CINQ.
DOWN at the Regional Justice Building (RJB) Mitch took the familiar path through security and up the elevator to the District Attorney’s Office.
Curiously—for this had never been the case before in the hundred or so times he had been there—he found the door to be not only closed, but locked.
Normally he would just try the door again, certain that it was just stuck. But a feeling of Impossible Wrong stilled his hand and instead Hesitation Itself seized control.
Look, with your eyes.
Something was happening...
just behind the door.
Through the mottled glass inscribed with
DISTRICT ATTORNEY ADAM YOUNG
in bold official letters,
were the impressions of
two figures.
They appeared to be in the midst of a friendly conversation. Or was it an argument?
He could hear voices, indistinct.
At one moment it sounded like the two were fighting about something, but furtively, all snatches of sharp whisper and grunted hisses, as if they knew they might be overheard.
Then, suddenly, the tone of their speech would abruptly switch, and he thought he heard the sound of laughing, only for it too to stop before any common feeling could be maintained.
He found himself drifting unconsciously closer to the glass,
trying to make out the blurred figures within,
to decipher their gesticulations...
When the door opened.
“Mitchell. It’s you.”
It was the DA himself who answered, an occurrence that Mitch found extremely odd.
He’d known Young since college, where after attending some of the DA’s lectures they had struck up a kind of mentorship.
“You don’t ask stupid questions and you don’t kiss ass,” Young had famously told him, and since then the elder statesman had been an invaluable, if uneven, resource in assisting Mitch with his cases.
It hadn’t taken many meetings to learn that the DA was a man of myriad quirks.
He was the kind of eccentric lawyer (standing at 6’4” with the wingspan and phrenology of a Herman Munster) befitting a longtime elected official. A tough native of LV who’d grown up working class, he not only knew the language and speed of his constituents, but he was smart enough (and tall enough) to dominate.
His work schedule, which included a siesta in the middle of the day that stretched hours at a time, his pinstriped suits, and not least his powerful litigation record were all well-known to the younger private detective.
As was his highly “traditional” stance toward office etiquette, which would have demanded that his secretary answer the door in the rare event that it was closed, never him.
“I’m here,” Mitch said, waiting to be let in, although in that moment he definitely felt that he wasn’t welcome. “As you requested.”
As soon as the door had cracked all talking within had ceased. A heavy silence instead took its place. Mitch had the sense he had walked in on something private and urgent. There was a thickness in the air.
The DA stepped back, opening the door further to allow Mitch to come in, and then—and this was also disconcerting—he closed the door once more after him.
Our friend the detective, locked inside the office now, instantly saw that another surprise awaited him.
Someone new sat behind the secretary desk.
It was usually Donna, whom he lovingly referred to as Doña even though she never remembered him and wasn’t Latina and never got the joke.
Instead, a younger girl now manned the post.
She was about his age he guessed (25), with a mass of hair that was darker than black pulled into a sloppy bun and black caterpillar eyebrows and a face of cloudy porcelain with pronounced cheekbones and a jawline that a carved statue would’ve killed for.
“My, um,” Young sputtered, also something he never did, and then, after clearing his throat, was at last able to declare, “My daughter. Vittoria.”
Mitch caught her eyes, bright and blue and unmistakeably like her father’s.
“It’s a pleasure, I didn’t——”
“Right, right, right. Look, before I forget,” said the DA as he checked his large gold watch, “Vittoria has everything for you. I have to go.”
And the District Attorney for Yorke County pulled open the door once again, exited his office, and shut the door behind him.
The two youngsters were left alone.
“What’s with him?” Mitch asked, which had the effect of breaking the thick ice.
She seemed surprised by his tone, perhaps assuming beforehand that he was just another one of her father's psychofants come to darken their door.
“He has a massage appointment,” replied Vittoria, without so much as a bat of her pitch black lashes.
“OK, that tracks.”
A furious need for pampering was one of the DA’s most widely-known quirks.
“But,” said Mitch, “he said he had something for me. It sounded urgent.”
Vittoria slid over to him a thin stack of stapled papers, which he took up.
“What’s this?”
“The terms of a consultancy,” she replied. “75K a year plus benefits.”
“What?”
“It’s a good deal.”
“That may be,” he said, rummaging through the pages of legalese, head spinning, “but he knows I don’t work like that.”
This also caught her attention. “You don’t. You must be rich.”
“No,” he said definitively, “and I mean to keep it that way. Surprisingly, it’s not that hard.”
“Some extra cash wouldn’t help?”
“Help?" he said, confused, "At what cost?”
“Why not challenge yourself then?”
He looked at her.
He thought about delving in to his standard line about working a “real job.” He was a private detective with his own LLC that he had incorporated when he was just 16, immediately after he got his PI license. He only worked the cases that gave him his detective instinct, ie only the ones he really cared about, that gave his existence that necessary sublime edge he craved, and as all of this rehearsed explanation came rushing to the forefront of his mind, ready as he was to stand in front of this new girl and fight for what he believed in...
It dawned on him in a ray of mental sunlight——
The case. The letters.
This was his ticket to investigate the April Fools Killer, officially.
The DA was the subject of the letters, or at least the person to whom they were addressed. That was surely enough to start a case, and since he’d been the one to receive the parcel (to say nothing of Jordan’s un-official inquiry) he was obviously the man for the job. That the DA’s office was offering him $75,000 a year to possibly figure it all out was just a bonus.
An unquestionably odd bonus, he thought, making that connection.
Add it to the list.
But regardless of how long the list was getting, he knew straightaway it would be his best chance at seeing if there really was a connection between the letters and AFK. He still did need to make this connection, officially, even if he’d already begun to believe it in his heart.
This rapidly-developing theory of his—that the two were connected—definitely gave him the instinct he was looking for, but it was, for now, far too insane and baseless to utter out loud.
A lot of things trouble me about this case…
He thought about mentioning the letters to Vittoria and as he stood there contemplating a heightened vibrancy adorned her brow, but ultimately he decided against it.
Whatever the reason for the DA’s offer, he’d still work the AFK/letters case on his own. Whether they let him or not.
It was the prospect of law enforcement resources, vague and dazzling as all naïve enticements are, not dollar signs and benefits, that now danced seductively before his mind’s eye.
A preocupation that likewise wasn’t lost on Vittoria’s sky blues.
“It’s up to you,” she said, in a tone slightly above a whisper.
He nodded his head slowly as he clutched the packet tighter.
“We need em back by tomorrow,” said the new secretary. “Signed.”