Lost Sleep
Jan. 10th, 2016 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brian_campo posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
hauntedbostonrpgAt 2:59 a.m., a text had arrived and it simply read: “01/08/16. Shooting. Female victim. 700 Block of Washington Street. No leads.”
The message came from a burner phone, but Brian, thick with sleep and thirst, knew that it was Detective Wilt Shipman, who didn’t give a shit if the ordinary men of the world were drooling into pillows or fucking pretty girls or what. When he wanted information, he was relentless, like a drill bit to the skull. If Wilt acted according to pattern, one ignored text led to a call, which led to a fist on the door, and finally an unmarked police car blaring its horn on the street. The dude was a prick. Brian attempted to cut him off at the pass with a return text - “she’ll still be dead at 8 a.m.”, but wisdom prevailed. At this hour, no one would see him skulking around the crime scene, which was probably Wilt’s line of thinking.
In the amber haze of a dirty streetlamp, he put on jeans and laced into his boots. He reclaimed an only vaguely dirty Ramones t-shirt from the hamper and topped it with a wool coat. His hair was still plastered to his forehead when he left the house. His old van grumbled and a fan belt squealed. The van was a holdover from his twenties when he needed it to haul gear for his band, back before responsibilities like child support and a mortgage payment. He plugged his phone into the stereo (definitely not factory) and picked through a playlist. Once he found a good song, he wiped his dry eyes and threw the transmission into reverse.
He stopped only once, for cigarettes, between his driveway and the address. He double-checked it. As far as murders went, it was an odd place to pick. Residential, historic neighborhood, cars with no body damage, American flags proudly swaying on front porches. The yellow tape, strung between the corner of a slumping garage and a cluster of trees, stuck out like a sore thumb; during another month, it would’ve been mistaken for a cheap Halloween decoration.
Wilt knuckle-tapped on the window. “I wish you’d lose this hunk of junk,” he said through the crack. The detective peered into the interior. “People probably think you’re hauling sex trafficking victims.”
“I bet the money’s better.” Brian got out and shut the door. On the way to the plot of grass, he killed his cigarette. “What am I looking for?”
“Bullet hole in the side of the garage,” called the detective, who gestured with a single cup of coffee.
Asshole.
Brian watched him head back to the street and then ducked under the tape. His palms, closed tight in their coat pockets, held an anticipatory tingle. They had been weapons in his thirty-two years of life, tricky digits designed to receive tactile information -- soft, rough, cold, wet -- but which supplied him with untold other details. The deep history of places. The secrets of people. The banal didn’t leave much of an imprint. It was the meat of life, the love and the hate and the greed, that turned an ephemeral thing like memory into a sort of fingerprint… psychic energy pressed onto three-dimensional objects.
He found the hole in the vinyl siding. His hand hovered. It was a risk. Sometimes he got more than he bargained for. A knife that sliced a stranger’s flesh cut Brian, too, in a different way. He had once lost an entire month of good sleep over a noise and a vivid mental picture (red bubbles expanding and popping in a throat). There were other, less violent ones. Powerful ones, like the treachery of his mother’s unlaundered sheets, and the last moments of his father’s life, which he spent clutching his chest inside the vinyl cape of a wet shower curtain.
What would he see this time? Was it worth whatever cash Wilt threw his way in order to improve his ratio of solved cases?
Brian shut his eyes and traced the shape of the bullet hole.
God, he hoped so.
The message came from a burner phone, but Brian, thick with sleep and thirst, knew that it was Detective Wilt Shipman, who didn’t give a shit if the ordinary men of the world were drooling into pillows or fucking pretty girls or what. When he wanted information, he was relentless, like a drill bit to the skull. If Wilt acted according to pattern, one ignored text led to a call, which led to a fist on the door, and finally an unmarked police car blaring its horn on the street. The dude was a prick. Brian attempted to cut him off at the pass with a return text - “she’ll still be dead at 8 a.m.”, but wisdom prevailed. At this hour, no one would see him skulking around the crime scene, which was probably Wilt’s line of thinking.
In the amber haze of a dirty streetlamp, he put on jeans and laced into his boots. He reclaimed an only vaguely dirty Ramones t-shirt from the hamper and topped it with a wool coat. His hair was still plastered to his forehead when he left the house. His old van grumbled and a fan belt squealed. The van was a holdover from his twenties when he needed it to haul gear for his band, back before responsibilities like child support and a mortgage payment. He plugged his phone into the stereo (definitely not factory) and picked through a playlist. Once he found a good song, he wiped his dry eyes and threw the transmission into reverse.
He stopped only once, for cigarettes, between his driveway and the address. He double-checked it. As far as murders went, it was an odd place to pick. Residential, historic neighborhood, cars with no body damage, American flags proudly swaying on front porches. The yellow tape, strung between the corner of a slumping garage and a cluster of trees, stuck out like a sore thumb; during another month, it would’ve been mistaken for a cheap Halloween decoration.
Wilt knuckle-tapped on the window. “I wish you’d lose this hunk of junk,” he said through the crack. The detective peered into the interior. “People probably think you’re hauling sex trafficking victims.”
“I bet the money’s better.” Brian got out and shut the door. On the way to the plot of grass, he killed his cigarette. “What am I looking for?”
“Bullet hole in the side of the garage,” called the detective, who gestured with a single cup of coffee.
Asshole.
Brian watched him head back to the street and then ducked under the tape. His palms, closed tight in their coat pockets, held an anticipatory tingle. They had been weapons in his thirty-two years of life, tricky digits designed to receive tactile information -- soft, rough, cold, wet -- but which supplied him with untold other details. The deep history of places. The secrets of people. The banal didn’t leave much of an imprint. It was the meat of life, the love and the hate and the greed, that turned an ephemeral thing like memory into a sort of fingerprint… psychic energy pressed onto three-dimensional objects.
He found the hole in the vinyl siding. His hand hovered. It was a risk. Sometimes he got more than he bargained for. A knife that sliced a stranger’s flesh cut Brian, too, in a different way. He had once lost an entire month of good sleep over a noise and a vivid mental picture (red bubbles expanding and popping in a throat). There were other, less violent ones. Powerful ones, like the treachery of his mother’s unlaundered sheets, and the last moments of his father’s life, which he spent clutching his chest inside the vinyl cape of a wet shower curtain.
What would he see this time? Was it worth whatever cash Wilt threw his way in order to improve his ratio of solved cases?
Brian shut his eyes and traced the shape of the bullet hole.
God, he hoped so.
Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-11 06:24 am (UTC)Especially after the night she had had at the Monroe's. "Just a dozen or so," they'd said, "and we'll buy in all the food," they'd said, "so you will have an easy night of it!" they'd said.
They'd lied. Or not lied as much as lost all touch with reality. She wasn't quite sure whether she'd missed the math class that equated 'a dozen' was actually 42, and there must have been something somewhere on her forehead that said 'SUCKER' because they didn't even think that perhaps the food her mother had listed for the dozen 'or so', was just not going to stretch to another 30 people.
She was glad her brother's study could be put aside for this emergency, and he was able to come and get things started while she'd done an emergency run to an all-night market to pick up, at premium prices of course, more supplies. She and Wyn had worked furiously, preparing and plating, serving and stashing away the containers their mother had also brought over to supplement the supply. At least the Monroe's had realised their screwup and had given an extremely large tip, on top of what they would be paying once it had all been calculated - her father's job the next morning.
And now she was walking. She could actually feel the footpath through the soles of her shoes as she trudged along the street, walking to the nearest gas station nearly eight blocks away. She turned the corner and blinked, a frown forming as she slowed a little. Two men talking, one gesticulating toward the building where some tape appeared to snake across the yard to a tree. She didn't have to check her watch to know it was well after 3am, and a glance at the vehicles in the street added to the disjointed scene - they're weren't from this neighbourhood.
Her curiosity got the better of her and she paused at the front of the block, head cocked to one side as she watched the man who appeared to be studying the wall of the garage.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-11 07:13 pm (UTC)The wound had burned, though not at first. In the beginning, there was an explosive, ear-ringing noise, a sensation of pressure, and shock. But then it burned like hell. By the time the woman tried breathing again, blood had begun to fill the—
“Nope.” He shook his head. Dark brown strands, still upright from sleep, wobbled on the crown of his head. “Not that.” The pursuit of that led no place good.
He cleared his throat and pushed past the interference from her. Before she looked at the red stain collecting between her fingers, what did she see? A gun. Maybe a Glock. A hand trembling in a death-grip. Either white or Latino. Brian followed the arm up to the shoulder and tried to see the face beyond. It was tan and elongated, clean-shaven, and topped with a mop of black hair. Just a kid.
Brian let go of the bullet hole and got into a crouch to inspect the grass.
A long time ago, he had stopped asking why shitty things happened to people. The answer, usually, was other people – occasionally cancer – but usually people and, it seemed to him, most people didn’t have a good reason for the harm they did. Just fear or jealousy or a creeping, black cloud of rage followed by a load of excuses. It was better if he didn’t get caught up wondering why the kid had shot the woman and then run before she had a chance to hit the ground. But he had a theory that the kid would come back. That’s another thing people did when they had regrets.
They haunted places.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-12 11:37 am (UTC)"You okay?" she asked, taking a step or two onto the grass when the man suddenly crouched, apparently muttering to himself.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-13 03:01 am (UTC)“Yeah… sorry. Is this your house?”
Wow. No, the owner of this house was in a morgue awaiting transport to a hole in the ground. His face betrayed his frustration with his own dumb question as he stood up and wiped his damp hand on his jeans.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-13 05:42 am (UTC)"And no, this isn't my house, unfortunately," she told him, leaving out the part about her being out of fuel. "Guess it's not yours either," she added, glancing over her shoulder to see where the other man was. Her mind had already raced ahead with what she saw as she added, "are you a cop? And is something wrong?" Which she realised as she said it was probably one of the most ridiculous of questions given the time, location, and tape.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-13 04:06 pm (UTC)Brian took one last look at the ground and retreated to duck under the crime scene tape.
“Um… I’m an analyst. Crime scene analyst. My buddy called me in for a second opinion.” With this he thumbed towards the unmarked police car, a four-door sedan. He tried to keep the sour taste out of his expression. Referring to Wilt as a buddy was like stepping in a pile of dog shit and claiming that he liked the smell. Really he just wanted to wash it off.
As he glanced at her in the dark, Brian felt a pang of anxiety. What exactly was he supposed to be analyzing, bullet trajectory? He should have pretended to be drunk instead and just meandered into the trees to pee on something.
Brian put his hands in his coat pockets. What was she doing out here? It was freezing and the middle of the night. “You’re in luck. If you like this house, it’ll be on the market soon. I’m sure it’ll be reasonably priced,” he said dryly.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-17 12:59 am (UTC)That made Melody blink, her mouth falling open as the stupid question rolled out before she had a chance to stop it. "Why reasonably priced?" she heard in her own ears as she frowned, looking from the guy in front of her, to the house and back again. Her hands tugged the edges of her light coat a little tighter around her body as the chill of the evening started to be felt all of a sudden. "Is there something wrong with it?"
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-17 10:38 pm (UTC)He went under the tape and maneuvered behind her. He took her by the shoulders and looked past her hair. “Do me a favor, hold up your arm.”
All of it was bullshit. She was nowhere near the place where the trigger had been pulled and he knew it. If he couldn’t screw around with a stranger at a crime scene, what was the point of being awake at three in the morning?
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-17 11:50 pm (UTC)She quickly dropped her hand back to her side and spun around, hoping the man hadn't seen the bushes, and if he had that he'd not really taken much notice.
"Where's the body?" she asked, glancing back over her shoulder and wondering if it was inside the garage, and still there.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-18 02:43 am (UTC)Brian brought his attention back to the girl. Should he tell her the truth or make up a story? He reconsidered her. She was incredibly close to his face. She had an exotic look. He wondered where her family was from.
Suddenly he felt like a dick for lying to her. “She’s in the morgue,” he said. “You um… you actually might be able to help me.” This time he meant it. “But it might freak you out, so feel free to say no. Would you mind standing in front of the garage?” He gestured toward the place where the woman had fallen.
Brian flipped his coat pockets and opened his coat to show her his empty waistband. “I don’t have any weapons. I’m just trying to get a picture in my head. It might help if I had a visual.”
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-18 03:31 am (UTC)She took a few tentative steps toward the garage, and looking down at the ground, wondering if she was standing on spot, then figured that that was sort of the point of what he was asking. She straightened and turned to face him. As she did she blinked, a shadow seeming to form behind the man, and then slowly shrink down. She angled her head to see past him, frowning, then straightened again. "About here?"
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-18 04:41 am (UTC)He swept his thumb and forefinger over his eyelids. Brian’s coat sleeve crept up his wrist. A small tattoo, stylized imagery of a third eye, shown from the inside. He blinked at her. “I’m going to close my eyes. If I say something weird, don’t worry, okay?” He waited a moment before following through on his promise.
Once his eyes were closed, Brian tried to clear his mind and think not of the girl before him, but the woman who had stood there a few days before, and the man who had killed her. Long seconds crept past, seconds in which he was distantly aware of the cold, damp air. He was not purely psychic; what he saw usually depended upon the sensation of touch, but there was something itching at the back of his mind. A connection just barely missed, like a whisper he was straining hard to hear. Once he noticed it, he wasn’t willing to leave until the ends met.
It led him to move closer to her, and when he thought he was near enough, Brian said, “Don’t move.” He breathed out and placed his hand against the wall. Then he had it. Another memory, a late-night meeting around the back of the garage. Two people -- a woman and a teenage boy -- fooling around. His hand twitched and he closed his fist. Suddenly the memory got scrambled up with an image of a wooden brush combing through long hair, a mirror reflecting an overhead light.
Brian’s hand had snagged in the girl’s hair.
“Oh shit. I’m sorry.”
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-18 04:55 am (UTC)And what was he doing?? He was getting closer, and she glanced across to the car where the other guy was still inside, from the looks of things talking on his cellphone, or something, and then the man was reaching past her to the garage wall... 'Don't move,' he said, so she didn't, figuring at least it would be a little warmer here than away from the building, and his approaching coat, which really was starting to look a whole lot warmer...
"Uh, ouch?" she said as his fingers tugged on her hair. She normally had it up, but had pulled the clip out as she had walked to her car, letting it fall down and cover her neck in the cold night air.
"Is this how you investigate all homicides?" she asked, beginning to wonder what the hell he was going to figure out 'forensically' by what he was doing.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-18 05:14 am (UTC)“And you’re freezing.” He took off his coat and put it over her, only afterward realizing that it probably smelled like cigarette smoke. He tried not to smoke in confined spaces like his van or his house, not wanting the chemicals to come in contact with anything his daughter might touch, but he had let the siren’s call of nicotine and the crushing need to stay awake while driving dictate his behavior.
He glanced at the road. Wilt was staring in their general direction, but it was impossible to read his expression.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-18 05:36 am (UTC)"Thanks," she returned for the coat, her nose twitching a little as she inhaled his scent, and the slight hint of cigarette smoke. None of her family smoked. Melody had tried it once, inhaling from a cigarette a guy had offered her at a party, and had spent the next ten minutes between feeling nauseous, head spinning, and throwing up.
"I uh, really should be going. I have another eight blocks to go to get fuel, then walk back again," she said, a little reluctantly as the coat really was a lot warmer than her own light jacket. But she'd soon warm up with the walking. She followed his glance across at the car. "Does your partner usually leave you to do all the dirty work?"
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-18 03:58 pm (UTC)It took all of ten seconds for him to get goose bumps from the sharp bite of winter air. He buried his hands in his jeans, the slight tug stretching them down a bit. "Listen, if you're out of gas, I can give you a ride to the station. Or he can. Unlike me, he has a badge."
He shook the hair back from his forehead. "It's Brian, by the way."
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-19 01:58 am (UTC)"And normally I'd say I'm fine and be all independent and the like but tonight I'm going to say thanks, I'd really appreciate a ride," cutting it off there because she was pretty sure Brian, or Brian's partner, was not needing to know about the Monroe's 'small dinner party'.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-19 02:14 am (UTC)He jogged across the road and leaned into Wilt’s open window.
“Who the hell is that?” the Detective asked.
Brian shrugged. “A girl. She wandered up and started asking questions. I’m giving her a ride to the gas station.”
The detective nodded vaguely, his curiosity sated. “You get anything?”
“Tall kid, sixteen or seventeen, Latino. They were messing around. She probably tried to cut him off. What was she, a teacher or something?” He scrubbed at his nose, the tip of which had gone numb.
“Something like that,” said Wilt. He reached into his dashboard and handed Brian a roll of bills. “We good?”
Leave it to the detective to get vague when Brian was the one asking for information. “Yeah.” Brian rapped his knuckles on the car door. “We’re good. Dick,” he muttered as he turned and headed for his own vehicle.
He climbed inside next to Melody and shut the door. "So what were you doing out here anyway?"
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-19 02:36 am (UTC)"Going to get gas," she answered, realising as she said it he already knew that part. She grinned and angled her head giving him an innocent look. "You mean you've never come across someone walking eight blocks to buy gas at 3am before?" Glancing at her watch she gave a lop-sided grin. "Or 4 o'clock."
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-19 04:50 am (UTC)He made eye contact for a moment.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-19 05:52 am (UTC)"I was doing a 'loaves and fishes' act for a couple over on Willard Street, who have a funny idea of a dozen or so people for a dinner party, when they really meant 42, though I really don't think they even realised it was that many themselves as I don't think the left hand let the right hand know who they'd been inviting. And there are a whole lot of similies in there if you think about it, from the Last Supper right through to the answer to life, the universe and everything along with the restaurant at the end of the universe and the dolphins telling us so long and thanks for all the fish." She stopped, glanced over at him, and huffed a soft laugh as she wondered if he would be considering dropping her at the gas station and keeping on driving. She had a tendency to jump from one thought to another, and leave people floundering in her wake trying to figure out just where her mind was heading, or just not even wondering, but giving up trying to follow what she was saying.
"And I had to do a bit of driving around for those loaves and fishes, and didn't remember to fill up," she finished with a self-deprecating grin. "A blow for women libbers the world over. They'll probably revoke my non-existent membership..."
no subject
Date: 2016-01-19 02:58 pm (UTC)“I think you’re alright,” he hedged and accelerated through an intersection. “Running out of gas is a genderless crime.” The streets were dead, no traffic to contend with as the van bounced across a dip in the road. The high-glare lights of the gas station canopy came into sight. A few silent seconds passed.
Brian turned to her. “I’m just clarifying. Was that a Dolphin Olympics reference? I caught some Hitchhiker’s in there. A little Bible, too, but I don’t want to miss anything.”
His urge to be kind to her surfaced out of nowhere. Melody seemed good, and he guessed that was why. She seemed guileless. When he was younger, Brian kept the antenna up at all times, hoping that he could pick up bad vibes (from people and their accompanying places) early on and then duck out before he got connected. Now, more often than not, he put the antenna down and just assumed everybody had dark secrets and pain. If he kept people just past arm’s length, minded his own business and relegated the truth-gathering to paid gigs, he didn’t have to know a damn thing.
Melody just gave off a different vibe.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-20 01:12 am (UTC)"The last thing the dolphins said as they baled off this rock was, or is, or will be,'so long and thanks for all the fish!' And so that was the title to the 4th book in the Hitchhiker trilogy, because only Douglas Adams would write a trilogy with a 4th book," she explained with a glint of mischief in her eye.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-20 02:16 am (UTC)"What can I do, anything?"
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-21 12:06 am (UTC)Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-21 02:19 pm (UTC)In case it wasn’t clear, he climbed out of the van, sticking his arms in his coat sleeves as he walked around the hood. “Go talk to the cashier. I’ll get the can and pump the gas so you don’t turn into Jack Nicholson in The Shining out here.”
He swung through the glass door and went into the aisle with automotive supplies, looking over bungee cords, funnels, bottles of transmission fluid, and the like until he saw a few plastic containers stashed on the bottom rack. Brian grabbed one and went out to the pump. The chill was worse in the parking lot without any wind breaks and his hair stung his forehead. Brian hunched his shoulders as he directed the nozzle into the can.
When it was full, he screwed on the cap and hauled the can over to the back of his warm van, which had the engine running and the heat on full blast.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-24 10:21 pm (UTC)As she approached she held out the capped cup to Brian. "Wasn't sure if you wanted coffee at this time of the morning, in case you wanted to get back to sleep, so I hope you like hot chocolate?"
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-27 01:24 am (UTC)Once they were loaded in, he shifted gears and the van lurched out of the parking lot. Hot chocolate bubbled into the small aperture in the lid.
"I have to force myself to let it cool down. I'm one of those idiots who's constantly burning the roof of their mouth on pizza. I once got a blister from a Philly cheese steak."
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-27 04:06 am (UTC)As the van headed back toward the direction of the murder scene Melody glanced across at Brian. She had suddenly realised what was so odd about the scene. There was no body, no ambulance, no flashing lights, no wandering uniformed police door knocking, or whatever it is they do in a case of a murder. If you believed all the shows on TV that depict murder scenes the forensics guys were always called in before scenes were contaminated by everyone else. "Do you get a lot of calls to... these kind of scenes? At this time of the day, or night as the case may be?"
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-27 04:23 am (UTC)"Sometimes," he said. Brian fidgeted with the rear view mirror. "It's kind of freelance. They call me if they want someone to take a second look. In case they missed anything."
Which did not explain the time of day, Brian knew.
"I'm off the books," he confessed, hoping that would explain it sufficiently.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-27 04:49 am (UTC)If one could slow down time and view the scene it would have looked something like this. The stream of hot chocolate that had been in the cup formed a lovely arc as it exited the cup, the lid leading the way toward the roof, then the windscreen. Melody's mouth fell open as her eyes widened, her pulse already a little higher now accelerated as her fingers extended toward the airborn cup, the contents now on a downward journey, about to splatter across the dashboard, windscreen, and floor.
Suddenly, as if in rewind, the hot chocolatey liquid reversed direction and appeared to run uphill, re-entering the cup, and the lid refastening as the cup settled back into Melody's fingers.
"Oops," she couldn't help but say, her eyes darting across to see if Brian had seen what happened.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-27 05:00 am (UTC)“What the fuck?!”
The cords on his rear view mirror clacked and spun.
He was tired, yeah, but he was definitely not high. Brian reached past Melody and groped along the dashboard, looking for proof that the liquid had been there, that he hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing. The beverage might have been swept back into the paper cup, but the stickiness remained. Proof.
“Did you do that? How did you do that?” Brian snatched the cup out of her fingers. What he planned to do with it, he wasn’t too sure. He started by popping the lid and looking inside. He even sniffed it. The brown beverage was totally ordinary. Which left…
Her.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-27 05:14 am (UTC)Well that was a little silly. He saw it all!
"That?" She stared at the dashboard for a moment, then down at her hands and back to him.
"Figured you didn't want me making a sticky mess on your dash?" she said, the question that had been bouncing around in her head about his being a murderer itching a little at the back of her brain. She rubbed her hands together, her palm a little itchy as it was sometimes afterwards.
She could see that he wasn't really angry-freaked or scared-freaked or thinking she was a freak, all expressions she had seen on the faces of people who'd seen something similar over the years. No, more curious-freaked she thought as she took a deep breath.
"I can move stuff, do things like that, and other things," she said, deciding this was a time to be honest instead of trying to hide it with humour, and act dumb.
"Can I have my hot chocolate back?" she added.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-27 05:24 am (UTC)He handed it over, but made no move to take his foot off the brake. The disbelief was somewhat muted by his long-standing suspicion that such talents existed alongside abilities like his. It wasn't normal to pick up an old shoe, for instance, and know that it fell off someone's foot while fleeing a robbery. But suspecting wasn't the same as knowing, and knowing wasn't the same as observing it up close and personal in his van.
Jesus Christ, who had he picked up?
He rubbed his hands over his face and laughed nervously.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-27 05:36 am (UTC)"You're not freaked out by it," she said, head angled a little as she watched him. "Why not? That's the usual reaction I get when I accidentally slip." She took another sip as she waited for his answer.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-27 05:49 am (UTC)"Because I just read a crime scene with my hands. Not intuition. Not forensics. I put my hand on a bullet hole and I saw it happen. That's what I can do."
He picked up his hot chocolate and drank some.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-28 12:42 am (UTC)"You're serious," she said, fingers falling still where they had been picking at the slightly torn edge of the lid of the cup. "That's what you were doing, when I was standing there, you were seeing someone shoot that woman." It was said as a statement, not a question, as she had already skyrocketed past the obvious answer and started wondering what else he could 'see'. "Could you see who did it? Or do you see only one point of view, or are you the bullet? What did you see?" Deflection came naturally to her as she had had to do it for a long time.
"And who was the guy in the car?"
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-28 01:35 am (UTC)"The guy was a detective, like I said before. As for what I can see, it's like... like being in the room, or the area, I guess. For a couple of seconds. It's a flash."
He shrugged.
"It's not all the time. Some places, some things just have strong memories attached to them, good and bad. I can't step foot on Boylston Street anymore."
He wanted to ask things about her gift, but maybe it wasn't the time for that yet. He took his foot off the brake and let the van ease into motion again. They passed the house where the crime happened and kept on, Brian depending upon Melody to tell him which car along the road belonged to her.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-30 01:40 am (UTC)"So what did you see there? At that house? Was there anything that might help figure out what happened, and who shot the woman?" she asked, her curiosity piqued in both the event, and his abilities.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-30 03:02 am (UTC)Brian wasn't sure why he felt uncomfortable except that maybe her questions and her eyes were too much direct attention. He rubbed the sharp point of his elbow. "Look, you defied physics," he said. "I'm just kind of psychic."
After a quiet second, he picked up his phone and stuck the auxiliary cable into the port. He thumbed through a playlist of songs, seeing nothing but a blur of color. Brian found himself willfully disengaging from the conversation, disengaging from her, not because he wanted to be a tool but because he couldn't seem to stop himself.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-30 04:56 am (UTC)But she didn't want to overdo it. "Thanks for the ride."
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-30 07:19 pm (UTC)Which was a stupid thing to say.
Brian frowned. He knew few others who were strange like him, and none closely. Should he let the unusually friendly, normal acting girl who happened to have telekinesis exit his van without another word? His eyes lit on the hot chocolate in his console.
"Campo," he said. "That's my last name. If you ever need anything."
He went into his dashboard and dug out a crumpled black business card for his shop, Retrograde Records, and handed it to her.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-31 01:30 am (UTC)BEST WAI Catering, with her own name and cellphone number at the bottom, the company's details in the middle, with the other side listing the types of events they specialised in.
"That's my number at the bottom," she pointed out as she handed it to him.
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-31 02:44 am (UTC)"Night."
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-31 02:48 am (UTC)"Nice to meet you too, Brian," she replied, shaking his hand and smiling. "And thanks for the ride," she added letting his hand go and heading around the back of the van to grab the fuel. "Good luck with the case too."
Re: Lost Sleep
Date: 2016-01-31 02:56 am (UTC)