Lost Sleep
Jan. 10th, 2016 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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.
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?"