I thought as I left the squad room. It was odd, considering the fact that I never really thought about anything before doing it. I was still known as someone who liked to jump in feet first, without really knowing where I was going, or what would happen. But somewhere along the lines, that had changed. I didn't know what it was. Maybe it was the fact that I'd been hanging around Major Case too long. I smirked that that thought, knowing that if I'd voiced it aloud and Alex had heard me, I'd have probably been smacked for it, but it was true, whether she liked it or not. Together, the Major Case Squad was unbreakable. Separated…the world seemed like a lot more than we could handle on our own.
And in this instance, we had been separated, in a manner of speaking. One of us was taking the fall alone, and he was the one that shouldn't have been taking it at all. I wondered why he was bothering to take up for me when it felt that no one else had ever really bothered. Goren had told me once during one of those off duty moments when we were both somewhat relaxed and trying not to think about work that facing off with the brass and IAD was something Captain Deakins did often, and was not afraid to do. For anyone…even me. I wondered why I found that so incredible, and yet so frustrating at the same time. He had already done me one favor by bringing me in from the island; why should he bother doing this for me now? Now, when I had not even come close to paying him back for what he had already done.
The thought would bother me, and I knew it. He had left the squad room a few hours before, assigning me an official desk, smiling faintly at Barek and shaking Carver's hand before walking away without looking back. I'd wondered what he had been thinking, yet didn't want to know. What I did know was that he hadn't deserved this, not even for my sake. I wondered what had made him think I was worth it. Wondered what made any commanding officer think that his or her squad was worth it. And then I wondered why I was even thinking about it in the first place, seeing as my record would probably keep me from becoming one and finding out the answer for myself.
May was the beginning of the hottest months in the city. Summer was coming, and with the rising temperatures, a rise in the crime rate. True, things went a bit slower in Major Case than they did in Homicide, considering the fact that the cases we handled were a bit more high profile and supposedly more important. But a dead body was a dead body; a victim was a victim, and a criminal was a criminal. That was just the way it was, never mind the fact that some of them were worse than others. It was this thought that made me stop in my tracks, which only served to earn myself a few annoyed looks from passersby, but my shield was pinned to my jacket, and I knew they wouldn't say anything to me. Sure enough, none of them did.
I remembered vaguely as I stood there a name that had been mentioned in another one of those off-duty moments. Barek and I had both been persuaded by Goren and Eames to join them for a drink after the last case they had closed, and among the things we said, there was something about a resignation, which Barek and I heard again the next morning from Deakins himself, who'd had no idea that we'd already been told, and neither of us had really had the heart to tell him we already know. There was also a name mentioned. It escaped me at the moment, but I knew it'd come back, and right when I was about to fall asleep, the way things like that always did. Used to be that I'd call it annoying; now I just laughed it off and drank whatever amount of coffee I needed to stay awake.
I still hadn't figured out where I was going. But the looks of annoyance coming from the people that were still walking around me were getting kind of old, so I started walking again, no longer wishing to be a pain and take up any more space than I needed to. The city didn't look as if it had changed. In my heart of hearts, I knew it hadn't, but somehow, it seemed like it had. Maybe it was because the NYPD was losing one of their own because of some scandal or whatever it was that Eames had been ranting about a few nights ago. That certainly seemed to be the reason. I wondered briefly as I continued to walk why he hadn't decided that he wanted to fight this. I knew that he knew damn well we would have taken up for him, same way he'd taken up for us, so his decision to just walk away remained a mystery to me.
Then again, on some level, I understood why he'd done it, even if the other three were still trying to figure it out. I myself had no intention of leaving after twenty years unless I was pretty much forced out, but I saw exactly why some wanted to leave after that long. If it wasn't burnout, it was a desire to spend those remaining years with those you loved, instead of sitting in some squad room, all the way across the city from your family, working odd hours that could have you walking in the door just as everyone else was leaving for school, or whatever, and leaving again right as they were all getting home. It was enough to drive any one of us insane. Nine months, and I didn't think I had ever seen a man more dedicated to his family. I could see them being the one reason why he'd walked away, easy.
But there was something else. Something about giving the department a black eye…Eames had said it, I knew that much for sure. She'd sounded derisive, as if she felt the department deserved this black eye, and at the moment, I was inclined to agree with her. There had been something else about an email, and the kid who'd been the first to show up on the scene of the shooting, after Barek had taken my gun, and they'd taken my victim off to the hospital, where he lost his life anyway, despite the finest medical crews the city had to offer. And suddenly, the name came back to me, and I scowled.
Frank Adair. I'd heard the name before, of course, through Goren and Eames, during one of those first nights before Barek had come along to join our little lineup. They'd dragged me rather forcibly out for a round of drinks, and while we hadn't exactly gotten drunk, knowing we'd have to work the next day, we'd had enough where we started reminiscing about past cases. I'd had plenty of my own stories, but for some reason, theirs regarding this Adair figure topped them all. And not only because they'd broken the thin blue lines that supposedly protected every cop, retired or not. Oh, no. This guy, according to them, was a real piece of work.
And also according to them, he was the one behind all this, he and whoever his 'true' friends happened to be. I nearly scoffed at the thought. It was ironic, I thought, that a man like Captain Deakins could be so easily betrayed by those he thought he knew, while idiots like Adair could still have people he knew he could trust in, if only to do his dirty work for him, while his miserable ass was stuck in some random prison. I didn't know where he was, and didn't want to know, if only for the fear that I would go to where he was and do something I would regret. Of course, at this time of night, I'd have probably dragged Barek or someone else with me, so I probably wouldn't have gotten the chance, but it didn't change the fact that I hated this man with everything I had.
The sound of water brought me back to the present. I wondered vaguely for a moment where I was, because I knew two things: it wasn't raining, and I was no longer at One Police Plaza. Nor had I taken a cab anywhere. I looked at my watch, and was startled to find that more time had passed than I'd thought. I was at the docks, and about to take the ferry out to Staten Island. I bit my lip to keep from laughing at this: I'd sworn to myself I'd never return to the island, but with the case that had started this crap in the first place, I'd been out there. But that, I told myself, in an attempt to justify this, had been work related. This was definitely not; it was personal, and I probably should've just headed back to my apartment, but I didn't feel like going there.
So I stepped onto the ferry, and didn't look back. There was no reason for me to. It wasn't the first time I had been through a squad change, but somehow, this hurt a lot worse than the other changes had. I wondered if it was because this was the first squad since the two-seven that I had really felt accepted in. If it was because everyone in this squad seemed to actually give a damn about me, instead of just looking at me like I was trying to be better than everyone else, because I came from Manhattan. Instead of staring like I was overcompensating, trying to prove that I was something that I was not, if only to make my shadowed past disappear.
.I wondered if the incident with the councilman had been brought up in whatever meetings that had led to this resignation. Wondered if the brass had thrown it all in Captain Deakins' face, and told him that I'd been a mistake in the beginning, and was still one, even now. I knew I would not still be in Major Case if he hadn't said something in my defense, and I knew that I would owe him for that, no matter what happened. And I would, sooner or later, find a way to repay him for everything he'd done.