When Harry opens his eyes, it's dark. It feels like he's floating, and he frowns up into the lack of anything. He gets to his feet slowly and squints. There's… nothing around him, no matter how many times he turns around.
He steps forward cautiously, hand itching for the weight of his gun – it's not there. But here there's no hurry.
He stops at that thought, but before he can ponder where it came from, there's a sound from behind him.
He turns.
"He used to flick lit matches at him," Cooper says softly, suddenly before Harry. "Through the dark night the fire walked with him, but no one ever realised that he was the fire."
"What?" Harry asks slowly.
"It was written in blood. When you're there, don't stay. Follow the iron path or it will be too late."
Cooper's eyes suddenly focus, and he steps forward, towards Harry. "Harry. Help me."
"I'm trying, Coop. Where are you?"
His friend's eyes drift past him and his expression changes. "No," he says, his voice uneven. He reaches out to Harry, but some unseen force seems to barrel into Cooper, then, and he trips backwards, a cry of pain grating against Harry's ears.
Harry lets out a shout, but he can't move. He hears impact after impact, watches the man curl in on himself.
Cooper's screams chase him back to the waking world in a cold sweat, his heart pounding so hard, it hurts. Some nightmare. It takes a long moment for him to register that he's still in his office, having drifted off in his chair. He lets out a groan, burying his face in his hands. Was that a dream? Cooper's words are branded into his brain, now.
Hell. Cooper's the one who knows what to do with this kind of thing. Not Harry. Cooper's the one who's called Harry at four in the morning to say I know who killed Laura Palmer, and later explain his vision, dream, sitting across from Harry, leaning forward in excitement, so sure that he'd almost uncovered the killer.
Jeez, Coop. Just think where we'd be if you remembered what she said.
He can't just sit here. So, Harry grabs his coat and leaves his office, stopping short when his gaze lands on the young woman sitting in one of the chairs in the lobby.
Audrey Horne casts her piercing gaze on him, stands, and moves straight over to him.
"I heard about Cooper," she says quietly. Harry's taken aback. "Are you close to finding him? Can I help?"
"Audrey," he says, and stops, staring at the young woman, wondering what to say. Her father, charged with the murder of Laura Palmer, and she's here asking about Cooper. It's… oddly comforting. To know that Harry isn't alone in the fact that, despite how little time they've all known Cooper in reality, the eccentric FBI agent has made such an impact that his absence isn't nothing. "Did you hear about your father?" He asks, instead.
Audrey nods impatiently. "If he killed Laura, to hell with him. But sheriff –" tears well up in her eyes, and she wraps her arms around herself. "I need to know that Cooper's okay."
The images of some unseen force beating Cooper in front of him flash through him mind.
"I know, Audrey," he says, gently, his mouth dry. "We'll find him."
He can see in her eyes that she doesn't believe him. How can she, when he doesn't believe himself? But she just nods.
"If there's anything I can do to help," she says firmly.
"You just get yourself home, Audrey," he replies. "And don't stay alone anywhere."
Once she leaves, so does Harry. He's not entirely sure where he's going, but he is sure that another second in the station will make him lose him mind. He gets in the jeep and just drives in the early morning light, gripping the steering wheel so tight he's afraid it'll break under his fingers.
After about five minutes, he has to turn the radio off. Try as he might, he can't focus on the words, and their cadence drills into his head to the point of anger. The silence is worse, in many ways, but he doesn't think he can brave the radio a second time.
He blinks, glancing out the window as he slows. He's on the road outside the golfcourse. Where Cooper was taken. He pulls over and sits there for a long moment, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel uneasily. Trying to think back to the previous day. He'd left Cooper with Leland to answer the radio. Leland had been saying something about –
He snaps out of his thoughts and stares at the woman he hadn't noticed, who seems to have simply materialised in front of his car. Through her big glasses she stares back, cradling her log closer. She makes no move to approach, and for a confused moment, neither does Harry. Finally, he finds himself opening the car door, stepping out onto the asphalt and raising a hand in greeting to the woman. "Hello, Margaret," he calls. "Is everything alright?"
"My log wants to tell you something." She says, once he's moved closer.
He nods. Hell, he's willing to try anything at this point, and Margaret – well, her log – has been right before. "Did your log see anything that could help us find Cooper?"
"My log says that you should think more like the one you're trying to find."
Well, he muses. What's that they say about thinking like your enemy, after all. "I'll keep it in mind. Thanks, Mrs Lanterman."
She stares at him for a long moment before turning and walking slowly back up the road. He watches her go, half-wondering if he should offer her a ride back to her cabin, before dismissing it and turning back to the matter at hand, returning to his jeep.
"How would I do it?" He asks, aloud, to no one in particular.
Well, the answer to that is simple. He'd turned around – so the kidnapper had his chance then. The next thing would have been to take out the next biggest threat; Cooper. Leland's just a lawyer, unarmed. But then, he muses, that's risky. How had an attacker taken two grown men, one an FBI agent, of all things, without alerting the sheriff within earshot? No, he's still missing something. Harry hadn't had his back turned long enough for that to happen.
…unless there was more than one assailant. That could be it. Could have taken both of them out together and hauled them off.
But then why didn't they just kill two birds with one stone and nab Harry too? And what about Maddy Ferguson?
Frustration wells up. Too many factors. Besides, Hawk had only picked out one set of footprints, plus the distinct impression of a body dragged through the leaves. Maybe if there were more attackers, they might have split up. And then the gunshot… Cooper must have fought back, was overpowered. The FBI agent is too formidable a sharpshooter to have just missed… unless, he thinks dimly, Coop ha a bad hit.
He thinks of the golfclub, and feels sick. Had that been Cooper's blood, or Leland's? They won't know until the lab sends back the results, courtesy of Albert's insistence at mailing the sample. But it could already be too late by that time.
The radio crackles on.
"Sheriff Truman?" Lucy says, through the static. "Agent Rosenfield and Gordon Cole are here. Sheriff Truman?"
He pulls the radio up. "Thanks, Lucy. I'll be right there."
"You better let us in on whatever the hell's going on around here," Albert snarls, rounding on Harry the second he walks into the office.
"Good to see you too, Albert," Harry replies drily. "Gordon."
"HELLO, HARRY," Gordon greets loudly, giving him a half-salute. "I APOLOGISE IN ADVANCE FOR ALBERT. HE'S WORRIED ABOUT COOPER."
Albert scoffs. "What I'm worried about how we're going to get anywhere in any investigation in this backwater town." He pauses, then inclines his head towards Harry, seeming to be physically reining in his loathing for Twin Peaks, before very slowly enunciating, "what do you have?"
"The dead body of Laura Palmer's cousin," Harry explains. "Wrapped in what looks to be the same kind of plastic." He drops the file Doc Hayward wrote up in the night onto the table. "We found her while we were chasing after the kidnapper."
Albert wastes no time in scanning the file, his eyes narrowed. "Letter under the nail of the ring finger. It's the same bastard."
"No question about it," Hawk agrees from the other side of the room, his arms folded.
"AND WHAT ABOUT THE HOTEL OWNER?"
"Charged. He's awaiting trial."
Albert gives an approving nod. "Good. At least some form of law prevails here. Any leads on Cooper?"
Harry shakes his head. "We found his gun, his ID and a piece of his coat that got torn off. Hawk followed the tracks, but our kidnapper's good. He got away clean."
Albert's mouth becomes a thin line. "Doesn't matter. We'll find him. Anything on our other victim? Laura Palmer's father?"
"Less on him than on Cooper. Hawk said there was only one set of tracks, and one body. There has to have been more than one guy, and they've separated Cooper and Leland."
"Well, as long as our grieving father didn't go rogue," Albert snarks. "Is that all we got?"
"Yeah." Albert's comment about Leland rubs him the wrong way, but Harry can't find it in him to argue. Albert can be an asshole, but Gordon's right – he's just worried about Cooper, the same as Harry. "It's gotta have something to do with the golfcourse," he says, almost to himself.
"What, our killer decided to go golfing?"
"Maybe. Maddy Ferguson was found in a golf bag, and the weapon on the scene when Cooper disappeared was a club."
"That's something," Albert says slowly, for once ditching the sarcasm. "Let's see the bag. Any nametag, indication of who owns it?"
Harry shakes his head. "Label was cut off. We've already been to the store we think sold it – they don't know anything we can use."
"Aaand we're back to square one. The golf club?"
"Same thing. If there's anyone out there who remembers who it was sold to, we can't find 'em."
"ALBERT, WHY DON'T YOU CALL UP THE LAB?" Gordon suggests. "SEE WHAT THEY HAVE ON THE BLOODWORK."
Albert nods tightly. "Alright. Good luck."
Gordon pulls Harry aside almost conspiratorially as Albert leaves the office and cracks the device pinned to his lapel up. "Harry," he says, at a decidedly lower tone. (And if Harry didn't know better, he muses, he'd be sure that that device was the volume control on the man, instead of his hearing aid) "While we were on the plane, I fell into a deep sleep. But the strangest part is that never once was I not aware that I was in a dream. And then I saw Cooper."
Harry starts, but Gordon continues on before he can say anything about his own dream.
"Cooper said to me that all of the pieces were laid out before us like a chessboard. But that to win, we would have to realise that our opponent isn't playing the same game."
The sheriff shifts uncomfortably. "I… I think I had a vision, too. Of Cooper. But he wasn't making any sense, either."
Gordon nods carefully. "I wouldn't be too hasty in forgetting anything he said, Harry. Cooper has always been a big believer in these things."
With that, Gordon re-adjusts the dial on his device, inclines his head to Harry and Hawk, and leaves the office.
Thanks for reading! I'm a little rusty on navigating , but I'm hopefully getting the hang of it again.