Alex (clockwork) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2018-07-06 14:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | #november 2017, alex, alex x dylan |
Who: Dylan and Alex
When: Monday, October 30, evening
Where: Moxie’s
Status: Complete
Dylan was wary and a bit clipped when Alex called him. The past wasn’t anything he liked to dwell on, but it was ever-present and there, so his thoughts were always a turn away at any moment. Point Pleasant seemed to have that effect, as far as Dylan could tell, spreading enough tragedy around that the options were either to become mired in it or to avoid it. Had he been the sort of person who developed healthier coping mechanisms, maybe other options would come to mind, but he wasn’t.
It wasn’t really a secret that Dylan had been a police officer years ago. Just the job and other events had worn him down to a breaking point, leading it to be a part of his life that he skirted away from, even if he couldn’t leave it properly behind. Still, Dylan couldn’t be sure the reason for Alex’s interest: if it were personal, Dylan felt like he might owe it to him to provide what information he could, limited as it might end up being; if it were spectatorial, he could simply leave. He had agreed to meet Alex to at least find out that much.
So he had arranged to meet with Alex at Moxie’s Monday evening. Dylan had somewhat of an idea of what Alex looked like; Dylan wasn’t a regular at Joyland by any means, but there were occasional mornings he stopped on his way to work. Entering Moxie’s, he scanned the diner in case Alex had arrived early as well, but didn’t spot him. Selecting a booth seat that faced the door, Dylan settled in and picked up a menu, though he kept an ear out for the sound of the door opening.
It hadn't been too hard to track down former police officers who worked on disappearance cases but it had been harder to find one who would talk about their work. The first officer Alex had spoken to were happily retired and wanted nothing to do with anything that might stir up bad memories and ruin his peace. The second had hung up on him before he'd even really finished his pitch. By the time he'd found a third, he'd reconsidered his angle entirely and scrapped his story about working on a book. He'd been honest about wanting to find information about local disappearances and incidents. It was vague but to his credit, Dylan hadn't asked too many questions on the phone and agreed to meet later that day. It would be easier to explain in person than over the phone.
The photo Alex had seen in the newspapers had been familiar but it wasn't until he stepped into Moxie's and saw Dylan waiting that he remembered serving him at Joyland more than once. He wasn't regular enough to truly be on a first name basis with but he was more than one of those faces that just blurred together with the rest of the impatient, hurried morning crowd.
“Uh, Mr Bailey?” Alex said as he walked over to Dylan’s table. Did you address officers as Mr once they retired or were they still their rank? He didn't know but didn't dwell as he slid into the seat opposite. “I'm Alex, we spoke on the phone. Thank you for meeting me.”
Dylan looked up when he heard someone enter. Prior to, he had not known Alex’s last name, so while there had been something vaguely familiar about his face, it had not clicked into place and Dylan had not given it any thought. And he had still needed the the confirmation that Alex might really be a relation to Laura--her son would be about his age now, wouldn’t he?--and it wasn’t simply a coincidence. Now that Dylan knew to look for Laura, there were enough signs of her in Alex’s face that made it a touch surreal. The last time he had seen her, she had only been several years older than Alex was now. Offering Alex a small smile, he said, “Please, call me Dylan. I must admit to being a bit curious about what information you’re seeking.” He had a better idea, but that was still partially true and he wanted to see what Alex would lead with.
“Dylan,” Alex repeated with a small smile. He got comfortable in his seat as he thought about where to start. He wanted to jump right into the deep end and ask for anything he might have seen in his cop years but he didn't want to scare him off or come across as a crackpot either. It was a fine line. He noticed the menu that Dylan was holding. That was a good, safe topic while he tried to find something to open with. “Have you ordered yet?”
Dylan accepted the sidestep, since Alex was the one who had questions after all and if it helped to lead with something else and ease into whatever questions he had, so be it. While Dylan had some apprehension himself, he didn’t really want to make this any more difficult for Alex. “No, I haven’t yet. I didn’t get here long before you,” Dylan said, putting the menu down and sliding it a little toward Alex in case he wanted to look at it. “Though I quite often end up getting one of three things whenever I end up coming here, but I suppose I check out of habit.”
“Me too,” Alex said. He visibly relaxed his shoulders and settled a little deeper into the seat. He hadn't realised how tense he'd been but focusing on normal things helped. The guy had turned up, he probably wasn't a part of AIR hunting anyone with questions, he seemed normal enough… Maybe this would go well. Maybe he'd even get a lead or some kind of answer. He glanced over the menu then once he'd decided - fries were easy - he gently pushed it back to the other side of the table. “I'm good, thanks. I know what I'm getting.” He paused then added,” So… when did you become an officer?”
Dylan noted that Alex’s posture became less tense, expression turning thoughtful for a second. “In 1993. I worked in Portland briefly before moving back here when my grandfather fell ill,” he said. It felt like a lifetime ago, in some ways, and like no time at all, in other ways. He caught the eye of a waitress as she passed by, placing his order for a hamburger with fries and letting Alex place his order as well before continuing, “I was an officer for about eight years. There were quite a few disappearances during that time.” It was an understatement, really, but it was one of the things Alex had mentioned trying to look into, however general that had been.
“That's not too surprising here.” Alex considered the new information carefully as he tried to figure out what to do with it. It was one thing to find disappearances and if he'd truly been working on a book like he'd said, maybe that would have been enough but he needed to narrow down the conversation to AIR related disappearances. He needed to do it without sounding crazy too, that would prove to be the trickiest part. “The case I'm looking into, specifically, happened before you started but I've heard there's a few similar cases where kids come back after a few years. Were any of your cases found again after a few years? Perhaps roadside, clean enough that you knew they'd been looked after but they were too disorientated to tell you anything.drugs maybe or…” He leaned forward on his elbows and lowered his voice, ”It'd have been like their minds were wiped.”
Dylan quirked an eyebrow at Alex. The few years before Dylan worked there part didn’t surprise him; he remembered Laura had disappeared when they were children, but he had moved away while she was still missing. He had been delighted to discover that she had been found and to reconnect with her many years later, though she had been reticent to speak of what had happened to her and Dylan didn’t want to cause her further distress by prying too much. “There were several cases like that,” he said. “It was strange, but that, too, isn’t a surprise here.” Since Alex seemed to have done his research, he likely already knew that as well. “So you’re trying to determine if this case you’re looking into might have some connection to the others?” He pitched it as a question for confirmation, but it was a reasonable conclusion to reach.
“Yeah, that's exactly it. I think those involved…” Alex frowned at himself. He'd expected Dylan to catch onto why he wanted the information about similar cases but how much could he reveal before he was taken in for knowing too much? How soon before AIR caught word about some kid asking too many questions and ‘took care’ of him? “I mean, I think there's enough similarities to maybe find who did it and why.”
It wouldn’t be the first time someone had presented a theory about where people might have gone missing to Dylan, even if Alex hadn’t gotten into the specific of his yet, that were of varying reasonability. Since Dylan hadn’t been part of PPPD in years, it happened considerably less, but this wouldn’t be the first time even since then. He considered what Alex was saying and how he was being vague rather than detailed. “I am willing to hear you out and help if I am able,” Dylan said, giving Alex a thoughtful look. “Should you find out who and why, what would you want to do with this information? Proving anything definitively might be more difficult than you anticipate.”
That was a good question and Alex's frown deepened. He'd always just assumed that everything would fall into place and once he had enough proof to expose AIR for what they truly were, they'd close down and that would be it. But that had been the simple heroic fantasy of somebody hurting. Now that he was actually closer than before, exposure felt even further away. “I don't know,” he finally admitted. He slumped back into the seat and tried to figure out an answer. “I… I guess more than anything, I just want to know that what I was told was true. For myself more than anyone else. It's… It's complicated and I'm well aware I'll sound like a crackpot if I even told you half of what I've seen. And it's not like storming into their offices and shouting will do anything so… right now, I'm just looking for any similarity between cases and I'll figure out what to do with it later.”
Dylan considered Alex’s answer. It was at least a realistic one; there was a chance that Alex might be close to uncovering the truth, but equally whatever theory he had might ultimately be incorrect, or at least unable to be confirmed. Folding his hands on the table in front of him, Dylan glanced up as the waitress dropped off waters over for them, thanking her, then waited until she was out of earshot once more before speaking. “I’ll tell you as much as I can, from what I remember and with respect to the privacy of the people involved,” he said. Some of the children who went missing and were returned lived in town, as well as relatives of those who went missing and didn’t, so volunteering names and too much personal information was something Dylan wasn’t comfortable with, even if Alex could piece together a lot of it through combing news records, most likely. “And I wouldn’t worry to much about sounding like a crackpot. I’ve lived here in Point Pleasant long enough to have a high threshold for that,” Dylan said drily, offering Alex a reassuring smile.
Alex nodded. He understood the need for privacy and even if he was dying to find others who had been through it personally, he'd already seen how a place like Point Pleasant protected its own. “Thank you. I don't need names,” he said. He paused to take a drink of water then set the glass back down and continued. “I wanted to ask about a case, probably 17 years ago now, where a bunch of kids were all found at once. Were you working then? Did you see them, did they give anything away about where they'd been or did they even remember any of it?”
The particular instance Alex had seemed impossible after so much fruitless searching, like a miracle, so of course it stood out in memory. There had been other cases, here and there, of single children returning, disoriented and without memory. “I was still working then,” Dylan said. “It was rather remarkable, given how few people who go missing end up being found again, much less a group of them at once.” His expression turned thoughtful and he shook his head slightly. “Most of them didn’t remember anything at all, and those that did only had fragmented information about where they had been, at best.” He had never been sure how much of that was true ignorance, a response to trauma, or something else, but the end result was the same: nothing conclusive.
“Yeah, I suspected as much. I met one of them,” Alex lied. He didn’t have any proof that was why Neil had known more than he was letting on but he was the right age to be one of those kids. The idea had only recently come to him and he hadn’t seen the squirrely librarian to ask yet. Not that he expected any real answer, of course, but he usually found more in what Neil didn’t say. “He recognised one of the guys who… Well, who I suspect anyway. And please remember I’m not a crackpot but did they link it together with the fire at that research facility at all? They happened at the same time, didn’t they?”
Dylan raised an eyebrow. He was admittedly surprised by that, but it had been many years. Was it one of the kids--adults, now--who had remained in town? Or had Alex taken this investigation further? It would be hypocritical to ask him to specify, so Dylan didn't. “It isn't the most outlandish theory,” he said, not wanting to discourage but still a little noncommittal since he didn't know for sure. “But there was nothing found at the time to connect the facility to any of the disappearances, so it may merely have been a coincidence.” Coincidences did happen in Point Pleasant, but they were admittedly few and far between. “By ‘one of the guys’, do you mean someone who worked at the research facility?”
Alex resisted the urge to roll his eyes but it was hard. Of course the police had dismissed any connection, why had he expected anything different? If they had been smart enough to figure it out, the new AIR facility wouldn’t be standing and kids like that young girl wouldn’t be going missing again. “Yeah but I’m sure it’s probably just coincidence,” Alex said sarcastically but took a deep breath before he continued. “Sorry, it’s just… It’s kind of personal. Not me but someone close to me went through this and it’s hard not to want some sort of justice, whatever that looks like.” He shrugged. “What are your theories then? Off the record if you must.”
Dylan's lips quirked, wryly. Even without piecing together the Laura connection, it wasn't a stretch to assume Alex had a vested interest. “No, I understand. I figured you had some personal connection to someone who disappeared, for one reason or another,” he said. His expression returned to something more serious. What he had to say was less of a theory, more of an explanation of his position. “The way I’ve viewed it is this: regardless of my personal feelings, there was never enough concrete evidence nor any eyewitnesses willing to recount anything to definitively prove a conclusive argument against one person or organization, including the research institute. Maybe it’s from fear of retaliation, or simply a desire to move on from something traumatic, but without one or the other of those things it always felt irresponsible to jump to a conclusion.”
He sighed. “I do agree that it is unusual that the research institute burned down around the same time that that group of children were found again, but many people died in that fire. Even if there is a connection between the two, I’m not sure that it would have led anywhere good for those kids.” It was the sort of thing had kept him up at night, years ago, and kept him up at night sometimes still, so he could understand the desire to find justice, or at least answers; his mindset had become jaded enough that he wasn’t sure what that would even look like at this point, though. “Will getting answers about what happened to this person you were close to bring you peace?”
“I don't know,” Alex admitted. He wanted to think that some sort of proof would lead to closure and if he could close the place down in the meantime, that'd be even better but Dylan had a point. Even if he could get something close to justice for his mother, what would the other victims think? The one person he'd managed to find who had been there certainly looked like he'd prefer to forget everything but that wasn't possible when they were still out there. And if any of those other rescued kids had anything like his mother did, another spotlight on their history would just make it even harder for them to hide. “I don't think I'll know until I've got them but I've seen what they did to those kids and I've seen what was left behind. I just want to know why she…” He stopped, sighed and looked away from Dylan. He watched the waitress behind the counter instead, it was a safer place to focus. “She died from it. Indirectly and unprovable but…” He shrugged and turned back towards Dylan. He knew he was saying too much and the other man would probably block his number after they parted but he didn't care. “And they're back doing it all over again to a whole new generation, like that Lucas kid. It's hard not to get angry about that. I just want… I don't know. Something.”
Dylan studied Alex a moment, then dropped his gaze. Surprise, followed by a dull pang of sadness, struck Dylan with the news of Laura's passing. While they hadn't been close or spoken in years, she had been a friend once. They had fallen out of touch when she moved away, exchanging a few letters earlier on, but that had trailed off, as they had each become mired in their own lives. How recently had this happened? There hadn't been any reason for him to have received notification of her death since she had wanted to leave Point Pleasant behind and start anew. Regardless, he could understand why Alex felt further driven in his pursuit for justice. "I'm sorry for your loss," Dylan said, looking back at Alex. "She is--was--your mother, right? Laura. I knew her a little, years ago, but I haven't seen her since she left here. You look like her and your last name's a bit of a giveaway. So I can understand why this is important to you and I will help you as much as I can." He still wasn't sure what extent that could even be, exactly, or to what extent Alex was acting on his own or if he had other help, but Dylan felt like he needed to offer, at least.
Alex looked at Dylan, surprised to have found somebody who knew her back in the day. Really, he'd considered more than once how strange it was he hadn't met anybody who had a past connection with her but now that he'd found somebody, his feelings surprised him. There was relief in the mixed bag of emotions the news brought and he realised that until he'd met somebody who had been there, he'd started to wonder if she'd ever lived in Point Pleasant at all. He had known she had, on a surface level where he'd been told countless times, but the confirmation somebody else knew her, that they'd remembered her… “Wow,” he said softly as he took a moment to process everything. He took a breath, held it, and let it out slowly through his mouth before he felt steady enough to continue. “Uh, she's buried here if you want to, uh, I guess ‘see’ her. With my grandparents by that twisted tree near the middle. The one that leans like it's pointing...” He shrugged again and appraised Dylan carefully, trying to guess at his age. Probably closer to Laura's than he'd first assumed but still on the good side of fifty for sure. “When did you know her? What was she like?”
Giving Alex a moment to process, Dylan took a sip of his water to calm his own nerves. He felt guilty now that he hadn’t made and effort to stay in contact with Laura, that years had slipped by and he hadn’t thought about her in more than a passing curiosity as to how she was doing that he never followed up on, but what reason would he have to think she would have wanted to hear from him? There was likely not much he would have been able to do for her, since there were times when he could barely manage his own life, and he quashed the feeling down for now since it was too self-centered. “I think I know the spot you mean. I’ll pay her a visit.” His voice caught a little, so he cleared his throat. “I mostly knew her when we were kids. We lived in the same neighborhood, and Point Pleasant has never been a large town. She was quiet, but good company. We spent a lot of time running around outside, climbing trees to read books in, until she disappeared. My family moved to England not long after that--family emergency--and even back then missing people here were sadly nothing new, so I never properly knew what happened to her until I moved back.
“I was happy to see her. She was still quiet, but different after whatever she went through. She never seemed to want to talk about it and I never wanted to pry. There would sometimes be weeks where I wouldn’t see her, where she’d fall off and keep to herself. We tended to run in different circles anyway, since I was already becoming more of a homebody at that point and she wanted to get out and enjoy her life,” he said, smiling a little. “Then a couple years after that, she decided to move to Portland to start anew. That’s the last time I saw her.”
Alex had heard people talk about her at the funeral as a quiet kid but they were mostly family he’d never met or barely remembered. She’d had friends from Portland but as far as he’d known, nobody from Point Pleasant had come. He’d been back to the town once or twice since he was old enough to remember but that was only after his grandparents had been buried locally and they never stopped to track down anybody else. A visit to the cemetery, somewhere to eat, back home again. “She never really talked about being here much. She always said there wasn’t much here so it wasn’t worth thinking about.” He pushed his hair back out of his eyes as another thought occurred to him, “Did you know my father too? She told me once that he was from here.”
Dylan shook his head. “Not especially. I knew who he was by rumor and what Laura mentioned about him on occasion. I met him a couple times, but we didn’t really get along,” he said, carefully neutral; he had an ill opinion of Ashley from how unreliable he had been, how he had abandoned Laura when she was pregnant, but she had likely been better off without him as that simply seemed to be the way he was, from what Dylan knew. Maybe he had changed over time, but Dylan hadn’t kept tabs on him and he doubted it. “I can’t say I’m surprised she didn’t speak of here. Whatever she went through seemed as though it must have been very traumatic.” He paused, as the waitress came over, bringing their food, and he thanked her reflexively before she departed once more. “Are details of what happened to her something you came across in your research? Or did you mean of some of the other missing children?” he asked.
Alex wanted to ask more about his father as his mother rarely gave much information about him but there wasn't a natural way to turn the conversation back. He let it go, making a mental note to maybe look the Hawthorne family up too. He took a fry from the bowl in front of him and used that to delay answering. How much could he reveal? Laura was dead but AIR still existed and might have spies and Dylan said he was open minded but Alex had a feeling dreamwalking might push that. “I knew about her before I came here. It's why I'm here. After… You know, everything… I wanted to make sense of what she'd shown me,” Alex said without noticing his slip. His mind was on Neil. He'd have to find out his surname and check the records. “The other one… I'm not sure about his details but for all I know, he could be one of the fire kids. He's the right age for it, maybe 26, 27.”
Dylan layered the lettuce and tomato that came alongside the burger on top of it, then the bun, to have something to do with his hands though he didn’t start to eat quite yet. He was listening carefully to Alex’s words, not trying to catch him in anything, but to be attentive. Still, Dylan quirked an eyebrow at some of the phrasing he chose, though addressing one thing at a time was likely easier. “What do you mean what she showed you? Like a drawing?” He didn’t recall Laura being particularly artistic, though that could have changed with time.
Alex sighed as he ran a hand through his hair. He'd need to be more careful next time he approached somebody but it was hard when it had been his reality for so long. “It's… complicated,” he said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “The kind of thing that'd convince you I'm crazy too but…” For a moment, considered what it'd mean to tell Dylan everything. He could leave him to contact his police friends, they'd investigate,find proof and AIR would shut down. It was a nice fantasy but it'd never happen. More likely he'd contact his friends on the force and get him arrested for… Was being crazy a crime if you weren't dangerous? He sighed again. “At the risk of it though, I will say she came back more different than you saw. That's one of the reasons I want to find others who went through it, to see if it happened to them too. Maybe start a support group for mute…” he cut himself off quickly and bit back the building sarcasm. “I just want to compare notes with what I already know.”
Had Dylan spent less time in Point Pleasant, Alex might have sounded crazy, but as it stood he didn’t seem particularly so. Dylan wasn’t sure how much of it he believed to be true and how much of it was Alex trying to make sense out of something tragic that had happened to his mother, but Dylan was willing to keep an open mind regardless. He mulled over what ‘more different’ might mean; in a place like Point Pleasant, that could be anything. Quiet for a moment as he considered what Alex presented, Dylan mused aloud, “So you’re theorizing the research institute is kidnapping children and… changing them in a deeper way than what the general trauma of being separated from their families would result in?” He wasn’t quite convinced, but he kept his tone more toward neutral. “Was the other person you suspect going through the same--one of the fire kids, you said?--able to confirm this?”
Alex studied Dylan carefully, trying to decide if there was a hint of sarcasm or disbelief hidden under the words. He was sure there probably was - he'd have done it if the roles were reversed - but decided to proceed as if there wasn't. As long as Dylan was calmly listening, he didn't care what kinds of things he thought of his story. “Well, no, not yet,” he admitted. Neil hadn't really been able to confirm anything except that he was afraid and paranoid. “That's why I want to find them. I can't find anywhere else she'd have developed these, uh, skills and I want to see if anyone else has had anything similar experiences since. But as soon as I started asking about the Institute, he was… Everything changed, he's terrified of somebody looking into it. He freaked out when he saw a picture of Wilkes, that was the guy who started it all, and why would that happen if they weren't connected? You've got to admit, something like a building burning down and a whole bunch of missing kids coming back on that same night… Anywhere else that'd be obvious and this place doesn't seem to do coincidences. And then they open back up and a few months later, the disappearance rate for kids starts to spike up again? Come on.”
Having a conclusion and then retroactively making clues fit it was the sort of thing Dylan tried to avoid. It was too easy to fall into unconscious biases or false hope but whatever hesitation he personally felt, he kept to himself and listened to Alex. Keeping an even keel and reserving judgment in most circumstances were things that both came naturally to Dylan and had been cultivated with practice. The reaction he described did admittedly sound suspicious in a way that might speak of paranoia, guilt, or maybe just not wanting his privacy invaded. “It does sound like an unusual reaction, but Dr. Wilkes was considered a well-respected member of the community, though I can’t personally speak to his character. And say the building burning down and the children returning are connected. Quite a few people died inside the building that night; would you be saying they were involved in the fire?” He didn’t touch the part about Amelia Lucas’ disappearance, since one girl gone missing was bad enough and brought with it Dylan’s own fears that more would follow, but he hadn’t been able to do anything about it before and now he was in even less of a position to.
“I mean… I guess but…” Alex frowned as he thought about what the implications of anybody admitting the connection between the two events. He definitely hadn’t thought of it that way before and maybe that explained why the secrecy. Though he was still convinced Neil was paranoid about a bit more than being caught for arson. “Wouldn’t you light a fire if it was your only way out from something like that? They did some pretty messed up experiments on those kids.” It wouldn’t be useful to argue with Dylan though so Alex tried to remember any other questions or topics he’d planned to cover. “So… there were no leads or anything about who was involved in the kidnappings? The ones I’m talking about where they all came back the same way, were they assumed to be related at all?”
Dylan took a bite of his hamburger while Alex spoke, considering the question posed. It seemed a bit extreme, in the moment, plus Dylan was more cognizant of the potential consequences, but in the mindset of a scared kid who would have been a kidnapping victim, who knew. He was listening closely to Alex to absorb the information he presented and at the mention of “messed up experiments”, Dylan frowned, since Alex hadn’t specified what he believed to had been done to his mother or any of the others. “Nothing to indicate there was any one person behind the children who had gone missing. Of the ones who came back, even before the fire, none of them could remember anything about where they had been,” he said. There were the usual avenues of looking into potential family members or other potential suspects of that nature, as well as what ones might be considered runaways, but Alex likely wasn’t interested in those. “How did you find out they conducted messed up experiments on these children?”
Alex was less interested in how he knew everything than going back to how the police missed what was, to him, a totally obvious modus operandi but he knew he had to give Dylan something. It wasn't fair to expect somebody to give every answer they had and give nothing back. “My mom,” he admitted reluctantly. “Some of her memory recovered from whatever scrambling they did but it was years later and nobody would have believed her without proof. It's complicated… So the police dismissed how all these kids would always go missing then just turn up back here years later, no memory, no information, always well cared for but sometimes with weird scars?” He frowned. It seemed so obvious to him with the gift of hindsight that he couldn't imagine dismissing it as anything but related. “Even if they couldn't tell you where they were, surely the similarities… were any drop off points used more than once?”
There were definitely commonalities between some of the children who went missing and turned back up, that part Dylan couldn’t deny. If he returned to that mindset, the sheer number of unexplained missing children had been overwhelming; PPPD had been staffed adequately based on population size, but less so for the ultimately violent nature of what happened in the town. “I wouldn’t say dismissed. Given the circumstances, it seemed as though there might have been a connection between who was taking some of them, but there was never evidence enough to trace too far back. But you also need to understand that for all the kids who turned back up, there are far more who didn’t and remain unaccounted for to this day. There was also only so much questioning to do for the children who were returned with no memory of what happened. Most of them were found again nearby to their homes, rather than any particular drop off points. Quite often their families were simply grateful to have them back and moved away to start over someplace new.” However successful that was, Dylan was somewhat doubtful. Point Pleasant was the kind of place that often dragged people back. “With what your mother recovered of her memory, was she able to identify Dr. Wilkes as her captor to you?”
The reasons for not pushing the investigations made a lot of sense when Dylan laid them out like that but it was still too easy for Alex to feel like the force hadn’t done enough. He felt a twinge of guilt about that as he realised he only knew what he did because of events that wouldn’t be believable to the average person, let alone admissible in court. “Kind of,” Alex said slowly. He wondered how he could explain she’d never said his name and only remembered his face in dreams she couldn’t properly remember. “I don’t think he was the one who took her and I don’t think she really knew where she was. Only that it was a research facility and she recognised his face. It’s not really enough to convict someone on, I know, but there were so many loose ends and things she couldn’t explain properly. I came here to try to make sense of it all for myself, to just… I don’t know. Shut it down and be a hero?” He gave a bitter laugh and shook his head. “Even just finding somebody else like her would be good. Some kind of proof, I guess, do you know what I mean?”
Dylan considered Alex’s words and nodded slowly,eating a few fries. There was a certain reassurance that came with merely knowing what had happened for sure, that there was some kind of answer and at least another person who could corroborate. “I believe so. You'll find quite often that for one reason or another, people are drawn back here.” There was one young man who was one of the children found around the time of the fire who was still in town that came to mind fastest, but given the cagey way Neil reacted, Dylan often kept a polite berth of him. He hesitated to reveal Neil to Alex, though Neil very well may have been the person Alex had mentioned finding already, but Dylan would have to try to talk to Neil. “Though even if you were able to find others to confirm your story, it would likely be an uphill battle without incontrovertible proof, since Dr. Wilkes was known for his altruism and wealthy enough that he could wield some influence.”
“Yeah, I got that already.” Once Alex had found out where his mother had been experimented on, he had spent a time looking into the founder’s history trying to find some kind of crack in his facade. It was a strong one though with not enough people looking too closely into what he did, beyond the front of social sciences and behavioural problems in kids. He already knew that he wouldn’t be able to take down that kind of reputation and end the current facility either. Not alone and not without more voices behind him to confirm what he said. “I know stopping it would be impossible, I’m not an idiot, but it’d feel so damn good. Can you do me a favour? If you think of anybody who might have anything, either they worked on previous cases or you know somebody who matches the kind of description I’m looking for, can you please give them my number?”
“I certainly understand the impulse,” Dylan said, since that much was certainly true. If Alex were correct, if this were all true and not merely an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, Dylan wasn't sure how much there was he could do to help, but he would certainly try. He nodded his acquiescence, since that much Dylan could do. “And I will try to talk to a couple people, though I'm unsure how readily they'll follow up with you.” Then, making up his mind, he added, “If anything comes up or if you think of anything else that would be of help to you, let me know and I will do what I can to aid you. I am not necessarily in opposition to what you hope to prove and I am sure you are being careful, but some of it I will need to further contemplate.”
“Thank you,” Alex said and he meant it. He figured anybody Dylan talked to might take him more seriously than some stranger who’d only been in town for a few months and might help him be seen less as some conspiracy crackpot trying to uncover past hurts for the sake of it. Not that he really expected anybody to call because he knew he wouldn’t have under the circumstances but… maybe there was somebody else who had lived through it who wanted to talk. He grabbed the last couple of fries he’d been eating while they were talking and offered Dylan a small smile. “Oh, by the way, a friend of mine said you were a teacher now. What do you teach?”
Dylan smiled in return at Alex and decided to leave that matter as it was for now, leaving it to him to ask if there was anything else he wanted to know at the moment. Dylan finished eating his burger, then wiped his hands on a napkin. “Government and Economics. I’ve been teaching at Chamberlain for several years now--what’s your friend’s name?” If his friend was around his age, there was the off-chance Dylan might recognize the name and he was idly curious.
“Mike. Mike Alton,’ Alex replied after taking a moment to think about it. He’d seen it on his bandpage and social media accounts but hadn’t been friends long enough to know it instinctively. He briefly wondered if he’d hear how much they looked alike as it wouldn’t be the first time he heard it but he couldn’t see it too clearly. They shared the same colourings (when Alex didn’t dye his hair anyway) and were the same age but beyond that… “I can’t see him being big on your class though. Got any good gossip on him?”
Mike Alton. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but no student came immediately to mind on that alone. “I’m afraid nothing comes immediately to mind, which is likely for the best. His name sounds familiar, but. I believe his mother is a physician-- a neurologist?--and that’s more likely the cause for recollection.” Dylan leaned back against the booth once more. “How long have you been in Point Pleasant now?”
Alex shrugged as Dylan speculated on Mike’s mother. He’d seen Mike’s dad but his mother was a mystery to him. A doctor though… He knew it was probably a dead end but if he could suss her out, maybe she could help him with other ones in the area and maybe even know somebody who was working at the research facility before it closed. “Since the summer. She died in May so I just finished my classes and had this genius plan to move here and find out why she was the way she was.” He shrugged. It felt so cold and clinical to say it like that but it was what happened, if not a simplified version that missed everything in between and all the grey feelings with it. He considered adding something else but decided not to. He knew Dylan would probably have questions but he wasn’t sure he wanted to answer too many right then.
That answered what Dylan had wondered earlier, that Laura’s passing was relatively recent. Alex’s want for answers would have made sense either way, but Dylan could see how that could be an additional motivator. “It’s not the worst plan, and I do hope you’re able to find the answers you are looking for,” he said, sincerely, even if he doubted that they would be easy to come by. There would likely be more for them to discuss, later, but for now Dylan wanted to think over a few things of what Alex had said, so Dylan didn’t question him about it further. “Did you want anything else to eat?” he asked instead, since they both seemed to be finished with their food otherwise.
Alex had expected Dylan to have more questions about his mother but he appreciated when he didn’t. He considered the empty dishes in front of him for a moment then shook his head, “No thanks. I think I’m good. I should get going...” He tried to think of any more questions he needed to ask before they parted ways and he was sure he’d find some later but that was okay, he had Dylan’s number. He stood and awkwardly held out his hand towards the other man. “Thank you for this, I really appreciate it. And if there’s anything else you can think of…”
There were still questions Dylan had about Laura, but it hardly seemed fair to press Alex further about his mother at the moment. Taking out his wallet, Dylan left cash to sufficiently cover their food and tip before rising as well, shaking Alex’s hand and giving him a small smile. “I hope I can be of some help. I’ll call you if I can think of anything else. Feel free to call me as well if you think of any other questions, or if anything else comes up,” he said, releasing Alex’s hand. “It was nice to meet you, the occasional coffee run-in aside.” With that, Dylan moved out of the booth, to take his leave.