I probably should've figured that half the things I did would come back to bite me in one way or another before I managed to die, but it was one of those things that I didn't like thinking about, so I didn't. One of those stupid moves that I had the habit of making every now and then, but half the stuff I'd done was from years ago, and I was idiot enough to think, however uncertainly, that none of it would ever come back to bother me. I had been wrong. This case had proved that much, and more, and I didn't want to think about it, but I didn't want to not think about it either. Didn't make sense, really, but I knew I'd mull over that, and the case, until it did. But I doubted it was going to happen anytime soon.
Captain Deakins had pushed us all quite literally out of the squad room, first ordering us out, and then walking behind us to make sure we actually left. I'd been half-tempted to laugh at him for it, but had managed to keep quiet, for once. There hadn't really been any need for him to follow us, and I suspected he knew it, but hadn't wanted to take any chances. But at the moment we'd left, I'd doubted that any of us wanted to be there in the squad room, and I sure as hell didn't want to be there now. Not for a while, anyway. At least until my alarm went off, and I hit the snooze button because I hadn't managed to get more than an hour of sleep, before falling asleep and waking up again to find that I had about five minutes to get dressed and get to work or get yelled at.
Then again, had I been given a choice at the moment I was currently in between having Deakins yell at me and having to go through something like the case we'd just closed again, I'd have taken being yelled at. This case…I'd seen things like it, but never on this scale. It was the sort of thing that I knew other guys I'd worked with sometimes speculated about happening, but we never actually thought it would. And now it had, and I was thrown for a loop, with no idea what the hell was going to happen, and all because some idiot judge didn't know how to keep his hands to himself. Some representative of the justice system, I thought sarcastically, and shook my head.
It was disgusting, and I knew I wasn't the only one who thought so. No, the whole city did, that much I knew from opinions I'd heard from other cops, and through the media, and that annoying as hell reporter, if you could call her that, Faith Yancy, or whatever the hell her name was. I didn't really remember, and I didn't really care, either. It didn't really seem to matter much. Not anymore, anyway, not when there were other things to worry about. It was this that was keeping me wide awake now, and it wasn't even that late in the first place, but for some odd reason, I wanted to sleep, and I knew I would be unable to until I got an answer. The problem was that the answer would take forever in coming, and I knew that, too.
That was probably the one reason why I found myself sitting in my apartment on a piano bench, staring off into nothingness, wondering why the hell I was sitting there in the first place. I figured it was probably because I didn't want to sit around and flip channels and because there was nothing else for me to do. I had been sitting there since about an hour after I'd gotten home; before that, I'd been sitting there in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, for once not in the mood to eat anything, just mulling over everything. I had moved when the silence started getting to me, but it was still quiet. I hadn't turned the television on, or the radio, or anything else, but for some reason, just sitting there at that bench had made it not seem as bad.
I wondered why, for a moment, and then shook my head, wanting to laugh, but somehow managing to keep from doing so. This was the sort of thing I'd balked at doing when I was a kid, on those lazy summer days when I'd disappear from my own home after my mother had finally decided she'd had enough of me for the moment, only to reappear a few blocks away, at my Aunt Molly's house. She was the reason I even had this old piano in the first place; she'd decided on one of those days that I needed something to do other than just sitting around, and had taken it upon herself to teach me how to play. She'd tell me to practice every time I appeared at her place, for at least an hour, and I'd sit there, hitting a key every now and then until she, too, got tired of me, and sent me outside to do what I would.
The last time she'd been around, she'd left a music book, and it was this that caught my eye now as I continued to think about this case, and everything that had come along with it. The four of us and Captain Deakins had each gone our separate ways once we'd left One Police Plaza; I didn't know where any of them were, and they probably had no idea where I was, either, but it didn't really matter. As long as all five of us showed up in the squad room again tomorrow, things would be all right, and we could move along and forget about Garrett, but not about the two girls that had fallen victim to his disregard for everyone and everything other than himself. That annoyed me more than anything else about him.
That, and the fact that he had decided to come after us the way he had. My fingers found the keys and before I knew it, I was actually playing, something I hadn't done in a while, but I was doing it now, and it was oddly relaxing despite the thoughts I was having. I was an idiot a lot of the time, and I knew it; there were occasions where I took the whole 'ticking time bomb' thing to a whole new level and scared the hell out of people, but at the same time, there were those moments where I could actually look like a gave a damn about what was going on, and as much as I expected people to give me hell for it, no one ever did. They hadn't before, and they didn't, now. But the fact that numerous things I'd done wrong had finally come back to be a pain in the ass, well…It wasn't something I'd expected.
The music in this book was oddly darker than anything Aunt Molly had ever left before. It fit my thoughts almost perfectly, and as I continued on this mental journey of mine, I realized that I didn't really care that he'd gone after me the way he had. Sure, I hadn't wanted any of it to come out, but it had, and there wasn't exactly anything I could do about it. But I could, with the others, find justice for the victims, and that was what we had done. The only problem was the price we'd had to pay for it. I was fine, and knew that I would continue to be so, because nothing Garrett had come up with against me really bothered me. It was stuff that could've been found out easily enough, all he really had to do was ask around. I'd worked in Manhattan long enough before being shoved out to Staten Island for more than a few people to know who I was.
That was another problem, though, and I knew it, knew that half the crap Garrett had pulled from his sleeve was aimed at Goren and Eames, because he was an idiot and thought that he could break them. Even I could've told him that it wasn't going to work, but no, the idiot had to go and send someone to bother Goren's mother, like he wasn't going to do anything about it. I honestly couldn't blame my fellow detective for going to confront that pathetic bastard about it; bothering him was one thing, but damned if he was going to let anyone bother his family. I wondered why Garrett had gone after him so much, rather than taking out his frustrations on the rest of us, and supposed that it was because throughout the whole thing, Goren had been seen as the lead detective. The damn letter that Eames had been made to read out loud, in open court, had only been meant to discredit him, but it had left the partnership between Goren and Eames on shaky ground, and that attorney and I were going to have a serious issue if I ever saw him again.
It made sense, the whole lead detective thing, and the reasons for why Garrett had gone after Goren harder than he'd gone after the rest of us, but it bothered the hell out of me. We'd gone around in circles, and then we'd found Garrett's son, and then we'd found it had been him…and all the while, we'd had one grieving mother whose daughter was receiving most of the media attention because she had come to New York City on a class trip, looking for a good time and a taste of the world outside her hometown before going back to her definition of normal. And then we had the other grieving mother, one whose daughter had received little attention, if only because she was from the city, but as we went farther into the investigation, Barek and I, we wondered if maybe race played a part in all of this. We'd been disgusted by the thought, even though we figured it was more than likely true, which was ridiculous, because both girls had had the rest of their lives ahead of them, but one's case had been pushed harder for reasons I didn't even want to think about.
I wondered if the same would have held true if Barek and I had been in the place of victim rather than in the place of detective. Would I have mattered more, or would it have been her that took precedence? It felt selfish to think about, and I tried to push the thought away as the song hit a more difficult part that I actually had to concentrate on, but it didn't want to leave. I wondered if she, with her proper upbringing and parents that loved her, would have been the case that pushed forward, while I, the one with the dysfunctional family and a mother who didn't give a damn one way or another, was the case that was pushed aside and forgotten until a lead led to a body that had already long gone cold. The thought alone was enough to make me feel cold inside, a feeling that I wanted to go away, but it didn't, and I continued to play.
I wondered what the difference was between the two girls, honestly. They had both been young, both had had their entire lives ahead of them…both had had families that obviously gave a damn about them. And yet one seemed to matter more than the other. Was it race? Was it upbringing? Or was it really just the fact that one was not from New York, and the other was, and people went missing in this city of ours all the time, and at the moment, the second girl's disappearance hadn't been considered top priority? I wanted to think that it was none of those reasons, that it was merely a crack in the system, but I knew better, and I knew that some cases were pushed forward because they garnered more press for the department, and it was disgusting and disturbing because both of those girls had deserved justice, and only one of them was even thought about until something led to the second.
That was the problem, I thought, with things like this. It seemed to me that sometimes those who worked Missing Persons only really gave a damn if it was a high-profile case that would come to matter in a big way sooner or later. It was probably why so many of the disappearances that occurred in this city went unsolved, because either no one cared, or they'd followed the trail until it had gone cold, and then no leads had come, and it was like the missing person had fallen off the face of the planet, when they were really probably just going about their lives under a new name, and maybe a new face. It bothered the hell out of me, and for more reasons than one.
It wasn't only because I knew that it was more than likely that I'd be one of those cases that got shoved aside, either; no, that wasn't it at all, but it was part of it. It scared me to think that one day something would happen, and no one would care because it was me, because, hey, it's just Logan, he'll come back sooner or later, and if he doesn't, well, it's no big deal. My fingers slipped at this thought, and the jarring sound of a wrong note startled me. I paused, for a long moment, and for that moment could only hear the sound of my breathing, filling the otherwise empty apartment, and nothing else. The empty feeling had returned, and after I had calmed down again, I started to play again, and then it went away, just like I'd known it would.
We had wanted justice and had gotten, it, but I wondered if the price we had paid to get what we wanted was too high. I already knew that the price the two girls had paid was too high, because they hadn't deserved to be brutally murdered and left in places where no one could find them, and the first girl hadn't deserved to have the city she'd been longing to see end up being the last place she ever saw, just like the second hadn't deserved to have the face of her killer be the last face she ever saw. Just like the lot of us hadn't deserved to have our past mistakes and the skeletons we'd kept hidden in our so-called closets shoved out into the open and into our faces. But somehow, whatever discomfort we had suffered, whatever discomfort I had suffered, paled in comparison to what we had just seen.
The song came to an end, and I moved on to another one, turning the page, without really thinking, and just continuing to play, almost fearing what would happen if I stopped, and the thought of what could happen scared the hell out of me. I played because I wanted to forget, and at the same time, I wanted to remember, because I didn't want this to happen again, but I wasn't missing persons; I was Major Case, and even if it did happen again, I probably wouldn't be able to do anything about it solely for that fact. It bothered me, because I knew it happened, knew that it would continue to happen, knew that some cases would have more priority than others, and this case I and the others had just closed had only served to prove it in a real and almost painful way.
I was from the wrong side of the tracks, to some people's view, and I knew it. This second girl…from where I'd stood, she hadn't been. From where the city stood, she might have been, I didn't know, and I didn't want to know, because I was almost afraid of the answer. I didn't want to know the real reasons why she'd been pushed aside, didn't want to know why no one had given a damn about her until this other girl had come along, didn't want to know why some cases mattered more than others, but I already knew why. Already knew the answers to the questions that I had floating around, even though I didn't want them, didn't want to think about them, but they were there, and they would remain until I needed them again.
The second song came to what my aunt had always described as a crashing end, but this time, I didn't flip the pages. I sat there, staring at the notes in front of me, looking at them almost as if they were tracks, and on one side, there I stood, and on the other, there stood Barek, and there I was, thinking about the two of us in the role of victim rather than detective. Suddenly the book wasn't a book anymore, but a scene in the back of my mind, and the bars were actual tracks, and there we were, on opposite sides, and she was smiling, looking at me as if she wanted me to cross, but I couldn't, and in this scene, both of us knew why.
It was because I was on one side of things, and she was on the other, the same way the two girls whose murders we'd solved had been on different sides. And as much as I hated to think about this, I knew it better than anyone else I had come across, because I had been looked down upon before, and knew what it felt to feel as if I were less than someone else, because of where I came from, knew what it was to have people stare at and assume I'd amount to nothing because of how I'd grown up. But I wasn't less than anyone, and I had amounted to something, and that second girl, the one who most everyone had forgotten until this case, she would have done the same, if she'd been given the chance.
I continued to think about this as I finally made myself turn the pages, flipping until I found a quieter song, one that I knew would serve to calm my nerves. I started to play again, and as I did, that scene came back, and there I was, with Barek still standing opposite me, but the scene changed suddenly, and we turned our backs on each other and went our separate ways, and I couldn't help but think that this was me looking back on the two of us in earlier years, but I hadn't known her, and hadn't known that I would end up here, with her, now. The notes of the song echoed through my apartment, filling the empty spaces, and as I watched this scene in my head, I realized something.
This second girl and I…we were the same in many ways, ways that I didn't often like to think about, because it reminded me of things that I'd always felt were better off left alone. But we were the same, her and I, if only because at some point or another, we had both been looked down on, for not growing up the same way everyone else around us did. Even if at times, it had seemed that nothing good would ever come, but she was in a better place now, and so was I, and as I continued to play this third song and think, I realized something else.
Sometimes being on the other side of the tracks wasn't as bad as everyone seemed to think it was.