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It was hard to tell where he was. There was a certain vagueness to the place, and the lighting conditions, those of a colourless dusk, didn’t help. One thing he could tell was that everything was filthy, his surroundings, the ground, the walls, his own hands, all covered in something dark and unclean.
From further away, he could hear the sound of footsteps, and when he looked up, he saw Dani running towards him, her expression a mixture of disbelief and disgust.
’How could you do this, Bright?’ She asked, demanded, seemingly appalled by him. Malcolm frowned.
’What do you-’ the words died in his throat as he turned around and looked down to where Dani seemed to be looking. Startled, he let out a strangled cry as he stumbled backwards, right into Dani’s tight grip.
Edrisa Tanaka lay before him in the filth, unmoving, an expression of terror frozen on her face. Her torso was riddled with stabs and cuts, and her shirt was so soaked with blood, it was hard to tell what its original colour had been. Nausea gripped him at the sight, and as he brought his hands up to cover his mouth, he realised that they, too, were covered in blood, and he was holding a rather large, bloodied knife.
His breathing picked up as panic started taking over, panic and terror, and he screamed, staggering further back, and screamed some more as the grip on his wrists became tighter, and screamed until darkness swallowed him whole.
When he awoke, he was sitting upright on his bed, out of breath, his throat aching from exertion. Dull, white light filtered through his window, suggesting an early, cloudy morning outside.
As his breathing calmed, he reached with shaky hands to unbuckle the restraints around his wrists and remove the mouth guard. His arms ached, like he’d gone through a particularly vigorous workout, and he could see the imprint of the restraints around his forearm and wrists. Nothing that wouldn’t disappear in time, given that the restraints were designed to avoid causing harm.
Still shaking, he leaned forward, buried his face in his palms and stayed like that for a while, trying to empty his mind, trying to get rid of the image of Edrisa’s dead body that lingered still at the forefront of his consciousness, ugly and intrusive and absolutely bone-chilling.
Edrisa felt just a little bit of guilt for being excited when she was called to another crime scene, but when one dissects the corpses of victims of brutal murder for a living, one had to become desensitised to a few things. And one also had to look for the silver lining to these dark situations, like how she’d get to see Malcolm Bright again, doing his thing, being brilliant and pretty.
She realised she’s gotten outright giddy at the thought and made an effort to calm herself down as she approached the police cordon and put on her professional face. She greeted her colleagues as she walked by them to approach the body, her surroundings grounding her in the reality of her work. By the time she reached it, she was focused solely on the body, all thoughts of a certain blue-eyed profiler banished from her mind.
“Conflicted” didn’t even begin to describe Malcolm Bright’s state of mind as he crossed the cordon. Despite his best efforts and various attempts at meditation between having woken up and getting the call to the scene, he hadn’t been able to get images from his nightmare out of his head. Since usually his nightmares were, to his conviction, true memories, he constantly had to remind himself that this time that wasn’t the case.
Still, a deeply irrational part of him half expected to show up at the scene and find a completely different medical examiner leaning over the victim. These intrusive thoughts created a dissonance in his mind that was quite distracting to work with.
Gil was walking with him, filling him in on some of the information they already found out, and it took him all his brainpower just to take in what he was saying.
‘What is it, no Holmesian deductions from seemingly arbitrary information today?’ Gil asked.
‘I’m not sure if I should be flattered by the comparison or hurt by its sarcastic wording,’ Malcolm deadpanned in response, hoping that would amuse Gil enough to distract him from his own distractedness.
Gil patted his back, keeping his reaction to a tasteful chuckle, as they were on the scene of a tragedy, and they both came to a stop a few steps away from the dead body.
Gil had already told him that the vic was a father of two with no criminal history, who never got home from work the previous evening, and that the body was found by a couple of construction workers, nailed to the wall. Staring at the victim now helped him get into the focused mind-space he needed, all distractions escaping him for the time being as he studied the pose of the body.
The nails weren’t long enough to go through thicker body masses like the torso, but the thinner parts of his limbs were all nailed to the wall, as well as his clothes, and there were also ones that were beneath his arms and armpit, probably there to provide additional support to the man’s weight from below.
‘Whoever did this nailed that hand first,’ he said, pointing to the man’s left hand, which was nailed smack in the centre to the wall above shoulder height and a bit to the side. ‘He put up a fight with his right, and the perp shot a nail through his palm to stop him from struggling before he pinned it to the wall definitively, which would the second nail at an odd angle.’
He stopped for a second to think. Even with a nail gun pointed at him, the vic probably fought back, which meant that whoever did this was formidable enough to overpower him for as long as it took to nail that first hand to the wall.
‘Are there any other signs of struggle?’ He asked, leaning in slightly closer to the body to see if there was any bruising.
Edrisa hadn’t seen him arrive, having been talking to someone else about the crime scene, but when she turned around to get back to the body, the sight of him put a smile on her face. She caught most of his “thesis” when she approached, silently appreciating the string of logic he constructed.
‘Indeed,’ she said, stepping up to the body and pulling the hem of the victim’s shirtsleeve away to reveal some bruising on his right wrist. Bright seemed to almost jump, as if startled by her sudden appearance, looking like a deer caught in the headlights for a split second. Edrisa couldn’t decide if his reaction was cute or worrying and settled on looking back at him with a puzzled expression.
When he didn’t say anything, she took it as her cue to continue.
‘Bruising around his wrists and forearms, as well as his neck and face, suggests a struggle taking place likely until his body gave out.’ She pointed at the many nails in his torso and some in his head. ‘The varying depths that the nails penetrated means that some of these were shot from a distance. It’s too early to tell what exactly it was that killed him.’ She paused for a second before she added, in an upbeat tone: ‘Good to see you again!’
She smiled expectantly at Bright, who was still looking like a dear in headlights, then quickly looked away, back at the body. Edrisa felt her smile fade.
‘Right, um, the uh… the killer used him as target practice,’ he half-muttered, then continued a bit more confidently. ‘He took pleasure in “toying” with his victim once he couldn’t run.’
‘So he knew the guy,’ Gil half stated, half asked.
‘Not necessarily,’ Bright replied. He had one arm crossed, the other hovering near his chin, occasionally moving to gesture are the body. Edrisa smiled. He was so expressive when he was explaining things. ‘What does this guy look like to you? What do we know about him already?’
‘Successful, married, family man,’ Dani listed off, looking up at Bright to see if that’s what he meant.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘We know appearances can be deceiving, but on first glance, it seems like this guy was living the American dream. It’s possible that he had enemies, but it’s also possible that whoever killed him did so because he thought he had everything, while the killer had…’
He trailed off, staring into nothing for a few seconds, and when he snapped out of it, he quickly shoved his hands back in his pockets. Edrisa thought he saw his hands tremble for a second before he hid them.
‘It’s too early to tell which it is,’ he said. ‘It’s better if we wait until we know more. Excuse me.’ He slipped past her and Dani and made his way outside. Edrisa watched him leave, confused, and saw the same confusion on the rest of the team’s faces. Gil frowned.
‘Alright, let’s wrap up here,’ he said, after a few moments. Later, when they were leaving the crime scene and she was alone with the body-bag, he approached her. ‘Don’t mind him, he gets like that sometimes. I’ll talk to him.’
‘Oh, I… I don’t mind,’ she replied, realising that she wasn’t even convincing herself with that. Gil put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Don’t worry too much about it,’ he said. ‘He likes you.’
Edrisa wasn’t exactly expecting that. She didn’t know the details of Gil’s relationship with Bright, but she knew they were fairly close, and that Gil was the one who brought him in to work with the NYPD, so it was reasonable to assume that Gil knew what he was talking about.
‘Y-yeah?’ she asked, her hands immediately going up to fiddle with her glasses. ‘Okay,’ she added, dumbly.
Gil smirked, patted her shoulder, and left. She stared at the air before her for a bit, mind racing, before she followed suit.
Back at the station, Malcolm sat alone in the room they usually used for their cases. JT and Dani had gone to get some lunch, but he hung back, claiming he was full on that croissant he had about two hours before, which of course neither of them believed, not that he was trying to fool them.
He’d been staring at the board from his seat, arms crossed, and felt himself dozing off, willing himself to snap awake as soon as he felt himself slipping, but it wasn’t long until he no longer had the presence of mind to catch himself.
She lay broken on the ground, limbs twisted at awkward angles, clothes soaked in blood. Malcolm swallowed, and took a few careful steps towards her, to see her face. Her body twitched, and she inhaled with a sickly wheeze and looked straight at him with dead eyes. Malcolm startled, stumbling backwards.
‘Why?’ She croaked. He felt his heart beating against his chest, heard his own breathing quicken. Black blood oozed from her mouth when she spoke again. ‘Why?’
‘Bright?’
Edrisa had finished with the autopsy somewhere around lunchtime, and since she’d be taking her break anyway, she thought she’d deliver the results herself. Any excuse to spend more time among the living was a good enough excuse to her.
When she stepped into the room she knew they usually used, she was surprised to see Bright dozing off at the table, head resting on one outstretched arm. The sight almost made her smile, until she realised that he was twitching and muttering in his sleep. She couldn’t really make out any words, but she could tell he was distressed. She took a few steps closer, holding the folder with the autopsy results tighter to her chest.
‘Bright?’ she called, slowly reaching one hand out towards his shoulder. As soon as she touched him, he sprung up from the table, almost falling off his seat as he lurched away from her. She startled, stepping back and giving another squeeze to the folder in her arms as she squeaked.
Bright was staring at her like he’d seen a ghost, eyes wide, panting like he just ran a marathon.
‘Edrisa,’ he breathed, his voice almost as soft as a whisper. His eyelids twitched closer together and finally, he seemed to realise where he was and what was going on. He reached for his tie and loosened it a bit, taking a gulp to calm his breathing down. ‘I mean, Ms Tanaka. I’m uh, sorry for that,’ he said, his eyes now avoiding hers. ‘I shouldn’t have…’
‘It’s ok,’ Edrisa rushed to say, adjusting her glasses that had gotten slightly lopsided when she startled. She wasn’t exactly sure what was or wasn’t ok.
Bright stood up slowly, looking at the ground somewhere next to Edrisa, biting his lip. It seemed like he wanted to say something, but couldn’t, and just sort of stood there, awkwardly. Edrisa also started to feel awkward herself, until she remembered why she was there in the first place.
‘Oh, autopsy results,’ she said, showing the folder to Bright before setting it on the table. ‘It seems the nails in his chest weren’t enough to kill him, hence the nails in the head.’ It ceased to disturb her how nonchalantly she was able to relay morbid information like that a while back. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t bother her how casually Bright talked about the inner workings of a serial killer’s mind. She really understood him, in a way she thought many might not.
But right now, she didn’t really understand him at all. Bright was still avoiding looking straight at her, his gaze directed at something somewhere behind her, and she could feel her stomach sinking.
‘Thank you, Ms Tanaka,’ he said, his voice coming out weirdly raspy, but for a split second she caught his eyes flitting to hers. She mustered a weak smile and turned around to leave.
Malcolm watched her leave from the windows of the room and when she was no longer in sight, sunk back onto his chair and buried his face in his hands, then drove them through his hair.
All he could see when he looked at Edrisa were her blood-soaked clothes and cold, dead eyes from his dream, and feared that if he looked at her for too long, he’d just get lost in the dream again. That it would become real to him in that moment, even if it wasn’t for the rest of the world. Settling his forehead in his palm and squeezing his eyes shut, he groaned at himself
You fucked up. You were scared, and now you’ve upset her, because you couldn’t get over yourself.
Thankfully, before he could go down the rabbit hole of mentally berating himself even further, Gil stepped into the room.
‘She brought the autopsy results?’ He asked, simply. Malcolm nodded, not even opening his eyes to look at Gil. He heard him sigh and pull up a chair next to him. ‘Out with it. What is it this time? Another dream?’
Malcolm didn’t even answer, just sat in silence, staring over his conjoined hands at the surface of the table.
‘Malcolm,’ Gil said, pulling his seat a bit closer to him. ‘Whatever’s in these dreams, you can’t let them control you. Every time, you show up here looking like a kicked puppy. It can’t go on like this.’
‘It’s not… It’s not what I see in my dreams, Gil,’ Malcolm finally said, his voice barely above a whisper. He looked up at Gil. ‘It’s what I see when I’m not even sleeping.’
Gil slowly leaned back in his seat, joining his hands on his lap. Malcolm could tell he was at a loss of what to say. He really must have hit him with a big one, not that he wanted to. There was no satisfaction in watching Gil worry over him.
‘Is it her?’
The question came almost out of nowhere, and Malcolm knew he shouldn’t have been so surprised to hear it. Once again, he just nodded, taking a deep breath to calm himself down.
A few more moments of silence passed between them, both men staring at the space before them.
‘Malcolm,’ Gil finally said, again. ‘Look at her.’
This made Malcolm look back at Gil, confused. Gil’s expression was hard, stern, and he could tell he was very serious about this.
‘Go, look at her,’ he repeated. ‘She’s real. Whatever you saw in your dream isn’t. Look at her until you know that.’
Gil’s suggestion was almost childishly simple, and Malcolm realised he was staring at him, wide-eyed, like a kid. He’d been over-thinking it all, digging himself deeper and deeper into despair, and in comes Gil, not a psychologist, not some kind of an expert, but a man who knew Malcolm possibly better than anyone else, and sees through it all. It didn’t slip Malcolm’s attention that by know, he barely had to say anything for Gil to understand him.
‘Well, what are you staring at me for?’ Gil asked, a tinge of humour in his voice. ‘Go!’
Malcolm almost felt like a kid again, springing to his feet and skittering out of the room after Gil all but shooed him away. As he walked through the corridor towards the morgue, it occurred to him that she might not even be there. After all, it was well into lunch time, and she’d probably been working on that autopsy report all morning. He didn’t need to think too hard before he formulated another plan and corrected his course towards the exit.
Edrisa had just gotten back from her lunch break and had just began preparing to get back to work when the morgue doors opened behind her, and she turned around to see Bright step in with two plastic cups in his hand.
He had just the most apologetic look in his eyes as he greeted her and walked over, extending what looked like a cup of pink smoothie from a very good and very expensive coffee place nearby.
‘Smoothie?’ He offered, dumbly. Edrisa reached slowly for the cup, as if she was unsure about taking it. She finally decided to accept it, and as she took it from him, it occurred to her that the smoothie must have been fairly expensive, if it was from that fancy place nearby. Then she remembered that his suit probably cost more than most of her wardrobe combined.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and took a sip. It tasted heavenly, and she had to stop herself from moaning into the straw. ‘Strawberry and banana! How did you know?’
Bright smiled, that uncertain look in his eyes still remaining.
‘I… extrapolated… from previous experience,’ he offered, taking a sip of his own drink, which was brown and smelled herbal.
Edrisa raised an eyebrow.
‘Mr Bright, did you just profile my taste in smoothies?’
That legitimately made him chuckle, and this time when he looked away, it wasn’t the same as before, because as soon as he recovered, he looked right back at her, and his eyes were shining.
‘What can I say?’ he said, a playful tone to his voice as he shrugged. ‘It’s both a blessing and a curse.’
Edrisa giggled, perhaps for a bit longer than a joke of that calibre deserved, but she didn’t mind. She certainly didn’t expect anything like this earlier when she left him in the room like that. It was amazing how just as easily as he ruined her mood earlier, he was able to lift it.
Bright’s smile faded a bit, but a tiny smile still remained, pulling at the corners of his lips, and for a few moments they just looked at each other, him mostly just standing still with a hand in his pocket, her sipping away at her free, delicious smoothie.
‘Look,’ he said, finally. ‘I’m sorry about…’ he waved his hand, trying to find the right word, then seemed to give up. She knew what he meant, anyway. ‘I don’t know what got into me. Well, I do, but… It’s not important, it doesn’t justify how I treated you. So here I am. To say I’m sorry.’
He almost sounded awkward… and nervous. Edrisa’s smile turned almost coy, the straw never having left her lips, until she spoke again.
‘This smoothie is delicious,’ she said, holding it out to study it, then looked at Bright. ‘I think I’m going to have to forgive you.’
The genuine smile that spread across his lips was so worth how easily she let him off the hook. Time for phase two.
‘But you’ll have to keep the smoothies coming,’ she said. Bright raised an eyebrow at that, and for a few seconds just studied her with those impossibly blue eyes, making her feel all bubbly inside.
‘Alright,’ he said, his smile audible his voice. ‘I can do that.’
Edrisa beamed. They bid goodbye and he turned around to leave. She watched him disappear through the double doors and waited for a few seconds before dropping her professional facade and exploding giddy little victory dance.
‘Yes! Yes!’ She whisper-squealed, despite being alone in the room.
By the time she calmed down and drank the rest of the smoothie, it felt like the air in the morgue had turned pink.