December 24th, 3:50 pm
Robert allowed Simon to awkwardly manhandle him into the room where Gumshoe was unpacking. He wasn’t sure where the interpol agent was at the moment, but he wasn’t unduly bothered by it. If anything, Gumshoe was a relaxing presence to be around, more so than someone new– and more than the rest of the group. He never felt scrutinized or put on the spot by the senior detective.
“Need any help unpacking, detective?” he offered.
It’s nice of you to offer to help!
Not really. It’s just something to do besides standing here staring at him.
Gumshoe didn’t really have much to unpack. A carry on bag sat propped against the pillow, and a beaten up old suitcase was already open atop the sheets with clothes sprawled out within. He was part way through unfolding a dress shirt as he chuckled warmly.
“Don’t got too much, but I ain’t ever gonna say no to a helpin’ hand from a pal!”
Robert peered at the suitcase, wondering what Gumshoe had packed.
“I don’t think any of us packed heavily for this trip– it was pretty last minute after all.”
It didn’t look like much. He saw a plastic baggie of a toothbrush and a bar of cheap soap and cologne…a few dress shirts and the same deep army green trousers he seemed to always wear along with his solitary trenchcoat.
A small row of ties lay beneath a photograph of Maggie Byrde and him, taped to the lid at a jaunty angle, as well.
Robert could see the packs of cigarettes in the small mesh pouch just beside it, as well.
“Yeah…Mr. Edgeworth was in a rush,” he chuckled “can’t blame him…ain’t like the bad guys are gonna wait for us, yeah?”
“No, they certainly aren’t,” Robert mused. He wondered how far ahead they might be already. As he paused, Bobby continued with a grin. “I see you found time to bring the missus with you, though, detective! Was Maggey annoyed to get left back in LA?”
I hope he doesn’t have the idea to interpret that as some kind of obtuse threat, Bobby.
What? Why would he?
Because we’re a spy and murderer who’s been pretending to be his friend for a year?
You might have been pretending– he’s my friend!
Gumshoe rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish grin “I always got this picture taped up in here, in case Mr. Edgeworth’s gotta summon me to wherever he’s doin’ his work. She probably ain’t happy, I know she’d wanna be along, but…she gets it. Ain’t the first time Mr. Edgeworth’s dropped a sudden trip on my lap, pal!”
If he took it as a threat, it didn’t show in his genial smile.
Bobby chuckled, and the trouble in his mind didn’t show on his face either.
“Not one for downtime, the Chief Prosecutor.” He rubbed his chest, where, beneath the layers of fabric there was still a deep bruise where the bullet had come so close to ending both their lives. “I remember last year you were gone quite a–”
We’re supposed to be in character, Bobby. Halblicht remember?
Does it matter? we’re alone! I’m bad at lying.
I’ve noticed.
Bobby chuckled embarrassedly, his shoulders dropping. Well.”
“I remember.” Gumshoe laughed cheerfully “he kept draggin’ me out. Maggie was startin’ to get annoyed…but you know how it is.”
He gestured towards the door with a jerk of his thumb “now you get to trail along huh? Betcha didn’t expect that. Ever been to Cauli before?”
“A few times,” Robert admitted truthfully. “But I haven’t had much of a chance to tour the city. I doubt that this time will be any different.”
“Yeah,” Gumshoe bobbed his head. “got the whole murder situation to sort out…but hey. Maybe it’ll wrap up quick, huh? Have a day to bounce around, not that I can afford anythin’ TOO fancy.”
“That’s the dream, isn’t it?” Robert huffed. He tried not to think about all the ways the operation could go bad. “Has the chief prosecutor ever sent you on a simple case?”
“Uh…” Gumshoe thought for a long moment before he said “he sent me on cases that seemed simple before someone got kidnapped, maimed, or killed?”
He scratched his chin “not that anyone’s gonna be maimed, kidnapped here or nothin’.”
“I really hope not, Gumshoe, I think that would be exhausting for all of us.”
And terrible!
I guess.
“And terrible, pal!” Gumshoe echoed Bobby’s thoughts. “I remember one time when Mr. Wright’s assistant got kidnapped by Shelly De Killer…spent the whole trial lookin’ for her while they stalled as long as they could.”
“That must have been a frantic time. Did you save the assistant in time?”
“Yeah…just barely. Poor girl was shiverin’ in a damp wine cellar by the time we found her. I…”
There was a sudden and rapping knock at the door, before it swung open to the half-sleepy grin of Agent Kelso.
“Hey there, sirs…hope I’m not interruptin’ anything.”
“I don’t think so, Agent Kelso.” Robert turned to look at the agent as she entered. He had a habit when meeting new people of observing them closely, and he was trying to get a sense of the interpol woman.
I hope you’re not thinking of trying to impersonate her.
I don’t know why I would. Besides, she’s too small.
Agent Kelso seemed to size him up through heavily lidded eyes…staring for a half-second longer than was polite. She’d thrust her hands back in her pockets as she leaned against the doorframe.
“Just got off the horn with Agent Lang.”
Gumshoe’s head shot up to attention. “does he have the crime scene ready for us?” he asked with palpable excitement.
Robert adjusted his tie, anticipating the same thing. It had been a long, tedious flight– but he’d certainly had worse. If it was time to look at the scene, he’d be there.
It’s funny. You’d never been a detective in your life til last year when you stole mine, but now you almost seem excited about it.
I’ll admit, solving crimes is generally more mentally stimulating than committing them.
Oh so you think it’s fun? I didn’t know you knew about fun.
I didn’t say fun.
“Nope!” Agent Kelso chirped as she began flipping the bullet between her fingers again with a gentle shrug of her shoulders.
“…Agent Lang noted that it’s gettin’ dark, and Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth’s party’s plane is running a little behind. Given the level of exhaustion and the hour, he’s having some of our guys keep the scene secure and preserved and we’ll investigate in the morning.”
Gumshoe deflated “aw, man…and here I thought we’d get ta get started.”
Robert pushed his glasses up.
“Well, that’s sensible… though not very exciting, admittedly,” Bobby finished the sentence his counterpart had begun. “So what’s the plan then?”
Kelso clapped her hands together, with a sound like the ringing of a small bell as metal hit metal
“I treat you fellas to a night on the town…or at least dinner.” She chuckled “can’t afford much outside that, I’m afraid.”
“Well, very kind of you, Agent Kelso!” Bobby said, saluting her.
Robert however, narrowed his eyes behind their amber shades. What’s she got in her hands– I’ve noticed her playing with it for a while. It’s not bullets, is it?
I think it might be?
The woman held her hands up with a big grin.
“hey, what can I say? I want you all to feel welcome in my homeland. Only seems polite, right?” As her hands raised in the air, the metal objects seemed to vanish…likely a bit of sleight of hand. “As thanks for not minding shifting the investigation till morning.”
Gumshoe rubbed his neck with a chuckle “well…I ain’t gonna turn down a free meal! Thanks pal…thanks a lot.”
There was another sharp knock at the door, and it opened again to admit prosecutor Blackquill, who was now accompanied by Taka.
Bobby snapped to a salute as he entered, and grinned. “Prosecutor.”
Simon crossed his arms and leaned on the doorway. “Half wit. Catch me up on the conversation.”
Now that’s familiar…
“Agent Lang’s holding the crime scene until morning, and Agent Kelso’s said she’s going to take us out to dinner.”
Agent Kelso’s eyes closed over her lackadaisical smile “that’s right…remember I mentioned that little family owned restaurant? They’re still there, and I booked us all a couple of tables tonight. My treat.”
“Well, well.” Simon adjusted the edges of his jinbaori, “as eager as I am to get started, I suppose we can’t argue with Lang-dono. Let’s collect the rest of our party and have something to eat.”
December 24th, 4:30 pm
Dinners out with new people were a rough ask for Athena at the best of times, when she was at her most emotionally robust. Today was hardly the best of times. At least she was in similar company– hardly anyone at the table looked alert, eager or well rested, with the exception of Agent Kelso.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true– Halblicht seemed well enough, but in the clangor of emotions and noise, Athena had no idea how genuine that was.
There was no way her hearing could do much of anything in a situation like this. The air was thick with emotions dripping from tone and gesture, and conversation she couldn’t quite follow as it shot back and forth across the table.
Even the worst of them, Detective Skye, had begun laughing and chattering with the others as the alcohol made another round across the table. And Athena smiled and laughed along with them as she poked at a plate of rice and pickled vegetables.
Athena Cykes wore the perfect mask of a cheerful young woman out on a dinner with friends, plastered over the swirling mass of other people’s emotions inside her. The smile didn’t go any deeper than her face, and her laughing additions to the conversation were nothing more than surface level agreement as she passed on the drinks.
The conversation– what little of it she could actually parse– seemed benign, so she wasn’t missing anything important. It sounded like Gumshoe was telling an anecdote about a kidnapping; it had sounded like Halblicht asked him about it, but Athena might have missed whatever the actual impetus of the discussion was as she phased in and out.
The day weighed heavily on her. The day. And the day before. And the whole week. How had it all added up to being here?
Her own emotions on it felt distant, like ripples in a tidal wave…just like they’d always been when she was younger. Muted, even when she blocked the world away with her mother’s headphones. Only now she didn’t even have those with her to help her isolate her fragile Self from the collective.
She looked up with a laugh, and smiled brightly at Simon as he happened to glance her way, before she leaned on her hand.
The murder of her mother, her desperation to fix her, Miss Aura’s hatred. The murder of Clay Terran, the fire and flames, the assassin in the dark and the forged evidence. The Phantom, her friend, a man who brought a ping of joy to her fragile internal mood matrix every time she’d seen him…her momma’s killer, the man who tried to frame her.
Simon. Simon and The Phantom…the assignment.
Dead men in Cauli, Agent Sam Wan Kelso with her subdued laughter and distracting fidgeting. Psychotherapy.
It all spiraled inside her, fragments of sentences and events that mingled together into a physical feeling of vertigo she didn’t dare let show. She was normal..she had to present as normal, the moment she seemed off, the others would notice. A lawyer always smiles even at the worst of times, after all.
She had no answers for how she wound up here, eating bibimbap and chuckling emptilly along with the wounded man who killed her mother in cold blood.
And almost as suddenly as the meal seemed to have happened, it seemed to have ended, and she was standing outside in the dark street with the group of them in front of the little restaurant. Ema and Simon were still chattering away– Taka was harassing Gumshoe. The air was cold– almost stinging on her face, and it was the first thing that even brought her almost back to reality.
The other thing was a voice.
“Miss Cykes?”
Athena’s eyelashes fluttered in the cold, and her bright blue eyes struggled to focus back on the real world for a frozen moment. It passed in the blink of an eye and she turned her head with the bright and automatic smile she’d learned to project in Europe.
“Hey!”
It was Halblicht. Her mother’s killer. Athena noticed that Simon’s eyes were on them now– a fact that Halblicht didn’t seem to be paying attention to.
Instead, he smiled a little thinly at her, and there was a calm, searching expression in the eyes behind his amber lenses.
“I wanted to ask if you’re alright,” he said, in a low, even tone. “You seemed a bit out of it at dinner– don’t worry, I don’t think anyone else noticed.”
Athena’s heart skipped a beat, and she glanced briefly sidelong at Simon and the others…the worry that she’d find staring eyes and concerned frowns turned her way.
When she didn’t find any, her eyes fell back on Halblicht’s dark sunglasses…and the eyes behind them. She managed a soft, hiccuping breath. “…you noticed, huh?”
Her imaginary smile evaporated into a soft and pensive line, and she rubbed her hand against her elbow before she spoke again.
“Of course you noticed…” she whispered “you’re one of the only people here who would…”
“My apologies if noticing made you uncomfortable,” he murmured back. His posture was stiff, hands behind his back. In comparison to the swirling torment nexus of emotions in the restaurant, his muted bubble of silence was almost a comfort.
Athena shook her head, managing something almost like a smile as she took a second to bask in the silence. It may have been more than ‘almost’. It was comforting. Familiar to the matrix inside her, like the world with the headphones on, or her mother’s quiet lab where she could hear herself feel.
She could almost feel herself again. All thanks to the nameless, tortured spy she had been asked to save.
“No, it’s almost nice.” She rubbed her elbow again. “…I’m just a little overwhelmed by..” she glanced at the others “…they’re all feeling a lot, right now. It’s hard to feel myself, you know? I guess I started to zone out.”
“I can understand that,” he nodded. “Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with people.”
For a moment it seemed like he was going to say more.
But then Simon stepped over their way with a thin smile.
“Cykes-dono, is the new detective harassing you? We can have his pay docked.”
Athena laughed , the bright and performative smile alighting on her face once more as she held her hands up. “Gosh, no way! I know how bad detective salaries can get! I don’t wanna make the poor guy suffer! We were just talking about dinner!”
“I was asking her if she knew what kind of sauce was with the meal, Prosecutor Blackquill, sir!” Halblicht grinned a great big Bobby Fulbright grin, but this time there was nothing behind it to disturb the silence.
A quiet secret between them.
December 24th, 7:15 pm
Dick had managed to sleep a little on the plane, which was probably why he was able to stay up and wait for Mr. Edgeworth’s plane to get in, when the rest of the party was going to bed after dinner to deal with their jet lag.
That wasn’t to say he was well rested, but he’d gotten by on worse with less. He still had hours to go till Mr. Edgeworth landed, and a bit of his paycheck burning in his pocket from the free meal Miss Kelso had given them…so he found himself drifting to the ol’ detective’s standby…
The hotel bar.
It was a small, lonely affair, probably more lively when more people were traveling for business. It certainly wasn’t well populated on Christmas Eve.
In fact, aside from the bored looking bartender, there was only one patron. A broad shouldered older man that Gumshoe had last seen back in LA.
“Well if it ain’t Tyrell Badd!” Gumshoe laughed, walking over to slap him on the back with an ear to ear grin. “room for one more?”
Badd laughed and punched him in the shoulder as he turned to greet him. “I should hope so! I haven’t gained that much whiskey weight yet! How was the flight?”
“Prosecutor Blackquill and his new detective pal nearly took my head off for slappin’ him in the face by accident!”
Badd whistled. “Glad you said nearly– open brawl in a closed plane’s no funny haha. That new detective, huh? Doesn’t sound like Blackquill’s got him on a tight leash, or what?”
“Nah, his leash is plenty tight. I’m just the idiot who got a little too close!” he plopped himself down and waved for the bartender. “He stopped basically right away. Nearly gave Athena a heart attack though.”
“I’ll bet. She doesn’t seem the type to like sudden moves– especially considering.” Considering what, Badd didn’t have to say. “First drink’s on me.”
He motioned to the bartender, who got out a second glass and poured a couple more whiskeys.
“Awww…sir you don’t gotta do that for me!” Gumshoe chuckled as he caught the glass as it slid his way. “Thanks.”
“Interpol’s salaries higher than LAPD,” he chuckled. with him. “In case you were ever thinking about joining up.”
Badd raised his glass to him in a brief salute, before tipping it back.
He raised his glass in return “think you could get my Mags hired? ‘Cause I’d say yeah if the travel time wasn’t such a bastard, sir…and if Prosecutor Edgeworth didn’t need me, of course.”
“I get it,” Badd nodded, “You’re tied down. Not me– everybody I run with’s already with the pack, as Lang says. I probably could get your Maggey in– Edgeworth though, tricky. You’d have to ask that Von Karma woman” He barked a laugh.
“Fr…” Gumshoe’s voice hiccuped. “…Franziska?? I ain’t gonna ask her, pal. Last time I tried to ask her anythin’ she nearly flayed me alive with that whip!”
“Oh so she does do that to everyone. I was wondering.”
“You thought it was just you, huh sir? Sorry…that’s just her standard way of sayin’ hello.”
Badd shook his head. “Takes all kinds, I guess. Speaking of all kinds…”
He glanced up at the bartender– who was standing a little way away, apparently paying no attention.
Gumshoe leaned in with a curious tilt of his head “yeah, pal? What’s up?” he whispered low.
Badd turned away from the bar, leaning against it with his back instead, and his voice dropped low as well. “Just looking for your assessment of the situation. You spent 14 hours on the plane with that guy– what’s the deal? Is he a flight risk? Is he gonna cooperate?”
Gumshoe took a long sip of his whiskey.
“Don’t think he’ll be able to flee even if he wanted to, the way Prosecutor Blackquill’s watching him like that hawk of his.” he murmured quietly. “But he doesn’t seem keen on it. It’s like he’s the same ol’ Bobby Fulbright we knew back at the precinct most of the time…he seems ready to cooperate. He even tried to jump to Prosecutor Blackquill’s defense when I made that little uhhh..” He waved his hand, before mocking a salute “salutation screw up.”
“Yeah. I was getting that sense.” Badd rubbed his stubbly chin thoughtfully. “Espionage business is rougher than we give it credit for, Gumshoe. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just wanted out. But still– keep an eye on him for weird moves. Even if he does want to help, it doesn’t mean he’ll think or act like the rest of us– and that could create problems. Like it sounds like you already ran into on the plane.”
“Hoo boy, don’t I know it!” Gumshoe laughed, an edge of nerves in his voice “…I’ll keep an eye on the guy, promise. Make sure he doesn’t do anything too out there. He’s on our side, I’m gonna keep believein’ that because of the friendship we had back at the precinct…but I ain’t gonna let him go around snapping necks just ‘cause that’s how it’s done ‘in the business’.”
Badd slapped him on the shoulder. “Good man, that’s exactly what I was looking for. We don’t want him deciding he knows the most efficient way to take care of a problem.”
“If he tries, I’ll have Blackquill deduct his pay to hell and back!” Gumshoe rocked under the man’s hand with a hearty laugh.
He paused though a second later and asked “w…we are payin’ the guy, right?”
Badd paused too, and he sucked down the rest of his drink. “No idea. Better ask Mr. Edgeworth about that.”