She's already covered in blood, and Skip freaks out when she goes out of sight, so the ambulance attendants agree that she might as well ride along and question him on the way, instead of messing up her cruiser. She wishes she could clean herself up, too, but there's a minor chance that some of the blood on Skip isn't his, so she'll have to wait to be swabbed down for evidence later.
"I'll meet you at the hospital with clean stuff," Jamie says to her, as the rear doors of the ambulance swing closed. "Text me if you want anything else."
"Small black tactical bag, bottom of my locker," she calls, just in time. He raises his hand and shrinks from her view as they speed away with full lights and sirens.
Holding onto the stretcher, she manoeuvres herself carefully alongside the male EMT who is working intently on Skip, taping his ribs and checking his pupils and breathing every two minutes. She's not a medic, but it looks to her like his biggest danger is internal bleeding and concussion. His nose is broken. The assholes at the bar worked him over good. Kicked around the middle, mostly, after he fell.
What strikes her is the level of rage involved. How jacked up, how furious do a bunch of drunk guys have to be to go from sleazeball to trying to kill a man in just a few seconds?
She stifles a shudder as a sticky, rusty-red hand touches hers gently. "Eddie – I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
"Skip. I heard you. We're good, okay? Can you answer a couple questions for me?"
"Four men," Skip says, correctly guessing her first few. "Didn't hear any names. They were all dressed up. Dark suits, two blond guys, two with dark hair. Good shoes. I saw the shoes real close up."
He's trying for wry, but Eddie jumps on this, grabbing her notebook. "Shoes. Good. Talk to me about shoes. Color?"
"Black leather dress shoes. Plain. One pair really pointy. All of them but one. Big blond guy. He had brown, dark brown, with like a curly bit over the lace holes…I can't really…"
"You mean like a scalloped strip on the uppers, over the laces?"
"Yeah."
"Was the strip the same kind of leather as the rest?"
"Lighter than the rest. Gold. Gold holes. Laces."
"Gold grommets. Good. Keep going. These brown shoes, were they scuffed at the toes?"
"Yeah. Yeah! They were. Not new. I could see stitches. Weird, like yellow and brown twisted."
Skip's eyes go still and his chest bucks instead of rising. The EMT is on him in a tenth of a second, applying a mask and adjusting his jaw. There's a new trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, and Eddie's heart sinks. Sometimes she hates being right.
And shit, what if her poking Skip's cracked ribs ruptured something critical…but it couldn't, could it? She hadn't felt anything give, hadn't prodded hard enough to feel more than the outline of a rib, which had certainly not budged, even if it made him yelp.
She knows she could never justify that poke to anyone might question her about it. But she also knows that it released them both, in a weird and unsettling way. He was begging her to make them evens, lying there on the floor as immobile and exposed as she'd been with that bastard Campbell pinning her arms behind her back. Her words and reassurances weren't getting through. So she made sure he felt it, and he did, and then he believed her.
She swallows hard and looks at her notes. She's pretty sure Skip's describing hand-tailored shoes, fairly well-worn. That could prove useful.
"Central to Twelve-D. Information," she hears.
"Copy, Central," she hears Jamie's voice come though on her shoulder.
"Copy, Central," she echoes.
"Twelve-D, Unit Twelve-Echo reports picking up two male suspects one block from your scene. Both male, twenty-five to thirty-five, both dark, business type suits, blood on shirts. Taking them home to process."
"Copy. Thanks to Twelve-Echo," Jamie replied. "Partner, you good?"
"Ten-four. Almost at St. Victor's. Vic reporting four attackers, so please keep looking. Partial description: both blonde males, twenty-five to thirty-five, also in dark business type suits. One with black shoes. One with…"
She drops her finger from the radio as her brain races. Yes. She knows the sort of man who would look forward to groping women in public, lead an attack on an intervenor, and then leave the others to pick up the pieces.
The same sort of man who would claim he wasn't even at the Psi Beta Tau house on the night in question, and had no idea what sort of unsavory activities were going on in his absence. And indeed, Campbell, the vice-president of the chapter, had released her and disappeared before Eddie had seen him clearly enough to identify him.
She only knew who he was because he had sent a note to her residence the next day, covering his cowardly ass, and triggering her suspicion. Campbell, in his note, wrote that he had "heard some of his brothers had come home very drunk after a kegger the night before, and were rude to a few of their guests, and he hoped she would take up his personal invitation to a catered dinner party at the house the next week." The boy she'd been with, just a shocked pledge in the frat house himself, had not been able to deny that Campbell was the same person who led the "panty raid" as they called it.
Oh, yes. She knew they type. They ran from the light like roaches, but couldn't resist sticking around to watch.
"Twelve-D, losing you. Come in."
"Central!" Eddie cries. "He'll be nearby. He'll be close enough to watch the scene. Maybe hiding between buildings. Keep looking for one well-dressed blond male, white, twenty-five to thirty-five, drunk and possibly bloodied, with brown tailored shoes, scalloped uppers, gold grommets. They'll be easy to spot. The kind of shoes people wear to be noticed. Maybe blood on them." She thinks fast. "Or same description, in socks or bare feet. He may have ditched them. Vic has described the shoes. Find them. If you don't find him tonight, he'll be back tomorrow night."
"On it, Twelve-D."
"Nice one, partner."
"PBT ring," Skip groans. "That's what cut me." She jumps to find his eyes on hers, above the oxygen mask. She hadn't noticed him coming round.
"Central! Twelve-D again. Suspect has a fraternity ring on him. He might take it off but he won't ditch it. Psi Beta Tau, gold ring, red stone," she relays, staring at him. "Skip. They were PBT?"
"Yeah."
"They didn't think you'd do anything," she breathes, sickened. "They knew it was your bar."
"Yeah, I think so, too," he says clearly, and fades out again, just as they slide, sirens shrieking, into an unoccupied bay under the hospital's covered entrance.
Skip doesn't wake up as they wheel him straight into prep for X-rays. The EMT, whose name she learns is Justin, isn't overly concerned, but thinks Skip has a long recovery ahead.
"Nothing I wasn't expecting," Justin says, which is some small assurance. They're standing in between the two automatic sliding front doors, where the air jets are warm, because neither has a coat, and Eddie's a little shaky now. "Intra-cranial pressure increasing is what likely kept him going in and out like that, from bleeding into the brain, but no other signs of concussion. Pupils looked good, coherent speech. Except for that broken nose." Justin shakes his head, "That's gonna hurt worse than the ribs. And something got punctured inside, but a slow leaker. Hopefully not an organ. Just have to wait and see."
"Thanks," Eddie says, getting it all in her notebook along with Justin's cell number, in case she needs to corroborate Skip's information later on.
"Friend of yours?" Justin asks kindly. "Not gonna bust you or anything. Lord knows I'd want a familiar face to ride with if I had to."
"College…" Eddie says vaguely. Justin nods and then gestures with his thumb to his ambulance.
"Gotta run. Call if you need," he says.
She leans against the wall and takes out her phone to text Jamie: At St Vic's. Skip heading for OR soon. PBT frat connection b/w vic and sus but Skip couldn't ID. You?
It takes him a couple of minutes to respond, which means he's probably driving. Then: Nearly there. Det squad has PBT info. Got your kit here. Kara's with me to bag your clothes and swab hands etc. Bringing meatball sub and mocha.
She smiles weakly, recognizing she's running on fumes after the adrenaline rush. She hadn't felt like crying before, between bouts of anger and bitterness, but that nearly does it.
To steady herself, she pushes her back up against the wall, literally, and takes stock of what she knows and where she's at. It's been one hell of a week. Her knee's still sore from the little punk knocking her down at the beginning of it all.
She'd been far, far too pissed off earlier to admit that Jamie was right to prevent her spinning an act of vengeance out of a minor altercation. He only screwed up by going to Erin first with the story the assault, without telling her he even knew. That was a breach of privacy that still stings, but she gets that she was running headlong into deep water and shutting him out every single time he tried to talk. Of course he was well within bounds, in terms of protocol. They'd never intervene like that if they weren't convinced it was in the other's best interest. This is something they can work through.
Meanwhile, they're looking for a PBT who still wears his ring. Probably from the same year, or a few up or down, as Skip, if he knew enough to look up him up ten years after graduation. So his name will be on a list, somewhere. Not Campbell, though, not the same sociopathic bastard who giggled in her ear while dragging her down the hallway as she struggled. Skip would have known him. And after tonight, Eddie knew, she could trust that Skip would have named him. There were more Campbells out there. Trained by and covered up for by each other.
Once she's turned in her clothing and written up her notes, she can step aside from the whole case if she wants to. In fact, her job is to let the Detectives run the case from here. And it'll feel okay. She hopes Skip recovers, and that's an end of it. He's no longer a barb under her skin, and she's no longer a troubling stain on his memory. They're even. Washed clean of each other. She may never encounter Campbell again, but she doesn't dread it in the least anymore. She knows she's ready to take him on, and that she is surrounded by a rock-solid firmament of law and support.
When she thought back on her late college years, it was usually with bitter resentment at what she'd had taken from her, through no fault of her own. Her sense of safety around her friends, and on campus. Her emerging sexual confidence as a young woman. Then, only a year later, the family crash, sweeping away not only the economic security she'd taken for granted, but her belief that her father's hard work and character were the rational and moral source of her family's luck and fortune. Replaced with nights of nausea at the thought that some muckraking reporter might put her father's name together with the name of that dark-haired college girl whose picture was splashed across Facebook the year before, naked, her arms twisted behind her back, confused and screaming for help.
It was a very real but baseless fear. The administrative sanctions placed upon all of the frats by the school had not won any adulation or attention for herself or the other girls who had come forward. For one thing, the proceedings were supposed to be anonymous, and like the other girls, she'd signed a non-disclosure agreement, assuming that she was legally compelled to. So the people on campus who would have gladly supported her either knew nothing, or were restrained from talking to her outside of the official activities of Student Counselling Services and the Office of Non-Academic Discipline. And the people who knew wanted nothing to do with her, or to drive her off campus.
They'd nearly succeeded. Her father, before his empire toppled, offered to send her to any school she wanted, for her senior year. It was her mother who convinced her to stay. Mira chose that moment to take her aside and quietly explain the use of rape and sexual threats as a weapon of terror, in her war-torn old home-town of Prijedor. She explained the power of looking people in the eyes until they dropped theirs, and reminded Eddie that because she spoke the truth, other girls would be spared, and the boys would be monitored.
"I could not stay in my town, or even my country," Mira told her, cradling her as if she was still a little girl, during a few days' rest at home. "My own people were the occupying force, committing the most awful atrocities. I could not look any of my old friends in the eye. I dropped my eyes first. And if I said anything against the Serb uprising, I would have been killed. I had to run. But you, my girl," she kissed Eddie's forehead, "You spoke."
Somehow, she stayed, and somehow, not only finished but scored higher in her marks than ever, probably out of loneliness and obstinacy combined. She'd always found solace in work.
A year later, seeing the faces of the old friends that her father had taken everything from, in the name of providing the American Dream for his family, Eddie thought she had an inkling of what her mother had felt, utterly betrayed by those she loved best, and held tacitly responsible for them. And she ran.
"Hey, Eddie. There you are."
She nearly leaps sideways. "Kara! Sorry."
"Jesus, girl. Look at you. C'mon, I got us a ladies' room we can use to do all the chain-of-evidence-y shit and then you can shower off."
Kara holds up Eddie's tactical bag, like a small waterproof duffel, with her clean gear and toiletries. Over her arm she has Eddie's warm winter uniform jacket.
"Let's do this," Eddie says, braced up by Kara's matter-of-fact bearing. "Then food."
"Damn straight." Kara replies, as they head into the hospital lobby and around a corner.
"Where's Reagan?"
"Off buying flowers to say he's sorry."
"The hell? He doesn't need to – aw, shut up, Walsh."
"Gotcha. He's parking the damn car. He'll be in soon. He said something about you being pissed with him."
"Not anymore." Eddie says.
"So," Kara eyes her, interestedly, "He has bought you flowers to say sorry before?"
"Pizza," Eddie corrects her. "And meatball subs."
"Really. And yet I notice you haven't married him."
"Um – " Eddie looks back quickly. "Funny you should mention that, actually. So guess what."
"No. NO. You guys did not finally – "
"Gotcha," says Eddie.
It's ridiculous bullshit, and they both know it. Kara's faith in her ability to keep up and keep laughing is a tonic. In the small bathroom next to the nurses' nap room, they get through the processes of swabbing, scraping, bagging, tagging and taping as quickly as they can, and then Eddie finally gets to shower off the accumulated blood, sweat and unshed tears of the day. Kara, folding Eddie's dirty uniform neatly into the bag, keeps up a running commentary of her own shift, and pretends not to hear any sniffling.
Eddie, Kara and Jamie share their takeout dinner in companionable quiet, in the cruiser. It's less comfortable than the hospital cafeteria, but it's private and they don't get stared at for being in uniform. After eating, the rush of the shift long faded, Eddie feels a wash of sleepiness. She'd like to say that she knows herself well enough to be aware that she's too tired and mentally zapped to drive, but in reality, it's that she wouldn't endanger her car. Silver Belle is precious for many reasons.
Jamie, being Jamie, doesn't need her to say any of this. Once they're back at the house, he lounges against the wall outside the ladies' change room, as he so often does, waiting for to appear, and then sort of herds her towards his car. He opens the passenger door for her and she doesn't even roll her eyes at him. In fact, she watches her hand close over his, on the rim of the door, and squeeze gently.
They don't speak or make any eye contact. He closes the door gently and she hears him clear his throat as he gets in his side.
She's so used to sitting in the shotgun seat beside him that it's like a second home by now. She closes her eyes, snuggling deeper into the warmth of her jacket and the heat from the A/C, and it feels a little like he's carrying her home.
He says her name softly when they're near to her apartment. He has to say it twice, and she realizes that he doesn't want to startle her by shaking her shoulder as he normally would. A little more alert after her doze, she turns and gives him a lopsided little grin.
"I'm still me, Reagan. We're still us."
"What's that mean?"
"I mean, don't treat me any differently because you know what you know. I'm not made of glass."
They've pulled up outside her building. He shuts off the engine, and turns to her. "I'm just trying to – it's hard to know what to do, Eddie. All this stuff coming out just now, all these past abuse stories and more of it happening every day – it makes me want to look back, you know, to figure out if anything I said or did ever went over the line. With any of my girlfriends, or any of my friends I might've made feel uncomfortable, if I didn't know they were dealing with past shit. I mean, it's becoming pretty clear that there's probably very few women I know who haven't either been targeted or sexually picked on just for being women. You've had way too much of that, and I'm pretty sure I've only heard the major stuff, not even the everyday. I don't want to add a single grain of sand to that pile."
That gives her pause for thought. "I get that. I do. You're about the least likely person I know to have any reason to be concerned about consent or respect for the people around you. I mean, we've all done our share of stupid things, but consideration is like second nature to you."
He gives her a look of such genuinely deep affection that it sends a thrilling rush through her guts. "That's…that means a lot. I wish that was the baseline for compliments to men. Especially from other men."
She lets out a laugh. "Damn, wouldn't that be a revolution?"
"It would." He's clearly pondering something. "I think maybe I should check in with Jack and Sean more often. I know Danny's doing a great job with them, and Linda was always a big one for respect. But I know there's more going on in their lives than they tell their dad."
"You know when I call you Eagle Scout I wouldn't want you any other way, right?" she responds, before she can pull the words back. Oops, she thinks. She rambles ahead before he can reply. "Jamie, I'm not mad, you know. Anyone else, I might still be, but lucky for you, I do know you were trying to help. So here's the thing: if anything like that ever, ever happens again, can you try one more time to get my attention with like a big red flag or something, before taking my own stories to someone else?"
"I promise I will. I'm really sorry about that. I think I was pretty shocked, to be honest, and I was worried what you were getting into. And I… "
"You…what?"
"Maybe denial? No, that's not it. I didn't want to think of you as someone who'd gone through something like that. Not because it changed my sense of you. I couldn't match my sense of you with someone going through that."
"Oh, come on," she teases him, almost lazily. He makes it so easy sometimes. "You were just suddenly confronted with this image of me as a twenty-two year old college girl in bed with a frat boy and it freaked you out a little. No wonder you didn't want to ask me directly about it."
He doesn't blush or fluster, which should have served as a warning. He simply holds her eyes and says, "It's already hard enough not to think of you first as an attractive, sexual being, Eddie."
She has to take a moment and inhale. She can't imagine the look on her face right now.
Why can't we just why the hell can't we just…
"Yeah," she manages, at last. "Yeah, I know. It's not getting any easier, is it?"
"No. But here we are."
"It's for our own good. And the job."
"Yup."
It's just the emotions of the day and loving him so much as a friend and this would be a really bad time and why can't we just…
They stare at one another for a very dangerous few seconds. His eyes flicker downward in a way she remembers, for a bare instant.
"I better go," she says, softly.
"Get outta here. I'll see you tomorrow. You want a pickup?"
"Nah, I'll commute. No big."
"Call me if you change your mind."
"Yup. G'night."