Letters
11
-M-
August 4, 2007
The research with Mello had reached a dead end. The redhead was aware that there was a limit to information available on Mihael Keehl. He'd exhausted every resource now except one and he still didn't have any clear leads.
Somehow, Matt had known that he wouldn't have found what he was looking for anywhere else. He'd tried to bury the small voice that had always been clamoring for attention, insinuating that he'd have to go back. In vain, Matt had tried to ignore the dark whisper, and instead rely on information the world could offer. But he couldn't do that anymore.
The problem with returning to Wammy's House was that he would legally be under Roger's thumb until his eighteenth birthday and that was still six months away. Being a runaway, the police would be more than willing to help the orphanage keep Matt locked away. That is, if Roger didn't do it himself or send Matt off to the Youth Offending Team.
Matt wasn't worried about the interview process the YOT would do; running circles around the heads of the interviewer would be like child's play. It was the fingerprinting and mug-shot that terrified him. As one of L's protégés, the idea of having his identity locked down and exposed was horrific. It would be more or less the end of "Matt" as he had become. It would kill whatever goals of detecting he wanted to accomplish, if it didn't kill him right away. Records of one's name and face were dangerous companions in this day and age.
It was frustrating, suddenly and completely. He felt like raging around his paid room like he had done as a kid, but knew it wouldn't help him get anywhere. Six months was a long time. Matt grabbed a cigarette from his pocket and lit it fluidly. He needed the taste and release from tension as soon as possible. His first drag was long and powerful, and Matt sucked in the fumes like a diver coming up for air.
Matt's shoulders gently relaxed as his mind softened to the idea of a long wait. Six months. It was a long time, but...
...but it meant Matt had six months to plan his reunion with the place that had screwed up his life. He'd wait until after his birthday.
After all, he's always heard revenge was a dish best served cold.
-M-
"There's a place that ends here I know
When they close the gates I'll cry
I'm so tired of never sleeping
The whole world wants what we're on.
Got to get to you, the orphanage is closing in an hour."
-M-
July 5, 1999
It was strange to have an afternoon off. Matt couldn't remember the last time they had been excused out of classes, but then again, it was fairly rare that one of their professors cancelled at the last minute. Also, it being a Monday, they hadn't been assigned much new homework yet.
The day outside was pretty, the sun pouring through a few puffy clouds, but the heat and brightness was annoying. He ate lunch alone in the air conditioned cafeteria, Orphan sniffing at his choice to eat inside and going out on her own. Knowing her, she probably was sitting with her cats and feeding them bits of a sandwich. It was all the better that Matt didn't go sit with her.
But what to do with the rest of his impossibly long afternoon?
The nudging thoughts that had been pressed up underneath his routine for the last few months rose up to the surface. As much as he secretly dreaded another confrontation with Dan, he didn't have any further excuses for not seeing him today. He'd been busy with schoolwork and the imposed fitness regime that it was even difficult to find time for gaming, let alone talking about the Letters.
But the idea was always there, just under the surface of this daily thoughts, bubbling up in the few minutes here and there. When sitting on the loo, he wondered if Kiss had written on the walls in the girls' lavatory. While walking alone to his room, he tried to decide where Backup was. And when he saw his fellow classmates in the mornings, he tried not to believe that one of them would die.
Matt sighed, standing up from the empty table, the room dark only in contrast to the brightness outside. He tossed his apple core into the waste bin as he walked out, squinting down at the paved walkway so he didn't have to look up at the sky, or worse, the sun. Although, he had made the walk to his room enough times that he was fairly sure he could do it with his eyes closed.
Just as a test, Matt closed them, his footsteps suddenly feeling more unsure. And even though he knew his inner ear was what controlled his balance, it was a lot more difficult to know for sure whether he was completely upright. He continued for a bit, resisting the urge to open his eyes until suddenly his left foot hit turf and he opened them suddenly to find he had only made it about 10 feet before going off course. Matt immediately felt silly and childish, so he hurried to his room, hoping no one had seen him.
Once there, Matt grabbed his question paper and steeled himself. If he didn't do it now, it would mean he'd lost all his courage and he'd never be able to convince himself to do it in the future. He'd procrastinated enough already. There were no excuses left now.
Matt locked his door behind him and took the stairs down one floor to Dan's room. He knocked, the paper folded neatly and held in one hand.
There was no response. Matt stood there, unsure of what to do. He knocked again, and then turned his head, straining his ears in case there were any soft noises he had missed. He waited, and there was still nothing.
It seemed as if Dan wasn't there today, and Matt felt half-guilty for being relieved. He'd had enough courage, so it wasn't his fault that Dan wasn't there. There was no point in leaving a note, he'd just have to come by another day and—
"Ah, my favorite lamb," said a voice from behind Matt's turned head. Matt jumped, looking guilty as he spun to find Dan's tall frame in the hallway. "Looking for me, were you?"
Matt swallowed once quickly, trying to get his adrenaline under control. "Um, yes. Yes I was. I mean, I am."
Dan glided past Matt to his door, unlocking it in practiced manner and opening it up. He held it open above Matt's head, and gestured so that the redhead entered under his raised arm.
Matt waited politely in the room for Dan to take his seat, the interview shaping up to be similar to the previous one. And indeed, Dan sat in the same pose, leaning forward so he was still a few inches taller than Matt, but more or less on the same level. His dark chocolate eyes looked expectantly at Matt, who tried not to let it bother him.
He retreated to his paper, unfolding it while he spoke so he didn't have to look Dan in the eyes the whole time. "Um, so I wrote down a few questions that I had and—"
He was interrupted by burst of laughter. "You wrote them down?" Dan looked bemused. "God, aren't you an earnest one."
Matt felt like he had committed an atrocious faux pas, but held his ground firmly. "the first one is how—"
"You'll only get one question per visit if you have them on a ridiculous paper like that."
"—how did Kiss die."
Matt stared at Dan, his brows furrowed. Fine. So, one question per visit. Good thing Matt had at least ordered them with his priority at the top.
Dan stared back, and Matt felt like all his practice with Mello's eyes was finally paying off. When he really thought about it, Dan wasn't as scary as Mello, and somehow that made facing Dan easier. He breathed evenly, willing the memory of respect back into Dan that he had demonstrated at the end of their last meeting.
"Alright, lamb," Dan replied, his expression still half-bemused. "But make sure you're sure. You only get one question."
Matt nodded without hesitation.
"I wasn't living on the floor at the time that Kiss was, but there were only three at the time. Ivan and Jiwon were the other two." Dan leaned in, looming larger as his story progressed. "She was beautiful—every guy had a crush on her, but since she was on the fourth floor not many would admit it. But she wasn't interested, of course.
"And then there was Ivan. We all knew—yeah, even us regs—but no one seemed to care how crazy he was. He reminded me of Backup... in the bad way. I once saw him from a window dissecting a rabbit on the back lawn. But the thing is, the rabbit was still alive."
Matt's breath caught in his throat, his mind frozen and unable to think forward—he didn't want to guess where the story was heading. Dan looked satisfied by his response, not smiling, but neither frowning.
"So we knew he was a bad one, but smart enough to hide it well. But even we didn't know just how bad he was.
"There are tons of stories now, but I'm fairly sure that at the time, no one knew about his thing for Kiss. It was late one night, middle of winter, when everyone heard the scream. It was the loudest, most terrifying thing that I'd heard. Blood-curdling, you know? It's not just a phrase, things like that really happen. Anyway, everyone ran out into the halls, trying to figure out who it had been. We knew it was a girl, so us boys went downstairs to the girls' dorms. Most of them were in the hallways too and no one admitted to screaming. We all idled away the time, probably a good forty-five minutes, and just before we all planned on heading back to our own rooms, someone suggested that it could have been Kiss. She was the only girl up there, so it was actually pretty easy to overlook her.
"No one really wanted to go up there because of Ivan, but strength of numbers pushed us onward. It was more like a dare, really, and someone—Ben, I think—was supposed to knock on her door. When we got to the fourth floor, it was deadly silent. We began whispering and shoved Ben forward to the K door. As he knocked, it opened.
"The scene inside was something that I never want to see again." Dan's voice was calm and for the first time, his gaze was centered inward and not on the boy before him. It lasted only moments, however, before the grim smile was back in place. "In your line of work, however, little lamb, you'll probably see it for yourself."
Matt felt small and insignificant. The world suddenly seemed like an enormous complex monster that was pulling marionette strings and Matt had suddenly realized that maybe he, too, had strings attached. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. Dan's eyes narrowed and Matt's insides squirmed as he realized Dan was actually enjoying the retelling.
"The first thing was the smell: all iron-tangy from all the blood. Kiss was in the center of the room, on her back in the middle of the floor. Her throat looked like it had been ripped it out and she had enough clothes missing that it didn't take a genius to figure out what had been done to her. Several people ran the moment the door opened, and another guy puked. They must have figured Ivan was still alive in there, because he was sitting on her bed, leaning up against the wall. But a second glance was enough to see that he had cut both wrists and bled to death already. The bed and sheets were stained almost black. Both Ivan and Kiss were dead. We stared for a long time, and then Wammy and Roger came up hurriedly and shooed us all away. We weren't supposed to talk about what we had seen, and they got counselors in to talk to everyone. Wammy encouraged everyone to see them on their own time as well. I never went, but the kids who were the worst off... well, they did and none of them even seem to remember what happened. But like I said, no one talks about it.
"Except you asked, little lamb."
Matt stood rooted to the floor. To think that Kiss had… she'd been raped and murdered by another student. There was no way Wammy would have let that happen. And yet, it had. Despite Dan's dramatic storytelling, and the way he had relished scaring Matt, the redhead knew he believed it. Why else would he see her ghost? The red splash across her shirt? The blood monster seeping towards him across the floorboards, the black and white cloth covering his eyes, the bodies of the people he loved more than all the world….
Dan was still staring at him, expecting some sort of reply. The only thing Matt could think to do was mumble a thank you before he turned tail and left the room on his own. He couldn't take it. How could that have happened? She'd been murdered and her spirit left to wander the halls, waiting for someone to notice her.
Matt was in his room and it's patient darkness almost before he realized it. His notebook was out on the bed, and he ripped off his goggles, letting them drop to the bedside table as he hunkered down over the open page. He took a pencil up and wrote. It now looked like this:
Alec
Backup
Crick – reg
Dan – reg
Excalibur
F – girl?
Grant –reg
H – girl?
Ivan – killed Kiss, suicide
Jiwon - graduated
Kiss – dead, killed by Ivan
Lawrence – BEST
Mello – 3
Near – 4
Orphan – 1
Matt – 2
He looked at the master list, trying to figure out what it all meant. On one hand, there was some kind of perfect sense—the neat row of an alphabet, not yet complete, but a work in progress. Except why was 'L' there before any of the rest? Dan had specifically said before that they were all after Lawrence, his backups in case anything went wrong… so why was he in the middle of the alphabet? Why weren't they backups for Alec? If they all had made-up names anyway.
There was something else bothering Matt about the whole thing. Why hadn't Wammy prevented Kiss's death? Ivan's suicide? After all, the man seemed to know everything that was going on in the house, and if Dan's story was accurate, Wammy had been at the house, not on one of his trips. He and Roger had closed the door to the dead bodies of extra detectives in training. Matt swallowed. If Mello broke into his room and tried to kill him, would anyone know? If he yelled loud enough, would someone come and save him? He shivered, even though the July afternoon was almost stiflingly hot.
What was he supposed to do next? He knew how Kiss had died, but that had solved nothing—her killer had died moments afterwards.
He flopped over onto his back on his comforter. As shocking as the truth was for his own future, there didn't seem to be answer as to how to stop Kiss's spirit from wandering the fourth floor on moonlit nights.
…Unless… maybe that's what Matt was supposed to do next. He wanted to argue with himself, say that he had already accomplished one heavy task today by seeing Dan. He didn't need to go ghost hunting right away. He didn't want to confront the dead, not when he'd already was having a crisis.
He took a deep breath. Kiss would wait, Matt would gather himself up into less fearful thoughts. And he would go talk to Dan again, the next chance he had.
For now, there was always his Gameboy.
Matt picked up the toy, and for some reason, he found that tears were running down his face as he turned it on. A moment later, he was gasping for air, the little lights blurring hopelessly through tears, the sounds distorted against his choked sobs. Relentlessly, he kept his hands on the controls, pressing 'start,' not admitting defeat, pretending he wasn't afraid, acting like it was a normal day, and above all, not wanting to give in to the bare loneliness of his life.
When he went to bed after hours of mindless game play, he didn't remember when he had finally stopped crying.
-M-
July 11, 1999
Orphan had commented on his haggard look all during the school week, but Matt was hoping it would all be over after today. It was the following Sunday after his second meeting with Dan, so he had no classes, and even if he had to stay up all night to finish up homework he didn't complete the day before, he was going to talk to Dan again. He had avoided being in the hallway alone, not wanting to accidentally run into its ghostly inhabitant, but the new information had been draining him. He was having difficulties focusing on the assignments in class, wondering how they could be so important for what Matt was struggling with. There seemed to be no reason to be working on his calculus when he was trying to solve the riddle of his own living space.
No wonder he hadn't been getting enough sleep. He kept waking up to images of Ivan (who looked remarkably like Mello's older brother) standing in his doorway, silhouetted and terrifying, like the man in the hat. In Matt's nightmares, the two were often the same being, with Kiss protectively holding Blair Rose in her arms, even though they were both corpses, blood flowing from fresh wounds.
He needed to find some way to end whatever was going on. Why did it happen? That was what he needed to know, but Dan might not know—he wasn't a Letter at the time. The only person who really could know the truth was Jiwon. But who was he and where was he now? What happened when someone 'graduated?'
Matt knocked on the door, the D A N rattling a bit against the wood they were attached to.
The door opened, Dan's languid figure leaning against the frame. "I knew you'd be back."
He smiled and Matt gave a nervous smile back as he walked in. "I… need some more answers."
"Let me close the door first, lambikins," Dan mocked, before doing as he had pronounced. He claimed his seat as usual, his mood obviously chipper in a way that didn't fit the subject matter they always talked about. "Did you bring another list?"
"…No," Matt said, a little surly and more uncomfortable.
"Then you must be learning. They do start you lot young," he said, musing and looking somewhat patronizingly above Matt's head.
"Look, I need to know why Kiss died," Matt said.
Dan looked a little annoyed. "I already told you about that."
"No," Matt retorted, a little annoyance entering his own voice, "you told me how she died. I want to know why, and if you don't, then I want to know where Jiwon is."
Dan let out a low whistle, his voice surprisingly soft. "You sure know what you want, don't you."
Matt swallowed and nodded. Dan leaned in, his voice low.
"I don't know why Ivan killed her other than he was always a psycho. A bit like the Mello you've got on your hands—" Matt cringed slightly "—with no rhyme and reason, just brains to do violence. There were only three in that generation, so you're right to think about finding Jiwon, but… he's not at Wammy's. And he's not dead either."
Matt nodded hopefully. "What does it mean if he graduated?"
Dan laughed. "Oh yes, he was a great success. The first and only one of us to actually graduate the program. He passed, you see and became a real live detective just like all of you dream about becoming. Of course, Lawrence is always better, but Jiwon had the makings of being another like him. He made it seem like the rest of us had been worth it—a kind of, 'see, hey, it works, someone made it' thing."
Matt nodded warily, disliking Dan's use of past tense.
"All of us failures"—Matt noticed he said the word with incredible distaste—"heard the whisperings of his first case. And you know what he was given? A murder-suicide. A man killing his rival's girlfriend before himself."
"…Is that what happened to Kiss? Was she Jiwon's girlfriend?" Matt barely dared ask his questions, but he knew Dan was leading up to something.
"No, she wasn't. But see, that's the thing. Jiwon was always so utterly wrapped up in his own thoughts, his enormous brainpower or whatever that even though everybody knew Kiss fancied him, he was socially inept and didn't see. He ignored her. He ignored Ivan. He only did what he was told by Wammy."
"So why is the first case important?" Matt was confused now, trying to draw conclusions and similarities.
"Hang on, I'm getting there. Jiwon got to his first case and for the first time, as he got into the mindset of the case, the way you need to figure out motives and what people were like, that's when he saw the similarities. That's when he realized what Kiss must have felt, what Ivan must have felt, and what he… well, what he should have felt, but didn't. It drove him crazy. He's in the mental hospital on the other side of town."
The abrupt ending to the story was jolting. A mental hospital? Wammy's best and brightest wound up there? The Letters was suddenly a terrible story of failure, despair, murder, mental instability, and suicide.
Dan smiled at him cheerily, like a man at a fair handing out cotton candy. "You see what a bright future you have waiting for you, little lamb?"
-M-
Alec
Backup
Crick – reg
Dan – reg, but willing to talk
Excalibur
F – girl?
Grant –reg
H – girl?
Ivan – killed Kiss, suicide
Jiwon – graduated, insane after first case
Kiss – dead, killed by Ivan
Lawrence – BEST, but why?
Mello – 3
Near – 4
Orphan – 1
Matt – 2
The only part that didn't still didn't fit into the neat pattern of alphabet soup was the extra M.
Matt. The extra replacement.
But somehow, knowing what he did now, he wasn't so sure it was a bad thing.
-M-
March 3, 2000
The moment Orphan shouted excitedly from the hallway, Matt knew it wasn't going to be an ordinary day.
"There's a notice from Wammy! He wants us to go to the admin building and classes are cancelled for the entire day!"
All the marked doors on the fourth floor opened and the boys looked at Orphan incredulously.
"What about the Chinese test?" Matt asked awkwardly, momentarily blinded by the bright lights before he pulled his goggles down. He tried fixing his scraggly hair underneath the elastic band.
"Why does he want us there?" Mello asked simultaneously, his voice low and wary. He was still standing in the shadow of his door, not yet emerged.
Near simply stood and looked in awe at the fifth figure in the hallway, the open door with the gleaming L still ajar behind the man. He stretched fully upright, black lacings and silver studs of metal glinting in the morning light. Bits of black material slung almost carelessly all over his slim body.
He looked almost completely unlike the man Matt had met before. The Lawrence he had gotten his goggles from and eaten cake with so long ago. But it was certainly the same pale skin and black mop of hair underneath that ridiculous amount of skintight black clothing, leather pants, and silver jewelry. The same teenaged face with dark sleepless eyes. Was that a pierced ear? Lawrence walked to the center of the hallway, and turned to look at the smaller students around him, a playful smile on his face.
"Ah, I think it's because we are to be properly introduced today, Mello. And Matt, the Chinese test is going to be postponed until tomorrow." He held out a fingerless-gloved hand to Near and another to Orphan, both of whom crossed to him and took it without a word. "Let's be off, then. We wouldn't want Wammy getting worried."
And he grinned at his own alliteration before clomping off in biker boots, Near and Orphan tentatively walking on either side of him. They held his hands like they were afraid to squeeze too tight for fear of breaking him, despite the tough exterior that his clothing and playful attitude exuded. Like they were holding the hands of something too important to mess around with.
Matt and Mello followed behind in perfect silence, unable to comprehend what was happening. It was enough to simply walk behind their hero-figure and forget their constant rivalry. Too much was focused on the man before them.
Matt found himself worrying what the sudden meeting was for. If they were being formally introduced to Lawrence by Wammy, then it might mean they were facing some kind of challenge. Would Lawrence be choosing his own successor now? Then Matt had to make an excellent impression. He couldn't afford to lose… because then what would happen? Would his training cease? Would he get shuffled back to the lowly regs to be forgotten by the fourth floor and ostracized by everyone else? He tried not to worry about his fate, but it seemed like that was the only possibility for the meeting at this point. He'd been studying at Wammy's for almost two whole years now.
He steadied himself mentally, bracing for any impacts of words as he entered the administration building last.
Lawrence led them into an adjacent room from the entrance hall. It had a small table, with six chairs in it, one of which was occupied by Quillsh Wammy, who smiled warmly at the entering youngsters. There was a pitcher of water and glasses set neatly upon napkins for everyone.
"Now then, children," Wammy began, gesturing around him, "Please have a seat."
Everyone obeyed quietly except for the tallest one in black. "Am I still a child to you, Wammy?" he asked cheekily, sitting down at an angle so that one booted leg hung over an arm of the chair.
"You are to me, Lawrence," Wammy replied with a sigh. "And shouldn't you be trying harder to make a good impression? Please remove your feet from the furniture."
Lawrence wore an expression of perfect sullen teenager-ness. Lips slightly pursed, eyes looking off just to Wammy's right, trying to look bored and put-out at once, while his posture slumped before he twisted to sit straighter in his chair with what seemed an abnormally laborious movement.
Wammy smiled at him. "You've certainly got that down, Lawrence. You'll be fine tomorrow, I'm sure. But enough of that, we've got to get down to business, yes?"
He looked around at the rest of the Letters, meeting all of their eyes. "Mello, Near, Orphan, and Matt. This," he gestured to Lawrence, "is Lawrence."
They all nodded sincerely, and oddly it was Near who spoke, his voice soft, yet firm. "We know. We've all met him before."
"Ah, I expected that from the lot of you, but," Wammy continued, "I am not completely finished. Lawrence is currently working as a detective, the same as all of you aspire to be."
This time, Matt chimed in. "But sir, we knew that as well."
Wammy smiled indulgently and shared a knowing look with Lawrence, who seemed inordinately pleased.
The old man opened his mouth to speak again, but was interrupted by Mello. "And don't try to tell us that the rest of what you wanted to say was that he's the best bloody detective in the world. Because we already know that."
There was silence for a moment before Quillsh Wammy let out a hearty laugh.
Lawrence, on the other hand, looked thoughtful. He turned to Mello, suddenly very intent, his entire body focused on Mello's eyes. "But tell me, Mello, have you ever heard of the detective Eraldo Coil?"
Mello seemed to withdraw for a moment, doubt flickering across his face. "…N-no."
"What about Deneuve?"
Mello shook his head, his blond hair waving.
"And Kappei Yamaguchi?"
Matt enjoyed watching Mello swallow uncomfortably in Lawrence's presence as he shook his head again, his usually defiant blue eyes looking down at the table in defeat.
Lawrence suddenly leaned back and looked around the room. "Have any of you heard of those detectives?"
Matt looked around to Orphan who searched his own eyes for clues, and then to Near, but didn't find any flickers of knowledge from either of them. They shook their heads and mumbled no in unison.
"Then how could you know if I'm the best?"
"Because you—" they all began simultaneously, and iin a kind of terrible harmony, all four of them finished, "…told… me."
Matt looked around at the rest of them in horror, and saw his own expression reflected in those of his classmates. They'd based all their information off of one source. How ridiculous was that? But wait, Matt suddenly realized that along with listening to the competition and piecing clues together from the other three, he had also heard its truth from Dan.
"And so did someone else," Matt finished quietly, yet hopefully into the silence.
Everyone looked at him, but none more violently than Lawrence himself. His black eyes were piercing and his features suddenly sharp and dangerous. Panicked, Matt looked to Wammy, but the older man's expression held confusion, honest worry, but somehow… a vibrant intensity?
"Matt, look at me." Lawrence's voice was a command. Matt looked. "Who else told you that?"
Matt swallowed, his eyes straying to those of his classmates and his guardian, before returning to Lawrence's face. "Um, well, I first heard things from Orphan and Mello, but…" his voice shrank as Lawrence nodded slowly without losing his locked gaze. Matt didn't want to give up his source! Not to Orphan, Mello, and Near. He took a deep breath, and then leaned in closer to Lawrence, thankful he was sitting just to Lawrence's right. The teenager moved in as well once he understood what Matt was doing, his black eyes leaving Matt's finally and tilting his head so Matt could reach his ear.
Just to be extra careful, Matt used a hand to cover his mouth from view by the others across the table. He stopped an inch from Lawrence's ear, and whispered.
"I asked Dan."
Lawrence was perfectly still for a moment, then seemed to slump a bit like a deflated balloon, leaning back. Slowly, he turned his head back to look at Matt, but his eyes were strangely filled with sorrow. Lawrence looked down and away from the question on everyone else's faces.
"Lawrence?" Wammy asked, his voice holding a bit of a waver. The man was literally sitting on the edge of his seat.
"No, it's fine, Wammy," Lawrence replied, still looking downcast.
Matt returned to his normal sitting position and breathed a slight sigh of relief.
Wammy coughed, trying to restore some air of normalcy to the room. "Well, that brings me to the next point in this conversation. Just as every detective here has a false name, we still need to act as a team to protect each other by not giving out information that can harm us."
Wammy looked at them all carefully. "I hope that none of you have spoken to anyone else about Lawrence being a high caliber detective?"
They shook their heads, even Lawrence. Wammy continued. "Good. And it is imperative that none of you do so in the slightest. It would be best if none of you mentioned him at all—just like how your training and classes are highly secretive, so is Lawrence's existence.
"This is because you are all correct. He is the best detective in the world."
"But what about Eraldo Coil?" Mello asked, half sullen, half sarcastic.
"I am Eraldo Coil," Lawrence answered succinctly. "He's the second best detective."
"And Deneuve?"
"I took that name as well." Lawrence's face was impassive. "Third."
"You have all reached the point," Wammy said, cutting over the awed looks at their shared idol, "that when Lawrence is not busy working, he will teach the occasional class. Congratulations."
Lawrence looked up finally and smiled around the room. It was his strange smile, the one that felt genuine, but looked like a replica. Or maybe it was only that Matt recognized it as his true awkwardness showing through again. At this, at least, Lawrence wasn't playing a role like he was with his clothing and attitude when they arrived. Matt smiled back.
"So, there's water for all of you if you like, and you can go ahead and get to know your newest teacher a bit in an informal setting. I suppose it's okay since you are all floormates as well," Wammy said benignly. "I have some of my own work to do today, so I can't stay, so do everything that Lawrence says, alright?"
Wammy smiled and rose from his seat, walking steadily to the door and exiting.
No sooner than the door had shut when Orphan spoke. "So what's it like? I mean, really being out there, doing real detective work. Because I read Sylvia Strange, but I think there are probably a lot of inaccuracies because it's a novel and so there's a lot put in there simply for entertainment, but it's not always true."
Lawrence blinked, and shifted sideways a bit, one leg coming up to rest a foot on the edge of his chair. "Each case is different."
"Can you solve any case?" Mello asked, his voice sounding out like a challenge.
"I have never failed," Lawrence replied.
"But that doesn't mean you can solve any case," Mello answered back. "You could simply be choosing the cases that you think you can solve going into them."
"You are implying I avoid difficult cases, Mello?" Lawrence asked, his tone only barely rising into a question on the name.
Mello watched him levelly, but didn't speak. Lawrence sighed.
"It's true that I have solved every case put before me, some more neatly than others, but all have been solved to my satisfaction… which I might add is usually higher than the court systems in most countries." He paused for a moment. "But considering all probabilities, there will likely come a case that I cannot solve. I can think of many 'perfect crime' scenarios in which I would not be able to identify for certain who the criminal is, so it stands that eventually there will be a person that can think to the same level as one of them and will wish to perform the crime."
Matt blinked. "But then, couldn't you just profile the murderer by identifying the level of intelligence required?"
Lawrence smiled at him. "Yes, but it could always have been someone more intelligent, or someone who learned the idea from another person, and so on. The tricky thing about dealing with criminals at my level is that they learn very quickly. Rarely do I get a case where the criminals are stupid."
"So," Orphan began, joining into the conversation, "you actually have a limited criminal base, since you really only deal with the masterminds."
"Precisely."
"What was the hardest case you ever solved?" Mello asked, changing the subject. Matt was slightly annoyed at him—it seemed like Mello was simply trying to prove that Lawrence wasn't as smart or experienced as they all believed. Which, if Matt thought about it, maybe was a good thing in a way, but Mello was going about it all wrong. Spitefully, almost.
"Probably my first one," Lawrence answered wistfully. "I was very young, and hadn't had much training." He smiled quickly at them. "Not like all of you are getting."
"But what was it?" Mello persisted.
"A murder," Lawrence said. "If I had to solve the same case now, it would be very simple really. A matter of hours, a day at most… so it really comes down to what sort of equipment one has. Most specifically, one's brain."
Orphan looked doubtful. "Are you saying that you weren't very smart?"
"Oh no," Lawrence returned, "I was plenty smart. Just untrained. I didn't know how smart I really was. Am."
Matt stifled a chuckle. "You're really saying that we don't have a clue how smart we really are either."
"Yes," Lawrence nodded, "And it amazes me just how quickly all of you are learning. J'ai dû apprendre français pendant trois mois avant je parlerais comme un parisien, si vous le croirez. And that was before I knew any Russian at all."
Orphan snickered a bit, trying unsuccessfully to squash it. Near sighed quietly from the corner, twisting a bit of his white hair between his fingers in his usual habit.
"So we're actually better than you," Mello said, his voice a bit quieter and less confrontational than before. He was looking at the center of the table.
"I didn't say that," Lawrence replied softly. "But it seems quite clear that you all have the potential to be better than me.
"That is why you are my successors."
-M-
Even though it felt like they had talked about nothing of particular importance, Matt was exhausted. Lawrence was very kind, and answered each question, but Matt had only realized after the interview was over that all the given answers were rather cagey.
He was a great detective, that was nearly a given since it came from the trusted source of Wammy and confirmed by other unrelated sources (Dan and Matt's own classmates). He was also incredibly intelligent—Matt could tell for himself just by a conversation.
But who was he really if a whole alphabet of children were trained to be like him? He hadn't been able to ask about the Letters and about the generations of trainees before him, because of his classmates. But if there were still so many failures in the past, in fact, if Matt really thought about it, if all of the former Letters had been failures, then why did they still continue the program?
Who was 'they?' Wammy, for sure. Lawrence, too. Roger was a little harder to answer. Why did these people, all so exceptionally kind to a group of smart misfits, continue a program that had been proven dangerous and unsuccessful?
Matt blinked. It wasn't like he didn't want to be here, learning to be a detective. He enjoyed it, really. He was treated like an adult most of the time, and given appropriate challenges. He was quite spoiled, really, considering that he had nearly every gaming system created in the last several years and all the games he could want to go with it. He ate well, he slept well, he…
…hadn't found his family's killer, was beaten up by Mello, kept seeing the ghost of a murdered girl, felt stupid most of the time, was scared of and by Dan, and had no real friends.
Matt's head spun. That couldn't be right. Not all of it anyway—while he really did have no idea who had killed his family, Mello hadn't beaten him up for quite a long time, and neither had he seen Kiss. He had avoided sparking Mello off, and wandering hallways at night… it was just a learning curve. And Lawrence had just told them all how intelligent they were, not to mention how he couldn't really be too scared of Dan if he had been to see him several times. And friends… he had Orphan. And Lawrence counted.
Hell, even Mello and he were friends of a sort. Against the rest of the world, he and Mello were far more similar. And Matt got along with Near fine—they hardly ever spoke, but when they did, there was never anything unkind between them. It was always a friendly joking or agreement.
So his life was more or less perfect. He couldn't ask for anything, really. Maybe that's why they kept the program around. Because for Matt, it was the best life he could ask for.
Really.
Soooo, another update over here. Yaaaay. Hope you're all enjoying the story and stuff. :)