Disclaimer: the usual boring boring not mine boring the usual
Rating: T
Summary: Lassiter & O'Hara go out of town to work on a puzzling case, and meet up with the past. Story suggestion by ace888, so send blame that way.
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It was a confusing set of cases—they were sure it was the same guy, but he alternated between home break-ins and business burglaries. He always worked at night, seemed to work alone, and they'd never caught more than shadows on surveillance video.
It was those shadows, in part, which convinced Juliet and Carlton it was the same perp for each case. He seemed to know exactly where the cameras were, moved quickest when he was in their reach, and took his time elsewhere in each location. And he limped, favoring his right leg. It wasn't a serious limp, but it was definitely a limp, and all studies of all the available video footage showed it.
But the real reason they were sure was his pattern. On Tuesdays, he burgled homes. On Thursdays, businesses.
However, that was the only pattern, significant as it seemed, and it wasn't as much to go on as it should have been: the homes were in different neighborhoods, with owners of differing wealth; the businesses were anything from liquor stores to tech shops to florists. He took money, merchandise, sometimes clothing or food. Even the distances between each location were such that they couldn't—yet—predict where he might strike again. He took a week off between each round.
Juliet looked up from her computer, "Carlton," she said loudly enough to get his attention over at his desk. "There's a similar set of break-ins up in San Luis Opisbo."
He looked up to give her an exasperated glare. "That's not even sensible."
She laughed. "Come on, it's less than two hours from here. He could do it."
"You're reaching. This guy is local." He frowned. "Probably."
"Right, probably."
"Okay, whatcha got?" He came over to her desk and pulled the wooden chair around to see her screen.
"Well, nothing about a limp, but the same pattern. And so far, all the cases I've checked have taken place during the weeks he doesn't work here."
Carlton smiled approvingly as she pointed out dates and times. "Who's the lead detective?"
"I already have an email to him in progress," she said with satisfaction, and he smirked before returning to his desk.
By the end of the day, she'd made contact with Detective Greg Volakis of the SLOPD, which she thought was kind of a comical acronym, but at least even "slop-d" was easier to say than "SPBD". She was still sure she'd one day yell out "SDPB!" or "SPDB!" or "TCBY!" and be met with confused stares by whomever she was trying to arrest.
Volakis wanted to meet to discuss the cases in more detail, but asked her to come to San Luis Obispo. He pointed out that the earliest break-ins assumed to be by their perp were in SLOPD territory, so they had dibs.
Chief Vick approved the field trip, in part because the shadowy thief had recently burgled a business operated by the son of one of the mayor's aides. "It's a tenuous reason to amp up an investigation," she said dryly, "but any future support from City Hall is good support."
"Besides," Carlton pointed out, "the guy's hit here fourteen times already and we need to find the son of a…" he trailed off at their expectant expressions. "…banana-eater."
Juliet knew her eyebrows were as high as Chief Vick's.
"It's what my little sister used to say when she was afraid to curse in front of Ma," he explained. "Anyway, we hit the road tomorrow. O'Hara, set it up!"
She talked to Volakis again, agreeing she'd arrive with her partner and access to SBPD casefiles at ten sharp the next day. He said he and his partner would be ready to trade.
They drove—Carlton at the wheel of course—to San Luis Obispo in the morning, armed with information and loaded with Starbucks. Traffic was easy, which always improved Carlton's mood, and Juliet leaned back and enjoyed the passing scenery of spring as the caffeine and coffee nirvana settled in.
She felt crisp and cool, and he certainly looked that way too, relaxed and humming a little as the miles zipped by. She liked him best this way, when they were alone and he could dial back his usual need to be the guy in charge; when he could just be her lean, quiet, blue-eyed partner and friend.
Sipping her lovely Starbucks, she ventured. "I don't think I've ever met anyone from SLOPD. You?"
He shrugged. "Maybe at conferences. Have you ever been up there?"
"No. Well, when I first moved to California, I took a few day drives to get the lay of the land. I might have driven through."
"What made a Miami girl even choose California?" he asked curiously. "I know you visited with Scott Seaver, but what made you start your detective career here?"
He'd never asked before. Juliet smiled. "I didn't think I could ever prove myself in Miami. It was just too big for me to get a foothold there, and… you know, I wanted to break free of family. California seemed like it might be far enough away."
"Uh, yeah. But you…" Carlton hesitated. "You like your family. Right? All the brothers?"
"Yes, of course. But I… I wanted to be Juliet O'Hara, not little sister Julie. And professionally I wanted a clear field. Dream big, right? Since I'd been here with Scott, I knew it was beautiful, and it was by the ocean, which was my concession to a Miami home life." She laughed. "Though in Miami I only got to see the ocean every few weeks. We didn't exactly live beachside."
"Santa Barbara does have its views," he admitted.
"Why Carlton, and here I thought you only had eyes for crime."
A reluctant smile curved his mouth. "Don't tell anyone."
He'd mellowed, in his own way, over the past few years. Only with her, she thought, at least mostly only with her. But she'd take that.
And in the past few months, after Yin had nearly killed her, he'd … Juliet hesitated. He hadn't changed in any substantial way, no. But there was something… different in how he seemed to regard her. Something maybe ten percent gentler in how he looked at her. He even asked her sometimes—and seemed to want to know the answer—how she was, or what she'd done that weekend. It was as if once she broke down in front of him, within his unexpectedly and blessedly comforting embrace, he felt more open to being… himself with her.
He cursed at a passing driver, startling her, and she grinned privately out the window. Nope. He was fundamentally the same Carlton after all—but that was okay too.
SLOPD was on a busy street, with limited public parking on the lone side road. "Guess they don't get many drop-ins," she said as he pulled in half a block away. "I'll text him we're here."
The building was white, or maybe tan—hard to tell in the bright morning sunlight—and sort of nondescript, but then again, it was what went on inside that mattered.
Volakis met them at the door. He was tall like Carlton, but sandy-haired. Younger, she thought, but not by much. He had a strong handshake, and her quick glance at Carlton told her he approved.
"Come on back. My partner's joining us in a minute. Coffee?"
"Is it drinkable?" Carlton asked bluntly. He'd polished off his Starbucks at least forty miles ago.
Volakis laughed. "Actually yeah. Our chief insists."
"Then pour me a cup, Detective."
He led them past Booking and Intake to what looked like a small meeting room, and Juliet ducked off into the conveniently-located loo—her Starbucks had run out at least fifty miles ago.
Coming out, she nearly ran into a tall blonde, who stood back to let her pass.
"Sorry about that," she said.
The woman smiled. "No problem. Since I don't recognize you but you're wearing a badge, may I assume you're Detective O'Hara from the Santa Barbara PD?"
"Yes! I'm here with my partner. Around the corner, I think."
"That's right." She gestured. "I'll be there in a minute. I'm Volakis' partner." She had to stand back again to let another woman enter the restroom.
Juliet chuckled. "Not a good place to linger. I'll see you in a bit."
In the office, Volakis had laid out a slew of folders, and Juliet booted up the SBPD laptop she'd brought along.
"I have a good feeling about this connection," Volakis said. "And not just because his weeks off here match up with his weeks on for you."
"We've had fourteen break-ins. You've had how many?" Carlton leaned back in his chair, legs crossed, looking relaxed.
"Eighteen. Four before he hit you. So he's probably local to us."
"Maybe not," Juliet countered, "He could have started with you, taken a week off because it wasn't convenient, and then after a second week with you decided he could swing it at home, too."
"Or maybe he lives halfway between here and there," said the blonde woman, coming in with her own coffee.
Volakis straightened up, and both Carlton and Juliet turned in their chairs. "This is my partner Detective Lucinda Barry," he said as if those were perfectly ordinary words. "Barry, this is O'Hara, and here's—"
"Carlton Lassiter," she said slowly with a faint smile. Very faint. Almost not there at all.
Juliet had to force herself not to gape with shock.
Carlton's coffee mug slipped a little, but he caught it in time. "Lucinda," he said, and to Juliet his voice sounded muted, and almost as if the woman's first name was foreign to him.
But then sometimes it seemed Juliet was foreign to him too.
"Long time." Lucinda slid into the empty chair, and for a few moments there was a deep silence in the room.
Juliet glanced at Volakis, completely unnerved and desperate not to show it.
He seemed only puzzled. "You know each other?"
"We've crossed paths," she said mildly.
Carlton straightened up. "We were partners years ago." His tone was mild too, but Juliet knew him: he was rattled. A little pale, a little exactly like his usual still self, but definitely rattled.
She was rattled.
He had an affair with this woman. This tall, cool, pretty and very remote woman.
Lucinda nodded, meeting Volakis' gaze impassively. "True story." To Juliet more than Carlton, she explained, "I've only been here about eight months, so Volakis doesn't have my background memorized yet."
Juliet found her voice at last. "Where did you transfer from?" Because she wasn't touching the elephant, no sir.
"Well, from Santa Barbara I went up to Modesto for a couple of years. Lately I've been in San Jose. But I wanted something a little smaller. Less… crime-y." She managed another faint smile. "So everyone has coffee? Let's get down to business." To Carlton, perhaps realizing a potential tactical error if she wanted to shrink the elephant, she said, "We'll catch up later."
"Sure." Big slug of coffee.
Juliet felt goosebumps.
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They broke for lunch, and Juliet couldn't get into the restroom fast enough—her first moment alone since. Just... since.
Lucinda had been called away twice, and Carlton had visibly relaxed each time she was out of the room.
Volakis didn't ask any questions, and they'd all kept to the topic at hand: sharing information about the break-ins and trying to work up a more complete profile of their shadowy limping perp.
But her mind was on two tracks, maybe three… or four or seventeen: watching Carlton not watch Lucinda, while Lucinda conspicuously didn't watch him. How they both tried so hard to seem unperturbed by this meeting.
How Carlton didn't keep eye contact with Juliet long enough for her to figure him out—but clearly knew she was trying to figure him out. He knew she could read those vivid blue eyes better than anyone else.
They had never discussed Lucinda Barry. She knew the woman's name, and had heard the rumors. She knew Shawn had outed their affair, heard it was probably short-lived to begin with, knew he'd already been separated from Victoria for close to two years. She knew Lucinda hadn't been at SBPD for more than a year or two.
She remembered—with embarrassment—challenging Carlton about "interoffice romance," and how he'd bristled against her too-young-too-cocky-too-thinks-she-knows-it-all arrogance.
She even knew instinctively that Lucinda Barry was the reason he'd kept Juliet at arms' length for so long: he had to recover professionally.
But they'd never discussed her. And apart from looking her up some years ago to put a face to the legendary name—not that she recognized her in their first encounter today—she really knew nothing about the woman or how she'd worked herself into Carlton's personal life.
She washed her hands and took a deep breath.
Lunch. Lunch would be... interesting.
He slept with her.
Why did that keep reverberating in her head?
He slept with her. He'd risked his partnership, and their careers, and what was left of his mostly-dead marriage.
It was so... uncontrolled.
Carlton's entire sense of self involved control: of himself, of his job, of criminals. Hell, of paperwork. Casefiles. Everything. Control. He had to be master of himself and his environment, and she put it down to what she knew of how he was raised.
If the thing with Lucinda had been a one-night stand—a very human lapse, nearly understandable even for him, given his long separation—she might have had a better handle on it.
But this was an affair, by all (admittedly underinformed) accounts.
So… was it a love affair?
Juliet swallowed, unexpectedly uneasy.
Funny how up until this moment she'd never thought of that. She'd always assumed it was just a tawdry "episode" in a beleaguered man's life, a crisis brought on by job stress with his new boss and personal stress by way of Victoria.
She'd never before considered that he might have… loved Lucinda.
Why?
Well… because he was all about control. Because in those early days of their partnership, he was all cool command, alternately stalwart & snarky, arrogant and demanding.
Men like that didn't fall in love. Right?
And equally cool, remote women like Lucinda—she even had blue eyes too, though hers were pale and revealed nothing—didn't have tawdry episodes. Right?
And with that, Juliet admonished herself sharply that she knew nothing about anything, because in the first place she didn't know Fact One about Lucinda Barry, and in the second place, she knew so much about how Carlton Lassiter had changed since she met him that the truth was, she had no idea who he really was before she walked into the SBPD to take Lucinda's place.
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He'd forgotten how tall she was. Without heels—and like Juliet, she preferred heels—she was easily 5'10, and with the heels, she was just about his height.
He'd liked her light blue eyes too—or maybe what he'd liked was that she was reserved, She didn't give a lot away. She didn't want to be treated differently because she was a woman, so she did her best to seem like a person—a cop—first.
But whereas Juliet's absolute ability to kick a perp's ass never undermined her sunny nature, Lucinda had always chosen control. Calm. Reserve.
Victoria was all about drama and upset. And she'd pulled back from him in every way, for much too long.
He couldn't even remember how, exactly, he'd ended up sleeping with Lucinda, except that the first time involved a drunken night out after solving a tough case. He'd never had the nerve to ask her what she remembered: who came on to whom that first night? After that, their encounters were sober, but rushed and furtive. For some people having affairs, the awareness that it was wrong, or the fear of discovery, heightened its appeal. For him, it was knowing a woman wanted him. A strong and reserved woman who didn't need him, wanted him.
Victoria didn't want him. But for a few weeks—five or six tops before Spencer busted it up—Lucinda had.
Carlton's head was down as he pretended to study the folder in front of him, turning pages automatically, not taking in a single word. Juliet had gone to the restroom, Lucinda had slipped out for a minute, and Volakis was on the phone, In a few minutes they were going to pile into a car and go have lunch, may God have mercy on his soul.
There was so much to process.
The expression on Lucinda's face as she drawled out his name. More accurately, the inscrutability of it.
The expression on Juliet's face as the words registered. More accurately, the flash of surprise mixed with unease and—dare he think it—sympathy.
The years gone by—was it five?
They'd had no contact. Vick transferred her out ASAP, and other than an awkward coffee the last morning before she left, they'd had no contact. She'd even said to him, "Let this be our past. Don't forget, but don't... try to resuscitate. Okay?"
"Okay," he'd agreed, and while he probably would have missed her in a normal world, as if he knew what a normal world was, his had just been split open by Spencer, not to mention the arrival of his new partner. He could have throttled Karen Vick for choosing to assign another blonde young woman to work with him. Was she evil? Was she testing him? Was she getting revenge because she knew he resented her making Chief, even interim, and hadn't been overly shy about it?
How was he supposed to treat fresh-faced, pretty Juliet O'Hara so soon after being outed for his affair with his last partner?
Lucinda. After all these years.
Hell.
Slapping the folder closed, he got up abruptly and pulled himself together.
There were bigger problems than a polite lunch having polite conversation with his polite ex-lover.
There was this case, for one thing.
But for another—and this seemed of far larger consequence—there was the upcoming drive back home with Juliet, because there was no way, none at all, zero, zippo, zilch, nada, that his past wasn't going to be part of their conversation.
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A/N While you wait for the next chapter, which won't be tomorrow, could I interest you in an amusing, quirky sequel to The Princess Bride? It's called "Humperdinck's Revenge"; I quite enjoyed it and I know the writer (Random Guise) would love more readers. s/12510723/1/Humperdinck-s-Revenge
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