The A.F.R. trace down the burglary chain: the café-au-lait pawn, the fatal interviews, Kite

texture · by ?/9-11 Nov YDAU

• When: the trace is complete by the Antitoi search (?/9-11 Nov YDAU); its first link (the pawning) is undated, post-burglary
• What: The A.F.R. work the burglary backward with a patience their dead coordinator would have recognized. The trace: "through the strenuous technical interview of the sartorially eccentric cranio-facial-pain-specialist, whom they had traced through the regrettably fatal technical interview of the young burglar" — and the apparatus explains how the young burglar was found at all: "Easily found when pawning a cordless M. Café® Café-au-Lait Maker at a Brookline shop of pawning, for Fortier and Marathe and the A.F.R. knew well M. DuPlessis's passion of breakfast café au lait." The dead man's breakfast habit is the thread his avengers pull. A separate endnote records the fate of Gately's associate on the job: Trent Kite, whose home-invasions with Gately included "that of one G. DuPlessis, which Kite ended up regretting exponentially more than Gately did, once the A.F.R. got through with him." Whether the fatally interviewed "young burglar" of the trace is Kite is nowhere stated — the two attestations sit adjacent and unmerged, and are left that way here. The trace's endpoint is event 11's recovery; its unreached remainder — Gately himself — hangs over the hospital serial (event 13).