A/N: Tonight's top story: I still don't own Chuck.

Chapter 5

Later that night, I stood in front of one of the walls of Lester's apartment, studying the timeline in front of me.

September 2007. Bryce Larkin dies. Chuck starts dating Sarah Walker.

January 2008. Wienerlicous closes. Orange Orange opens.

September 2008. Emmett Milbarge begins working at Buy More.

December 2008. Chuck dies in car accident. Orange Orange closes. Sarah leaves Burbank.

January 2009. Emmett becomes Buy More manager.

April 2009. Emmett killed. Bryce seen in Glendale.

Ok, it wasn't a particularly detailed timeline. But I needed to get my mind straight, and this seemed to be the best way to do it.

Obviously, Bryce Larkin couldn't very well be dead and wandering around office buildings in Glendale at the same time. After getting Chuck kicked out of Stanford, I'd thought of Bryce as something like the devil, but life after death was pushing it.

That meant he had faked his death. And if Bryce wasn't really dead, maybe Chuck wasn't either.

Clearly, I had to get back to Glendale.

I wasn't sure what I would say to Bryce if I found him again. I'd only actually spoken to the man once. It was right after Chuck had been kicked out of Stanford. Kicked out for stealing a test, to be exact. A test that Bryce had actually taken. Bryce had topped that by stealing Chuck's girlfriend too.

It had been a weekday afternoon. After a couple hours of consistent prodding, I'd finally managed to get Chuck off of Ellie's couch, and so we had headed down to the arcade. After a while, it seemed like he was starting to feel better. But then, as he was fishing through his pockets for another quarter, he looked up and all of the color drained from his face. I followed his eyes, and saw a guy our age walk into the arcade. He stuck out there in about the same way that I'd stick out at a ROTC meeting. He came up to us and said, "Chuck, I need to talk to you."

From Chuck's reaction, I immediately figured out who the guy was, and I decided I'd better do the talking. I moved in front of Chuck, which only resulted in an amused raised eyebrow from Bryce. "He doesn't want to talk to you," I told him.

"I think that's up to Chuck."

I mustered up as much courage as I could and held my ground. Once Chuck had immersed himself in another game, Bryce continued.

"Look, Chuck just needs to understand some things."

"Understand some things? You mean you're not even here to apologize to him?"

"No, I mean, well yes, among other things. But things are a little more complicated than that."

"How can things possibly be more complicated than, 'I'm sorry I got you kicked out of Stanford and stole your girlfriend'? It seems pretty simple to me!"

Bryce sighed. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Chuck was staring at the screen but his hand hadn't moved the controller once. I nodded to the side, and motioned Bryce to follow.

"Look, Chuck's a great guy. Such a great guy that he would probably forgive you some day. But not today. I know I probably could only slow you down for, like two seconds, but I'm not letting you talk to him. And then you'd have to tell Chuck how punching out his best friend is 'complicated.'"

Bryce studied me for a moment. Finally he said, "You're a good friend to him, Morgan. Better than me." After that he turned around and walked away. I was surprised he knew my name.

I don't know if Chuck ever did forgive him, but he didn't seem particularly happy when he told me about his death a year-and-a-half ago. Did Chuck know he wasn't really dead?

I heard the sound of a key in the door, and I turned around to see Lester entering. He glanced at the note cards tacked into the wall. "Dude, I've got a security deposit on this place!"

"Relax, they're just pushpins. Did you have any trouble?"

"Not really. There were a couple of cops in the store earlier, but they left by mid-evening."

"So did you find anything?"

Lester dropped his backpack and laptop onto the kitchen table. Opening the bag, he pulled out a stack of DVDs. "I found these in Emmett's desk. They weren't marked or anything, but they were pushed way back in one of his drawers. I thought they might mean something."

Lester took one of the DVDs and stuck it into his computer. After a moment, a blurred picture appeared on screen. I couldn't see much other than a blurred hand on the side of the screen. "What is that?"

"Not sure." We stared at it for a moment longer.

"It's definitely a hand. Looks like a big ring on that one finger."

"I guess. Maybe we should skip ahead." He moved his laptop mouse a bit, and the screen shifted. Now we could just make out a couple of people on screen.

"Wait, I know what this is!" Lester exclaimed. "I think this is 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2!'"

"Didn't that just come out?"

"Yeah, it's not on DVD yet. Don't you see? Emmett is a pirate!"

"I guess. You sure he hasn't just bought the discs?"

Lester shrugged. He ejected the disc, and we tried a couple more of the DVDs. They all seemed to have similarly grainy versions of recent movies.

"I think we've solved it. Emmett was murdered because he pirates movies!"

"Seriously? Some vengeful movie executive smacked him on the head and killed him?"

"Of course not. He'd probably have somebody else do it. Probably a stunt guy or something."

"I dunno. It seems like a stretch to me. And what does it have to do with Chuck?"

Lester shrugged. "You got me. That's your thing."

Lester ended up watching the movies most of that night. Unfortunately, since he watched them while sitting on his couch/my bed, I didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night. As a result, I let myself out of the apartment the next morning and headed to the store to pick up some coffee.

On my way back, I noticed a generic sedan parked in front of the apartment building. More importantly, I recognized the two people sitting inside the generic sedan.

"Good morning officers," I said as cheerfully as the limited amount of sleep would let me.

"Well if it isn't suspect number one," Grimmeault greeted me. I nodded at Wallace seated in the passenger side.

"So, have you seen anything exciting?"

Grimmeault grunted. "Since my partner informed me about your bit of wanderlust yesterday, we realized we can't take any chances." He glanced at my shopping bag. "Mind if we have a look?"

I shrugged, and handed the bag to him. "I'd have picked you guys up some donuts, but I am on a bit of a limited budget, being between jobs and all."

Grimmeault was flipping through the contents of my bag: bagels, bottled water, some index cards, and pushpins. "So, I'm guessing you're recreating your psycho collage, huh?"

"Trying to. Unfortunately, some of my stuff seems to be missing now, so it's a bit incomplete."

"Oh gee, I'm sorry to hear about that. I'll start a major investigation about it right now. Heads will roll over this, I promise you."

"You wouldn't by any chance be related to a John Casey, would you?"

"Got lots of cousins, could be. So are you going to kill anybody else today?"

I was starting to wonder that myself, the way the conversation was going. I thought about bringing up what Lester had found, but decided against it. I doubted they'd take it seriously, and it would probably get Lester in trouble for removing evidence. "Have you even considered the possibility that I might not be the guy you're looking for?"

"Sure, we're professional police officers, aren't we Officer Wallace? We consider everything. The minute you present a compelling reason why we shouldn't consider you the prime suspect, then we'll let you go on with your life. Whatever that might be." He handed me back my bag. I noticed one of the bagels was gone.

"I didn't kill Emmitt."

"I don't care!" Grimmeault responded. "From 'The Fugitive', you know." I saw Wallace roll her eyes behind him.

"Yeah, I don't think that's compelling enough," Grimmeault remarked. "So if it's all the same to you, we'll keep watching." I heard a phone ring, and Wallace reached into her coat pocket.

"Uh huh, yeah, we'll be right on our way. Thank you, Sergeant." Wallace turned to her partner. "They think they found the murder weapon down at the docks."

"Well whaddya know? Maybe we just wrapped this thing up. Don't leave town again, Mr. Grimes. Another squad car will be here shortly, so don't think that nobody's watching you."

I watched them drive off. Whatever they've just found will either clear up some of my problems, or create bigger ones.

Chapter 6 coming up soon. Review away, folks!