Disclaimer:All of the characters are the property of Dick Wolf. I thank him, the writers, the directors and all the great actors who brought them "to life" for our benefit. Any "liberties" I have taken with them is motivated only by my fond admiration.
AN: This story is not set entirely within the accepted "canon" or strictly within the "storyline" for the characters as it is only officially portrayed by the TV series. It gives me the flexibility to take things in other directions. I only wish I was sure which ones they were going to be
And oh yeah…this not like my usual stuff…see why I'm really "Clueless" on this one??
A WIDE OPEN COUNTRY
Friday 11th June
Centre Street, Manhattan
Goren and Eames stepped into the early afternoon heat on a day, like much of that month so far, that was hot and sticky. In marked contrast to the air-conditioned frigidity of 100 Centre Street where for almost three hours one or other of them had been on the stand. The kind of grilling they got in turn from the wily defence attorney in the trial of Roger Day, trying to make them feel very warm at times.
"Take this Goren".
His partner, for a petite woman packed a remarkable number of pounds per square inch into her frame, as she shoved a large and heavy file firmly into his arms. Leaving both her hands free to take her shades from her purse and shed the smart, red jacket she was wearing.
"I'm already regretting the decision to leave the car behind" she muttered, retrieving it from him.
He took the chance to ease down the blue silk tie and release a couple of buttons on his shirt. "It's only a few hundred yards to walk Eames. We'll stay the shady side of the street"
"Try walking it in these shoes then"
"I would but it would be a pity to stretch them" Goren said, with a glance at her feet in black high heels of the sort he only saw her wear days like this and at social functions.
He reached in his jacket pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter he was given by his mother many years ago. When being a smoker wasn't the modern day equivalent of leprosy, in terms of how welcome you were in public places and at most social gatherings.
Eames scowled up at him as he lit it and inhaled. "I thought you were supposed to be quitting that again?"
"I am and I am" he replied, setting off at a pace allowed for the different lengths of their stride and the footwear factor. "This is only the third today. I swear"
"Doing it luke warm turkey rather than cold turkey?"
They stopped at the corner just as the lights changed to allow pedestrians to cross.
"Uhuh"
If traffic was bad in Manhattan, there were times the sidewalks almost seemed worse. Like ant colonies on the move as people swarmed over the cross walks. Always it seemed, marching in opposite directions and in equal numbers. Eames did the smart thing and ducked behind Goren. Let him be the one the ants coming the other way walked into, while she slipstreamed along behind him. Though with a guy his height they tended to see him coming and keep out the way.
One of those situations where she would normally tease him with some comment like "size matters" just to see him become a little pink round the gills or discomforted, even after so many years of them working together. But moments of levity had been few and far between for a long time. Too long and a time when cracks began to appear everywhere including, for a while, in their professional and personal relationship.
Goren taking up again a habit he'd once quit was just one of those cracks. One in retrospect turned out to be minor. But now he seemed to have turned the corner and dealt with the more serious ones, she and others felt it was okay to get on his case about it.
On the other side of the street Goren realised Eames was back at his side and wrestling the jacket, the fat file and her purse, which kept slipping off her shoulder.
"Want me to carry that file Eames?" he enquired. "As you often remind me I've got longer arms than you"
She smiled to see a little more of that self-deprecating humour returning. "Thanks. Must be fourth grade since any boy offered to carry my books home from school for me"
As she passed it over Eames took the chance to whip the half smoked cigarette from the corner of Goren's mouth and toss it in the gutter.
He looked at it for a moment and licked his lip where a piece of skin had gone with it. "That was sneaky and it's littering Alex"
"So arrest me Detective" she said setting off again in the direction of 1PP.
One Police Plaza
The lobby and then the elevator of NYPD's headquarters building offered cool relief when they got inside. Eames took back the file from Goren envying that in one respect, he'd not changed. With the almost twelve months that had passed since the Roger Day investigation, she'd needed the Major Case file of record and some swotting to refresh her memory. Whereas Bobby and despite everything since, seemed to have relied on a few sheets and his personal and eccentric notes made at the time. Scanned briefly as they awaited their turns to be called to the stand
"Did we get him Goren?" she asked in the first mention of the case since he was excused from the witness box.
"We know he did it, we think we can prove he did it" he mused with a fractional shrug. "Jack looked as happy as he ever does when we were done. What twelve citizens think is another matter"
"Personally I hope they fry the son-of-a-bitch" Eames muttered. "And don't remind me the New York statute is for lethal injection or of your views on the death penalty"
"I won't. We agreed to disagree on that one a long time ago" Goren said mildly.
When the doors opened on the eleventh floor they went their separate ways into the male and female locker rooms. Shedding his jacket, rolling his sleeves and whooshing cold water over his face, Goren tried to put out of his head once and for all images of the carved up body of Yvonne McDonald.
Made by Day to look like a rape/homicide when the young intern at his Daddy's Wall Street finance company became, at first, little more than a passing sexual convenience to him. But as a result of that, an unwitting witness to some lucrative but illegal side deals he was working on. In Goren's view an exercise in financial and intellectual thrill seeking with Roger trying to prove to himself, if not the world, he had the same sized cohones as his old man.
It had trouble written all over it the first time he and Eames walked into the Day & Littlejohn offices. When there were more sharp suited lawyers around everyone they spoke to than papers on their desks and all of them quicker to account for their social connections than their movements the night of the girl's death. And once they'd cut through various lies and obfuscation, Day's lawyers had been playing every card they could at each stage of the legal process
That was how it went with some cases. Though the primary criminologist dying in a traffic accident, while they were waiting for the case to grind its way to court, was a rare event. But you could understand why Jack McCoy was close to tearing his hair when the substitute he was relying on to get minimal but complex forensics across to the jury, turned out to be "useless" in his words. Not his young and inexperienced fault, but if Day's head didn't roll on this one, Goren suspected McCoy would be headhunting for "someone" at CSU he'd described in very colourful Anglo-Saxon.
The two of them had hardly sat down at their desks, never mind started to sift paper and messages dumped in their absence, when Ross loomed at his office door.
"Is he making that gesture in our direction Eames?" Goren asked blocking out his peripheral vision by pretending he had a sudden itchy forehead.
"'Fraid so" she replied.
Eames had not liked feeling she was "piggy in the middle" at times after Danny Ross replaced Jim Deakins. Goren wasn't always easy to handle and not because he was by nature, difficult or short-tempered or deliberately disrespectful. People tended to forget he had a successful career in the military before he became a cop and no matter how brilliant you might be, Uncle Sam wasn't known to just forget the rules and regulations for one "pain in the ass" soldier.
It took her a while herself to realise that a lot of Goren's problems, or rather the ones other people had with him, owed their origins to his "smarts" and his focus. It could make him seem arrogant or dismissive and appear obsessive, which some even mistook for unseemly ambition. She and Captain Deakins learned that, developed strategies to deal with it and with Goren. Which did occasionally did mean going toe to toe with the size thirteen's.
But the manner of Jim's departure hurt Goren more than he let on, even before the new guy arrived. Ross came with a very different personality and style and determined to make his mark. With a fair dose of smarts too but certainly over-influenced by what the gossip was on one of his new subordinates.
It wasn't exactly a recipe for disaster but certainly some rough times, when she would go home exhausted after a day of well chosen words in one ear or the other. Acting as a mixture of interpreter and mediator to get Ross and Goren to understand what the other was really saying and coming from. It was either that or resort to the quicker, but rather more extreme solution of shooting them both.
"Probably wants to know how the trial is going"
"Just tell me that's all it is Goren. You haven't done anything else to piss him off this week"
"That was a genuine mistake Eames" he muttered. "How was I to know that pack of coffee by the machine was his own personal supply? Shouldn't have left it there. Could have happened to anyone. And I replaced it"
"Good"
"And whatever it is" he stood up fixing his tie. "I'm counting to ten and getting ready to bite my tongue like you told me a hundred times"
"It's at least five hundred Goren. The air's much thinner up there. Sound takes longer to reach and get in your head"
Goren picked up his folder. "Could be. Though it doesn't travel at all in a vacuum of course. As Robert Boyle discovered when he…"
"Shut up! I got a B in physics I'll have you know" she muttered.
"Only a B?" he mocked. "Though I guess for…what was it Alex? A prom queen? A B is remarkable. Possibly, even unique. You coming to see the principal then?"
"When I get my shoes back on" she winced. "And you can go deleted expletive yourself Bobby"
To be continued…