Carrie Lewis settled into the well established dent in her aging sofa with a sigh and pulled the orange chenille throw over her feet. A steaming cup of sweet, strong black tea and a Tivo full of her cop show completed her comfort ritual. Yet, as the opening teaser rolled, she found she just couldn't settle. Even the first glimpses of her favorite detective hovering over a victim, standing on the backs of two church pews, gesturing with his long, elegant hand, failed to soothe her. She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't been able to fall into the story and let the world disappear, but tonight her worried thoughts intruded.
Finally, she gave up with an annoyed shake of her head. Hauling out the files crammed into her large gym bag, she spread them out on the coffee table. For over an hour she studied them, stacking and restacking them in front of her. She tried arranging them by cash flow, by investor, by asset fluctuation... every different way she could think of. Carrie just knew there was money missing, but damned if she could figure out where it moved off the radar. She stretched her stiff neck, pulled off her small, square reading glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose, willing back the headache that hovered just behind her eyes.
Leaning back, she glanced at the episode in progress on the screen. Her detective, she'd always thought of him as hers, was glaring at a map with over a dozen pins in it, rubbing his fingers over his lower lip, willing the murders into some sort of pattern. "You and me both, buddy," she said with a sigh. "I'm kidding myself here. Why did I think that just because I dream about solving crimes with you, that means I can do it in real life?"
This needed to be analyzed by police with actual expertise, not a Law and Order fan with delusions of grandeur. Carrie wondered if the police laugh at her if she brought her suspicions to them in the morning? Even worse, might they charge her for stealing these files from Mr. Slater's office? Well, that was just a chance I'll have to take, she thought. Leaving well enough alone was not in her nature.
That settled in her mind, she relaxed into cozy depths of the sofa cushions and let her eyes drift closed. Her detective's coaxing voice floated around her as he led an unsuspecting perp into his carefully crafted trap. That's another thing she couldn't remember, she thought with a yawn... the last time she'd fallen asleep without his voice in her room, in her ears, in her mind. As he pulled the criminals toward revealing their secrets, he pulled her into slumber, into dreams, into his world.
Detective Robert Goren of the NYPD's Major Case Squad lifted a desk calendar out of his way and pulled off his shoes, tossing them to the nearest CSU uniform. He sat on the desk, spun around and planted his sock feet on either side of the dead man, leaning close and carefully pressing a cloudy eyeball with one latex covered index finger. An uneasiness came over him that had nothing to do with the dehydrated corpse in front of him. Something felt wrong. The body still held it's secrets. Eames still smirked and asked if he was having fun... yet his attention fractured... pulled toward the other side.
Few in his world perceived the other side or the people who inhabited it. They moved through the plot of their lives unaware that "The Audience", as he'd come to think of them, infused everything that happened to them with meaning and vitality. They had no idea that when things felt flat and depressing, it was due to or lack of attention or enthusiasm from those watchers. Goren didn't really know why he could sense their presence when no one else around him could, but he accepted it as part of himself in the way that he accepted his ability to pick up crucial, minute clues, see patterns in a seemingly unrelated array of clues or identify the subtlest of smells. Sensing what others did not was part of the fabric of his life.
However, "sensing" hadn't meant "being distracted by" before now. He'd never had a problem focusing on the case in front of him. It troubled him. No, he thought, tilting his head and considering, he wasn't troubled by the distraction. Trouble was distracting him. As the flickering light indicated a break, he slipped through the gap and let his mind wander over to the other side, seeking the source.
He wasn't surprised to find his attention drawn to a familiar, comfortable living room and the usually comfortable woman sitting in it. His brow furrowed as he noticed, for the first time in his memory, that she seemed agitated... not really with him. Yes, he thought, that's it. Whenever she was part of the audience, he was used to her being so much a presence in the story that he could almost feel her at his side. Her fascination, admiration and devotion infused everything that happened with purpose and grace. The lack of it was like a dissonant buzz in his ears.
The lights flickered again and he returned to his case, keeping half of his attention on her as he worked. She was nervy, scowling, and he wished he could put his arms around her, rest his chin on her hair and talk her into her to telling him about it. He watched her fetch stacks of files and stole glimpses of them as he could. As in his cases, the puzzle she was wrestling with quickly caught his imagination. It was something about embezzlement or money laundering, but he couldn't quite get a hold of it with constantly needing to return to the case in his own world.
As one case ended and another began, Goren willed her to let go of her obvious frustration. He knew she could be like a terrier once she latched on to a problem. If she would let go and join him they could talk through it, together, collaborating on the problem as they had so many times with his work.
Eventually, he saw her sit back and mock herself for thinking she could really solve crimes on her own. He wanted to chastise her for that, tell her she had as fine an intellect as he'd ever encountered in his world or hers. At the same time, he was concerned about the idea of her or anyone not on the job investigating on their own. Too often that was a recipe for disaster… it was easy for a civilian to underestimate the danger until already over their heads.
He'd get her to tell him the whole story. It wouldn't be long now. He could feel her mind and body relax and start to slip toward him as his case wound down to the final interrogation.
Though his words were for the strange, sad man in front of him, moving him inevitably toward realizing the patterns that revealed his crimes, his tone was for her. Like the proverbial pied piper he drew her toward him, weaving a spell with his voice that reeled her into the place they had shared since the first episode years ago. She knew it as her dreams. To him, it was simply home.