Laurels

5 December 2005

I closed the door to the office at Laurel Detective Agency, as requested, and sat down across the desk from Mark Larmais, who was adjusting paperwork and didn't look up or speak for a solid few minutes. I waited, quietly, and tried not to make it obvious that I was glancing around at the decorations on the wall and shelves, some of which were commendations or letters of thanks for different cases he'd solved. I didn't really have time to read any of them, I was just skimming and thinking about the assortment available.

"Something seem off to you, John?" he finally asked, laying out a folder in front of himself and still not looking up as he opened it.

"You didn't solve the JonBenét Ramsey case. No one did." He laughed and finally looked at me.

"You'd be surprised how many people either don't notice or don't want to mention that one. How many ghosts are in this room?"

"Like...literal ghosts?" I asked, raising a brow.

"Yes."

"Uh...well, none right now. But why-"

"Right now?" I sighed.

"Yes, right now. There's a faint trail over there," I said, pointing at a small filing cabinet on the other side of the room, "but it's gotta be a day old or so by now."

"Probably Murray, the asshole," he muttered, pulling out a paper from the file. "Nice to meet you, kid. Why do you wanna work at a detective agency?"

"I like to look for things. And I hear it pays better than pizza."

"I'm sure at least one of those is true. Look, I'm gonna be straight with you. You're here because your dad and I go way back. He said you'd be good for the work, and he tends to know what he's talking about. But he also mentioned your little...thing, with spirits and shit."

​"Is that a good or bad thing?"

"Depends on you. Here's the thing. Most work from private firms these days is just finding people. Occasionally it's uncovering an affair, but most of our money comes from collections agencies trying to track down someone who didn't leave a forwarding address. So don't expect it to be like the movies."

"Fair enough."

"Now as for your thing. If it's a tool that helps you finish a job, use it. That's fine. But I can't take that shit to court, so you better have used it to get me something I can. No one's really going to ask me how we found Joe Smith's new phone number, as long as we didn't break the law, so I won't ask you. But if by some turn of fate you get a murder case dropped in your lap, and you go find the victim's ghost and ask them how they died and call it a day, we're all fucked. You get useful information, got it? Weapon, witnesses, locations, anything that we can then use to build a case through conventional means." I nodded. "Good. Any questions?"

"You're just fine with this whole thing?"

"I've seen worse. You ready to start on Monday?"

"Yeah."

​"Good. Buy a tie."

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