Archive of Our Own ^beta

Olive almost bumps into him as she heads towards her seat.

“Olive?”

She turns and looks back at the person who’d said her name. “…Colton? Is that you?”

“Holy shit,” Colton Rivera says. “It’s been a long time. How’s it going?”

“Uh, it’s fine. How about you?”

Olive got her masters recently — but she’s coming back to Gotham, because student loans are expensive, and rent is cheap, and the job she’s gotten for herself pays well.

“I’m doing pretty great,” he says. “I got out, I’ve got myself a man…actually, hey, we’re heading back to Gotham because he’s got an art exhibition. Check it out?”

“Are you doing promotion for me?” A man turns around. Colton’s boyfriend, probably, based on what he just said. “Hi. I’m Ryan.”

“Olive Silverlock,” she answers. “I take it you’re dating this loser?”

“Hey!” Colton says, but he’s smiling. Olive thought she’d never see the day.

Ryan puts a hand around Colton’s shoulders. “It’s an honor.” There’s a twinkle in his eye. He seems a little preppy for the kind of guy who’s putting on an art exhibition in Gotham, but she can’t really make assumptions like that. “How’d you and Colton meet up?”

“We knew each other in high school,” she answers. “Part of the same friend group. Crazy that we’re both here, of all nights.”

“Well, hey,” Ryan says, butter-smooth, “a friend of Colton’s is a friend of mine. Here.” He passes her a business card. “You really should come to my exhibit.”

“Uh, thanks,” Olive says. She should really find her seat before the train gets going. “We’ll catch up then, yeah?”

“Sure thing,” Colton answers. “It was nice to see you, though. I like the hair. It suits you.”

Olive touches her hair, which now comes down in a short bob instead. She cut it sophomore year of college. She hasn’t thought about it in a while. “Uh…thanks.” She turns away and heads for her seat. It’s a pretty small train — only a couple cars. And it looks like there aren’t a lot of people on the train, either.

Olive stows her bag in the overhead compartment, and sits down. Someone’s sitting in the seat near the window.

“Oh. I didn’t think I’d gotten a seat next to someone else.” She turns, and her glasses slip slightly down her nose. “Apologies. I’m Taylor.”

“Olive,” she answers, mood now firmly crashed. “If you need me to move and I fell asleep, feel free to wake me up. I don’t care that much.”

“Alright,” Taylor says. “If I need to. Hey, you want a mint?”

“No, thanks.”

Olive puts her earbuds in and prepares for the long train ride to Gotham.

She’s woken up by an announcement on the train. Taylor’s also fallen asleep in her own seat.

“May all passengers repeat to the caboose. I repeat, all passengers to the caboose.”

Olive gets up with a sigh. What’s going on here?

When she arrives at the caboose, she sees the other passengers. Colton and Ryan, of course. And…are those…the Mizoguchi siblings? Wow. One hell of a reunion. Olive looks down.

Oh, shit.

That’s a dead body.

“Is this everyone?” Maps — because it’s definitely Maps, and wow has she changed since high school — asks. She looks around.

“I was sitting next to someone. She’s probably on her way,” Olive answers.

“Okay,” Maps says. She stops pacing. “Wait, Olive? Holy crap.”

Colton lets out a low chuckle. “If only Pom was here. Then we’d be having a high school reunion for real.”

“And Kathy,” Maps points out. “But…wow. Most of the detective club, back together.” She looks back down at the dead body.

Just then, Taylor walks in. She looks down. “What’s going on here? Where did that come from?”

“Well, that’s what I’m here to find out,” Maps says. “For those of you that don’t already know me — the name’s Maps. I’m a private investigator.”

It suits her perfectly. Olive would hardly have expected anything else from Maps.

“Uh, this isn’t Murder on the Orient Express,” Ryan says.

“No, it’s not,” Maps agrees. “For one, this train’s not steam powered.”

“Okay,” he says, putting his hands up. “You don’t gotta be so passive-aggressive.”

“Now that everyone’s here…I have to ask. Does anyone know who this man is? I could start digging through his stuff, but I don’t really want to tamper with evidence, even with gloves.”

Olive doesn’t know the guy.

“He was sitting in the seat across the aisle from us,” Colton says. “But Ryan and I don’t know him personally. Ryan invited him to his gallery.”

“Okay, stuff it is,” Maps mutters. She squats over the body and digs through his pockets, pulling out a wallet. “Does the name Gavin Sanders mean anything to any of you?”

Everyone either shrugs or shakes their head.

“Okay, then.” She takes a deep breath. “I don’t have reason to suspect anyone right now. But I do have reason to believe this was foul play.”

She carefully turns over the body. He was foaming at the mouth. Olive looks away.

“This is no ordinary drug overdose. This is poison.” Maps’s gaze sweeps around the crowd, with a deep intensity. “So either he poisoned himself in the train bathroom and collapsed out here instead of staying there…or someone here poisoned him.”

“Mia, aren’t you being a little dramatic?” a woman Olive doesn’t recognize says. She’s standing next to Kyle. Girlfriend, maybe?

“If this guy really was murdered,” Colton says, “I wanna know. So I can stay the hell away from them.”

Olive agrees, if she’s being honest with herself. She’d rather not deal with a murderer on the train. If this really is a murder. It wouldn’t surprise her if Maps is just looking for any glimmer of excitement in what would be a fairly ordinary train ride.

“How do we know you didn’t do it?” Taylor says, inspecting one of her cuticles or something.

“Hey,” Kyle growls.

“She wouldn’t,” Olive says. Despite the fact that it’s been years since she last knew Maps, and she seems to have changed quite a bit in turn — Olive knows this.

“I don’t mind,” Maps says. “It probably does seem like I’m trying to cover for my own crime by pinning it on someone else, huh? Well, let me explain. Reality doesn’t tend to play by these kinds of rules, but a while ago, this one mystery writer came up with these ten rules for detective fiction. One of them is that the detective is never the culprit.”

“Are you really trying to argue that because of some rules for mystery fiction that you can’t, categorically, be the culprit?” She crosses her arms. “Don’t make me laugh.”

“Oh, I agree that they’re generally not applicable in reality.” Maps waves a hand. “But I need you to trust me, okay? It doesn’t work if you don’t trust me.” She turns towards Kyle and the other woman. “I didn’t get up from my seat this whole time, right?”

“Uh, nope,” Kyle says. “Alibi confirmed.”

“You could’ve led with that,” Taylor says. She sighs. “So what’s your plan now, oh great detective?”

“I’d like to talk to everyone one-on-one,” Maps declares. “Get a general sense for if anyone might be lying so far. It’s harder to get away in a one-on-one scenario.” She looks around. “I’ll be going to the next car for that, if anyone wants to join me first.”

Olive follows her first. She doesn’t know what exactly compels her, but— that was her best friend. It’s not a bad thing that she wants to catch up.

“Maps?” Olive slides into the train car.

“Olive.” Maps turns. She’s grinning. “I missed you. How was college?”

“It was good,” Olive answers. “I thought you stayed in Gotham. What are you doing here?”

“Came out to watch Kyle’s game,” Maps answers. “I want to trust you, Olive.”

Olive can read between the lines. She was Maps’s best friend, once upon a time. But that doesn’t give her too much now.

“I know,” she says. “I’ll tell you the truth. I was asleep the whole time. I have no idea who this Gavin guy is, and even less reason to want him dead.” She looks up. “And…I missed you a lot.”

“I missed you too,” Maps says, softly. “I like the haircut, by the way.”

Olive flushes. She looks Maps over. “I think…the long hair suits you, too.”

Maps has her hair tied back in a braid, tucked into the collar of her trench coat. She still has a flower hairclip. It makes her look older, which was probably the idea.

“Thanks!” she cheers. “I believe you. And…if you come up with anything, you can tell me, too. I dunno how much you’ve kept up with your skills since leaving Detective Club, but you’re smart. You might be able to catch something I missed.”

“I…appreciate your faith in me,” Olive says. She exits the train car, joining the others back at the crime scene.

Colton stands up to walk in next. “How was it?” he asks, in a low enough tone where only she can hear it.

“I don’t think any of us are actually suspects,” Olive replies. “She’s just trying not to look biased. And to catch up a little, I think.”

“Okay,” he says, entering the train car.

Olive sighs. She’d been looking forward to a pretty uneventful journey — she’d only really expected there to be anything eventful after she got back to Gotham, considering, well, Gotham.

“This timing sucks.” She looks up at the sound of someone talking — oh. Kyle.

“I’m glad Mia’s here, at least,” the woman replies. “She’s quite competent, isn’t she?”

“Of course she is,” Kyle answers. “She lives and breathes this kind of stuff. Has since we were young.”

The woman chuckles. “And what was that other man talking about earlier?”

“Colton? Oh, yeah. We were all at Gotham Academy together,” Kyle explains to her. “It was really just our group of friends, but…we did get into some stuff while we were there.” He smiles. “I haven’t really thought about the rest of them in a while. You know tennis keeps me busy.”

“Maps mentioned that while we were talking,” Olive says, cutting into the conversation. “How did the match go?”

“Kinda hard to be thinking about tennis with something like this,” he admits. “But I won. Uh, let me introduce you two. Olive, this is Melissa, my girlfriend. Melissa, this is Olive. She was one of the classmates I mentioned.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Melissa says. Olive’s just glad Kyle didn’t mention the whole “ex” thing, because that would’ve made things way more awkward than they need to be. She gets it. Most of the others she hasn’t thought about much since high school — she was texting Maps throughout her freshman year, but after Maps graduated, they drifted apart. And now…

Maps is different, too. But Olive likes it a lot.

“It’s nice to meet you too.” Olive sticks her hand out. Melissa shakes it. “Just curious…what do you two think of all this?”

“It’s horrible.” Melissa looks away from the body. “I can’t possibly think of any reason why someone might want to kill a stranger.”

“I trust Mia,” Kyle says. “She’ll figure it out. I don’t know what will happen when she does, but I know she will. We’re still shut up on this train. If the killer gets exposed, who’s to say they won’t try to target Mia?”

“We won’t let that happen,” Olive says. “And besides…she seems to have picked up a few tricks. If it came to that, I don’t think the killer would succeed.”

“You’re right, but still…” Kyle looks around at everyone else gathered. “Do you suspect anyone?”

Olive shrugs. “I don’t know for sure. We don’t really know enough about how things happened. The whole point right now is trying to gather information. As we get more information, we’ll be able to make better conclusions. Like…none of us even know who the victim is. Supposedly. But someone has to, right? Because otherwise, there’s no reason for him to be dead.”

“What if it wasn’t supposed to be him?” Kyle proposes. “She said earlier that she didn’t think it was suicide.”

“She said she didn’t think it was an overdose,” Olive corrects. “It’s not the same thing.”

“Right.” He frowns. “I guess I just got too wrapped up in all this…maybe he really did kill himself. Or maybe not.”

“At least if he killed himself we wouldn’t be dealing with the prospect that one of us might be a murderer,” Melissa snaps.

Everyone turns to look at her. The train car is deathly silent, save for the rumbling of the train’s motion.

She sighs. “I don’t wish that on anyone, of course. It’d just be preferable to thinking of this as a murder.”

After a beat, the atmosphere relaxes.

“I get it,” Kyle reassures Melissa. Olive slips away from the conversation. She kneels next to the body to take another look at it. She really can’t spot much beyond the foaming at his mouth. Definitely dead, and definitely poison. But the question is — where did the poison even come from? She doesn’t think Maps is looking into how he got poisoned very much — she’s looking for the culprit, and looking for their motive. It’s not a bad thing, but Olive thinks even if they do manage to figure out who did it, it’ll be impossible to say anything definitive without knowing how.

She rises to her feet and heads for the bathroom. Maybe she’ll be able to get a clue as to how he got poisoned there. It looks like he had been coming from there, and if it wasn’t the bathroom, then the method would have to be something in his stuff. She’s not digging around in someone else’s belongings for this.

Immediately, she’s hit with the smell of vomit.

Oh. He probably wasn’t poisoned in the bathroom — he was trying to get the poison out. Olive doesn’t know what exactly that changes, aside from narrowing the time the crime could’ve occurred a little bit.

So…she knows who to talk to next.

She walks back over to the train car Maps is talking to everyone in.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Olive says. “I just…had some info you might want, Maps.”

“Really?” Maps says. “What is it?”

“He didn’t get poisoned in the bathroom,” Olive declares. “He must have gotten poisoned before. He was trying to vomit it up.”

Colton goes pale. “Oh no.”

“What is it?” Maps rounds on him.

“He was wondering if anyone had something to chew or suck on,” Colton says. “He said he was trying to quit smoking. So I offered him a breath mint?”

“And where’d you get the breath mint from?” Maps asks. She looks dangerous — but also kinda hot — no, bad Olive!

“Uh…I dunno. Someone else gave me a tin,” Colton says. He gets it out of his pocket. “She said she didn’t want them.”

“She?” Olive frowns. She can only think of a few women on the train. Her, Maps, Melissa…and Taylor.

“Yeah. I felt like I’d seen her before somewhere, or something. Maybe on some kind of trip for work or something.”

“At the start of the train ride, right?” Maps says. “Do you still have them?”

“Yeah.” Colton takes out the pack of breath mints from his pocket. “I probably shouldn’t eat these, right?”

“No.” Maps snatches them out of his hand. “I’ll be taking a look at this, but…it must have been that other woman who gave them to you.”

“Taylor,” Olive says. “I was sitting next to her.”

“Earlier, I had the conductor call the police. They’ll be waiting for us at the train station when we arrive,” Maps declares. “And I’ll be ready to provide them with all the evidence they need. They trust me.” She smiles. “Even if they probably shouldn’t.”

“Are you going to…to tell everyone what happened?” Colton asks.

“No,” she answers. “But I would like to talk to her. Colton, if you would?”

“Sure,” he says. He exits the train car.

“Thanks for the assist, Olive.”

She blinks. “I’m sure you would’ve figured it out too, if you’d looked in the bathroom yourself.”

“I guess I just got too focused on this opportunity,” Maps says sheepishly, and Olive sees glimmers of the person she used to be in high school, just…well, different. “Got too caught up playing the detective, and forgot to do the actual…detecting. Usually my cases don’t have as strict a time limit.”

Right. When they get off this train…that marks the end of Maps’s ability to maintain dominance over the crime scene.

“I missed this, too,” Olive admits. “Not— not people dying. But something actually weird and exciting happening.”

“Well…you’re planning to stick around in Gotham, right?” Maps says. “I’ll call you. A second perspective on things can be pretty helpful.”

“I’d like that.” Olive smiles at her.

Just then, the door to the train car opens.

“Why me?” Taylor asks. “I don’t even know who the victim was.”

“Neither did anyone else,” Maps says. “But you do know someone else on this train, don’t you?”

“I work in tech. I know who Mr. Rivera is, yes.”

“Would you care for a mint, ma’am?”

Maps grabs the container Colton gave her. Taylor looks down at it, then back up at Maps.

“No thank you,” Taylor says coldly. “Where’d you get that?”

“Colton gave it to me,” Maps answers. “He said you gave it to him.”

“I…see. Forgive me for refusing, then — I’ve never been fond of mints.”

“Really?” Maps asks. “I like them.” She opens the container. What is she doing? Is she trying to bait her into confessing? Someone who’s already resolved to become a killer isn’t going to stop Maps from dying. “Mind if I have one?”

“Maps…”

“You probably shouldn’t,” Taylor says. “I’d advise against it.”

“Why not?”

“I think you’ve figured it out, detective. Do I really need to say it?” She arches an eyebrow.

“When we arrive at the station in Gotham…I’ll tell them everything,” Maps says. “You don’t need to say anything else. I already know the truth.”

“If you say so.” Taylor leaves the train car.

“Don’t you need to know why?” Olive asks.

“Oh, I figured that out,” Maps says. “She said she worked in tech. She probably works for a rival of Colton’s. It’s why she wanted to kill him. Eliminate the competition. If she’d been one of his coworkers, I would’ve said that she was gunning to take his place.”

“Huh.” Well, Maps has always been more of the detective. “Do you know how much longer we’ll be here?”

“We should be getting to the station in about twenty minutes,” Maps answers.

“When we get back…don’t be a stranger, okay? I missed you.”

“Me too,” Maps says. “I won’t. I promise.”

Maybe coming back to Gotham won’t be so bad after all.