Heathens chapter six

Google Docs nearly didn't save this and I had to recover an older version, edit that, and add the part that had been cut off but whoo hoo, still managed to have it. 

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He hates New York. 

It’s loud and bright and hot, and he’s not really made for loud and bright and hot these days, but there’s not a lot he can do when all they’ve afforded him is a cab with a cabbie who’d attempted to make conversation seven times before B told him they’re both going to take a detour to a ditch if he didn’t shut up, and a simple room in a three-star hotel. Jeevas was probably enjoying setting up his accommodations just to see if he squirms, which, tough luck, considering he’s stayed in worse, but he supposes he can’t really risk worse now, while he’s still recovering from his burns. Even after surgeries, he’d been constantly reminded to be careful, after all. 

At least he can close the curtains in his hotel, and he’s got enough gel pads to maybe last him a week here, although he has to find A fast unless he wants to be uncomfortable, and he’s brought his pressure garments with him. Provided he stick to shaded areas when travelling and not getting hit by sunlight drifting through window glass panes even when inside cabs (yep, that had been a major inconvenience earlier), he should be fine.

He needs to get out of here fast. He’s tired, and the thought of having a ticking time bomb on his foot had been hammered into his head even further with the strange looks he’d gotten from the obvious bump under his pant leg, just right by his ankle. He was being allowed to walk, but it wasn’t exactly to walk free.

He opens his phone after tossing his bag onto the bed. MONIKA’s OS screen lights up on it and right after she loads everything, he combs through the files again.

The first victim had turned up in Springfield, Massachusetts, which is also a hell of a long way from Los Angeles. It had been a man, Frank Devron, 46, and he’d been found in his house, having bled out onto his carpet, numerous lacerations on his body that looked like the work of barbed-wired whips, and holes on his feet and hands. The second victim was mutilated the same way, but was in Jamesville - which was in New York. 

The third one was in Sugarcreek, Pennsylvania. The fourth, in Toledo, Ohio. 

The pattern continued like that. The fifth was in Athens, Indiana; the sixth in Elmore, Illinois; the seventh in Iowa; the eighth in Elm Creek, Nebraska; the ninth in Colorado Springs; the tenth in Glenwood, Utah; and the eleventh in Las Vegas, Nevada

Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada.

“Could have gone to Arizona,” B says. California and Arizona were both near Nevada; hell, so were Oregon and Idaho, but whoever was behind this had gone straight to California - to Los Angeles, where A lied in wait. 

He frowns for a moment. “Bait?”

He couldn’t be disrupting an operation, because otherwise, Matt wouldn’t have called. And A would have found a way to report back, or at least let themself be bugged if they could’t call back. 

An operation gone wrong? Them baiting themself on purpose and it had fallen sideways?

“Isn’t it a little too early for this?” Jeevas’ voice filters through the phone with no warning, and B frowns, pausing. “You just arrived from hours of travel.”

“And I don’t have hours to  waste,” he says, “I want out of here already.”

“And here I thought you’d be excited for freedom.”

He scoffs. “Freedom isn’t something that’s going to be granted to me unless I die,” he says, and lifts his shackled leg, even though Jeevas can’t see it. “As you can see, I have a lovely anklet.”

Jeevas only shrugs. Then, he says, “If you need rest, you should definitely rest. You’re never going to get anything done with only three house of sleep or something.”

“Watch me,” he says instead. Jeevas sighs and waits for him to speak. He says nothing for a while, and then says, “I think I’m going to need a laptop to navigate things better.”

Jeevas is quiet. Then, hesitantly, he says, “How would that help?”

“How would - Matt, I can’t open multiple tabs or zoom in very well on a phone. I can’t open multiple windows without it crashing, or something,” he says, “You’re going to install MONIKA into it anyway - don’t lie to me - so you’d be able to track what I’m doing.”

“Okay, I’m not going to lie, I would, if you ever get a laptop, but ration your money right now until I can send you some. Or just send you a laptop, if you don’t feel like walking around.”

“I’m not here to sightsee,  I’m here to find A.”

“Sheesh, just imagine it, would you,” Jeevas says, “Beautiful, loud little New York.”

“Pain in the ass New York.” 

“Truly you’ve no appreciation for the small things in life. Like, you managed to get at least a few good views here.”

“This isn’t a vacation, this is a rescue mission,” he frowns at his phone. “Unless A did up and run, in which case you’d be hardpressed to find them. “

“It’s not,” Jeevas says. He sound so sure, but then again, he doesn’t know A as well as B does. At least, B hopes he does, otherwise, he’d just be failing himself, being unobservant. “They have more reason to stay, I told  you.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he says. “But I reiterate, as we’re getting sidetracked. Laptop.”

“Alright, I’ll get you a laptop, give it a few hours,” he says. “Anything else?”

“Yes, any news about you trying to track down A on your end?”

“Nothing,” Jeevas says, “Which means that A either can’t because they’re physically incapable of doing that, or they haven’t had the time to.”

“Or, they don’t want to.”

“You keep pressing for that reasoning, but I’ll tell you again and again that you’re wrong.”

“That, or you’re in denial,” B says. He tosses his phone to the side, still not ending the call. He unzips his jacket to shred it, since he’s still a little warm from spending so much time in a stuffy cab and having to carry his own bag up to his room. “A’s smart. If they wanted to disappear, they would.”

“They would have done it a long time ago, if they wanted to,”  Jeevas says, “I thought you were doing so well with agreeing A hadn’t run. What’d changed your mind? Ride to New York too bumpy?”

He thinks about the photographs on the desk again. A’d looked happy out with a friend, in one of them. The other was a dead memory. 

“What do you really think, B?”

He says nothing, for a long, long time. And then he lays down on the bed, spreading his arms as he falls, exhausted.

“I don’t know,” he says.

Jeevas, thankfully, only holds his tongue.

-

He actually gets some sleep, which he doesn’t mourn over much because he doesn’t feel as horrible in the morning than when he’d first arrived. He gets himself cleaned up, nearly forgets to eat breakfast, and then picks up the package left on his front door as Matt’s made quick work of ordering a laptop from the nearest, yet most efficient, store in the city. B momentarily celebrates the plus side of hastily demanding a computer, which is that MONIKA isn’t installed in it, but then Jeevas says, “Turn on your phone’s and the laptop’s bluetooth.” and that had been the end of his little victory, because otherwise, MONIKA would set off his ankle monitor. 

Speaking of, he glares at the damn thing from where it’s poking out under the hem of his pants.

“I really can’t take this off?” he asks.

“Negative, sir,” MONIKA answers from his phone’s speakers.

He glares at the phone and turns off the lockscreen. It buzzes back to life as he sets it back on the bed.  He glares at it harder. A few minutes later, MONIKA chimes that the file transfer from the phone to the laptop has been completed, and she needs only a few seconds until set-up is finished. B watches her program load on the laptop screen, slowly installing itself, before the window closes as it completes.

“You’re done?” he asks.

“Yes, sir,” both laptop and phone speakers say, in perfect unison.

B slides a finger over the mousepad on the laptop, hitting the search bar so he can get a map to mark. He’d forgotten to let MONIKA set it up earlier in his distraction of snooping around A’s room. He makes the areas where the victims had been found, and then the last place where they’d found A’s phone.

Kline Street.  

“MONIKA, connect me to Matt.”

His phone’s screen automatically changes to a calling screen. Jeevas picks up on the third ring.

“Yellow?”

B resists the urge to groan. “Has anyone trawled the river?” he asks.

Jeevas is silent for a moment. “That’s a good possibility even if I don’t like it. No, no one has trawled the river.”

B hums, absent-mindedly bringing his thumb to his mouth to bite it, and then pulls his hand away in disgust. “Am I able to notify the police?”

“Please avoid contacting the police.”

He lets out a harsh breath through his nose, irate. “Okay,” he says, “Okay. I can work around that.”

No mobilising the cops means he has to do the leg work all by himself. Maybe he can get people to do a few things for him, but he doubts Jeevas will let him attempt to reconnect with old contacts, and in the off-chance A was kidnapped, he’d just be bringing to the kidnapper’s attention that there’s someone looking for them, unless they’ve left the area entirely. Still, B doesn’t have a lot of options, and he’s got fake I.D.s with him anyway. If he can play his cards right, everything will fall right into place. He just has to make sure to control all the variables.

Control of the situation, that’s what he needs here. 

“Kline Street,” he says. He pauses for a second, running his half-formed plan over and over in his head. He doesn’t have much time to smooth it out, so it’ll have to do.

“MONIKA, get me the clearest possible photo of A you have, zoom it in, and save it to my phone,” he says, already standing up to dig into his bag. He chucks aside clothing until he finds the baggiest hoodie he has, and the most faded pair of jeans. 

MONIKA chimes out an affirmative as he pulls the hoodie over his head and changes into the jeans. He goes to the mirror, checking - he looks like someone who hasn’t had time to really care about their appearance, who’d grabbed the nearest thing in the closet and put it on, but that’s exactly what he’s going for here. His hair is a mess from putting on the hoodie, but he messes it up more; there’s still dark circles under his eyes from the fatigue of travel, but that’s perfect.

His phone lets out a small ding.

“Image downloaded, sir.”

He turns to pick it up, quickly navigating to his file folders to move the image to photos and changing the file name to a date, just in case someone pays attention to it. 

“What’re you thinking, B?” Matt asks.

“I’m thinking of doing my job,” he says. “Kline Street’s someplace to start, at least.”

Matt laughs, amused, but B’s already shutting off the laptop and pocketing his phone, so his voice sounds muffled. “Good luck, B,” he says, “Here’s hoping you find something of use.”

-

Kline Street is warm and stuffy when he gets there, that he can actually feel his skin itching even underneath his pressure garments. To be fair, he’d chosen the hoodie when he could have just gone for a big and overused t-shirt, maybe sell the pity act a bit more once people saw the pressure garments, but then again, he’s not really sure his vanity would allow that. Acting is one thing. Acting while people are pitying an actual circumstance he has is another. 

But he has things to do and not a lot of time to lose, so he goes to Kline Street and goes from door to door, asking if anyone, please, has seen his beloved friend whom he really, really cares for and is really, really worried about. It’s laughably easy how people fall for it once they see how he’s dressed, and at his unkempt, sleep-deprived state. Granted, the friendly demeanor and the soft voice probably helps because they could have easily mistaken him as a stalker. Unfortunately, no one has seen anything, and it’s hard to keep track of cars passing by the neighborhood when, well, it’s right by a street, and streets are made for cars to run on, after all. No one’s going to pay attention to suspicious cars as long as they’re not the fabled white vans that snatch children up and take them away. 

Maybe someone in a white van just ran off with A inside. He wouldn’t be surprised.

If only it’s that simple though.

Come noon, he’s exhausted and has to duck under a nearby diner to get out of the heat and down three glasses of iced tea, much to some of the patrons’ shock, but he since he’s clearly uncomfortable in the heat (who isn’t, though), they let him be. He regrets not bringing a hair tie, for a moment, sitting there in a booth fishing ice out of a glass to crush it between his teeth, because his hair’s sticking to his face and the back of his neck. He settles for taking out the drawstring of his hoodie and tying his hair up with it. He can suffer with a too-large hood for comfortability.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. He takes it out.

There’s a message, from Jeevas:

Found anything?

He types out a no and moves to put his phone back, but it buzzes again before he can even lower his arm. 

I checked Kline Street’s footage from a week before A’s phone was found, and up to the recent tapes, but I haven’t found anything - not that most of the footage is even clear enough to be of use. It’s been raining there recently. Low visibility. 

He shouldn’t be surprised, especially if Wammy’s is backing Jeevas’ hacking escapades, but:

You can get into CCTV footage?

The storage for it, Jeevas says, Working around a few things.

B leans back in his seat. Maybe he doesn’t have to trawl the river, not that he thinks A’s there. Unless their body was weighed down, their corpse should have floated up by now. 

Can you see if there’s cameras and footage of the river? he types.

Mohawk River?

Yes.

I can try, if there’s any, at least. We’re both ignorant Brits, Jeevas says. B just snorts. After a pause, during which B starts typing and then has to stop when another message comes up, he says: I still don’t think they were drowned.

B types out his answer, highlights it, and then backspaces, deciding it’s not worth it. Instead, he just sends: Just check the footage. I’m asking people around the area as soon as the sun stops trying to kill me.

Jeevas only responds with a ‘lmao rip ;-;’ and B doesn’t grace that with a reply. 

Mohawk River is huge, and B gets there near sunset, exhausted from walking and asking a few more questions but getting no helpful answers from the diner staff. A hadn’t been here in the past few weeks, or maybe ever, which means B hasn’t made any progress at all, aside from maybe rule out eyewitnesses. 

But the phone had been thrown into a street gutter. That had happened. Someone ought to have seen that.

Unless A’s body is in the sewers and their phone had just fallen out of their pockets? Someone still would have had to stuff an entire corpse into the sewer. Someone should have seen that. He’ll have to ask again, about weird behavior near gutters, not that that will probably get him anything. People threw things into the gutters all the time. 

He pinches the bridge of his nose. The river’s a pretty sight, at least. And it’s quiet here. Quiet and cold, or maybe that’s because of the setting sun, and B feels just how scorched his cheeks are when the cold wind hits his skin. He sighs, moving to sit down, leaning forward to puts his elbows on his knees as he takes the time to simply rest.

“Where are you, A?” he murmurs. The river doesn’t answer, nor does it spit them up. He supposes he should be thankful.

There’s a loud sound of a branch breaking behind him. He turns, quickly, and sees a young boy with a bike, camera hanging by a strap around his next, blink owlishly at him.

He sits back down, deciding it’s none of his business if a child decides to go biking around here just as it’s getting dark, with a camera with him.

“I’ve never seen you here before,” the boy suddenly says.

Conversation. Great.

He turns and stands, ignoring the kid, but hears the clunky sounds of the bicycle’s wheels turning, and he shoots the boy an unamused look when he comes to stand beside him. 

“I came here to get away from people,” he says, hoping the kid would get the hint. 

Instead he just laughs. B takes note of his name, floating above his head innocently. 

“You a runaway?” Raymond, the boy, asks. He looks down at B’s foot, where his ankle monitor is noticeably poking under the hem of his pants. “Oh, wow, you’ve still got a shackle.”

“That’s not a shackle,” B says. He turns and starts walking, ignoring the kid’s cry of, “Wait, hey! Hey!” but then Raymond circles around him on the bike and stops when he’s right in front of B, cutting him off.   B glares, walks around him, and then continues trudging up and away from the river faster than he had earlier.

Raymond sadly catches up easier with the bike. B wonders if MONIKA would electrocute him for pushing a child over.

“I’m just curious,” the boy says. B wishes he had the ability to shut the kid’s mouth without getting killed by an AI. “I’ve never seen you here before, you go around town asking people things, you’ve got that thing on your foot - it caught my attention.”

B pauses, just for a very short while. “You noticed that, huh?”

“During the morning. I saw you out my window. I have no idea how long you’ve been asking around, but you’re still near the neighborhood, so I can guess,” Raymond says.

Well, he can’t say he’s been discreet. Not like he was trying to. And he can spin this to his favor.

“I’m looking for someone,” he says, taking out his phone and opening up A’s picture. He shows it to Raymond, who leans over and looks at it carefully. A looks happy in their photo. It’s the one of them carrying a few books, wrapped up in a scarf and a coat. “Do you recognize them?”

“That’s Antoinette.”

B raises an eyebrow, very slowly. “So you do?”

“Yeah. They moved here a few years back. Pretty nice. Liked to bike with us. Quiet, though,” Raymond says, and waves a hand. “Moved away around a year and a half ago, though. I miss them.”

“I see,” B says. Quiet. Maybe quiet enough that the neighbors didn’t notice them, or too busy with work to actually bother meeting everyone. “How come no one in the neighborhood recognized them?”

Raymond shrugs. “Maybe they thought you were a stalker and decided not to tell you.”

B gives the boy a flat look. Raymond snickers.

“You have a vibe,” he says, and motions to B’s foot. “Plus that really obvious thing.”

“I’m aware,” he mutters, and then fakes a sigh, running his hand through his hair, the image of frustration as he keeps it there and clenches his hand a little, tangling locks around his fingers. “Look, they’re my best friend, okay? They didn’t come home a while ago, someone said they were headed here last, and this is the only place I know where to look for them.”

Raymond stares at him, sizing him up, and tries to cross his arms, but his bike starts to fall sideways so he holds on to it. “Maybe you are a stalker.”

“I’m not,” he says.

“You could just be lying,” the boy says. 

B doesn’t blink for a few seconds, enough that his eyes are heating up and watering, and then he blinks rapidly. Raymond’s expression falters.

“They’re the only person I have left,” B says, wishing the lie didn’t quite feel like it wasn’t one, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. “Please.”

Raymond looks at him, and he holds the boy’s stare, eyes glassy, jaw clenched, like he doesn’t want to cry in front of a child, and he doesn’t, really, because that’s pathetic and at most he just wants to go back to the house, but he has to sell the act of a bedraggled college student just looking for a missing best friend.

“I haven’t seen them around town in a year,” Raymond says. He looks away, but he’s silent, no tells giving away anything about him lying. B thinks he’s pretty much gotten the kid convinced. “Sorry about that.”

“Do you know of anyone suspicious passing town?” he asks. “Maybe they were kidnapped when they came here.”

“I don’t know either, I’m in school for most of the day,” he says.

B presses his lips to a thin line. Coming up with nothing on this end too, huh.

He considers, briefly, telling Raymond about the phone in the gutter, just in case he knows something about it. Besides, the kid looks to be about nine. He can’t tattle much, at least not enough to be taken seriously.

“A few cops who were working on this said the last place they found my friend’s phone was in a street gutter,” B says, and the looks to the side, hunching over and rubbing the back of his neck. “I admit I shouldn’t be doing this, I’m kind of doing this on my own, because I thought the cops couldn’t find them fast enough…”

“I get it,” Raymond says, “It’s okay. Do you know which street gutter?”

B holds his breath a little and hopes that’s enough to make his cheeks forcibly color, like he’s embarrassed. “No,” he says.

“Okay,” Raymond says, “How long ago did they disappear?”

“A few days ago. But it could be a week. We don’t live close, as of recently, and I was only told a few days ago.”

“A few days ago,” Raymond repeats. He quiets down for a moment to think, and then he nods to himself. “I don’t know if it could be the same thing, but it was raining heavily here a few days ago. I was outside, running home, and I saw someone toss something out of a car window. They almost hit me with it, actually.” He shrugs. “Could’a been a phone.”

“You think it was raining strong enough for currents to take a phone down into the sewer?”

“The floodwater took one of my shoes away,” he says, “If the phone’s lighter than the shoe, why not? They could have nearly thrown it into the sewer anyway and the water just pushed it through.”

“Fair enough,” he says. “Which direction did they go?”

Raymond jerks his thumb towards the neighborhood. “Towards the highway. Other than that, I can’t tell.”

“The only way they could have gotten to Kline and to the highway if they didn’t take the highway in the first place and then circle back is - “ B makes a motion towards the nearby road.

“Front Street, yeah.”

“I see,” he says, and then remembers to plaster on a grateful, relieved smile that makes him feel like his blood is turning to molasses. “Thank you very much - uh?”

“Raymond.”

“Raymond,” he says like he doesn’t see the boy’s whole name floating in front of him. Best not to scare the kid and have himself be under scrutiny for suspicion. “Thank you, this helps a lot.” He inclines his head downwards, a gesture of gratitude, and then starts to walk back up towards the neighborhood.

“Hey!” 

He turns. Raymond is facing him, looking small but determined. It reminds him of someone.

“Yes?” he asks.

“I hope you find your friend.”

He’s heard the well-wishing remark so many times today that he’s practically tuned it out completely, but he’s exhausted from a day’s worth of walking around and acting like he’s someone worried sick, and it’s a little boy - one who looks haunted, like he’s seen things he shouldn’t have seen too. 

B smiles, even if it’s more smug and borderline threatening than kind. “Thanks.”

-

Front Street unfortunately forks into too many roads - it curves to E Main and Pearl, and there’s also the possibility of the kidnappers doubling back (he’s fully ruling out runaway if someone tossed a phone out of a vehicle, almost hitting a kid, because again, A wouldn’t be stupid enough to forget about their phone and just toss it out when they remember, not unless they were planning to confuse whoever tried to find them, which is too much work and is something they would do, but not in the middle of a case that’s nearly solved; he’d asked Jeevas earlier if the cult case was solved - it wasn’t) but at least he has something. He can work with this. 

“Where was A staying when they were in L.A., Matt?” he asks. He’s in his most comfortable sweater and pants, with the A/C turned up, because it’s been a sweltering day outside for him. He’s too sensitive, which is irritating. 

“Pasadena.”

B stills. He scoffs then and bites into the piece of meat he’s speared with his plastic ork. “Pasadena.”

“Don’t blame me, I wasn’t the one in charge of their accommodations, they chose it themself.”

B harrumphs and finishes the rest of his meal in silence before chucking the styrofoam container into the wastebasket. 

“MONIKA, map,” he says. MONIKA pulls it up as he sits back down. He blinks as he sees the line - well, a jagged one - she’s drawn from Pasadena to Kline Street. “From Pasadena in Los Angeles…” He traces the blue line with his finger, although he doesn’t quite touch the laptop. “All the way to Kline Street in New York.”

“That’s far,” Jeevas says. “America’s huge, wow.”

“MONIKA how long would travel by car take?”

“Fourty hours, sir,” MONIKA says.

“Easily doable in two days without rest,” B notes, “But not if they have to stop for gas. And they’d have to, constantly, so we can place this at maybe three or four days.”

“Enough time since A’s disappeared,” Jeevas says. “Counting naps too.”

“But the further they’ve been on the road and the more times they’ve had to stop for gas, the more times A’s had to attempt an escape, if we’re going by the kidnapping theory,” B says. “They could have had their phone.”

Jeevas picks up on his train of thought easily. “Could have tried to call.”

“And was unfortunately found out - phone was confiscated, hurriedly chucked out of the window without regard for consequences.”

There’s a noise on Matt’s end. The boy’s probably wiggling in his seat or something. “We have something.”

“Not quite yet,” B says, “It’s full of holes, but it’s something. And at least we know which direction they’re moving in.”

“Where do you think they’re going?”

“Lots of places they can easily go, but the nearest ones would be - Massachusetts, maybe New Hampshire.” He pauses. “Wait, MONIKA get me a list of those victims and where they were found again?”

MONIKA clears the screen to show him the list. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s probably nothing, but - 

Massachusetts.

The first victim was in Springfield, Massachusetts.

A would be the twelfth, from Los Angeles, but then, why not kill them in the city? Unless it didn’t matter where they were killed as long as they were from the targeted area. Maybe’s A’s too high profile to risk. Maybe A’s not part of the intended victims at all, just someone who needs to be eliminated, as quickly and as far away as possible.

B grins. 

“Matt?”

“Yeah?”

“I need to go to Massachusetts.”