For obvious security reasons, Kristeva's home computer didn't have access to the police databases, but there were civilian databases of missing persons online which he could--and frequently did--browse, plus it was faster. He didn't have to sit and wait ten minutes for the thing to boot up and finish loading everything, and didn't have to put up with its incessant groaning and creaking grinding on his nerves. He supposed that this was worth the sacrifice of limited database and software availability.
Most of his home browsing efforts were done on occasions when he found himself unable to sleep, but now it was only early evening. Both he and Devetko had been forced to start looking into other, fresher cases lest they be found to be negligent in their new positions; Devetko had seemed to handle the distraction well enough, browsing through the database and making calls, though Kristeva chafed at spreading his attention around--no matter how good he might be at doing so--and so heading home that afternoon had been a merciful break.
Most missing person cases were relatively trivial affairs. Runaway teenagers, mad at their parents. Runaway spouses, mad at their significant others. Runaways from life, mad at the world in general. Most missing people weren't truly missing, just temporarily misplaced. Most turned up okay. While on the one hand it was always good for a case to have a happy ending, still, he found that those cases irked him the most. It wasn't that he wanted a case to have an unhappy ending...just that the more ominous cases seemed to be a better use of his time and energy.
He felt on some level it was futile, but, after memorizing the sketch Kincaid had provided them, started keeping his eyes open for something similar in the local databases. He had no reason to believe "Melissa" was a missing person, but at least it gave him something to do to fill in an evening that would otherwise be silent and tedious.
After an hour or so of browsing through unfamiliar faces, he knew it was time to take a break when all of them started to blend into each other and look the same. He sat back, turned on the screensaver (fish swimming around in a tank), rubbed his eyes, and got up to head to the bathroom in the hallway.
He had to pass through the living room as he went, and without thinking glanced up at the landing to the upstairs level. The doorway to the master bedroom was visible to the left, another doorway to an unused bedroom to the right, and a painting hung on the wall between the two--a watercolor of a high bridge over a river. He slowed his step as he remembered how a painting of the Souris Narrows Bridge* had ended up on his wall, how he'd asked its creator to marry him mere moments after she'd shown him her work, how his space had been the corner of the dining room with its computer and wall of clippings and her space had been the unused loft area to the side of the master bedroom where she'd worked on her paintings, how three months later she'd taken all of her things and had gone and they hadn't talked to or seen each other since. It wasn't that he hadn't noticed this painting had been left behind. But every time he saw it hanging there it was like he'd forgotten.
He made a face, pushed the memory away, and continued to the bathroom.
At the sink he splashed water on his face, avoiding looking in the mirror at first, as the odd dream he'd had at the station remained in the back of his mind. When he finally lifted his head and peered at his reflection, all he saw was himself, though he didn't seem quite as recognizable as he used to be; he hadn't been aware just how dark the rings under his eyes were, before now, as if somebody had punched him in the nose. His stare shifted to the side, looking at the wall behind him just in case, but nobody stood in the empty shower stall/bathtub. He heard a splashing sound and looked down to realize that the water was still running; he shut it off, wiped his hands and face on a towel, and turned to the door to head back for the dining room, only his step faltered and he stopped without knowing what it was he was stopping for. He frowned and looked back into the bathroom, from the bathtub to the toilet and medicine cabinet to the sink and mirror to the towel rack and back again, growing more confused. When he found his stare settling on the shower stall again, it struck him, and he looked down into the empty bathtub.
"You said you were told it happened in a bathtub...that's a start."
The house had two full bathrooms, but he never used the bathtub, only the shower. It wasn't something he'd thought about before now, but when he mulled it over, it had always been that way. He tried to think of the last time he'd taken a bath and came up blank. He sometimes swam at a local pool--another good distraction when all the faces started merging together in his mind--and so had no problems with water itself...but when he tried to imagine why he'd never made use of the bathtub, it just seemed like something that would be unpleasant to do.
He briefly wished he'd never brought up the subject, since now he wouldn't be able to get it out of his head until he'd done what the psychologist had asked. Otherwise she would probably guilt-trip* him for ages. He made another face. Psychologists were a type of doctor, and he'd never cared for doctors.
He made to exit the bathroom again, and again halted. The look on his face turned into a grimace as he turned back to the bathtub and yanked the sliding glass door open. He almost expected to find the floor damp and droplets on the showerhead like he had in the upstairs bathroom, but he almost never used the shower in this one, and so they were bone dry. He held onto the door and stared into the bathtub for a little while, biting the inside of his mouth. He really didn't want to get in, but couldn't be sure whether it was because of actual distaste, or just a perverse desire to rebel against his mandatory therapy. Sitting in a bathtub hardly seemed like a legitimate therapeutical practice, anyway.
Once he thought this, as if to spite himself, he pushed the door open all the way and stepped over the tub's edge, turned, and abruptly sat down. He raised his hands in a Ta-da motion, as if demonstrating a magic trick to an audience. "There you go," he said aloud, and then looked up toward the ceiling, voice bouncing off the walls. "And so what should I be expecting, an epiphany--?"
He waited a moment--of course nothing happened--and reached up to grasp the metal bar along the wall. "Thought so," he said, pulling himself up onto one knee, and then he looked at the drain and paused in mid-crouch. The drain plug was sitting on a little shelf built into the wall, where it had been left for who knew how long, so that the bathtub couldn't function as a bathtub even if he did want to use it.
He sighed, picked up the plug, and climbed out. Turned on the water and let it get warm before putting the plug in the drain and then watching the tub as it slowly filled. He actually looked at his watch once or twice out of annoyance, even though it wasn't like he had anything better to do. When the tub was full he stopped the water, stood, and reached for the hem of his shirt, but then stopped. For some reason...climbing in the bathtub fully clothed was weird, but taking his clothes off seemed even weirder.
He rolled his eyes--as if anything should be making sense, by now--and stepped into the tub a second time, grasping the bar and sitting down carefully so he wouldn't slip and crack his head. He immediately felt foolish, sitting in tepid water in his clothes, and felt his ears growing warm as if somebody were watching; yet he stayed still and waited anyway. When nothing had happened after a moment or two, he felt even stupider, and was ready to climb back out, but made himself let go of the bar and lie back instead. The water came up around his ears and he lay staring up at the ceiling tiles for a few more moments, hearing his breathing and his heartbeat amplified in his head. He even heard a car pass by on the road out front of his house. He held his breath and the dull boom-boom-boom was all he heard.
Without giving it a second thought, he shut his eyes and sank until his head rested on the bottom, the water creeping up over his face and submerging him.
He kept holding his breath. The dull boom-boom-boom continued unabated. Colors swirled dimly behind his eyelids. Then, just as his lungs were starting to burn, a tiny glint flickered in the colored swirls, disappeared, then glinted again. The swirls darkened and disappeared, or merged into each other, or something; now he stared at a field of black, as if the lights in the bathroom had gone out, and the glint glinted again, only now it wasn't a glint but a circle, shining dimly but not illuminating anything. He stared at this, vaguely curious, but it didn't do anything else, just hung there.
Somewhere far off--in the back of his mind?--elsewhere?--a faint voice exclaimed, "What are you doing? What the fuck are you doing to him--?"
Immediately it felt like clamps had shut over his arms. He opened his mouth in surprise and water flooded down his throat and into his burning lungs, now making them feel like they were on fire, and he tried to push himself up but his hands were useless. He thrashed his legs intead, kicking up gouts of water--meanwhile that little dim disk continued hanging over him and the disembodied voice kept saying, "What are you doing? What the fuck are you doing to him--?"--and then suddenly his arms were working again, and he lunged upward, gasping and coughing up water and blinking his eyes open, seeing tile wall before him, his own wild-eyed and distorted reflection staring back from the hot and cold water knobs.
Just as immediately, the agonizing burning in his lungs vanished--he blinked again and opened his mouth to take a breath. His throat was dry and he actually coughed, though no water came up; after a few confused seconds of gasping in air and looking around himself, he realized he must not have breathed in any water at all, that it was just part of the--dream--or whatever that had been. He stretched and flexed his arms a few times, expecting numbness, but they felt fine. Further examination showed him the water all over the tub's edge and on the floor--he hadn't shut the glass door behind him--so the thrashing part had been real, at least. The rest of it had apparently been nothing more than his imagination.
Not quite sure what to think of this, he grasped the bar and carefully pulled himself to his feet. The water sloshed around him, cooler now than it had been when he climbed in. He stooped to pull the plug, then stepped out onto the wet floor, grabbing a towel from the rack and draping it over the tiles to soak up the worst of the mess and avoid a slip and fall. He then made his way up the hall and through the living room to the stairs and up to the master bedroom to change, because the feeling of the wet clothes clinging to him was almost more than he could bear right now.
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