Mockingbird -- Jim Hopper

10. THE LIBRARY

Things are heating up! I'm so glad everyone is liking this book so far!

Not edited

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It took Allie almost no time at all to make it to the library since she floored it all the way there. Once she walked in, she let out a sigh of relief. She loved libraries. The smell of books, wood, and something she could never pinpoint, but she loved it. During college, she spent all of her time in the library studying, but she never got sick of it. It sort of became her little safe haven.

The librarian at the front smiled at her above her glasses, "Hi, can I help you with anything today?"

Allie approached the woman and returned her smile, "Yeah, I was actually wondering if I could some newspapers over strange things that have happened here."

The librarian tilted her head in mild concern, and Allie didn't want anything bad to happen so she improved something, "Uh, it's for my thesis. I'm a grad student studying journalism." she lied easily.

The librarian smiled at her again, "Oh how fun, yes of course. We have all the big papers here, The Post, The Time, all the big ones. You can also use the microfiche in the reading room."

"Thank you," Allie looked at the librarian's name tag, "Marisa, this should help a lot!"

Marisa nodded, "Of course, although you may not find anything. I'm sorry to say not a lot happens in Hawkins."

Sure. Allie thought snidely and gave Marisa another fake grin, "We'll see, thanks for the help," she said in a clipped tone and walked back into the library and began searching for the newspapers. It took a good couple of minutes before she found what she was looking for and dug into her research. She sat there for hours searching for anything that seemed out of the ordinary about Hawkins. The only thing she thought was weird was with Hawkins lab, but before she could dig any further into the paper she was reading her stomach growled, loudly.

Allie looked around for a vending machine and smiled when she found one in the far corner. Hopefully, it had some candy, she could really go for a three musketeers bar right about now.

She fished a couple of cents out of her back pockets and walked over to the vending machine. Her caramel eyes scanned for her favorite candy, and she grinned when she spotted the giant bar. She placed her coins into the machine and a button on the side.

Allie grabbed her candy bar from the machine and started opening it, and then stopped when she heard the sound of voices.

"You have a lot nerve showing up here," Marisa snarled, her shrill voice echoing off the walls.

"What?"

Allie tensed, the unmistakable baritone voice of Jim Hopper rang in her ears. She took an angry bite of her candy bar.

"You could have called at least," Marisa shrieked, "You could have at least said 'Hey Marisa, it's not going to work out'"

"I'm a dick," Jim responded dryly.

Allie scoffed, he was right about that.

"Yeah," Marisa said angrily.

"Um maybe we can go out again, I can-" he groaned in pain, from what she could assume was an elbow in the ribs from his colleague, "Newspaper, we're here for newspapers. You got some?"

Marisa let out a dramatic sigh, "Yes, all the big ones, a microfiche is in the reading room."

"We'll take The Post, can you get the Times for us?" Jim asked curtly.

"Someone else already has all of those, I'm sure you can ask her to share," Marisa snapped before sitting back down in her seat.

Allie's eyes widened in realization, they were going to come back here with her. Wonderful. Well, she might as well try to still work, in fact, she was just about to read something interesting before her stomach decided she needed a break. Allie's converse squeaked quietly on the old carpet as she made her way back to her study place. She took another bite of her candy bar with narrowed eyes when she saw Jim leaning over her notebook, his stormy blue eyes scanning her notes. "It's rude to snoop you know," she said while leaning up against a bookshelf, her arms crossed.

Jim rolled his shoulder and met her fiery gaze with his own glare to match, "Of course you would have to be here."

Allie gave him a sarcastic smile, "Sorry for the inconvenience, Chief."

Jim rolled his eyes and swallowed his pride for a brief moment, "Can we borrow some of these, it's important police business."

Allie stalked closer to him, "depends, why do you need them?"

"For work," he shot back, "I really don't need your permission to take these anyway," he snapped and started to grab the paper she was about to get back to reading.

Quick as lightning, Allie grabbed his wrist tightly, "Not so fast, Hop," she narrowed her eyes at him, "I was reading that one, but you're free to look at all the others."

Jim tore his wrist out of her grip and glared down at her, "Fine, give that to me when you're done," he growled and briskly walked to the other table where Powell was sitting.

Allie sat back down in her seat and started reading the paper in front of her. The pen in her hand twirled between her fingers as she read, occasionally stopping to scribble down some useful information. Which this paper seemed to have a ton of. She currently was reading about a man named Dr. Brenner who allegedly experimented on children. She crumpled her empty wrapper and tossed it to the side, her mind racing with an idea that this could possibly be the place El was referring too.

She sat up in her seat and scanned through the papers in front of her for any connection before glancing at Hoppers table. Allie snatched the paper in front of her and rushed over to his table and shoved the paper in his face, "here,"

"Hey, what the hell!" Hopper grumbled and pushed her hand away from his face.

"Shut up, I'm thinking," she growled lowly, her eyes scanning the papers before they landed on one with a woman on the front, Terry Ives. She snatched the paper and started reading- she claims that her child was abducted by Hawkins Lab, they did LSD research on her probably to expand her mind or some hippie shit like that. None the less, Allie pulled out the seat next to Hopper and shoved this paper into his face too, "Look, those two are connected."

"Stop shoving these in my face," he grumbled and took the paper out of her hand and began reading. His eyebrows furrowed in thought as he scanned both newspapers. Allie noticed that his foot began tapping against the ground as he flipped through the pages, fitting the pieces together. When he was done, he looked back up at her, "you're right, they are connected."

Powell scoffed, taking the papers to look over, "this is a bunch of hippie crap."

Hopper shook his head, "No, it's bigger than that. Look at the hospital gowns, we found a piece of the same cloth when we were looking for Will, maybe he was at the wrong place at the wrong time" he trailed off and looked at Allie, "wait, tell me about that little girl you saw again."

Allie swallowed thickly, "Um, you see-"

"Hey Powell, is the Chief with you?" Callahan's voice crackled over the walkie.

Hopper took the walkie from Powell, "Yeah, I'm here."

Callahan sighed over the line, "Yeah you better get out to the Quarry. They found a body."