "There's chow mein left, help yourself."
"Thanks."
"Don't. I used your credit card."
"Well, yeah," Matt said, rolling his eyes as he walked over to the kitchen table, "I kind of expected that."
They were silent for a while, Matt quietly eating his noodles while Mello typed.
"How was the analysis?" Mello asked, finally closing the laptop and glancing at Matt.
"A bitch. You don't know what I had offer Gregor to make him leave me alone in a room with his precious machines."
"Skip the bitching, Matt. What'd you get?"
"Well," Matt said, slowly putting his takeout down and leaning forward on his elbows on the kitchen counter, "the usual. Blood, cotton, skin cells, and -"
"And?"
"On one of the scraps of the kid's shirt, a touch of lipstick. Just like the other case. You know the one. Jacqueline the Ripper." The mysterious murderess (murderer?) of Oxfordshire whose lipstick mingled with the blood of her victims, as though she were planting kisses on the wounds of her victims. "Have the Eynsham people figured it out yet?"
"What do you expect? They're looking for Zodiac, not a crazed chick who likes to remind people of her fashion sense. Incompetent as Near's lackeys. 'Sides, they haven't even gotten around to investigating the body yet - procedures and all and they're still too focused on the note."
"Yeah. It's a new one, isn't it?"
"Yeah." Mello is silent for a while before continuing. "It's not her."
"No?"
"No. It looks too much like him - like B. Whoever it was is connected somehow with him. And B wasn't obvious." He was, after all, a Wammy child, even if he was currently held in a prison with concrete walls four feet thick.
"Or it could be another insane psychopath just imitating B."
"No," Mello said slowly, "it's not. And it's not Jacqueline either."
"Oh. Right. Mello senses. Then she's a pawn. Or she is Zodiac, and this is just another taunt."
Mello nodded. "Or Zodiac's trying to frame her."
"Great. So we just eenie meenie miney moe and choose which one she is?"
Mello threw a pillow at Matt. Which, in retrospect, wasn't such a good idea. Chinese takeout flew into the air, splattering the air with oil and stir-fried rice.
"Mello," Matt said, picking pieces of crab rangoon out of his hair, "you are cleaning this up."
Mello ignored him.
"And the notes - four shootings, four of the same notes, one very obvious murder and a different note. And in the B murders, four was the arc number - one and three, two and two. And there are twelve signs of the zodiac, so that means three cycles of four - each one with a different type of note. Three cycles for B's three victims. And then there's the question of Eynsham - Eynsham, when all the other killings have been taking place in East of England -"
"Very interesting. You're still cleaning my place."
Mello glared at him. Matt didn't even blink, only walked over and handed Mello a mop.
"We need to investigate," Mello said, tossing the mop onto the jaundice-colored carpet, "find out this Jacqueline is, see if he or she or whoever has any connection to B. Then we'll need to look at the notes - analyze them, read them left to right, up and down. B left messages. And then -"
"First though, Sherlock," said Matt, firmly placing the mop in Mello's hands, "we're cleaning this place up. C'mon," he said, his eyes softening a little, "we'll go out for some two a.m. ice cream afterwards