Bryant O'Neill (corpseofaction) wrote in horror_story, @ 2012-11-06 17:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | archer, bryant, charlie, complete, cycle001, group post, o'brien |
If
WHO: Archer, Bryant, Charlie, O’Brien
WHEN: before 2PM
WHERE: begins in lobby, moves to pool room (anything Bryant says in the lobby, particularly things said loudly, can be overheard and feed into the rumor mill)
WHAT: If you give a mouse a cookie coroner a living patient that’s seen a dead body, he’s going to want to see it. If you let the coroner see the dead body, he’s going to do a post-mortem examination. If you agree to let him do a post-mortem, you’re going to have a headache. If you’re a police captain.
WARNING: scene in progress, but Archer’s here and even when he’s being professional the occasional curse slips out
Bryant strode into the lobby with a purposeful walk, not something that was often seen in the anxious academic. If he was aware of Charlie tagging along behind him, he didn’t comment on it. He was too intent on finding one of his targets. Spotting one of them, he adjusted his long strides to bring him on a direct course toward the police officer standing by the front desk. “Captain Avery?”
Hearing his name, Archer turned around... to see a very intense-looking Bryant O’Neill bearing down on him. The phone receiver in his hand was put back in the cradle with a little more force than was necessary; he gave a curt nod to the clerk behind the desk before stepping away to meet Bryant partway. “Dr. O’Neill.” Seeing Charlie at Bryant’s heels made a few puzzle pieces click into place in Archer’s head. Well, fuck. Of course. This is what he got for sending a coroner to tend to someone who’d seen a dead body. The police captain made his face completely bland. “Help you with something?”
“As a matter of fact, you can,” Bryant returned. His voice was a little louder than he’d planned when he said, “What’s this I hear about there being a death at the Eclipse?”
Archer’s calm expression didn’t waver. “At this time, I can--”
Bryant waved a hand in the air between them, as if trying to erase the beginning of Archer’s sentence. “Yes, yes. You can neither confirm nor deny, I’m sure. I’ve heard things to that effect before. Official police business and all that rot.”
The captain’s eyebrow went up. ‘Rot?’ He crossed his arms over his chest.
Oblivious to the minute change in Archer’s demeanor, Bryant went on, “Captain, am I correct in my belief that you and your... ah... your associate are detained in the hotel by the, ah, storm?” There was a flinch there from the slightly taller man that was impossible to conceal but there were, as the expression goes, bigger fish to fry here. He took Archer’s silence to be consent. “May I make a further guess?”
“Can I stop you?” was Archer’s quiet rejoinder, more to himself than to full-steam-ahead Bryant. Stress and strain were weaving their way into the base of his skull, met by the weariness of an all-nighter to stir up the embers of a headache he thought he’d quashed earlier. How the rest of this conversation might play out was apparent in a flash to him and if he was right, Archer was going to hate every minute.
It was also apparent Bryant had either not heard Archer or chosen to ignore the question. “If there was a dead body at the hotel--”
“If.” Archer repeated the first word, glancing around to see if they were gathering any sort of audience. His eyes fell on Charlie again and Archer suppressed a sigh before looking back to the agitated doctor.
“...Indeed. Speaking in the hypothetical, are we?” Bryant queried.
Stony silence was the only response he was getting.
“Very well. If there was a dead body at the hotel, you’d, ah, you’d normally require a team of crime scene technicians. This would be quite the hive of activity, yes?” It was Bryant’s turn to look around the lobby. “Yet I’m not really seeing other members of law enforcement hurrying to and fro. No, of course not,” Bryant mused to himself, aloud. “No, not with a... with the... with a h-hurricane.”
Archer gave Bryant a scrutinizing look, wondering if this was headed where he thought it might be. The nervous behaviors were still in play, though the good doctor looked much less... shellshocked... than he had this morning. Which made sense to Archer. This morning, everything was abstract to Bryant: screams, noises, the temperature change that had to be pointed out to him. Depending on what Charlie told him, the coroner had something concrete to focus on. Something very much in his line of work.
Bryant was pushing onward. “So you lack the resources you’d normally have available to you and are stranded here just as surely as the rest of us are. Except you’ve got something else weighing you down: you’ve a suspicious death to solve.” Bryant clasped his hands behind his back. He wasn’t smiling, was he? Perhaps a little. Purely unintentional.
The headache drifted closer to Archer’s awareness, though he resolutely pushed it away as absolutely not something he had time to deal with right now. He looked over at O’Brien, who’d joined the group at some point during the conversation. O’Brien, at least, would be able to read the expression on his partner’s face: Cat’s out of the bag. Even telling persons of interest not to talk about the body didn’t change the fact that this was a bunch of people basically sequestered in a hotel due to the weather. Word was going to spread one way or another. Considering Bryant approached them directly, it was better than him going around asking other people for what they’d heard. They had so many unanswered questions still. Having a coroner in the know... there were worse things to get FUBAR’d. Right?