Love and Darkness and My Sidearm
Author's Note: The title is from Moby's song "Southside" off the album Play that I was listening to as I wrote this. If I made videos, I would do one for Crews to this song, it seems to fit him…. "love and darkness and my sidearm."
Setting: Takes place early in Season 2 – in the space between… other cases.
CHAPTER ONE – Darkness Everywhere
Darkness was all he saw. There were lights and people and movement and the broken body of a small child, but all Charlie Crews saw was darkness and demons. His landscape was colored blood red with rage for innocence betrayed, belittled and abandoned. How people could visit such violence upon children eluded him. His stomach turned, he tasted copper from the blood in the air and bile from his churning insides. He was still and silent, but inside he writhed in agony and helplessness. Arrest was too good for this guy, prison too kind – there was too much time for him to work his way to forgiveness. Charlie wanted him to die with the guilt of his sin heavy on his heart – if the bastard had one.
To the outside world he looked calm, peaceful, contemplative, but under his sleek and shiny exterior lurked deep crevices full of hateful thoughts, jagged edges, sharp points and hidden scars from shivs, fists and feet and his own dance with the devil. As chaos whirled around him, Charlie Crews stood at the center; the pivot point on a deadly thrill ride of a case.
Across the room, his partner observed what no one else saw. She saw the tautness, the anxiety and dread that inhabited him. To her he appeared stretched thin almost to the breaking point. Her partner had few triggers, but the abuse of innocents or the weak was one. He became slightly unhinged at weakness exploited for sadistic pleasures. His anger raged inside burning through him like a fever. Violence against women sometimes provoked him, but particularly crimes against children, even cruelty to animals disturbed him greatly. Pain visited on the weak by the strong. It was a tiny nugget of truth about the man who was largely a blank slate to her.
He was deliberately bland and unobtrusive. He strove not to be noticed. His dress was clean, efficient, tending toward expensive but never ostentatious or flashy. His face was a mask, his features revealing nothing. But her cautious examination revealed a sea of turmoil roiling in the depths of his eyes, which rolled through the color palette from the pale blue of the sea to the sickly greenish cast of a the sky before a storm and arriving at the steely grey of storm clouds. She knew him more now through careful examination than anything he ever said. Crews said more when he was mute than his rambling speech ever did.
His eyes flicked up and caught her gaze. He stared right into her; he could sense what she was doing. She exhaled deliberately and watched the message penetrate. He rolled his neck slightly to the side and some of his tenseness eased. He silently acknowledged that she alone knew his unease. His eyes returned a thanks and her nod was unnoticed by anyone but him. He blinked twice and stepped into the work that brought them here. He came to meet her in the middle over the body of the dead child.
Her quiet canvass of responding police was futile and his observations were equally useless. They were nowhere. She crouched beside the child and he crouched beside her. She could feel the heat from his body, the anger rolling off him in waves. She reminded him to breath, asked him if he needed a moment and amusement crossed his features as he realized the student had become the master. Perhaps she was able to see past it because she'd done the job longer, perhaps because violence had not touched her as recently as it had him. She resisted the impulse to squeeze his shoulder or a likewise conciliatory but hollow gesture. No hug, comfort or consolation could undo a wrong this great.
Outside, in the car, he returned to himself. As he often did when something affected Charlie personally he deflected, "How can you stay that unaffected? I know you knew violence, perhaps even yourself as a child."
"Uh-uh," she cautioned, neatly sidestepping his line of personal inquiry. "You are so not going there, mister. Whatever is going on in that head of yours, you have to deal with, don't you dare drag me into it. This isn't about me, this is about you."
He turned sideways and asked, "When did you get to be such an authority on what's going on in my head?"
She shrugged and turned the ignition switch, sparking the unmarked to life.
He reached over and turned it off.
"Cut it out Crews. It's hot and we got places to be."
"What places?" he goaded gently. He knew she was as anxious as she to escape the gloom of the place and the metallic taste of blood in the back of her throat.
"Anywhere other than here," she owned up to her own unease. She restarted the car and he let it go. He focused beyond them, staring into the blank air beyond the windshield as if it held answers. She'd already decided to take the coast road and let the windows down for the freshness of the salt air and the energy of the sun dazzling off the waves and water, mindless of the knots it would tie her hair in. She tuned the radio to an indie rock station and deliberately blared the music, preventing further talk or introspection. Work the case she told herself not your own personal demons – or Crews'.