A/N: Here's chapter two. Enjoy. I shall post chapter three eventually.
Disclaimer: Not Mine.
Chapter 2
"There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives if that be so."
"Hey, lovie, you awake?" It's high voice. Carlton groans and opens his eyes, hoping that this movement will make the voice leave him alone. It doesn't. Instead, he can see the face that belonged to the voice. The face is thin, every aspect of it. The lips, the nose, the eyebrows. Even the hair looks thin from Carlton's vantage point. A hand reaches up from somewhere behind the face and pats Carlton's cheek, he instinctively pulls away and the face laughs.
"Carlton Lassiter, eh?" it says, its lips moving into seemingly exaggerated positions. "Well, I didn't for one moment believe Kasey could get you, but now-"
"Don't tell him my name, you dolt," gruff voice says. Thin face falls back, most likely from being pushed, and is replaced by a thicker face. The one that owns gruff voice. Another hand pats Carlton's cheek, this time he doesn't pull away. The hand feels like sandpaper, and he grits his teeth to keep from showing his disgust.
"Where am I?" he asks. Thick face, Kasey, makes a tutting noise and sits down on a chair in front of Carlton.
"We're the ones that ask the questions, mate," thin face pipes up while Kasey is still tutting. Kasey glances back at thin face and makes a shushing sound. Carlton smiles. He can outsmart these guys.
He tries to lift his hands, to get the jump on them, but finds that he is tied to a chair. Okay, he thinks. They're not that dumb.
He can outsmart these guys, as soon as he unties himself.
.-.-.-.
What hit Shawn the hardest when he walked into Lassiter's house was how lonely it seemed. Everything was clean and the furniture looked practically untouched. The vastness of the building increased the sense loneliness Shawn felt when he reminded himself that only one man lived there.
The kitchen was crowded with forensics. They were taking samples of dirt from footprints that adorned the otherwise pearly white floor and testing doorknobs and countertops for fingerprints. Shawn avoided them, assuring Juliet that he didn't need to see the exact crime scene to get a psychic reading. Instead, he meandered slowly through the house, looking at the sad life of Carlton Lassiter.
The walls were sparsely decorated; about three framed pictures were all that hung in his stairwell. All of them, Shawn noted, were of Lassiter doing some heroic deed. Shawn reached the top of the stairs and stood in the hallway, staring at the closed door before him. He slipped on the gloves forensics had made him take and opened it carefully.
Lassiter's bedroom was just as empty as the rest of the house. A bed, a bedside table, a bureau, and a mirror were all that was in it. Shawn stared at the perfectly made bed, at the smudgeless mirror, and at the painfully white walls that enclosed it all.
"Shawn?" Juliet's voice interrupted his thoughts, and he was glad to have a reason to turn away from the room. She stood in the doorway, her face lined with deep concern.
"Have you found anything?" he asked. She shook her head.
"No prints," she said. "You?" He turned back to the bedroom as he spoke, and his eyes fell to the corner of the mirror. Tucked into the frame was a photograph. From where he was he couldn't make out any details, but he wasn't about to give away his secret to Juliet. He shook his head. He waited until he heard her footsteps descending the stairs before crossing the room to peer at the picture.
.-.-.-.
"Do you think you can get out of this?" Kasey asked, an aggravating smirk adorning his face.
"Not even Houdini could escape our precautions," thin face piped up. Carlton still didn't know the other man's name, but he figured that didn't matter too much. Kasey was obviously behind all of this, and thin face was going along for the ride.
"Will you shut up?" Kasey snapped, and thin face retreated to the other side of the room where Carlton could no longer see him. "Now, Detective Lassiter, do you know who I am?"
Carlton sized the man up, trying to decide what kind of answer he was looking for. He was at least semi-intelligent, Carlton surmised, seeing as he had managed to break into Carlton's house without alerting any of the neighbors; that meant Carlton couldn't get away with a smartass answer. He shook his head, and Kasey laughed.
"You see that, Caleb? Man doesn't even remember me," Kasey said. His voice was jovial, but there was something in his eyes that sent a chill through Carlton.