DISCLAIMER: I own nothing of it.
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INSOMNIMANIA
00011
OLICE LINE
DO MOT CRO
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THE NEXT DAY AROUND NOON, Dean again stood in the Quenton Park's sixth-floor elevator alcove staring at the blood on the wall. Ava Wilson, the hotel manager, had railed at him for making her staff wait a day and a half before cleaning up the murder scene. A kid. Dean remembered the young woman's brash, spoiled demeanor. Can't be more than twenty five. Getting paid five times my salary. I'll bet, just to hire and fire Latinos and feed receipts into a computer.
The manager had become more pleasant when she learned that none of the hotel guests or employees had so far been implicated in the murder. And she had turned absolutely charming when Dean told her to go ahead with the cleanup.
Now the gold screen that had been hiding the stained wall and floor had been removed. The police-barrier tape was piled on the floor. Three hotel employees stood discussing what could be done about the bloodstains.
"The one on the wall's a cinch. We'll scrub as much of it off as possible, then give her a good coat of paint. But that blot on the carpet's the problem." Ed said pointing to the wall.
"Guess we'll have to replace the whole square of carpeting for this corridor." Harry sighed.
"Yeah, but no. Not today," Ed repeated. "That Ava Wilson, she want this hall fixed up quick."
"So?"
"Grab one of those little rugs from one of the empty rooms. We'll toss it over the stain for now."
The two dispersed. Dean still stood in the corridor, staring at the bloodstain as though it could be decoded, as if it might reveal . . . what?
Probably not a hell of a lot.
Garth, the forensics investigator, had already been by to perform his spatter-analysis magic. By measuring the exact size and dimensions of the blotch, the distance between isolated droplets and how they were smeared, Garth had drawn his Sherlock Holmensian conclusions about the exact positions of the attacker and the victim when the fatal wound was delivered. Garth had even come up with a fair idea of the attacker's height, build, and strength.
About my size.
And - oh, yes - although the autopsy wasn't too far along, it seemed pretty conclusive that the killer had used an extremely keen blade - probably some kind of stainless steel, serrated kitchen knife.
The wonder of forensics. A lot of good it does. The man was dead, after all. That was final, unchangeable.
Several hotel guests came and went, gawking and shuddering and sometimes making sick jokes. Dean looked at the raised wall pattern critically. He didn't have to be an expert on decor to know that the interior of the Quenton Parks was load of crap.
How typical of Hollywood's bullshit "comeback" - trying to make a new hotel look old!
Two of the men in white corells returned with buckets, brushes, paint rollers, and rags. Dean sighed as he watched them set to work. It was kind of sad to wipe out a thing like that with a few sweeps of a paint roller. There sure was a lot of mystery in that stain. Dean sort of like the way it shattered the corridor's pretensions.
Dean heard a small gasp at his back. He turned to see a dark-haired man standing behind him. He was tall, about five-foot-ten. His smooth short hair was tousled - like a bed hair. He was dressed in black and blue tie, an expensive-looking three piece suits with matching dark coat. It was the kind of getup that had been carefully put together or bought as an outfit. His eyes were wide, and his mouth was hanging slightly open. He seemed stunned.
"Can I help you, sir?"
The dark-haired man was clearly unaware of his presence.
"Sir?'' Dean said, stepping nearer to him.
He started out of his trance, trembling. He briefly, nervously perused Dean's face. With his large blue eyes and his full lips, he struck Dean as a startling beautiful man - but he thought that was probably the result of a lot of time and effort.
The man turned swiftly and started to walk away.
Does this one know something? He stepped in front of him, pulling out his badge.
"Sir, my name is Dean Winchester, L.A.P.D. Are you aware that this is a crime scene?"
The man stopped, but he looked as though he actually might try to dash past him and run.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
"Well, it's just that you seemed awfully interested in that wall there.
"Not really," he said, not turning to look at it.
Dean tried to go easy. Don't spook him. "Sir, I don't mind telling you that we're having a hell of a time with this investigation. It was a particularly nasty crime, and in a public place like this - well, clues are pretty tough to come by. If you can tell me anything - anything at all . . . "
He looked at him. "It's just -" he stammered. "It's just that I've seen something like that."
Dean pressed forward. "What's your name, sir?"
"Castiel. Castiel Novak." He shrank away from him again.
"Are you staying here? Nice place. Not your usual homicide scene, if you know what I mean." He was trying to put the guy at ease, but he seemed to grow colder and more distant by the second. He wondered if he still had garlic on his breath from lunch.
"Yes, I'm staying here," the dark-haired man said. "Down the hall. I'm here on business."
"What did you mean when you said you've seen something like that?" as Dean, gesturing toward the wall.
The man started to reply, then closed his mouth. Dean reached out as if to touch his arm, to encourage him - a mistake, he realized too late. He drew back from him again and was quite composed now. This time he turned and faced the splattered wall.
"Oh, it's the design. I believe it's Louis XIV. I saw something like it at Versailles, I'm sure. I'm an architect as well as an interior designer, so I notice these things. It's shocking to see it . . . stained like that."
The elevator doors opened. "Excuse me," the man said. "but I'm late for an appointment."
Dean nodded. He walked away from him.
Can't exactly haul the guy in for knowing too much about wall decor.
With a straight back and a dignified step, Castiel disappeared into the elevator. Dean took out his small notebook and wrote down his name.
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Castiel Novak fled deep into the velvet lined elevator, slipping into a space behind several people. He watched the open doorway warily, but the detective did not follow him. The handful of people faced front in doll-like silence as the doors slid shut. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the elevator wall. The sun design with it dark blotch kept exploding in his mind like the afterimage of a flashbulb.
That morning, when Castiel had follow the porter out of the elevator on his way to his room, he had laughed when he spied the ornamented wall. He knew that the emblem of the Sun King was copied from His Majesty's very bedroom doors. Even then, another significance to that design had teased at his thought, but his attention was quickly deflected by the small demands of finding his room and settlilng in.
He had seen only one of the garlanded suns that morning, however. The other wall had been blocked with the screen. Something gold. Yes, three gold panel with a crane and a bonsai tree. One of the elevators had been out of service. And yellow tape bearing the warning POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS was stretched diagonally across a portion of the corridor, preventing access to the screen or the elevator. Castiel hadn't found the tape particularly ominous - just a reminder that he was back in L.A.
But just now, the Japanese screen had been moved aside and a long strand of the yellow plastic tape lay tangled on the floor. Fragment of the message surfaced here and there among its coils . . .
. . . OLICE LI . . . ROSS POLI . . . INE DO NOT CRO . . . OSS POLICE LI . . .
And now that police detective was standing there in the hallway. He had been staring directly at the stain - a stain that Castiel had not seen that morning. The larger splatter was placed across the garlands and the rays of the sun, the smaller splashes bloomed like terrible flowers on the face of the sun, and the line of a drip followed a curved edge.
That stain was exactly like . . .
But no. He wouldn't complete that thought. He couldn't. The implications of that precise stain on that precise design were intolerable.
Castiel struggled to bring his thoughts under control. The elevator stopped at another floor, and two more people got on. At each stop, everybody on the elevator shuffled slightly backward. The elevator stopped at another floor, and two more people got on. The rhythmic sliding of the doors, the familiar rituals of the people - their polite distances, their quiet apologies to one another, their contractions of boundaries to accommodate those whose presence they would not again acknowledge - these small protocols eased Catiel's alarm. He couldn't believe he had so nearly panicked right in front of that detective.
What did I think he was going to do, arrest me?
By the time he got off the elevator and found his way to the bar, Castiel was feeling steady again. Like the rest of the hotel, the King Louis Lounge was posh - althought here the florid French motif gave way to a darker and more heavily upholstered elegance. Behind a well-polished wooder bar, an array of bottles glittered. Only a few people occupied chairs around the scattered tables. The room was shadowy, and Castiel couldn't tell immediately whether the friend he planned to meet had arrived or not.
Then, in a burst of color and motion, a man with slick blond-colored hair scrambled out of a booth and charged forwad, holding out his arms and calling Castiel's name. Gabriel's warm, chestnut-colored eyes momentarily startled Castiel. No one else he knew had eyes like that.
Surprised by a rush of emotion, Castiel realized how much he'd missed his friend. He threw his arms around Gabriel, who returned the embrace warmly. Castiel stepped back and saw Gabriel, was laughing.
"I can't believe it's been year," Gabriel said.
"I can't either." Castiel said.
Then came a moment of pleasant confusion during which neither of them had the slightest idea what to say next.
"Love your outfit," Castiel said at last, although he was sure Gabriel's tie and slacks hadn't started life as ensemble.
"Don't be sarcastic," replied Gabriel pertly.
"Let's just say you have got a knack for making me look stodgy."
"You've made it so easy," commented Gabriel with a little smirk.
Castiel caught a sepia-tinted glimpse of the two of them in the mirror behind the bar. His own dark reflection was practically visible next to the blond and purple one. Images came back to him, of the two of them in faded jeans and men's shirts, piplub sandals, baseball caps and dirty sneakers.
In those days, they'd been on more equal terms. Of course, they'd both gone through transformations during the past several years. But Castiel could see that Gabriel still maintained an air of exuberance, while his own look was now more premeditated.
My own life is more premeditated.
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TBC