DISCLAIMER: I own nothing of it.
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INSOMNIMANIA
00010
FLASHBACK
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CASTIEL NOVAK APPROACHED THE HOUSE through its elegant formal gardens. Morning sunlight washed across the scene, accentuating the stucco texture of the facade and giving it a yellowish tint. He briefly considered exchanging the bright sunlight for a dusky twilight or even a midnight full moon, just to observe the variation. But then he thought better of it.
Trivailities. Better stick to business.
He moved directly across the terrace and up to the front door and peered into its leaded glass window, a contemporary design through which he could vaguely glimpse a cheerfully lit interior. He smiled slightly at his fleeting impulse to ring the doorbell.
Who do you expect to find at home?
The door swung open, and he moved into a stately entryway with an upstairs gallery looming above him along three walls. There was not a stick of furniture in the place or a painting or any of the walls. An eerie feeling of cavernous space swept over him.
How large an unfurnished house always seems.
For a moment, he thought he heard a sound of an orchestra echoing through the empty space, slow and gentle but punctuated by an odd discord.
Rossine again. Why can I not forget that tune?
Castiel focused his attention on the room, shaking his head to make the music go away.
It didn't.
He thought about ascending the stairs on his left in order to gaze over the majestic room from the gallery. But it seemed best to poke around downstairs a bit first. He passed on into the empty living room with its monumental fireplace, then into the vast dining room.
He noticed that he was holding his breath.
Each time he turned a corner, he half expected to see someone there.
Someone dangerous.
Utterly ridiculous.
Swinging around to view the empty room, he saw nothing. But he thought he heard a violin bows clacking, slapping percussively against the wood of the instruments.
You're like a little kid who's stayed up past bedtime watching horror film on TV.
Castiel passed through another doorway into a bare kitchen. He turned back and forth, studying it whole length. It was long, narrow, and cramped in comparison to the rooms he had just passed through.
I told them this space was too tight when we went over the floor plans. Who could do any major entertaining from a kitchen like this?
After a few deft movement of Castiel's finger, the wall that connected to the dining room glided silently backward, carrying its counter space and cabinets along with it, broading the whole area by exactly four feet. Castiel studied the enhanced kitchen space with satisfaction.
There. And that doesn't damage the next room - it's still big enough.
Just to try the idea out he caused a work island to pop into view in the middle of the kitchen floor. He effortlessly change the shape of the island and rotated it a little until it sat at a pleasing diagonal. There was plenty of room to walk around it on all sides.
Still, an adjustment like this demanded a formality. He moved his computer mouse to the desk accessory list, selected "Send Mail," and typed a message in the space that appeared.
TESSA:
PLEASE NOTE THE KITCHEN WALL ADJOINING THE DINING ROOM. I MOVED IT. IT'S NOT LOAD-BEARING, SO I DON'T SEE ANY PROBLEM. DO YOU? LET ME KNOW IF YOU THINK OTHERWISE.
-CN
Another mouse-click caused the message to vanish. Later he would bundle the design file up with the note, attach his version of the house plans, and send the whole thing to the design office.
It was now very early in the morning, and he had not yet gone to bed. His eye were too tired to continue his visual "walk-through" of the house on his computer screen. He felt a yawn welling up. Maybe he was getting truly sleepy. He closed his eyes and stretched his arms and back.
A sharp "boing" sounded directly in front of him.
His eyes snapped open.
An icon was flashing in the upper left-hand corner of the monitor.
E-mail. No big deal.
So why was he shaking?
He was still unnerved by the apparition - that grostesquely comic, disturbingly savage murder he had witnessed just a few hours ago.
Hold it now. Simulation of a murder. Let's keep our realities straight, OK?
Even so, the animated performance had irrationally frightened him. The music and images had haunted him as he toured this perfectly safe, innocuous, virtual interior. As he stared at the blinking E-mail icon, a bright red cartoon bloodstain flashed across his brain. He tried unsuccessfully to erase it.
And just who would be leaving an E-mail at this time of night? Or should I say morning?
He double-clicked the icon and the message appeared.
CASSSSSSSIE!
AM LOOKING FORWARD SO MUCH TO SEEING YOU TOMORROW! WE ARE ON FOR NOON, AREN'T WE? AT THE COURT OF KING LOUIS XIV? OH PLEEZZZ DON'T CANCEL! IT'S BEEN WAY TOO LONG.
GABE
Castiel breathed more relaxedly.
Gabriel
Gabriel was even more of an insomniac than Castiel, and nocturnal messages between them were no oddity. But part of the message puzzled him.
Court of King Louis XIV?
Then he remembered. The lounge. The hotel where he'd be for the next few days.
Gabriel's fantasizing again. Guess it's my serve.
He went to his desk accesory list again to leave a message of his own
HELLO GABRIEL!
WE'RE STILL GOING. AND I UNDERSTAND WE'RE IN FOR A TREAT. OLD KING LOUIE'S HOLDING A COMMAND PERFORMANCE OF A BRAND NEW MOLIERE PLAY WITH MUSIC BY LULLY AND LYRICS BY NEIL SIMON. SHOULD GO DOWN GREAT WITH WHISKEY AND MARGARITA. SEE YOU THERE!
-CN
He zapped the message into the network, then shut down his design program.
Surely I'm tired enough to go to sleep now.
But as he looked at his hand resting on the computer mouse, he noticed that it was still trembling.
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The horizontal hold went out on Dean's eyesight. The omelet he was trying to eat kept flipping upward through his vision. He just wanted to close his eyes and let his head drop on his plate. This commonly happedned after he'd been awakened for work in the wee hours. Particularly when dawn was just coming up, as it was now.
But Dean knew he'd get a second wind in a little while. He'd be good for another twenty-four hours straight if he paced himself right. The prospect wasn't particularly pleasing.
Dean took a huge swig of coffee and stared ruthlessly at the omelet until he managed to make it stand still. Then he looked across the cafe table at his partner. Victor was munching on a stack of pancakes.
"Not off to the best starts, are we?" Dean observed.
"Nope. Reporters showing up before cop is not what you'd call a P.R coup. The captain'll really give us hell for that."
"Why can't he blame the Hollywood cops? They got there before we did."
"Since when is Colt fair?"
"Good point."
"So a millionaire from Chicago gets whacked in one of our finest wannabe-luxury hotels," Victor mused, shaking his head. "Kind of obliges us to solve the case, huh?"
"Kind of."
"So how soon do you think we'll get a laugh on this one?"
"The same as usual," Dean said. "Soon or never."
"Never's a long time."
"A hell of a long time."
Dean and Victor frequently likened themselves to a stand-up comedy team playing to an unsmiling audience. A "laugh" was any hint or clue indicating that a case might be solvable. If they didn't get one early on, things would only get tougher - if not downright impossible.
The ideal time to get a laugh was before the two of them even came onto a homicide scene - during those first few minutes after patrol officers arrived. But this time, the warm-up act had been a real dud.
Dean shuddered as he sipped on his coffee. A high profile case like this could dog their heels almost endlessly.
"Never" was, indeed, a long time.
He grabbed a jar of horseradish and began to spread the sweltering stuff all over the omelet - his usual antidote to disagreeable crime-scene odors. If worst-case situations - when a corpse was, say, a week or two old - horseradish was the only way to clear up his sinuses.
Dean and Victor began to talk over their strategy for the rest of the morning - including the hotel guests they needed to interview, and the subpoena they'd have to get in order to obtain the hotel's records on those guests.
"I got a hunch it'll all prove a waste of time, though," Victor remarked.
"Why?" Dean asked.
"Just a feeling. I don't think it was done by a guest."
"Who was it, then?
"Come on, Dean. If I knew that, we could wrap up and head home early. It could have been somebody from outside, that's all. I got a look at the fire stairs. The perp could've just slipped in, done the deed, and let himself out."
"But did the killer hang around the hallway and wait for this particular guy, or was it random? And are we ruling out a mob hit? Dick Roman wasn't said to be the sweetest guy in the world. His demise might have been subsidized by some gerous Chicago philanthropist."
"Awfully messy for a professional job."
"Well, it sort of fits in with the pervasive decline in Amican craft and workmanship, doesn't it?"
"It was personal, Dean."
"Yeah, I guess you're right." Dean said, remembering the man's gaping wound and the savagely rendered blood stain. "How long's it been since we saw someone cut up like that?"
"I sure can't remember."
Dean was seized by another wave of tiredness. He involuntarily close his eyes. His own words echoed through his mind . . .
"How long's it been since we saw someone cut up like tha?"
Her face crept into his mind. Her face with that odd, glazed look.
Come on, man, forget about it. It's been three years. How much more time do you want?
Dean tightened his eyes.
Don't see it. Keep it out of your brain.
Her face with that expression. What was it about that expression?
His first thought had been that she'd gotten her makeup all wrong. And, yes, that expression. He'd laughed at the expression whenever she'd gotten it before. It was a screwed-up-goofy look of some dippy thirties movie comedienne, a bemused look she got when some asshole called with a wrong number or when she came home from the store with some body else grocery bag or when she'd bob out of a swimming pool like a wet cat after an unexpected dunking. It was the look that had made all her friends cheer and clap and hoot and holler when she popped in the door on the evening of her twentieth birthday and got the surprise of her life. It was a look that had made sweet mockery of her pretty young face.
Dean's eyes popped open. The bright light of the cafe dissolved her image. It had been a long time since his last such attack, and he'd forgotten how simple it was to get rid of the pictures.
Just remember to open your eyes when you don't want to see something.
The brightness resolved into a glittering clarity - the half-eaten omelet, the empty coffee cup, the Formica tabletop. Dean raised his head and looked into Victor's light brown face with its slender but distinctly African features. Victor was staring at him.
"You OK, Dean? Thought I'd lost you for a moment there."
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Don't bullshit me, fella. I'm your partner. It's my business to know when you're not fine."
Dean sighed. "Doesn't this job ever get to you?" he finally asked.
"No."
"Never?"
"Huh-uh."
"Does it ever get to you that it doesn't get to you?"
"All the fucking time. I worry like crazy that I'm turning into a ghoul or a soulless zombie or an insensitive husband or daddy or some such thing. All cops do, 'specially in homicide. You know that. It's just a fact of life." Victor paused a moment, then added, "But all cops aren't you. We haven't been through what you've been through."
Dean nodded. That pretty well cut to the problem. Victor hadn't become Dean's partner until a few months after the thing had happened, and Dean had never told him the whole grisly story. But Victor knew enough to figure it would still nag at Dean from time to time.
"If it's getting to you, maybe you should take some vacation time," Victor suggested.
"Naw, then I'd really get all strung out. I'll be OK, Vic. I'm just tired. And when I'm tired, I started getting pictures in my head. After a while they always go away."
The two of them ate in silence. Then Dean said, "I used to like my job. Now I don't have any idea whether I like it or not. I'm like an air traffic controller who's trying to do his job after he's been in a plane crash. Maybe I really ought to look for another line of work."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Something that won't push my buttom like this job." Dean fell silent again for another second or two and then added, "Maybe I'll become a mortician."
He and Victor both laughed.
"Not until you get yourself cloned," Victor said, "If I lose you, my next partner's sure to be some right-wing redneck skinhead white supremacist."
"You'd be an experience for him." Dean grinned. When Victor just scowled, he said, "And right, damn it. I'll stick it out for a while. Just for you. Now let's finish eating ang get moving. We've got a real mess on our hands.
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TBC