The teen was jostled awake from the spot in his mentor’s passenger seat, the dull hum of the 80s muscle car he kept in an idling run. He was saying something, and his apprentice ignored him, rubbing his eyes as he looked around and took stock of where they were.

  Suburban neighborhood, old fashioned and probably with a pretty annoying Homeowners Association from the look of things. The sort of place people retired to when they wanted to live the fucking two and a half kids and a dog life. Its little happy visage only broken up by the general sense of unease, crime tape around one door and several buildings with brand new for sale signs.

  “You’re not sleeping at all, are you kid?” Alfred asked with a roll of his eyes, as though it were his charges' fault.”

  “No, my little sister needed help doing a last minute summer reading project, The Lady sent us the wrong book with the school supplies for this year and no one realized until two nights ago. Fox fell off the couch onto a cup just as we were finishing up, and had to go get stitches,” the man complained with a tired smile all the same, one finger rubbing his temple as though it would wind him to consciousness, “I got a few hours sleep while waiting for you at the office, I’ll be fine.”

  “Well, I’ll give you a little time off later so you can sleep before everyone gets home; for now we got a suburb to look at.”

  “Doesn’t really seem your aesthetic,” his apprentice answered, watching Alfred shake his head as he sipped from a flask. “I took you to be more of a run off into the wilderness and live in a log cabin type.”

  “My dad was a logger,” the older man said in a tone that made it sound like it was supposed to be a disagreement.

  Alfred was maybe forty or so, looking only around ten years his apprentice’s senior and already exhausted with life. With an untrimmed full beard and long brown hair that might have made him fit in as a perfect casting for a depressed Jesus, his sad blue eyes always with a strangely far off look to them like he were anywhere but where he was. He dressed in what might have passed for a detective from an old noir movie, with a pressed white shirt, brown slacks, a black tie; all topped off with a trench coat and fedora.

  “So what are we starting off with here?” the younger asked, fetching his leather bound journal from the glove box to start taking notes.

  “Christ, Peter, maybe if you listened the first time you’d know,” Alfred snorted, shaking his head even as he held up a manila folder, “thirty disappearances in this neighborhood in the last month. They’re starting to drop off, but this isn’t your average spree killer and the police aren’t treating it like one either.”

  “I haven’t gone by Peter since I was a kid, can you fucking stop calling me that? It’s been Misha since before you knew me,” Misha snapped, before pointing to a group of kids playing in their front yard, jumping around a sprinkler, “that aside, looks like people here aren’t reacting like a spree killer is out. That many people gone, you’d let your kids play out front with no supervision?”

  “My boy doesn’t go out without me out there, let alone if this was happening,” Alfred agreed with a grunt, passing one folder to Misha before taking up another of his own, “six homes. Some of them elderly people on their own, some entire families, ones with younger kids seemed to have had those spared at least for small blessings.”

  “So we’re going to be fucking busy?” the younger man asked, flipping open the pages as he looked through, “split them up? You start at one end, I start at the other, meet wherever we meet?”

  “Yeah, you start here and I’ll drive a bit farther down,” Alfred agreed with a grunt, pointing to a house that looked the same as all its neighbors, “first one in the line. You get any questions, give me a ring, and make sure to look around pretty thoroughly. We’re still not sure what caused this, so take every precaution you can and keep one eye open.”

  “Not my first rodeo,” Misha chuckled, and his mentor barely had time to say something before the apprentice was out of the car, tossing his journal on the passenger seat. He slapped the hood as he walked around, and Alfred let out a small complaint even as Misha ignored him and started toward the home.

  Even with the manila folder and fake IDs in his pocket Misha didn’t exactly look like a cop. It was going to be a miracle if he wasn’t stopped, and he knew it, with his raggedy old blue jeans, stained with oil and torn up, and a faded Weezer shirt not giving off any sort of authority. Even his hair, long and brown, tied into a low ponytail with a small goatee he’d managed to grow out, didn’t look like I was supposed to be in the suburbs.

  All the same, he had some advantages on his side even if using mind control on someone wasn’t a first resort. Fucking someone’s head up once was one time too many as far as he was concerned, and talking his way in felt better. A brief bolt of fear he pushed down while gathering himself up to knock at the door as a formality. Picking the lock or breaking the frame an easy option to jump to, but it’d be rather awkward to burst in on a relative or real estate agent just trying to prepare the home. Better to knock and wait a bit just in case there was someone inside who didn’t deserve to have a heart attack.

  He was glad he did, as almost immediately the sounds of tiny feet running about and a small amount of hurried apologies came from the other side. A few seconds later, and the door opened, surprising Misha slightly as he came to look down at someone who did not look like they were just visiting.

  She was an older woman, with curly black and gray hair down around shapely hips and a soft belly Misha liked. Maybe nearing forty, her face was crossed with a few wrinkles of knowledge and stress that had come about from that life. Simply dressed, she wore a pair of sweatpants that hugged nicely to her legs and a purple blouse that had more than a few stains along it, all under a bathrobe she barely let rest on her shoulders.

  “Oh, sorry, can I help you?” she asked, tilting her head in confusion as she looked the man over, probably more confused than he was.

  Misha realized he probably should have read the folder before coming here, seen what sort of situation had actually happened at this house so he knew how to lead. From the looks of things though there was a toddler here and an older woman, two sorts of people that were likely to result in a call to the police if he played this wrong. So, trying to play cool he checked the first page of his folder and asked, “Mrs. Jackson?”

  “Collins,” the woman corrected, frowning at the question, “all my friends call me Charlotte though, my husband was Mr. Collins.”

  “Was?” Misha asked, knowing Mr. Collins had at least been one of the people to die. He had skimmed the synopsis.

  “Oh, um, yes,” she admitted, flinching slightly as she looked away from the man, “he went missing last month. Were you looking for him?”

  Right, this was the right place.

  Misha reached into his pocket, pulling out the fake FBI badge that he held up for her as he explained, “I just stopped by to ask some questions. A lot of people went missing during this last month, and your husband’s case seems like it might be connected to others.”

  “Oh, you don’t look FBI,” the woman said nervously, even as she stepped aside to let Misha in, “are you undercover?”

  “Oh, we’re not required to wear the black suits all the time, be a bit of torture in the summer wouldn’t it?” Misha chuckled, stopping as he took stock of the home.

  It was rather immaculate, no dust, nothing out of place except for the obvious signs of a little kid he knew well. Misha stepped into a sitting room, with a recliner in one place with an ashtray on the end table next to it. A TV sat on the floor against one wall, and a gas fireplace set up with a couch and coffee table with a few toys on it filling out the rest of the room. No family photographs, no sense of decoration or personality beyond making it feel like a magazine, which felt rather out of place for a place someone actually lived.

  Charlotte led the man out of the room after a moment, and into a small hall where he was led to a mixed kitchen and dining area. Across the hall, with a gate ready to be set up, was what seemed like a children’s play room with several toys laid out and a radio very quietly playing some kids tunes — almost too quiet to hear even this close to it. The kitchen was clean, and the dining room table seemed only partly used with two chairs having space in front of them and an electric typewriter and papers filling up the rest.

  Set up obviously changing, though the basics still held onto with only a month passed. Kid kept out of view of the rest of the home, the table is only usable for two and obviously doubles as a work area for someone, likely Charlotte. A house as big as this, it was rather weird to have a kid this young have a play area somewhere you’d have trouble hearing them, unless the living room was rarely used by both people.

  “Can I get you anything?” the woman asked me, forcing a nervous smile, “coffee, something to eat?”

  “Coffee sounds nice,” Misha admitted, stepping around the room as he looked around, trying to avoid his occasional glance back at Charlotte, “with honey if you have it. Otherwise sugar and milk would be nice.”

  “How I like mine,” Charlotte said, moving to start preparing a pot as a kid came barreling through the room. The child nearly ran into Misha, and fell back a moment as he looked up in shock. Misha let out a small laugh, and Charlotte quickly moved over as she hastily apologized, “I’m so sorry, he’s just at that age and-”

  “It’s fine, kids are supposed to have this sort of energy at their age,” the younger man said, crouching on the ground to meet the kids' eyes. He was maybe three, dressed in a pair of shorts, a bright green t-shirt with his black hair cut short. The kid looked nervous, and Misha waited a moment before he finally asked, “what’s your name?”

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  “Timmy,” the kid answered nervously, taking a few steps back.

  “Timmy, that’s a good name,” Misha said, chuckling at his reaction, “how old are you? Can you tell me that?”

  Timmy waited a long moment and, after glancing at his mother, raised three fingers in response.

  “Three, now that’s a good age too, lots of people wish they could be three again,” Misha said with a sage nod as he offered his hand, and told Timmy, “my name’s Misha. I’m nineteen.”

  Timmy nodded, and he slapped my hand in what Misha thought was a high five before running off. He looked after him for a long moment and Charlotte let out a nervous laugh as she said, “that was actually a really good reaction for him, he’s a nervous kid.”

  “Just need to give him some space, he’ll get there eventually,” Misha said, smiling as he stood back up and watched her go back to making the pot of coffee. Taking a moment before he hesitantly added on, “I was a nervous kid growing up too, and honestly people pushing me never really help. You just let them take it at their own pace, they’ll find things out on their own.”

  Charlotte nodded, smiling even as she repeatedly glanced at him and slowly asked, “so, nineteen? Little young for an FBI agent isn’t it?”

  Fuck, was all Misha could think. He was supposed to stick to twenty three while he was using this ID, this could have ruined shit.

  “I was a bit of a savant, they made an exception,” Misha tried brushing off, letting out a nervous laugh.

  The woman nodded, furrowing her brow a moment before she asked, “So what did you want to know about my husband?”

  Right, he needed to interview her now instead of just tearing the place up looking for clues.

  “Did you notice anything suspicious in the days before his death?” Misha asked, shrugging as he took out a tape recorder from his pocket and clicked it on, “this doesn’t need to be anything obvious either. Maybe weird noises or lights at night, phone calls you couldn’t explain, electronics going out, people you saw a lot you didn't before?”

  “No, nothing like that,” the woman said, shaking her head, “the car hasn’t worked for shit since he died — I’m sorry, ladies shouldn’t curse — but that’s about all. Everything seemed normal before that. Is there a reason it wouldn’t be?”

  “Well, sometimes you don’t see everything you think you would,” Misha explained, shrugging as he sat back in the chair, “you know, especially in cases of disappearances like these. Sometimes people brush off signs of people watching, or their spouses are hiding things that boil over.”

  “Oh, well, maybe then,” she said quickly, stopping as a look of deep thought came over her face, “I…maybe a couple times I heard him talking late on the phone late at night? Could that have been something?”

  “Maybe,” Misha lied, nodding as he clicked the recorder off. He was starting to get a theory on what had happened here, and it wasn’t very useful. Instead of forcing her to dwell on it though he asked, “you said something was wrong with the car?”

  “Yeah, I tried putting more oil in it and that did nothing,” Charlotte sighed in exacerbation, “takes forever to get started up, engine makes all sorts of noise, sounds like it’s going to blow up half of the time it's running. I work at the library, came home late last night and I thought for sure it was going to turn off at the stop lights.”

  Misha nodded, furrowing his brow as he thought about it for a long moment. Alfred would have wanted him to get out of there, move onto the next house and forget this had happened. She probably didn’t have anything to do with this case, the more time he was here the more time he wasted.

  “Can you take it to a shop?” he asked, wondering if he could have convinced Alfred to help give her a ride back from one. At the very least he could have come by later in his own car and helped out, if she even needed it.

  “Raising a kid on my own, librarian?” Charlotte asked with a small snort, “I’m only lucky the house is paid off, so I have that going for me I guess.”

  Misha shook his head, trying to tell himself, leave Misha, she’s not your problem, leave a couple hundred to help if you feel that bad. You have the extra spending money this month, you don’t need to buy yourself lunches and new clothes, you can hold off.

  “How about I take a look at it?” the man offered instead, watching her pour out a couple cups of coffee, “my dad was a mechanic, I spent some time working at his shop and he fixed up cars a lot, and my sister taught me what he didn’t. I even help my partner with his car every now and then, and he doesn’t let you touch that car if you can’t name every part on the engine. I can’t guarantee anything, but I can probably at least give you an idea of what’s wrong.”

  Charlotte nodded, looking nervous as she mixed a little honey into each mug and slowly brought one over to her guest. It wasn’t until she sat down she spoke up, “I couldn’t ask you to do that, you’re working, I-”

  “My partner’s not going to notice me slacking for a little bit,” Misha said, knowing he’d likely spend a couple hours on each home investigating. Even if he took an hour figuring out what was wrong it wouldn’t be as long as he was expected to take here, and if it was a couple hours he could rush a couple houses.

  “Well, if you insist,” she said slowly, “just in the garage.”

  Misha let her lead him there, drinking the coffee the whole way as he was brought to the garage where a relatively normal looking van waited. Charlotte fetched the keys, and Misha opened the hood while she turned the engine and he took a long look over how it ran. After watching it for a few seconds he shook his head and asked her, “do you mind getting me a couple paper towels? I’m going to check your oil and spark plugs, usually one of those two when it sounds like that. Is it okay if I use any of the tools here?”

  “Use whatever you need,” Charlotte said, and Misha was left alone as he sipped his coffee and walked to the work bench.

  He had to guess it was Charlotte’s husband who had been the tinkerer, based on the shitty magazine pages on the wall and thin layer of dusty disuse; and with as many tools as he had available Misha thought he was the kind to do any project even if he wasn’t qualified. There was more than enough there for the man to have fucking replaced the engine if that had been a requirement, and he doubted it saw regular use.

  The thought crossed Misha’s mind with a humored smile, and he glanced over to one of the shelves of bottles and boxes as something caught his eye. On the bottom shelf an open box, obviously still mostly filled, looking weirdly out of place as Misha crouched down and took it up, reading the label with a small chuckle.

  Rat poison.

  It was at that point Charlotte chose to come back, looking nervous for a moment even as Misha gave a small smile and told her, “you want to keep this on one the upper shelves, don’t want Timmy getting in it.”

  The woman relaxed a little, and the man went about checking the engine as he’d said he would. After a bit of struggle and getting plenty of oil on his hands and shirt he managed to find the source of the problem. To something that was a bit of bad news, both the oil needed changing and the spark plugs were visibly corroded.

  Both were relatively cheap for what they were, though she seemed to be struggling financially and he could have done it for free. Maybe two hours for both if he had everything on him and he worked like a machine, and not exactly something he’d feel pressed to do. Working like a machine seemed a little unlikely though, having not worked on a car alone really at any point, and not used to this sort of vehicle.

  He didn’t have time for that.

  “When’s your next shift?”

  “Three to eight,” the woman answered nervously, as Misha checked it was still just a little past nine, “is it bad?”

  Fucking Hell she didn’t have good timing.

  “I can fix it, two or three hours max,” Misha said, sighing as he tossed the towel aside, “if you don’t mind that is, I just need to get to a shop and pick up a few things.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” Charlotte laughed, “I mean, I can’t even pay you back right now, and you’re-”

  “You can pay me back when you’re doing a little better,” Misha said, forcing a small smile, “and it’s not even a hundred dollars in parts if I had to guess. If I let you take this somewhere you’re looking at probably three times the cost in material, so I’ll save you what I can.”

  The woman nodded, looking nervous for a moment before she answered, “there’s a shop a mile down the road from here. Would you need a ride? I didn’t see a car.”

  “I can walk that,” Misha said, giving a small shrug as he quickly finished his coffee in a few large gulps, “besides, let's just leave this all as is and keep stuff cool, no guarantee this wouldn’t damage something driving it.”

  Charlotte agreed, and Misha took off down the road, wondering the whole way why he was going this far out of the way for someone he barely knew. Alfred was going to have a fucking field day with him when he found out, and The Lady was probably going to have something to say about it as well if it caused any issues for her.

  All the same, he walked the whole way without considering going back and picked up the parts he needed, and ended up coming back with a few bags of necessities. By then Charlotte had opened up the garage for him, perhaps to cool it down in the summer heat, and she sat by the door while Timmy played with toy trucks on the driveway.

  After a brief greeting again Misha got to work, eventually needing to check if she minded him taking off his shirt while he worked in the heat and got more oil on it. A long process, he spent a while propping up the car to change the oil and even longer afterwards putting it down to change the spark plugs.

  Misha lost track of time as he worked, and it wasn’t until he finished with a small grunt, wiping his face and hands with a rag, he told her, “give it a try now, it should sound a lot better.”

  Charlotte nodded hesitantly, and the woman walked over to the car with a stare of fearful hope, turning the key with the engine almost immediately rolling to life. It hummed well, and what fear was there left her face as she asked me, “should it work now?”

  “Well, if anything else is wrong with it then this car is barely held together, and liable to explode if lightly bumped,” Misha said with a small laugh as he wandered back to the workbench. His eyes quickly scanning for a pen he grabbed to write his number on a post it note he passed onto her, “if you ever need anything give me a call. I get a lot of free time with my schedule, you can say. It’s not a big deal if I need to come down for a few hours and help fix something or give you a ride.”

  “I’ll…I’ll keep it in mind, and I’ll be sure to pay you back,” the woman said, nodding as she looked down at the number, “thank you so much, this is a big weight off my shoulders. Do you need to take a shower or something before you leave? I don’t want you needing to walk around all day covered in oil.”

  “I keep some spare clothes in the trunk, I’ll just use the sink to rinse off if you don’t mind,” Misha chuckled, ready to say more before there was a cleared throat from the garage doorway.

  Alfred stood there, arms crossed and a smile on his face as he asked, “mind if I borrow Peter there for a moment?”

  “No one calls me Peter,” Misha answered in a sing-song voice, walking over as Alfred led him to the edge of the driveway. Led down until they were out of ear shot, and with a nervous shuffle to his stance Misha muttered, “sorry, I got distracted.”

  “I’ll say, who the fuck is she?” Alfred asked with a whisper back, “I thought the Collins wife was killed with her husband.”

  “Obviously not,” Misha said with a nod back to Charlotte, “and I don’t think this has to do with the other disappearances. I think it’s just an unfortunate coincidence.”

  “What makes you say that?” the older man asked, sounding a bit curious as he glanced back at the widow himself.

  “I got the sort of vibes that this guy probably got killed by the wife, and I’m not exactly getting merciless killer vibes from her so I’m just going to assume he deserved it,” Misha whispered back, seeing a brief look of disappointment cross his mentor.

  “I don’t trust your opinion on any woman with a kid, Peter, but that’d make sense compared to what I saw at the other homes at least,” Alfred admitted stroking his beard, a smile suddenly crossing his face, “well, how about you go get that oil washed off and I’ll grab your change of clothes. Love to meet this girl that distracted you, kid.”

  “You’re not mad?” Misha asked, genuinely a bit confused, “I have the feeling my sisters are going to give me more grief for this than you are.”

  “No, there wasn't really anything to find,” his mentor admitted with a sigh, “no one remembered anyone disappearing, and all I found was some weird mold under a few carpets.”