Another Month Later
On a dull, dreary Monday morning perfectly identical to the thousands of other dull, dreary Monday mornings preceding it, Detective Berman sat at his desk, typing up a storm on the antiquated computer his department insisted they had no money to upgrade.
Having finished a particular section, he leaned back against his office chair and took the time to read it back. It was boring, rote work for him at this point--some report for a straightforward case that'd popped up a few days prior--but he prided himself on his thoroughness. After several corrections and that final, satisfactory evaluation, the detective eagerly turned his attention to his desk's newest addition: a small, elegant onyx block that spun effortlessly posed atop a single vertex. It was a model sculpture of the famed Astor Place Cube in New York, a sculpture of which he was fond and, incidentally, a recent gift from his madam.
In his fifteen years of tenure, the detective had tried to make his office into something more than its vomitous asbestos floor tile, exposed ductwork, and beige cinder block wall. Filing cabinets and shelves of books and binders lined the free space of his office, with papers and folders that sorely needed organizing lying about. A large city map and whiteboard hung behind him.
Despite its mustiness and clutter, Detective Berman liked to think he'd succeeded in enriching his space. There laid a dark rug on the floor, well-worn but sturdy. He disliked the overhead fluorescents and thus opted for a banker's lamp on his desk and a standing lamp in the corner. He'd given wooden Venetian blinds to his singular, sterile portal to the outside world, which on that morning were pulled open to welcome in the day's cold, cloudy light. Various tchotchkes laid about on his desk and shelves. Several works of art hung on his walls, done by friends of his.
And now, that little cube stood front and center on his desk, small but proud. He leaned forward and gave it a flick, watching it whirl idly as he again leaned back and settled into his chair, arms crossed, a tiny grin making its way to his lips.
His weekend had been utter bliss. They'd finally, to his heart's delight, begun venturing outside her house at more normal hours, enjoying the quiet dinners and outdoor excursions of a normal couple. As much as he enjoyed her trances--from deep, collared blackouts to gentle but rapt attention--he found himself acutely in their throes less often as of late. In fact, the past Saturday afternoon had been so sunny and mild that the two spent it merely sitting together on a park bench, like any other normal-looking couple. Holding steaming Solo Jazz cups of corner store coffee, bird-watching, people-watching, spinning yarn after yarn of conversational tangents as they sat upon the massive web left in their wake, sky streaking pink, sun burning red, stars sparkling to life, evening breeze briskly displacing the heat of day. His fingers weaving gently through her tawny tresses, the dim, gold light of waning sun setting her sly green eyes aflame. The surprise black cube in her unfurling fingers, just a little something for him, that was all, it even rotates, and oh! he'd said, eyes wide, what a chip off the old block it was, and she'd rolled her eyes before laughing that laugh of hers, and what a laugh it was. The gentle knocking sound when--
Detective Berman opened his eyes.
One of his reports, Sergeant Joshua, knocked on the open door. The cube had slown, lazily ceasing its rotation with its last ounce of inertia. He let out a sigh.
"Come in, Sergeant," he called without looking up, taking an idle, obligatory sip of his tepid coffee. The young sergeant's unique knocking cadence always gave him away. A particularly tall, lanky young man of a certain awkwardness, he strode in and placed a thick folder on his desk.
"Morning, boss. Got a few revised reports for you to review."
"Cool, can't wait," he said dryly, eyeing them with mild contempt as they plopped onto his desk. The focal point of his career--bloated reports. Speaking of which, he ought to finish the one on his screen. He returned to typing. "Anything else for me? Anything that won't make me want to go the hell home by noon?"
"Well," the young detective started, a sparkle in his eye as he placed a dusty folder on the desk. "I believe we have a new lead on the Walter case."
"Yeah?" Detective Berman replied, ears perked but fingers still typing, eyes still screen-affixed. "That's something, alright. But don't get excited or anything, we're holding off on it for now."
"He's, uh...actually waiting outside," he said, voice lowered, glancing outside the door behind him. Detective Berman stopped typing and followed his gaze, leaning to the side. "He says he was a higher-up at Chyron, a VP or something."
Chyron. A single, muted string plucked in his head.
"Uh..." the younger detective continued, leaning in, his smooth, thin face painted with concern. "He looks to be, like...on the verge of tears. I dunno. I really think you should see him."
"Well...I guess I have a few minutes," Detective Berman grumbled, checking his watch. "He's already here, might as well hear him out. Send him in."
"Will do," Sergeant Joshua said, stepping out to retrieve him.
A short, wiry man with abnormally straight posture walked in, gait radiating confidence. In his mid-fifties, his hair was jet black and slicked back, temples streaked generously with gray. His suit was a washed-out navy, very sharp and closely tailored, his feet shod in spotless brown oxfords. His body language emanated apprehension, while his face--angular, gaunt, with prominent cheekbones--betrayed turbulent emotion.
"Good morning, Detective. Marcus Chiang," he said tersely, his words slightly accented. He extended his hand.
"Morning, Mr. Chiang, sir. Nice to meet you. Have a seat," the detective said, leaning across his desk and returning the handshake. He turned his attention once again to his screen. "What can I do for you?"
"I'm going to save you some time and get to the point," Marcus replied, taking a seat on the agéd chair opposite the detective.
"Fantastic. I like you already."
"I am certain that in the course of your investigation you've encountered a Doctor Maria Angelos."
Detective Berman nodded, still staring at his report on the monitor. His eyes flicked anxiously to the clock on his system's toolbar. Already, this felt like a waste of time.
Marcus continued.
"Well, you could say I'm one of her patients. Or was, rather. Her practice, might I say, is a bit...unorthodox."
"Tch. Tell me about it," the detective fired off, only half paying attention.
"What do you mean?"
He stopped and looked up, realizing what he'd just said.
"Just that we've already looked into her styles of treatment, so to speak."
The two met eyes for a spell.
"So you know," Marcus said, voice lowered.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Detective Berman replied evenly, the words leaving his mouth automatically.
"It seems to me like you do."
"It's really not much to go off of. We consider it a dead end."
"But you do know about her...method, let's say."
"Whatever was in Mr. uh...Walter's medical file," he said, now needing to glance at the folder for help recalling the victim's name. His memory wasn't normally so dodgy, especially not regarding cases so recent. But for some reason, that one seemed like it'd swallowed into a void, a black sinkhole in his mind. No matter. "That's all. It's on our radar, nothing more."
"I see."
The detective's stomach turned. He rested his chin on his hand in thought, elbow propped on the armrest of his chair. Marcus narrowed his eyes at him before leaning forward and dropping his voice to a whisper.
"My word is 'dream'."
They met eyes again, a silence befalling the room.
What did this schmuck think he was trying to accomplish? So she'd gotten around. Mere playthings they were, that was all, from long before they'd met--however it was and however long ago it was that they met; the exact details were both unclear and unimportant. She'd released each and every one. That was what she'd told him, and it satisfied his curiosity. He felt privileged that she'd been so honest and divulged such information to him. Privileged that she'd even looked at him, wanted to see him so often, wanted to shower him with affection and ease his stresses with gentle caresses. He had no reason to doubt her.
"What's that, some kind of sleeper agent thing?" he said flippantly, giving the cube on his desk another casual whirl. Marcus glanced at it and raised his eyebrows.
"I think you know exactly what it was. It's what's known as a trigger word. I would hear her say it and...totally lose myself."
The detective leaned back in his chair, nodding with a smirk. He certainly knew the feeling.
"Yeah, well, that's a common effect. Of that sort of thing. So I've heard," he said, gesticulating vaguely. But, though he tried to resist, gaze tempted by that spinning cube, he was beginning to feel his mind salivate, melting a little just thinking about it, remembering it, as though he were hearing about a fantastic feast he knew all too well would be otherworldly and yet remained unavailable to him.
Marcus, for some reason, looked somewhat encouraged.
"I mean, it took me so long to even come forward, and that was
after
I heard Mr. Walter had died, by which of course I was very saddened. I'd worked with him, after all, it shouldn't have taken his death to get me to say something. But he was the one who referred me to her, and I just can't help but think...well. I'm not quite sure what to think about the whole thing."
"Neither are we," Detective Berman mumbled. Granted, though he highly doubted his lovely madam could be implicated in something so unsavory, his working mind won out and his interest was piqued. Strangely, though, the more he heard and thought about this case, the harder it was to remain focused. He'd never felt anything quite like it, but it all just seemed so boring, so...trivial. They might as well have been discussing basic arithmetic.
"I'm not exactly sure, sir, what it is you're implying," he continued.
Marcus sighed as though he'd been expecting this. "Well, I'm not exactly sure myself, is the thing. There were some...unusual things going on at the company. Doctor Angelos had a few of them as patients, and they fell into some...similar patterns of behavior, I suppose you could say.
"At first I thought it nothing more than my own paranoia," he continued, "but then those same people began exhibiting the same behaviors, over and over, you see, and, well, I couldn't really explain it. I had people in HR telling me these people's supervisors noticed them spacing out at their desks at various times of day. It didn't even affect their work, all of them were solid performers, but like clockwork--"
"Like clockwork, the people chained to their desks down at Chyron for eight hours a day would get bored and space out? That is pretty crazy, yeah," Detective Berman interrupted flatly.
Marcus pursed his lips and tilted his head downward. "Not like that, Detective. I mean, the odds of these same guys spacing out in the exact same ways, every single day,
without
a drop in work performance...I was just wondering how on Earth they'd all managed it. Hell, it sounded good to me. And the weird part--it was even with the same exact facial expression each and every time. Same blushing cheeks, same distant little smile. And the common denominator in all of them was th--"
"Doctor Angelos."
"...Right."
"Well," the detective replied, idly scrolling through the document on his computer as he processed this information. He had to admit that this was news to him, though he took it with a grain of salt. "That's quite a claim you're making there, Mr. Chiang. You wouldn't happen to have any sort of evidence supporting it, would you?"
