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Chapter Three: A Man Obsessed
Riza was on her feet before the staff sergeant finished his first sentence. Have you ever been in love, Riza? Beth's voice was taunting now and she had hoped the rain would drown it out on the quay but it had not, and then Mustang had approached her, tried to comfort her as if he knew that he was one of those ghosts that had been haunting her lately. As if he could win his way back into her heart so easily when they both knew she was here to atone. To help him to the top and keep him safe so they could begin to undo the damage they had caused.
The staff sergeant led the same trio that had set out to the warehouse through the maze of corridors and back out into the rain. Before they could get into the car, Mustang held out a hand to stop his Lieutenants. "Why wasn't she brought here for questioning?" he asked.
"I'm not sure how many questions a dying woman can answer, sir," the staff sergeant replied.
The woman in the emergency room bed was unrecognizable. Her hair was limp and dirty around a face that looked like a corpse's, though her chest still rose and fell with shallow, uneven breaths. Her skull had been fractured in two places and her wrists were broken beneath swollen purple skin. The doctors said that it was unlikely she would live through the night, and less likely still that she would ever wake up. Riza felt sick with guilt that she had been so quick to believe that Beth was behind the two other murders, and while Havoc stood in the corner looking ill and in need of a smoke, while Mustang spoke with the man who had found Beth, Riza bent down and whispered, "I'm sorry."
Mustang returned shortly thereafter. "Call headquarters, tell them to bring Alfred Tomson back in for questioning."
"You really think that man is capable of something like this?" Havoc asked, gesturing toward Beth's broken body.
"No, of course not. I want to know more about the man Laurel was having trouble with." Mustang paced back and forth while Havoc went to make the call, never once looking in Beth's or Riza's direction.
"Where did they find her?" Riza asked.
"They say they found her hanging half out of a dumpster down an alley off Pike Street," Mustang said, still pacing without looking at Riza. "She was still conscious and she appeared to have pulled herself out from under a pile of trash. Her legs were still pinned and she passed out before the ambulance arrived. It's amazing she held on as long as she did, if what they say is true."
For the first time since he had entered the room, Mustang looked at Riza, and she felt the weight of his gaze pushing her down on her, something like pity in his eyes. Not for the first time, it made her want to hate him, but anger and resentment weren't quite hatred, and they were the best she could muster for now, and so all she could do was glare back at him, challenging him to say something. Daring him to broach the subjects he had been too cowardly to address at every turn. She wanted to scream at him all the things that have been festering in her heart ever since they returned from the war. Coward. Liar. Traitor. A thousand times she had cursed him in her head, and a thousand thousand times she had cursed herself. She knew she had every right to blame him for betraying her trust, for abandoning her, but she had no right to condemn him for staying and murdering when she herself lacked the courage to say no to a war she knew was wrong.
But a hospital room was not the place to dredge up bad blood between old friends, between old lovers, and so she held her tongue. "We should get back to headquarters," was all she said, and when Mustang nodded, he turned away. Have you ever been in love, Riza?
As he left, Riza crouched down beside Beth's bed and placed a gentle hand over her bloodied knuckles. "Last week you asked me a question," she said, her throat thick with the curses she had refrained from hurling at her commanding officer. "The answer is yes. Yes, I have, but how I wish that weren't true."
With one last glance at Beth, Riza followed Mustang out into the hall. Her heart felt a hair lighter for having told her secret. It felt a mountain heavier for standing beside him and knowing what hopes she once had held for the two of them.
Those memories only made it harder to see how broken Alfred Tomson had become following his wife's death. When they arrived in the interrogation room, he looked ten years older than he had that morning and she knew before he spoke that he had seen Laurel's body.
"You said this morning that your wife was having trouble with someone at work," Mustang said, sounding as though this were a friendly chat over lunch rather than part of a murder investigation. "Tell me everything you know about that."
Alfred hesitated at first, and then he told them—in stumbling, stuttered words—of a man who had worked at Laurel's shop from the very beginning, who had grown resentful of a younger man Laurel had taken under her wing and made her assistant. Laurel had fired him the week before and her assistant had taken on extra hours to pick up the slack until she could find a replacement.
Riza listened in horror as she realized that there never had been an affair, and that one man's jealousy had killed at least two people. Alfred had never learned the man's name, but he told them it should be on one of Laurel's old ledgers in the shop. He slid a key across the table, and Mustang slipped it into his coat pocket with fingers just as capable of murder as the ones that had held Beth's hands to Laurel's throat. Mustang ordered Havoc to escort Alfred home and post a guard outside his apartment; he ordered Riza to come with him to the shop, and all the while her trigger finger itched and burned and she could not shake the irony of two murderers tasked with bringing a third to justice. A quick glance at the man beside her told her that he was keenly aware of the same. Now that they were alone, he made no attempt to conceal his guilt. Not yet twenty-five, he looked closer to forty in that moment beneath the street lamp outside an abandoned shop on a chilly September evening.
He opened the door and held it open, a gesture born not out of chivalry but an unspoken order for her to sweep the shop before he entered. When she had determined that it was empty, she motioned him inside. While she stood guard, he examined the ledger, a frown coming over his features as he flipped through the pages. "Tomorrow's your birthday, isn't it?" he said. "Do you have any plans?"
She shook her head. With everything that had happened, she had completely forgotten the date.
Mustang looked up from the ledger. "Tell you what, I'll let the team off early and we'll all go out for drinks, my treat."
"That's—that's very kind of you, sir, but completely unnecessary," she said.
"Nonsense," he protested. "How many birthdays have you spent alone? You don't need to add another to the list."
She bit her tongue to keep from reminding him that her last birthday had been spent in Ishval. Before that, she had been in the Academy, and Rebecca had made the same offer, dragging Riza and Havoc and Breda on an ill-advised night to a nearby bar where they had played that eventful game of "Never Have I Ever" when Riza had silently confessed her heartache. And before that… Her back throbbed with the phantom pain of a thousand needles all at once and it took every ounce of control to keep it from showing on her face.
"If you insist," was all she said, and he returned to the ledger without another word on the subject.
There was nothing for Riza to do but wait, and while she kept an eye on the door, she wandered the shop, looking at all the little figurines on the shelves that lined the walls. A sign on the wall said they were handcrafted and hand-painted, and it was a relief to know that here was something alchemy had not touched. Most of the figurines were animals, but she spied a park bench with a couple that so strongly resembled Alfred and Laurel that it made her heart lurch painfully. She moved on to examine a Dalmatian with bright eyes and a tail caught mid-wag.
"Jason Koch," Mustang said triumphantly and Riza tore her gaze away from the porcelain dog. He had already picked up the phone and started to dial headquarters as Riza made her way over to take a glance at the ledger herself. His name was listed alongside the words severance pay and a generous sum.
While Mustang issued the warrant for Jason's arrest over the phone, Riza moved closer to him, hand on a gun. She knew he had most likely fled East City for good, but she still did not want to be caught unawares if Jason Koch were the kind of man foolish enough to return to the shop after everything he had done.
Several moments later, Mustang hung up the phone again. He stared past Riza with a set jaw as he said, "Elizabeth Sawyer is dead."
The next several hours carried a soft-around-the-edges dreamlike quality as dark, rainy streets blended into harshly lit hospital corridors. Somewhere, Beth's parents were still sobbing. In the morgue, the day's third murder victim grew colder and stiffer on a table, nothing like the kind, vibrant woman she once had been. Even the office where she had spent nearly every day for the past three months seemed ethereal tonight, as Havoc and the M.P.s who had searched Jason's apartment reported that he was long gone and that there were no pictures to be had of the man save for a quick sketch drawn up by one of his neighbors. It seemed unlikely that he would ever be found.
By the time Riza returned to her apartment, it was nearly midnight, and she cast her uniform aside to step under the hot spray of the shower. By the time she stepped out of the bathroom again, she had been twenty-three for nearly twenty minutes, and her phone was ringing. She answered with some trepidation, which dissipated as soon as Rebecca's voice came through the line.
"I've been calling you for ages now, Riza. Why didn't you pick up? I was starting to think you didn't tell me you found a man to take you home tonight and I was pissed because I wanted to be the first one to wish you a happy birthday." Rebecca paused for a breath, leaving Riza room to respond.
"For the last time, I'm not interested in dating at the moment," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose with exasperation. "Thank you for the birthday wishes, but I need to get to bed. It's been a long day."
"I heard you were investigating a murder," Rebecca said in a low voice. "What was it like? I've been out of the Academy for months now and I've never gotten to do anything like that."
"The woman three doors down is dead, Rebecca. I'm not in the mood to chitchat right now. We can talk later. My team is going out for drinks after work tomorrow—tonight—and I'm inviting you. Goodnight." Riza hung up the phone before Rebecca could ask more questions. The thought occurred to her that Rebecca and Beth might have been fast friends, had she lived in Riza's apartment instead. If Beth had had a true friend, rather than an irascible acquaintance, would she still be alive? That was not the kind of path Riza's thoughts needed to go down tonight, and she chased it away as she got into bed. Once she was asleep, however, it was no longer so easy to banish unpleasant thoughts, and she slept restlessly through her nightmares.
When she arrived at headquarters after not nearly enough sleep, Riza was greeted by Rebecca, who held out a donut most likely swiped from her unit's break room. She appreciated the gesture nonetheless and accepted a bone-crushing hug once the donut was safely in her mouth.
"I'll meet you here after work, birthday girl," Rebecca said as she let Riza go; she didn't even give Riza a chance to say goodbye before racing back toward her wing of the building.
When Riza entered her own unit's room, there was already an enormous mug of coffee waiting for her, and the entire team wished her a happy birthday in unison. In spite of her exhaustion, she couldn't help but smile. In those few, blissful moments, she felt incredibly fond of all of them, even Mustang, but the feeling was short-lived. As soon as she had taken a sip of her coffee, Mustang cleared his throat.
"Jason Koch is currently the most wanted man in the Eastern Region, but there hasn't been any sign of him. Until there is, we really don't have much to do aside from paperwork, so it looks like we have a long day ahead of us." Mustang leaned against the wall when he had finished speaking, already looking bored at the prospect. In spite of his promise to let them all go early so they could celebrate Riza's birthday, she couldn't help but feel the same.
