| Scene Title | So Much Time On Our Hands |
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| Synopsis | Coren fills Felix in on the Megan Manning case and the related serial killer. Actually, he tries to avoid all mention of Meg Manning, since it's still an incredibly sore spot for him. What Cassidy and Liz find at Jackie Wilcox's dorm room nearly scares the life out of him, and Felix finds out that there's something weird about this detective. |
| Date | July 27, 2009 |
| Notice |
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| This scene happens during part of We Are So Screwed. Read this scene first. |
The New York Police Department Head Quarters is an old stone building, renovated many times over the years. The plaster walls are not as cracked and in need of repair as the various Precinct buildings around the city. The fluorescent lights give the room a rather sterile glow. Old posters, civic reminders, duty rosters and newspaper clippings are tacked up on the walls, rustling every time one of the doors opens. A high, wooden desk sits on the north wall, manned by two clerks, who records all visitors and arrests.
The way out to the street lies to the south, while doors to the offices of the Head Quarters lie to the northwest.
Coren may not drive slowly, but at least he doesn't drive like a maniac, either. Granted, he found himself hovering a bit above the speed limit, not that he expected the FBI to deliver old case files from Quantico to New York City in the time it took them to get back.
Since waiting's a bitch, he makes himself a cup of tea, and decides after a bit of pacing, that it's probably best to clue Felix in to the whole situation before the files arrive. His nervousness is unsettling on its own without it being picked up upon by Cassidy, unsettling her, and then being reflected back at him. That only makes him a far greater bundle of nerves than he'd ordinarily be, so much so that he actually jumps at someone else's phone. At that point, he rests his head on his desk a moment before cracking his neck and looking up at the Fed. "We never caught him," he says, "And as you can plainly see, it drove me a little mad."
That's gonna be a little, yes, waiting on what's not already in NYC. "I don't blame you. Chasing after Gabriel Gray nearly sent me around the bend," Fel confesses. He's got a glass of cola in hand - in this heat, he doesn't want tea. He's just sort of hovering, at the moment, eyeing Coren.
"We first discovered his MO in ninety-nine, as I said, when two blonde roommates at the MSU dormitories were found, each holding the other's slit wrists. There was a white queen between them, hand carved with a gold 'A' embossed on the bottom of it," Coren describes. "Chased him around for a long time. Two years, nonstop. Eighteen bodies in all, nineteen if you count the one we never found, and possibly countless others. He made them look like suicides. There was just something fishy about that one case at MSU that the the local police thought they needed us for. They were right."
Felix snags an extra chair from somewhere, settles straddling the seat, resting his arms on the back. "MSU. Where's that?"
"East Lansing, Michigan. Michigan State University. We figure he could have killed many others, really. What kind of person examines chess pieces found at the home of a suicide, right?" Coren snorts, "After the disappearance of the last girl, Megan Manning, on September seventeenth of two thousand, we spent just over sixth months continuing on the case, trying to find her. Then we moved on to other things. But I swear I saw him, every time I heard of a suicide, I went and examined the whole scene looking for a chess piece. Once my supervisor stopped me from doing that, I pored over all the files, trying to figure out what we missed. Every day I had off I spent in a filing room going through boxes. And then I resigned." He stares into his tea. "And now the son of a bitch is back."
"And now we're going to get him," Fel says with complete and utter assurance, pushing his glasses up his nose in a gesture that is far more adorable when Hiro does it.
"We better," Coren remarks, and he no longer stares into his tea, but drinks it. Hot weather and tea? It cools him off. That's his story and he's sticking to it. "For all our sakes, we better get him." No matter how hard Cassidy would try, there's simply no getting around those images flashing before Coren's mind. It's enough to make him sick, and perhaps if he didn't have the constitution he has, he would be. Unfortunately, his tea mug — which he was not holding by its handle — does not have the constitution, as it breaks in his grip, cutting jagged gashes into his hand and making him gasp from the pain. It takes him a moment to slow his breathing before he reaches into his desk for a towel with which he first mops up his right knee and then wraps his hand in. "I ought to watch my blood pressure," he says, his entire face flush red. He certainly is a strange one.
Fel watches him, with a bit of wariness. "What was that there?" he says, atthe crushed teacup. "You okay?"
"Nothing a couple of stitches won't heal," Coren says, though he's apparently not a good liar. Except he is. Cassidy, on the other hand, is a terrible liar. Not that Felix would know that. He unwraps his hand, the broken pieces of tea cup forgotten for the moment. "Maybe no stitches," he says, avoiding both questions entirely and watching the wounds on his hands weep blood. Anything to wash that image away. That sick and twisted fuck. He squints his eyes closed, both for his and his partner's benefit. Calm in her present situation is simply not possible, though he manages to pick up on something from one of the images to help divert his partner's attention to something other than the bloody mess. Still, it's very unsettling, though one tiny little piece just fell into place. One more answer and another question. But that was simply unmistakable.
Coren glances at his watch, brushing away part of the towel that managed to cover it up. "I have a feeling our respective partners will be checking in soon." Boy does he ever have a feeling. And it's not one of those warm and tingly ones either, but one of those spine-tingling, stomach churning ones.
"You're Evolved, right?" Fel asks, not bothering to try and put that politely. "What's your trick?"
"Certainly you've heard by now, I'm the cop who never sleeps. Which isn't actually true, I do, just not with regularity," Coren says, clenching his fist — the one that's injured. "Superhuman Endurance, says it right on my card." Yeah, he knew the awkwardness of his partners ability would eventually bite them in the ass. Or wait, no, it was Cassidy who believed that. He thought, foolishly, that they might be able to hide it. Apparently all those times she let him bleed through has finally caught up with him — and bitten them both in the ass. It just figures he had to have a major episode in front of someone who has probably seen the occasional psychic work his or her magic, enough to be able to recognize it. "Oh bugger."
Oh, Fel definitely knows. That's his stock in trade. "Do you need medical attention?" he asks, voice gone flat and wary. "And relax that hand, or you're gonna hurt yourself further," He's already found papertowels somewhere, proffers them to Coren. "And I can sympathize. That's not my power, but I don't need to sleep too much either, by most people's standards."
"Isn't it grand having so much time on our hands?" Coren asks, "When you're up twenty to thirty hours at a stretch, on average, sometimes longer, you start to miss what normal people do. Even if the dreams were nightmares, sometimes I wonder if it would be more enjoyable than having time think about things." He takes the offered paper towels and replaces the now bloodied dishcloth he got from his desk. This time he applies pressure with his other hand. "Just have to stop the bleeding and I'll be fine. I've survived worse." Yes, he's been shot. Way too many times, and he doesn't like 'medical attention' much anymore.
And that, too, he can sympathize with. "No. I like sleeping. I like it a lot, in fact," Fel says. "And my nightmares…..well, considering, I'm glad to miss them."
"When you're not tired, you can't sleep," Coren remarks. Another shiver runs down his spine. "Well fuck." His mood flattens, and his English accent is nearly missing entirely from the cussing, but it returns when he speaks again. "There are some things you're going to find out today that will answer some of your questions. For example, how I know that Jackie Wilcox is dead, and how I know we are so very, very screwed. Harrison trusts you, so I'm going to go out on a limb and trust you myself, but here and now is not the time for this discussion."
The glare of sunlight on his glasses whites the lenses out for a moment, hiding his eyes, before he turns away. "Understood," he says, though he's more or less crawling with curiosity.