Duo slumped back against the wall, eyeing the streets around him in discouragement. He and Lowell had been on the streets for over a week now, and neither had found out anything useful except that it was pretty damned obvious that the local people were freaked out about something. No one was talking. No one would get close to anyone else at all... like they knew that there was a killer hiding somewhere among them. He'd barely gotten enough money panhandling to buy a cup of coffee, and it was more than a suspicion that none of that came from a local resident.
Peeling himself off the wall with a sigh, he headed back for bridge that had become his second home. He was a little surprised when he got there to find that one of the displaced derelicts was back. On a sudden impulse he moved closer slowly, trying to look unthreatening.
"Hey man..." He nodded at the older man, relieved that it was one of the ones who didn't speak only Russian. "Cold tonight."
The old man threw him a wary look, but didn't immediately back away.
"You have anything to drink?" He asked hopefully. "People were damn stingy tonight..."
"No..." the old man shrugged, tugging his ragged overcoat closer. "Lot of slow nights lately."
"Yeah," Duo sighed, kicking at one of the bridge supports. "Man... shoulda stayed back on L2... pickings were still slim...but better'n this."
"How'd you come here?" The old wino threw him another suspicious look.
"Stowed away on a freighter..." Duo shrugged and huddled down against the pillar out of the wind. "Didn't have a choice of destinations though. The one headin' here was the only one I could sneak on..." He sighed. "I thought everyone on earth would be rich, y'know? Guess I am just a stupid kid after all... just like everyone always told me."
"Just unlucky..." The old man sighed. "This... place has gotten unlucky lately. For all of us...."
"Oh?" Duo tried to stifle the hope that he might be about to finally get information. "I was wonderin' what was up... why everyone here was so tight..."
"Things... are bad here now." The old man looked uncomfortable again. "You been asking questions. That's bad..."
"Huh?" Duo blinked. "Just askin' for money, man...."
"No." The man frowned suddenly. "You shouldn't ask questions. They don't like that... you don' wanna see too much here. Don't listen... hear?"
"Why?"
"Don't hear nothing, kid. Just remember that." The old man started to shuffle away.
"Hey..." Duo started after the old man. "Wait...who doesn't like me asking questions..."
"Nobody..." The old man cowered away. "No one... you shouldn't ask questions though... hearing things breaks the rules... can't break the three rules now..."
"Whose rules?"
"No... no!" The man scurried back.
"Hey... mister...wait." Duo edged carefully after him. "I got a little food... you want some? You help me out... tellin' me about the rules... I'll share a little...."
"No!" The old man looked truly terrified then. "I didn't help you... I didn't. I'm not a Samaritan... I'm not. Don't send the monkeys after me."
Huh? Duo stared at the man as he scuttled into the shadows. "Okay... that was weird...."
"What was weird?" Lowell asked behind him. Duo jumped guiltily and whirled around.
"Damn man... don't sneak up on me like that." He leaned back against one of the cement bridge supports and ran a grimy hand through his long bangs. "I thought I was finally getting some information out of one of the derelicts... but then he started raving."
Lowell sighed, leaning against the wall where he was still mostly in the shadows. "I'm beginning to think we're just chasing our tails here."
"Yeah," Duo sighed. "Eight bodies have turned up... but no one saw a thing, no one heard a thing and even if they know anything... no one is saying a goddamn thing."
"So what was your friend raving about?"
"He said he'd seen me asking questions. Somebody apparently has rules against that kind of thing. I told him that if he helped me out by explaining the rules, I'd give him food. Apparently that was the wrong thing to say... he freaked and accused me of setting monkeys on him."
"What did you just say?" Lowell froze, and turned to stare at Duo in shock.
"He was raving, Lowell..." Duo blinked at his partner uncertainly. "What? Does that mean something...?"
"I don't know... there's something.... What were you saying about the people here earlier?"
"No one's seen anything, no one's heard anything...."
"And no one is saying anything," Lowell groaned. "It's the three monkeys. But hell if I know what it means."
"Uh... you've lost me here. What three monkeys?"
"See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil." Lowell straightened. "It's a very old but very popular type of statue. Three monkeys sitting on a log or something, each one with their hands over either eyes, ears or mouth."
"Huh... weird. Though it sounds kinda familiar, now that you mention it..."
"No doubt. I saw the image in some of the graffiti earlier, but didn't think anything about it..."
"Those were supposed to be monkeys?" Duo shook his head.
"I think so. The artist on the North side is much better."
"So you think we're dealing with someone with a fetish for either monkeys or old statues?" Duo asked, only half joking in an attempt to lighten the suddenly grim mood.
"Maybe..." Lowell frowned. "It does seem rather... unlikely though."
"Ugh..."
"What?"
"I just thought of something unpleasant. According to the autopsy reports, the bodies had random mutilations..."
"Yeah... they couldn't find a consistent pattern." Lowell glanced over at him. "What are you thinking?"
"I think we need to get back to HQ and go back over the reports."
Dorothy stepped into Purgatory, staring at the scene before her in amusement. Lowell was poring over a stack of autopsy reports, while Duo was standing on the couch and peering at a scribbled list as he stuck pins into the wall map.
"You guys are back kind of late." She closed the door and tossed the pizza box on the conference table. "What's up?"
"Hey Doro... good. I need you to work your magic and do a database search on any murders where the victims were mutilated," Duo muttered over his shoulder, obviously deep in though.
"Any particular mutilations?" She asked, slipping into her usual seat and pulling Epyon's new case out of his carry bag.
"Eyes, ears and... mouth?" Duo glanced over at Lowell, who merely nodded.
"Area?" She asked quietly. "And the pizza is for you guys."
"How'd you know...?" Lowell looked up from his report for the first time.
"Zechs ordered it." She shrugged. "I guess he figured if you guys weren't taking the time to shower first, you weren't taking the time to eat either."
Duo blinked, then glanced down at his grimy street clothes. "Oops. Forgot about that. Sorry Doro...."
She just shrugged, not wanting to say too much in front of Lowell. "Not a problem. Area?"
"All of Sanck... and go back about a year?" Lowell mused softly.
"Doro... you ever see a statue of three monkeys?" Duo asked as he finished marking the last location where a body had been found.
"The See-no-Evil ones?" She asked absently, typing random comments to Epyon so that Lowell wouldn't notice her odd method of communing with her computer.
"Yeah," Duo sighed, moving over to the table and snagging the pizza box. "Ooh. Pepperoni. Thank you guys."
"My grandmother had one... it was terribly ugly." She shook her head, then stopped. "Eyes, ears and mouth...? Oh, now that's just twisted."
"It's still just a theory..." Lowell shrugged a little defensively, and took the box of pizza as Duo held it out. "But it fits with some rumors Duo got out of one of the homeless...."
"Not to mention that the random mutilation of the victims is looking a hell of a lot less random by the second," Duo muttered around a bite of pepperoni pizza.
"I'm not doubting your theory." She shook her head. "What have you got so far, so I can cross reference them?"
Duo looked down at his list with a grimace. "Two of the victims were blinded, one apparently with something sharp and the other with some kind of acid. Another simply had duct tape wrapped around his head... with his eyes open. Two of them had their eardrums pierced... and a third had his ears cut off. The last two... one of them had his tongue cut out, and the last one had his mouth sewn shut."
"Yuck," Dorothy sighed. "So we're guessing the next one will also have his voice removed somehow. Lovely." She frowned down at Epyon as he started searching the entire Preventers' database... and the Sanck National Police database.
"That's the pattern so far..." Lowell nodded grimly. "Dammit... I still can't see any connection between the victims though. Nothing that they had in common, except being in Little Russia."
"Maybe that is the entire connection?" Dorothy mused.
"But why the three monkeys?" Lowell pressed. "I've never heard of that being a Russian legend."
"Mmm." She frowned at Epyon. Any ideas?
Not Russian. Epyon answered after a long moment. Possible origins... Downloaded articles flashed onto the screen almost too quickly for her to read.
"It's not Russian" she informed the guys as she finished skimming the articles. "Most common origin is thought to be Japanese... followed by Chinese and Portuguese. It's also linked to a few churches in Europe..."
"Damn. That narrows it down..." Duo muttered, picking up another slice of pizza absently. "But I still can't think of a connection between any of those and Little Russia..."
"Well... Japan is fairly close to the eastern border of Russia...."
"Yeah... but Sanck isn't close to either."
Dorothy frowned thoughtfully, then glanced at Epyon as he beeped. A list of open cases scrolled slowly across the screen. "Hey... I think we have something here."
"Yeah?" Duo grabbed up a legal pad from the table.
"Four murders in the last year, all unsolved... two in Neo-Amsterdam, one in Upper Chinatown... and one in Little Tokyo. Bodies were found in alleys, no blood, all mutilated either by blinding or by having the tongue cut out."
"Nothing to remove hearing?" Duo blinked at her. "That's odd..."
"I didn't say that. Three bodies were simply found in the harbor. Again, no blood. One with the eyes removed, one with the ears removed... and one with the ears filled with cement."
"That's been in the last year? How come no one linked the cases together?"
"No one ever searched by mutilation before?" She asked. "I'm guessing that since none of the mutilations were the cause of death... they were just seen as random torture."
"You know... that is not the most reassuring conversation to walk in on," Zechs muttered as he closed the door.
"Hey Zechs," Duo grinned up at him. "Thanks for the pizza."
"You're welcome." The blond moved over behind Dorothy to peer at Epyon's screen. "What brought on this rather odd line of research?"
"The guys found a link between the murders in the harbor area and the three monkeys." She glanced up at him with a sigh. "It's looking like a lot more than just eight bodies now."
"Three monkeys?" Zechs shook his head. "You've lost me."
"Glad I'm not the only one..." Duo muttered.
"See-no-evil, hear-no-evil and speak-no-evil," Lowell answered, looking almost embarrassed. "It's thin... but all the bodies have been mutilated in one way or another to match the statue of the three monkeys. And one of Duo's sources muttered something about Duo setting the monkeys on him for breaking the rules...."
Zechs raised one eyebrow. "How many bodies are we talking now?"
"In the last year... possibly fifteen." She glanced back. "I'm going back at least another year now."
"Can you print out the autopsy reports on the other bodies?" Lowell asked wearily. "Maybe we'll find something that will tie the victims together."
"Already done." She pointed at the printer on the file cabinet behind him. "Though now that the locations are spread all over...."
"But still around the harbor area," Duo muttered. "That has to mean something."
"Maybe." She turned back to Epyon. "Come on... talk to me...."
"We're going in circles here," Zechs finally muttered, leaning back and stretching. "The victims have absolutely nothing in common except that they're all male." He scowled down at the scribbled lists in front of him. "Ages range from 18 to 65, backgrounds range from homeless to dock-worker to midlevel business man.... Nationality is now ranging from middle-eastern, Chinese, Russian, Norwegian and Dutch to Sanckian."
"And while the majority of them have been found in Little Russia lately, none of the earlier murders show any pattern to location except the harbor area." Duo shook his head. "There has to be some pattern here we're missing."
"Is there any area that borders the harbor that hasn't been hit?"
"Not if you go by where some of the victims lived. At least two were found fairly far from where they normally live and work. And at least one body has been found in each territory around the harbor." Duo glanced up at the map thoughtfully. "I wonder why Little Russia has been hit so hard though."
"Maybe the killer just likes the area. It's apparently damn easy to hide what's happening there."
"Yeah." Dorothy frowned. "How annoying convenient for our killer."
"There has to be something that all the victims have in common," Duo muttered. "We just have to find the pattern."
"Well... we're not going to find it tonight." Zechs glanced over at Lowell, who was mostly asleep at the table. "We need to get some sleep, start fresh in the morning. Doro and I will requisition the full files on the new victims from the Sanck Police, and start doing the legwork talking to the victims' families. Maybe then we'll find out the common link."
"What about us?" Lowell asked, raising his head as he pushed back from the conference table.
"You and Duo see if you can find out anything more about these monkeys..." Zechs sighed. "Maybe it's just been a case of not knowing what questions to ask."
"Alright," Lowell nodded. "Maxwell... you need a ride back?"
"Nah... I'll just crash here... and head back tomorrow. I want to do a little more digging in the files. I'll meet you in the usual place tomorrow night when you get off shift."
"Right."
There was silence for a few minutes after Lowell left, as the members of Purgatory began to relax. Zechs couldn't help smiling as Solo flopped down in the middle of the conference table with a disgusted snort. Treize just shook his head and perched on the file cabinet.
"Alone at last." Duo stretched his arms back over his head, and for a moment Zechs forgot himself as he watched the younger man lean back in his chair. "So... any comments from the peanut gallery?"
"No," Zechs muttered a little too quickly. Duo and Dorothy both threw him an odd look, but didn't press the question. Ignoring the amused looks the two ghosts were throwing at him, Zechs stood up. "I'm heading to bed."
"Be there is a bit, guys... I really want to grab a shower first."
"Don't take too long..." Dorothy sighed. "We never seem to manage more than a few hours sleep before Epyon starts having nightmares."
"Yeah... well," Duo grinned. "I'm too tired for anything but a quick shower tonight. And the Preventers locker room isn't really conducive for long, hedonistic, steamy showers anyway."
Zechs could swear that Dorothy blushed at that, even as he fought down the mental image their youngest partner's offhand remark had generated.
"That's good to know..." Dorothy managed after a minute. "I'll just... ah... get ready for bed myself."
Zechs watched both of them leave, only to turn back as Treize chuckled. 'What now?'
'I just thought you might like to know that apparently your bathroom is conducive to long, hedonistic, steamy showers.'
'Have I mentioned lately that death has apparently not helped your sense of humor any?'
'Frequently.' Treize shrugged nonchalantly. 'But you love me anyway, right?'
Zechs rolled his eyes and finished gathering up the remains of the pizza.
TBC