I still don't know what my update schedule is so, like, have this a day earlier than I initially planned. Motivation brought to you by the new single by Mili and MYTH & ROID.
Also, if you saw that I'd been using the wrong name for the main character in the summary for the past week, no you didn't.
EXPOSING CONTEMPT / NATURAL MALAISE
Parse Peralta is not an idiot. Far from it, actually- he'd been trained from a young age to understand that idiocy is the cruelest form of weakness, because idiots don't even know that they are weak.
This is why Parse knows that something is up with the woman named Naomi Misora, even though he does his best to hide it. Behind a smile, behind a laugh, behind a cup of tea. She not once offers her name, but he finds it all the same, and it's all he needs to drudge up...something on her.
Something turns out to be larger than he had thought, even if the details are still scarce. At first, he's surprised; his connections run deep, and it shouldn't be too hard for them to find information on somebody who says she's a private investigator. However, what little he scrounges up clears up his confusion fairly quickly, even if it fills him with unease. FBI. It tracks with her mentions of being an investigator, but he hadn't expected her to be so high up.
He also finds information on her fiance- much easier, in fact, considering her facebook feed is all about him. Raye Penber, he reads on the engagement announcement his contact has sent him, and the lack of other information on him leads Parse to assume that he's FBI as well. He frowns at the thought, but shakes his head. It's not like he's actively trying to get roped up in FBI cases, so he should never have to deal with both of them at the same time.
He also idly wonders if she'd invite him to the wedding, then laughs at the thought; he doesn't know if he'll even exist by next summer.
It's not as though Naomi is his only priority, either. While she's a mystery, one that Parse wants to unravel before he leaves California, she's not the mystery. No, that title belongs solely to the great detective L.
Unfortunately, Parse hasn't had much luck on that front, but that's to be expected when L is known for making himself just as scarce as the other letters in his name. The closest he's gotten has been mentions of recent cases solved by his other aliases - Coil, Deneuve - in the western US, so knowing L's modus operandi, Parse can only hope he's still in the area. No- he knows he is. The only thing stopping him from coming any closer is L's hermetic tendencies.
Parse can feel a breakthrough coming though, and he doesn't know why, but he occasionally gets the unmistakable feeling that the woman known as Naomi Misora may be the key to his latest problem.
Three months of stalking L and worming his way into Naomi's life later, the case blows wide open- but the detective known as Parse Peralta is not pleased at all at the results.
It's nine in the morning and Parse hates life. He hates life on a normal day - not that he'd show it, hiding it far beneath that amicable smile of his - but he hates it much more before his first cup of coffee, and it's unfortunate for him that his brand new Keurig just decided to break.
He trudges across the street towards his favorite coffee shop, reading signs and billboards and other things that shouldn't exist. Everything is dyed in a murky red, either due to the rising sun or some other factor; everything is red usually, but today's red feels more foreboding than usual. He shrugs it off; he hasn't been getting much sleep lately due to his case, and so he chalks it up to the night terrors getting to him in the waking hours as well.
Parse's instincts, however, are still as perceptive as ever, even when he doesn't listen to them. He's on the corner of Normandie and Hollywood when the day takes a hard left turn. Or perhaps it's the truck driver who does. Or both.
Regardless, what happens next is a blur in 4K, both a blessing and a curse for somebody with eidetic memory such as Parse. A normal-looking businessman standing next to him on the street corner screams all of a sudden, looking terrified for his life. All eyes are on him, including Parse's; the surprisingly large number of passers-by on the opposing street corners all look at him just as Parse does, trying to find some sort of hint as to what exactly the man was screaming at-
-when the man runs out into the street, and that's the last thing Parse sees before a semi-trailer is suddenly blocking both his vision and the intersection. He blinks, his eyes working faster than his mind as he tries to understand what he's just witnessed. Somebody screams. Then somebody else. He still can't see. That truck is so big. Somebody pulls on his sleeve. He turns. Nobody's there. He turns back.
Red pools in the intersection. There's a crumpled can of a body several yards away from the bloodstained truck cab. That man is dead.
Of course he is, Parse's mind supplies him with facts and statistics; he was just hit by a semi-trailer truck at top speed. Very few people could survive that. That doesn't change the fact that a man had just been killed in front of him- and that the man should not, by all of Parse's accounts, be dead.
Several police cars pull up as witnesses huddle in small groups on street corners, and the part of Parse's brain that's trained to cover for him in these moments finally kicks in. He mechanically shoots Naomi a quick text - Apologies, I won't be in office today. - before sitting down on the curb and waiting for a cop to come over for his testimony, which doesn't take long. His mind's still reeling as the policeman introduces himself, some name that starts with a J, or maybe a V. He can't tell and frankly doesn't care. The business card the cop offers likewise goes unnoticed and flutters away in the wind soon after he departs.
Twelve minutes after the cop leaves him alone - twelve point two-five, he knows this exactly, his mind counts the seconds because it's not doing anything else helpful - another car pulls up, this one a red corolla that only pulls his attention because suddenly Naomi Misora is stepping out of it. He looks up at her, and they make eye contact, only for her to nod and turn away, towards the closest policeman.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Parse finds that odd. The rest of him is too preoccupied with counting seconds and coping with trauma and other equally useless endeavors. He watches her converse with the cop, reading something off of a clipboard before returning it to him and stepping back under the yellow tape.
"Sorry," she says as she returns to his side, sitting down on the curb next to him. "I had to deal with something first. Although I guess this explains why you won't be in your own office." She tries to crack a quick smile, but drops it as soon as she realizes he won't be returning it. Her hand raises to his shoulder. "Are you okay?"
Parse doesn't know. "He shouldn't have died," he says dumbly.
Naomi nods sadly, commiserating in a way that Parse doesn't understand. "That was reckless and avoidable, but tragic nonetheless."
He blinks, opens his mouth and tries again. "No, he shouldn't have..."
He shouldn't have died. Down down down, far from the roof into the bushes onto the street and there's red, so much red and that number is gone, it may have been small but it certainly wasn't zero- it couldn't have been zero he had been perfectly-
"Parse." Naomi snaps her fingers in front of his face, bringing him back to reality. "Parse, are you all right?"
He nods shakily, tries to brush it off as mere shock and not trauma. He's too used to death and destruction to be traumatized. He's also very good at lying to himself. "I'm fine, Miss Misora," he says- there's a waver in his voice that he either doesn't try to hide or just can't. It's hard to tell, even for him. "Why are you here?" He tries to turn the focus away from himself, even if for just a moment. "This seems like a job for the police, not a private eye."
Perhaps that's the wrong thing to say, as she hesitates for a moment. "Ah, that's..."
Parse frowns at her reaction. He's still shaken, but her presence is at least giving him focus on his missions rather than the crime scene in front of him. "Miss Misora, don't feel compelled to tell me if it means divulging classified information." Although he wants to push, he knows better than to scare her away now and lose the chance for good.
"No, it's...irrelevant now. I got the call from my superior on the way here." She stares at the crime scene momentarily before nodding. "Actually, this has to do with the case I am...was, I suppose, currently on. The victim is- was part of a case we were pursuing with Coil."
Fire sparks in Parse's stomach at the name, and any thought of the victim disappears when his goal is suddenly placed right in front of him. "Eraldo Coil?" Naomi jumps, shocked at the venom in his voice, but he realizes his mistake immediately and clears his throat, pulling back on his animosity. "I was following the case on the news. You're telling me that a suspect just so happened to get involved in a hit-and-run less than a day after the latest victim was found?"
"The suspect," she corrects him, and he would be more irritated at her pedantics, but she adds quickly, "Coil had just narrowed it down from three suspects to one. For all intents and purposes, we were about ready to detain him, but..." She gestures at the scene.
"But he died," Parse finishes for her darkly. She nods. "How convenient."
There's a long, awkward silence, which Parse blames partially on himself; he hadn't been as restrained as he usually was, and surely Naomi would be off-put by it. However, she's given him a step that he hadn't expected to take, and there's no going back now.
"Miss Misora," he ventures, sounding unsure of himself; it's new, the hesitation in his voice. "Can I ask you for a favor, from one private eye to another?"
"Is it something you can't do yourself?" The question isn't accusatory, which relieves him. She still respects his ability enough to question it. "If I can, sure. Shoot."
It's not a negative. He's surprised he's so lucky. Or rather, he should only say that if she doesn't slap him in the face after she hears him out. That is, if she even hears him out to begin with...Parse wonders if losing this lead is worth taking the chance.
He decides to test the water and ask a question instead. "Has this been happening often recently?"
"Parse." Naomi's voice sharpens, dropping to a harsh whisper, and he should have expected as much. She's not an idiot, so she already knows his train of thought. "You did not just accuse Eraldo Coil of killing a suspect."
"I didn't," he says quickly, holding up his hands. "I assure you, Miss Misora, I absolutely didn't. I just..." He swallows, looks past her towards the crime scene, looks back at her. "Please, I don't want to be paranoid."
He's not paranoid. He knows. He just hopes she can find the strings he already sees without his guidance.
She looks away. "There have been similar cases," she says finally, but the wall she's put up refuses to come down. "But they've all been different- murders, suicides, accidents." The last word makes Parse flinch; if she notices, she doesn't say anything. "They've been with different lead investigators, too. Some of them have been with Coil. Some with Deneuve, a couple with L...even a few lower-named detectives around the western US. It's not like there's a connection between all of them."
He doesn't show it on his face, but his heart snarls. L, Deneuve, Coil. Any detective worth their salt knows the connections there- how could she not, competent as she is? Still, he tries to placate Naomi, slowly lowering his hands into his pockets. "Still," he mutters, looking at the ground. Passive. Nervous. Play the part. "I can't drop this, not until I'm certain..." He clears his throat, and looks back up at her. "Please?"
Another long silence follows, in which she stares at him, coldly yet suspiciously, as if trying to solve his puzzle and set him on fire at the same time. "Fine," she says finally, looking away again. She's not lying, though; he knows she'll at least try. "Fine, but only because it's you. And only this case. No others."
Something in his stomach drops as he removes a hand from his pocket to offer it to her, and she returns the gesture in a very loose reenactment of a handshake. Regardless of her findings, he knows this isn't something he's going to let go.
"Thank you."