Immediately upon entering the restrooms, Simon activates the sink and splashes his face, once, twice, with cold water. A rushed swipe with his sleeve only partially dries his cheeks, but he doesn't mind; the damp marks remaining will mask the traitorous tears that have sprung forth.
These agents, reminding him so much of his adolescent days, when he didn't often have Aura around to defend him. Being teased, bullied from everything from his race to his perceived (or perhaps, actual?) sexual orientation, and no matter what he attempted, he could do nothing to fend himself from such adversaries. More than once, Simon had been on the receiving end of a detention slip—as well as a fist to the face from some scapegrace who found Simon's threats about skewering them with his katana rightly laughable.
He hates them, hates everything they stand for, and above all, hates himself for not being prepared to counter their dubious tactics. He is under the counsel of Metis Cykes, and whether or not she is fully aware of it, he is a role model, a positive male figure in Athena's life. Are they not enough?
He needs to grow beyond this; he should be grown beyond it already, yet here he is in the same spot he often found himself when he was fourteen: holed up in a lavatory and trying not to blubber like some "slanty-eyed queer", or what-have-you.
All that's asked of a samurai is to be sound and strong, in body, spirit, and mind, and more than following the Bushido to bring honor to the Cykeses, he wants to do it for himself. So he can not just survive, but thrive when he's only ever been made to feel he's nothing, can only ever amount to nothing.
Why could he not stop the agents from steamrolling over his commands, and what's more, the way Fulbright had been so gently supportive of him, Simon had reciprocated with... what? He'd done nothing to help Fulbright, to defend him. He'd only allowed his own poisonous words to be thrown back at him as Fulbright sacrificed himself in noble fashion.
Simon assumes Fulbright hadn't meant to point out Simon's earlier maligning of him in that heated moment, but it... it hurts, to think he had been, even for a second, the sort of person he wanted to see the world rid of.
Just as Simon snuffles loudly and wipes his arm across his nose, the restroom door swings open. Hoping to cover the fact that it's the setting for his personal pity party, Simon fumbles his phone out, brings it to his ear.
"Y-Yes, Aura, I shall be returning shortly!" He says too loudly, too dramatically for Officer Stone to not raise an eyebrow as he approaches Simon at the sink. "Yes, yes. I... I love you too. Goodbye."
Gods, he can picture Aura clutching her sides and falling to the floor in laughter at that last line. The image is enough to coax a smile from him, that he's able to give Officer Stone as he tucks his phone away. "I was just leaving, officer. I apologize for all the... events of today."
Stone sidesteps to block him off. "No, hold up, Blackquill. I needed to talk to you. I—"
"If you've come to gloat, I haven't the patience for it now, Officer Stone. I will save you the time, and admit that I am as woefully inexperienced as you proclaimed when we first met. I hope you are able to gain some measure of satisfaction from being proven right. Have a good evening."
"No... Prosecutor Blackquill, you... Please wait. I still have that blueprint, if you want it. " Stone has the same long parchment in his hands that he did earlier. He unfurls it, presenting it for Simon to see, as he explains, "This is the dock and then the back hallways here, including the sorting room. I marked where we found various evidence and bloodstains, and... I don't know if this is important, but there's a freight elevator leading up from the dock, too. I noted it here... "
Simon studies the diagram, following Stone's finger as he points everything out. The quality and detail astounds him; Simon guesses even his own father, who earns a living as an architect, would be impressed. "I... thank you, Officer. This is very well done. I'm sure it will prove useful tomorrow."
"I was going to hand it off to Fulbright, but..." Stone sighs. Then, his demeanor shifts considerably, expression transforming to one of pure outrage. "You know what? Fuck those guys, seriously!"
"I will agree with you wholeheartedly, officer. Unfortunately, this is where we are now—or rather, where I am. Again, my sincerest apologies for being unable to properly defend Fulbright's dignity as a detective. I vow to you, I will see to it that whatever punishment he might face, it is not a severe one."
"What are you sorry about? Bobby's the one who screwed up. Yeah, he's my friend, but he really... he screwed up. It's just, those agents, they're not even trying to work with us, with you. So even if he'd done everything correctly, can you imagine how that would have gone? Them having to hand off what they found to us? You know they just care about the credit, about being the ones to 'solve' everything. At least you, you're..." Stone trails off, as does his eye contact with Simon.
"Please, don't stop. This is cathartic for you—and myself, I must confess." Amusement glints in Simon's eyes, as he really is curious now. "So go on: what am I?"
"Well, you're still a noob, right, but I don't... mean it in a bad way anymore, like you're a punk or anything. Besides, I know you think those agents are full of shit, so even if I did still think you were a punk..."
"The enemy of the enemy is your friend, is that it?"
"You're not my enemy, Blackquill, I just..." Stone takes the diagrams from Simon, busies himself by carefully rolling it back up. He slides the rubber band up and down along the diagram as he speaks. "Look, I don't have a whole lot of respect for most of the prosecutors I've had to deal with. It's 'cause they're mostly like those assholes; all they care about is credit, about... everything other than, well, justice. Y'know, a couple years ago, a prosecutor—God, I can't remember his name, or maybe I've just blocked it out. Anyway, this jackass, he almost... he was really bent on the idea that the defendant was guilty, and it turned out his key witness was the killer all along!"
"I see. And as an officer who worked on the case, you felt slighted that all your hard work was, in essence, ignored?"
"No, I..." There's a careful recitation to what follows. Each word clear, crisp. "The victim was my little sister. Her killer almost went free. All because of some jerkoff's ego."
It's a slap across the face, breaks Simon from the narrow frame his anxieties have constricted everything into. He feels this is not something that Officer Stone shares lightly, nor should it be. It is solidarity that Stone is offering him, and looking for in return.
"I... I see." No words are sufficient—but an attempt is always more welcome than complete silence.
"And these goddamn agents!" Stone points the rolled-up blueprints in what must be the direction of the sorting room. "They're no better, and it's bullshit, and they know it, but they don't care! And you get what I'm saying, Prosecutor Blackquill, I know you do; Bobby trusts you and your judgment, so I can too. So if there's any way that I could help you—and I know Officer Ng feels the same way—if there's anything either of us can do, after today, then..."
"Yes, Officer. Certainly." Simon cautiously reaches for the blueprints, not wishing for them to be damaged by all the waving around Stone is doing. "And, for what it's worth. I never... I suppose I should have considered that there was a reasoning behind your treatment of me. I thought you naught but a glory-monger, driven by arrogance."
"Yeah, but I was still a dick to you, and I shouldn't have been. I guess we were both wrong, about each other."
"I believe so." There's a pause, one that should be awkward but Simon fills it with a calm smile. "Thank you, again. For the diagrams and for... your shared sentiments."
"Yeah, no prob... Oh!" Stone's face lights up as one does when they've remembered something. "Dakota—Officer Ng, she told me that if I saw you, to send you back to the sorting room! She said you have to see what she came across in the victim's e-mail account!"
"Oh?" Simon quirks an eyebrow. "Have you seen it yourself? I trust it'll, as they say, crack the case wide open?"
"I haven't seen it, all I know from what she told me is that it's really good shit."
"Officer Ng, this had best be not only the 'really good shit' that Officer Stone informed me of, but the best, most absolute ground-breaking shit I ever see in what I hope is a long and storied career."
Simon says this all with a straight face as he strides up to Officer Ng, and it's enough to send her bursting into laughter before she's able to reply.
"Oh, no joke, Prosecutor Blackquill. I promise, this is the best shit ever." She's rather short, so she doesn't need to hunch over the computer desk, at least not like Simon does as he positions himself beside her. "Sorry, hope you don't mind standing. Chair's evidence, and all. So here, prepare yourself!"
Ng's face is aglow as she opens up the e-mail program. Simon comments, "I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you quite enjoyed yourself, snooping through Mr. Ecsprest's emails."
"Something like that. Honestly, there wasn't too much. Just a couple requests asking for days off, and it looks like him and one of his coworkers, a Holden Biggersley, liked sending memes to each other, most of them pretty inappropriate and not what you'd call 'safe for work'. I don't know if that's someone else we can maybe question, or—"
Simon finds himself staring at a message serving as an example of Mr. Ecsprest's meme tastes, with a particularly fiendish looking sloth iterating what lewd sexual acts it'd like to perform.
"Where is what you promised, Officer? The 'really good shit', as it were?"
"Keep your dick on, I'm getting to that! God..." She huffs under her breath, and scrolls down several messages before opening one. There's a link inside that she clicks on. "Here. Mr. Ecsprest set up an account—a paid account—to access the archives of the Los Angeles Record. Lucky me, he saved his username and password in it. Check this out.
Ng presses the 'J' key in the search box of the Record's archives, and 'Jesse Prior wife murder' is the first suggestion to populate.
"Senator Prior?" Simon asks.
"One and the same," confirms Ng. She guides the mouse to the first result, which has already been browsed, judging by the deeper shade of its font. She clicks, and Simon catches the headline of Mayor's Wife Murdered but none of the article itself, as Ng skims halfway down, stopping on photograph serving as a paragraph break.
Simon first notices the sandy-haired teenager at the center of the photo, with his navy sportcoat and a smile prominently displaying metal braces. On one side of him, in a fire-engine red gown, is a pretty blonde girl of the same age and nearly the same height. To his other side is a well-styled woman, dripping in sparkling jewelry, undoubtedly the boy's mother, with her arms entwined around one of his. Behind all three is a sturdy man with a graying mustache and angled cheekbones like those of the blonde girl.
Ng taps a finger on the boy. "That's him, Prosecutor Blackquill. That's Kerry Herr."
"You're sure?"
"Oh, I'm totally sure." Ng prods at the screen again, this time to the caption below the photograph. "See?"
Simon scans the caption, once, twice, disbelieving how much information could be packed in so few words.
In this 1996 photograph, Susannah Prior poses at a political function with her husband, Los Angeles Mayor Jesse Prior, son Kerry and stepdaughter Ursula. On the evening of August 11, Mrs. Prior was found dead after a charity gala at Silver Meadows Country Club in what has been ruled a homicide. The police are asking for the public's help in this case and encourage anyone with leads to contact the LAPD Tipline. Calls will remain anonymous.
"For some reason, Mr. Ecsprest was looking into Mr. Herr's—and apparently, Ms. Prior-Stewart's—past," Ng says. "What I can't figure out is why he'd be the one searching it. You'd think the two kids would be the ones knee-deep in this case; it was never solved."
"Oh? You remember it that well?"
"Tch, yeah. When your golden birthday is overshadowed by news blaring everywhere that some politician's wife got ghosted, it kind of... sticks with you. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it... well, I guess you're a bit young. Or unless you didn't grow up in L.A."
If Simon is calculating correctly, he would have been very young at the time this took place. A year old, if that. And if such is the case, his family would have still been in England, plans of moving to California not even in an embryonic stage. "The latter, Officer Ng. Now, did they ever find any leads? Any suspects, at all? What about the mayor—er, senator?—himself?"
"There were hundreds of people at that gala and every one of them checked out, and so did the staff. And no, the mayor, he was a broken man from it; or, at least he acted like it well enough to get reelected a couple months later—and in a landslide, too. God, they were covering this thing twenty-four-seven. You couldn't go a day without seeing the ads on TV trying to garner sympathy, and then pointless updates just to report that there were no new breaks in the case."
Simon hums, affirming. "I see. Anything else you can recall?"
"I don't know if this counts, but what's really... well, not weird, but... " Ng idly scrolls the article up and down, not seeming to absorb any of it as she continues. "I always felt bad for the lady who lost against him. I just remember her—she was this hip, young single mom, no political experience but strong, innovative ideas. My older sister was part of a grassroots campaign that spread like wildfire, to get this woman into office, and... I think she really had a chance until the mayor's old lady here bought the farm. It's horrible to say, but it was like his wife's death was the biggest stepping stone of Prior's career; after that term as mayor ended, he ran for senator, and that's where he's been ever since."
Simon lets this information stew for a few seconds; not every tidbit he receives is important, and yet... he has the hunch that all of this is. "Officer, might I ask your educated opinion on something?"
"Sure."
"If your significant other, or mother was murdered, and that murder was never solved, would you not constantly pursue it until it was?"
"Grief is a bitch, Prosecutor Blackquill. People don't act how they know they should. Maybe they were finally able to accept her absence and just... moved on with their lives."
Simon thinks of his own mother, and her absence. After so many years, he has not moved on. He doesn't believe it possible, and her absence had been caused by divorce, not death. He doesn't believe that Mrs. Prior's family, under these circumstances, could have moved on either.
"I can not agree. I think we need to ask ourselves why Mr. Ecsprest was playing amateur sleuth in the first place. He did not seem to have a close friendship to Mr. Herr or Ms. Prior-Stewart. I can't understand why he would be assisting either by looking into an event so far into their pasts."
"Well, maybe it was the opposite reason. Maybe he wasn't trying to help them."
"Pardon?"
"I've just noticed that in cold cases like these, everyone thinks they've got some new angle or theory about whodunnit." Ng takes her eyes off the article, looking over at Simon with a solemnity that matures her greatly. "And maybe... Mr. Ecsprest's theory didn't sit well with Mr. Herr, when he found out. And by 'found out', I mean 'was confronted'."
"You mean to say, that Mr. Ecsprest was treading dangerously close to the truth and that perhaps..."
"Yeah. Perhaps it wasn't a truth Mr. Herr wanted revealed."
Or... Simon thinks of the lengths Aura has gone to protect him during his younger years. No one could torture her brother; that was her job, after all, and she proved it by brutally twisting the nipple of a bully who spit bubblegum in seven-year-old Simon's hair...
Was there a similar nature in the relationship between Mr. Herr and Ms. Prior-Stewart? He can not say, because so much is being hidden from him, and purposefully too. But he can not imagine them working together, in such a large city and after so many years of legally not being siblings, is a coincidence. Nor is it coincidence that such a connection was concealed from him.
What if she was the one confronted, and who's to say how aggressively? Would her former stepbrother have acted—overreacted—in his defense of her?
"It still doesn't make sense why the victim would care either way or..." Simon's sentence dies with an exasperated sigh; this belongs in the hands of someone with patience, and a copious amount of free time at their disposal—and also an account with the Los Angeles Register. Luckily for him, he has been introduced to a person who currently fits that very description.
"Officer, would you mind emailing this article to Detective Fulbright? I know the LAPD has access to the Register's archives; it should be no problem for him to pull it up, along with the others. If you want to contact him after this, to plan when the two of you can reconvene and further comb through them, I would appreciate that. All I ask is that you've whatever information you find e-mailed to me by eight o'clock tomorrow morning."
"Yeah, no problem, Prosecutor Blackquill. Should I CC you on them too? I mean, those jerks wanted to get their hands on everything we'd found, I'd guess they'd wanna know about this too. If you've approved it, of course."
"No. No, don't. It is imperative that only Fulbright receives the e-mail. You see, I do not wish to weigh down our hard-working comrades from the Postal Investigation Unit with all this superfluous information, what, with them liking everything so cut and dry. I have this case to think about, not one nearly twenty years old. With no connection to the current one."
Officer Ng nudges Simon aside, types in Fulbright's address, then clicks 'Send' with a dramatic flourish. She glances over at him, a conspiratorial smirk slowly spreading across her face. "No connection to the current case yet."
"Yet," Simon agrees.
Before leaving, Simon detours away to a secluded corner and calls Aura. When the voicemail instruction begins, he ends the call and instead sends her the most concise text message he can: that the investigation took longer than expected and he will call for a cab to pick him up and deliver him to GYAXA, understanding that she is likely in the midst of dinner preparations.
At the main entrance he is disgorged from the heavy revolving door and into the cool, late spring evening. Lingering at the top step, he brings up his phone's search function to contact a cab company, and just as he's about to dial them, he's the one being hailed.
"Prosecutor Blackquill! Over here!"
Across the street, partially obscured by a monstrosity of a vehicle and waving Simon down, is Detective Fulbright.