Tatum Donnelly (a_straychild) wrote in horror_story, @ 2012-10-03 14:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | archer, complete, cycle001, tatum |
Who: Tatum & Archer
When: Early AM. Close to simultaneously with this interview.
Where: Begins in first floor hallway/outside of Tatum's room [115].
What: Archer talking to Tatum about CJ.
Warning: None.
Given the number of 911 calls that had come in referencing the Eclipse hotel -- and given that the hurricane warning discouraged Archer from calling dispatch for any more manpower -- the police captain decided that he and O’Brien could cover more ground separately. Right now, Archer was digesting the account from that fairly odd coroner guy as he traveled down two floors. It was interesting to him that the occupant of 315 had called for outside help and that one of the occupants of room 115 was purportedly their slightly unhinged-sounding anonymous caller. The other occupant was yet another 911 caller -- one who’d identified herself, just the same as the doc did -- who was worried when her unhinged-sounding anonymous friend didn’t come back from investigating the screams. Archer didn’t know what the fuck was going down in this hotel but he was damned sure he’d try to find out.
In the elevator, he checked his notepad for the name and any pertinent details he’d gotten from the radio call. Tatum Donnelly. Two N’s, two T’s. Dispatch had said she sounded young but that didn’t give much for Archer to go on. He could only hope that like Bryant O’Neill, Miss Donnelly did what the dispatcher usually recommended: stay where you are and stay calm.
When the elevator pinged and the doors slid open, Archer went stalking down the hall as he had two stories and several minutes prior. He wasn’t much drier from being out in the storm -- even after being in the confines of the doc’s uncomfortably warm hotel room -- but at least he wasn’t dripping wet. Archer strode down the hallway looking every inch a representative of law enforcement, blue tie still knotted very close to his throat and dark trenchcoat flaring behind him when he took a sharp turn. Archer came down the final approach to room 115, where he rapped sharply on the door. “Miss Donnelly? Tatum Donnelly?” he called out in a calm, authoritative tone. Steady blue eyes scanned the surrounding area as he waited for some sort of answer.
--
Tatum had been shaken after her call to 911, and she hadn’t really been sure what to do next. Stay where you are, and stay calm. Yeah, that was easier said than done, that much was for sure. She knew that she couldn’t stand out on the front porch forever though; for one, if the police were coming, they weren’t going to look there for her. That was the point of handing her room number over to the dispatcher. She had to go up there, that was where they would come knocking when they arrived. Proper authorities were on their way, and she reassured herself that it was a good thing, that things would work out. She had to believe they would sort everything out, and find CJ.
Even as she headed back inside and made her way through the lobby, her head down as usual, Tatum kept hoping that she would just run into the lanky man on her way. Maybe he would just come bustling along, and tell her that he didn’t find anything, and he just got sidetracked by something. So much as she hoped for it though, it did not happen. She was alone and silent as she made her way to the elevator, getting in by herself and letting the doors slide closed behind her. She mind immediately began to think up ways the day could get worse, she half expected the elevator to get stuck or something.
It was just one floor though, and she was exiting into the corridor before she knew it, looking up and down the hallway with a blank look on her face. Her room, she had to go to her room.. but it was still giving her the creeps. She didn’t want to sit in there, by herself. She was exhausted, the bags under her eyes were apparent, but she knew that there was no way she could get any sleep. Especially if the cops were on their way.
Her struggle to decide on what to do took almost five minutes, with her just standing outside of the elevator and looking down toward her room, biting her lower lip. She couldn’t do it, not until she calmed down. She couldn’t go in there, no alone anyway. She didn’t want to be alone, but what choice did she have? She would go see Luce, she decided, after all of this was over. She was pretty sure that she could remember the other girl’s room number, and she only hoped that she was right. She didn’t think she could deal with knocking on the wrong door.
Standing around outside the elevator, she soon realized, probably looked weird. If anyone came along and got out, she didn’t want to be just standing there awkwardly, practically twiddling her thumbs while she tried to decide what came next. Service, she needed service. If she could just get service on her phone, she could distract herself with that. She could check in and see what was going on online; she hadn’t checked her email since the night before, and that needed rectifying.
Tatum had wandered half way down the hallway away from the elevators by the time that Archer came down to the first floor. She was crouched down against the wall, her phone in her hands and her eyes focused on it, as she stayed perched in her little spot of reception that she had managed to locate. Her eyes flitted up momentarily when the elevator made it’s polite ‘ding’ and opened it’s doors, but she was quickly looking away again and avoiding contact as someone disembarked from the elevator. She would have stayed right where she was, hoping to be ignored or bypassed, until she heard the quick knocking and her name being called out.
The redhead, who was still several doorways away from the officer and her own door, stood up shakily to her full height; not that it was much, all five feet and two inches of it. Now that she was actually looking at him, this man definitely had to be the police, he had the look all about him. Not to mention the serious looking face. Tatum swallowed thickly, trying to pick up her courage. She had to say something, she couldn’t leave him knocking forever. “T-That’s me,” she finally piped up, hating the way her voice cracked. “Uhm, T-Tatum Donnelly. That’s m-me.”
--
To say that Archer was surprised that the huddled red-headed figure that had been crouching down the hall was his person of interest? Yeah, that would’ve been a lie, and not only because Archer Avery was generally unsurprised. Dispatch had said their caller was young, female, and nervous. A cursory scan of the hall had tagged the girl avoiding eye-contact as all three of those things but Archer wasn’t one to jump to conclusions.
When he was directly addressed, Archer’s eyes cut away from the door he’d been knocking on and tracked right over to Tatum. Somehow, as much as he tried to keep himself from making assumptions, she was both shorter and younger than he’d thought she’d be. Much younger. The stuttering, the cracking voice... in a very different way, she was just as nervous as Dr. O’Neill had been. Something in her hesitant cadence -- and he seemed to be getting a lot of that today -- and meek bearing managed to temper some of the steel that was usually present in his tone as he stepped away from the door and toward her. “Miss Donnelly, I’m Captain Archer Avery of the Cantonsville Police Department.” He identified himself cautiously, stopped a respectful distance away even as he fished for his badge and held it up for her. First at shoulder height and then, after a split-second’s consideration, more on her eye-level. If she needed to see it up close, the same way the doc had, that was fine.
Admittedly, times like this he would’ve been glad of having O’Brien around. O’Brien was a lot less... unintentionally threatening... in his demeanor. Archer was certainly trying to lessen the impact of his presence but it wasn’t something he had a whole lot of success in. He was a large, serious cop. There was very little he could do to look like anything but a large, serious cop. For now, he spoke quietly, professionally. “You called for assistance? Would you like to talk privately?” Archer inclined his head toward the door he’d been knocking on, though if her room was anywhere near as warm as the doc’s had been, he really couldn’t blame Tatum for being out in the hall.
--
Tatum fought hard with herself not to go entirely stiff as Archer stalked over to her, and she straightened herself up to her full height, though it wasn’t much. Cops made her nervous, even though she was raised by one, raised around them. She was always intimidated by authority, even when she wasn’t guilty. She just had a naturally guilty looking face, or so she felt. Being interrogated, even in the simplest ways, were a challenge for her. But she knew she had to do this, for CJ, and for whoever it had been screaming earlier. Something was rotten here, and somehow, she had gotten tangled up in it. That was just her luck. No backing out now, the cop in front of her was already hauling out his badge.
“Uhm, t-thanks for coming, C-Captain Avery,” she managed back, squinting a little at the badge. It seemed legit enough to her, though it was distinctly different in design than the sort she was used to back in Maine. She had never really had to deal with police outside of her home state, and she hadn’t expected to. She was infinitely glad, for once, that she didn’t have any weed on her or in her room. That would have been a whole other stress factor on top of everything else. She nodded her head quickly, though her eyes were averted, when he asked if she had called for assistance. “I d-did, yeah, uhm..”
Her eyes lifted, and she stared at the door as he motioned to it. Yes, if he wanted to talk somewhere private, that was the place to do it. But Tatum had her suspicions that it wasn’t as private as it seemed. She knew convincing this serious looking cop that CJ was in danger might be hard enough, he was only gone an hour, but she felt it in her gut. Something was wrong. It would definitely be hard to explain, especially when she was stumbling off her words. Her stutter never helped people take her seriously. People had a tendency to brush her off. Without throwing in CJ’s earlier story about people in the walls, Tatum knew she might already sound crazy enough to this Captain Avery fellow.
She didn’t want to go in the room, but what choice did she have? She glanced around, the hallway was deserted, at least for the time being. “Uhm, I g-guess.. I’m sort of, j-just hanging out here,” she murmured, mentally kicking herself. That sounded weird, she wasn’t explaining herself well. She came up with the best excuse she had off the top of her head, and it wasn’t really a lie. It was blistering in there, creeps in the walls or not. “It’s h-hot in there, like.. s-super hot. I d-don’t know why.”
--
Archer tucked away his badge, all the while observing Tatum. “You’re welcome,” he said, an automatic reply to her thanks. Not everyone bothered to thank him for anything. In New York, people were far more likely to be full of loathing or suspicion than they were to be grateful for jack shit he did and Archer had learned early that his was a job that didn’t include gratitude in the admittedly limited benefits package. Being a cop separated you from the average joes, and not often in a great way. But it was a job that needed doing and one he did well. Archer saw Tatum’s thanks as a social convention and just replied in kind.
She was a jittery kid -- and Archer couldn’t shake that, that she was young -- but she’d taken a good peer at his badge which likely meant she’d seen shields before. In what context, Archer couldn’t say. The averted eyes made him ratchet up his observation of her but didn’t discount that this action could just be because she was nervous and keyed up, same as the doc. Not everyone was a perp to Archer. Not everyone was a victim, either.
It was her explanation concerning her room that sharpened his attention to a fine point, gave him something to chew over. “It’s hot in there,” he repeated neutrally. Well, here at least was someone who hadn’t been too scared over something to at least notice a room-temp increase. Unless it had happened more rapidly for Tatum than it had for Bryant. “Did you happen to contact the front desk to complain?” asked Archer, even as his mind clicked away through the possible scenarios. This all didn’t fit together. How many more rooms were like this? How many people had complained? Was this related to the screams and the possible MP this young woman had reported or was it coincidence only, an old hotel experiencing a malfunction with its heating system? It would explain the machinery sound the coroner heard... but not explain how the sound could follow so closely behind the distinct human scream. Archer separated the facts out inside his head, nodded toward her door so that Tatum might be obliged to open it for him.
When he spoke again, it was possible Archer didn’t know that he could gentle his voice quite this much, but he was trying in a somewhat stilted way to be... well, he didn’t have a better word for it than gentle. Archer was a kind man, with a level personality and often very pacific demeanor, a constant calm that could be maddening to more excitable personalities. But he was a man of authority and action. One didn’t readily associate such delicacy with him. “It’s okay, Miss Donnelly,” Archer said softly. “Show me your room and you can tell me about this friend of yours. The one you called about.”
--
“R-Really warm, like stifling w-warm,” Tatum assured him softly, nodding her head in agreement as he repeated her words. She was having a hard time reading him, much the same way she often had a hard time reading her father. There was something there, his mind was clearly working, but on what was a mystery to her. And that automatically put her on edge. Serious people, disciplinarian types, people that were in charge, that had to act stoic and somber all of the time. They unnerved her, even more than a normal person. It was impossible to read his poker face, and she tried just to keep her own face inviting as she stared up at him.
She was scared, but she couldn’t act entirely terrified. She had to man-up. Acting too scared was seen as suspicious by some people, even if for her, it was just her default reaction to almost everything. It was an intimidating world out there, full of intimidating people like this Captain Avery in front of her, like her father. Calm people were almost just as intimidating as the overly extroverted people; extroverted people were intimidating for all of the obvious reasons, but calm people with unreadable expressions like this one, were almost worse. She couldn’t tell if he thought she was a liar or not, but it really was hot in there, and she really was scared.
Her phone had been shoved absently into the pocket of her sweater by now, and she held her hands stuffed in there as well, knowing her palms were getting sweaty. When he spoke again, with a surprisingly gentle tone, it did immediately put her at ease. She couldn’t help but give a weak smile, still nervous, nodding her head again but more calmly this time. Some of her defenses were lowered, but not entirely, and she still looked unsure as she eyed the door in front of them. “Alright, i-if you really w-want to see it,” she agreed. What choice did she have? Refusing to go in the room would definitely be suspicious, which was the last thing she needed if something shady was going on in this hotel.
There were a million places she would have rather been, and though she knew she would have never had the guts, she wished she had taken Luce up on her half-joking offer to stay over in her room, then none of this would have happened. But she hadn’t, and now she could only slowly open the door for the officer, and be glad that she had cleaned up CJ’s mess before the police had shown up. It wasn’t perfect, and she hoped he wouldn’t look too closely at everything, but she knew she had done a pretty good job on tidying up the previous trashing. It looked a bit messy, messier than she normally would have liked, but it was miles better than it had been when she had found CJ in a panic hours before.
Heat had rushed out to meet them as soon as the door had been opened, and Tatum wasn’t sure whether to go in, or hold the door. She decided on the polite thing, holding the her thin arm against the door and waiting for Archer to head inside and begin his look around. “M-My friend, uhm.. w-well, it’s complicated,” she began weakly. It was mostly complicated because she still wasn’t sure if a man she had only known for a few hours could be considered her friend. She knew it wasn’t a long relationship to put much faith in. Most people would probably assume that CJ had just skipped out, had a laugh about trashing her room, and probably robbed her on the way, it would explain the missing 3DS and everything. But something in her gut told her that wasn’t the case, she knew it wasn’t. She just had to convince everyone else.
She hadn’t known him for long, but she had to tell someone about him. “We j-just met, like.. t-tonight. H-He and I. But I k-know something is like, up.. s-something’s rotten, y-you know?” she tried to explain, trailing off shortly after.
--
Archer waited as Tatum opened the hotel room and the heat rushed out at him. It seemed warmer here than it had up in the doc’s room on the third floor but Archer wouldn’t swear to it. He received the temperature change with no visible change of expression, though he cursed so softly that Tatum might think she misheard him. “Fuck. Yeah, that’s warm.” He tipped her a nod as he stalked past and into the room. Archer had noticed the way she clenched her hand inside her pocket and he’d considered the possibility that she could be carrying a weapon. But he read people pretty straight on and that weak smile she’d given him had been genuine. Her nervousness wasn’t... it wasn’t malicious. He intimidated her. This wasn’t a new reaction for Archer. At least his attempt at calming her had been slightly successful. So, no, he didn’t believe Tatum was going to strike out at him as he passed her to enter the room. He never made the mistake that anyone was harmless, no matter how young or scared they looked, but Archer thought Tatum’s concern for her friend was genuine.
And he was beginning to think there was something a little squirrelly about this whole fucking hotel.
Her hopes that he wouldn’t look too closely was bound to be dashed as Archer moved further into the space and peered around, scanning the area. Sharp eyes picked up... inconsistencies. Things were just a little out of place. There could be several reasons for this. Dr. O’Neill admitted to believing his watch had been stolen, though he was reluctant to say it in those words. “So that’d be a no? To my question about calling the front desk?” articulated Archer as he took another step forward to look. Photographs hung just slightly askew. Had there been a fight? Had this place been tossed, rifled through? Was this just normal mess?
Pulling out his notepad, Archer’s face moved from calm into mildly interested as he stood in the center of the room and looked to Tatum. “Complicated,” he nodded as if that was a perfectly reasonable and understandable word. He’d seen some odd shit in NYC. In an attempt to get everything straight, he clarified, “You met last night, you mean?” Not tonight. Though it wasn’t like Archer’d had any sleep; this still felt like night to him, too. But it was past dawn, a new day and more work to do. “What’s your friend’s name?” It was just easier for him to refer to the guy as ‘your friend’ instead of ‘the guy you met last night and then called 911 about.’ Anything else would sound confrontational. If she was worried enough about this guy to call 911, there was some form of friendly feeling there. “He a local or stuck here by the storm?”
--
There was no way for Tatum to miss the way Archer peered around, she was watching him as closely now as he was watching the room, feeling a lump in her throat. “N-No, I never.. I n-never called the f-front desk. I uhm, d-didn’t want to bother them,” she replied, making her way over to the bed that had been meant for CJ, sitting on the end of it. She removed her hands from the pocket of her sweater, folding them in her lap instead, fidgeting her fingers around a bit. It was always hard not to drum her fingers, do something, when she got worked up. To be honest, it had never occurred to her to call the front desk. She hadn’t planned to be in the room, and she didn’t want to talk to the staff, frankly.
If they were really in the walls, they were probably well aware of how dreadfully hot it was in there. But she couldn’t say that to Archer. Not just right off the bat. Even now, just a few moments in, she wanted to shed her hoodie. She could feel herself sweating, a perfect storm of anxiety and the actual heat of the room around them. She watched as Archer took out his notepad. Here it came, the statement. She had to do her best to explain what had gone down, but she knew she would have to PG up some portions. How CJ had paid her for his half of the room, for example.
“Y-Yes, last night. When I g-got here, my flight was like.. h-held over, so I came h-here and I ran into h-him. His name is uhm, CJ. I don’t k-know what his last name is, he never s-said.. does that matter? I s-should have asked, that’s r-rude,” she fretted, exhaling shakily and trying to get herself back on track. She couldn’t prattle on and berate herself in front of the police, he was going to think she was an idiot. She needed to get to the point.
“He’s s-stuck here, too. His uhm, motorcycle is out f-front, that’s why he couldn’t keep d-driving.. like, h-his motorcycle couldn’t r-really do so great in the r-rain, and he d-didn’t have much m-money.. we uhm, had a cigarette on the front porch and he asked if I w-would mind sharing a room. N-No funny business! Just like.. y’know, h-he asked nice, h-he’s a nice guy. He’s nice to me,” she explained, trailing off. Some part of her needed to stress that point. Not everyone was nice to her, especially once they heard her talk or found out how geeky she could be. But CJ hadn’t known her long, but he had been nice enough, nicer than some people she had known her whole life. Then again, a lot of people she had known her whole life had turned their backs on her recently.
“He’s n-not from around here, and he’s.. h-he’s here somewhere, I j-just don’t know where. He c-couldn’t leave, he was just.. t-trying to help the girl. Uhm, the girl we h-heard, did they t-tell you about that? The s-screamer?” she asked, biting her lip and feeling her blood seem to run cold even just talking about it. That scream had chilled her then, and it still did now. “Something m-must have happened, it was like.. t-the worst scream. It w-went on forever.”