Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note nor any of the characters contained therein.
Summary: L is almost 17, investigating a serial murder case near Toronto University. Undercover as a student prodigy, L will have to find a balance between education, investigation, and (ye gods) a social life. Rated M for language/nudity/gore. Some spoilers for Death Note: Another Note.
#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#
Drowning is not so pitiful
As the attempt to rise
Three times, 'tis said, a sinking man
Comes up to face the skies,
And then declines forever
To the abhorred abode,
Where hope and he part company –
– excerpt from "Drowning is not so pitiful", Emily Dickinson
#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#
The Worst Feeling Ever
Chapter 19: Diving Deep
Even during trying times, the importance of taking solace in simple pleasures was clear to him. A breakfast and lunch of fresh-baked cake and coffee, for example, or a long uninterrupted shower in his own bathroom with a locked door to keep out intruders. L pressed the soft white towel to his chest, blotting the last droplets from his body. His hair stood up at odder angles than usual, having just been rubbed vigorously by a towel he'd since dropped to the floor. Poking the damp thing with a toe, he clutched at the other towel, bringing it to his face. It smelled clean. He smelled clean. But I'm not, he thought.
L rubbed his face viciously, preventing hot trails from forming, and tossed the second towel aside, staring down at the white lumps as though they were shed skin. Before I persuaded him, he thought, Watari seemed willing to continue working with me, though not on this case, despite the fact that he believes I murdered Maulty. Whatever he may think of me, this does not speak highly of his own scruples, harboring one murderer to catch another. L pushed a thumb to his mouth, pinning flesh between teeth. Even Aleister, who has an unrealistically positive view of me, believes that I could be a murderer. To be fair, he is not wrong.
Turning to face the mirror, L propped his fingers on the vanity and stared into his own eyes, the pupils constricted, gunmetal grey staring back with both barrels. Am I wrong to do this? L wondered. Am I wrong to think that I can pay back any debt by solving crimes? Am I even worthy of taking on such a role?
The ruddy bloom across his face stood out in his reflection, even as condensation threatened to mist the mirror over once more. He stared, letting his eyes unfocus, his features blurring into the ghostly skull and black cloud before snapping back into sharp relief. Cool marble on warm skin soothed him, and his breathing began to slow. No, I am not worthy, L thought, but I will do this just the same. Whether I owe any debts or not, I want to do this. I am L, and a detective by choice, not by design or obligation.
He saw that his pupils had dilated again, and he took a deep breath. The anger and guilt that had clamped down on his thoughts let go, releasing him. All of the case files he'd just re-read – every case Coil had ever worked on, over a thousand of them – surged through his brain in a rapid slideshow. Only nineteen of the cases had been in Canada, eight of which had occurred in the Toronto area, not counting the current case. One of these eight snapped to the forefront of L's mind.
In the late seventies, a former cryptographer whose brother was a renowned Egyptologist had been brought to justice by Coil for committing a string of murders in and around Mississauga – or he would have been, had he not hung himself in his apartment before police arrived, just after the final murder. Coded notes had been left at each of the seven murders, all young women, and much had been made of Coil's ability to decipher what had stumped the police. The code had used hieroglyphics in a substitution cipher, with the resulting decoded messages often taking on an almost Dr. Seuss-ian rhyme scheme. "Sebastien Willette," L murmured.
The case against Willette had been largely circumstantial, with the exception of the note left at the seventh murder, which had had the man's fingerprints on it. Willette's fingerprints had also been on his suicide note, though there had been some question at the time about whether the handwriting matched the coded notes.
Did Coil fake any of the evidence at the scene of the murder? L wondered. Or did he only fake the man's suicide note? Even if Willette had been the murderer, if the evidence convicting him was false . . . then Coil did not truly solve the case, L thought. The scene of the seventh murder was just downstairs from Willette's apartment – if Coil got there before the police and confronted him, he could have garroted Willette, written the suicide note, placed Willette's fingerprints on it and the coded note, strung the man up, and gotten downstairs in time to return the coded note to its original location on the woman's forehead.
L grimaced, shaking his head, droplets flying from his hair, remembering something he'd said to Maulty: "You are placing what you wish to believe above the evidence of this case." Far too much is unclear in the file of the Mississauga case, L thought, but I do not have enough solid proof to reopen it, considering that Sebastien Willette's body was cremated and thus cannot be exhumed for re-examination. I must focus on extrapolating what could connect this information to the current case.
When Roger had compiled Coil's case files and sent them along the first time, he'd pulled them from ICPO records, presuming that they would have the most updated information. The ICPO's files did list two newer cases that had not been in the Wammy House records for Coil, but the Mississauga Murders case implicating Willette had been missing, falling in the one-year gap that L had detected. The altered case file L had noticed from the following year had not included the victim's name, Desiree Montague, nor had it shown photos of the strangulation victim and the landlady's statement, but nothing else was missing. As I recall, there was a rumor that Deneuve had taken an interest in that Swiss case, L thought. If Montague was Deneuve's agent, that could explain why some details were obscured. This crime, however, seems to bear no connection whatsoever to the Missing Parts case. The fact that the Mississauga Murders case had been completely wiped from the ICPO's database raised L's suspicions considerably.
Willette, a widower, had had a young son named Claude, but there was no mention in the file of where the child had been at the time of the murders. If his father was framed, the son would have been motivated to go after Coil, unless . . . L's eyes widened. Could the son have been involved in the murders from the seventies? Did Coil show him "mercy" and let him go, possibly with the intention of calling in a favor later? Just before his shower, L had looked for any information on a Claude Willette in the local and international criminal databases but had come up empty. Which, of course, only means that he's never been arrested, L thought, unless those records were wiped too. He'd be in his mid-thirties now. L decided that he would need to review the list of employees at the University, as well as the list of hospital employees. He remembered most of the names, but he wanted to be certain. Then again, Willette may be operating under an alias, if he is here.
No photos of the boy were in the file, but it had been noted that he had early-onset alopecia universalis. A burst of images flashed in L's head and he blinked, still staring at his pale reflection but not seeing it, seeing instead a partial profile in the darkness and then a bald man in a grey jumpsuit walking past in daylight.
I should have noticed, L thought, his hands turning to fists on the cool marble; I should have noticed the lack of eyebrows. He nearly collided with Janine . . . and he smirked as he left, though the scar at the corner of his mouth may only have made it appear that way. Did he pass her a message? He realized that there could be many reasons for lacking eyebrows, and he knew that the man he saw was not a perfect match to the image he'd captured when he'd arrived on campus in August, but it was not uncommon for the two sides of one person's face to be somewhat dissimilar even without a distinctive scar. True symmetry is rare, L thought. Given his age and appearance, this man could easily be Claude Willette.
Despite Coil's presence at the scene of Maulty's death, L knew that the detective preferred to delegate the dirty work to others. I know that Coil murdered him, L thought. Whatever his preferences, he set them aside to do this. It is possible that he had to improvise – he may not have begun his sham investigation of this case with the intention of framing me for murder, but Maulty may have gotten too close to the truth. Coil would have had to prevent him from exposing his plan. Even if Maulty did not realize what Coil was actually doing, if he had found the Butcher and solved the case before Coil did, it would have rendered all of Coil's efforts moot anyway. Desperation in the wake of murdering Maulty would have then induced Coil to find the most advantageous solution, one I stupidly handed him by walking right into his crime scene. L grimaced. Willette may not have been involved with Coil's "solution" for Maulty, but he must know about it by now. Whether Coil and Willette are working together or are at odds, they are connected.
"I am not wrong." L's voice was a low growl, blending with the whir of the fan. "I am not wrong, and I will stop them."
Pushing back off the vanity, L grabbed the clean clothes he'd brought in with him, pulling on the blue and white striped boxers, the blue jeans, the grey shirt. No red. He needed precisely two things to bring this case to a stuttering halt: the location of the Butcher's base of operations, and the identity of his accomplice. It is even possible that Willette has kept the identity of his accomplice from Coil, L thought. Regardless, I will find the truth.
#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#
Earpiece in, he kept returning to the same view – the dorm kitchen hovered there onscreen, its windowless space still managing to appear bright and cheery in green and yellow with a near-constant stream of residents coming and going. He continued monitoring the audio even while switching to the other camera feeds. The sight of Officers Harnett and Drummond rooting around in his dorm room did not concern him. There was no longer anything they could find that could incriminate him after Watari and Aleister's thorough cleaning. Aleister had already confirmed by looking at the archived images that the two body parts that were dropped further away from Trinity Hall had been rigged to do so from trees, and police reports indicating that rubber tubing and other debris had been found nearby bore this out. The body part that had been discovered by students attending the dance had landed on the grass with no one in camera view, but there had been an arc to its trajectory on camera and no debris found, indicating that it had either been rigged from much further away, or it had been thrown. By a person.
L was certain that the abandoned train tunnels led to the Butcher somehow, but he knew that he needed to identify the accomplice conclusively or the murders might continue after the Butcher was caught. They must be captured together, as a set, he thought. Then and only then can Coil be exposed as a fraud and a murderer himself. The Butcher likely displays symptoms of anti-social personality disorder, but the accomplice may not.
The information he'd drummed up on the Willette boy had been meager at best with only one school photo of him at the age of eight. School records indicated that he'd been smart but unfocused, and had been prone to occasional outbursts, a few of which had been moderately violent. Teachers' notes had painted Claude as a shy boy with an active imagination. His grades had fallen off a bit after his father died, but once he got to high school, he was pulling a reasonable 3.4 GPA. College, however, had remained mostly out of reach for the younger Willette. Unable to obtain a scholarship, he'd attended community college for a year before dropping out to work full-time. His employment records were spotty, riddled with construction and maintenance jobs all over the Ontario region. Four years ago, a man named Claude Miller had started working at Toronto University, initially as a janitor, though he was now listed as a supervisor under "Building Maintenance." This may not be the same man, L thought, given what seems like a half-hearted attempt to change his name, but interestingly, he gained employment here two months after the case I solved in Rome that caused several international journalists to describe me as 'the next Eraldo Coil.' Could Coil have been planning all this so far in advance, or is this a coincidence?
L sighed, bringing his thoughts back to the Mississauga Murders case. Perhaps, rather than participating, the younger Willette merely observed the murders, either with his father's permission or without his knowledge, L thought. His school behavior seems somewhat reminiscent of Beyond's, though Willette is clearly less intelligent and, if anything, less in control – a disquieting thought. If he witnessed his father's actions in horror, then he may have been grateful to Coil for stopping them and 'saving' him, but if he revered his father . . . it is possible that he is allowing Coil to think he is grateful when he is, in fact, plotting revenge. It is also possible that he reviles both of them and seeks to make his own mark. Frowning, L pulled at his lip. Meanwhile, Coil uses Willette for his own purposes, and at least twenty-two people are now dead for nothing more than their combined vanity. He felt his mouth twisting and knew there was not enough sugar in the world to take away the bitter taste of such depravity.
The tease of just-recognizable feminine voices in his ear caught his attention. Still flipping through campus feeds, L settled in to listen to the inevitable inanity of small talk as he plopped sugarcubes into his mouth.
"Well, other than that, was the dance fun?" The slight Vancouver accent to the warm tone marked the voice as Kim's.
"It – yeah, it was, but . . ." The higher pitch and self-interrupting manner were unmistakably Janine's. "I dunno. I mean, I like Geoff a lot, and he was really sweet all through dinner and the first part of the dance, but then he sorta . . . ditched me, for, well, almost an hour."
"Whoa, what?" Kim sounded surprised. "What happened?"
"At the dance, he kept drinking out of this flask he brought – I don't know why, they had beer and wine right there. I don't really know what was in it, but he went to the bathroom for a long time, and when he got back, he said he'd gotten sick . . ."
"Aw, c'mon, he wouldn't fake getting sick to ditch you! Geoff was really psyched to go with you, I could totally tell." Kim's face was in view at last as L clicked back over to the camera feed from the sixth floor dorm kitchen. The two girls were sitting at the table.
"Maybe, but . . . he didn't smell like he'd been sick, and he wasn't pale." Janine frowned and took a sip of soda. "Plus, the stuff in his flask didn't smell like booze – it smelled like coffee."
"Coulda been Kahlua."
"That's what Danielle said." Janine's eyes were downcast. "But there's no way he would have gotten drunk off of that."
"Oh, I dunno. Are you sure he's not a lightweight?" Kim winked. "Cheap dates are better anyway."
"It's possible, I guess. But his pupils weren't even dilated, and, I dunno, the timing was just weird."
"What do you mean?"
Shrugging, Janine pushed her soda can away from her with an index finger. "Well, he left, and then about twenty minutes later that . . . part was found, right outside the ballroom."
"Whoa, whoa – you're not trying to say Geoff did that, are you?" Kim's eyes were wide, as were L's.
Janine looked up, her face tired. "No, it's not that. I mean, you never really know what's inside someone, no matter how long you know them, but . . . I don't think Geoff's a killer. There's no way I'd date someone I thought that about. It's just really weird that he was gone when they found it. I was sitting there with Allison and her boyfriend when someone came in from outside and told us what happened. I'm so glad I didn't find it . . ."
"Yeah, seriously. A severed wiener is some kinda party favor . . ." Kim grimaced. "And with the other two parts they found, I can sorta see why some people think it's a prank. I mean, rib-bones and butt-cheeks? Talk about creepy and juvenile. And are the police really snooping around in Ezekiel's room? It makes no sense, there's no way he's the murderer, I don't care what anybody says."
"Yeah, I . . . yeah. I hope he's OK . . ."
L was only partially listening to them now, watching their faces as a series of memories fluttered through his mind, pieces of remembered conversation coming into sharper focus. He gripped a sugarcube too tightly and it crumbled between his thumb and forefinger, sweet snow showering onto one knee of his jeans. Janine does not appear to be lying, he thought, which means . . . my assessment of her was wrong. The likelihood of her involvement has dropped below 1%, and Danielle's has dropped to 3%. Whether Danielle intended to distract me or not, I can only conclude one thing: Geoff is the accomplice. 86%.
#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#
"So you sent him away to attempt this subterfuge?"
"No. I sent him away to get you supper. I am merely taking the opportunity to depart before he can return and express any disapproval."
"He'll have my head."
"I imagine he'd prefer you kept it, actually." L's tone was droll. "How do I look?"
"Not like you."
"Good." L adjusted the baseball cap on his head, pinning down his normally wild hair.
"You do realize some wag may approach you and attempt to discuss the Toronto Blue Jays' dismal season, don't you?" Aleister raised an eyebrow, surveying L head to toe. Between the baseball cap, the fake nose, and the darker foundation, he looks surprisingly different, he thought. Now if only he'd act differently.
"I do not intend to engage anyone in conversation on my way."
"You're certain Miller and Willette are one and the same?"
"Yes." L plucked another item from the tabletop and dropped it in his pocket. "Where is he now?"
Aleister stepped back over to his computer, seating himself and scrolling through some camera feeds. "There he is. Still walking, starting to get out of range, but he's still on campus, heading in the opposite direction of the hospital. It's hard to say for sure, but given his direction, I'd guess he's going straight for –"
"The power plant," L said along with Aleister, now peeking over his shoulder at the receding figure of Geoff onscreen. "It is interesting that he is approaching it aboveground since the tunnel should lead to it. I suppose I will find out when I get there."
"You don't think it's another trap?" Aleister tried to ignore L's breath at his neck.
"Unlikely, but that possibility is why I am taking precautions. Are you certain that this nose looks natural?"
Aleister spun in his chair to face L. "I am. Just keep from rubbing it – if you break the glue seal, it'll look decidedly unnatural, plus you'll muck up my makeup job."
"Understood."
"Are you positive that you –"
"I must go there alone." L interrupted. "It is not to keep you safe, however. I need you here, watching, so that you can alert me of danger if necessary. And I need you to prevent Watari from taking any rash action against me. Will you do those things for me?"
Aleister found himself nodding, irked that he was being manipulated yet still moved by the notion that L needed him. "I will."
"Thank you." L turned to go. "I have my cellphone."
"And if I can't connect?"
"Keep trying for five minutes. If I do not answer within that timeframe, go to plan B."
Chafing at the term, Aleister shook off the feeling and stood. "I know you don't believe Beyond is alive, but I must insist you find him."
"Locating his remains is important, but my priority –"
"I know your priority!" Aleister drew his voice back from the precipice of a shout. "Find him. I will hold you personally responsible if you do not."
L turned to look at him from the door, eyes hooded. "I am personally responsible. As is he. As are you. As are the Butcher and Coil."
"I know all that. Just promise me."
After a moment, L sighed. "I promise I will find Beyond."
Aleister nodded. "Good. And I promise I won't tell him you used his chosen nom de guerre." A corner of his mouth tried to pull into a smile.
L raised an eyebrow. "I would have denied it anyway."
"Of course." Aleister watched L turn and straighten his spine in a reasonable facsimile of a normal person's posture. "I stand by my earlier advice."
"Which advice was that?"
"Don't die." Aleister kept his tone light, knowing it wouldn't fool him.
"I cannot afford to die – I have too much to do."
"Do you intend to walk, by the way?"
"I do not." L gave him a half-smile over his shoulder. "B is not the only one who is skilled at stealing vehicles." Swiftly opening the door, L was through it before Aleister could respond.
Shaking his head, Aleister walked back to his computer. "Blimey, we're all a bunch of fucking crooks, aren't we," he muttered.
As he sat down, he saw that the now-distant figure of Geoff was closer to the old power plant. Aleister knew from reading all of the campus planning papers and recent newsletters from the university that the power plant was scheduled to be phased out over the next couple of years. Certain university buildings had already converted and were drawing from the main Toronto power grid, but the switch was proceeding gradually. Due to budget cuts, the oversight of the small on-campus plant had been significantly reduced. Wouldn't be shocked if this murderer's been holed up under the power plant with no one noticing, Aleister thought. It operates with a skeleton crew at this point – in fact, it mightn't need more than one man to keep it going.
Not wanting to dwell on why Watari might have thought the worst of L, he focused on the screen, waiting. We're all capable of murder, everyone is, it's basic human nature, he thought, but being capable of it isn't the same thing as doing it. Aleister wondered if he would have killed a person if it meant saving someone else, someone like Beyond or L. Swallowing, still anticipating the eventual appearance of L's disguised form onscreen, he stopped his train of thought, unsure of which conclusion would be uglier.
#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#~~~~~~~~~~#
Author's Note: L coming to terms with the shift in roles was crucial to this chapter. There are still things he's not facing up to, but he's adjusting, learning, and becoming who he will one day be. Few personal transitions are pretty.
As I understand it, the legal drinking age for Ontario, Canada (in the 90's at least) is 18, hence booze being available at the dance. Hopefully this excursion will go better for L. At least he's trying to disguise his appearance, since the police are looking for his alter ego.
FYI to any long-time readers, recent events induced me to revise chapter 16 of this fic. I apologize if this annoys anyone.
Thanks for reading!