Walking under the dark sky, Mayhew turned the corner and approached the entrance of his apartment building. Expecting a certain lady to be at the lobby, the detective got ready for another wild conversation.
'That's the least of my worries. It's so late, Margret might just feed me my own teeth.'
Having these thoughts, his steps became just a little faster.
Though before he could go inside, a distant blabbering voice made him stop in his tracks.
'I've heard that voice before.'
Turning his gaze toward the other side of the street, Mayhew almost let out a gasp as he saw a drunk lady stumbling around the sidewalk, speaking nonsense to herself.
'It's the lady I ran into this morning.'
The first day of the investigation had gone pretty well in the eyes of the detective, but it seemed that maybe—just maybe, it could become even better.
'I can ask her about the woman that went missing in 1981, if she herself is not the woman in question. Even if she isn't, she might have some information about her strange disappearance.'
Not wasting any time, the detective walked across the street and approached the drunk woman.
"Hello miss, it's nice seeing you again."
Wiping a stream of yellowish saliva off her lips, the woman groaned before turning her head to the brown-haired detective.
"H-have w—d-do I know y-ou?"
Mayhew's smile dimmed slightly as he looked at the woman from top to bottom.
'She's doing even worse than when I met her in the morning. My words did not help her at all; they might have even worsened her situation.'
Mayhew was a detective, his job was to investigate. His priority was to push the investigation forward and nothing else. He wasn't a therapist, or a relative to any of the people he had come across while doing his job. Finding the truth was all that he was meant to do...and yet he did more—more than he was meant to. Everyone he came across—he helped, even if it was a drunk or a criminal, it did not matter to him. In his heart, even though it appeared differently to the world, Mayhew truly believed that his job was not that of a detective but that of a parent or brother. Everyone deserved to have family, even the worst of the worst.
A sudden giggle made the detective break away from his personal thoughts.
"Y-you look funny," said the woman with an awkward smile on her pale face.
Mayhew shook his head and chuckled at her remark.
"Do I now? Well, when my hair gets messy, it does kind of make me look like a completely different person. I'm the guy you bumped into in the morning, don't you remember?"
The woman scratched her head and let out a low groan.
"It's c-cold, and m-my head is bad."
The detective's smile quickly turned into a serious expression as he heard what the woman said.
"Do you mean to say that your head hurts? If so, then you might have caught a cold. Listen, I have rented an apartment in the building just in front there. If you want, you can stay with me and my partner for the night, or at least relax for a little bit until you feel better."
The woman gagged and held the side of her head as it was going to fall off.
"S-sure. We c-can have some fun."
Despite not quite understanding what she meant by that last statement, the detective took a step to the side and supported the woman with one arm. At a slow pace, they made their way across the street and into the building.
As they walked in, Mayhew looked around the main lobby to see if Helena was there. And after just a few seconds of looking, the detective saw that the mischievous lady was indeed there, and she also wasn't alone.
'Who might that lady be?'
The girl Helena was talking to seemed pretty young, her dark hair was short and her skin was super pale. Her eyes were also kind of—
'What the!'
Mayhew stumbled hard to his right as he felt the weight of the drunken woman he had been supporting leave him in an instant.
'Why did she—'
His question was quickly answered as the wobbly woman threw herself into the arms of the black-haired lady that Helena was talking to.
Taking a brief pause to read the room, Mayhew saw that both Helena and the pale lady didn't seem upset by her actions, which made him much less nervous to go and approach the trio.
Walking up to them, the detective made sure to put on a polite smile on his face. Though that wasn't much trouble, as a smile always formed on his face naturally.
Seeing the detective approach, all three women reacted in their own ways. Helena smirked with what seemed to be arrogance, although Mayhew had no idea why she would be feeling that way right now. The pale lady that was being aggressively hugged by the drunken woman put on a polite smile as she saw him. And the woman that Mayhew had supported from the streets didn't spare him a glance as she was busy wrestling the black-haired lady.
"Hello everyone. I see that both of you are already acquainted with my new friend here, at least I hope so."
Of course, Helena was the one that replied, considering that she was the only one that really knew Mayhew, at least a little. It only made sense that she would.
"New 'friend,' is that what they use nowadays?"
Not understanding what she meant by this, Mayhew replied with slight hesitation in his voice.
"Well, yeah, what other word would you use?"
Helena chuckled.
"Here I thought I was dirty for seducing this young man, meanwhile you're already bringing up drunk women to your room. I didn't know you could be this dirty, Mayhew."
Suddenly, Mayhew was even more confused than before.
'What does she mean? And wait a second, what "young man" is she talking about—'
The detective's eyes widened slightly as she shifted them toward Helena's friend...boyfriend.
For a moment, Mayhew was frozen.
'She...he looks so feminine.'
Though now that the detective was paying a little more attention to the black-haired boy, he did notice lots of details that would have pointed to him being a boy.
But it was the boy's silky smooth skin that had fooled the detective.
"Hey Mayhew, you there?"
The detective shook the thoughts out of his head and decided to go along with it.
Helena giggled and pointed a finger at him.
"Are you drunk as well? Maybe it's not as bad as I thought, it's equal terms after all."
Mayhew waved a hand in denial.
"No Helena, I'm not drunk. And I also don't know what you were thinking I was going to do in my room."
The shady lady leaned on her boyfriend's shoulder and laughed for a good minute before responding.
"Come on now, you're in your late thirties. No way you're that innocent, stop acting."
Mayhew sighed.
"No, I'm not innocent, but I still don't get what you mean."
Instead of answering, Helena continued to laugh.
Seeing this, the pale-skinned boy decided to speak for her.
"Well, I don't know if you know this, Mister Mayhew, but if you are trying to bring a drunk girl to your room while you yourself are sober...let's just say that it just seems a little predatory."
Having it explained like this, the detective suddenly understood what Helena had meant.
"I'm very sorry if it looked that way, but I can assure you that I did not have bad intentions."
The boy patted the drunk woman on the head as he spoke.
"It's alright, Helena told me a lot about you, Mister Mayhew. I don't think you would do such a thing."
Mayhew let out a sigh of relief and reached his hand across.
"Well, it's nice to meet you..."
The pale boy met his hand with his own and shook it lightly.
"Konrad—Konrad Novak."
As Konrad waited for the detective to share his own name and surname, he was caught by surprise as he felt Mayhew's hand tighten around his own with strength that was unnecessary for just a handshake.
Before he could comment on this, the brown-haired detective spoke, his voice remaining polite but slightly hesitant.
"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that, what was your last name again?"
Hearing this, Konrad gave an understanding look and answered.
"Oh, my last name is Novak. Yeah, I know, it's pretty surprising to hear a Slovakian surname while you are in Poland, I totally get it, Mister Mayhew."
...
...
...
'Tomasz Novak, the first report of a missing person not being found in this town. This "Konrad" has the same surname, so he has to be related to Tomasz. And if that is true....
Loosening his grip of Konrad's pale hand, the detective spoke in a polite tone.
"So you're from Slovakia, that's interesting to hear. Well, my name is Mayhew as you already knew, and my surname is Brown."
Konrad smiled.
"I will call you Mister Mayhew or Mister Brown then. Would you mind if I chose how I liked?"
Mayhew nodded with a smile.
"Sure."
'I need to keep this Konrad close.'
Letting go of his hand, Mayhew moved toward the stairway and stopped right at the first step.
"Well, I'll be going now, it's getting very late and my partner is expecting me. Please take care of the girl, she's very intoxicated and she might have caught a cold, okay?"
Both Helena and Konrad nodded.
The detective took a few steps up before stopping once more.
"Oh, and also, Konrad, I'm new to this town, so would you mind showing me around sometime? Especially the park and forest, it looks so beautiful, but I'm just so afraid of getting lost, haha."
Konrad chuckled.
"Of course I can. I actually go there to play chess almost every day, I wouldn't mind an opponent, Mister Mayhew."
The detective nodded.
"Okay then, we'll meet tomorrow at the lobby. Does 10 am sound good to you?"
Konrad paused for a moment before replying with a simple nod of the head.
With this done, Mayhew made his way upstairs, where Margret was waiting to discuss what they would do.
With this much progress in a single day, the detective at least hoped that Margret would let him off the hook once he told her everything he knew and had planned for the future.
His promise to Mrs. Smith was one step closer to being fulfilled.