Under A Rest Pt. 01

He was so sure she'd done it.

Really, this inquisition was merely a formality. The more he uncovered, the more he found the circumstances were just too perfect.

On the surface this case seemed particularly thorny, stumping even the most shrewd of his colleagues. But in his 15 years of detective work, he'd picked up a thing or two.

The deceased--James Walter, a lone, middle-aged bachelor--was found in his garage, seated in his running car. With his cell phone in hand, he was last dialed by a private number returning no trace. His home was littered with small clues: the recently-used lipstick in the car's center console, the lacy bra stuffed haphazardly in the back of the drawer, the extra tampons stashed in his bathroom cabinet. And after asking around, no woman in his life of which to speak.

Except, of course, for his psychiatrist.

Detective Michael Berman's reflections in the mirrored elevator were cut short, punctuated by a chime of arrival.

Even her waiting room seemed imbued with a strange aura. Doctor Maria Angelos' secretary assured the detective that she'd be just a minute. Naturally, he took a seat.

Duly noted was the sheer calm of the room's ambience, a room that clearly rebelled against its liminal reputation, a room that seemed eager to force its inhabitants to sit and simply be for a little while, rather than fret about such futile, transient matters as life's everyday worries.

The wooden, coffered walls absorbed noise perfectly, the space almost eerily silent except for very slow, very pleasant jazz wafting from the ceiling speaker. No harsh fluorescent bulbs to be found--only warm light, and not too much of it, from stylish, strategically-placed floor lamps. A faint, calming fragrance of something piney, perhaps balsam, puffed away from a small machine humming in the corner. The chairs, a far cry from the starkly utilitarian constructions typically found in such rooms, were accommodating, soft, and supportive. Very easy to settle into. Fascinating art on the walls; little reading material of which to speak. A kindly grandfather clock ticked in the other corner, each tick a heavy thunk forward in time, its pendulum swinging with equally great effort.

An art lover, Detective Berman studied an intricate and colorful impressionist painting on the wall across from him. It was spirited, yet restrained, with big, bold strokes of vibrant greens. And as he examined it, focused on it, it wasn't long before he realized that the rest of the stimuli around him had faded away.

Veritably peaceful by any standard. So peaceful, in fact, that when called in, the detective found prying himself from his position took a bit of effort.

He'd always had that tendency of intense, tunneling focus, and though it uniquely suited him to his work, it sometimes caused moments of distraction like this. Mildly amused at his own fixation, he rose and followed the doctor's receptionist, making an appropriate mental note of this phenomenon as a fascinating study in the effect of one's surroundings.

His face appeared apprehensively from behind her door, taking in her office. This space was of similar serenity to her waiting room--carefully-curated, though more suited for long hours of work.

And there sat the little lady herself at her expansive mahogany desk.

"Doctor Angelos?" called a baritone voice.

"You must be Detective Berman, hi," she said sweetly, rising to shake his hand. "Good evening. Come in, have a seat. Hope the rush hour traffic wasn't too bad."

"Evening, Doctor. No, not too bad. I have my shortcuts," he replied. She nodded politely.

His large, sunken eyes scanned the woman before him, his instincts immediately sizing her up. She was more than a head shorter than he, wearing a burgundy skirt suit that, while modest, highlighted her curvy figure. Somewhere in her early forties. Long, light brown hair--a dusty shade, streaked with silver, done in a French twist, with bangs that fell into full moon, pale green eyes. Dark undereye circles stood in stark contrast to both her eyes and her pallor. With a thin nose and slight overbite, her features were diminutive, somewhat crooked, fey. Odd, yet striking; altogether uniquely alluring. She smelled of sandalwood.

The detective in front of her, as Doctor Angelos found, was of similarly peculiar magnetism, albeit clearly frazzled from the day's demands. At first glance an average-looking man, closer scrutiny found a countenance tan, warm, and expressive, with eyes trustworthy and a smile disarmingly kind. His frame was tall and well-filled, his posture straight but saddled with fatigue. Approaching forty, it both showed and didn't. The charcoal suit under his coat looked to her discerning eye to be of superior fit and quality, perhaps vintage. His hair, curly and tangled and ink black, stood in all directions, framing his heavy brows and equally inky gaze. On his aquiline nasal bridge sat a pair of rounded black spectacles. His face was coated so liberally in stubble that it threatened a beard--a shadow cast well past five o'clock. He smelled of the city, mixed with deodorant on its last legs.

"If you'll excuse my appearance," he said, stretching discreetly, looking down at himself as if reading her mind. "I've been up and about since five this morning. I was lucky enough to be the detective on call. No time to so much as run a comb through my hair."

"Of course. I'm terribly sorry to hear that," she said, hand to her chin thoughtfully. "Sounds like a very stressful day. Such a tragedy about what happened. I'm at a loss."

"Absolutely. But thank you for understanding."

"They pay me to do just that. So what can I do for you?" she said, gesturing to an empty seat across from her desk. He took it, admiring its soft, plush leather.

"I must say, Doctor, this is quite the suite you've got here. The waiting room, the art, the chairs. I'm sure it gets patients talking. If not about their trauma, about the brocaded drapes, at least."

"Oh, of course. I pick every fixture in my home and office with the utmost thought. Down to the pile of the carpet."

"I can tell. I love those grandfather clocks. You can never go wrong with one, can you? They're timeless. Though not really, because, well, you know."

She smiled. He continued.

"Uh...You seem to have a different one in here than in the waiting room."

"Thank you. The one in the office is a more modern model, whereas this one's a genuine antique. Regency Era England."

"Incredible."

"Indeed. So what's on your mind, Detective?"

"Well, I'm just here to do a bit of bureaucratic poking around," he said, taking out his legal pad. "Standard procedure, piecing together a coherent narrative grounded in substantiated fact. Because the whole thing, when we really look at it, it all looks a little...well..."

"Of course. I didn't want to say anything, but it does reek of foul play, I'm afraid. As chief investigator I'm confident you will do your due diligence."

"You have my word. Hey," he said suddenly, pointing to a miniaturized marble sculpture on her desk. "Proserpina?"

"You know it?" she replied, eyebrows raised.

"Love Bernini, no one like him. I could look at his work all day long. I always discover something new about it whenever I take the time."

"That's precisely why it stands on my desk. But I'm sure you didn't come here to do that," she said politely. The detective gave her a slight smile. She returned with a particularly pleasant one.

"Right. So regarding Mr. Walter...you knew him on a doctor-patient basis, right?"

"That's right."

"And you're a practicing psychiatrist, is that correct?"

"Guilty as charged," she said evenly.

"So that's the only basis on which you knew him."

The doctor paused.

"Detective, I'm almost offended you'd even intimate such a thing. You know as well as I do that anything more would've been highly unethical. I'm not in the habit of risking my livelihood."

"Fair enough. It's just a standard line of questioning, no offense intended. Although I would like to get a woman's opinion on this, um...bra we found in his apartment." Detective Berman pulled a plastic evidence bag from inside one of his coat pockets, inside of which lay a thin, white, lacy brassiere. He continued.

"We're just trying to figure out...did Mr. Walter have any other women in his life that you knew of? Someone who these could've belonged to, even the store they might've come from. Victoria's Secret or whatever. Maybe this one's a bit too nice to have come from there, I don't know. I don't know where you ladies get these frilly little things."

For a very brief second, the doctor was well and truly rattled. After all, that was indeed her bra. She had indeed forgotten it.

"I'm afraid I have no idea whose that is. Or where it might have come from."

Though there was no need to telegraph that.

"Yeah, I thought as much, sorry. It was a long shot. No worries." A valiant effort at lying, he noted. A lesser detective might have even eaten it up. But Detective Berman merely nodded slightly while jotting more notes down, Doctor Angelos gazing at him curiously.

She found him strangely hard to read. Did he suspect her, merely indulging in some sort of investigative theatre for the sake of reconnaissance, or was he asking in good faith?

But the good doctor had no time to speculate nor plot. Only time to act.

"I can't imagine keeping a coat on in here. Aren't you hot in that thing?" she mused. He looked up at her in surprise. His roomy black aviator jacket was not overly warm, though he had noticed that the room temperature did seem particularly so.

"Not particularly. Though now that you mention it, I can tell a good portion of your operating expenses go to the thermostat. What's it at, like, seventy-five?"

"Nearly. I just get cold easily. I happen to like a room toasty."

"Not that cold tonight, is it? Forty-something?"

"Oh, I'm one of those people who feels it in my bones 'til it's seventy out, so I splurge on the heating bill. To me, just another cost of doing business."

"I hear you," he said, nodding and scrawling notes, the intricate gears of his brain whirring along. A woman who liked to have her cake and eat it, too--perhaps not entirely unlike a psychiatrist who might indulge in a dalliance with a patient despite her protests to the contrary. "Did you happen to have anything of note on the victim like his file? Might help us piece things together."

"I suppose I'm at liberty to share it with you now that he's. Well." She halted, putting a hand to her cheek with a heavy sigh. "You know."

"Yeah, I'm sorry. Still raw. I understand," he said, not looking up from his notepad. She nodded solemnly and handed him the manila folder on her desk, eying him as he leafed through it with a swift thoroughness, his lips pursed.

Suddenly, he exhaled as though somewhat overheated and unzipped his jacket, giving his collar a lazy tug. Confidence surged through her. A strong subject--Lady Luck was in the building tonight.

"Hey, wow, thanks for being prepared," he said. "Here we go, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, clinical depression, bipolar one...treatments included cognitive behavioral therapy...bunch of prescriptions...uh huh...hypnotherapy, huh? Pretty fascinating stuff."

Her eyes shone.

"I definitely find it's quite effective in the right patients," she said, studying his face. The more she studied it, the more she found she liked it. "Not everyone responds to it in the same capacity, you see. But Mr. Walter responded to it rather well. He was frightfully intelligent, mutable where it mattered, very receptive to...I guess newness, as it were. You know, he once worked as a senior engineer for Chyron Aeronautics."

"Impressive. The headquarters down in Oakmont?"

"That's the one. Though that was before he decided to shift gears and pursue writing novels."

She spied a flash of curiosity in his face as he scrawled the information in his pad.

"Oh, I read his writing, it was plenty good," she added. "He was even beginning to find some modest acclaim. Very talented man."

"I can tell," he said, lifting his pen and pausing. "Funny."

"I'm sorry?"

"No, nothing, it's just that that's exactly what crossed my mind, whether I'd like to be sitting fireside reading the fictional musings of a plane engineer. And you answered me."

"Ah! Well, it's true. I just wanted to emphasize that he engaged all parts of his mind with equal vigor. He was very creative. Part of what made him such a good candidate for that type of treatment."

"Hypnotherapy?" Detective Berman asked, eyes creasing. The doctor nodded. "Good to know."

Was there or was there not some sort of sales pitch happening? The detective wondered. Certainly felt like it with the ticking of that clock underscoring the conversation. A healthy skeptic always up for a bit of tête-à-tête, he decided to humor her.

"I'm sure it'd be wasted on me."

"Really? On the contrary, you strike me as a creative man with an imagination and eye for detail. It's what every detective worth their salt needs in their arsenal, is it not?"

"You think I'm worth mine?" he quipped.

"You haven't given me evidence to the contrary."

"I'd hope. But yeah, very interesting stuff," he said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs. He scratched the side of his head with the top of his pen in thought. She was steering the conversation just as he'd hoped. Time to do a little digging.

"Speaking of which," he went on. "I did have something else I wanted to ask you. For some reason, I can't remember it."

"Would you like help?"

His brow furrowed. "I'm not sure how you could."

"Are you sure?" she asked, her voice subtly shifting. She was easy to listen to; he'd give her that much. "Sometimes our ideas and memories don't really leave us, they simply lie latent in our mind, obscured from sight only just barely. All it takes is some gentle encouragement, some prodding, some retracing of steps to retrieve those thoughts. Recalling your feelings and mindstates, recalling associations. Some focus, an external stimulus to guide that retrieval. I'm no peddler of false memories or previous lives, but recollection is something with which I helped Mr. Walter in many of our sessions."

A pause. Suddenly, the detective blinked and snapped his fingers.

"Now I remember. I mean, sorry to interrupt. But did you happen to have any record of where you were this morning at around one, one-thirty?"

"Hm...yes, actually. I was at a friend's birthday party. A college buddy of mine named Paul. Dr. Paul Kuklinsky. We were celebrating his birthday at his house, it all ran rather late. We were playing Scrabble, you know how nerds get with Scrabble."

"I do. Believe me."

"I can give you their names and numbers if you'd like to substantiate that information."

"Very good, I'd appreciate that," he replied, jotting in his notebook. He chuckled a bit. "I've got to hand it to you. That was pret-ty good. Talk about earning your keep."

"What? What was pretty good?"

"The way you managed to help me jog my memory there."

"The human mind is a strange thing, Detective. Sometimes we never really forget anything to begin with," she said with a barely-perceptible smirk. He mirrored it.

"Is that the kind of thing you used as part of Mr. Walter's therapy?" he asked, still writing.

"Similar. Hypnotherapy can be a very useful tool in many contexts," she said. He did not look up from his notepad.

"I, uh...I've got to say, that didn't really feel like much of any kind of hypnosis, Doctor."

"Well, yes, I wouldn't really call it that to begin with. There are lines, you know. Hypnosis is a strange thing, so covert that sometimes it's as simple as going to the movies and being so completely drawn into a grand tale on the big screen without even realizing it. You know the characters on the screen are just actors, that everything is fake, but you leave the theater feeling almost unreal, riding on a high, as though you're arriving back through a portal from a different world. It's the beautiful side effect of real, focused concentration. It's spectral, not always some powerful, all-consuming sensation."

"Hm." He paused. "But sometimes it is."

"Sometimes it is, yes."

"Fascinating," he said, rising from his seat. "Well thank you, that about wraps things up for now. I'll be back later, just to corroborate some other things. I can drop by your house tomorrow night if that's more convenient."

"By all means," she said with a smile. He extended a hand. She took it and shook firmly.

"Strong handshake, there," he said, somewhat impressed by her grip. He turned and made his way towards the door. "Take care, Doctor."

"Thanks, and you as well. If you don't mind, may I ask you a few questions?"

He stopped. It was he who asked the questions. But he only pulled his lips into a polite smile and slowly turned back around.

"I don't see why not."

"Please have a seat," she said, gesturing at his chair. He hesitated. "It'll just take a couple of minutes. Promise." After a long sideways glance, he obliged. She arose from her seat and sauntered around her desk, crossing her arms and leaning against its front to face him more directly.

"When was the last time you really, consciously, just...relaxed?"

Detective Berman tensed. Something, some unplaceable waveform in this woman's voice had shifted again. The clock's ticking marched into his ears inexorably. The fine scent of pine from earlier did not billow into this room but still felt suffocating somehow, a sort of phantom sensation. He felt a brief hitching of his breath as his eyes scaled her body, coming to rest upon her verdant gaze.

The feeling startled him.

"Oh, I'm not sure," he said, suddenly a little less brave about humoring this so-called therapy when staring down its barrel. "In my line of work, I seldom get the chance, you see. Always occupied, on-call at all kinds of hours."

"I can tell. That's why I asked," she said gently. He raised his eyebrows. "If you had to choose a time."

"I don't know," he said, chuckling a bit, his smile now waxing perturbed. "I really can't remember."

"Work with me, here, Detective. I want you to think about it," she said, her voice even softer yet somehow more insistent. He swallowed, gripping the arm rests of the chair.

Listening to her closely, there really was something in that voice of hers that unsettled him, something about it that set his brain abuzz. It grated yet soothed, its words discordant yet compelling. The room somehow felt even warmer. The grandfather clock insisted on ticking.

"Probably a couple weeks ago, now. Maybe more. Probably more. Which sounds odd, I'm sure, but I've been just absurdly busy lately. Why do you ask?" he said, hardly able to believe he was entertaining this bizarre line of questioning from a suspect.

"Couple of weeks ago!" she repeated, face painted with concern.

"What?"

"Well, it's just because you appear so tense that I thought I'd help out, do you a favor with a type of guided meditation meant just for this sort of thing."

"No thank you, I'm quite alright."

"Really, I assure you," she said. "It's simply an empirically-tested form of stress management."

"What, sitting here, thinking about nothing?"

"In a manner of speaking. You have someone to talk you through relaxation. It helps and has helped many of my patients."

"Like Mr. Walter," he uttered dryly.

"Among hundreds of others over the years."

"Uh-huh."

Cluing into his trepidation, she continued. "There's nothing sinister about it, Detective. I would not call this exercise hypnosis. A mere precursor at worst. It is whatever you wish it to be."

"You did call watching a movie hypnosis."

"And it is, but this isn't a movie, this is meditation. Different brain waves, different mindset, different end goals. Nothing really *happens. No pocket watch here, merely an exercise in bodily awareness and care."