5. Teachable Moments

. . .

Loki glanced at the narrow window set in the front of the small slat-sided house. In the shadows beyond its blue frame, he could see the slim profile of the child's grandmother as she fretted at Agent May by her side. He could imagine the shape of their conversation clearly; the elder woman's discomfort with the stranger outside with her grandchild, and May's undoubtedly conflicted need to be on his side in this matter. He looked away. There was nothing he could do for them, so he watched over the child instead.

Aimee seemed far less worried about the pale man in a black suit than her grandmother, fussing instead with a thick book of crossword puzzles that she laid on the front lawn's plastic table. She wanted to finish the puzzle she was on, she told him. It was very important to her. A child's firm proclamation; not one to be disobeyed. So he accepted that with a nod and took in a view of the neighborhood instead while he waited for her to be done.

Green yards edged with chained fences, dogs barking their mild annoyance with each other now and again. Up the street, Officer Tomlinson leaned against his patrol car and talked with another neighbor. Simmons was at his side, listening in. The officer saw nothing unusual, nothing to remark about the choice of agent set to the child's side, which amused Loki deeply. For all his bleak reputation, today he was a nobody in a quiet urban neighborhood.

"What's another word for not being scared?" Aimee didn't look up at him. The pencil wiggled in her hand as she thought, her mouth twisting with the effort.

Loki resettled on the wide, flat rock that had no doubt seen a few summertime tea parties with Grandma. His hand rustled in his pocket, pulling out a silver coin and toying it through his fingers. "There are quite a few. How many letters do you need? Have you any clues?"

"Eight letters." She poked at the tiny boxes with a soft brown finger. "There's a P and an I."

Simple enough. "Intrepid."

He watched her fill the rest of the letters in. Then she shut the book and pulled it close to her, her round face closing in on itself for a moment. When her dark eyes opened, a child's quick tears were threatening at the corners. "Mr. Stutgart gave me this last month. He said it would help me learn new words."

"And so you do." Loki said, thinking he understood now the importance in finishing the puzzle. Having her cry too quickly would draw a grandmother's frantic worry, so he rambled lightly for a moment to snare her attention back to him. "Intrepid. Fearless, if you will. A bit of a chancy word, a bit robust for most circumstances. Unafraid works just as well mostly, as does bold. But I suppose it's all about the tone of the statement you're trying to make."

She peered up at his accented cadence, eyes wide and blunt in their assessment. "Are you really a cop?"

He arched a single eyebrow at her, far higher than he usually might.

A tiny smile peeked at his stretchy expression. "You don't look like one."

"And what does a cop look like?"

Aimee's eyes flickered up to Tomlinson. "With the uniform. Sometimes in suits, but not like yours. They go into houses after the uniform ones go in sometimes. They all really keep to themselves. They don't talk to kids."

"Not much evidence to bolster your case here."

"You don't sound like a cop." She clutched the crossword book closer to her, her drying eyes accusing him from under a cascading knot of thin braids and pink plastic bows.

Loki inclined his head politely, smiling, the coin still playing around his fingers and catching her gaze. "Well, regardless of how I seem, I am trying to help find who hurt your teacher. I promise you that." She leaned forward when the evening-orange sun set the coin to flickering brightly and he held it still for her to look at. Curious, she lifted a hand and then drew it back.

He pinched it between two fingers and offered it to her to examine. "It's quite old," he said as she took it carefully, her dark brown child-sized fingers in contrast to his. The face on the coin was worn almost smooth, the image of a noble Asgardian profile no human would be able to identify. On the other were the old runes. A token from another age, the first great era of All-Father Odin. "Older than me by no small measure."

"Who is he?" A tiny fingernail painted with pink and green sparkles traced the faded face.

"Oh, just some king." She gave him the coin back. "It doesn't matter. Just a little trinket I keep around." He flipped it into the air and caught it deftly, drawing a smile from her. Then he started dancing it back and forth between his hands.

The smile grew, then faded into a child's deadly seriousness. "Are you going to try to hypnotize me with it?"

Loki reared back, mock-astonished. "You watch far too much television. Absolutely not. It would be inconsiderate." He set the coin to dancing again, thin evening light flashing along its edges. "All I will do is give you something to watch while we talk. Something to keep your eyes and mind busy."

"Why?"

He smiled again. Children held no filters in his experience, they drove in for the kill. There would be little point in being anything other than honest right now. "Because sometimes we want so badly to help when things go wrong that we might push our thoughts too hard. Memory is a tricky thing; it's a liquid and not a solid. So when the questions aren't asked right and the stakes are high, why, it's very simple to create a perfectly believable and completely incorrect answer. The witness describes a man in a dark coat at a crime scene. But perhaps it was brown? Or green? What answer might best please the questioner? What makes them feel like it helps the most?"

Aimee studied him, her lip pulling in for a worried nibble.

"Even more, it's quite easy to make someone create a story you could use instead of the truth. Quite easy indeed. Most living people have very flexible minds. All you must do is push just a titch." The coin balanced on the nail of his thumb and then seemed to flip itself. No magic, just a single deft gesture so quick it was invisible. "But the truth is what will help here and so we'll only look for that. Watch the coin, Miss Rodgers. Don't think overmuch, just talk with me. You may have seen more than you realize, but your eager mind will get in the way if you let it."

. . .

May stood at the window and studied Loki as he flipped the coin about in an intricate little dance. Was it all sleight of hand or was he using a little real magic now, too? Probably didn't matter. The kid looked fine, if tired around the eyes in the unmistakeable sign of someone doing a lot of crying. May knew what some of Loki's less-ethical stunts could look like and nothing he was doing was setting off her warning instincts. Aimee laughed at a few of the tricks, having no clue who her visitor really was. Grudgingly, May had to give him this one – he seemed way better with kids than his rep gave him any right to be. The last time she'd tried a sit-down with a kid under sixteen, the boy had been already hicking up hot tears by this point.

None of this showed on her face. Instead, she gave Mrs. Rodgers her best comforting smile. "We're out here with some of our best. If you want, please call the number I gave you. They'll reassure you that everything's all right."

Mrs. Rodgers tugged at the scarf wrapped around her neatly-tied hair, only a few tight ringlets permitted to escape near her temple. "I only agreed because of how upset she's been. She looks fine right now, but she took that news so very hard. Stutgart was a good man. Hasn't slept hardly a wink since, got to keep that book of hers close by. If she thinks she can help..." Her voice trailed off.

"I guarantee she's helping. Any little detail is incredibly valuable at this stage."

"And that man? He a child psychologist or something?"

May's long practice at self control kept the sharp inhale of laughter at bay. "Just one of our specialists, ma'am."

. . .

"We were going to read about old Russia. Homework was a big chapter about one of their kings." Aimee tapped at the comparatively huge hand she thought for sure held the coin and found the palm empty.

"The tsars?"

She nodded, then checked his other palm. Still no coin. She frowned at him, tugging at his fingers for an answer. "No fair. First hand?"

His first hand flexed a thumb, and the coin reappeared from where he'd hid it just out of sight. She clapped. "Which tsar?"

"Ivan. Ivan va-see-lee-ev-ich." She sounded it out carefully just the way she'd been taught, frowning. "The boys were happy. He sounded gross and mean."

"Well, sometimes the truth of history is distressing." The coin snapped through the air. "Does few favors to pretend otherwise."

"You're weird, too." The coin arced over her head and she caught it with both hands before tossing it back to Loki, who only smiled.

"And so the bell was about to ring. And that was your day?" He set the coin on the stone and let it roll along its thin edge, catching it before it fell into the grass.

Aimee nodded. "He did his little bow and he looked at his desk again and the bell rang. I told him goodbye and I had to run to get my bus. It's all the way down at the end of the line and I've missed it before. Gamma got mad, but not at me. It's hard for her to get all the way to the school. It's really far."

Again. The coin paused in another roll, his instincts prickling as he caught something in the tone of her voice – the single word drawn out and emphasized. Again, sheesh, agaaain. The coin started moving again. "Again? What was he looking at on his desk?"

Aimee furrowed her brow, clearly thinking hard before she looked at him, startled with herself. "I'm thinking too hard!"

"It's fine, Aimee. Just relax and talk."

"He looked at his desk a lot on Friday." Her brows knotted tighter. "Like it bothered him."

"Now be careful." She reached out for the coin and tried to flip it herself. It dropped into the grass by her knee and she picked it up, playing with the outlines of the old pre-futhark runes. "Why do you remember that, you think? There's likely a reason if you can stumble into it, but don't feel you need to force it."

She looked up at him after a moment of play, eyes widening and short dark fingers firmly pinched around the coin. "I forgot! I went up to his desk before lunch. And there was an envelope on it. I noticed it because it wasn't from the school."

He kept his expression calm, doing his part to try and keep the memory neutral. "Do you remember anything about the envelope? Why was it not from the school?"

"Because it didn't have anything on it. They stamp all their stuff with this yucky blue ink! And the paper was weird." She looked up at the sky. "Thick. Rough looking. Like stuff we use in art. He put it down in the morning and didn't touch it again. Because we put all our papers in a pile next to it and he kept fussing with the pile. Made sure it didn't slop over."

A heavy canvas envelope from an unknown sender. That's what he burned. He smiled, calm and easy and thinking ahead. Did the other victims have such an envelope? And did they destroy theirs?

And then his next thought, once alien to him in its nature – The others might well find this useful. His expression changed slightly as he realized that, drawing a worried glance from the girl. "Is that good?"

"Aimee, that is remarkably helpful." He took the coin back from her, bowing his head politely.

"You looked startled."

"Something else occurred to me. A personal matter. No need to trouble yourself."

"You looked sad."

"You said startled first." He put the coin away in his pocket.

"People can be both," she said with a child's clarity, then reached out to tug at the sleeve of his suit jacket. "It's okay to be sad, isn't it?"

"Whether you lose or find something important to you, very much so."

Aimee swallowed hard, the tears threatening again. "He liked to talk about all the chances we could have. He liked talking about hope. He never made us feel bad for things we couldn't change." The leaking started despite her efforts to hold it back. "I miss him."

"You will for some time." He tilted his head, considering her. "Thank you for talking with me, Aimee. Now come. Let's get your grandmother so you can have a treat and a good cry. It won't fix what hurts, but there's never a poor moment for a sweet."

She nodded, and took his hand when he stood up. With some effort, he managed to not show his surprise.

. . .

Groquist looked up at the three men waiting for him in the lobby of the county morgue, immediately comfortable with their style – three boring looking men in suits of varying shades of grey. "Came down soon as you called, gentlemen. Can we help you?"

One of them stepped forward to flash a familiar-style badge, his voice lazily annoyed and local. "Yeah, we've got a call on our desk about some out of towners pretending to be our jurisdiction. Didn't your chief check with our Columbia office before lettin' 'em in?"

"Told us all they were vetted clean." Groquist set his jaw, feeling the vindication about the 'Quantico' kids warm his heart. God damn Chief Broward. The young little prick was always on his ass for some PC horseshit or another. Well, he was just gonna love having this blow up in his face.

"Yeah, well, they weren't clean. Now I guess we gotta take care of the mess." The agent heaved a sigh, reaching out to clap the ME on his shoulder like an old friend. "Can we get a look at the stiff? I want to know if these jerks screwed anything up before we go round them up."

"Absolutely, sir." Groquist reached into the lobby desk to get the keys to the morgue. "I'll walk you through myself."

"Great. Glad we got someone here I know we can trust. Old-timers. You know how it's done." Another clap. "I'll hope you've got our back when we throw down on the chief. This is some serious incompetence."

"Ain't it ever." Groquist grinned. The revenge of the dinosaur was gonna come around at last. "Happy to help the proper authorities."