Elysium Dreams

Twelve

"He lives alone," Arons answered.

"That doesn't mean he does not have a girlfriend," I pointed out.

"Or a mother," Lucas said.

"How very Norman Bates," the unidentified detective said.

"In the movie, Bates just preserved his mother, she died of natural causes," Lucas said dismissively.

Agent Arons visibly paled, "This guy is an amateur taxidermist."

"Oh, how creepy," I said, shooting a glance at Lucas.

"Which part?" Lucas asked.

"Both. How does one become an amateur taxidermist and why would you stuff your mother?" I answered.

"We don't know that it was his mother," Xavier reminded me.

"True," I answered, "but stuffing anyone is pretty creepy."

"I'll give you that," Xavier looked at Arons. "Do you want us to go with you to check on the rest of his associates?"

"No, we'll organize it. You concentrate on our killer," Arons and the detective left.

We loaded up and headed back to the hotel.

I hate being trapped in a car. There is nowhere to run when people start asking you questions. I had found the same applied to showering. Lucas had a tendency to corner me in the shower if he wanted to know something that I didn't want to talk about.

"Now, back to your drug use," Gabriel said as the car pulled out of the parking lot.

"They are not drugs," I said. "They are sleeping pills. I normally only take them when we are not on a case. The neighborhood we live in is secure enough that I should be able to get a good night's sleep. My brain does not let me. Between my past and the history I am building as a Marshal, I am having more nightmares. The pills keep the nightmares away. I do not dream at all when I am on them, or if I do they never wake me and never let me remember them. It isn't a problem. I took one tonight because I was having trouble erasing the image of the photos being smashed from my brain."

"I need you completely functional, Aislinn," Gabriel said from the front seat.

"And I am, Gabriel. Seriously, I am fully functional. However, I have not slept much since we arrived and was starting to feel the effects. I thought I would get one night of sedated sleep and be back on the job tomorrow as my usual self. I never expected to have you walk into my room to tell me that they had caught a guy with bloody clothing in his car. I expected at seven or eight tomorrow morning you would burst in and tell me we had another victim in a tree. Since I average four hours of sleep on the pills, it wouldn't have been a big deal."

"How much sleep do you get off of them?" Gabriel pressed.

"When we are on a case? About two and they aren't very restful. When we aren't on a case, about four. Of course, my body reacts differently to the pills when we aren't on a case and I can usually get six if I am home and in my bed."

"Ace requires less sleep than most. She is at her best when she has between four and five hours of real sleep. That's all the pills do," Xavier defended me.

"And you're sure that she is fine on them?" Gabriel continued.

"Her? Yes. Anyone else would be comatose. Aislinn doesn't have any groggy side effects or feelings of slowness that is normally associated with these types of medications," Xavier responded.

"What is she on?" Gabriel asked.

"Quazepam. It's a benzodiazepine used to treat insomnia with very few side effects. Aislinn has no side effects and I write the script for thirty tablets but she only fills it every couple of months. She isn't abusing it or misusing it," Xavier assured our team leader. A weird look came over his face.

"What?" Gabriel asked.

"I had a thought," Xavier turned to look at me. "You tried other benzos, didn't you?"

"Several. I have been on and off them for years," I answered.

"Ever try triazolam?"

"Yeah, it was terrible. It did not improve my sleep, something about the half-life. It would make me sleepy, but by the time I fell asleep, it only kept me asleep about ten minutes. While in college, I was on and off diazepam and clonazepam. It worked much better."

"Don't care about the others. Did they say why you had such problems with it?" Xavier asked.

"Yeah, I metabolized it too fast due to a stress induced high metabolism. The half-life is normally something like two hours, but for me, it was more like thirty minutes. As a result, I would fall asleep, but I would be awake within a few minutes."

"If I injected you with triazolam, how long before you woke up?"

"Twenty minutes, maybe less."

"That's it," Xavier looked at Gabriel. "There's my fast acting, quick to leave the system sedative."

"Speak English," Gabriel told him.

"Well, I'd been racking my brain since we got the case about what sort of sedative it would take to keep them from fighting, but have them awake for the skinning. I was leaning towards full anesthetics, but while Ace would only sleep for twenty minutes or so, most would sleep for hours before it started wearing off. But triazolam, since it is such a fast-acting benzodiazepine, it wouldn't take long for the drug to wear off and wake you up."

"But I have failed drug tests because of benzos," I told him. "Hell, I failed the Marshals drug test and had to get a note from my doctor in Washington that I did have a prescription for the Valium they found."

"True, and triazolam would stay in the body since they die within twelve hours of injection," Xavier hung his head. "I'll go back to thinking on it."

"Glad my medication use could almost help," I told him forcing myself to sound cheery.

"Yeah, well, it was a great thought. I hadn't considered some of the weaker benzos because they aren't used much in the US. Some are even banned," Xavier told us all.