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"Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?"

You know we've got a mystery to solve,

So Scooby-Doo be ready for your act.

Don't hold back!

- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You

Something didn't sit right with Hopper about the autopsy. A local kid dies and the local coroner is sent home by some people from the state? That wasn't normal. And given Joyce's insistence … well, maybe she was crazy, driven out of her mind with grief. But a parent's feeling for their child was something that shouldn't be ignored. All of Hopper's experience as a cop told him that, as well as his own all-too-brief fatherhood.

He had Flo call Gary to come into the station, and sat him down. "You feeling all right, Gary?"

"Never better."

"So you're just … taking the day off? I've never known you to take a day off."

"Not my idea, Hopper."

"You didn't call these guys?"

"No, sir. They just showed up with the body. Troopers."

"Where did they come from? Did they tell you why they were out looking around in a quarry in the middle of the night?"

"I guess one of them was doing some kind of rounds? They didn't explain much." He shook his head. "Sure is a shame. Poor Joyce, she must be beside herself."

"It's a tough blow." Hopper didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to have to think about the pain Joyce would be in once the truth hit her—he had altogether too much experience with that kind of pain. "So, Gary, tell me about these troopers who brought in Will."

"There was about six of them, I'd say."

"All staties."

"Yes, sir. Never seen that many troopers come with a body before."

"They told you that they were going to take care of the autopsy, huh?"

"Yeah. Claimed jurisdiction, kicked me out." Gary shook his head. "Well, it all seemed a bit over the top to me, considering …"

"Considering what?"

"Considering this was Will Byers and not … John F. Kennedy."

Hopper sighed. Gary had a point. Why would the state have bothered? Public health issue? But if so, why wouldn't they have talked to him? He got up, moving closer to the TV. The sound was off, but the station was tuned to an interview with the statie who had found Will's body. Why a statie? Why the quarry? It didn't make sense.

Belatedly, he remembered Gary was still there. "Thanks for coming by, Gary."

"Sure thing."

As Gary got up to go, Hopper turned up the sound on the TV.

" … know that the troopers are on duty, and it should be safe, because we think this is just an isolated incident," the statie was saying.

"State Trooper David O'Bannon, thank you so much for your time."

The interview was over, but Hopper's questions were only just beginning. He decided to track down this trooper himself, which took some doing … but Hopper had been a cop for a long time. He knew what cops did when they had found bodies, when they wanted to drown their sorrows. It was just a question of finding the right bar.

Eventually he did, taking a seat next to the trooper and ordering a whiskey and lighting up a cigarette. They sat there watching the game and drinking until O'Bannon was about done with his beer and Hopper's glass was down to the dregs. He pushed it across the bar and wiggled his fingers at the bartender. "Another, please." He pretended he had just noticed O'Bannon's beer getting low. "And another for my, uh, friend here."

O'Bannon looked at him in surprise. "Oh, thanks, man. 'Preciate it."

"Yeah, that's all right. I'm, uh, I'm celebratin'. My daughter. She won the spelling bee today." God, where had that come from? Sara would never win any damned spelling bees, although she could have. She'd been so goddamned smart. He leaned into it, finding an obscure pleasure in being, for just a moment, a man whose daughter was alive to win spelling bees.

Seeming unimpressed, O'Bannon said, "Is that right." He turned his attention back to the game.

"Yeah, that's right. 'Odontalgia.' That was the word. You know what it means?" O'Bannon shook his head. He didn't particularly care what it meant, but that wasn't going to stop Hopper from telling him. "It's a fancy name for a toothache." Hopper chuckled to himself. "Yeah, she's smart. She's real smart." Will Byers was smart; Hopper bet he could spell odontalgia. "I don't know where she gets it from, I've been trying to figure that out for years."

"Your daughter, she got a name?" O'Bannon asked.

Coming in the middle of his assumption of this proud father persona, the question threw Hopper off. "What?"

"Your daughter. What's her name?"

He hadn't wanted to give away that part, had wanted to keep it for himself. Reluctantly, he said, "Sara. Her name's Sara."

O'Bannon reached for the full beer bottle the bartender had put in front of him, and lifted it. "To Sara."

Hopper toasted him with his own refilled glass, and they drank. The hook was set. Giving it a moment, he looked over at his companion. "I recognize you. You famous or somethin'?"

"You might've seen me on TV. I, uh, I found that Byers boy."

Wasn't sitting well with him, either. O'Bannon's eyes were on the TV, and he looked fidgety, nervous. Not sad or proud or even matter-of-fact. Yeah, something wasn't right here.

"Were you on that case, or what?"

"No, I just saw him on patrol, you know. Dumb luck."

"So that quarry, that's, uh … that's state-run, where they found the boy, huh," Hopper said slowly. He tapped the ash off his cigarette, carefully not looking at O'Bannon.

"Yeah."

There was silence for a moment, while Hopper could feel how badly O'Bannon wanted him to drop the subject. "Well, that's funny. 'Cause, you know, I know for a fact that it's run by the Sattler Company." He did look over now, waiting to see what the reaction would be. "Frank Sattler, decent guy, still got a couple of operational quarries up in Rohan."

"That right."

"Yeah. That's right." Hopper's tone was flat, now; direct. "So why you lying to me, man?"

O'Bannon looked at him, angry enough to try to deflect Hopper confrontationally. "What's your problem, bud?"

"I don't have a problem. I'm just a concerned citizen."

"Yeah? Well, stick your nose someplace else. The kid is dead. End of story." Getting up, O'Bannon threw some money on the bar and grabbed his jacket. "Thanks for ruining the game, dick."

And he walked off.

Hopper was struck by what he'd said. 'The kid is dead.' Had there been any doubt? Hopper had asked about the quarry, not about the kid. To offer up a defensive assertion that the kid was dead meant that … maybe the kid wasn't dead. How could that be, if there was a body? Had Joyce been right all along with her 'Will's in the lights' theory?

He couldn't get into whether Will was in the lights right now, but he could follow up on this lead. He finished his drink—no use wasting good whiskey—and, tossing some money of his own on the bar, he followed O'Bannon out the door.

Catching the trooper on his way to the parking lot behind the bar, Hopper grabbed him by the arm. "Tell me about the quarry. How did you know to go there?"

"Go to hell."

So Hopper slugged him. "The quarry! Who sent you there?"

O'Bannon just glared at him, so Hopper hit him some more, backing him up against the wall. It felt damn good to finally be able to do something, to work out some of his frustrations. Hopper was careful not to let it go too far—he did need information out of this asshole, after all. When O'Bannon was sagging against the wall, his breath coming short, Hopper hauled him up and held him still with a hand on his jaw.

"Okay, let's try this one more time. Who told you to be out there? What were you doing out there?"

The trooper shook his head just slightly. Couldn't talk, wouldn't talk, was scared to talk—it was all the same to Hopper. He raised his fist again, making it clear he would strike again and again until he got an answer.

O'Bannon groaned a "no" at him, having had enough, apparently. "He—he just told me to call it in, and not let anybody get too close."

"Get close to what?"

"The body."

Hopper froze. Joyce had been right. Whoever was in the morgue, it wasn't her son. "Who do you work for? The NSA? Hawkins Lab?"

O'Bannon was staring at something over his shoulder, fear written on his face. Hopper turned to look and saw a long black car parked at the edge of the lot behind him.

"Who is that?"

"You're gonna get us both killed."

"Who is that?" Leaving O'Bannon, Hopper started toward the car. "Hey! Hey!" He pulled his gun, running toward the car, which pulled away before he could see the driver in any kind of detail. He considered shooting at the car, but that would make a lot of noise out here in public, and he didn't know nearly enough yet to take the risk.

When the car was gone, he looked around and saw that O'Bannon had fled, as well.

That was probably okay—he thought he'd gotten as much from the trooper as he was going to get. No, now he had to go see the body, and find out why no one was supposed to come close to him, and how they had made whoever it was look so similar to Will that it had fooled his own brother.

Another trooper, this one looking very young, was on duty outside the morgue, engrossed in a book. Cujo. Hopper approved.

"Hey," he said, smiling as he approached the young trooper. "I love that book, that's a ... nasty mutt.

The trooper was on his feet immediately, book down, hand on his gun, standing in front of the door. "You can't be back here."

It was nice to be tall. Hopper towered over this kid by several inches, and he made them felt, even as he kept smiling. "Yeah, I just got off the line with O'Bannon, he said that he needs to see you at the station, it's some emergency …"

The kid wasn't biting. "What the hell you talking about? I don't work with O'Bannon."

"Did I say O'Bannon? I meant—" He wasn't going to find another name. The hell with it, anyway. He'd at least tried to play this straight. "Okay." And he hauled off and punched the kid.

Two strikes and the young trooper was down for the count. Hopper felt bad about the headache he would have later.

Grabbing the keys off the trooper's belt, he let himself into the morgue, looking around all the while to make sure no one was watching. One trooper, that was all they'd left here? If he'd been trying to hide something, he'd have left more.

The morgue was silent, dark, and a little bit spooky. Hopper usually wasn't troubled by fears of this nature—his own demons were more than enough nastiness lurking in the dark—but this was … different. His heart was pounding. What was he about to find?

Will's body, or whoever's body was standing in for it, was in the second drawer down. Hopper pulled out the drawer and took the sheet off the face. Damn, but it sure looked like the kid he remembered meeting at the movie theater.

He walked away from it, thinking of dead children and grieving parents and anguish and heartache and loss. But that was his story. Maybe it didn't have to be Joyce's. Getting a grip on himself, he returned to the body, pulling the sheet back the rest of the way off the torso. Immediately, he could see a problem: The chest was smooth. There had been no autopsy. Was this why they had sent Gary away, so no one would know they hadn't cut into the boy?

Hopper put his hand on the chest, and then took it away, frowning at it. The skin felt strange. Spongy? Not quite firm enough? Something was definitely not right.

Damn it, he was going to have to cut into this child's body. Could he really do this? If this wasn't Joyce's son, it was someone's. Shouldn't he have more respect? But something was off about it, and he wasn't going to know what it was if he didn't at least look.

Opening up his pocket knife, he started to make the cut, but pulled the knife away before it made contact with the skin. This was awful. He couldn't help seeing Sara there, Sara lying alone and cold in the dark.

But this wasn't Sara. And all signs pointed to it not being Will, either. He had to know.

This time, he made the cut, deep and sure. The skin was surprisingly tough to cut through, and it felt as though there was nothing inside the body to cut into.

He pulled the sides of the skin away from the opening he'd made, plunging his hand into the cavity before he could think better of it—and came away with a handful of fluff. This wasn't a kid at all, not a human. This was a doll, filled with the same kind of white stuffing a plush animal was filled with.

His first reaction was pure anger. How dare anyone put someone through what Joyce and Jonathan were going through, faking the death of a child? What kind of monstrous asshole did that?

His second thought was Joyce. She needed to know.

Hopper wanted to run out of the morgue to her and tell her what he had found, tell her she had been right all along, and this wasn't Will … but what good would that do? She knew she was right. She knew this wasn't Will. She had said so, in the face of skepticism and despite what she knew it sounded like to others. What she didn't know, and what this wouldn't tell her, was where Will was—and there was only one place Hopper could think of where he could get that answer for her.

He had to go to the lab.