Chapter 4
Jack sat under the awning in the rain, watching the lurching forms of creatures scuttle around just outside of clear view. If Victor didn't see them, then he doubted anyone else could; and if they really were all aliens, people and monster alike, then it didn't matter if anyone saw. Maybe there were bigger ones out there, like those from the hospital but fully grown. Maybe the townsfolk crawled around during the downpours, the water washing away the skin of their disguises.
"Is this really even our case, anymore?" Jack asked contemplatively, tapping his chest. "This isn't an isolated attack, or even a serial case. It's a whole conspiracy. If everyone here is an alien, shouldn't some alien FBI agent handle it, or something?"
"You're really going to give up?" asked Ianto.
"I'm saying it isn't our problem. I don't think it was to begin with. Look around. This isn't Cardiff. The rest of the world isn't my responsibility, there's somebody else who covers that. Sometimes. When he feels like it."
Jack felt resentment gurgling up in his chest like venom, into an aching rage, but he pushed it down. He didn't want to feel that way. He didn't want to confront why he felt that way. "Besides, I'm not even FBI, I'm freelance, remember?"
"People here are being murdered. Human or not, they need your help."
"What do I do next, then?" Jack said, head in his hands. "Torture Vic into a confession?"
"You have another crime scene to cover," said Ianto.
Jack sighed. He ran his hands through his hair. And then he got up. None of this should have been surprising, but he felt like he was being toyed with now. Lured in and prodded and poked by an unseen force. Captain Jack Harkness really did not like being used.
"First, we should figure out what we're really up against. The usual big claws and big teeth. Venomous quills, bites, and saliva. And some of them can be really, really big."
"That's a start," said Ianto. "Did you notice there's not a single person here over 30? How much control do they have over their shapeshifting, do you think? Can they appear any age or sex they want to? Can they impersonate another of their kind? Things like that."
"Maybe they eat each other when they get too old." Jack shrugged. "The wee little juniors got pretty distracted once snacktime started."
"That reminds me," said Ianto, "As cute as your nicknames are, Jack, I think we should start naming them for organization's sake."
"Good ol' Ianto," Jack said, patting over his ear endearingly. "And you have some ideas, right?"
"I assume you're set on Bulldogs for the big ones, right? Well. I was thinking "Spitter Crickets" for the little ones. No idea yet for the adult ones. They might just tell us."
"I'm pretty settled to call the little ones "Speed Bumps" myself, but I must agree, yours has a certain charm to it." Jack gave a crooked smile.
Jack felt a little bit better now. He'd let himself get a little lax on the job, and accidentally gotten invested in the actual comings and goings of Redwoods. Everybody here were supposed to be suspects, not friends. It wasn't like him to lose track of things like that. Being emotionally removed was his forte.
"Okay," Jack said, standing up and dusting off his longcoat. "Let's go pick around in the dead boy's toys."
Jack opened the front door again to find Victor still waiting in the main room, leaning against the wall with his head bowed. Jack wondered if he knew Jack suspected him as the murderer. He looked so earnest now, trapped in a house with the body of someone he might once have called a friend. Jack patted him on the shoulder, and he looked up.
"I thought you were leaving," Victor said, raising his eyebrows at him. "Backup won't get here until the rain stops, and I can't go until then."
"I just needed to clear my head, that's all," said Jack. "I'd like to get my hands on this crime scene now, though, before anyone else can tamper with it. Every person in this town is a suspect, including the police."
"I can understand that," Victor said. "I'll just stay in here, then."
"Thank you," Jack said, bowing out back into Blaire's bedroom. The room stank of the taste of iron, so strong it was almost suffocating. Jack put a hand over his mouth to keep his head clear. Now was the ideal time to look for direct clues. A murder weapon, normally- but Jack had a hunch that a creature with talons wouldn't really need a knife.
He had to think. This body, like the last, didn't show any signs of a struggle despite the obvious pain the victim had endured. It was possible though that the perpetrator had paralyzed him with the same goo the bulldog had used on him, and it had just washed off in the shower. It was also possible that the body might have other wounds, pinpricks from the aliens' needle-like quills.
That might be helpful for preventing another death, but it gave him no clues about who it was that had done it, other than the victim's last words. He also hadn't been able to find a motive for either attack.
There could be clues in the room, though. Hopefully more than in Nim's because, as far as he knew, Blaire lived alone.
"Aha," Jack said, only moments later. There was always a secret compartment in a drawer. He pulled out a thin little notebook in a leather casing. It was engraved with letters on the front. "BNC." Jack had no idea what this might be an abbreviation for, unless it was initials for a polyamorous relationship, which was completely possible. Blaire, Noel, and Charlotte? Or Nim for N, most likely.
Jack opened up the notebook. There had to be more clues inside.
And there was, sort of. No secret plans. No day to day diary entries. Just pages upon pages of sex dreams. A few of them were in different handwriting, but other than that, nothing of use.
Sure, it helped confirm that Redwood played it loose with monogamy, but that wasn't surprising.
"There has to be something," said Jack. "Blaire was still alive when we got here, if only barely, but it's been raining since before we arrived. The killer must have rushed to get out of here, and probably left something behind.
"Or he's still here," Ianto said, tauntingly. "The phonecall's coming from inside the house, Jack…"
"Oh you," said Jack. "Come on, we don't know for sure that it's him."
"Maybe I didn't mean him," said Ianto. "Maybe there's someone else. Maybe they're watching from inside the vents."
Jack paused for a moment, and seemed to consider. "Nah, these things are pretty loud and not very coordinated. Still, we should probably search the rest of the rooms before the rain stops."
"Hello again, friends," Victor said, lounging over the stairwell.
Jack smiled as he passed by, and dipped into a few more rooms off the main room.
"Did you hear that, Ianto?" Jack said. "He thinks you're his friend, now."
"I'm thrilled," Ianto said boredly.
"Come on, you love friends," Jack said, moving from the hallways to the echoing kitchen. "Entertaining people you don't actually like is practically your favorite pastime."
"That is absolutely true," said Ianto.
"You're lucky sarcasm is a turn-on for me," Jack said, peeking inside a cupboard. Nothing. No one hiding in any traditional manner, anyway, but these aliens might be able to do all sorts of things he didn't know about. It might have flattened itself out and went right through a seam in the wall.
"Jack?" Victor's voice called from the other room.
"Victor," Jack said, coming back to the entry room. "Remember those cats from earlier? I think they might have taught the killer how to phase into walls."
"That sounds completely reasonable to me," said Victor. "Listen, the rain is calming down, and Deputy Stiff and a few Officers will be down here shortly. It's up to you if you want to stick around."
"I want to keep looking," Jack said. "One more go in the bedroom. I must be missing something."
Jack would have bet a turn of naked hide and seek that Ianto would be impressed by the state of Blaire's closet. Everything was hung up neatly, with suits in sets toward the back, and everything else arranged by style and color nearer the front. Hung inside the door was a quaint little mirror, and a very impressive tie rack.
"Your hero, right?" Jack pressed.
"If I was seventeen," Ianto said. "Which I am not. Wait- Jack- look a little closer."
Jack did as he was told, rustling through the racks idly until he saw what Ianto was talking about. Once he'd spotted it, it seemed so obvious. A dress, tucked back into a far corner. It had tripped him up, because anywhere else it wouldn't have been a surprise.
"Ianto, I don't think…" Jack said, turning it over in his hands. All along the back of the dress was torn thin, jagged holes, all the way from collar to where the tailbone would be. Jack stuck his finger through one and out the other, contemplating it carefully. There was something familiar about it.
He'd seen this same dress before.
It had been worn by that waitress at the diner, the cute cheeky one. It was the same one, exactly. Black polkadots on a white fabric, with a black collar.
"She could have slipped right out into the rain," Jack said, gently rubbing the cloth with his thumb. "She was in such a hurry her dress tore on her alien bits while she was taking it off. And then, she was mostly naked when she went down on the victim- kinky, but I've done worse. It makes sense though, Ianto. That's why he didn't struggle until it was too late."
The door cracked open.
"What's happening?" said Victor, wrinkling his nose.
"We've just found Noel Feathering's dress at the scene of the crime," Jack said.
"Oh my god," said Victor. "I'll call it in and have them hold her for questioning."
"Not suspicious," said Ianto.
"Shh," said Jack. "Don't worry, I have a plan."
"So," said Jack, sitting on the hood of Victor's police car. He watched the other officers as they scrambled around the scene, taking pictures and putting up "DO NOT CROSS" tape all willy nilly. "Let's have a serious talk."
"How serious?" Victor asked, standing patiently across from him.
"Very serious," said Jack. "I'm never not serious."
"Sounds serious," said Victor. Jack smiled.
"Okay," Jack said, "I want you to think about this very carefully before you answer." Jack waited for Victor to meet his eyes. "Would you like to come back to my place and have a drink?"
"I've just seen a man with his liver on the floor, Jack," Victor said, the corner of his mouth twitching. "I'm hardly in the mood."
"That's exactly my point," said Jack. "Things are getting intense, and I think we should all have a break. A little wine, maybe some dancing…"
Victor sighed. "Alright, fine, but let's make it my place. I've been to those hotels you're staying at, and they're not very good for dancing."
Jack winked. "Okay. We'll take your car, then. I prefer to drive, but I don't mind taking someone in the back seat."
"You're a dirty man, Harkness," Victor said, climbing in shotgun.
Victor's apartment smelled a little bit like spilled whiskey. Jack noticed it almost the second he walked through the door. Judging solely by the scent, Jack deduced that Victor had probably been pretty drunk, fairly recently.
Other than that the apartment was meticulously clean, decorated in a theme of wood and glass. It was exactly the sort of house Jack had subconsciously expected.
"You're serious about the wine, right?" Victor said, sliding open a liquor cabinet built right into the wall. Judging by it, Jack could've been sitting in a bar. "Red or white?"
"Red, please," Jack said, settling himself in on a long, fancy couch. Victor poured their glasses and sat down next to him, setting the bottle on the coffee table.
"So, tell me a little about yourself," Victor said, sipping his drink. "You're the real mystery around here. People don't often come to Redwood, and a single murder seems hardly the occasion for an… agent to be sent out."
"You're a nice guy, Victor Ames," Jack said with a smile, "But I don't do interviews."
"Of course not," said Victor, shaking his head, but he was smiling too. "I actually like that. The air of mystery, it suits you."
"I get that a lot," Jack said, setting down his glass. It was half empty. "What about you? How does a man like you end up in a place like this?"
"Born and raised," said Victor, taking another large sip. "Both my parents were from here. Well, I assume. I never knew my father, and my mother's… She's not around anymore."
Jack watched as Victor impressively finished off his glass, and then poured another.
"That must've been hard," Jack said, because it was the right thing to say.
"I'm over it," Victor said. "It's in the past, and I'm here. Here and now is all that matters."
Jack gave a quiet laugh. If only it was that easy.
"I can tell that you're hurting, Jack," Victor said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "And that it isn't old wounds. Something happened to you before you came here, something that can't be fixed."
Don't think about it. Don't think about it, Jack. You don't want to know.
Jack put a hand up to his forehead.
"…Yeah," was all he said.
"I just want to make sure all this flirting isn't a coping mechanism. I don't want to make it worse."
Jack laughed. And then he laughed again. He laughed so hard that, for a moment, he couldn't breathe. "Oh Vicky, that's the one thing that's always been there. Don't worry about that."
Victor laughed quietly, and blushed.
"Ianto, what do you think?" Jack said, putting a hand to his ear.
"What can it hurt?" said Ianto.
Victor leaned over, and kissed him. Jack kissed back, forcing all other thoughts to the back of his mind. Don't think about the past. Don't think about Redwood. Think about Victor's lips, his hands, his warmth. Ignore the ache in your chest like being suffocated, and then coming back again.
"Is it time for the dancing, n-" Victor tried to say, but Jack's mouth cut him off.
Jack reached for Victor's belt. There was a soft click, as Jack fastened his handcuffs through the slates of the couch. But he kept kissing him, rough and insistent, hands pulling at his clothes.
"Jack," Victor panted, arching up against him.
"Ianto," Jack breathed back.
"So, when are you going to untie me?" Victor mumbled sleepily.
Jack gave a small smile as he dressed, looking down on Victor sadly.
"I'm sorry," Jack said. "Blaire was still alive when I found him. I asked him who the killer was, and he said it was you."
"What?" Victor said, with pleading eyes. "You can't honestly believe that."
"I didn't know for certain until I took your shirt off," Jack said, putting a hand on Victor's shoulder. "Something broke into my hotel room earlier, and I shot it. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but that scar on your chest looks pretty recent."
"Oh come on, that doesn't prove anything. You haven't been here long enough for a bullet wound to scar over."
"Some aliens heal faster than others," Jack shrugged.
"So I'm an alien now?"
"Maybe you're a were-alien, I don't know. Whatever you are, you're not human."
"And you're just going to leave me here until Stiff comes for me?"
"I can't trust him either," said Jack. "I'm going to find the truth, and I'm going to do it alone."
Victor sighed quietly.
"Well," he said. "It's a good thing I thought ahead."
"Thought ahead to what?" Jack said, raising an eyebrow.
"To the slow-acting paralyzing venom I injected every time I bit you." Victor shrugged. "Nothing personal. I was going to pretend I spiked your drink, and then do a bit of bondage interrogation myself."
Jack laughed. He kept laughing as his vision blurred, and his legs gave out.
"Sexy," he said, and then he lost consciousness.
Chapter 4: CLEARED
TOTAL Number of Days: 2
TOTAL Enemies Defeated: 19
TOTAL Asses Tapped: 1
TOTAL Number of Continues: 1