Eiichi P.I., Vol. 1

by James K. Penn

  Chapter 4

  Its Own Voice

  “Whoa! Okay, big guy...”

  Eiichi slumped forward, nearly falling on his face. Suddenly, nothing wanted to stay vertical. It took the quick efforts of Noda to grab him by the arm and lug him over to the wall where he could sit. And sit he did, leaning his back against the wall and sliding all the way down until he was planted on the floor.

  Noda adjusted her camera strap. “He faces off against a bunch of blood-thirsty delinquents, and goes down because of one girl.”

  Eiichi groaned with his hand in his hair. “I have my reasons...”

  “Uh-huh, you don’t look so hot, are you feeling okay?”

  “Why, do I look that bad?” he grumbled, trying not to sound as dazed as he really was.

  “You look like you’ve been working the graveyard shift...the real one. Did you catch a cold and not tell me?”

  “Like I’m supposed to tell you every little change that happens to my body?”

  “A heads-up would be nice. You were fine until that girl bumped into you.”

  He had seen a good deal. Just from those few moments of laying eyes on her, he knew she was in a state of constant, predominant fear. There was the forlornness of being just another statistic within the police database, with hundreds of questions unanswered. She felt loss, that her old life had been stolen from her. She felt paranoia, the things that had once been peaceful had now become a threat to her.

  Her mind had fed him images of disturbing letters, the smells of flowers, and frequent, alarming phone calls. The most prominent of them all had been what was awaiting him and Noda around the corner right now. These messages only came in fragments, and there were important things he had not been able to get a good grasp of. Her name was Reiko. That he was sure of, it had been written enough times on the letters, and he could feel the terrifying disgust at the sight of her own name being used in such a possessive way.

  What she did not know, or maybe it just wasn’t as clear to her as it should be, was that her life was in imminent danger.

  Eiichi raised his head. “Where did she go?”

  “She ran off that way, and she was really scared of you.”

  “Figures...”

  “Well don’t get all depressed about it, Mister ‘I don’t care what people think’.”

  Eiichi ignored this. “Her tote bag must be around that corner. She didn’t have it with her.”

  Thankfully, Noda didn’t pick up on just how bizarrely intuitive this sounded. He said this knowing what Noda was going to see next. He figured he’d wait here and let her take a look until he could stand again.

  “Yep, here it is,” she called from around the corner. “Uh...Eiichi...”

  Might as well play along, “Yeah?”

  “When you’re done feeling queasy, you better come take a look at this...”

  He didn’t want to keep her waiting, and shoved himself up. His head didn’t hurt now, but that girl Reiko’s output had hit him harder than he thought, and he had to lean against the wall.

  Around the corner, Noda had been standing among a few other students, all near the open shoe locker. She had the tote bag in her hand.

  The rest of them were staring at him, since Noda had called a name that seemed to ring negatively in everyone’s ears.

  Eiichi placed his hand on the shoe lockers and guided himself over. The spite and disdain washed over him then.

  “Alright, alright, go home, get outta’ the way, dammit...”

  He didn’t even have to push through. The small crowd dispersed at his words, seeing that he was not in a good mood and was just as interested in what they had been looking at.

  He sauntered over, next to Noda. The lockers behind her banged when the weight of his shoulder hit them, and he gazed at the girl’s open locker, the dead lark lying inside.

  “Well that’s fucked up…”

  “You’re telling me...” Noda wrung the handle of the bag. “This explains a lot.”

  “Bad way to start her second year.”

  “Do you think it’s a prank?”

  “If it is, it’s a really disturbing one...”

  “People can be pretty cruel.”

  His instability was beginning to wear off, and he felt able to approach the locker and kneel. He peered at the bird.

  “...No, whoever did this is severely demented. Look at the feathers around the throat.”

  He scooted so Noda could lean in as well. After she got a closer look, he felt a pang of horror in her output.

  “They broke its neck! Poor little thing...”

  “My guess is, this was a gift.”

  The thought seemed outrageous to her, and she stood. “A gift?”

  Eiichi stood as well, placing his hand on the lockers momentarily.

  “Are you familiar with the behavior of stalkers?”

  “Well, I know they follow people around and stuff. I would think this was someone trying to send her a message...a bad one...”

  “They are. Stalkers make a concentrated effort to be known to the person their affections are aimed at. They may seem like they’re selfless, and their thoughts are only of their target, but really, they’re completely selfish, almost primal. They stalk, like a predator…”

  “Then, why would they be bringing her a gift?”

  “Do you know how animals bring gifts to their owners?”

  Noda lowered her head, eyes still on him, “We don’t really have animals at my house.”

  “Dogs and cats will both bring dead rodents and small animals as gifts to show affection. With dogs it varies...” he could remember Connor bringing him beat up shoes and lost tennis balls during their walks. “Typically, it’s cats that bring a dead bird to their owner’s doorstep, or their feet.”

  He felt the hair on her neck stand up.

  Her eyes fixed on him and widened. “A dead bird in her shoe locker...”

  “While animals are wholesomely affectionate, people are much more complicated. A stalker wants to be wholesome, but they don’t know how. Actually, he already believes that his thoughts are genuine. He gives her gifts, but they are things only he thinks she will like. As if he knows what is best for her. He believes that his love is so profound, the gift will inspire meaning. He claims to desire her love, but really he wants control. He expresses affections, but is invasive. His affections are really hiding something that is much more sinister and vicious. I would guess this has been happening for a while, but judging by how scared she was, this could also mean things are escalating. It seems our predator is conflicted. He is obsessed with his prey, but can’t decide if he hates her or loves her. Really, he wants to claim her, like she’s a possession.”

  Noda looked back at the shoe locker.

  “Well, get to it, photo girl.” Eiichi cracked a smile.

  She whipped her gaze onto him. “What?”

  “We might need photos of this. If it’s left here, someone could move it. Maybe the police could make use of what we bring them.”

  “You want me to take pictures of a dead bird?” Noda said, astonished.

  “A dead bird inside a girl’s shoe locker. Take pictures of the locker number as well.”

  “We won’t have time! What if someone sees?”

  “You’re right...”

  Eiichi took the tote bag from Noda and walked toward the lobby, standing at the opening of the aisle.

  “I don’t see anyone outside the front, on your side. I’ll stand here and if anyone comes by, I’ll say something that’ll make them leave.”

  Noda’s fists clenched next to her skirt. “Drrrgh, you’re making me look like the freak!”

  “C’mon, chop-chop. If you get it done fast, we can leave.”

  Noda’s whole frame shook for a moment before she raised her camera vigorously and began aiming it at the shoe locker.

  He was too far away now to pick up a read on her, but he could hear her viciously muttering under her breath at him while her camer
a clicked away rapidly.

  “Mrrgh...tell me to take pictures...I’ll take some pictures...I’ll take a lotta’ pictures...just you wait...I’ll give you pictures...jerk...”

  He smirked distantly at the semi-populated lobby.

  When Noda finished, she began approaching and Eiichi turned.

  “I suggest we find her so we can at least give this back,” he said, raising the tote bag.

  “Fine. Sounds like the polite thing to do.” Noda brushed past him, eyes shut.

  “Oh boy...”

  Eiichi could tell that due to Noda’s heated mood, she had no idea where they were headed, or where the girl had run off to, and was blindly following his suggestion.

  She had made her point clear in the past that she knew the school very well. Even the smallest crevasses and halls were supposedly known to her, which was no mean feat, considering its size. While Eiichi could not boast to know the school as well, he could, however, claim to know people and their behaviors. Not that it was something he simply declared outright. He would have to provide his evidence for knowing, which of course, he couldn’t. He wondered sometimes if he should create a more contrived story to cover this up.

  When Noda and he were being chased by Okanaya and his gang, Eiichi had been able to use his abilities as a radar, to check their area and make sure the coast was clear. His ability acted very much in this way, as well. Typically, people’s outputs came up like random blips in an available three-sixty radius, not in the literal sense, but he found the image satisfactory. Most of them were random, and still appeared in whatever mood their output was exhibiting at the time. Each output displayed a thought pattern that was unique to a particular individual, very much like a face or speech pattern. Again, most of them seemed random to him because he was unfamiliar with them.

  Over the past week, he had become much more familiar with Noda’s output, so he could now pick it out of a mess of others, and could sense when she was approaching, even if he could not see her. This came in handy the few times she had tried to sneak up on him.

  He began scanning their area, looking for Reiko’s frightened output. She had been so wrought with fear and anguish, it would be no problem spotting her, even if she hid behind a three foot wall of reinforced steel, or more reasonably, inside a crowded classroom.

  “She was running fast, but I doubt she left the campus. This is bad enough that she had to have gone to one of the faculty offices. Whether they called the police or not is questionable.”

  “Is this bad enough that they would?”

  “Maybe. If she’s called the cops before, it should be common practice now. She was in such a panic, she probably needed to be around people of authority first. If the situation really has escalated, she probably ran in there screaming one-one-zero.”

  Just then, a few sensei came walking past them with stern expressions.

  “Yep, that would be their response. They need to check first before doing anything else. Even after looking, they would be uncertain whether the situation required police investigation. Good thing you took the photos. They’re probably just going to toss the thing.”

  “I still don’t understand why we needed to do that.”

  “It could be presented as evidence of their behavioral pattern. How many people do you know that kill little feathery creatures and give them to others?”

  A few steps more and he began picking up faint whiffs of Reiko’s output. She wasn’t far, but was deep inside one of the faculty offices.

  “Here,” he said, and stopped in front of an open door.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Take a peek.”

  He saw Noda’s jaw tighten and her eyes flare, but she stepped over to the doorway and poked her head in.

  “Yeah, she’s sitting far back from the doorway.”

  He couldn’t go in there, unless he wanted to take a seat and possibly be conspicuously dizzy during the whole conversation, depending on how long it took.

  “Here, why don’t you take it in to her, and when you do, take the concerned citizen role. See if you can ask if she’s called the police and if they know anything yet,” he handed Noda the bag.

  The irritation boiled up inside her and he picked up something about him ‘talking all smart’ and her ‘doing all the dirty work’.

  “You’re right!” She smiled, and jerked the bag out of his hands. She took great satisfaction in her next choice words. “You already scared her once. If she sees you again, she might scream her head off and start throwing things at you.”

  This was followed up with a complementary image of him being pelted in the face with a textbook.

  ‘Take it easy Noda, I’m not doing this on purpose.’

  With her hand rested on her camera, she marched into the office, while Eiichi leaned against the wall outside.