Watari Pt 1: L\'s Heirs

Outside the rain lashed the ground, bouncing several inches back up again, such was its force of landing. Practically vertical, until it hit the rooftops of the outhouses, then it raged horizontally across. Though early evening, the sky was bruised in angry purples and blacks. Periodically, it would all flash and rumble with the storm directly overhead. The air needed it, unbearably muggy for most of the day, crying out for a relief in the pressure. "Pathetic fallacy." Mello mumbled, miserably.



"Huh?" Matt glanced across, his hair seeming almost black in the gloom.



"When the weather suits the mood of those looking at it. Pathetic fallacy, or anthromorphic fallacy."



"I know what one is." Matt sighed. "Just not why you\'re choosing now to ramble on about it."



They fell silent again, but Mello wasn\'t in the mood for quiet reflection. "\'Then, in my childhood, in the dawn of a most stormy life, was drawn from all the depths of good and ill, the mystery that binds me still...\'" He sucked on a square of chocolate and heard Matt reach for his cigarettes. "\'The thunder and the storm and the cloud that took the form, when the rest of the Heaven was blue, of a demon in my view.\'"



Ten minutes before the storm had broken, they had received the news that Mairoo, the fifteenth in their generation\'s Wammy\'s House rankings, had been found dead. Until the files were sent over, there was nothing that they could do but wait and silently speculate. The news was shocking in a four-fold capacity. Firstly it confirmed that someone was out to kill them all; secondly, it eradicated the theory, offered by Mello, that it might be seething resentment from the last of them spilled over into extreme violence; thirdly, it stepped outside the pattern of killing in order of rankings, bypassing Deontic to return to the bottom of the ladder; and lastly, Mairoo was dead. Mello had spoken his \'De Profundis\' loud enough for Matt to hear, thus leaving them both remembering the teenager, as last they had seen him.



"Mello," Matt whispered, "I say this with the greatest respect. If you don\'t stop randomly quoting poetry, I am going to brain you."



"Fuck you."



"That\'s better." Matt turned to survey the monitors. The tension in the air, from news, Mello and storm alike, was pressing down on his sensibilities like he was about to implode. "It\'s not that it\'s bad in itself; it\'s the fact that you\'re feeling sorry for yourself that\'s doing my head in."



"\'I could not bring my passions from the common spring, and all I loved, I loved alone.\'" Mello growled and Matt stood. He walked into his own study and closed the door. Mello bent his knee and kicked the table in front of him. It moved a couple of inches, so he had to lean over to pull it back before replacing his feet upon it. He sighed, glowering at the furious weather outside, but being alone was worse. He called out. "Matty! I\'m sorry. I\'ve shut up now."



A ping sounded from the monitors and Mello leapt out of his seat, dashing across to access the information. He was gratified to hear Matt\'s door opening again and to see the redhead reappear. Matt switched on the light and the mood instantly became less oppressive. It was no less grim though, especially as the details emerged. Mairoo had been shot at point-blank range, but hadn\'t been found for several days. The description of what had been found turned Matt\'s stomach, while Mello just stared in stony-faced tightening of his own features. "Shit."



"Yeah."



Matt chainsmoked, Mello ate chocolate. Somewhere along the way, they also held hands, though neither admitted that they were nervous. "Who\'s doing it, Mell?"



"It\'s got to be someone from Wammy\'s. It\'s the only thing that links everyone and only someone from there would know about us." Mello stated the obvious, as they had already covered this ground. "Much as I\'d love to pin it on Near, there\'s no motive and I find it hard to believe he would do it."



"I don\'t know." Matt bit his lip. "He went to Camden to try to be like us. How about him going wild with his new gun and trying out our violent sides too?"



"Possible, but I\'m still finding it hard to imagine." Mello sucked loudly on his chocolate. "I also find it hard to imagine us not getting another \'phonecall when he absconds from HQ every time a murder takes place. He\'s probably the most watched of us all. It\'s not Near. It\'s not me or you, because we\'re each other\'s alibis, though I admit it would look suspicious to anyone else. Deontic has disappeared from the face of the earth, after running out on us before Near\'s people got there. She is still a strong contender. Her motivation would be to clip the two people below her, if she was making a bid for L."



"No." Matt was as irritated by this line of thinking now as he had been before. "You\'re assuming it\'s all about rankings again. That\'s your obsession, Mell, not everyone\'s."



"No, not yours. Everyone else was definitely fighting over them. You\'re the one blinding yourself with personal bias."



"But if it\'s rankings, why now? Why not before?"



"Kira case is over. The battlefield got changed. Before now it was all about catching Kira, because the winner there got to be L." Mello released Matt\'s hand and brought up his list of alumni, alongside their rankings. "Hollow is still my prime suspect, until she can clear her name. She\'s gone underneath the radar and, judging by something said that night we all met up at Linda\'s, I know she\'s in touch with Nathalie." He paused, then corrected himself. "Was in touch with Nathalie. She could have gained access to your ashtray. She\'s gone from seventh to fifth in one foul swoop. I\'m surprised that you don\'t find that suspicious."



"Luigi was in therapy."



"Yes, and he\'s gone from eighth to sixth. But he was in therapy because I made him a nervous wreck. He was shaky at Nathalie\'s."



"You were waving a gun around. They were all shaky."



Mello glared, glancing sidewards, then faced his list again. "Just because he\'s seeing a counsellor doesn\'t mean he\'s a murderer. What\'s more damning is his access to that ashtray. Fenian... again gone up two places, but no evidence that he could have been in Nathalie\'s. Linda, she could have, but it\'s strange that she would kill her own boyfriend. Mind you..." He tried to smirk, but his heart wasn\'t in it. "The fact that Jonny was the first victim either makes her the strongest or weakest suspect. We need to know more about how strong their relationship was. It doesn\'t feel like a crime of passion though, considering the follow through was other Wammy\'s. Salvo, nothing concrete, again up two places, no evidence he knew where Nathalie was. Century, same again. Chrissie, same again. Lamond, now a really strong suspect. She\'s the lowest ranking person still alive, plus she had access to the ashtray." He highlighted and made bold several names. "These are the people whom we know that Jonny and Nathalie would have opened their doors for. There was no evidence of a break-in at either place. Nor at Mairoo, but we don\'t know who he was close to."



"That\'s a bit sad really." Matt mused. "We grew up with the lad and don\'t know who might have been his friend."



"That\'s because he was a complete loner." Mello licked chocolate from the back of the bar. "Matt, if the door knocked now and you opened it to find, I don\'t know, Century outside. What would you do?"



"I don\'t know. It\'s a toss up between watch from the monitors or follow you down when you went to deal with it."



"Imagine I\'m not in." Mello waited as Matt shrugged, but didn\'t supply an answer. "Ok, I\'ll tell you what you\'ll do. You\'ll not answer the door to anyone, especially no-one from Wammy\'s House right now. I\'m 98% certain that that\'s precisely what Jonny, Nathalie and Mairoo did. We\'re only sitting pretty for as long as it takes for one of them to track us down and, let me tell you, I am so glad we moved from the flat. No-one on this list is stupid, Matty, not even Mairoo, not even Lamond. I believe that this is all about moving up the rankings, which means that, however you look at it, the person doing this is coming for us."



"Your theory makes even less sense when you see that Mairoo is dead."



"Yes." Mello paused, staring pensively at the screen. "Ok, I\'ll admit that is odd. Unless Mairoo is just a smokescreen."



"Or Mairoo found out who it was."



"That\'s a good point." Mello paused before opening the image file. Matt straightened slightly and braced himself before nodding. The pictures were graphic. Matt gagged, Mello crossed himself. He rapidly clicked through them, so that they knew what to expect. It only vaguely blunted the edge on their shock, but they had to be seen. "Origami!" Mello pointed past the devastation to the little paper figurine. "Deontic is being set up this time."



"I thought she was a top suspect."



"She was, but she\'s just gone down a notch, unless it\'s a double bluff." Mello rubbed his face. "You wouldn\'t think anyone would need to attempt a divide and conquer with us lot. We do that well enough on our own." He sat down on his computer chair. "Matt, leave the room if you want. I\'m going to bring up all the images and the text file at the same time. I want to compare everything."



"I\'m good."



"It\'s definitely Wammy\'s. This person knows our quirks."



"I know."



Mello filled the screens with the grotesque evidence and they both sat in silence for the longest time. "Matt, are you scared?"



"No, bring it on." Matt replied, sounding almost like he meant it. "Me and you are probably the only people out of the lot of us mentally equipped to deal with this shit. It\'s going to fall to us to sort it out."



"Don\'t underestimate them, Matt. You hate it when people underestimate you."



"I don\'t. You do on my behalf. I find it funny." He smirked. "Especially when you\'re the one doing it."



"I never underestimate you." Mello replied quietly.



"Much."



"I could ask you to do anything and you\'d fathom out how to do it, but you lack general common sense. That\'s where you\'re mistaking my underestimating you." Mello flared. "I only trust you to think through consequences if I\'ve asked you to think them through. Then you\'re amazing. Left to your own devices though and you\'re hard pushed to consider the short-term results, let alone the long-term."



"How have we gone from investigating Mairoo\'s murder to verbally abusing me?"



"Nervous energy."



"Right." Matt lit another cigarette. "Like you plan ahead. If you haven\'t found what you\'re looking for in the first five minutes, you just do something to stir it all up in the hope it\'ll pop out. Like, if I said the grass is getting too long and you couldn\'t find the mower, you\'d just set fire to the lawn. Get the result, have a scorched earth behind you."



"I\'m not even listening to you anymore." Mello pointed to a photograph. "The murderer is right-handed. Entrance wound is favouring the left. Who was right-handed?"



"Near, Deontic.. actually it\'s easier to say that you and I could be, but Chrissie is left-handed. Everyone else is right-handed." One of their first conversations had surrounded the fact that both he and Mello were ambidexterous. "Presumably that moves her to the bottom of the suspect list."



Mello made a note. He paused and bit into his chocolate. "To make up for verbally abusing you, can I tell you a secret?" He peered underneath his fringe. "I\'m left-handed as well. I remember having a slap on my hand when I was little and the crayon being put into my right hand. Then I came to Wammy\'s and you turned up. You were using both hands really easily and I wanted to be like you. I mean, I\'m ambidexterous now, but I really had to force my right hand to co-operate."



Matt laughed, then saw the annoyance on Mello\'s face. "Sorry." He reached across and squeezed Mello\'s thigh. "That is just so Mello, it\'s unreal. But yeah, we all did things like that."



"What did you do?"



"Just saying in general." He stared back at the screens. "Is there a plan?"



Mello was watching him with narrowed eyes, but he looked away. "Yes. We stay alive and when the fucker who did this turns up, we take her out."