My thanks to all the lovely people who reviewed the last chapter! If you've read anything of mine before, you'll know I'm a terribly slow updater. But I hope you enjoy this new chapter anyways!
Napoleon
.
Napoleon sat on the front steps of his apartment building, clutching his travel mug tight to his chest, waiting for Illya to pick him up.
They were supposed to carpool on Thursdays, and since Illya was a sadist, and refused to show up less than an hour early for work, Napoleon was forced to pry himself out of bed at an unholy hour of the morning to accompany him.
Except Illya didn't come.
So Napoleon waited.
And waited.
And waited…
"Well, this is ridiculous."
He got to his feet, dusted off his trousers and after draining his mug in one go, he dropped it into Mrs. Morgan's rhododendron bush. It was too much work to let himself back into his apartment. He'd collect the mug at the end of the day.
Napoleon pulled out his cellphone as he strolled around to the parking behind his building. Illya's phone went straight to the answering machine, which was odd, because Illya had never let his batteries go dead in all the time Napoleon had known him.
Perhaps it had broken?
He left five identical messages on his partner's phone anyways, just to annoy him, drove his own car in to the precinct, and then left five more messages from the parking lot before making his way into the building.
"Good morning, Solo," Rogers at the front desk greeted him without looking up. "You're late."
"I'm half an hour early."
Rogers finally looked up. "You're late for a Thursday. Where's Kuryakin?"
Napoleon shrugged. "Car trouble?"
The secretary was incredulous. "And he didn't call in?"
Casually spinning away from the desk, Napoleon headed further into the police precinct, walking backwards. "Everyone's allowed a bad day. He's not a robot."
"Keep telling yourself that, Solo. You are the only one who believes it!" Rogers shouted after him.
There weren't any messages left at Napoleon's desk, and Illya's was exactly the way he'd left it the night before. You could always tell if Detective Kuryakin had been in, because he locked all his office supplies into his desk drawers overnight. Napoleon was the only one that was allowed to borrow his stuff, and that was only because Illya had essentially given up trying to stop him.
At eight fifteen, he stuck his head into Captain Sanders' office.
"I finished all my paperwork last night. We don't have any open cases. Illya hasn't shown up yet, so I'm going over to his apartment to check if he's dead."
Captain Sanders looked wholly unimpressed. "Get back to work Solo. He's only fifteen minutes late."
"An hour and fifteen minutes."
"Get back to work."
At nine o'clock, Napoleon broke into Illya's desk and read his planner. There were no appointments, meetings or activities scheduled for that morning. Then he turned on his partner's computer and checked his email. Illya was still under the impression that Napoleon hadn't cracked his latest password. It wasn't that hard. The computer didn't accept Cyrillic characters, so Illya's password was 'mypartneris100percentmoron', written out phonetically from Russian.
But there was nothing of importance in his emails either.
At ten o'clock, Napoleon stuck his head into Captain Sanders' office again.
"Oleg needs help on the McCallum case. I'm going out to interview some witnesses."
"Mhmm."
Napoleon collected his sports jacket from his desk and left the precinct.
He wasn't going to help Detective Oleg. He'd never actually said that's what he was going to do.
Sanders was such a chump.
He drove by Illya's apartment and checked the front door. Illya, paranoid fellow that he was, always lodged a black thread between the door and the frame, so he could tell if it had been opened while he was gone. It hadn't. His car wasn't out back.
It was, however, still parked outside the bar Napoleon had sent his partner to the night before.
Napoleon tapped on the door. It was only ten thirty and they didn't open until eleven.
A tired looking man in dress pants and a rumpled shirt opened the door. "Sorry buddy. We're not open yet."
Napoleon dug his ID out of his pocket and held it up. "Detective Solo, New York Police Department. Do you mind if I come in? I've got a few quick questions about a patron you served last night."
The barkeeper sighed. "Fine. Come on in." He retreated into the bar, leaving Napoleon to follow.
Napoleon like to think of this particular bar as their regular haunt. It was the closest place to unwind after a long week of solving cases, and dealing with a jackass of a boss. But Detectives Solo and Kuryakin had the highest closure rating in their precinct, and consequently spent way too much time being loaned out to other detective teams, other precincts, and even other agencies to smile, assist, and generally make Captain Sanders look like a better policeman than he was.
So they didn't make it to the bar very often. But if they did have the time, this is where they came.
Picking up his cleaning rag, the bartender settled himself behind the counter and got back to his work. "So what can I help you with?"
Flicking through his phone, Napoleon chose a picture of Illya giving him a dead-panned 'What do you think you're doing?' look, instead of the usual scowl he directed at his partner's camera.
"I'm looking for this man." He showed the barkeeper the picture. "He's about six foot five. Should have come in around eight o'clock."
Nodding, the barkeeper squinted at the picture. "Oh yeah. I remember him. Hard to miss someone that huge. He was sitting at the end of the bar down there, talking with a little brunette."
"A woman?" Napoleon's eyebrows rose.
"Yeah. I think he scared off some creep that had been bothering her. I'd been keeping an eye on the situation because I was afraid she might punch the creep if he stuck around much longer."
That made Illya's motivation a bit more understandable.
"Did you notice what time he left?"
"Um," the barkeeper paused. "He didn't ask for change. Just dropped a twenty on the bar and then I did a drop: moved some cash to the safe. Soo…" After flipping through a small booklet wedged under the till he looked back up. "Eleven fifteen. He left a couple minutes before eleven fifteen, with the girl."
Napoleon stopped scribbling in his notepad. Illya left with the woman? That was Napoleon's style, but not his partner's. There was no way Illya would follow a woman home on a first date. Especially if this was a random encounter.
"Were either of them drunk?"
The barkeeper rubbed at his forehead. "Your fellow was a little tipsy, actually. I was concerned about someone that big falling over. But he must have been drinking before he got here, cause I only served him one beer."
A little thread of ice began to wind its way around Napoleon's gut. That was also completely unlike Illya. He hated being intoxicated in public.
"And the lady?"
"No. She's been coming in a lot over the last few weeks. Always by herself and always sticks to soda."
"Do you know her name?"
"No. She pays cash."
"Oh." Napoleon flipped his notepad closed. "What about surveillance footage?"
"Why exactly are you looking at his guy?"
If he got any help now, when Illya didn't technically yet qualify as a missing person, he had to get it through cooperation or wiles. Napoleon brought out his phone again and found a picture of the two of them in front of a squad car. "He's a Police Detective. My partner, actually. And sometime after he left your bar last night he went missing."
The picture seemed to convince him, since the bartender relented, and beckoned Napoleon behind the counter. "I've only got two cameras, and the angle's not great. One of them covers the cash register, and the other is right outside the front door."
It didn't take him long to find the previous night's footage. Illya had been sitting too far down the bar to show up on the one camera, but they caught him entering and later leaving the establishment at a quarter after eleven.
Napoleon frowned as he watched Illya stumble, and then catch himself. It was too dark to get a clear look at the small brunette's face. She seemed to show concern about Illya's unsteadiness, but Napoleon had always been a better judge of deceit than his partner. She gestured off the screen, and they walked off together.
"Is there any more parking out back?" Napoleon looked up from the monitor.
"Well, not for my establishment. But behind the fence there's a lot belonging to that warehouse."
"Thanks."
Napoleon checked around the back of the pub, and found exactly what he had been hoping not to find. There were some slats missing from the wooden fence at the rear of the parking lot, and three short blonde hairs caught in the rough wood of the fence. The ground behind the fence was disturbed, churned up by the muddled impressions of size 15 dress shoes, and size 7 heels.
He found two deep impressions of a set of knees, and a long expanse of flattened grass right beside it. The chunks of shattered plastic nearby appeared to be the remains of Illya's cellphone.
With a deep sigh, Napoleon ran a hand over his face.
He stopped back into the bar before leaving.
"One more question."
"Yeah?" The bartender was slightly more enthusiastic, now that it seemed Napoleon was leaving.
"You said the young woman always paid cash, but what about the 'creep' that was bothering her?"
Twenty minutes later he was outside the upscale condo of Alexander 'Vince' Vinciguerra. The man was quite hungover, which made him painfully easy to manipulate. He didn't even ask to see Napoleon's badge.
"I'm here about some complaints of sexual harassment, actually."
"What?" Vince rubbed his knuckles into his forehead, wincing at the light trickling in the open door. "Gaby actually lodged a complaint? Why would she do that? We're friends. We're practically family. Her uncle's worked for my company for decades."
Napoleon scribbled a bit of nonsense in his notepad and nodded. "Maybe I should talk to her Uncle then. He could give you a character reference."
"Yeah. You should do that." Vince stumbled over to a cabinet in his condo's entryway, and pulled a business card out of the top drawer. "There. Rudi Groth. Gaby's uncle. You can even call into the office if you want to talk to him now. I think my fiancé's in today. You could talk to her too."
Napoleon tossed him a charming smile. "Thank you, sir. I'll do just that."
A quick internet search revealed that Rudi Groth, long-term employee of Vinciguerra shipping, had one niece by his deceased sister: Gabriella Teller. A short time late Napoleon was standing in front of a cheap walk-up with peeling paint and crooked window shutters. Even its better days probably hadn't been that good. Nobody appeared to be home.
Not a problem.
Now Napoleon was a cop, but he'd spent his younger years developing an entirely different type of skills. The kind of skills which would have prohibited him from ever going near the police academy if he'd gotten himself caught. But he hadn't. So here he was.
It took him seconds to jimmy open the back window and slip inside. He'd checked for alarms, but there weren't any.
Illya knew.
About his skills, that is. He'd stopped Napoleon on the sidewalk outside the precinct, as they left work on the third day of their partnership.
"Yes?" Napoleon had given him an ingratiating grin.
Illya didn't return his smile. "If you ever try to lift single item when we're on duty, I will report you right to the Captain."
"How-"
The tall blonde fixed him with scowl that seemed to suggest Napoleon was the source of all the world's woes. Then he turned and left.
It took Napoleon another month to realise that Illya didn't hate him, personally. He scowled at everyone, all the time.
The apartment was small, and messy, in an organic sort of way. Ms. Teller didn't have many belongings, but what she did have was sort of slung around the apartment; none of the appliances sitting quiet square with the walls, pieces of a disassembled food processor drifting over the various surfaces of the living room, none of the furniture quite matching.
Her bedroom was dominated by a work bench, her bed a mere afterthought of a cot in one corner.
It was among the reams of engine blueprints that Napoleon found the photo album.
It was actually more of a scrapbook than a photo album. The photos were glued down, and surrounded by notes, receipts, time lines, and even one short lock of blonde hair.
Every single picture in the book featured Illya.
Illya exiting his apartment. Illya climbing into a taxi. Illya standing at a crime scene, talking to Napoleon.
In quite a few of the pictures he was looking almost directly at the camera with an intense frown, like he could tell he was being watched, but couldn't pinpoint who was watching. Napoleon shifted uncomfortably when he realised how many times he'd caught his partner making that face over the last few weeks, and had merely needled him about daydreaming.
There was a smaller notebook jammed between the pages at the back of the album. Only the first six pages were filled. Each had a place name, and a date at the top, and a newspaper clipping underneath. Two of them he didn't recognize since they were cut from a German language newspaper. Napoleon could speak enough German to tell the articles were about two separate missing persons cases. The other four were cases he was quite familiar with. Four different young men who were missing, presumed dead. They were still unsolved. In all four cases there had been no suspects, or motive for their possible kidnapping and murders. It had been assumed they were crimes of opportunity.
Given how often crimes went unsolved in the real world, it was unsurprising that these six deaths hadn't been connected to each other before. None of the bodies had been found, so the causes of death were unknown.
But now, looking at the six young men, their deaths outlined in the same scrawling handwriting, Napoleon took a deep breath. He was looking at the work of a serial killer.