Nick was investigating. He'd taken it upon himself to be the one to figure out who had shot and killed Ivana Focque. He stood in the hallway between the bathrooms, and began to logically deduct where to look for suspects. First of all, he remembered, Ivana had passed himself and AJ while they were sitting in their seats. They'd then watched her walk away down the aisle, and there hadn't been anyone in first class that had followed her to the bathrooms. Therefore, Nick thought, the person was either waiting in the bathroom - which was illogical because, really, how would they know she was going to go to the bathroom? - or else they had walked forward from the next class back. Nick headed that way.
As Nick moved between the seats, scanning people's faces, they turned to him with desperate, nervous looks in their eyes. They seemed to silently beg him for answers to questions nobody dared put into words. One woman grabbed his wrist, stopping him. She clung to a small child, her eyes filled with unshed tears. "What happened?" she asked.
Nick smiled weakly, "It's nothing to be afraid of, ma'am... It'll be okay." He moved onward.
Suddenly a stewardess ran over to him, "Sir, we're making an emergency landing, if you could please take your seat, that would be great..."
Nick looked at her, "I'm an FBI agent... well, sorta." He pulled out his badge from his pocket and held it up for her to see it. "I need a list of the names of every passenger on this plane."
The stewardess looked at him, wide eyed, "Okay."
"Can you get me that?" Nick asked her.
"Yes, yes sir," she answered, "But you've got to go to your seat and I'll get it to you before you leave the plane."
"Thanks," Nick replied, heading back to the seats. On his way there, he ran into the doctor as he was folding his stethoscope and putting it into his bag. Nick paused to talk to him. "Hey, excuse me... You're the one that was with Agent Focque just now, right?" The doctor nodded. "Can you like save the bullets?" he asked.
The doctor looked surprised. "Save the bullets?"
"Yeah," Nick paused, "Here.." he reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, then drew a pen from over his ear to scribble down his cell phone number. "Call me here when you've got'em and I'll tell you where to send them. We'll need them for ballistics tests."
The doctor looked at the phone number on the paper, then looked up at Nick. "Aren't you a Backstreet Boy?"
Nick shook his head, "No... today I'm an FBI agent." With that, he brushed past the doctor and onwards to the seats. AJ was there, looking out the window at the ground as it slowly began coming up at him. He sighed and ignored Nick, even as he sat down. Nick glanced across the aisle and ahead to Agent Bryant, who was pale, stone-faced and sitting straight ahead. Nick bit his lips, and took a deep breath. At least he'd remembered to collect a little bit of evidence.
-----
Agent Bryant was the first one off the plane, followed by Nick and AJ. Bryant rushed on by the gate and into the men's room, leaving AJ and Nick alone in the waiting area. The stewardess had handed Nick the list of passengers on his way out the door of the plane. He tossed his carry on bag on the floor in front of him and dropped into a chair, watching as the other passengers flowed out of the gates. AJ stood, shifting his weight from foot to foot, a few feet away from Nick. Whoever the killer was, Nick decided, he wasn't going to be easy to spot. The crowd coming out of the gate were all unlikely suspects, people you wouldn't look think would commit a murder. Most of them looked scared and confused.
AJ sighed, "Nick, c'mon. We should go see if Bryant's okay."
"You go if you want to," Nick responded, not moving his eyes from the gates, "I gotta stay here."
"Why?" AJ asked, not particularly wanting to leave Nick alone. Clearly the Masquerade Murderer meant business... and God only knew what could happen given the situation at hand.
'I've got to find the killer," Nick replied, his voice sounding noble.
AJ paused, following Nick's gaze as the people poured forth from the plane. "Shit, Nick, you're a damn genius!" AJ cried. He stopped and cleared his throat, "I mean, sort of."
Nick raised an eyebrow, "Um, thanks, sort of.... Why am I a genius?"
"Because, obviously the killer's on the plane."
Nick nodded, "Um, yeah, duh. Am I the only one to have thought of that, seriously?"
AJ perked up, "You watch the gate, I'm gonna go get a passenger list."
Nick held up the folder. "I'm ahead of you again," he responded.
AJ blinked in surprise, reaching for the folder. "Damn you did think of everything." He looked it over carefully. "How are we going to narrow this down?"
Nick shrugged, "It should be somewhat easy. I mean, the men are the ones we gotta look at. Ivana said it was a man." He paused, taking mental photographs of each face he focused on. "Maybe we could cross check the names to narrow the list, run'em by some kind of scan, figure out who could be the one behind all this crap."
"How so?" AJ asked, confused by Nick's logic.
Nick explained, "Well, the one who killed Lorriane probably had a room at the Grand Hilton the night she was killed. And again, they probably had a room at the Hilton in Berlin."
"Good thinking," AJ said with a nod, impressed.
"Plus," Nick added, "The killer's probably from New York, or one of the states around it, or else they had a hotel there, too, when they killed the other people there."
AJ blinked in surprise. "Crap Nick, you really are a genius. When did you become so good at this detective shit anyways?"
Nick shrugged, "About an hour ago."
"Well," AJ hesitated, "You're damn good at it."
Nick smiled, "I'ma saaaaave the day."
-----
When the trio arrived in Berlin, Bryant hadn't wanted to talk about the case. He'd been unusually quiet and simply disappeared into his room, half-heartedly reminding the Boys that he'd see them in the morning when it was time to go to the crime scene. Nick had decided to wait until the ride over to tell Agent Bryant about his investigations on the plane. So that night in the hotel room, the two Boys pulled up an online white book and began running names to see if any of them came from New York City or the states around it. So far, half way through the list, they'd come up with nothing but negative results.
Nick sighed, "I thought for sure we'd have a name by tonight," he said, pausing between names. He looked discouraged.
AJ shrugged, "Maybe he's unlisted, or maybe Bryant has a better program to run this stuff with."
Nick sighed, "I dunno... I guess I'm not as good at this as you thought, huh?"
"Hey, don't say that," AJ shook his head, "This was a brilliant idea. Seriously."
Nick shook his head, "I can't do anything by myself without it failing." He looked at the keyboard sadly, "I wanted to impress you guys so bad, so you'd respect me more..."
AJ sighed, "Dude, we respect you."
"No you don't," Nick answered, shaking his head, "You guys are always teasing me or yelling at me or something, and you never let me do stuff alone anymore."
"Well you're fun to tease," AJ joked. Nick's eyes got sadder. "Dude, seriously, it's just in fun. You're like our little brother. It's practically a requirement that we tease you."
"I guess," Nick replied. He sighed, "I just want to be treated like an adult."
AJ hesitated, "Well... honestly, you don't really act like one."
Nick raised an eyebrow, "Well if I don't then technically none of us on the bus do. We're just real, though, we have fun. I mean being a grown up isn't about being uptight is it? It's about knowing right from wrong and being able to take care of oneself, about being responsible. Right? So what if someone goofs off if the important crap is there?"
AJ paused. "I guess you're right," he admitted. He sighed. "We just love you, Nick. You figure we met you when you were thirteen and... well, not much has changed since then in how we all interact." He looked at Nick with serious eyes. "Maybe sometimes we forget that you've gotten older over the years."
Nick looked back into AJ's eyes, "Maybe you should try to remember better."
AJ nodded, "Maybe we should."
Nick smiled, "Yeah... I'd like that."
-----
Agent Bryant lay wide-eyed in bed at 6am the following morning, staring up at the ceiling as he had been since he'd laid down the night before. He felt as though he were going crazy in a way he'd never felt before. Everything seemed completely out of control. 'I should've saved her,' he thought, 'I could've.' But could he have? He didn't know. He just knew that he felt extremely remorseful and guilty for not even being there to try. But then again they'd been on a plane, in the air, and she'd been going to the bathroom. How was he supposed to have known...? The truth was that there was nothing he could've done to prevent Agent Focque's death. But he still felt as though there was something, and he found himself questioning everything about his career because of it. 'I'm not very good as an agent if I can't even protect my co-workers,' he thought remorsefully, frowning at the darkness all around him.
A knock came on the door. Bryant didn't move. "Agent Bryant?" It was Nick.
'Poor kid,' thought Bryant, 'He thinks I'm a hero or something and really I'm a failure.'
"Agent Bryant???" Nick's voice insisted.
Bryant stayed still. Maybe if he didn't move, Nick would go away. If Nick went home right now, there was no chance of him being killed, too, Bryant thought, and clearly he wasn't able to save the lives of anyone... he didn't want what happened to Ivana Focque to happen to Nick and AJ. He waited until he heard the two Boys walk away from the door before he allowed himself to breathe and reposition himself on the bed. All he wanted was for the world to stop spinning around him.
-----
"He must've already left for the crime scene," Nick sighed as the Boys walked away from the door. "Dawg, AJ, I told you that you were talking too damn long in that shower."
AJ shook his head, "Oh hell no, dude it's only 6am, if he left already it's because he's the man who never sleeps... or else he was super impatient."
Nick pointed at the door," Well he's not here."
AJ shrugged, "So we'll go meet him at the Hilton then."
"Do you think that's a good idea?" Nick asked, hesitating, "I mean with everything going on?"
"Well what do you want to do? Stay here?" AJ asked, rolling his eyes, "Nick, he's obviously gone to the crime scene. Plus if we head over there, maybe the front desk girl will cross check the names for us," he suggested. "Then Bryant'll be that much happier to see us."
"I dunno," Nick answered, reluctant. Something familiar was bubbling up in his chest as he pondered over the idea. If he'd thought about it more, maybe he would have realized that the feeling was the same one he'd gotten when he'd snuck off at the Gopher's suggestion to get McDonald's french fries... maybe he'd have realized it was a feeling he frequently got just before bad things happen: that magic feeling of foreboding. That dreaded feeling you always recall having felt once something goes wrong. Maybe if he'd noticed that, he wouldn't have agreed. Or at least have been prepared for something to go wrong. But, as it was... "Yeah, okay, you're right... Let's go."
And so begins the action.
Saving the Day for Blondes 2: The Amazing Story of How Nick Apprehended The Infamous Masquerade Murderer Without ANY Caffeine In His Body! by Pengi
