Harry finds himself alone in his office again. Though it feels like it's been hours of pacing, sitting only to stand and move through the room once more, he knows it's only been about five, maybe ten minutes before Hawk comes back.
"Audrey Horne called," his deputy informs him. "She was asking about the trial date for her father. And about Cooper."
"Do we know that date?"
Hawk nods. "Day after tomorrow. Judge will be getting in early that morning, trial's in the afternoon."
There's another clock ticking, he thinks grimly. He doesn't voice that to Hawk, though, instead opting for, "y'know, I'm starting to get the feeling that the judge is gonna have to move here at the rate we're needing him." Especially if Ben Horne turns up innocent.
"There is something still out there," Hawk says, after a moment. "Something I believe I missed."
Harry nods, but his heart is heavy. "Hard to believe you coulda missed anything, Hawk. But… I'm gonna need you around right now."
"The forest's secrets will keep," Hawk assents, regarding Harry. "But Harry, we're gonna need a damn good lead, and soon."
He needs no reminder, but he nods again anyway. "Yeah. Lucy was looking up golf stores around here, came up with one just out of town we haven't visited. They could know something."
The door slams open, announcing Albert's arrival.
"Lab says our bloodwork will be done by this evening," he says curtly, by way of greeting. "Here's hoping our killer left prints on that club, something we can use."
"Well, in the meantime, we got one more possible lead," Harry replies. "You can come with us, if you'd like."
Albert shrugs. "Beats sitting around. Let's go."
Harry knows the road to the place. He's never paid much attention to that golf store before; it'd never crossed his mind in the initial frenzy. Now… now he doesn't know if he's just wasting more precious time. Time that could be the difference between finding his friend's dead body or saving him. Maybe, he reflects, I should've let Hawk go off. But then again, some small part of him needs his deputy's fortification here. It's not that he doesn't trust Albert – despite the man's bristly nature – or Gordon for that matter, but if Hawk isn't at his side, then what might he miss?
He pulls up into the parking lot of the place. Desolate. There's one other car, which is parked around the side of the small store. It's a dingy building, rundown but not quite succumbed to abandonment. A large sign hanging off one chain over the door proclaims in faded yellow letters, 'general goods 'n golf'.
"Must be a charming little place to stop by," comments Albert. "I wonder how far out of date their food is."
Still, the FBI agent is the first into the place, followed keenly by Harry and then Hawk. Albert immediately makes his way over to the counter to see if he can verify what they got on the club and the bag with the owner, while Harry gives a low whistle through his teeth as he takes in the store. Clearly, the owner is a big believer in 'don't judge a book by the cover', because the inside of the building is nothing like what the exterior suggested; it's clean, everything clearly marked, small aisles on either side of the clear path to the checkout counter.
His eye is caught by one sign marked 'BAGS - GOLF'. Might as well, he reasons, moving towards the section. It's an impressive range of bags, most more traditionally made. But what he's interested in is the bigger canvas bags a little further down. They're all of the same design, though they vary in colours, but it they do look like the bag they found the body in. He picks up one of the black ones and turns it this way and that to inspect it. It's the closest they've found so far, anyway.
He glances towards Albert – the owner has come out, and is inspecting the piece of paper the FBI agent has given him.
"Hawk," Harry calls over his shoulder. "Come take a look at this."
His deputy appears at his side.
"Think this is it?"
"It looks right," Hawk replies, just about glaring at the bag as he studies it. He nods. "Yes. I think you got it, sheriff."
Harry takes a moment to put the bag back, trying to put his thoughts in order. "Hey," he finds himself saying slowly. "I didn't wanna say it in front of Albert—"
"You've had a vision," Hawk states – really, Harry isn't surprised at the dead-on guess. "I overheard parts of your conversation with Gordon."
Well. Harry suspects Hawk would have known either way. But he nods.
"Yeah. Of Cooper. He spoke in… riddles. He said, 'it's written in blood.' And something about fire walking with someone. That no one knew that it walked with this person." Harry pauses, frowning. "I can't shake the feeling that I've heard something like it before. Can't remember where, though."
Hawk nods thoughtfully. "Pay mind to it, Harry."
He is – if only it made sense. "The log lady came up to me, too. She said I should 'think like who I'm trying to find.'"
"That is good advice in many walks of life. In hunting, too."
"Yeah. So, I started walking through what the kidnappers did to get our guys. Think like the enemy, you know?"
"Well, Harry," Hawk ponders for a moment. "Maybe it means you should start thinking more like Cooper."
…why didn't that occur to him? He shrugs. "Not a bad idea, but… I wouldn't even know where to start."
"The little details," Hawk suggests.
Albert calls their attention, then. Harry turns to find the FBI agent standing a little ways off, idly picking up a golfclub from the wall. "Cashier seems to think this store's definitely the one that sold the club, and the bag too." He pauses, glancing down at the club in his hands, a tight smile. "Come and look at these clubs – they're about right, anyway." Then, almost as an afterthought, he adds, "maybe I should take up golfing."
Harry stops dead, and a cold feeling washes over him. It has nothing to do with Albert, or the store. Do you play golf, Agent Cooper? That had been the last thing he'd heard before picking up the radio, and Harry had briefly looked back to see Leland animatedly lead a reluctant Cooper around to the back of the car. May I show you my new clubs? he'd vaguely heard as he waited for Lucy to catch him up to speed.
He used to flick matches at me. He'd say, 'you wanna play with fire, little boy?'. That was what Leland had said mere days ago, when he'd brought in the poster with Andy's sketch of Bob. Because Leland had known Bob. Cooper in his vision had specifically reminded him of that.
May I show you my new clubs? There was only one club. It wasn't in the trunk. When they'd walked into the Great Northern to break the news about Ben Horne to Leland, Leland had been holding a golfclub, not a cane, as he danced to entertain the guests. It could have been taken from Leland, but –
Madeline Ferguson was found in a golf bag.
"Oh, my God," he says, feeling lightheaded. Albert and Hawk turn to look at him.
"Well, if you were that opiniated about golf, you should have said so earlier," Albert says drily.
Harry ignores him. No one who claimed to have taken Madeline's bus even saw her arrive. Because she never made it to the station.
One set of tracks in the forest.
I drove her to the station myself.
The deceiver who's got you from the start.
"Leland. It's Leland."
He's gone over it dozens of times, now – in his head, and trying to explain it to his companions on the drive back to the station. He feels worse the more he says, and more certain with every passing second as he stacks each hint, each little thing as though they were blocks in a tower.
"We're not gonna be able to pin anyone if, first of all, our best piece of evidence is 'I saw it in a dream'," Albert snaps, "and second, our alleged killer is missing in a kidnapping case where all evidence points to him being a victim!"
"Cooper had these dreams and was often right," Hawk points out, his tone level.
"Voodoo magic won't hold up in any court of law. At least not the competent ones."
"Albert, stuff it," Harry growls, his gaze razor-focused on the road. "We're out of options. If the voodoo magic that had Cooper figuring things out left and right is giving us our only lead, then I'm goin' with it. If you're not in, then you can just stay out of the way."
"What do you really have, sheriff?" Albert demands scathingly. "You have a hunch. Bravo. But even if there's the slightest possibility that your batshit crazy idea is right – we're still no closer to finding out where our killer went. Or are you gonna have another dream and glean the answer from the heavens for that, too?"
Harry clenches his jaw. "Well, maybe we don't need a dream. Maybe it's right there in front of us."
Albert has begun to make more protest, but by now they've pulled into the station's parking lot, and Harry slams the driver's door behind him as he moves briskly towards the front entrance.
"Lucy," he says, far more sharply than he intends to, making the poor girl jump as he bangs through the double doors. "I'm gonna need the files on Laura Palmer and Madeline Ferguson. Bring them to my office."
She squeaks out a yes, sheriff Truman and scurries off to the records room. He goes straight into his office, not caring that Albert, seething, is shadowing him.
"This better be damn good," Albert says, finally, almost through his teeth. "I don't think I have to remind you that this is Cooper's life we're talking about here."
"No, you don't," Harry replies shortly, snatching up a map and spreading it across his desk, eyeing it critically.
Lucy comes in with the box two very long minutes later, Andy trailing behind her.
"Thank you, Lucy," he says, regretting his outburst earlier. She nods warily.
"We brought you some coffee, sheriff Truman," she responds, setting the box down on his desk as he gestures, before she points towards Andy, who is indeed holding a tray of coffee cups.
"Thank you," he repeats, and she mumbles something under her breath before making for the door. "Lucy, would you get Gordon in here? We're gonna need all hands on deck for this one."
The receptionist nods quietly and leaves the room.
Harry turns his attention to the box, pulling out Laura's file and then Maddy's, narrowing his eyes at them. His gaze travels over familiar words, pictures. He puts them on the map, spreading them out, then tracing his finger along the paper landscape of the map until he finds the spot on the road where Cooper was taken. Follows the path up, to where he's marked the place where they found his gun and ID.
He's still missing something.
"Fire, walk with me," Andy reads out, and Harry's attention snaps to him.
"What?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, sheriff Truman," gasps Andy. "It was just the picture from the – from that old traincar."
Andy's holding one of the pictures from Laura's file. He holds it out to Harry.
"'It's written in blood' – Andy, you're a genius!" Harry exclaims, taking the picture from the man. Andy beams.
"Really?"
Harry's head is whirling too much to reply. He turns back to the map, once again finding that last spot where they found Cooper's ID. Up to the next road where Madeline's body was dumped. Further into the forest on the opposite side of the road, up, up – and finally, his finger stops on the bridge. The railroad tracks. And further up them, away from the bridge, the traincar where Laura Palmer and Ronette Pulaski were taken by the former's killer.
"It's a pretty straight path," he says, aloud. "Albert, what do you have on serial killers going back to old haunts?"
Albert has actually gone pale, and instead of answering, he says, "you know, sheriff, you might have found the first thing that's pretty damn likely gonna be true."
Harry knows it. And right now, they've got a killer to catch. If it's not too late.
Hang on, Coop. We're coming.
Or, In Which Harry Uses the Power Of Hardcore Bullshitting to Solve the Case. (very on par for Twin Peaks, though.)
I'm gonna be completely honest, I wrote this today(posting date) because my week was busy and my writing schedule suffered because of it. It's just turned 11pm, meaning I had an HOUR left to post this on schedule XD
Only a few more chapters to go! Will Harry make it on time to save Coop? Will we get the promised hug?