Goodbye Vince, a matt houston fanfic

Another blurb taking place on the end of Season #1 and on the "Glimmer of Twilight" storyline. Hope you enjoy it and thanks for reading and the feedback.

They stood at the airport on the tarmac preparing to say their goodbyes. The two men who had started out as adversaries but over time had watched their impressions of each other change until they had become close friends.

And with them stood the woman who had helped bring them together, and who would watch them head off into different directions. Vince had decided to retire from the LAPD as a lieutenant after a particularly arduous case caused him to question his commitment to his profession and so at a young age, he had opted for a medical retirement citing an old shoulder injury. He had a roster of job related medical conditions to choose from, not the least of which had been a bullet wound in his back, a duodenal ulcer and a pinched nerve in his neck. However, none of these had broken his will to be a cop out to get the bad guys like that last case.

He had stood eye to eye with a desperate man on a pier, the man had pulled out his gun and pulled it on him, its barrel only inches away from his face and then as Vince stood watching, he had undid the safety and pressed his finger on the trigger.

And nothing happened. Vince had blinked at the realization that the force he expected to slam into him turning his world into blackness hadn't come after all. The bullet had jammed or stove piped in the gun. The man had pressed the trigger twice and still, nothing and then unnerved he had tossed the useless gun on the ground and run. Vince had recovered from the shock of not dying enough to chase after him to collar him just as the other officers began arriving to back him up. They had looked at the guy for a long moment in Vince's custody and then handcuffed him to take him back for booking.

The weird thing had been that the abandoned handgun which had been registered to its handler had been taken back for testing and had fired perfectly three times. Once for each time the man had pulled the trigger and nothing happened. To say that this had set the hairs straight on the back of Vince's neck would be putting it mildly. His escape from death's grip had completely unnerved him in ways he didn't think anyone else would understand.

But the worst thing had been the face that had stared back at him, belonging to the man who had held the gun. It had been one of his own, a crooked cop. One who had graduated from his academy class years ago, who had risen in the ranks alongside him offering up no hint that he had been rotting out from the inside. That behind his easy going smile had been a man more troubled than he could have ever guessed.

After being interrogated, Vince had gone on home to his wife and kids, not to mention Mama who had been shutting down the family restaurant for the night, early because of what had happened and they spent all night with him and by morning, had come decisions about his retirement and their migration back to Miami.

Matt hadn't taken that announcement very well, and after he hadn't been able to talk his friend out of it had headed to the gym to work out, remembering how often he and Vince had done that together which helped them come up with answers and solutions in some of the most perplexing cases. About a dozen exercises with dozens of reps apiece, Matt had finally settled down and realized that his friend had made his decision. C.J. had been there too, trying to make sense of it all, it had been a difficult time for her coming on the heels of her experience with Marquis Duval and his band of terrorists being held hostage and threatened with death before Matt and Vince came up with a plan to free her. If it hadn't been for the two of them…she didn't even want to think about that. She had been so grateful, she hadn't even been mad when Matt and Vince ditched her and Mama to go to the fights instead of the opera.

She and Mama had brushed it off and had gone to the night horse racing at Hollywood Park instead making a ton of cash and then spending some of it at a spa in Palm Springs, returning much refreshed the next day to the puzzled looks of Matt and Vince. Priceless, C.J. had thought as she had filed them away.

As she would all of her memories of Vince and Mama right now, not to mention the sumptuous dining that she and Matt had done at the restaurant that had been sold. She knew that she and Matt would very much miss that, the food and the festive atmosphere, the camaraderie between the two men, who in many ways were so different except in their dedication to pursuing justice and the truth.

And she knew she'd miss him for other reasons, one of which she kept to herself.

Vince had been so dogged to try to find the faceless killer of the women who had washed up dead on shore from time to time since she and Matt had moved to California. Some of them reported missing but most of them not before they were tagged with numbers and sent to the county coroner's office to be processed. Cause of death, in most cases not known because the elements of the ocean had done its work but asphyxiation or strangulation were definite possibilities though some of the bodies had been marked with bruising that appeared to precede them into death.

But Vince like the other seasoned cops including the ones in homicide had been haunted by these women in ways much different than how they impacted C.J. She looked at their photos or composites in the newspaper and saw young women with dark hair and lively smiles. Maybe the camera had captured their last smiles.

Never much forensic evidence, never anything the killer didn't want them to see, and never any arrests in connection with the appearances of these dead women. Even their deaths had taken forever to link together…on both coasts. But she knew that like had happened in Boston and Cape Cod when she had been younger, had somehow followed her here. She kept that to herself not wanting those around her to think her crazy. Because it could be a coincidence after all, right?

She sighed as she thought about him leaving…as if the women were being left too, devoid of the one cop who had cared so much about them, just like he had cared about her. He had helped Matt free her from Duval's island just in time.

"We'd best be heading to the airport," Matt said with a sigh.

She hadn't known he had been there inside the office with her. Had he known what she'd been thinking, that she knew sometimes who had killed those women, in her dreams, the certainty had shaken her but upon awakening, she questioned her beliefs in the light of the world around her that didn't follow her into sleep. But she nodded.

"I'm ready…I can't believe they're really going to Miami," she said, "It's not going to be the same without them."

Matt knew that but didn't express it, because he still didn't quite believe it, he had been waiting for the phone call from his best friend telling him to scratch all that, disregard what he had said, that he and Mama and the family would be staying home in L.A. after all. He could even feel the relief that would consume him in his fantasy. Because Vince had been his close friend, Mama had been just that, what he never knew in his life and as the hours lapsed away from when they had been days and weeks, Matt felt it harder to say goodbye.

They drove in silence to the airport in his Mustang that Slim had handed off to them without a word, intuitively knowing which car he'd select. She had been in her last week working as his mechanic before heading to Hawaii with her surfer dude she had discovered and fallen in love with while Matt and C.J. had been busy solving cases.

Vince and his mother, plus the wife and kids had been gathering on the tarmac to board Vince's plane that he had bought with his retirement package and they all milled around, not eager to say goodbye but the time finally came.

Matt stood there not sure what to do as he stared into the eyes of his lifelong friend.

"Hey I'm just moving across the country, not off the planet," Vince said easily enough, "and if you ever need anything, just give me a call."

Matt finally had broken from his ennui and hugged him goodbye, trying to hold back tears and after they let go, Vince hugged C.J. as well telling the two of them to take care of each other. So much remained unsaid between them all but as it turned out, there had been nothing left worth saying. Their friendship would survive their geographic distance.

"We'd better get a move on," Vince said, "If we're going to make it to the cousins' house by nightfall."

So Vince ushered up his family and a weeping Mama who promised to ship her food regularly to Matt and C.J. as soon as she got her new eatery up and running. Vince hadn't been sure what he was going to do beyond some deep sea fishing, maybe he would set up shop in that and do it professionally.

The plane door closed keeping the Novellis inside while C.J. wrapped her arm around her best friend pulling him close, letting him lean on her because she sensed he needed that.

"Come on Houston," she said, "Let's go to dinner…there's that new Tex Mex place…I'll buy."

He looked at her, knowing that she missed them too but for reasons different than his own. He knew how much the last case that Vince had working on, investigating the deaths of the young women had haunted her in ways he didn't quite understand and that she wouldn't share with him. When he asked, she just looked at him and fell silent and then deftly changed the subject. With the departure of his friend, so went some answers to some questions that ate at him unless he found different ways to ask them.

Right now wasn't one of those times, it was time for two close friends to spend time together to remember someone else and when they walked out to the Mustang, they made plans to do just that. Driving back from LAX, they took PCH down to the restaurant not noticing that the coroner's van and assorted vehicles had parked further down by the ocean's edge where another body had turned up.