On his way into the bullpen, Nick caught up with Deputy Wu.
"All quiet on the home front?" he asked, fearing the worst.
"About as quiet as usual," Wu answered. "Say, Chief was asking if you and Hank have made any progress on the attack of the brain-eating worms."
Nick snorted, "Thanks for making it sound like a cheap horror movie!"
Wu shrugged, "Just trying to keep things real around here, y'know?"
Nick shook his head; things were a lot easier when he had a group, or even a renown Wesen to deal with; this time, not even the victims were Wesen, and no one had ever seen the culprit.
"We have a few leads," he told Wu, "but we're still trying to figure out how it all fits together. Once we get a pattern, we can figure out an MO and start compiling a list of suspects."
"Yeesh," Wu muttered, "tough break."
Nick plopped down at his desk, "Tell me about it," he moaned.
Hank approached with a coffee in each hand. He offered one to Nick.
"Did you get any sleep last night?" Hank asked.
Nick shook his head. "Hardly; you?"
"Not a wink; I made the mistake of stopping by that Wesen comic book store you mentioned, just for a look at what we're dealing with." He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. "Man, that thing is freaky! I kept seeing it every time I closed my eyes."
"I just can't figure out how it happens!" Nick cried. "We have a bookstore that seems to be ground zero, but both the owners are Genio Innocuo."
"And yet there have been no further cases since you asked them to close their doors," Hank pointed out.
"So the Kinderphantasie has to be connected there somehow," Nick proposed, "but how? I know for sure it isn't Steve, and he claimed that he hadn't seen a Kinderphantasie there; but sometimes Mariana is the only one in the shop. Maybe the Kinderphantasie visits and infects books when she is the only one there."
Hank pondered this. "That would explain why Steve is not infected," he noted, "since all the Kindly-monster would have to do is make sure the infected books are sold before Steve gets back."
Nick actually perked up at this. "Hank, that's the best theory I've heard all week. Let's check financials for New Renaissance and see if there are any fluctuations in book sales, particularly on the days we know that our victims were there." He opened a new window on the computer and began requesting bank files.
A while later, Nick closed the last file and shook his head.
"Well, that was a bust!" he grumbled.
The sales reports of the days they were looking for appeared no different than the other days.
Hank had even pursued the angle that perhaps there was a specific connection to the books themselves. Each book they had discovered with the victims so far had been of the Gothic genre: Poe, Hawthorne, and Irving were all Gothic authors. After the first few calls to other customers who had bought the same kinds of books (and, in the case of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, the same books), Hank had to conclude that this was a faulty lead as well.
Nick began pacing the floor. "There is no pattern in the kind of book, which book, the locations of the victims... nothing!"
Just then, his cellphone rang. Nick picked it up. "Burkhart."
"Hey Nick," Monroe greeted him, "have you found any good clues yet?"
"Not really," Nick admitted.
YOU ARE READING
Read Between The Lines
Fanfiction"The Bücherwurm (book-er-verm) originates from a bookstore run by a Kinderphantasie; anyone who reads a book purchased there is infected, and the worm burrows into his brain, allowing the Kinderphantasie to feed on his imagination, incorporate him a...
