So, it's been a while since I updated this (the gap is a bit too long for my liking…) but here's a little post Halloween update!

Chapter 16: More Loose Ends

Gary and Leaf watched Ivy intently as they waited for her to spill words, words they needed to hear. Ivy's usual cool and collected demeanour had vanished in a blink of an eye, now she looked panicked. No wonder why the woman never went back on a promise.

"Okay, let's start by telling me everything you two know." Ivy said once she had calmed down. She put cutlery down with a clatter and laid her arms on the table in a professional manner.

"Well, what we think so far is that the stolen project is the doll. The doll is responsible for the killing spree back home. The organ, which is a brain, might've come from car crash victim Alexander Courtez, a charitable surgeon. But at the scene of the crime, the other crash victim, George Little, strangely enough died from an incision across his neck and this is where you come in." Gary summed up.

Ivy nodded her head. She was amazed that a few teens managed to find all that out. Her mind weighed the pros and cons of helping them. If she helped them, she could be saving a peaceful little town from further jeopardy but if she didn't help them another dozen of people could be dead by next week. Clearly, there were only pros and no cons in helping them.

"I know you worked as a crime scene investigator for the crash since there were so many elements that didn't make it look like an ordinary car crash." Gary prompted when Ivy remained silent.

"I did indeed and I have to say, to this day, we've never been able to say for sure what happened." Ivy said. "We'll talk about this in my lab after breakfast." Ivy said then tucked into her chilling poached eggs.

Looks like Daisy was going to have to wait.

All eyes were glued to the monitor as images were flashed on them, images that they would otherwise never see without Ivy pulling a few strings. The images were gruesome and gory, bloody and, in general, disturbing to look at as Leaf and Gary's faces showed whenever Ivy clicked onto the next photo. At least they showed for about the first three seconds before their faces became non-distorted again. Seeing angry open wounds, messy blood splutters and limbs that looked painfully bent in the wrong direction was not what Gary and Leaf had in mind straight after breakfast.

Ivy had dug out the files containing results from all the tests carried out from the scene of the crash, prepared to read out all that appeared out of place.

"That was disturbing, even for us, and we have to put up with Lt. Surge's muddy, fly infested boots practically in our face every morning." Leaf said on behalf of Gary and herself once they had viewed the slideshow of photos. She hated that the man made her and Gary sit at the front.

Gary shuddered at the thought of the lieutenant. He was one guy that really needed to use the fine creation called a shower. And soap. He pushed the thought out of his head for now and tried to focus on getting as many clues as he could now. He and Leaf had an extremely tight schedule if they wanted to question Ivy, check up on Daisy and make it home without Professor Oak suspecting anything, though the latter should be the least of their concern.

"Test results showed that neither party were on drugs, drink, nor had their vehicles tampered with yet at the scene, all the glass in Alexander Courtez's car was fully intact while the glass windows of George Little's car had been smashed inwards." Ivy said as she scanned her document for key information.

"Inwards?" Leaf repeated. She looked at Gary, who gave her a mirrored look back. "I thought they crashed into each other and not into objects that smashed their windows?"

"Is it just me who thinks that the crash didn't look at all fatal?" Gary asked. He was partially sitting on Ivy's writing table as he flicked through some of the photos again. The drivers weren't even thrown out of their seats nor had any head injuries – the air bag didn't even inflate and Gary was certain that both those cars had built in air bags. Every car made in the past ten years had to have an air bag, as Gary had found while he was looking to buy a car and the cars in question were certainly less than five years old.

"That's exactly what I thought when I dealt with this case." Ivy said. "If the crash really had a lot of force behind it, there would be at least some cracks on Courtez's window too."

"How did Courtez die?" Leaf asked, uncertain as to whether that question was a stupid or not. To her, there was no obvious cause to his death. It was clear that Little had died from blood loss from the neck wound.

"Post mortem results showed that there was nothing wrong with his organs, no extreme blood loss or pathogenic infections of any kind." Ivy said.

"So he died of an unknown cause?" Gary asked, keeping his eyes on the monitor. He inspected every photo closely. "And how did Little get that nasty looking cut?" he asked, referring to the neck wound that was on the monitor.

"It would seem so." Ivy said as she snapped the file shut. "And nobody knows. There was no evidence that the crash scene had been tampered with even though that would be the only explanation."

The room became silent as they let the information sink in. Leaf wasn't sure if it was just her or if Gary felt it too but she was just as, if not more, confused than before they had this conversation with Ivy. She felt as if she was told to find answers to more questions rather than having the ones she had to ask answered.

"Then what about the whole ordeal with Violet Waterflower? The doll was at my house, sitting on the desk in Leaf's room at the estimated time of death." Gary said, raising a vital point.

Ivy straightened up. "You study science, figure it out yourselves. What must every experiment have?"

Leaf and Gary thought for a moment.

"A duplicate!" Leaf chipped enthusiastically.

"Exactly. There was a duplicate experiment going on in your grandpa's secondary lab in Pallet Town." Ivy confirmed. "And that project too had been stolen." Ivy said. Now that the woman had revealed that, it seemed obvious that there had been two dolls behind the crimes the whole time.

"Gramps had a second lab?" Gary asked, beating Leaf to it. This was news to him. "And why wasn't the robbery of that lab on the news?"

"The secondary lab is a secret as was the duplicate doll." Ivy said.

"Whose organ went into that one?" Leaf asked.

Ivy shrugged. "I wasn't in charge of that one so I don't know but I know someone who does know." Ivy said and wrote down a contact on a bit of paper and handed it to Gary who gave it a quick read then pocketed it. "You didn't get the contact from me." Ivy was quick to add.

Leaf and Gary both nodded under Ivy's icy glare which didn't fade until they promised.

Gary and Leaf sat in the red car outside Ivy's country house. Leaf pulled her seatbelt over her shoulder and into the socket, preparing for the trip to Cerulean City. Gary did so too, and plunged his key into the ignition but he didn't start the engine.

"Totally did not see the second doll coming." Leaf said, her mind still blown from that second revelation that Ivy had made.

Gary nodded. He sat coolly with one arm over the top of the steering wheel. "I know what you mean. That answers a lot. It would explain why you saw blue eyes when you first got the doll and I saw green, it would explain how Violet died so soon after Johanna and it could explain one more thing."

"What?" Leaf asked and looked at Gary curiously.

"Why there were no traces left at the crash scene." Gary said with his gaze fixed on the steering wheel.

"Are you implying that doll number two was made first?"

"If doll number two is the doll from the secondary lab then yes."

Leaf and Gary looked at each other and sat in silence, contemplating the possibility that what Gary said was true. With all the things that they had managed to uncover of past few days, if that really was the truth, they would not be surprised.

After sitting for what seemed like a long enough time to let the thought sink in, Gary started up his car and left Ivy's country house behind as they set off to find Daisy.

It was almost afternoon when Gary's car pulled into the busy city of Vermillion. It took them longer than anticipated since Leaf and Gary had barely touched their breakfast back at Ivy's and therefore had to stop for brunch at a small roadside café. The stop was brief and provided them with barely enough time to order their food and eat it before they we're back on the repetitive road.

They had been driving for almost four hours and Leaf was starting to get restless sitting in the car. She had read over all their clues and facts and tried to piece together the whole picture but to no avail. Most of what could be pieced together had already been done so before they started the seemingly endless road trip. Several twists and turns through the city later, they managed to navigate their way out of the city centre and towards their destination.

"Think Bill's place should be down this road somewhere." Gary said as he squinted to see the tiny house names that were pinned next to the doors of the rows of houses.

"Good. Your driving's awful." Leaf said, feeling slightly sick from sitting in the moving vehicle and reading simultaneously.

"At least I have my license." Gary said then pulled the car over to the house that he assumed to be Bill's.

"Is that his house?" Leaf asked. She read the name on the wooden tag.

"Should be. Got a plan?"

Leaf sat for a moment then replied. "I was just thinking we should go up and knock on the door. Do you want me to think of a plan?" Leaf asked.

Gary stared at Leaf. It wasn't like her to take the straight forward approach without a good reason. He looked at the driveway and noticed that Bill's canary yellow car was sitting in the driveway, indicating that Bill was likely to be in. Leaf must've realised that too. She knew what kind of car Bill drove and with her constantly scheming mind, it was unlikely that something that could be used to their advantage be forgotten so easily.

"No, I'll just role with what you have in mind." Gary said, putting his trust on Leaf yet again.

"If you say so." Leaf said then opened the car door and stretched her legs before standing up.

Gary followed suite and locked the doors. He made his way to Leaf's side of the car and stood on the pavement beside her. "So we just walk up to the door and knock…?"

"That's generally how it works." Leaf said with a shrug.

Gary gave Leaf a gentle shove and walked forward down the cobble tone path then onto the eerily neat front porch. Leaf followed behind him and knocked on the door since Gary showed no signs that he was going to do it.

A few seconds after the first knock and they received no reply. Leaf knocked again and the pair waited again. This time they heard movement from the other side of the door and after a long wait, the door opened slowly.

So, that's the end of this chapter. That's a few of the questions that I've received via reviews and stuff answered but I think I'm probably going to complicate things again pretty soon. I'll need to make sure my new idea fits in with my existing ones first though.

Oh, and before you lovely people review, which of course I know you will (teehee), I remember saying that I'll finish this story this year (in my profile somewhere) but I don't think that's going to happen… Oh well!

But anyway, hope you liked this one and thanks for reading!

~silver-hedgehog