White Noise, a numb3rs fanfic

white noise. (numb3rs)
gen; megan; character study
In this white wave, I am sinking in this silence

with thanks to my two betas, tigertrapped and wliberation. no copyright infringement intended.

in this white wave, I am sinking in this silence

There are grey suits everywhere, and she thinks it's like when Alex took her to that ball game once and they ended up seated with the fans of the other team. The office space is bustling like midtown during rush hour, and the faint buzz and whirr of machinery rings inside her ear. Empty polystyrene cups cluster around a waste basket brimming with scrunched up paper and silver and pink candy wrappers.

She can feel a tension in the air, the quiet hum of activity at fever pitch; it irritates her skin, makes her nervous with anticipation. In a room at the far end of the office space agents gather like bees to honey and someone is gesturing to the crowd, arms spread out, sheaf of paper in one hand. She can feel the signals coming together in her mind, can hear herself collating the data spread in front of her and she makes an educated guess that she's watching her new boss. Sitting near him is a black man, one leg crossed over the other so that his ankle rests at his knee; the generic under agent, manilla file open on his lap, fiddling with a pen, contesting, adding details. The group leader nods, agrees, says something to the rest of the assembled. He takes a breath in a way that signals the end of the meeting and the agents scatter, leaves to the wind.

She approaches the large glass wall quickly but calmly; she doesn't want to jump-start the panic that curls within her abdomen, a hard knot of first day nerves. Pushing open the door she reminds herself to be clear and concise, and to maintain eye contact. Eyes forward, shoulders back. No nonsense. The team leader looks a little worn; they both do, as though it's late at night and not eight in the morning. More coffee cups strewn about the sides of the room; blinds drawn across windows, blocking the light. It's a bizarre sensation to think that the day has passed you by in a few seconds.

They don't notice her, the two men poring over yet another file. Paper is distributed across the ring of desks in cluttered piles. Post-it notes convene in clusters over desk tops and work surfaces. There are photographs of crime scenes - victims, potential suspects - their details scrawled onto scratched white boards; names, dates, leads, dead-ends, words crossed out, written over, obscured by more sheets of paper, more post-its, memos and Polaroid snapshots, tacked on. Organised chaos. Moving, fluctuating, facts and particulars distributed in a seemingly haphazard manner, but she can read the patterns, the division into useful and possibly useful, the difference between the fresh leads, the old ones, the dead ones; the way time plays out across the board, the older ink fading and written over, words at the bottom smudged, the different coloured inks a cacophony of visual stimuli assaulting her eyes. And she can read it as plain as black type on white pages. She can read it, and right now she's reading trouble.

She knocks on the door and smiles a little when the team leader looks up, disoriented by the interruption. His face is pale, drawn, and he doesn't really register that she's looking for a little of his attention. Then he stands up, straightens and appraises her. The other agent looks at her too, curious, curious. "Can I help you?"

"I'm Megan Reeves." It's a statement, but it comes out more like a question. "I was told to report to an Agent Eppes?" The complete lack of comprehension on his face makes her lose confidence. "I'm a profiler." She adds the minutiae slowly and wonders if she hasn't ended up on the wrong floor. But then something changes in his face and he inhales, his eyes crease a little in remembrance.

"Right, of course. Head office told me you were coming." He takes a couple of steps towards her and leans forward, shakes her hand. Strong grip, she notes, trustworthy. "You're starting today?"

She nods, "Yes sir," and his face twitches a little in amusement. He shakes his head. "I'm Don Eppes, and this is David Sinclair." He turns back to the other man in the room. "Look, track down Ellison and I'll look into Cleary. Someone had to have seen something."

"Yeah. I'll call you when I'm done."

"Good. And check in on Charlie. See if he's got anything on that thing he's working up."

Sinclair leaves the room with a smile in her direction. He seems friendly enough, but intent on doing as he's told. Megan shifts her attention back to Eppes and the board he's in front of. He seems to have forgotten her presence as he pores over the file again. She takes initiative and tries to work out what the case is about, walking towards the boards at the front of the room. She has to navigate her way round a maze of chairs to get there; the information swims into dangerous focus and she begins to make her own patterns and associations, building up the case work from the notes laid out in front of her. "Embezzlement?" There's one photo of a businessman staring sombrely into the camera's lens, as though challenging anyone to disagree with him; the turn of his head, the posture is posed but it sends out a clear warning. Danger signals flashing through her mind. "This is your suspect?"

Don looks up. "Yeah. Three days ago Martine Daley and Chris Knophler were found dead in Transtech Corp's office space." He begins to lay out the foundations of the case; the disparate elements start to make faster, more tangible connections within her mind; it's like taking the subway and working out your destination by all the stops you leave behind, and the faster you speed by, the faster you work out your destination. Except by the looks of things, the case is running to nowhere. Leads are being crossed out one by one; there's a nervous quality to the man beside her, a little frustrated, more than a little tired. She wonders if this is how it always is, long days, late nights and nerves shattered by too much caffeine and not nearly enough sleep.

"We need to check this guy out—" Eppes' voice breaks through her reveries; he slaps his hand on the flat board, on a dour faced man, maybe mid thirties, a little older. Megan wonders how much of his life has been drained from his face. He seems impassive, corpse-like. She realises, after a moment that Eppes has stopped talking and is watching her, profiling her, and she finds it amusing, ironic. He's somewhat impatient, and she asks him what Cleary's association is to the case to prove that she's paying attention. There is no preamble, no time for introductions and she senses that this is appreciated. She is here to work, not to socialise. He's comparing her to someone; she can see him tallying up her credentials and weighing them up against her personnel file and… and something else. Someone else. She's being ranked. She feels a twinge of discomfort; this is a test. It's not been stated, and Eppes himself doesn't seem to realise, but that's what he's doing. He's waiting for her response; waiting to see what she can come up with, whether or not she can meet his expectations.

"You know, typically, embezzlement is a white collar crime because of access and low risk capabilities but this kind of high end mathematics isn't generally an in-office crime." She pauses, keeps her eyes focused on the information in front of her; she's acutely aware of a bipolar duality: Eppes' peculiar attention and the stillness of the room, and the tension outside the room, the energy and pace of the world. Somewhere outside the conference room a fax machine whirrs into life. Someone kicks a vending machine. Phones ring intermittently; the security doors whine as they slide open and the carousel clicks as more people pass clearance and filter through. She pauses.

"Essentially, though, embezzlement is just theft. It's motivated by the same factors as most petty crimes – need, greed, supply and demand." She turns neatly on her heel. "What I mean is, in all likelihood, there's probably two or three people responsible for this magnitude of theft. You'll have someone with the access and the motivation, and someone lower down who works the logistics and gets paid off. And more than likely, this secondary? Probably working in Transtech as a low level engineer."

"Cleary doesn't fit that profile, though, and there's clear connections here between his mobility and Transtech's account fluctuations."

"But someone has to know the math."

There's another moment of silence, but she can see him gathering himself to move. He's assessing the new information, collating it with what he already knows, the interviews he's already done and he's nodding now, pulling on his jacket, turning to the door, still processing, evaluating, re-evaluating. "Right, so maybe it's not Cleary. Maybe it's someone that Cleary knows." He turns back at the door. "You coming?"

She smiles and nods. "Sure." She sees a flicker of something flash across Eppes' face, again, a sense that he's trying to make sense of her in an external context, pushing her buttons a little. He's impressed, maybe; at the very least he's motivated, back on the move. Still tired, but reinvigorated and ready to move on. There's an intensity to his movements, the turn of his face; he's building his own conclusions, restructuring expectations. And then it's gone. He exits the room and she hurries to keep up with him.

end.