Known Associates

by Halfpenny

If Richard had to put his finger on it, it was more like he was a costly experiment Conan was expecting something specific from, and he wasn't delivering very promising results.

6. Chapter 6

It'd taken around twenty years for Richard to diagram his oh shit sensation, which was to say that it'd taken around twenty years for him to witness a train wreck from start to finish on security footage. Train wrecks weren't so much the oh shit at the end as they were a culmination of accumulating oh shits along the way. No train autonomously decided to fuck itself against an unyielding surface. Faulty signals, neglected infrastructure, a conductor asleep at the controls: once failure gained enough momentum, there really wasn't a whole lot to do at that point but throw the brakes and try to aim the splatter downwind.

Richard tried and failed to light his cigarette nine times over the wreckage of his takeout before he understood how much momentum his oh shit had gathered under his skin. It was too late to self-medicate with aerobics channel boobs. He slammed his toes against the chair leg and nearly projectile-vomited his own boobs out the window trying to grab fresh air, and all in all this was probably a good refresher on the evils of momentum. Trains didn't crash if they didn't move. His mistake had been leaving his office and opening himself up to derailment.

Rachel called the agency's landline from school near noon. He let the first call fall to voicemail because he had detective things to do and then answered the second call because he wasn't doing detective things and she could smell incompetence from tremendous distances. "I don't prostitute myself on weekends for your tuition just for you to skip class," Richard said.

"Gross. And it's lunch right now." Rachel sounded breathless. There was some unidentifiable murmur behind her along with what sounded like a printer choking on its paper. "How are you doing? Did you eat yet? There's extra fried dumplings in the fridge if you're hungry."

"Beer and pocket lint is closer. Where are you? What are you doing?"

"I'm in the guidance office. They let me use the phone."

"Did you get arrested?" he frowned.

"What?"

"You need me to come bail you out?"

"Dad, the guidance office isn't jail," Rachel said. "I know it was for you when you went to school, but I don't start brawls in the cafeteria over ketchup and soy sauce. I'm just checking in to make sure everything's okay and that you're behaving yourself over there."

"Right," he said. "Because that's a normal thing normal daughters do with their thirty-three year-old fathers."

"You're thirty-seven, and normal daughters don't have to watch their fathers get assassinated with wire," Rachel said. "Did everything go well at the police station? Conan said that was probably where you'd went this morning. Did Inspector Meguire give you a ride home, or were you out in the rain that whole time?"

The teriyaki sauce was a pungent snot-stain in its container. Richard had been supine on the floor for forty-six minutes and was just now starting to remember what body autonomy looked like. He was vaguely aware of having left a cigarette burning unattended somewhere, but since nothing was on fire he assumed he'd either survived his negligence or had died and entered the cosmos' most unimaginative purgatory. "Dad?" Rachel's tension immediately jumped several audible notches. "Dad, are you there?"

"How did Conan know I was at the station?"

"Huh?"

"I didn't tell either of you where I was going. How did he know that's where I'd went?"

"Oh, Dad, I don't know. Does it matter? He probably just took a lucky guess the way he always does." Rachel's voice grew distant for a moment. Richard could hear faint voices on the other end. "Did Inspector Meguire say you were done giving witness statements?"

"Says I might have to testify eventually but not to lose sleep over it."

"That's good, then, isn't it? Maybe there's enough on Maya that the police won't need anything else from you. It looked like she'd been doing that job for a long time before she got to you."

"Could be."

The voices murmured again. This time he heard Rachel answer before coming back. "Sorry, I have to go," she said. "I have karate club after school, but afterwards I'll be right home to cook dinner, okay? There's a sale on beef and I want to make a hotpot, so make sure you're there."

"You wanna really save money on meat, how about I just nab one of the squirrels that've been digging in our trash. We'll send the tail as a keychain to your mother."

"Gross," Rachel sighed. "Bye, Dad. I love you. Okay?"

"More than squirrel meat, right?"

"Yes, Dad. Much more than squirrel meat."

He hung up and turned over and massaged his forehead against the trail-worn carpet until senses slotted back together in his head. By the time the nausea finally hit, nearly an hour after the fact, his fingers had regained enough sensation to hold onto the trash can he was decorating.

He hauled himself up to ease his back against his desk and this time managed to light a cigarette. He worked himself through two at a steady clip, watching the ceiling fan maypole the ribbons of smoke.

By the third he'd successfully pried himself off the floor. He washed out the garbage can in the bathroom sink and jimmied the agency's window up higher to share his narcotic hypertension with some pigeons. His desk was still in disarray from his earlier flight response; mind occupied, he distractedly spent a moment dumping nonessential paperwork into his largest filing drawer and clearing the space so he could lower himself into it.

He hadn't realized quite which level of security alert he'd reached in his head until his dog-eared notepad was open in front of him and his notes were compiled, and at that point Richard was forced to confront the least convenient truth about himself: seven years of competence made bad bookends with sloth-induced incompetence. The fact was he had resources. Worse, he had the experience to know how to leverage those resources.

He stared at the list of pros and cons until the bullet points became projectiles. He picked up the phone receiver four times and the fifth time held it so long the dial tone shut off. Conan's official yearbook photo had been sent home with him two weeks ago. Rachel had bought a frame and had set it up on the bookshelf next to the pictures of her maternal grandparents and the collection of photos Richard had taken during their last family trip to the beach. Richard had caught Conan looking at it several times with the same intense appraisal museum curators looked at portraits of dead monarchs. The kid only laughed it off when confronted. My glasses take up half the shot.

Richard set the phone down. He massaged his mouth with his thumb and then bit at the smoke folded into the grooves. On Tuesday Conan had tripped so hard climbing up the stairs to the agency that he'd bled through the knee of his trousers. Richard had plopped him on the seat of the toilet and had knelt to attend to the biohazard as Conan leaked theatrical fake tears. What hadn't been fake was the way Conan's hand had flinched unintentionally to Richard's shoulder as the sting of the alcohol had set in, as if to physically push the honesty of pain away from himself, and that reaction – literally the only candor Richard had rescued from the kid's eternal sea of undulating horseshit that past week – had made something skitter in him like static.

Richard came around to it all with the swooping dread of a cancer diagnosis. He didn't want Conan gone so much as he just wanted Conan to stop waving foreign flags and unify with their territory so Richard could start taxing him properly. Richard invested in Rachel because he owed it to her to invest in her. Loving her wasn't a risk. Coming to give a shit about someone else's kid, knowing there was probably an expiration date for that investment of time and money and energy, was leaning voluntarily into a knife and hoping the universe didn't sneeze hard enough one day to shove him onto it.

He scheduled up his angle of attack for the day before shifting his attention onto things that didn't make him ralph into trash cans. He faxed over the invoice for Desner Enterprises' latest slew of employee background checks and sealed up the files, then called up the executive of Gorse Food Services and quoted the projected cost of booking Richard a room in the same hotel where the executive's wife was planning to fuck his business partner Saturday night. He managed to finagle in a cushion in order to use the minibar because he was a good businessman and then sweat his way through a chart of the family's personal expenses that month because he was only a good businessman with other people's money. He'd have to pick up a few more tails this next week to make sure beer and cigarettes weren't hypothetical.

He submitted to a briefcase to store his mail and several other personnel files before latching it up against impact. He hit up the bakery and hustled up a pistachio muffin to muzzle the acid rummaging around his stomach with teeth, then picked out some extra cinnamon crullers to store in the bag before snagging a taxi uptown.

He delivered the completed background checks and jiggled his leg impatiently by the sleepy gate guard until payment was brought out to him. Bakery bag in hand, briefcase in the other, he hoofed it the rest of the way uptown to duck into the suburbs flanking the fringes of New Town commerce.

His old lieutenant was kneeling before the flower bed in his front garden, wrangling bulbs up from the rain-dampened soil. He barely looked up at the squeak of hinges as Richard let himself into the front gate. "Hand me that trowel, would you?"

Richard's mouth was full. He sat the bag aside and squatted on his heels to fish the tool out from under the wheelbarrow. "Damned raccoons dug up half my tulips already," Benoit grunted. "Set three traps and all they do is piss on the things. Something in that bag better be for me."

"Consultation fee." Richard handed the crullers over and watched Benoit tear into the bag without regard for his dirt-streaked fingers. "Is this a bad time?"

"Hetty's got her 'famous beet and potato casserole' mutating in the oven again, so I'm mostly just out here trying to have a heart attack before dinner. What brings you to this neck of town?"

"I'm flattered you're interested in my practice, but it's all very hush-hush. I'm sure you understand the need for discretion. Now that I'm a mainstream attraction, nobody can get enough of the famous Richard Moore, Ace Detective."

"Background checks, then." Benoit's laugh was dusty and genuine, angled down into the upturned dirt. He shoved half the cruller into his mouth and chewed as he worked. "That's the glamorous life of a PI for you. Joseph said you might make your way over here eventually. Should've known you'd turn up without a call ahead."

"He's already talked to you?"

"Just gave me the broad strokes. Says you've got some foster kid staying with you that you're trying to keep out of the system. Gotta say, I didn't think you had it in you. I didn't take you for a soft touch when you were on the force."

Richard's legs were already aching. He stood and pulled over a plastic patio chair to fold himself into it, trying to preserve the warmth he'd generated during his walk. "I've been out of the loop for a long time, kid," Benoit said. "I already told Joseph I'm probably not going to be able to get you what you want. You're better hitting up Diaz in Records."

"Eva's already using her resources to try to track down his family and I've got someone in HR sniffing around the missing children cases to try to get a lead. I don't want to turn any more heads at the station than I have to." Richard dug into his briefcase and produced the photograph from one of the personnel files he'd packed in before he'd left. He held it out. "Do you recognize this man?"

"Hershel Agasa," Benoit said dryly, eyes flickering over it. "What'd he blow up this time?"

"Nothing today. Says he's some kind of relation to the kid."

"Not much family resemblance."

"They're both pains in the ass," Richard said. "What I don't have a bead on is whether or not the pain-in-the-ass part is from genes or osmosis."

"If Agasa's his acting guardian, do yourself a favor and stop hunting. Parents duck out all the time, Dick. System's got a thousand kids a day who don't know where their meal is coming from and about twenty welfare operatives burning their candles at both ends trying to mop up what parents drop. The station's not going to prioritize a case like this over those others, especially if the kid's with someone the department trusts."

"Rachel's been visiting Agasa with Kudo since they were barely out of diapers. He never mentioned having a family or had any of them over."

"Man's a public health hazard but he isn't a nut-job," Benoit said. "Chances are he hooked up at some point in his life. Maybe the kid's parents are overseas."

"Great, except their genetic byproduct is living in my house," Richard said. "Meguire says he's on borrowed time and I don't want my daughter snotting all over me when they finally nab him up for being a runaway. If I can at least prove he's who he says he is and can pull a tether from somewhere, I can control the fallout."

"Why not ask the old man directly?"

"He's been dodging my calls for weeks. Every time I head over there he gives me some excuse on his security monitor and tells me he'll get back to me."

Benoit squinted at him. He'd braced his forearm over his knee as he sank back on his heels. "You're real wound up about this."

"Not wound up. Just tired of being jerked around."

"But not tired enough to put a kibosh on it."

Richard silently thumbed the streaks of dirt from the trowel's handle off his palm.

Benoit sighed. He himself up with another expressive grunt and disappeared around the corner, returning with two beers in either hand.

Richard accepted the offering, sliding his ankle up across his knee and scratching up the tab on the can until it popped free. Benoit pulled up his own garden chair with a rickety cacophony of cheap plastic and tired bones. "Cheers," he said.

Richard knocked the can against his. Benoit was silent for a long time, companionable and contemplative, scratching his ankle with the heel of his boot as he observed the pockmarked progress of his garden.

He said abruptly, "You remember that operation we ran out on the docks in District 6? The drug ring we busted from that tip we got in Salone's Tavern?"

"That was right before you retired, right? I think I was around four years in at that point."

"That scoop made its rounds in the news for almost a month after that. I figured that was as good a swan song as any."

"I still have the scar above my knee where one of their dogs took a chunk out of me," Richard admitted, tapping the can over the spot through the fabric. "Eva wouldn't let me live it down for weeks. 'You can dodge a bullet point-blank but you can't stop Fido from getting a taste?'"

"You could shoot the balls off a termite back then," Benoit said. "Uncanniest fucking aim I'd seen in thirty years. I was one of the ones who pulled for you, you know – back when that shit went down with Murakami and Eva. I'm sorry I couldn't do more for you."

The brief warmth he'd leached from the alcohol faded. Richard blinked out at the crapsack world beyond the heap of dormant tulip buds and wondered at which point he'd lost the will to fight for it. Somewhere between the bullet that had ended one career and the divorce that had launched another. "It's in the past."

"Yeah well, that's the thing about shit: someone somewhere is always making more. I just want you to know I'm pulling for you. Then and now. You pulled some real bullheaded crap sometimes, but I always knew you meant well. I'll tug on some old ties, look into Agasa. Don't expect results right away, but I'll patch through what I do get."

Richard let his breath out over the can. He hadn't realized he'd been tense over it. "Thank you."

"Agasa's been orbiting in and out of the police periphery for decades now for consultation. It shouldn't be too much trouble to find someone to dig up dirt on him." Benoit looked up again briefly, squinting against the metallic sheen of the sky. "Got anything else in your grill that needs scraping?"

"No, that should do it."

"Looks like the rain's about to start up again. You want in? I can fix you up some coffee for the road."

"Got another beer?" Richard said hopefully, and Benoit shook his head but emerged from his utility shed with a second can that he tossed at Richard's forehead. Richard's Judo had it spiraling off into the flower bed. "Thanks for the invite, but I should get going," Richard said apologetically as he fished it up out of a tulip hole. "I've got some more noise to wrap up at the office before my kid comes home."

"Lemme call you a cab then." Benoit gathered Richard's empty can from his chair. "Drop by again sometime. Hetty and I want to have you and Joseph over for a barbecue once the weather warms up. Bring the kids and a side dish and I'll call up my cousin to bring up the good stuff from the brewery."

Still feeling a little road-rashed by unwanted detours, Richard perked up at this as he popped the tab on the can. "Isn't he the one that brought that twenty year-old bottle of Macallan for your retirement party?"

"That's the one. He's co-owner now, can you believe it? Broadened the umbrella and is trying to make vodka. Tastes like squirrel sweat but they're getting there. I'm hoping they have something viable by next year."

"He still have that hot younger cousin?"

"Yeah, and she's still getting more action with women than you do." Benoit's laugh ricocheted around the side of the house as he disappeared. "Wait there and don't break anything trying to solve it too hard."

Richard spent the cab ride back in a state of minor fugue as Beika smeared beyond the window in rain-soaked pastels. For the hell of it, because he wasn't nearly buzzed enough to let it go, he took out Agasa's photo and Conan's photo and did a side by side comparison. Phenotypically they had about as much in common as a radish and rottweiler but it wasn't the point. The point was that someone somewhere was roundly fucking with him. Discovering the roots of his existential harassment wouldn't necessarily stop it but it'd give it a name. There was a lot he was willing to deal with drunk and a lot less he was willing to deal with sober. Names meant timelines. Timelines meant finish lines.

He looked at Conan's photo so long that the edges began to blur. He was about to put it away and stopped. There was a small glint on Conan's glasses from the camera's flash, but his eyes were clear underneath the shine. Whether or not he was a cute kid was debatable. He had a pasty fat head on a skinny neck and unnaturally round ears that his hair wasn't long enough to hide. There'd been mixed heritage somewhere up the line: his eyes were a deep-water tint muddy enough to pass for brown in indirect light.

Richard leaned onto his hip and scraped his wallet out from his back pocket. He flipped open to the yellowed plastic sleeves and thumbed through them until he came across the photo of Rachel and Jimmy playing with the Peterson's dog under the sprinklers. Rachel had screamed herself hoarse with delight that afternoon and Jimmy had annoyed everyone in earshot with little-known facts about German Shepherds and Alsatian Dogs and how they were actually the same until Jack had sideswept him onto his ass chasing after a butterfly. Both kids were red-faced with laughter in the picture.

Richard propped his elbow on the door sill and crooked his forefinger to hold his cheek. He looked at it until the edges blurred again, until nothing was left but blue, until nothing was left but the wide, fearless smile.

---

.

The pretty dark-haired woman standing outside the agency had a leather satchel and an armful of files tucked into the crook of her elbow. Her umbrella was propped between her wrist and shoulder as she cranked her head back to intently study the agency's windows. She turned when she saw Richard pull up in the taxi, expression relaxing as she appeared to recognize him. "There you are."

"Hello," Richard said, famous and delectable from most angles. He shoved a fistful of cash against the driver's head until it was snatched out of his hand and then narrowly managed not to shut his coat sleeve in the car door as it pulled away. "I must say, you look a bit lost, miss. You're in luck – I happen to know a very competent, reputable, and devilishly handsome detective in the area that specializes in guiding wayward hearts."

"No, I'm definitely at the right place," she said dryly, but her smile was tolerant as her sharp eyes flickered up and down to take him in. "I called earlier and left a message, but I see now you were out. I'm sorry for dropping by unannounced. I don't suppose you remember me."

"How could I forget?" He'd forgotten. His jacket had long since been sacrificed to cover his briefcase, so he shifted his weight to a more appealing angle and tried not to shiver as rain sluiced anew down his collar. "If you are looking for the world famous detective Richard Moore, you've indeed come to the right place. Care for an exclusive tour of the agency? It won't do to have a beautiful young woman like yourself stuck out in the cold, after all."

"Are you sure? You just came home. I really don't want to impose."

"The Moore Detective Agency is always open for damsels in distress. There's no such thing as taking a day off from justice."

"Well, in that case." The woman cocked her head a little and this time offered a smile that dimpled. "I'm Conan's teacher, Sumie Takara. We met a month ago when we were discussing Conan's placement in the school. If you've got a moment, I wanted to check in with you regarding his performance in class."

His libido suffered a gruesome death. Weirdly, his first reaction was to check his watch. It was nearly four, which meant that Rachel was still knocking snot out of faucets over at karate practice. Conan was MIA, but Richard suspected that was deliberate. Conan was far too street-smart to come home without Rachel there to referee. "If this is a bad time, I can try to schedule in another visit," Sumie said into the pause.

"No, of course not." He shook out his keys and mentally realigned himself. She would've had to have come here directly from work in order to make it here this quickly. Home visits were standard for the district and for a school of Titan Elementary's reputation especially, but for her to have made the trip without being sure he was here first meant that whatever problem she had with Conan was piped pretty firmly up her craw. Richard paused with the key in the lock. "He didn't kill anybody, did he?"

"He barely comes up to my knee."

"Short people can kill too. They just have higher to climb."

"I think there should be lawyers present before I answer these questions," Sumie said.

He didn't have lawyers but he did have tea. He let her into the agency and briefly excused himself to change out of his shirt, thumping back down to fire up the hotplate for her. There were seven flashing messages on the agency's voice mail that he presumed were probably ten percent related to detective things and two hundred percent Eva's spawn shrilly nanny-goating him from across town. "Do you have a preference?" Richard asked Sumie as he accessed the tea drawer under the plate.

"I'll take whatever you're having, thank you."

He chose a lemon turmeric mix and heroically managed not to burn the shit out of his knuckles when his tremors redirected the stream of water over the mug. Sumie made herself at home on the opposite end of the coffee table with the ease of a woman hundreds of conferences into her career. She accepted the tea from Richard and settled herself blissfully into the steam. "This is lifesaving," she sighed. "There's nothing like hot tea on a cold rainy day. Thank you again."

"My daughter picks them out. She knows more about tea than I do."

"Rachel, right? Conan speaks about her a lot."

"Conan speaks about everything a lot," Richard said. "Listen, if this visit is anything about his massive yawp and finding a muzzle that fits it, I'd have sprung for one earlier if it weren't illegal in all of the precincts I checked."

She huffed out a startled, genuine laugh across the surface of her tea. "Mr. Moore—"

"Richard, please." There was too much larceny in him to resist picking that lock but not enough liquor in him to actually open it.

"Richard. I want you to know I'm not here today to complain about Conan. At all. To be honest…" The tip of Sumie's tongue came up briefly to wet her upper lip as she visibly weighed her approach. "Well, to get right down to it, I've noticed some things about him that I wanted to bring to your attention. I wasn't sure how transparent he was here at home about his progress at school."

"Rachel puts the screws to him sometimes if she thinks he's hiding something big, but as long as he does his homework I don't really ask."

"Does he ever volunteer information to you?"

"Who did he kill?" Richard wanted to know.

"No one yet. And nothing's wrong – at least, not academically. And actually…" Sumie set her tea aside and reached into her briefcase. "I was going to save this for the scheduled visit next month, but while I'm here I might as well make you aware of them now. I think it'll help explain things."

"Is whatever this is causing a problem in class?"

"No. If anything, I'd say Conan is… abnormally composed. I won't say he doesn't attract his share of schoolyard trouble, but it's because he carries himself so differently than his peers, not because he does anything to provoke them."

Richard could name, off the top of his head, fourteen different ways Conan had provoked him just since last Sunday. Most of it was verbal needling but some of it was Conan just straight-up climbing into Richard's business like a thirsty sand-encrusted spider crab. Conan made dissent a performance art. "You sure? You really don't have to be nice."

"I'm not. Really, I think showing at this point is better than telling."

Richard watched her pull out two nondescript folders to lay them out side by side on the coffee table. The old labels were scratched out in pen on the tabs. "I've copied these and removed the names for student privacy," Sumie said, opening them both so the assignments were in view. "If you have the time, I want to show you a comparison."

"What am I looking at?"

"These are the late autumn benchmarks we use to test the student's aptitude in writing. It's designed to feel like a creative exercise, but we're scoring them based on their penmanship and reading comprehension. In first grade we're not really looking at spelling – we're mostly concerned about punctuation and whether or not they're processing the question we're asking them."

"Didn't score high?"

"Oh, god, no. The opposite." Sumie tapped the left one first and then the right. "This one is a typical first grade response from a student a few years ago that we use as an example. This one is Conan's. The reason I bring it up is to impress upon you just how far Conan is from benchmark."

Richard glanced at her to secure her nod of permission before plucking up the left sample. "The prompt is 'my parents drop me off at school one day, but they forget it's a holiday and I'm left all alone inside the school; what do I do'," Sumie said. "Read that one first."

Richard tilted it towards the natural light from the window.

.

'My Day At School'

If my parints droppd me off at scool and ther was nowone ther, I will feel very scard! But then may be I wood go in to the class room and I wood pritend to be the teecher I cood give a lessin and give out homworck and then evry budy wood have to do it even tho they and I wood make it fun tho. Then I may be wood run arond the halls and yell cus I am not sposed to do that and no budy wood

.

"It cuts off," Richard said.

"They're timed," Sumie said. "Now look at Conan's."

Richard picked up the other paper.

.

'My Day at School'

If my parents dropped me off at school when it was actually a holiday, and I let them do that, it'd be my fault for not checking the school calendar. Either way I wouldn't be surprised because that would be just like my mother to forget that sort of thing. She'd have most likely dropped her own copy of the school calendar into the sink or the toilet where most of her official documents seem to end up after her second glass of wine at dinner. As for being inside the school, the front gates would be locked, so it's not like I'd be able to get in anyway. That leaves either panhandling for cab fare or hitchhiking on somebody's bumper with my skateboard and hoping they don't stop too fast at the red lights.

.

"What's with the prompt?" Richard said, bypassing the avalanche of psychological issues for more pressing natural disasters. "Half the kids take the train by themselves anyway. It wouldn't be that big of a deal."

"To us, no," Sumie said. "We're adults and process these questions differently. These kids are only a few months out of kindergarten. If you ask a child this question, they'll invariably translate it into 'what can I get away with with no adults around?' I'd say all but two or three of the responses I got from my class involved what mischief they'd get into if left unchecked. It's just the way a child's brain works."

"I don't know," Richard said. "I mean, the spelling's impressive, but Rachel's friend used to write like this when he was in first grade. The kid binges true crime documentaries. He probably soaked up some of that vocabulary from there."

"Here's the other one." Sumie pulled out another folder and again set out two sheets next to each other. "This one was from a week ago. Read the left one first. The prompt was 'The Best Day Off Ever'."

Richard picked it up.

.

'The Best Day Off Ever'

If I was suposed to go to school but we had a day off it would be relly cool. I wold do watever I want! I wold go to the arcade and mabbe call som of my frends and there moms. would let them go even thoo they had to study cause it wold be the BEST DAY EVER we wold go to the Park and eat Ice-crème! and then we would go to the store and by lots of things like candy or more Ice-creme yum I wold have lots and lots. And after mabbe we would go to the oshin and pretend to

.

"Now Conan's," Sumie said.

.

'The Best Day Off Ever'

If I had a day off, I'd probably use it to sleep. Uncle snores, so every night is a lot like trying to sleep next to a moving freight train. The kids Amy, Mitch, and George would probably drag me out to do something around eleven or so with something they'd promise me wasn't time-consuming but that ends up taking half the day anyway. With luck I would wrap up the wacky hijinks and be home around five in the evening. I'd say I'd read or something by then, but chances are Rachel will need help in the kitchen because Uncle not only snores like a freight train, he's got the stomach the size of a cargo hold. So there goes the rest of my day. I might be able to squeeze in some reading if I multi-task, but I'm thinking at this point that my day off would already be decided for me, making it not a day off. Actually, I think school would be less stressful. I'll just go wait there.

.

"… yeah, I see your point," Richard said.

"If I thought Conan was performing to his full potential and this was deliberate showing off, I wouldn't really think much of it, but if anything I feel he's under-performing… kind of badly," Sumie said. "I think he's so smart that he doesn't understand how much he reveals of himself even when he's trying to do poorly on purpose. It gets even worse if he thinks I'm noticing him more than the others. I've more or less learned to pretend not to see how far advanced he is so he doesn't actively sabotage himself in order to fit in."

"It's not that I don't see what you're getting at, but I'm not sure what you want me to do about it," Richard said. "I don't know what kind of schooling he got before he came here. If he's not being a problem, I say just reel him out and let the kid do what he wants. He probably doesn't want to stand out any more than he has to. He's living with a world famous detective, after all – hell, he's probably soaking up that genius from me. I should charge him for the rights."

"There's another reason I wanted to check in with you." Sumie gathered the papers back up. She pulled out a newspaper clipping and passed it over. "Do you ever talk about this with him?"

Richard took it. Four monochromatic smiles sunshone up at him as Conan and his friends held up their medals of bravery. The headline read Junior detectives foil masked burglars' heist. "Amy has written about the night they spent at that store several times in her daily journal," Sumie said. "She refers to it as 'The Case of the Hijacked Department Store'. They're very involved in their detective club. When I ask her about it, she insists that Conan is their leader and that they follow him to 'solve crime'. Whenever I ask him about their activities, he pretends not to know what I'm talking about."

"Sounds about par for the course."

"So he doesn't talk to you about it either?"

Richard gave a wayward flick of his knuckle not strictly intended to be dismissive. She seemed to pick up on this and made a thoughtful noise as she worked on her tea. "I'm worried about how much Conan is suppressing," she confessed. "I obviously don't… want to disclose too much about the other children in the club, but I think it's worth mentioning that they've apparently exhibited signs of stress at home. I think during the day it's easier to forget the scary parts of their adventures, but at night it comes back to them. There have been nightmares. Apparently Amy also had an… incident of being accidentally locked in a trunk of a car when they were 'investigating' one of their cases. When I asked Conan to confirm what she'd written in her daily journal, he admitted that it happened but wouldn't go into any details. Her parents were already aware of it."

He could feel the pulsating promise of an aneurysm. "This is news to you, I take it," Sumie said.

Richard tallied how many mean things his wife would say about him at his funeral if he got medicinally drunk enough to fall out the window and die in front of Conan's teacher. So far this day had mostly been comprised of people fencing him in with road signs and then directing unwanted psychological traffic directly up his ass. Help him keep his head down. Meguire had publicly congratulated the kids over the department store incident and then in private had leapt down Richard's throat and tore sixteen gaping holes in his esophagus. You want child welfare to come snatch him out of a dangerous housing assignment, this is how you do it, Moore.

Richard wasn't sure what his face was doing, but judging by the way Sumie's eyebrows were lifting towards her hairline it was probably expressive. He dug his knuckle between his eyes and mashed it in until his brain jump-started. "Look, the kid's about as transparent as a hockey puck, I'm not about to deny that," he said. "But if he's not disrupting anything, and he's keeping up with his work, does it really matter if the curriculum's not challenging him? It just means he'll get into a good high school later without having to pull any of his teeth. As far as I'm concerned, he wants to hide, let him hide. I don't really how that or some club is anything to get worked up over."

"The school requires us to keep a close eye on mid-year transfers as part of the probationary process. Conan's brilliant, but he's… stoic. There's not a lot he lets slip. All in all, the administration really only cares about his numbers," Sumie said. "That's not a secret. Schools are businesses, and Conan's achievements make Titan look very good. I'm not here because of his scores. I worry what he's suppressing is affecting him emotionally. As for the rest… I just wanted to make sure it was on your radar. That's all."

Richard kept his knuckle between his eyes.

The ringing phone ended up rescuing him. "I'm sorry to intrude on work hours," Sumie apologized, gathering up her papers. "I was just in the area and hoped to steal a minute if the agency was open to the public. Thank you so much for speaking with me on such short notice."

"Hey, it's fine. Thanks for making the trip." Richard scratched the back of his ear and went for broke as he helped her up. "You can make more, you know. The agency is always open to damsels in distress no matter what their profession. It's our corporate motto."

"Your agency is very accommodating, but I wouldn't dream of interfering with the cogs of justice," Sumie said. "I hope to see you at Conan's winter conference. I'll see myself out so you can get back to your work."

"Are you sure? There's more tea if you had anything else on your mind."

"Your phone is ringing."

Richard rescued the last scraps of his dignity by answering the phone and pretending that it was a high-profile client while an automated telemarketing ad played in his ear. Sumie warmly waved from the door, gestured towards the coffee table, and disappeared from view. Her smart shoes faded into echoes on the stairs.

Richard waited until she was out of earshot before disconnecting the phone. He ransacked a beer to wash down the taste of turmeric and sat back down to see what she'd left behind. It was a permission slip for Conan to attend a class tour of a downtown television studio and a flier dated sometime last week inviting families to an upcoming student art exhibit at the school. He checked his watch. Three weeks from yesterday. He'd seen neither of the slips from Conan and if his teacher had bothered to leave them, it meant Conan hadn't shown them to Rachel for her to sign either.

He lit and snubbed out a cigarette and changed his mind and lit another one. He bumped the table shifting his leg and watched the remaining tea in his mug shiver at the bottom.

He grabbed his jacket and went out, leaving the agency unlocked. He walked without purpose at first, letting muscle memory guide him until autopilot led him to the pachinko parlor.

He nearly went in and ended up stalling there, marinating in greasy neon lights and the smoke from two more cigarettes as the sky flashed its teeth at him between the gaps of Beika's skyline.

What do I want. He gave up. He bought a can of lemon soda from a vending machine and assaulted his taste buds with it on the way back to the agency. Rachel would be coming back any minute now to either brighten or ruin his day with karma-guided cooking. What he ultimately wanted was more time. If this was a process of gauging the fucks he had to give, he needed to erect his own goal posts so he could stop playing other peoples' games.

He snubbed out his last cigarette in the last public ashtray before taking the stairs up to the agency. Meguire was good at calling bluffs but Richard was better. There'd been a time where he'd thought he'd run out, but here he was, apparently a creature of habit. A creature of fucks to give.

---

.

Conan and Rachel arrived home together carting a passel of groceries between them that Richard hoped to god had actually been on sale so he wouldn't have to go back to selling plasma. "You've been out in the rain," she frowned immediately, hypocritical as hell as she slid off her shoes. "How long have you —oh, Dad, come on, you're shivering. And your hair is wet. You're going to catch a cold."

"I was out catching us our squirrels for dinner." Truth was he'd been rattling on and off since Benoit's yard but it was hard at this point to tell if it was actually environmental or just a personal problem. "You're late. Less looking, more cooking. Daddy's starving to death."

"You poor lamb," Rachel sighed, maybe only eighty percent sarcastic. She set her share of the groceries on the kitchen counter and then took Conan's off his hands. "Why don't you go take a bath to warm up. For that matter, have Conan go in too. I'll get everything going in here."

"I don't need a bath," Conan said, already trotting towards Richard's room with his overstuffed backpack in tow. "I'll be right back, I'm just gonna change."

"Then at least make sure to get your hair really dry," Rachel called after him, then turned a gimlet eye on Richard as she began unpacking the vegetables. "You don't have an option B. Make sure you wipe down the tub this time. I got sweaty at practice and want to wash up after dinner too without your hair in the drain."

"I don't need a bath, I'm just gonna go change."

Rachel caught his ear mid-escape with the tenderness of a trash compactor. "Bath. Or no meat in your hotpot."

Richard took a bath but not because she told him to. By the time he was out, Rachel had finished sautéing the vegetables in one pot and was now pouring the beef stock atop the cooked chunks of animal that hopefully hadn't slaughtered Richard's bank account. "That's not how you make hotpot," Richard said.

"Unless you want to wait two more hours, this is how we're making hotpot in this dojo today. No complaining." Rachel flicked the towel up over her shoulder and grunted as she extricated the largest pot from the lower cupboards. "You'll spoil your dinner," she frowned at Richard when she caught him filching a wafer from its package by the toaster. "And come to think of it, I saw you left the dumplings in the fridge. Didn't you eat today?"

"I told you pocket lint was closer."

"Dad, you can't just coast on beer and toast until dinner every day. You know what the doctor said at your last check-up."

"Are you gonna nag me all night?" Richard was honestly curious for science. "Does that run on batteries or solar power?"

"That reminds me." She braced the stirring spoon across the mouth of the pot and turned to him sternly. "You have to stop unplugging the office phone. It's really unprofessional. I plugged it back in and took down your messages for you. I left them on your work desk."

"Will you stop nagging me if I get them?"

"No," Rachel said. "Hard work is its own reward. Go take a look while I finish this up, I'm serious. It'll keep you out of trouble."

It wasn't until he'd switched his desk lamp on downstairs and sat to peruse his messages that he realized that the papers Sumie had left on the coffee table were gone. He jotted down two of the appointments for follow-up, added a phone consultation for that weekend and confirmed it with the client, then tossed the other messages into the trash so Rachel didn't get too accustomed to unpaid after-hour competence. "You get those fliers or did somebody steal them?" Richard asked her as he made his way back up.

"Oh, yeah, that's right." Rachel was setting the lid on the pot to let the stock simmer. She turned to fix him with earnest appraisal. "I saw that Ms. Takara left a message. Were those fliers from her, then? She really stopped by?"

"Earlier this afternoon. It was business hours so she didn't stay long."

"What do you think about her?"

"I dunno, between an eight and a nine. Cute rack but not enough trunk to grab onto in the shower."

"Dad." Rachel's teeth clacked together. "I meant what do you think about her as a teacher."

"How should I know?" he said, honestly baffled by her intensity. "I'm not in her class. She seemed fine. She hasn't killed him yet, so she must be doing something right."

"What did she have to say about Conan's performance in school?"

"The usual. Kid's a thug and an anarchist and headed for federal prison."

"And," Rachel prompted, too patiently.

"He's top of the class and Buddha incarnate. Look, hon, what do you expect her to say? Brat's weird. It's nothing we didn't already know."

"He's not weird, Dad," Rachel sighed, but to his surprise didn't pursue the topic any further. Her bangs were sticky with old sweat and steam; she hung her apron up on the nail and organized them out of her eyes with expert flicks of her wrist. When she turned again it was to lean around him, peering into the next room. "Conan? Are you still on the phone?"

There was a short pause. Richard heard the receiver click gently into its cradle; a moment later rapid little footfalls approached the kitchen. "Sorry, all through," Conan said. "Amy just wanted to check in about a journal assignment and sort of got to talking as usual."

"I never said you could use my phone," Richard frowned at him. "You already got your one jail call. Tender mercies cost extra."

"Rachel said I could use the phone whenever I wanted for academic purposes." Conan was already dragging his backpack over to the table and climbing up on the chair, legs flailing a bit as he reached down to pull the bag up onto the seat with him. Non-academic paraphernalia promptly emerged along with a clipboard and what looked to be an identical assortment of pens. "Is it okay if I work on some stuff here, Rachel? I've got a lot I have to get done for school."

"That's just fine. Dinner's just about ready anyway. I can do the rest myself."

Richard eyeballed the assortment. "Since when do first graders have that much homework?"

"It's a science project. Dr. Agasa is helping my group," Conan said. He'd yet to look directly at Richard that evening, unusually tense around the mouth and smudged under the eyes, but his tone remained polite. "It's due really soon, so I want to make sure I have my part done."

"Since when does Dr. Agasa run lab experiments with a bunch of two-faced snot-sprinklers?"

"Ignore him, Conan," Rachel said. "It's fine. I'll just set the table around it."

Richard's neck was itching again. Prickling under his shirt from the after-bath chill, he took a while to take Conan in. Conan was utterly focused down on his assortment, glasses low-slung on his nose. There were a half dozen strips of paper the length and width of Richard's forefinger lined out in front of him. As Richard watched, Conan pulled a tape dispenser from his backpack and taped the strips onto a sideways clipboard one by one, spacing them evenly apart. Starting with the first pen, Conan firmly scribbled a dark blob of ink on the top of the strip just under the tape. When he seemed satisfied with the mark he'd made, he capped the pen and moved onto the next one, repeating the process.

Richard waited until he was on the fifth strip before saying, "What's the project?"

Conan didn't appear to hear him. He studied the fifth pen intensely, thumbing the side, sniffing, drumming it against the table. He scribbled the dot, capped the pen, and brought the clipboard nearly flush to his face, shoving his glasses up over the bridge of his nose.

Richard was just about to either call animal control or an exorcist when Rachel announced from the kitchen, "It's done. Everybody get what they want to drink."

Conan replaced the supplies in his backpack and slid off the chair, trotting into the kitchen for his glass of milk. "This is kind of hodgepodge hotpot," Rachel confessed to the general assembly, setting the table with practiced speed before moving the pot with two hotpadded hands to the towel in the middle. "But it should still be good. Dad, how about some water?"

Richard got a beer and popped the top with a generous burp from yesteryear. "Great," Rachel sighed. "Everybody dig in. No need to thank me."

"You're the best, Rachel." Conan slid his milk up onto the table ahead of him and climbed back up. "This is gonna be super good heated up tomorrow, don't you think?"

"That's the hope. The flavors usually mesh really well overnight." Rachel looked at once bright-eyed and dead on her feet. She sank into her chair with a groan straight out of Richard's repertoire and began spooning a portion onto Conan's plate. "I can't wait to get a shower in. Practice was brutal today."

"How many mooks did you take out?" Richard wanted to know. "If it wasn't at least eight, you're fired from the agency. I don't keep slackers on payroll."

"Those mooks are my schoolmates, Dad. If I actually beat them up I'd have more to worry about than you firing me. Yes, Conan," she interrupted as Conan made a face at the leeks. "Vegetables too. You're a growing boy."

"Some scientists suggest a causal relationship between intestinal microbiota and stunted growth," Conan said. "Since we're not quite sure what causes it, and it could be caused by certain types of flora, I think it'd be really irresponsible to chomp down all these vegetables for the sake of some silly old wives' tale."

"First of all, you watch too much television. Second of all, vitamin A and K aren't wives' tales and neither is scurvy," Rachel said. "Unless you want all your grown-up teeth to fall out of your head."

"Probably make it easier to suck up to his teacher," Richard muttered, and earned a smack on the back of his head from the daughter he'd been partially responsible for bringing into this world. "What. Nobody likes a brown-noser. Especially a nerd. He should learn to be discreet with his smarts like me."

"That reminds me, Conan." Rachel dealt out her own portion and set the ladle on its ceramic tray by the pot. "I saw the fliers from Ms. Takara today. She brought them by when she did her home visit. Why didn't you tell us you had a school trip and an exhibit coming up?"

Conan froze with his mouth full. "Huh?"

"Your student art exhibit. The flier said it was coming up early next month. I really want to go to these things. You have to make sure you're remembering to tell us about them."

Richard watched a slow slideshow of expressions pass over Conan's face. Conan started chewing again. He swallowed and said, "I wasn't really hiding it. Honestly, I was just sort of planning to stay home on that day. I've already gone to the station before, so it's not like it'd be anything new."

"Really? If I remember, my trip to the station was back in first grade too. I didn't think they took class trips any earlier than that in Titan."

"It's just wasted money either way. I really don't care about going."

"Conan." Rachel leaned forward onto her elbows to study him intensely. "You know you don't have to worry about costing us money, right? We'll be happy to pay for these sorts of things. It's important that you get all the experiences at school that you can. It's your time to explore. See what it is you really like, so you can figure out what you want to be when you grow up."

Conan's eyes slid to Richard. "Isn't that right, Dad," Rachel said.

There was too much pepper on the meat but the rich flavor of the broth made up for it. He dunked it vigorously, shoved it into his mouth, and felt something in his gut slither in response. He rainchecked the sensation for future toilet bowl decoration.

"Dad," Rachel said.

"What," he mumbled, mouth full. When he looked up he realized she was crucifying him with her mother's eyeballs. "Right," he coughed, thumping his chest to help down a sliver of onion. "Whatever it is you just said."

"See?" Rachel was soothing again as she addressed Conan. "So there's no need to hide that kind of stuff from us. Understand?"

Conan nodded, albeit slowly. His eyes once again flickered to Richard.

Richard took the opportunity to avail himself of a chunk of Conan's beef. "Ms. Takara came to the agency to talk to you, then?" Conan said, ignoring the pillaging.

"What about it."

"What did she say?"

"That you're a godless sewage mutation," Richard said, at the same time Rachel said, "You're top of your class, Conan, seriously, stop listening to him. He's drunk."

"I wish they didn't do those home visits." Conan wasn't smiling. "It feels kind of invasive to me."

"Deal with it. We all had to put up with it." Richard stole another piece of beef and this time was fork-stabbed by the daughter whose survival he'd personally ensured at great expense to himself. "It's nothing I didn't already know, anyway."

"What do you already know?"

Richard tipped his plate and slurped up his remaining broth to the tune of Rachel's audible gags of despair. "Finish up, kid," he told Rachel when the plate was clean, sparing a second to pluck a final chunk of meat from the pot. "I'll do the dishes tonight."

Rachel had been eating the last bite of her potato. She now coughed around it violently, hands flying up to cover her mouth. Her eyes blinked overtop the barrier at him with horror. "What," Richard said.

Rachel swallowed with great concentration. She removed her hands, rose to her feet, and gathered Richard's face in both hands, leaning down to press her forehead against his. "Conan, send for help," she said calmly. "I think he's delirious. I'll keep him calm while you get the phone."

"You wanna know who boiled your bottles when you were still learning how to drool?" Richard asked. "Or did the laundry when your mother was busy throwing up on everything? Or mopped up the floor when you spent that year fingerpainting from your diaper? I know how to clean. Go file your nails or something."

"Dad, I can do dishes. You've worked all day."

"Go pet a cat. Read a book. Conan can do his homework at the table. We'll be fine."

Rachel's expression reflected the caution of a seasoned anti-terrorist unit. She turned to Conan. "You still have homework?"

"Yeah, sorry." Conan was scooping up the last of his broth with businesslike efficiency as he declined a role in their drama. "I hope it's okay to use the table. It'd really help to have a flat surface and Uncle's desk is covered with papers downstairs."

"Do you want to use mine?"

"It's okay, I've got everything I need out here."

"If you're sure." Rachel's eyes did flicker over him though, and Richard wondered if she was noticing what he had earlier. Conan was about as straight-shooting as alleycat piss but the avoidance was usually cheerful. Tonight saw him unusually preoccupied and terse. "Do you need any help?"

Conan opened his mouth. "Brat's fine," Richard said. He stirred and clonked Rachel on the side of the head with his empty beer can until she turned absently with twin shuto strikes to compact it between her hands. "If he can spout the word 'microbiota' he can manage first grade science on his own. Go shower. You smell."

"Rude," Rachel sighed. She hesitated a final time to chew on her upper lip. "Conan, make sure you're giving yourself lots of breaks. Don't work too hard. And if you need help, ask me or Dad, okay?"

"Thanks, but it's really not all that bad," Conan said. "Just sort of time-consuming. But I'll make sure to check in with you or Uncle if I'm stuck. I promise."

Rachel turned back to Richard. He expected more recriminations until he realized her demeanor had softened. She stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. "My eyes," she hissed dichotomously, jabbing the V of her first and second fingers towards her eyeballs and then over at his eyeballs, "are on you. I swear if you hide the dishes under the couch cushions again I'm telling Mom."

"Like I'd ever use the same hiding spot twice. I'm just gonna stick them in the vent."

She looked bewildered by his naiveté. "That's the first place the cops always look."

"That's what makes it foolproof. Nobody is dumb enough to hide things in them anymore. It's the perfect crime. You gotta think like a criminal to act like a criminal. How do you think your old man nabs so many crooks?"

"I'm washing my hair," Rachel enunciated. She was peeling her sweatshirt off in transit to her room. "No criminal plots while I'm in the shower."

"Get the itchy spot behind your ears where all the spiders live," he called after her, and relished her second gag of despair for the night. Dishes. He'd done dishes once. There was a tertiary motive involved here but he reportedly did have to involve some kind of soap.

He was just reacquainting himself with what sanitation looked like in his kitchen when the phone rang in the foyer. "Ignore it," Richard warned.

Eva's daughter ignored him as she jogged back out of her room. "Hello," she answered brightly, ducking her shoulder away to insulate the receiver from the sounds of the running faucet.

Conan had already brought his dishes to the kitchen and was back to removing the pens from his bag. The clipboard was back out alongside an unmarked vial of a clear liquid. With steady hands and unblinking concentration, he poured the liquid in a straight line atop the table and massaged it with his fingertip until it was a shallow sheen. "Uh huh," Rachel murmured by the phone. "Okay, okay. Not a problem. Just calm down. I'll be right there, okay? Try not to worry about it."

Richard plunked Rachel's dishes down into the basin of the sink and kept watching. Conan tilted the clipboard until the six strips of paper swung out from their taped border. He settled the ends against the sheen of water and held it steady as the moisture crept up the paper. "Well, there goes my shower," Rachel sighed, hanging up. "Sorry, Dad. I have to run out for a little while. Serena is panicking over her homework and needs help to prep for the test tomorrow."

Richard didn't squall but did make significant eyes at the clock. "I'll pick up diner pie on the way back," Rachel said preemptively.

"Ehhh. Give me a reason or something," Richard said. "Something that'll stand up in court and sets me up to be a good parent without pie bribes."

"She dropped her notes in a puddle and she's freaking out about the review page. She's really stuck and the library is already closed, so I was going to run over there and go over my notes with her so she can study."

Cherry pie was good and so was lemon. "You can't read her your notes over the phone?"

"I normally would if it was just a few things she had questions on, but she's really struggling. I think she'd get a lot more out of it if I was there in person."

"Curfew is something o'clock," Richard said. "Ten or something. Ten-thirty with pie."

"Eleven with pie and breakfast pie. And the satisfaction of knowing you, Father, a veteran policeman and renowned detective, raised a daughter who will honor her father's legacy and respond to a civilian's call for aid."

Damn she was good. "Ten forty-five. And three slices of pie. And don't tell your mother at your next lunch."

"Silence costs one slice. Ten forty-five, two slices."

He wasn't really looking forward to eyeballing the clock for her for the next couple of hours, but on the other hand her absence suited his purposes and there were pastries in it for him. "I'm not paying ransom if you get kidnapped before you get the pie."

"My hero," she said dryly, but kissed him soundly on the cheek again before jogging off to get her coat.

Richard chewed on the decision a bit as he collected the hotpot from the table, jamming it on the lowest shelf of the refrigerator with his foot. He waited until she'd ruffled the top of Conan's head in farewell and was tugging on her shoes at the door before going over to smack the back of her neck contemplatively with the wet dish towel. "Stop, gross," Rachel said. "I'll be careful. You don't have to worry about me, Dad. No one's going to mess with me."

"You seemed worried enough about it with me this morning."

Her face tightened. "That's different."

It was different apparently. He penciled in some paternal prosecutor's notes in his head but otherwise sat on it. "You getting paid for this?"

"No, Dad. Civilian in need, remember? Try to keep up."

"Civilians pay taxes and she's rich as Croesus. Just have their chef bake you some pie while you're there."

Rachel started to speak and stopped. She started and stopped again. "That's …" she hesitated, bit the end of her tongue lightly. "What kind."

"Whatever's the most expensive pie. Blueberry pie."

"That does sound good," she admitted, but added firmly, "but no promises. Just be happy with what I bring you."

He tossed her umbrella from the stand at her. She caught it reflexively with her knee, bounced it up to her right hand, and used her left hand to block his casual tiger claw to her forehead. "Be nice to Conan, Dad," she said sternly, holding onto his captured wrist and giving it a squeeze to emphasize the command. "I mean it. No yelling, no tears, no throwing things. Just get along until I get back."

Richard considered flicking her again with the dish towel in his other hand but knew at this point she was likely to make him eat it. "Bye-bye, Conan," Rachel called over his shoulder. "Get to bed on time tonight, okay? I'll check in on you when I come back."

Conan's affirmative response was polite and distracted. "See you later," Rachel sighed at Richard, and thumped down the stairs of the agency quickly, hoisting her backpack up on her skinny shoulders and fumbling to open her umbrella.

Richard headed back inside and on second thought switched on the TV to hide the sound of his failed interpersonal crises strategies. Conan had moved the strips of the paper off the layer of liquid and had let them once again lay flat on the clipboard. As Richard passed, he could see that the slow absorption of moisture had started to make the ink dots on top run, creating vivid blue and violet streaks that bled down the white.

The memory of Sumie's visit clung to his peripherals like a migraine. Richard reset his mechanism by seven years and let autopilot take care of the rest of the dishes, giving his brain leave to plot his strategy. It wasn't a great one. Mostly it involved speaking to Conan in decibels he didn't usually utilize and Conan actually being receptive to Richard's soft-pawed efforts not to be a complete dick. Neither had happened in recent memory and Richard didn't have a lot of wriggle room for second chances.

He slid the last plate into the strainer and mopped up the standing water on the edge of the sink before tossing the dirty towel over the faucet to deal with later. He shoved his pruned hands into his pockets and ventured out to lean his shoulder against the door frame. Conan had progressed to scribbling on a different sheet, his gaze flicking back and forth with mutant speed between his notes and the ink samples. "So," Richard said.

Conan peeled the fourth strip up and held it to the light source.

"Brat."

Conan set it back down. He thinned his lips at his data set, gaze hard and considering. He switched his pen over to his other hand to get a better angle on his notes and resumed scribbling with no discernable difficulty.

Richard reconsidered calling the exorcist. "Brat."

"Sorry, Uncle." Conan didn't look up. "I'm sort of busy and I don't really have a lot of time to talk. Can this wait?"

"What's the big rush? You said you were part of a team under Agasa, right? Can't they do some of this work?"

"I don't have a team."

"You said this was a group science experiment you were doing for school."

Conan's writing paused minutely, then started up again. "Oh, right. Sorry. Yeah, I'm sure they're working real hard too."

Richard palmed the back of his neck, slowly thumbed the sting under his ear. Seeing Conan ceaselessly rifle through his notes under lamplight brought back unexpected scraps of memory: moonless midnights combing through photographs and tagged evidence, Meguire perpendicular at his own desk with coffee-stained cuffs and the greasy carcass of his take-out container at his elbow. He watched Conan compile ink samples right out in the fucking open like Richard hadn't been a police detective for nearly a decade and somehow wouldn't recognize the lab procedure to determine the ink found on written crime scene evidence.

What do I want. Richard realized with the internal shriek of a derailing oh shits that it largely didn't matter what Conan thought of him. This was about an elementary school teacher telling Richard that a little girl had been kidnapped in the trunk of a car and that Richard's kid, the one living in the same house as his daughter, the one that swung his legs in the backseat of their taxis and crammed down hamburgers at the local grease pit and had grinned excitedly up at Richard when they'd boarded the Hannigan's cruise ship, was damaged enough to think it was okay to hide that from an adult. This was Rachel coming down to Richard's office in the middle of the night a month ago and bursting into tears after she'd hung up the call to her mother. Don't send him away, Dad. Please please don't send him away until we know why.

Conan scribbled a last note and circled the number under the fourth sample. Richard let oh shit gather steam and finally handed himself over to the fate of momentum. "Kid."

Conan was stuffing the samples back into his backpack. Richard again caught a collection of odds and ends from his vantage point: a blinking transmitter, a fishing net, a thermos with a cap like a door to a vault. "We gotta talk," Richard said.

"Sorry, Uncle." Conan's smile was a store clerk's polite detachment. He zipped his backpack and hopped down from the chair with a grunt. "I'm sort of in a hurry."

Richard started as Conan jogged for his coat. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Out. I'll be back soon."

"You're not going anywhere, it's after dark!"

"It's fine. I won't be long. I have to deliver something."

Incredulous, Richard shrugged his way off the frame. Conan was toeing on his shoes and reaching for the door handle when Richard slapped his palm against the wood, halting the door's trajectory. "Richard, I'm really in a hurry," Conan said. "Like I said, this won't take long. I just have to deliver something to Dr. Agasa."

"The old man can wait. I need to talk to you first."

"I don't have time," Conan snapped. "This is really important. You have to get out of my way."

Richard hoisted him up by his backpack. Conan snarled an inarticulate protest as he was hauled across the room, scrawny legs pedaling the air. "Let's get one thing straight," Richard said, tossing him back into the chair and jabbing a finger in his face. "My roof, my food, my money, my rules. It's a school night and I don't care what you think you have going on with Agasa, you're not leaving this apartment."

"But you don't understand!"

"Yeah? Make me understand. Go for it."

Conan's face was scarlet. His glasses had slipped down his nose. He shoved them back up with a rough flick of his fingers. "That's right, you got nothing," Richard said. "No dice. If you're done with your homework, get ready for bed so Rachel doesn't mow the grass off my ass when she gets home."

Conan wrestled out of his grip. He stumbled when he hit the floor and turned it into a quick scuttle to make distance. Richard turned and Conan spun to finish his retreat in reverse, falling to a crouch, hand flitting to his shoe.

Some grey scrap of memory in Richard's head flickered with color. He paused for a crucial second, stuck between channels.

Conan slowly straightened again, eyes on him. He backed up another deliberate step. "I'm not a kid," Conan said tightly. "I'm used to traveling on my own. I have my own transit card and I pay for it myself. I don't need your permission to use the train."

The sheer fluid amount of backsass flooded his engine. Richard stared at him, sincerely taken aback. "I'll call if I'm going to be any later than ten," Conan said, again making for the door at a ground-eating trot. "Tell Rachel if she asks that I had an errand."

Richard didn't register what was happening until the door was already open and Conan was thumping down the stairs. "Hey!" He stumbled over the chair leg in his haste, righted himself, and reached the frame in time to see Conan dart into his office downstairs.

Conan was grabbing his skateboard from where he'd propped it by the door by the time Richard caught up. He tried to duck through Richard's legs and yelped when Richard snapped his knees shut, trapping him in the vice. "Okay, look." Richard tried to navigate this shitstorm like a meteorologist. He birdwalked Conan into the room. "Just slow your roll for a second."

"I need to go!"

"Just hold on a second." For fuck's sake. Bewildered, Richard parted his knees again and dumped a squawking Conan onto the floor. He shut the door behind them and turned on the light. "What the hell is so important?" Richard frowned down at him. "You said this was a school assignment."

"I know, but—"

"Your teacher would've said something to me if it was due tomorrow. What are you freaking out for?"

Every tremor from Conan's ankles to his teeth bespoke raw animal frustration. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

"You let Rachel go out!"

"She's seventeen and the most dangerous thing on that train," Richard said. "You're a bobblehead on a toothpick and the most dangerous thing about you is your breath."

"But I can take care of myself!"

Richard leaned his weight slowly against the door. Conan's glasses came off in a swipe. He scrubbed his forearm over his eyes brutally before shoving the glasses back on. He didn't say anything else, gripping the straps of the backpack in bloodless little claws.

Richard felt something turn over in him like the rivet on a lighter. He watched Conan's jaw work, watched Conan rub his wrist, look anywhere and everywhere but him.

Richard said, "Not trying to hurt you, kid."

"I know that," Conan said immediately, crossly.

"Then what is this."

"I need to go. I can't always wait for permission to do what I need to do."

"Right," Richard said. "Because it's way better to bull-rush ahead and get some little girl kidnapped in a trunk because you're too full of yourself to rely on adults."

Every drop of color drained from Conan's complexion.

His neck was back to prickling under the hike in blood pressure. Richard abruptly felt exhausted. He leaned against the door and tried to assemble some composure that'd actually survive a stress-test. It was too late to have a civil conversation, but he had some powdered cocoa in the cupboards that wasn't ancient enough to be lethal. If he warmed up some milk he could maybe entice the kid with some halfway decent hot chocolate. This was relevant probably but wasn't the point. This wasn't the grill he'd intended to climb up into tonight.

Conan vibrated in place, flinty and focused on his shoes.

Richard pushed his way off the wood. "C'mon," he said tiredly, turning to unlock it. "It's raining. Let's go back up and I'll—"

An insect stung his neck. He slapped at it irritably and missed when his arm suddenly stopped responding to commands. He heard something hit the floor, and Beika was static between his ears.

---

.

There was a phone ringing.

Richard reared onto his elbows in time to share his dinner with the floor as the agency erupted in queasy lamp-lit fractals around him. When he attempted to get upright his compass glitched: his feet paddled on the wall and his head clunked against the welcome mat trying to steer the rest of him.

The phone was still ringing. When sharing time was over, he rolled himself away from the buffet and blindly dragged his knee up in order to reach his shoe. He managed to prize it off and was preparing to lob it when the ringing finally clicked over to voice mail.

Shoe in hand, Richard oriented himself on the dirty carpet and tried to inflate his lungs as chills rummaged up his spine. The skin on his neck felt hot and buzzed subdermally when he pressed shaking fingers to it. The window on the opposite room was opened a handsbreadth to the rain; the agency stood quiet and empty, the scent of lemon air-freshening the vomit.

His first instinct was to pass out until the world was more agreeable. He was on this side of a binge more often than he wasn't and the best response was usually just to air-dry in a corner while his liver organized his evils. It was only when he tried to shovel his beer cans out of the way to find himself an uncluttered place to put his head that the rest of his inter-cranial house lights flickered on.

The phone rang again. Richard threw his shoe at it. It ricocheted off the desk and spiraled out the window. He was supposed to be upstairs waiting up for Rachel. If he'd made the deal with the devil that he thought he remembered making, there'd be no pie in it for him if he didn't deliver on his end.

His frigid hands responded clumsily when he flailed for the door handle overhead. He tried again, tight-roping up the seam of the door, patting around until he got his mark. He used his weight to depress it, scooted it towards himself, and unceremoniously spilled out into the stairwell when the crack got wide enough.

He celebrated by sharing the rest of his dinner with the landing. When he was done, he twined his way onto his back through a snarl of spattered clothes and limbs and kicked the door shut with his heel. He beached himself there for a long time, panting, as thunder rolled around over his head.

He made a solid go at the stairs with his feet but had only one shoe, so he went up instead on his hands and knees. The door to the apartment was unlocked and yielded easily when he pushed his weight into it.

He felt his entire ancestral line hiccup at the stale scent of dinner that billowed out in the displaced air. He managed to vomit into the trash can by the door and then knock it over crawling from it anyway because that's what excellent detectives did. Uncover all the evidence. Rachel hadn't returned yet but the lamp was still wasting his money in the corner.

"Conan." He already knew the answer. His diaphragm spasmed and he clapped a hand over his mouth to close the valve. "Conan."

Conan didn't answer. His backpack was gone and so were his shoes.

Richard got to the table before his already sapped morale hit drought. He found a space on the floor and curled up while his neck prickled tight enough to knead the breath out of his neck.

He kicked off his other shoe and didn't throw this one out the window. He still had questions but there was a routine for those.

He propped his cheek atop his shoelaces, closed his eyes, and waited for his id to give him the answers.

---

.

"Dad."

A hand was running through his hair, unpeeling it from the film of sweat on his forehead. Richard swatted it.

"Dad, wake up. Dad, look at me."

"Shut up," he grunted, annoyed. Bile stung cuts in his mouth.

"Dad, how much did you drink?"

A shift of his head sent up an unexpected jolt from the faulty wiring in his neck. He bit out a startled groan as the darkness erupted into sparks. "Oh my god," Rachel breathed. "Conan, what happened."

There was a response somewhere behind her. There were deep-sea fissures in his head cavernous enough to swallow sound. "Dad, I'm going to sit you up." Rachel was working at him. "I have to see your eyes."

He let her jimmy him upright and prop him against something unyielding. The table leg. The angle of the lamp light painted interlocking matrices of color and shadows over his outstretched legs. Rachel had taken his face between her hands and was saying something that probably required his attention. "What," he said.

"Look at me." She maneuvered his face so she could peer into his eyes. "How much did you drink."

Stuck between channels with someone else yanking his antennae around, Richard wondered how he'd gotten here. It seemed like someone else's personal problem. "I know, Conan," Rachel said tersely, and Richard realized someone else had been speaking. Rachel's voice softened as she once again addressed him. "Dad, what happened."

"Fell asleep."

"On the floor?"

"Bed was too far."

"I found your shoe on the sidewalk outside." Rachel gently organized the hair out of his eyes again. "You don't smell like beer. Did you hit your head?"

His spine prickled with a million little feet. Rachel's hands were frigid and her hair was nearly black with rain. She'd gotten his coloration but her mother's eyes. Lethal lovely little combinations of everything he and Eva had loved and hated about each other, and Rachel had made them better.

Richard felt like a glitch in all of his timelines. He ceded his place in them and heard her gasp as he listed against her. "Conan, get the phone," she said. "Call an ambulance. Quickly."

"No," Richard said.

"Dad, you're going to the hospital."

"Just need sleep."

He could feel her hands quivering as she tried to remain calm for him. Richard found her wrist and settled the weight of his grip on it. "Just tired," he enunciated for Eva's very assertive deaf child. "Help me get to bed."

"Dad, what is this." Rachel was in tears. "What's going on."

He waved her aside and fumbled for leverage against the table. It wasn't until he'd prepped himself to rise when he finally spotted Conan. Conan was closer to the door, bracketed by the lamp and the glow from the stove-top light in the kitchen. He was drenched from head to toe, rain-speckled glasses hiked up over his hairline, eyes wide with horror. He was gripping his wrist so tightly Richard could see his knuckles blanch.

Richard felt the full crawl of mankind's entire evolutionary process restarting under his skin. He managed to snag the end of the table and grunted with effort as he rose. Rachel was there immediately, swiftly arresting his fall when his knees caved. "You got the pie, right," he said, blinking one eye hard before moving to the other.

"Yes I got the pie," she breathed, half-weeping, half furious. She guided his arm over her shoulders and snagged his waist before he could toddle into the lamp. "Come on. Lean on me."

She managed to steer him with the accuracy of practice, preventing him from introducing himself to any more unyielding objects. His sheets were still churned over from that morning. Rachel guided him down to the mattress, loosened his cuffs and his collar with deft flicks of her fingers, then reached down to hoist up his legs. Horizontality felt better but only barely. Richard rolled over and jammed his wrist in his mouth to prevent himself from vomiting a kidney onto his pillow. "You're drinking some water before you sleep," Rachel said, walking out. She returned with a glass she'd filled to the brim because both kids under his roof were sadists. "At least half," she insisted when he mouthed a complaint against the surface. "It looks like you… threw up a lot."

Conan had crept to the door, anchoring his lean with a hand on the frame. The lamp in the room behind him was hiding his expression under sharp contrasts. "Dad, I think I should call an ambulance," Rachel pleaded when he pulled away with a cough. "This is different. I think something's really wrong this time."

He collapsed back onto his pillow and counted the heartbeats under his ear. His thermostat was miserably batshit but he felt the chill distantly. His neck was burning enough to make him sweat. "Dad," Rachel said.

"Go away."

"Dad, no. This is serious."

"Then go away seriously." He wanted some goddamn pie but he had a feeling it'd end up where his stolen beef had. "Stop talking so loud."

She hovered above him like a neurotic wasp. He felt bad for her but mostly needed her to genuinely fuck off so he could concentrate. He set his wrist against his mouth again and summoned a decade of heavy drinking experience to organize equilibrium. He counted all the places he could feel his heartbeat under his skin and pressed his other arm against his stomach to insulate the ache.

He felt Rachel sit on the edge of his bed. He didn't stop her when she reached over to sort his hair. "I wish Mom were here," she whispered helplessly, nearly to herself. "I don't know what to do."

Pushed far out to the rusted fringes of every single one of his coping mechanisms, Richard spared a moment to flail out his hand. He brushed something that felt like maybe her nose or her ear. She took his hand in hers and held it tightly.

Richard managed to clumsily squeeze it and bring it to his face. Her hand was still cold and reeked of the sanitizer she used when she got off the train. He held it to his cheek and said, very sincerely, "Go away."

Rachel's laughter bubbled out of her like a sob. "I hate you."

"Take a shower." He worked his hand out and covered his mouth with his wrist again, breathing deeply around the obstruction. "Don't eat my pie."

She left and returned with a heavier blanket from their linen closet. It smelled like the bars of soap Eva used to store in between the sheets to perfume them. Everything haunted him peripherally. He wondered if Conan was still in the doorway or if this had finally been the impetus for him to fuck off back home. Maybe this panic was Rachel's latest Sisyphean effort to keep the last of her emotional pillars from crumbling around her repair work.

The night tumbled around him in a spin cycle of greasy smudges. He alternately roasted and froze as someone rotated compresses on his forehead, located somewhere inside the splatter of good intentions and bad directions. He thought he could hear someone on the phone before the rest of the night scrambled into friction between his ears.

---

.

Meguire sat in a stolen kitchen chair at his bedside, heels propped up on the padded seat from his office.

Richard lived but only fractionally. He spent his first waking minute in horror, cheek smashed against his pillow, feeling every bone in his body queue up to tell him where it lived. There was sunlight being julienned through the slats of his angled shades. "People are gonna think we're married," he mumbled.

"We are." Meguire didn't look up from the newspaper. "Don't talk. Every time you talk you throw up."

"I don't," Richard said, and threw the rest of his sentence up into the trash can by the bed. It was mostly water that he didn't remember drinking.

Meguire left the newspaper tented on the chair as he went to rinse the can out. He came back with another glass of water and propped Richard's empty vessel of annihilation against the headboard to help load up his next round of ammunition. "You get any more dehydrated and I'll have to admit you," Meguire said. "Try to keep this down."

Richard sank back down against his pillow and tried to find a place on it he hadn't already leaked on. "Rachel stayed home today," Meguire said. "She's pretty torn up so I didn't push her. I called in the absence. She's sleeping now."

Richard pressed the inside of his wrist against his eyes to watch all his regrets flicker in technicolor. "What the hell did you do to yourself, Richard," Meguire sighed.

"Where's Conan," Richard rasped through his throat, avoiding using his diaphragm.

Meguire was silent.

Richard was unprepared for what flooded him. He twined his fingers into the sheets by his head and tried to reframe loss in a way that didn't draw blood. Weeks of unwanted grocery expenses and extra takeout dishes and stressful teacher meetings. No sleeping bag to trip him in the dark. No collar to grab on a too-quick cross of the street.

Meguire was saying something. It was hard to breathe. Richard tuned back in. "He was in here with you overnight and went out this morning," Meguire said. "I didn't ask if he was going to school or not. He said he was stopping by Agasa's to find something that'd help settle your stomach, but I don't know when he'll be back."

The descent in him bottomed out. Richard blinked at the wall, heartbeat too quick in his ears. "Seemed pretty worried," Meguire said. "Probably be back pretty soon."

Irritation and incredulity came back with reassuring speed. Richard massaged the side of his fist between his eyes and tried to exist for a solid minute without destroying everything around him. "Want me to read you something or are you gonna pass out again?" Meguire asked.

Richard summoned a godless noise against his pillow. "Copy." There was a thump as Meguire hoisted his feet up on the chair again. "Brought the agency's phone up here so we can grab calls. Just stay off your feet for a while. Midori knows not to expect me back today."

His spine was still a swarming anthill but he no longer felt like he was going to combust. Richard breathed through his nose and tried to die gently and unobtrusively so nobody would interrupt him this time.

"Hey," Meguire said.

He lolled his head over to face him. Meguire was rattling the paper slightly: rhythmic thumps of his thumbs against the edge. He looked like he'd been dragged out of bed last night at precisely whatever o'clock Richard had told Rachel to shut up and wash off her stink. Eventually Meguire gave up subtlety and set the paper down, thumbing his eyebrows.

He said, "So can I take this to mean you've made up your mind?"

Richard's neck slithered.

"You know damn well you should've gone to a hospital. Any particular reason you didn't let Rachel call?"

The bed smelled as dead as he felt. Richard closed his eyes and thought about nothing. There was a lot to not think about.

Meguire let out his sigh very slowly. He folded the paper over to the other side, halved it, and settled in to read. "You're an idiot." It didn't sound accusing. It was almost fond.

Richard let the whisper of the newspaper fade into the background. He blinked in and out as the sun continued to change its angles on him through the slats, intermittently dazzling him and shrouding him. It didn't feel like victory but it didn't completely feel like a train wreck either. Something that splattered northward. Something that derailed in the direction of the sea.