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the valiant derek d. dobbs (monomythic) wrote in valesco, @ 2015-11-11 23:13:00

WHO Derek Dobbs and Therese Bonaccord
WHAT An interesting case detail
WHERE On the way to the Ministry
WHEN This morning

Therese’s chest was tight, and as she made her way toward the hit-wizard precinct, she got flashes of memories that had kept her up at night for weeks. She was, unfortunately, not a good follower of the advice she provided to her patients, to those who she believed needed calm and soothing words. Therese was not as full of grace as she liked people to believe, she withdrew, she kept her problems to herself because she’d seen people go through so much worse, so who was she to complain?

It was very easy to be jostled on the busy streets of London, and though she had tightly wound the rolls of parchment, the books, the letters, Therese found herself fumbling. Why had she not brought her bag? She had left her purse! It had been a mad dash around her flat and out the door---

As was her luck, it was the most blustery of days, and after being shouldered and spun around by a rude morning rush commuter, her rolls of parchment tumbled to the ground. Therese was able to sweep up most of them quickly, but a few were kicked away. She shot out her hand with surprising speed and managed to grab them, but one had unraveled and flown into the air. Therese jolted upright, eyes wide as she watched the letter float about, right past the head of---

“Dobbs!” Therese shouted, hurrying through the crowd, waving her hand. There were muggles everywhere, she could not pull her wand, and if she did her aim had never been the best. She tried to catch Derek’s eye,

“Allons-y! Grab that!”

Looking around in puzzlement for the source of the ruckus invoking his name, Derek raised his eyebrows when he finally saw the shouter. After catching sight of the piece of paper that must have been the reason for the wild gesticulating, he casually extended a hand and plucked it from the tumultuous breeze it was dancing on. At least he wouldn't have to arrest her for violating a secrecy statute.

Pulling his other hand from the pocket of his dragonhide duster (much more durable than cattle hide, he had to concede), Derek rolled the errant piece of paper back up and stopped in the midst of the flowing pedestrians, ignoring the grousing and non-literal cursing that ensued as he waited for her to catch up.

"Therese," he rumbled impassively, holding the scroll out for her to take.

Attempting to calm her breaths, Therese took the parchment back as graciously as she could, but it wasn’t very. She made to unroll it, but thought better of it, thinking that she should keep everything she had as untouched as she could until she could speak to the hit-wizards---

Her eyes shot up from her hands, and Therese nearly poked Derek in the chin with the parchment.

“You are a hit-wizard,” she said, as if it had not been a fact that she had known for the past nine years. Her lips pressed together in thought; she should most definitely continue to work with those that were already on her case, but Therese felt as if they were not taking her concerns seriously. Maybe they would after this new evidence, even if she was beginning to believe she was a bit crazy too...but at least she knew Derek.

Well, a little.

“I was going toward the precinct. I received something in the post and…” Her cheeks flushed, thinking of how silly this would sound, but how else could she explain it? “I think my dead ex-boyfriend is sending me letters.”

Derek scrubbed his face with his hand. He supposed he should have been prepared for this, being that he was in fact walking to work, where sentences like this were uttered with a surprising amount of regularity. However, he had not realised how precious those few moments from the Apparition point to the Ministry were, where he could transition peacefully from Wizarding world citizen to Magical Law Enforcement.

He was about to remark on the likelihood that her dead ex-boyfriend most likely wasn't sending her letters, but given his recent encounters with the apparently deceased, it wasn't as far from the truth as it sounded. Rather, her dead ex-boyfriend might not be as dead as presumed.

"Is that a letter from said dead ex-boyfriend?" he asked, nodding to the parchment scroll which might have severed his submental artery via papercut had it not been for his beard.

“It sounds crazy,” she said quickly, trying to establish that she knew that...that this was impossible, Remy was dead, it had been all over the news, but...Therese looked about, and then stepped to the side of a muggle telephone booth, so to get out of the stream of the early morning foot traffic, “but there are things...that only he would know.”

Therese could not look Derek in the eye as she fiddled with all the parchment in her hands, but somehow she managed to unravel the letter she had received this morning and a much older, more crinkled and faded one...that she should have burned years ago, but had kept in the back of a closet, buried in a trunk, unable to remove it because of feelings of dread that she could not shake.

Sticking the unnecessary items in some much too small robe pockets, Therese pressed the two letters up against the telephone booth, thinking that the muggle commuters would not be interested in what appeared to be the plastering up of posters. “Do you see? The handwriting is identical, and he speaks of my brother, which--that was only this month…”

She shook her head, “I don’t know what to do, if this is a joke or...but then the book that went missing…” Therese’s flush deepened. “If this is a joke someone is playing…”

Derek folded his arms and peered closer at the parchments she had plastered against the box. Glancing around casually for any lingering observers, he then took both letters out of her grasp.

"This is the original handwriting?" he asked, waving the yellowed parchment slightly.

Why would someone play a joke on her at all, let alone involve her dead former boyfriend, Derek mused, studying both the handwriting and the contents of the letters. She did rub elbows, in a sense, with some very high-profile athletes, but Therese Bonaccord was not exactly a household name, even after the abduction of her brother and the Monaco dignitary's son.

No, it was someone who was in a position to possess intimate knowledge of her personal life. Because they had witnessed it or heard it from her firsthand, or because they had researched her? That would be accomplished by getting close to and asking questions of those around her, which would surely seem unusual about someone relatively anonymous. So what was the motive? Sending taunting letters was one thing, but going to the trouble of impersonating a dead person…

Well, that was personal.

"Remind me what the stolen book was and why it's relevant," he said absently, now looking for indications of tremors in the presumably forged letter.

Therese felt very strange as she watched Derek read the letters, and her face grew hot. Not the one she had received today, but the older, frayed one...a love letter from someone who had convinced her he had actually been head over heels...someone who had turned out to be nothing but a liar, a madman, someone dangerous...and she’d never picked up on it. She’d been that blinded by love, and it had left a scar so deep that she couldn’t get rid of the letters he’d written to her because she felt like she deserved to be miserable about it. How could she have been so stupid?

“He gave it to me. He---wrote it,” she said softly. Therese thought back to the encounter, when Remy tossed the book on her desk and she had let him talk at her because she had been too stunned by his presence to do anything else. Artie Griffiths had been the one to notice it was missing, to remember the cover because of his obsessive ways, and Therese could no longer think all of these happenstances were happenstances at all. “About...he was an auror, he wrote about his time during the war, and...me, because...I was his cover.”

She suddenly could not look at Derek and turned her gaze toward where she knew the entrance to the Ministry should be.

“I do not know why anyone would take the time…” Therese shook her head, looking down at her feet. “I am sorry, you are not even on the case and I am taking up your morning.”

Therese's old boyfriend had been an Auror? Surprised, he wondered if Dorcas's or his own path had ever crossed with the wizard. Still mulling over that revelation, Derek waved aside her apology. True, the case had been passed to the official responders to Therese's reported break-in, and to his knowledge, there had been no new evidence to go off of aside from the initial breaking and entering, and petty theft. It was really happenstance that she had crossed his path this morning on the way to the Ministry, but she needn't feel sorry for showing him these new developments.

"Still report this to the lead Hit-wizard on your case," he said. "I can consult with them on anything they need."

Derek was quiet for a long moment after that, then looked at Therese as he raised one eyebrow thoughtfully. "Any reason someone would want to scare you, or play games with you in this way? Letters to… nonentities like us, not famous or celebrities, usually suggest someone with… intimate knowledge of their victims."

Handing the letter back to her, he added, "If the break-in and these are related, it sounds like someone with a grudge. This isn't the only one you've gotten, is it?"

Therese shook her head slowly, taking back the parchment and rolling them up. A grudge? Against her? She had a very professional reputation with her patients, never had a secret spoken in a session leaked to The Tattler or any other news source, so...her book was a work of fiction, inspired by the troubles of quidditch players she had seen, but…

“I have not checked my old post box,” she mumbled, thinking that this had been the first letter she had received since moving into her new house. Her post had been diverted to the main post office while she moved, work related items filtered through...Her face paled from its embarrassed tint, and she let out a breath.

“I will do that, after…” She put a hand out, touching Derek’s arm with gratitude. “Thank you for your help, even if it is a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He shrugged offhandedly. It was disquieting, to say the least, when the dead did not stay dead. In his own experiences, it was always the people you most wished were rotting in the Underworld, while those you wanted to encounter stayed silent, or worse, reappeared in the exact way you wished they wouldn't. "It's no trouble. "

Derek faltered slightly then, because it felt brusque to let this particular topic of conversation end there. So he instead gestured ahead of him before continuing on his way before detouring behind the telephone box. "I'll, erm—I'll walk you in."

A break-in to steal a strangely sentimental title, and mocking correspondence were too coincidental for his liking. Once the investigators had potential stalking on the table, the case would escalate, he knew. Then, hopefully, Therese would have some kind of answer, or at the very least, the knowledge people were trying to find answers as to the who and why and how of what had happened to her.

There was something else Therese had divulged that had nestled into his mind, that he knew he couldn't let go until he'd answered some questions of his own. The death of this Auror… yes, Derek would be looking into that.