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chapter three: broken wings

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Casey pushed through the door of the Palace, every muscle in her body tightly clenched. Vicky, trailing behind her, collapsed onto the living room couch with a dramatic exhalation. Casey ignored her and headed straight for her bedroom, immediately shoving the envelope from the doctor beneath the bed.

“You’re supposed to read that, you know.”

Casey jerked, hitting her forehead on the frame of the bed. “Fuck.”

“Ooh.” Casey’s current dilemma and delusion was leaning against the dresser, clad in an achingly familiar blue button-up shirt and leather jacket. “Such naughty language.”

“What – I, you – “ Casey fell over from her crouch into a tangled heap on the floor, panic turning her into a skittish, incoherent mouse.

“Hey.” He stepped forward, looking a bit alarmed. “Breathe, honey. Just breathe, okay?”

She pulled herself to her knees, one hand pressed to her chest bone. “I think I’m going to faint.”

“Just breathe. Calm down.” He kneeled down to her level, but stayed across the room, separated from her by five feet of carpet.

She started at him, eyes narrowed, before hunkering to her feet and slamming the bedroom door shut. “What is this?”

“What is what?”

“You’re – you’re not here.” Casey started to pace. “You – you can’t be. The explosion, you – he – “ she started to feel faint again and collapsed on the bed, clutching at the sheets. Her haven from the last few weeks called to her blissfully, and for a split second she considered burrowing back beneath the blankets, never to emerge again.

“Oh, I’m here, all right. Sort of.” He cracked a grin, looking up at her from his place on the ground. Reaching out slowly, he brushed a hand down her shin, not touching her skin but coming close, and the warmth from his hand made her shiver.

“Are you – am I going crazy?” she breathed. “I am. I am insane.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m not real, okay? I’m you. I’m in your head.” He laid a hand against her leg again, fully coming into contact, and she shivered once more. It was touch, but it wasn’t – it was physical contact with some sort of barrier in-between. He was touching her in theory.

“You’re…me.” She reached down and touched the hand on her shin, feeling the same strange sensation.

“Imagination’s a terrible thing.” He smiled.

“Why are you here?” she asked softly, mesmerized at the sight of his hand on her skin.

“I’m here because you need me here. You want me to be here.” He rose and joined her on the bed, and the same sensation of touch tripled when she felt the bed move beneath his weight, but when she reached out to touch the mattress, it was perfectly flat.

“I am crazy,” she said flatly. “Derek.” She said his name almost experimentally. “Derek.”

He smiled, and Casey realized with a start how hungry she’d been to see his mouth twist in the achingly familiar way. “I don’t – “

“Casey?”

She shot up from the bed, panic making her movements frantic. “Vicky! I mean – what?”

Vicky pushed inside the room, looking at her cousin warily. “Are you okay?”

“What do you mean, am I okay? Of course I’m okay.” Casey scoffed. “Um. Are you okay?”

Vicky drew her eyebrows together, crossing her arms. “Um, I’m fine, I’d just like to know if you’re going to continue being a freak in here or come out and eat with me. I ordered Italian.”

“Go and eat,” Derek – no, Not-Derek – said. “You need to. For the baby.”

Baby made Casey scowl. “I’ll be out in a second.”

Vicky gave her one last weird look, rolling her eyes and backing out of the bedroom.

“Speaking of baby,” Not-Derek said pointedly. “You might wanna dig that packet out from under the bed.”

Casey scowled at him. “I’m fine, okay? I’ll read it later.”

Not-Derek stared her down firmly. “No, you won’t.”

Not having the energy to struggle with herself – literally – Casey sighed, dropping to her knees and reaching in for the packet of handy-dandy pregnancy information. Coughing a bit from the dust, she grabbed onto the first thing she felt and brought it out into the light, waving around her face to dispel the dust particles floating in the air.

“What…” she frowned. “This isn’t what he gave me.”

Frowning, Casey sat back on her haunches. In her hands was a huge, brown office file, filled to the brim with smaller, manila folders. Turning it over, Casey’s breath hitched slightly as she saw black marker scrawled across the cardboard, Larrimer-Robeson plain to see.

“Case files.” Not-Derek’s voice made her jump. “The case I was working when I died.”

“Could you not do that?” Casey snapped irritably. “Refer to him in the first person?”

Not-Derek grinned. “Why, does it bother you?”

God, even her hallucinations of him were annoying. “Yes.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Why aren’t these with the police?” Casey murmured, heart pounding against her rib cage. “I thought Carter had confiscated all of Derek’s files. Especially these.”

“He kept copies, remember?” Not-Derek said. “Look.” He nodded toward the file in her shaky hands, nudging at her to open it.

Casey unwound the top of the file, reaching in and grabbing one of the manila folders. Inside was a neat stack of photocopies, each one of a different page of the original case file that Casey was sure was now in LAPD custody. “Oh.”

“Well,” Not-Derek said. “Looks like you’ll have a lot of reading material tonight.”

Casey dropped the files with a start. “What? No. No.” Not-Derek stared back at her, nonplussed. “No!”

“Ca-seeey! The food’s he-eere!”

Not-Derek nodded towards the door. “Your cousin has summoned you.”

Casey gulped, rising to her feet. “I’m not getting involved,” she said firmly. “I – I can’t get involved, I can’t handle it, Der – “ she cut herself off, not wanting to say his name out loud again.

“Casey!”

Not-Derek smiled genially. “Vicky’s waiting,” he said neutrally.

“I – “ Casey swallowed and clenched her fists, feeling an ugly emotion floating right below the surface. “I’m not getting involved. I don’t care.”

Not-Derek nodded. “Okay.”

“I’m not,” she repeated. Turning on her heel she strode out of the room, praying that Not-Derek wouldn’t follow, lies biting at her heels.

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Finding the Palace had been the best stroke of luck she and Derek had ever had, when it came down to it. The apartment above the bar in Hollywood had been fine – sort of nice, even, if you could ignore the sound of mice scuttling beneath the floorboards and the loud, pumping bass from the bar below that lasted well into the early morning on weekends. It’d had wood floors and large, open windows, and the landlord had been an interior designer in a former life and had provided them with huge bolts of fabric to hang from the windows and drape over tables.

Casey would switch them out every week – a dark green paisley on the windows one week, then moving to a soft, butter-yellow, then to a red plaid – the possibilities were endless and vibrant. She’d drape the counters with the fabric when she and Derek would have people over. Derek called it ‘creative cleaning,’ and seeing as how the bright cloth would distract visitors from the grime between the tiles and the run-down-everything everywhere else, Casey understood. It was sort of a metaphor for West Hollywood as a whole, really. Skimming over the ugly with bright colors and some mimosas.

But the Palace – oh, finding it had been like a dream. Derek loved to drive, he always had, and on days when neither of them had anything pressing or urgent to do – and sometimes, even when they did – they’d pile into the car, taking as much food as they could fit into the backseat, and just drive idly, picking back streets and roads, riding along the coastline for miles and miles. Casey would balance the books for the store, or read, while Derek listened to music and retreated into that silent, still spot in his head that Casey always wondered about but never dared to touch. Sometimes they’d talk, but mostly, they would just exist – outside of anything but the small space they were confined to, content to drift down the Californian roads with no real destination in mind.

It was on one of these lazy road trips that Derek had found the Palace – in reality, a very small, very sorry-looking house on a long strip of beach on the outskirts of LA. It was strange to see beachfront property that looked so abandoned, especially when condos directly on the coast were going for millions of dollars up in Malibu, so they’d stopped to look. One of Derek’s many, many occupational hazards was an inherent snoopiness that he’d always had, but had increased exponentially after he’d started actually making a career of it. So naturally, he’d looked into the house and found that it was an abandoned project of some businessman in the city, who’d been looking to sell it for awhile but had been having trouble due to the near-condemnable state of the building itself.

Casey didn’t think they’d even talked about it all that much. She remembered him sticking his head into the little alcove that’d passed for a bedroom in the Hollywood apartment and informing her that he’d just put in an offer – and that was that, basically. They’d fixed it up themselves – or attempted to, anyway. Derek was decent with handy, around the house things – fixing a broken faucet, repairing cupboards – but with the more complicated stuff he was as ignorant as Casey was. They’d gone one miserable day before giving up and hiring a single contractor to turn it into something manageable. They’d finished the home stretch themselves, and by the time they’d moved in, it was starting to look like a real home.

It was very secluded, rare for California, but close enough to LA to be a decent commute to work for both of them – traffic in LA was a huge bitch anyway you looked at it, and if Casey was gonna spend two hours in the car everyday, she’d rather end up someplace quiet than a dinky apartment in the heart of the city. And the final result, after months of tweaking, was the home that Casey had dreamed of since she was a little girl – soft carpets, big windows with huge sills that were converted into window seats, warm colors, high ceilings with light fixtures that shone fragmented light.

What’s more – everywhere she looked, she saw a mixture of her and Derek. The antique furniture she’d picked out at an estate sale and the weird, funky floor rugs that Derek liked, for whatever reason. Flower vases she filled with the rejects from the grocery store set next to the candles he liked to burn at night when the electricity bills were too high. Her Edgar Degas prints that he always referred to as ‘her girly dance pictures,’ those weird pottery pieces they’d found at an art show, that Derek had hated and she’d loved, and had only bought because he’d lost a bet –

It was maddening. What had been a comfort before was now a deadly reminder – the remnants of a life that she’d gotten but a taste of before it’d all been cruelly ripped from her hands.

Casey shut her bedroom door firmly, feeling soft and shaky, like a leaf teetering on the edge of a branch that was seconds away from being blown away into the air. Peeking around the room tentatively for signs of her freaky new delusion-friend, she stopped short at the case file, still sitting in the same spot on the floor where she’d left it earlier.

Crouching down on the floor, she kneeled in front of it, Derek’s handwriting on the front glaring up at her mockingly.

She didn’t want to get involved, did she?

Ms. McDonald, we regret to inform you –

No. Definitely not.

The file sat there unassumingly, a simple pile of paper and cardboard. She bit her lip, leaning down on her elbows. There were two paths she could take; she could see them both, stretched out before her. Accepting his death and moving on with her life (read: her child), or dragging out the possibly useless, definitely dangerous case that had taken him from her, with the sure-fire guarantee that she’d be in over her head with absolutely no clue what to do.

Yeah, so neither of them sounded that appealing.

Casey sighed and picked up the case file, backing up so that she was leaning against the bed frame. She ran her fingertips over the words on the file, Derek’s messy handwriting slightly faded by wear and time.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want a baby. Honestly. She’d used to fantasize about it all the time, particularly after she and Derek had gotten serious – how many children they’d have, what they’d look like, where they’d live, how Derek would act around them. That had always been the best part, obviously. He’d always liked to pretend that he hated kids, but anyone who’d ever seen him around Marti knew that it wasn’t true.

Casey bit her lip, eyes falling closed. How would he have reacted? If she’d conceived just a few weeks earlier, she probably would’ve found out before…she could’ve gotten a chance to tell him – maybe, if he’d known, he would’ve given up the case. Maybe he would’ve been more careful, maybe he wouldn’t have left that night, maybe they never would’ve fought –

Casey opened her eyes, blinking away the moisture gathering behind her eyes. Wondering was no use.

Her stomach churned, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since that morning. She groaned – taking care of just herself was hard enough, now she had to worry about two? She wiped at her cheeks angrily, the prospect of a future with no career, no Derek and a child she didn’t know how to handle stretching out in front of her. Who was she to raise a kid? She couldn’t even tell her family about her relationship. Yeah, real maturity there.

She couldn’t help but think that Derek would’ve known what to do. He’d always known what to do, after all. Or he’d always acted like he did, at least.

Derek’s not here, she thought angrily, glancing back down to the file in her lap. Son of a bitch. She fingered the file, sighing inwardly. Who was she kidding, anyway?

Opening up the file with trembling fingers, she slowly pulled out the pile of bulky folders, laying them gently on the carpet before her. Each of the folders was stuffed with papers, neatly stacked and organized. A smile flitted briefly across her face as she ran her fingers over the cardboard lightly. As unorganized as Derek was in everything else in his life, he’d always been meticulous about his work.

Spreading the folders out on the floor, Casey peered at them closer, catching sight of small, colored labels on the tabs. Leaning closer, she saw dates handwritten on each of the colored stickers, each folder apparently covering the period of two weeks or so. Her eyes widened, considering the sheer amount of paperwork laying in front of her. God, what did Derek do, write down everything he did, literally?

Well, that’d actually be a good thing. Right?

Wait, a good thing for what, exactly? Casey shook her head. “This is crazy,” she muttered. “Crazy, crazy, crazy.”

“If you say that enough, it might just turn out to be true.”

Casey started slightly, exhaling briskly. “Oh, great.”

She turned her head to see Not-Derek reclining on the bed, feet propped up on the cushions and back leaning against the wall. “What, not happy to see me?”

“Oh, no, I’m always happy to see my own personal hallucination,” Casey replied sardonically.

“I prefer ‘figment of imagination,’” he replied. “Sounds nicer.”

Casey gathered the files up into her arms. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “It’s useless.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Why should I look through these?” Casey asked heatedly. “All it’s gonna do is remind me of – I just don’t see the point.” She dropped the files on the bed with a huff.

“Well, obviously you want to look through them, or you wouldn’t have found them.”

“I didn’t find them, you did,” she countered.

“Yeah, hate to burst your bubble, sweetheart, but I am you, remember?” Not-Derek raised an eyebrow, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees. “You saw Derek put those beneath the bed weeks ago. All I did was remind you. And since I am you, technically you reminded yourself, so really – “

“Okay,” Casey cut him off. “I already have a migraine. Let’s not add to it.”

“You know why you got them out, anyway. You’re just being a drama queen.”

“I am not a drama queen!”

“Yes, you are. You know you are. Which is why I know.” He smirked. “No point in arguing.”

“Oh, that’s gonna get annoying real quick,” Casey said sourly, crossing her arms. “So enlighten me. Why did I find them?”

“To find me.” He smiled. “Or Derek, actually.”

“Derek’s dead,” she replied flatly.

“Uh huh. Sure he is.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” Casey bit out, a hard lump in her throat making it hard to speak.

He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Drama queen,” he sing-songed.

“Oh, shut up,” she snapped, collapsing onto the bed.

“Okay, stop being such a girl.” He scooted forwards on the bed, coming up directly behind her back, swinging his legs on either side of hers. Casey shivered, feeling the eerie, phantom heat surround her body, tingles racing down her skin as hands that didn’t exist smoothed down her shoulders. “Close your eyes.” His voice was a low whisper and she instantly complied, her breath coming quicker and quicker. “Relax and think about this. Why would you find these files?”

Casey bit her bottom lip, breathing deeply several times before trusting herself to speak. “Because he’s still alive,” she finally managed to whisper. “He’s got to be.”

“And what do you need the files for?”

Her eyes flickered open, heart thudding painfully against her ribcage. “To find him.” She swallowed determinedly, the words seeming so truly obvious now that they’d been spoken aloud. “I have to find him.”

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end chapter three

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