Bean

Chapter 3: The Boy with the Bright Blue Eyes

April, 2002
Los Angeles, California, USA

With a feeling of triumph that never grew old, L plunked his index finger down onto the laptop keyboard, ending the one-way video call with the FBI.

Another case, solved and closed.

He swiveled around in the computer chair and stood to his bare feet, his hands immediately moving to the pockets of his blue jeans. A lollipop was tucked in one cheek.

He sauntered over to the couch and hopped up onto it, crouching with his knees to his chest like a bullfrog.

On the coffee table before him sat a silver tray, and on it was a delicate china tea set. L reached with his long arms and poured himself a cup of English Breakfast, adding a large handful of sugar cubes to the dainty cup. He pulled the lollipop from his mouth and, holding the stick pinched between his index finger and thumb, he noisily stirred the tea with it. Then he set it on the saucer and lifted the cup to take a sip.

"Mm." He licked his pale lips.

Turning his head, he looked out one of the hotel suite's large, floor-to-ceiling windows. The sun was just beginning to set.

"Forty-six hours," L noted mentally to himself. It had been that long since he had slept.

But there was nothing atypical about that. In fact, he could very well be awake for another forty-six, and it would still be considered normal for the chronic insomniac.

A beeping sound emitting from the laptop turned his head back toward the desk. There was a message flashing on the screen.

L tipped his head and knocked back his cup of tea in one gulp. He sat like this for a moment, letting the grainy, syrup-like drops fall onto his tongue from the teacup dangling between his fingers. Then, he stood again, picking up the lollipop and returning it to the little pocket between his teeth and cheek.

Without bothering to sit down, he leaned forward and moved the mouse to click on the blinking message.

It was an alert from one of his informants in the UK.

L never liked information from his informants to be relayed via text message or email, and so he simply had them send an alert, and he would call them when he got it.

Biting the last of the lollipop candy from the end of the stick, L reached into his pocket and extracted his phone, which was already set up with voice distortion. He dialed and held the phone up to his ear using only his first finger and thumb. He chewed the hard candy loudly between his back teeth while it rang.

The informant picked up. "Hello?"

"This is L." The detective's long fingers carelessly flicked the lollipop stick toward a trash can. It missed its mark by a longshot and landed in the middle of the carpet.

"Oh, hello," the informant greeted. "Uh... yes, you asked me to keep track of the Russian girl, Anya Petrova?"

Anya.

L hadn't thought about her in a long, long time. He looked down at his toes and traced them back and forth in an arc on the carpet."Yes?" he prodded the man on the other end of the line to continue.

"Well, I just thought you'd want to know... she died yesterday."

An odd little pain sparked in L's chest. "Oh," he said simply. He shoved his hand into his pocket. "How?"

"She had an immune disorder," the informant replied. "It had been lying dormant for years, I suppose, but it struck about a month ago and progressed very quickly."