::Author's Note::
Of course, another disclaimer, the *fine print,* if I might: I don't own Inu-Yasha and unless there's some freak accident in which the world explodes and I'm the last person left on earth, I probably never will. "Inu-Yasha" and all it's characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi. ::Bows:: No sue-ie, please.
On a totally unrelated note, I'd like to dedicate this chapter of "Fate's Ways" to the crew of The Columbia, who went down in flames over Texas on Saturday, February 1, 2003.
"When there's nothing left to say, say the obvious; God bless the Columbia."
-- John Constant
Fate's Ways
Chapter Three
"Not So Pleasant Meetings"
By Jann
"Ahrg!" Kagome called in frustration. "Hojou! Have you seen the John Doe files anywhere? I don't know what number to use!"
"Uhhnn . . ." came Hojou's faint response. "Did you try the refrigerator, under my lunch?"
"Hojou, you are dead meat!" Kagome hollered back, upon finding the exact file she had just spent over fifteen minutes looking for. She had finally given up and finished the rest of the form before restarting her search. After another ten minutes of hunting around on the ground for the missing file, she had finally thought to ask Hojou.
Hojou knew where everything was.
"Sorry?" Hojou yelled back in question.
"Sorry doesn't cut it," Kagome roared. She tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ears and spent the three seconds that it took to look up John Doe's number and quickly typed it in and sent the file to Ms. Yura.
Kagome re-entered the autopsy suite to find that Hojou had finished cleaning. He grinned sheepishly and closed the lid on the laundry bin before pushing it across the suite to the door to the hall. He opened the door and found himself face to face with two men.
"My name is Special Agent Inu-Yasha Oniiyoukai," the one on the left informed him.
"And I'm Special Agent Miroku Ash," his partner added.
"Afternoon, Agents," Hojou said humbly. "If you'll let me pass, I have to take care of this bin. Dr. Higurashi will assist you in any way she can."
Miroku and Inu-Yasha filed into the suite, allowing Hojou to make his way out, Miroku eyeing the bin skeptically. When he looked up again, though, his brows instantly furrowed. He tossed a glance at Inu-Yasha to see that his eyes had widened upon sight of Dr. Higurashi.
"Inu-Yasha," Miroku whispered. "Doesn't she look a little like Kiky --"
"Shut up, Ash."
"Sure, if that's the way you want it," Miroku said with a shrug. "Fair lady," he called across the room, instigating the stride to the other side. At risk of loosing their forensic pathologist to Miroku's insatiable drive to flirt, he followed.
The woman before him looked just like his finance.
Former. Former finance
He shook the thought from his head. It wasn't time think about Kikyou, not now, not yet. It hadn't even been a year since he'd . . . lost . . . her. It wasn't time.
"My name is Dr. Kagome Higurashi," she began. "I understand you're here about the body of the Zackow kid."
"Yeah," Miroku offered. "Kohaku. With the arrows." His face grew dark. "The P.D. didn't touch them, did they?"
Kagome raised an eyebrow. "I've got the homicide unit of the police department pretty well trained around here, Agent Ash. No one touches my bodies but me or Hojou."
"Miroku, Dr. Higurashi," he corrected with a smooth smile. Inu-Yasha overcame the urge to knock him over.
"Sure, okay," Kagome agreed.
"Uh, Kag?" Hojou called from the doorway.
Kagome looked away from the agents to her partner on the other side of the suite. He was pushing a presumably empty bin and glancing off to the left of the frame of the door nervously.
"Kagome, I think we have a . . ."
"You bitch! You're no better than those damned police officers! You and this damned Dr. Miller! I want to see my little brother!" a young woman screeched, stomping across the suite. Hojou followed her apprehensively and caught a tray of tools before it teetered off the side of the table as she stormed past.
". . . a problem," Hojou finished when he reached Kagome. He rolled the bin into the crevice beside the door into the storeroom.
The tall, dark-haired woman pushed through Agents Oniiyoukai and Ash to stand directly in front of Kagome. "I want to see my brother, gad damn you."
"Ma'am . . ." Kagome began softly.
"Don't you 'Ma'am' me!" she screamed, her eyes welling up with tears. "You listen to me! You get my brother out right now!"
"Ms. Zackow, we were about to begin the autopsy and I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave," Kagome explained gently. It wasn't the first family member they'd had and it certainly wouldn't be the last. Some raged, as the Zackow woman was doing, others didn't believe what was happening and some just sobbed onto her or Hojou's shoulder.
Sure enough, Ms. Zackow broke down. "Please, doctor, please listen to me. He's not dead."
'Of course. Of course he's not dead,' Kagome thought to herself. 'Him and just about everyone else who's come through here.' "Please, Ma'am . . ."
"It's Sango, just Sango," she murmured, tears streaming down her face. "Don't call me that, it's not . . . don't . . ."
As if on cue, Hojou handed Kagome a tissue, which Kagome relayed to Sango. "Please, Sango, come with me into my office, all right? We'll talk about it there."
Sango merely leaned on Kagome's shoulder. Kagome mouthed over Sango's head 'brief 'em, Hojou, okay?' It was answered with a wink and a thumbs up from her partner. "Okay, boys, who wants a tour?"
Kagome led Sango through the storeroom and sat her down in a chair in front of her desk. She offered her a box of tissues and nudged a garbage can her way with her dirty tennis shoe. "I'm very sorry, Ms. Za-- Sango." Kagome paused. "I know it must be difficult to have someone close to you murdered --"
"He's not dead!" Sango lashed out suddenly, slamming her fist on the desk. "You don't understand!"
"I do understand, Sango," Kagome began. "You're going through --"
"Dr. Higurashi, I was there, okay? I rode in the ambulance with him, I held his hand. This isn't right, hear me? This is Naraku's doing," she explained, her tears drying. "It was Naraku and that Shikon shit."
"Naraku?" Kagome asked. "Shikon?" What did those names have to do with anything?
"You've never heard of it?" Sango demanded. "I thought everyone had. And you being a doctor and all . . ."
"I have heard the name, of course," Kagome said. "But isn't it a wonder-drug or something? They were calling it 'the next Penicillin' on 'The Today Show' a while back, when they first started testing it. Created by a scientist somewhere in D.C."
"That's it," Sango said with a nod and a sniff. She blew her nose one last time. "Did you hear that it's gotten onto the streets? There was a huge controversy. Evidently -- the studies weren't complete -- they figured out . . ." Sango's eyes filled again, but she didn't reach for the tissues. "It's a puppet drug. Or it can be used as one. This dealer, Naraku -- he got his hands on the stuff and he's been using it . . . The guy's as slippery as Bin Ladin, Dr. Higurashi. It's been all over the news."
"I've seen Naraku's name in the headlines and I know what everyone knows about Shikon. What's that have to do with your little brother?"
"Kohaku . . ." Sango looked on the verge of another break down, for a second. "He left right after he got home from school the other day. Left a suicide note for our dad to find. I went looking for him at the arcade and challenged him to a game of Feudal Warfare. He told me that he had said done some things that he probably shouldn't have and that he was 'leaving.' I know he was involved with Shikon dealers, you'd know too, if you'd seen him."
Kagome fought to stop a rising eyebrow. It wasn't uncommon for people to make up strange excuses like the ones Sango had, but most of them were more plausible. The physiological aspect had something to do with redeeming the person in one's mind. Connecting her brother's death with something so far-fetched as Shikon seemed like it would defeat the purpose, though.
"So you see, he's not dead," Sango finished.
"Sango, I looked at the body myself. Your brother is quite dead," Kagome explained as pacifically as she could.
"Dr. Higurashi, when someone's system is as full of Shikon as Kohaku's must have been, death is near impossible! Shikon will sustain life as long as it's needed!" Sango insisted. "If Naraku was controlling him, then he --"
"Kagome!" Hojou called, interrupting Sango. "Kag, we've got a 'napping," Hojou explained breathlessly.
"Shit!" Kagome screeched, jumping up. "How the hell did this happen, Miller?"
"I don't know, Kag, we were in the suite the whole time, remember? One of us was always in the suite, since we put him away. I mean, obviously there's the window, but you couldn't drag a body out that window without leaving tracks, I mean, come on," Hojou rambled, snatching up the phone. "If we call this in quick, maybe they can catch it before they put the organs on the market."
"He wasn't taken," Sango said darkly. "He's gotten up and gone by himself. Listen to me, Kagome Higurashi. He'll go after our dad and after that, he'll come after me."
"Why would your brother kill you?" Kagome asked in exasperation. She didn't realize until after she'd said it the ridiculousness of what she'd said.
Body-napping wasn't all that uncommon in the large morgues of Olympia, Washington; in fact, it was easy to slip in, grab a specimen and fool one's way out of the morgue. The thing was, Fairveiw, though prestigious, wasn't a large morgue. Each pair of doctors had a suite with it's own cooler. Hojou and Kagome had suffered only one previous stolen body and it had been by an intern. The predicament had been nerve-racking, though not very surprising.
Kagome had always thought that kid was a little off anyway.
"Hojou, have you gotten through yet?" she asked, grabbing her coat and flinging it over her shoulders.
"Damn operators," Hojou grumbled. "I'll keep trying."
"So how're we gonna find this body?" Inu-Yasha demanded from the doorway. He was leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, looking Kagome right in the eye. For the first time, Kagome really looked at him. He was tall, with a good build and compelling azure eyes. His long black hair fell lazily past his shoulders and the expression on his face seemed to dare her, or anyone else for that matter, to contradict him. In her chest, something danced a bit, but she quickly slapped it down. Now was no time to develop a crush; especially not on a feddie.
"We?" Kagome demanded. "I," she said purposefully, "am going to the station. If they pick anything up, I want it before they mutilate it."
"Stupid," Inu-Yasha said flatly. "You say it had to go out the window? That's where you start. That's a basic. Are all doctors this dumb?" God, she looked so much like Kikyou.
"I said he couldn't go out the window," Kagome said darkly. "I said there's no possible way he could have gotten out that window without making a mess." 'Or the perp wrapped the body in a sheet, breaking half of the bones, of course, on his way and managed to haul it out,' a voice in the back of her mind suggested.
"I didn't say there wasn't a mess," Hojou called over the mouthpiece of the phone. He had settled down in front of his computer and was typing furiously. "Damn P.D.! What's the access code to the critical info?"
"2000785," Kagome answered. "There was a mess?" she asked suddenly.
"Helluva mess, Kag; but wasn't a drag mess. More like someone had gone wading in a puddle of blood and started dancing," Hojou explained. He slammed the phone down, picked it up once again and hit re-dial.
"Is this an unusual occurrence?" Miroku asked. "I've heard of lots of body-snatchings."
"Not here you haven't," Kagome said grimly, grabbing her few worldly possessions -- a cell phone and a wallet shoved into her pocket. "Stuff like this can mean big trouble. Didn't you hear about the Paton Case?"
"No," Miroku said simply.
"It was bad," was all Kagome offered.
"You also said you or Hojou here was in the suite the entire time," Inu-Yasha said suddenly. "Which leaves no possible escape route but a window. Unless you're so inattentive that a body-napper could tip-toe, tip-toe past you."
"I'm checking out the cooler, Agent Onii . . . Onii . . . sama, chan, whatever the hell it was," Kagome said crossly.
"Inu-Yasha," he grumbled.
"Whatever. They couldn't have taken him out that window. It's not that big and it's at least four feet off the ground. When a body is in a rigormortis state, it don't maneuver so goodly. He didn't just get up and walk away!"
"I told you," Sango growled. "He's not dead."
"To the fridge it is, then," Miroku offered.
"I guess we'll find out soon enough, won't we," Kagome muttered, following close behind Inu-Yasha, Miroku and Sango.
This was breaking up the routine.
:: Author's Note ::
Obviously, we're going a *bit* out of order here. It's okay though, we'll move on. R+R is greatly appreciated. I'd like to know if anyone's reading this so I know whether to bother uploading this stuff or not ^_^;; (my pc's soooo slow . . .)
Anyways, I hope we're enjoying ourselves. More later! :}
Of course, another disclaimer, the *fine print,* if I might: I don't own Inu-Yasha and unless there's some freak accident in which the world explodes and I'm the last person left on earth, I probably never will. "Inu-Yasha" and all it's characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi. ::Bows:: No sue-ie, please.
On a totally unrelated note, I'd like to dedicate this chapter of "Fate's Ways" to the crew of The Columbia, who went down in flames over Texas on Saturday, February 1, 2003.
"When there's nothing left to say, say the obvious; God bless the Columbia."
-- John Constant
Fate's Ways
Chapter Three
"Not So Pleasant Meetings"
By Jann
"Ahrg!" Kagome called in frustration. "Hojou! Have you seen the John Doe files anywhere? I don't know what number to use!"
"Uhhnn . . ." came Hojou's faint response. "Did you try the refrigerator, under my lunch?"
"Hojou, you are dead meat!" Kagome hollered back, upon finding the exact file she had just spent over fifteen minutes looking for. She had finally given up and finished the rest of the form before restarting her search. After another ten minutes of hunting around on the ground for the missing file, she had finally thought to ask Hojou.
Hojou knew where everything was.
"Sorry?" Hojou yelled back in question.
"Sorry doesn't cut it," Kagome roared. She tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ears and spent the three seconds that it took to look up John Doe's number and quickly typed it in and sent the file to Ms. Yura.
Kagome re-entered the autopsy suite to find that Hojou had finished cleaning. He grinned sheepishly and closed the lid on the laundry bin before pushing it across the suite to the door to the hall. He opened the door and found himself face to face with two men.
"My name is Special Agent Inu-Yasha Oniiyoukai," the one on the left informed him.
"And I'm Special Agent Miroku Ash," his partner added.
"Afternoon, Agents," Hojou said humbly. "If you'll let me pass, I have to take care of this bin. Dr. Higurashi will assist you in any way she can."
Miroku and Inu-Yasha filed into the suite, allowing Hojou to make his way out, Miroku eyeing the bin skeptically. When he looked up again, though, his brows instantly furrowed. He tossed a glance at Inu-Yasha to see that his eyes had widened upon sight of Dr. Higurashi.
"Inu-Yasha," Miroku whispered. "Doesn't she look a little like Kiky --"
"Shut up, Ash."
"Sure, if that's the way you want it," Miroku said with a shrug. "Fair lady," he called across the room, instigating the stride to the other side. At risk of loosing their forensic pathologist to Miroku's insatiable drive to flirt, he followed.
The woman before him looked just like his finance.
Former. Former finance
He shook the thought from his head. It wasn't time think about Kikyou, not now, not yet. It hadn't even been a year since he'd . . . lost . . . her. It wasn't time.
"My name is Dr. Kagome Higurashi," she began. "I understand you're here about the body of the Zackow kid."
"Yeah," Miroku offered. "Kohaku. With the arrows." His face grew dark. "The P.D. didn't touch them, did they?"
Kagome raised an eyebrow. "I've got the homicide unit of the police department pretty well trained around here, Agent Ash. No one touches my bodies but me or Hojou."
"Miroku, Dr. Higurashi," he corrected with a smooth smile. Inu-Yasha overcame the urge to knock him over.
"Sure, okay," Kagome agreed.
"Uh, Kag?" Hojou called from the doorway.
Kagome looked away from the agents to her partner on the other side of the suite. He was pushing a presumably empty bin and glancing off to the left of the frame of the door nervously.
"Kagome, I think we have a . . ."
"You bitch! You're no better than those damned police officers! You and this damned Dr. Miller! I want to see my little brother!" a young woman screeched, stomping across the suite. Hojou followed her apprehensively and caught a tray of tools before it teetered off the side of the table as she stormed past.
". . . a problem," Hojou finished when he reached Kagome. He rolled the bin into the crevice beside the door into the storeroom.
The tall, dark-haired woman pushed through Agents Oniiyoukai and Ash to stand directly in front of Kagome. "I want to see my brother, gad damn you."
"Ma'am . . ." Kagome began softly.
"Don't you 'Ma'am' me!" she screamed, her eyes welling up with tears. "You listen to me! You get my brother out right now!"
"Ms. Zackow, we were about to begin the autopsy and I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave," Kagome explained gently. It wasn't the first family member they'd had and it certainly wouldn't be the last. Some raged, as the Zackow woman was doing, others didn't believe what was happening and some just sobbed onto her or Hojou's shoulder.
Sure enough, Ms. Zackow broke down. "Please, doctor, please listen to me. He's not dead."
'Of course. Of course he's not dead,' Kagome thought to herself. 'Him and just about everyone else who's come through here.' "Please, Ma'am . . ."
"It's Sango, just Sango," she murmured, tears streaming down her face. "Don't call me that, it's not . . . don't . . ."
As if on cue, Hojou handed Kagome a tissue, which Kagome relayed to Sango. "Please, Sango, come with me into my office, all right? We'll talk about it there."
Sango merely leaned on Kagome's shoulder. Kagome mouthed over Sango's head 'brief 'em, Hojou, okay?' It was answered with a wink and a thumbs up from her partner. "Okay, boys, who wants a tour?"
Kagome led Sango through the storeroom and sat her down in a chair in front of her desk. She offered her a box of tissues and nudged a garbage can her way with her dirty tennis shoe. "I'm very sorry, Ms. Za-- Sango." Kagome paused. "I know it must be difficult to have someone close to you murdered --"
"He's not dead!" Sango lashed out suddenly, slamming her fist on the desk. "You don't understand!"
"I do understand, Sango," Kagome began. "You're going through --"
"Dr. Higurashi, I was there, okay? I rode in the ambulance with him, I held his hand. This isn't right, hear me? This is Naraku's doing," she explained, her tears drying. "It was Naraku and that Shikon shit."
"Naraku?" Kagome asked. "Shikon?" What did those names have to do with anything?
"You've never heard of it?" Sango demanded. "I thought everyone had. And you being a doctor and all . . ."
"I have heard the name, of course," Kagome said. "But isn't it a wonder-drug or something? They were calling it 'the next Penicillin' on 'The Today Show' a while back, when they first started testing it. Created by a scientist somewhere in D.C."
"That's it," Sango said with a nod and a sniff. She blew her nose one last time. "Did you hear that it's gotten onto the streets? There was a huge controversy. Evidently -- the studies weren't complete -- they figured out . . ." Sango's eyes filled again, but she didn't reach for the tissues. "It's a puppet drug. Or it can be used as one. This dealer, Naraku -- he got his hands on the stuff and he's been using it . . . The guy's as slippery as Bin Ladin, Dr. Higurashi. It's been all over the news."
"I've seen Naraku's name in the headlines and I know what everyone knows about Shikon. What's that have to do with your little brother?"
"Kohaku . . ." Sango looked on the verge of another break down, for a second. "He left right after he got home from school the other day. Left a suicide note for our dad to find. I went looking for him at the arcade and challenged him to a game of Feudal Warfare. He told me that he had said done some things that he probably shouldn't have and that he was 'leaving.' I know he was involved with Shikon dealers, you'd know too, if you'd seen him."
Kagome fought to stop a rising eyebrow. It wasn't uncommon for people to make up strange excuses like the ones Sango had, but most of them were more plausible. The physiological aspect had something to do with redeeming the person in one's mind. Connecting her brother's death with something so far-fetched as Shikon seemed like it would defeat the purpose, though.
"So you see, he's not dead," Sango finished.
"Sango, I looked at the body myself. Your brother is quite dead," Kagome explained as pacifically as she could.
"Dr. Higurashi, when someone's system is as full of Shikon as Kohaku's must have been, death is near impossible! Shikon will sustain life as long as it's needed!" Sango insisted. "If Naraku was controlling him, then he --"
"Kagome!" Hojou called, interrupting Sango. "Kag, we've got a 'napping," Hojou explained breathlessly.
"Shit!" Kagome screeched, jumping up. "How the hell did this happen, Miller?"
"I don't know, Kag, we were in the suite the whole time, remember? One of us was always in the suite, since we put him away. I mean, obviously there's the window, but you couldn't drag a body out that window without leaving tracks, I mean, come on," Hojou rambled, snatching up the phone. "If we call this in quick, maybe they can catch it before they put the organs on the market."
"He wasn't taken," Sango said darkly. "He's gotten up and gone by himself. Listen to me, Kagome Higurashi. He'll go after our dad and after that, he'll come after me."
"Why would your brother kill you?" Kagome asked in exasperation. She didn't realize until after she'd said it the ridiculousness of what she'd said.
Body-napping wasn't all that uncommon in the large morgues of Olympia, Washington; in fact, it was easy to slip in, grab a specimen and fool one's way out of the morgue. The thing was, Fairveiw, though prestigious, wasn't a large morgue. Each pair of doctors had a suite with it's own cooler. Hojou and Kagome had suffered only one previous stolen body and it had been by an intern. The predicament had been nerve-racking, though not very surprising.
Kagome had always thought that kid was a little off anyway.
"Hojou, have you gotten through yet?" she asked, grabbing her coat and flinging it over her shoulders.
"Damn operators," Hojou grumbled. "I'll keep trying."
"So how're we gonna find this body?" Inu-Yasha demanded from the doorway. He was leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, looking Kagome right in the eye. For the first time, Kagome really looked at him. He was tall, with a good build and compelling azure eyes. His long black hair fell lazily past his shoulders and the expression on his face seemed to dare her, or anyone else for that matter, to contradict him. In her chest, something danced a bit, but she quickly slapped it down. Now was no time to develop a crush; especially not on a feddie.
"We?" Kagome demanded. "I," she said purposefully, "am going to the station. If they pick anything up, I want it before they mutilate it."
"Stupid," Inu-Yasha said flatly. "You say it had to go out the window? That's where you start. That's a basic. Are all doctors this dumb?" God, she looked so much like Kikyou.
"I said he couldn't go out the window," Kagome said darkly. "I said there's no possible way he could have gotten out that window without making a mess." 'Or the perp wrapped the body in a sheet, breaking half of the bones, of course, on his way and managed to haul it out,' a voice in the back of her mind suggested.
"I didn't say there wasn't a mess," Hojou called over the mouthpiece of the phone. He had settled down in front of his computer and was typing furiously. "Damn P.D.! What's the access code to the critical info?"
"2000785," Kagome answered. "There was a mess?" she asked suddenly.
"Helluva mess, Kag; but wasn't a drag mess. More like someone had gone wading in a puddle of blood and started dancing," Hojou explained. He slammed the phone down, picked it up once again and hit re-dial.
"Is this an unusual occurrence?" Miroku asked. "I've heard of lots of body-snatchings."
"Not here you haven't," Kagome said grimly, grabbing her few worldly possessions -- a cell phone and a wallet shoved into her pocket. "Stuff like this can mean big trouble. Didn't you hear about the Paton Case?"
"No," Miroku said simply.
"It was bad," was all Kagome offered.
"You also said you or Hojou here was in the suite the entire time," Inu-Yasha said suddenly. "Which leaves no possible escape route but a window. Unless you're so inattentive that a body-napper could tip-toe, tip-toe past you."
"I'm checking out the cooler, Agent Onii . . . Onii . . . sama, chan, whatever the hell it was," Kagome said crossly.
"Inu-Yasha," he grumbled.
"Whatever. They couldn't have taken him out that window. It's not that big and it's at least four feet off the ground. When a body is in a rigormortis state, it don't maneuver so goodly. He didn't just get up and walk away!"
"I told you," Sango growled. "He's not dead."
"To the fridge it is, then," Miroku offered.
"I guess we'll find out soon enough, won't we," Kagome muttered, following close behind Inu-Yasha, Miroku and Sango.
This was breaking up the routine.
:: Author's Note ::
Obviously, we're going a *bit* out of order here. It's okay though, we'll move on. R+R is greatly appreciated. I'd like to know if anyone's reading this so I know whether to bother uploading this stuff or not ^_^;; (my pc's soooo slow . . .)
Anyways, I hope we're enjoying ourselves. More later! :}