abrightboy | The Lengths That I Would Go To

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The Lengths That I Would Go To

The killer was moving around the country. Malcolm Bright could see the pattern, but he wasn't working for the FBI these days and they weren't exactly taking his calls. Short sighted of them, but they did fire him on suspicion of being crazy. The NYPD's jurisdiction was New York. With the killer beyond its borders, they handed it upwards and left it at that.

Let it go, Bright, had been Gil's sage advice. You can't catch every killer in America single-handedly.

Challenge accepted, some part of him retorted, though he'd only nodded mutely and forced a smile. Gil knew he hadn't simply let it go, but he wasn't going to have him followed to stop him doing anything stupid, either. He didn't have the will or the resources to keep tabs on Malcolm Bright 24/7 and Malcolm Bright knew it.

His mother, on the other hand, had extensive resources, so he simply didn't tell her he was leaving town. He did arrange for Ainsley to feed his bird, so the truth would come out eventually, but he'd be several states away by then.

He rode the bus. There was something oddly comforting about the anonymity of being in a crowd of strangers who had no interest in him whatsoever. He stared out the window and watched the country go by. When he stepped off the Greyhound in Lexington, Kentucky, he walked to a nearby hotel and checked in, then headed straight to the US Marshals office. There was no point in trying to talk to the FBI. If he was going to stop a killer from killing again, he needed someone in law enforcement to listen to him. The pattern suggested the next murder would happen in one of the rural communities around Lexington and it would be precipitated by a young woman's disappearance. He needed law enforcement with local knowledge, specifically.

He wandered into the Marshals' offices in a tidy three piece suit, charcoal grey with a burgundy tie perfectly knotted at his collar. He got a few suspicious sidelong glances but nobody asked if they could help him. He cleared his throat.

"Um, hello? I'm wondering if there's anyone here I can talk to about murder." He held up his hands. "Stopping murder, specifically, not... like... smalltalk."

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He nodded.

"Dr Whitly has lived very comfortably in the high security ward of Claremont Psychiatric Hospital in New York for the last twenty years. He continues to sell his 'what I have is a sickness' shtick with the strength of all the charisma that made him a successful predator. He managed to avoid a federal death penalty."

He couldn't stop his scoff at the excuse and bobbed his head to one side. "That's something. So I'd be right in assuming that's the reason you're introduced as 'Bright.' You choose it?"

Names were important. Even if Raylan had no idea where the hell his parents got his name from or what the hell 'Arlo' was supposed to be.

Malcolm was lucker, in that.

Malcolm nodded again.

"I changed it before I applied to Quantico. He was darkness. I wanted to make a conscious choice to be... something else."

He finally took a sip of his coffee, even if it wasn't the best idea when he wasn't going to be taking his medication on time. He liked a cup of coffee in the morning. One cup.

He lifted his eyes from the cup to Raylan as he put it down.

"He wanted to apprentice me into his trade, too."

Raylan nodded back. That made sense. "Like I chose the law instead of Arlo's petty life of crime and murder. You choose to specialize in assholes like your father. Not that not killing twenty three people should be a real choice but, different strokes and all."

If pushed, Raylan would have all sorts of uneducated and too practical to accomedate opinions on overmedication, lack of good eatin' and terrible sleep, but he wasn't one of those kinda people to push or voice those ideas.

"The eternal struggles of Daddy's and their sons," he sighed. "You must be pretty good to still get to work with the NYPD with that kinda history."

Malcolm laughed, looking down into his coffee cup for a moment.

"I wasn't too good to get fired by the FBI," he pointed out. "They listed a litany of sins that culminated in a concern that I could share my father's... illness." He looked at Raylan. "Lieutenant Arroyo was the beat cop that answered my 911 call," he revealed. "He came to find me when I got back to New York, told me he needed my brain for a case." He took a sip of coffee and set the cup down, looking at it instead of the Marshall again. "It's not the first time he's saved me. I'm reasonably certain it won't be the last."

"They were probably right to, but so what. The FBI have so many sticks up their asses you could do a puppet show," he huffed with a chuckle.

The revelation was given with an understanding 'Ah'. Now Gil's tone made a little more sense.

"And if he hadn't? What do you think you'd be doin'?"

Malcolm couldn't help a self-deprecating laugh.

"I don't know. Sitting in my apartment slowly going crazy? Watching the papers for weird and grisly crimes and showing up on the doorstep of random law enforcement agencies asking if there's anyone I can talk to about murder?"

"Well, you know what they say. Love your job and you'll never work a day in your life. At least you'll probably never kill anyone in that line of work. We'll see how good you are tomorrow with this case. The labs have already come back with the blood and drug tests and I'll check the BOLO's in the morning."

He assumed that every crime that Malcolm solved and every life he saved went into some counter against the blood his father spilled. But Raylan wasn't going to say that either.

"Been thinking about a few places that someone like that might go. Places where there aren't other people to point out the new face. I got a couple of ideas."

"Gil doesn't let me carry a gun, so my chances of killing anyone other than myself in this line of work are very low," Malcolm agreed.

When Raylan started talking about the case, Malcolm perked up visibly, his grip tightening a little on his coffee cup when he said he had ideas where the murderer might have gone.

"You do? What sort of ideas?"

"Oh trust me, you don't need a gun to kill someone," he replied too easily.

"There's a few plots of land that aren't occupied. Owners gone to jail or died and the lands been returned back to the state for one reason of another. A couple of them come with mines and plenty of room for no one to hear any sounds of protest. We'll look at 'em when it's light."

"Maybe not, but since I can't carry a gun or drive a car, I feel like killing would have to be a...mindful act for me."

His eyes widened when Raylan described his ideas for morning. "How many are there? How far away are they?" he asked eagerly.

"Wait, you can't drive?" To hell with everything else - who didn't drive now days?

"I've been on heavy medication since before I was old enough to drive," he told Raylan. "They won't give me a licence without medical clearance. Which I'll never get." He shrugged. "It's never been on the table, so I don't really feel like I'm missing anything."

"You haven't been off that stuff since you were a kid?" It shouldn't surprise him, but.. it did. He couldn't help but think that was part of the reason Malcolm was as fucked up as he was. You couldn't medicate problems away, you could only shove them into a closet and failingly try to suffocate them under sedatives.

"And the Docs thinks that's.. healthy?"

"Well no," Malcolm replied as though it were obvious. "But healthy isn't on the table either. I'm on two antianxiety medications, an antidepressant and an antipsychotic. Between them, they keep me moderately functional."

Raylan decided to say nothing, but his face said plenty. Such as perhaps the doctors didn't know what the good hell they were talking about and had probably created more than a few problems and dependencies that would be argued away by bullshit.

"If that's what they say," was all he could offer, not willing to litigate something he couldn't control and wasn't his business in the first place.

Malcolm didn't need highly developed skills in behavioural science to read Raylan's expression.

But this was why he tended to avoid getting into the topic of his medication with people unless avoiding it would look even weirder. If mental illness had a stigma, medicating it had its own category.

"You saw the part they can't control," he pointed out, nodding towards the ceiling. "That's the tip of the trauma iceberg, I promise you. And if we don't go back to town some time tomorrow, you might get more of a glimpse of the rest than you want."

Malcolm was going to miss large swathes of his fastidious morning routine, which wouldn't help his head any either.

He wrapped his hands around his cup.

"I'm not sure it would be my choice either if there was any other way," he admitted, "but I'm... comfortable with where I'm at right now. My mother keeps offering me barbiturates, but I don't like a sleep I can't wake up from, however well meaning its imposition."

"I'm just saying, you can't get over something if you don't ever deal with it in the light of day. That.." He said, gesturing with a glance at the ceiling. "The meds aren't touching that anyway, right?"

Didn't do much to back up the argument.

Raylan shook his head. "But I don't know shit from shit. Not my place to say anything about it. We're all tryin' to get through our days." He wasn't going to mention how much whiskey he downed.

"Half the reason I hate being here so." He half cheered Malcolm before taking another sip of his now reasonably temperatured coffee.

"But if we need to airlift you back to Lexington, I'm sure the US Marshal's Service will, if with a bill."

"I'm in therapy," Malcolm reminded him. "My therapist hosts the light of day dealing. Though she doesn't agree with me pursuing my repressed memories. She thinks they could trigger a spiral instead of a resolution," he admitted. "At any rate, if I get completely out of control, make sure it's a padded helicopter," he deadpanned, "and I'll take care of the bill."

"Don't make me sit on you again," Raylan threatened.

"We'll get you back into Lexington tomorrow. Come hell or high water. You can get your meds and a fresh suit." He was sure Malcolm was ready for one of those; Kentucky was dusty. Raylan took a deep breath. "Hell, since we ain't sleeping, we could head up there now and back down before 8. That's practically sunrise to some people."

"Being steer wrestled by a cowboy is honestly not the worst way I've woken up," Malcolm said innocently, though the offer of an immediate ride back to town also made him perk up. "Would that be okay? Are you fine to do all that driving on no sleep?"

Raylan chuckled and followed it with a sigh into his coffee cup. "You give me time enough to get another half cup down, I'll put the rest in a travel mug."

Yeah, he wasn't touching that with a ten foot pole, for a number of reasons. Wasn't like it was gonna happen again.

Malcolm held up his hands. "As much as you need," he said. He pushed his cup towards Raylan. "You can have that, too. I..." he gestured towards the cup. "Really shouldn't when I'm off my meds. It winds up what Gil calls my 'off the charts manic thing'." He got up. "I'll get dressed," he said before bounding upstairs.

Grunting noncommittally, despite the almost fond tilt of his smile, he reached over and collected Malcolm's cup after he'd vanished from the room and shook his head a little as he married the cups together.

Excuse him while he enjoyed the coffee, listening to the sounds of life in a house that hadn't had it in a while before pushing to his feet and taking the last of the cup with him to get dressed himself.

By the time Malcolm came back downstairs, Raylan was pouring his travel mug full, hat and tie back into their appropriate places as he put the pot back on the burner and turned the machine off. He'd have to come back later to deal with the pot itself but he could handle whatever would grow in there in the meantime.

Malcolm returned impeccably buttoned up once more, no lingering signs of having been rumpled in a full body tackle only an hour or so earlier. He glanced around the living room once more as he waited for Raylan to give the word, eager to get back in the car despite his interest in the house as Raylan's origin story.

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