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The Things I Never Told You

Phone calls at four am were for young men. Young men with adoring lovers, with bright futures, with friends and parties. Daredevil, reckless young men with crazy dreams. The kind of man I was not, and had not been for a very long time.

When I looked in the mirror, I wondered sometimes what happened, to replace the eager young man with what I saw in front of me. I was every bit the stereotype of grizzled old cop, right down to the ever present cup of coffee. The lone wolf, living entirely for my work, a stark contrast to the happily married best friend. I'd thought, once, that it was a bit like something out of Film Noir, minus the entrance of a sultry bombshell.

Well. It had been.

My partner hadn't been my partner for some time, not since he'd gotten married. I'd distanced myself from him then, using work as an excuse, and I knew it had hurt him. Ben Carson and I had been friends since the academy, and pulled each other through more hardships than I could count - the death of his father, my mother's cancer, the accidental death of a classmate who'd been my lover, numerous bad breakups. But what he really needed, or so I thought, was what he wanted - a family, a wife and children. So I stepped back and quietly removed myself from the picture, as much as I'd never wanted to.

Secretly, shamefully, I loved Ben more than anything in the world.

He never knew, of course. I couldn't have let him know, it would have crushed everything between us. Things were... complicated between Ben and I, and even years later I wasn't entirely sure how to define it. I'd been on the receiving end of what I'd first assumed were his sexual experimentations when we roomed together, but it had never been anything more than that. We'd seen other people like there was nothing between us and continued the casual sex - the incredibly hot, fulfilling casual sex - for years, up until he met his wife and got married, when I backed off. I'd had other long term relationships, when I was younger, but I'd never loved any of them as much as I loved Ben - possibly part of the reason things never worked out. Still, I'd needed his support and friendship far too much to chance losing him over something like the L word or asking him for a relationship that he obviously didn't want.

Looking back, distancing myself from Ben was my first mistake. There was an accident - an armed robbery he was caught in quite by coincidence, and of course he had to play the hero. Unfortunately, one of the men he shot was an undercover officer in the Organized Crime Bureau, and he died from his injuries. I could only watch from the sidelines as Ben's life fell apart as a result. I did what I could - everything I could, and more than I should - to clear his name and get him back on the force in good standing. But he couldn't handle that he'd taken an innocent life, couldn't endure the rumours and hate and his pretty wife's lack of faith in him. When he turned to vice to dull his pain, when she kicked him out of his own home, he disappeared from my life. He even stopped returning my calls, and if it hadn't been for the occasional contact with his sister Angie I wouldn't have had any way of knowing if he was even alive or dead.

I never stopped fighting to get him reinstated. I knew he'd pull himself together, and he did, pushing aside the alcoholism with the goal to fix his broken family. I couldn't give him good news when it came to his job, but I hooked him up with a temporary one, as a night watchman for a burnt out old department store downtown.

Hindsight is perfect. I'd give anything to change that now.

Days after starting the job, his sister was murdered, and he started asking me for things - background checks, paperwork, old records. Strange things. I knew he was looking for Angie's killer the same as I was, so all though I couldn't give him any information on the case, I got him what he asked for, and quietly kept copies of the information for myself.

This is what lead to my four am wake up call.

I groped blindly for my blackberry on the table beside my futon. "Larry Byrne."

"Larry? It's Alice." One of dispatchers and a woman I knew fairly well, who didn't normally work nights. "We just had a call come in that I thought you should know about."

I stared blurredly at the neon blue letters of my alarm clock. "Can't wait until morning?"

"Larry..." I heard the hesitation, the worry in her voice, and woke up a little more.

"What's wrong?"

"There's been an explosion at the Mayflower downtown," she said softly. "That's where Ben was working, wasn't it?" She knew Ben - most of the dispatchers did. A lot of people in the force did, though most of that had to do with being the son of a former chief of police. On a human level, though, he was the model officer, and always kind. At the end of the day, that's how she remembered him.

"Fuck." I was on my feet in an instant, hitting the bedroom light and pulling clothes from my closet with the phone wedged between my ear and my shoulder. "Did they send out fire and ESU? Medical?"

"Of course. Should I let them know you're on your way?"

"Please," I replied, and thanked her, grabbing a slightly overripe banana off my counter as I ran out the door.

A thousand thoughts went through my head as I drove to the Mayflower, navigating the city roads a little faster than was strictly legal, thankful that the early hour kept most cars off the streets. The idea that something might have happened to Ben terrified me. How big was the explosion? Was he caught in it, did he trigger it? Did it damage the building? Was he trapped somewhere, dying? God, it couldn't be possible. After everything that had happened to him, everything he'd lost - his career, his family, his self confidence, and now Angie - fate couldn't go this far, could it?

Dawn was just tinting the sky when I arrived, and I parked safely outside the plywood walls that barricaded off the property and ran through the service entrance that had been opened up by emergency crews. I recognized his car, parked haphazardly by the entrance, the rear view mirror inside still broken clean off. It didn't make me feel any better.

The building was a monument, a magnificent skeleton of concrete and stone. It seemed fully in tact apart from the blown-out windows, despite the soot-streaked exterior from fire that I knew had ravaged it years earlier. I could see flames flickering through a few of the windows beyond the streams of water from the fire hoses, and I slowed to a halt, staring at the organized chaos of firefighters and rescue workers. One of the uniformed officers approached me, and I flashed him my badge, well visible in the lights from the trailer and the vehicle headlights that illuminated the area. "There's a night watchman on duty here. Has he been accounted for?"

"Not yet," he replied, and I felt my heart sink. "Why is CSU here, detective....?"

"Captain Byrne," I corrected him, and ignored his question. "Who's in charge here?"

"Sergeant Margaredi with ESU," he replied automatically. "He's trying to get the utilities shut off for this place so we can figure out if it's safe for us to go in. From what we've been able to determine, the blast took out a good portion of the inner structure, but the good news is that the outer building seems stable. This place was built like a rock."

"Good news," I echoed numbly. I looked up as a familiar face came out of the security trailer, clad in an Emergency Services Unit jumpsuit and helmet with a light strapped to it. He crossed the lot at a jog to talk to the firemen, then returned to the officers, slowing and squinting slightly at me.

"Larry? What the hell are you doing here?"

I remembered him then, from the academy. "Lorenzo. There's a night watchman on duty here, is he accounted for?"

"Shit." He frowned. "We haven't been able to get a hold of the owners, we had no way to find out if there was anyone on the premises. Greenly - get on the radio and get a canine unit down here for recovery. We've turned off the gas lines, once the fire department okays the structural integrity we'll go in." Then he looked back to me. "Mind telling me why the hell CSU is here?"

I glanced down. "We're not. I'm here on my own. You remember Ben Carson?"

"Yeah, yeah. Your roomie from the academy. I heard what happened with the suspension and his wife, that's real tough luck. What's that got to do with this?"

"He's the night watchman," I replied grimly.

He took this in, his expression darkening a little. "I'm not gonna lie to you Larry, this situation ain't good. The damage inside is extensive, and the gas lines caused quite the inferno. Unless through some stroke of fate he skipped out on work - have you called his home to find out where he is?"

I nodded, feeling the knot of fear in the base of my stomach clench painfully tight. "Yeah, on my way here. There's no one there, but his sister died the other day. He's been staying at her place alone. Cell goes straight to voice mail."

He gave a slow nod and stepped closer to me. "Look, Larry... you can't be here. They're gonna treat this as a building collapse - "

"Don't give me that. I know ESU procedure, I've done collapse rescue before. Let me help."

"I can't let someone from outside the department, let alone a captain - "

"Lorenzo, please - I can't just stand here and do nothing. Don't make me beg."

Lorenzo frowned, but gave a sharp nod. "No heroics though. No digging, you help with the void search only. You get hurt and it's my ass on the line, so we do this by the book. There's extra equip in the van, go suit up."

By the time the blaze was out and the firefighters had done the initial sweep of the building, the sun was beginning to peek between the buildings of downtown New York. It would help the search, but it did nothing to push away the fear that was eating me up inside. When we got inside, I could see the reason for the delay, and my heart sank. The grand entranceway and the front part of the building was intact, but the back half of the first floor had collapsed into the basement of the building, partition walls and all. Without the support, the second floor had crumbled as well, a good portion of it still hanging precariously over the void.

"Jesus," I whispered, and Lorenzo glanced at me before pushing past. I followed to where they'd found an intact staircase down, the bottom disappearing into a good two feet of water. Lorenzo barked orders to the other men who scattered in pairs, then grabbed me by the arm.

"You're with me and Greenly, stay close. Don't try to shift anything."

I nodded, and tried to focus on the mechanics of a void search - identify pockets, places where falling walls and floors and rubble could tent against partition walls and create pockets where someone could be. Search them with the high powered beam of the flashlight we had on our helmets, which would even illuminate under the water, or by calling out. It was slow going, made more treacherous by the water and the tangle of broken pipes in the rubble.

Then, as we passed a collapsed tile wall, I caught sight of movement in the water out of the corner of my eye. Something white. I reached down to snag it from the water, unfolding the crumpled piece of cardstock to find a photo of a woman with two children who had dark hair and their father's smile. Ben's family.

"Lorenzo!" I called out to the Sergeant, shoving the photo in my pocket before grabbing a piece of the rubble and hauling it away from the collapsed wall. "I found a photo of his floating in the water. He has to be nearby. Ben? Ben?!" Adrenaline rushed through my veins, blocking out Lorenzo's words, his protests until I found myself yanked away from the rubble by strong arms, holding me back - Lorenzo and Greenly.

"I told you no moving anything," he barked, grip tight on my elbow. "I know this is personal, but I can't risk your safety in an attempt to recover someone who's likely already dead!"

The words hit me like a slap to the face, and I felt myself falter in their grip, knees giving out for a second before they hauled me back to my feet. "He's not dead," I said, but heard the quaver and break in my voice. "Lorenzo, he's not. I'd know. He's not dead."

The dog with the canine unit started barking then, and I heard one of the men call out to us. "Sergeant? We found something over here."

Lorenzo's hand tightened on my arm. "Don't run. We go carefully, or not at all."

By the time we'd picked out way through the rubble, they'd pulled away a lot of the debris. I could see the body - charred and mangled, and my heart sank.

One of the firemen looked up. "This victim's female. Sixty to eighty years of age from what we can tell."

Lorenzo turned to me sharply. "You know anything about this?"

I shook my head. What would Ben have been doing with an old woman here? "No, I don't. But it means Ben's still unaccounted for." But if she was this badly burnt, then... god, what kind of shape would he be in?

"All right," Lorenzo called out. "Still one victim unaccounted for. Let's get back to work."

I worked for hours. The void search turned up nothing, but Lorenzo didn't protest when I slipped in beside the others to begin digging, shifting rubble until I was covered in dust and mud and soot, until my entire body ached from the strain. Then, as it was nearing 9am, a piece of the second floor broke free, falling with a deafening crash and narrowly missing a pair of rescue workers. I heard the fire chief whistle the signal to clear the premises and found Lorenzo at my elbow.

"Larry, We gotta go. We're not going to find him."

I felt a shudder of despair and shook my head. "I'm not leaving. I can't give up yet."

"Look, the canine unit hasn't found a hint that there's another person - "

"There's too much water down here for the dog to be effective, you know that. He could still be trapped, he could still be alive - "

The look in his eyes was pitying, and he shook his head. "Come on, Larry. I don't want to have to pull you out of here by force... and someone's gotta go tell his family."

Numbly, I let him lead me out of the building, past where they were loading the body of the woman into the ambulance. I stripped out of the borrowed coveralls and work boots and started out to my car, almost running into the astonished daytime security guard. His brother was an acquaintance, and the reason I'd recommended this fucking job to Ben in the first place. I couldn't bring myself to say anything to him, though, and left dealing with him to the officers inside.

When I reached my car, I sat behind the wheel and stared blankly at it for a long moment. Bad enough that I'd made the call to Amy Carson about Angie's death... now I had to go tell her... tell my godchildren....

Oh, God.

I was numb as I made the drive to the Carson residence, the events of the morning playing over and over in my mind. I was numb as I parked, as I walked up the front steps and rang the bell. My mind registered the strange appearance of newspapers taped over the windows, but my thoughts were on Ben. I rang the doorbell again, and began to worry. I glanced over my shoulder to check that Amy's car was still parked on the street, the fished my keys from my pocket, finding the spare one for the house and letting myself in.

For a moment I stood in the doorway, staring at the scene in front of me. The floor of the house was covered in water, and every painting and mirror that adorned the walls had been covered by green paint - most of which looked to have been then scraped off. I reached for the gun I wasn't carrying subconsciously as I took a few cautious steps inside, water sloshing against my sneakers. "Is there anyone here?"

I heard a door open upstairs, and a tentative voice. Amy. "... Larry? Is that you?"

I took the stairs two at a time, stopping at the top as she stepped out of the master bedroom, still holding the door partly closed behind her. She looked bedraggled and worn, her dark hair damp and drying in a mess of frizz, her eyes red and puffy from crying. For a moment we just stood there, taking each other in - I likely didn't look much better. Had she already heard? The news would be covering something like this, wouldn't it? But from the look of the house, I wasn't sure she'd been in a state to watch the news.

I spotted Michael trying to peek around her leg, and swallowed hard. "Amy, I need to talk to you. Alone."

She nodded, turning to her son. "Go take care of Daisy, okay baby? I'll be right back. It'll be okay." He nodded mutely, and she closed the door, crossing the landing to me, her voice low. "Something happened, didn't it? Something with Anna Esseker? That's why he hasn't come back."

I stared at her, feeling my lips part at the name. The dead girl from the psych hospital? He'd told her about that? "Amy... what was he doing? What's going on?"

Her eyes glanced around the house wearily, and she shook her head. "He was trying to protect us. The rest doesn't matter now. Larry..." she took a deep breath, as if steeling herself against an answer she already knew. "Where is he?"

I couldn't look at her. I dropped my head with a shudder, and focused on my waterlogged sneakers. "There was an explosion at the Mayflower. We've recovered the body of an old woman from the wreckage, but we... they've called off the search for Ben." I stopped looking. I couldn't find him, I couldn't save him... I swallowed hard against a wave of despair. "It's almost certain that he couldn't have survived."

I heard a soft sob, but I couldn't move, couldn't say anything more. Then she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, burying her face in my shoulder and breaking down completely. I froze, but only momentarily. Then I slipped my arms around her waist and drew her closer, resting my cheek against damp hair and letting out emotion in a shuddering sigh. As much as I had envied Amy Carson in the past - at times resented her, and at the end downright hated her for what she did to Ben, I couldn't bring myself to push her away now, not when we both had lost so much.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, choking on my words, and felt tears escape the eyes I'd clenched shut. "God, I'm so sorry." It wasn't an apology to her, when I owed her nothing. It was just an acknowledgement of pain shared, of everything that we'd lost. And perhaps, an apology to Ben, that I hadn't been able to do more, that I'd failed him.

When she finally drew away from me, I wiped my face with the back of my hand, which came away smeared with dust. "The department will send out the usual missing person enquiries to the hospitals and morgues, and we should get the final results from the - from the site clean up within 48 hours. There's going to be paperwork for you to fill out at the precinct later today... I can stick around and help, if you want."

"Would you?" She wrapped her arms around her upper body, looking more than a little lost. "I have to - I have to clean up this place now that it's safe and it's Rosa's day off, so there's no one to watch the children..."

"What are you going to tell them?" I asked, and she shook her head.

"I'll take care of it."

"Okay." I let a hand rest on her shoulder in a slightly awkward gesture of comfort. "I'm going to call a few people in the area, old friends. Don't worry about the house, we'll get everything cleaned up.

~~~

Later that afternoon I was left alone in the house with the children, who sat together in Michael's room, quiet and subdued. I couldn't bring myself to sit idle, and set to scraping off the paint on the mirrors with a paint scraper I'd borrowed from one of the guys earlier, partly as an excuse to keep an eye on them. Flecks of green paint fell around me and I'd have to vacuum it later, but for now it was strangely therapeutic, scraping at the paint and slowly uncovering the smooth glass underneath. The children were talking in soft voices behind me, not audible over the scraping of the paint until Michael raised his voice.

"That's not what it means! He's not dead, I saw him, he's not!"

"Hey..." I turned and moved back to them, crouching down by where Daisy had sat on the floor by Michael's bed. "What's this about, guys?"

"Nothing," Daisy said with a frown, but Michael leaned out from the bed to wrap his arms around my bicep, burying his face in my shoulder.

"Uncle Larry, Mommy says Daddy's not coming home, and Daisy says that means he's dead like grandpa. But it's not true, I saw him under the water!"

"Under the water?" I repeated a little dumbly, and he nodded.

"He caught me and he pushed me back up to Mommy, just out there in the hallway. But why didn't he come back? Daddy always comes back. He wouldn't leave us, would he?"

I sighed, and shifted to perch on the edge of the bed, watching Daisy as Michael climbed into my lap and buried his face in my chest. "Sometimes things happen that we can't control. Sometimes the people we love can't come back to us, no matter how much they want to, or we want them to."

"But what if he's stuck behind the mirror like all those people- "

"Michael!" Daisy said sharply, but I shook my head.

"Tell me about the people in the mirror," I said gently, partly to humor him, but more because I wanted to hear what he had to say. Amy had offered no explanation as to why I'd found her house flooded with all the mirrors - every reflective surface, really - painted over, but why? And why had Ben been researching the mental hospital in connection with Angie's death?

Daisy frowned and sat down on the bed beside us, crossing her arms across her chest. "The things in the mirror tried to kill us."

"Not all of them!" Michael shot back. "Just the bad ones. There was nice ones too. There was a little boy that would play with me."

"Yeah, but one of them took over Mommy's reflection and tried to stab me with some scissors." The story that came out between the two of them - half of it arguing with each other - was fantastical enough that any other time I would have passed it off as a child's game. But my mind was too used to looking for connections, to solving riddles, and I couldn't shake the idea that as crazy as the story was, it made a strange kind of sense. I knew Ben, knew that he would have done anything to protect his family. The fact that him and Amy had both believed that there were some kind of supernatural beings in the mirrors, and believed it strongly enough to do this to their entire house... it was hard to write that off as nothing.

I realized the children were watching me expectantly, and I forced a smile. "It's been a really long day, hasn't it? You guys think I should order pizza for dinner?"

I saw a smile start on Daisy's face, though she fought to hold it back. "Mommy says pizza makes you fat."

"Not on Saturdays," I replied, and stood, setting Michael down. "Come on, come downstairs and help me choose what kind, okay?"

As we left the room, I noticed I'd left a hand print on the mirror, and made a note to bring glass cleaner upstairs with me to clean it off when I was done with the paint. When I returned, however, it had disappeared, and I wondered if I'd really seen it in the first place.

~~~~~