A/N: This is another story I'm migrating over, a one-off I wrote in the middle of the "Hindsight" arc.
It seems to Sharon that her head has only just hit the pillow when her phone starts ringing. Disoriented, she half expects it to be Andy, calling back with something he'd forgotten to say before they'd hung up. Instead, the almost-blinding screen shows four hours have passed and that Provenza is on the other end.
"Captain. I'm sorry to have to wake you." His sincerity rings true across the line. "But we have another batch of murders. Tamika's neighbors."
Like a glitch in an otherwise functional system, the day starts again, far too early. There is an admirable calmness in the city at four in the morning, though. Even with a stop for coffee, Sharon pulls up to the scene within forty minutes of answering Provenza's call.
After flashing her badge and dodging several patrol officers in the front yard, Sharon walks through a smallish but well-kept house. In the kitchen and adjoining dining room, the bodies of two young adults lie in pools of blood. SID officers are only beginning to set up, leaving much still unknown. But the head wounds suggest deliberate, execution-style shootings.
"Ma'am."
Sharon finds Julio standing in the kitchen doorway, glancing between the two bodies. A faint, but particular, sadness is etched across his expression. "Julio. This isn't a common type of shooting with gangs in this area, is it?"
"No ma'am. Around here, you get mostly drive-bys. Some walk-ups. But nothing like this." He frowns down at where the young woman crumpled onto the parquet. "And this isn't even the worst of it."
"What do you mean?"
He looks through the kitchen, out the back door. Sharon follows his line of sight, finding Tao and Provenza standing over another fallen form in the backyard. She has an idea of what she'll find there, even before Julio says, "There's another body in the backyard. A kid."
The context of his mood clicks into place. Less than a week, two dead children, and now almost ten bodies tied to their current case. It's a horrific scenario, all around, and they're not any closer to solving it than they were on day one. Sharon squeezes Julio's shoulder on her way through the kitchen.
The mood is just as somber in the backyard. "Ah, Captain." Provenza clears his throat. "Our third victim. We believe he's the son of the couple inside."
The boy can't be - couldn't have been - more than eight years old. He lies on his stomach, his head turned to the right. There are three bullet wounds in his back, which have seeped blood into the cotton of his blue shirt. He wears pants with a Superman print. His feet are bare and dusty.
Sharon collects the base facts into a chilling whole: "He'd been in bed."
"It appears," Mike says, pointing toward a line of scuffed-up dirt, "that he was running away from the house when the shooter..." He trails off, dropping and then shaking his head. None of them have words, yet, for what the shooter did.
She crouches near the boy, ignoring her now-churning stomachful of coffee. From the lower vantage point, she sees that his eyes are still open. The realization that he died here - terrified and alone in his Superman pajamas, sprawled in the backyard dirt - slams into her with the force of a wrecking ball. She brings her hand to her mouth, an unsuccessful attempt to stifle the shuddering gasp that escapes.
After a moment, Sharon lowers her hand to her chest, not yet able to look away from the boy. "Do we have IDs on our victims?"
Provenza answers. "I sent Julio back in the house to see if he can find wallets for the adults."
"Who would do something like this?"
The question is meant to be rhetorical, but Provenza answers again. "That's why we're here." Under different circumstances, it would be a ribbing comment. But tonight it's a call of reinforcement, for Sharon and everyone else. It's up to us to find the person responsible.
"Yes it is." Sharon stands and turns to Amy. "Are we canvassing?"
"Yes ma'am. I would expect that we'd have at least some witnesses, given the time of night, but the key is whether anyone wants to talk to us."
"Make it clear to Patrol that we want everyone in this neighborhood to know that we are dealing with a dead child. I don't care who we're dealing with, people are not heartless enough to let that slide."
Amy nods and takes off toward the house. Julio passes her on his way back to the group.
"IDs?" Provenza asks.
"No, sir. There weren't any wallets in plain view, and SID told me to wait until they have the scene documented before I start digging."
"Documentation," Provenza scoffs. "We need to know who these people are!"
"Sir, Lieutenant Flynn is here and he's talking with the SID sergeant, trying to get access."
"Okay, well," Provenza exchanges a significant look with Sharon. "We'll have our IDs soon enough, then."
"And once we have them," Sharon adds, "we'll need to distribute these names to Patrol. We have to make every effort to get people talking about what happened here."
"There are people talking, all right. Just not to any of you ."
Sharon, Mike, Julio, and Provenza turn to the alley behind the yard, toward the source of the interjection. There, Mark Hickman leans against the chain-link fence at the edge of the property. Mike turns right back around, smartly removing himself from the situation.
Provenza steps to the fence as one might move toward a large rat. "And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"That's the wrong question, Lieutenant," Sharon says. "The right question is: What are you doing here, Mr. Hickman?"
Of course, he takes the question as an affront and aims his indignation thusly."I'm a free citizen, remember?"
"I warned you to stay away from this case-"
"Warn away." Hickman holds his arms out, making a show of his position. "I'm standing outside your yellow line."
Sharon plants her hands on her hips. "You just suggested that you've been talking to witnesses about these murders."
"What people happen to tell me is none of your fucking business, lady. In fact," Hickman looks up and down the alley, "I don't see any decent cops for you to write up, so I wouldn't know what your business is here, anyway."
"Solving three more murders," Sharon says, approaching the fence. She doesn't overlook the way Julio shadows her movement as she goes. "You see, I'm not in the business of killing people. I'm not sure that's true of you." She studies Hickman's face for a response to her accusation.
He redirects to another slight, instead. "Oh, right. Your business is neglect." He wags his finger at her. "You're so concerned about the rules and respectability, you don't have any care left by the time you get to the know how I can tell?"
Sharon doesn't allow him the satisfaction of airing his observation, having heard more than enough already. She lowers her voice, hoping to avoid drawing attention from the other officers milling around. "Mr. Hickman. If I see you at one of our crime scenes again, I will throw you to the wolves. I will dredge up every ounce of indiscretion that you've been involved in over the last decade, and I will paper the entire city with it."
At the fringes of her attention, Provenza, wide-eyed, looks over her shoulder. She brushes the observation aside, committed as she is to making a clear point to their interloper: "I will arrest your wife. I will arrest your friends, I will arrest your neighbors. I will pull each and every one of them into Central and I'll make sure that they know you're the cause. I will string together a case that will land you in prison, and I will make certain that you end up in general population."
Hickman doesn't miss a beat. "Try it, Captain Perfect, and I'll sue you for harassment." His voice takes on a saccharine tone, as syrupy and poisonous as antifreeze. "You wouldn't want to risk your precious reputation, since we all know it's the only thing you really care about."
She stands five feet from a dead child and less than four days removed from another, having survived on more caffeine and adrenaline than sleep in the interim. In this moment, Sharon's vision narrows and sharpens, until Hickman's sneer is all she sees. Her breaths come and go like a pendulum, shallow through her nose. She takes another step forward, close enough for patrol instinct to kick in. Even with the fence in between, she could slap handcuffs on him in an instant. Her mind supplies a string of satisfying scenarios, mainly involving Hickman cowering in a lockup somewhere, surrounded by criminals as spiteful as himself.
The tableau lingers with several of her detectives standing by, each of them a player frozen within a charged moment and arranged on the sharp edge of chaos. Even standing in the middle of it, Sharon is aware that she's lost hold of the situation. A twinge of panic at the edge of her conscious raises the possibility that the stare-down could devolve to a melee around her with the smallest tic of provocation.
Of all people, it's Andy who manages to bring it back, pointedly clearing his throat from several feet behind her. To Sharon, the sound is as unmistakable as it is familiar. But his voice is laced with something foreign when he says, "Captain. Phone call."
The distraction is enough to snap Sharon's attention back into her surroundings, into the bustle of the crime scene around the standoff. To her right, Julio stands with his hand resting on his weapon, poised to intervene. His intensity sends her backward several steps, an effort to de-escalate the situation. She nods to Provenza, then to Hickman. "Get him out of here."
"Aw, just when you were finally getting interesting." Hickman's mouth curls as she turns her back on him. "I guess you're gonna have to hold that thought and go attend to your lapdog."
Andy responds in kind, tossing the words over his shoulder, "Lucky for you, jackass." But with his back to the scene of the confrontation, he doesn't quite meet Sharon's eyes. "Uh, you might want to take this out front." He holds his arm out toward the house.
She follows his suggestion, glad, for the moment, to put distance between herself and Hickman. Through the fog of her annoyance, it takes a few seconds for Andy's ruse to become clear. Once it hits, another rush of adrenaline courses through her veins. She straightens her spine and hones her voice into a sharp point as he falls into step with her near the back door. "I'm guessing there's no call."
He doesn't need to answer, and he exercises enough intelligence not to. They wind through the now-crowded house. Evidence techs hover near blood stains and broken glass, documenting anything that might become relevant. Andy stays close, with his hands tucked into his coat pockets.
In the quieter living room, he ducks his head and speaks low so that only she can hear. "I was getting the feeling you were about to do something that you'd regret tomorrow. And probably a long time after that."
A flame of annoyance flits up Sharon's throat, stoked by his presumption, by the idea she needs him to protect her from herself. She purses her lips with the effort of holding back the retort itching on her tongue. At a murder scene with three victims and a sense of inevitability hanging in the air like a noxious cloud, she's the last person who needs protecting. She almost wants to scream at the absurdity of it.
She steps outside, Andy still practically on her heels, into the nearly deserted yard at the front of the house. As if powered on by the change of scenery, her exhausted mind supplies a belated dousing of cold logic. At the very least, the result of whatever she'd been about to say - or do- to Hickman would have been fleeting. Most likely, it would have only cost her leverage as he gained satisfaction.
Sharon comes to a stop in the relative privacy of the yard, taking a moment to look over at Andy. He is impassive, having found some long-concealed reserve of calm. She crosses her arms against the pre-dawn chill. "You may have a point."
"Imagine that." His mouth tips into a lopsided grin as he nods down the sidewalk. "C'mon."
She casts her eyes down the street as they make their way beyond the yellow tape strung around the property. The quiet neighborhood evening is chopped into chaotic jags, lit by strobing red and blue lights. Even with the late - or early - hour, silhouetted forms rest on porches, standing sentinel, watching their neighborhood grow somehow even darker than it was the day before.
Her case fades away alongside, unraveling like a slashed sweater. So many threads, pulling in different directions. She can't gather them together, can't focus on one long enough to track it to its source. And even if she could, it'd soon go slack, snipped off somewhere between points A and B.
Lurking in the gap, with his damned irreverent doggedness, Hickman wields the metaphorical scissors.
Dull pain throbs at her temples, a natural continuation of the tension that took up residence in her jaw when Hickman showed up in the alley. Then again, maybe the pain ramped up when they were rolled out to the scene. Or when Tamika and her son were found in a bullet-ridden car four days ago.
The timeline is as irrelevant as the pain itself, in the face of bullet-ridden bodies. In times like these, Sharon loses track of the discomforts, as if she's never been without them. And, mired in the situation, some wary, illogical part of her wonders whether they'll ever fade away.
Andy brings his hand to her elbow, a toned-down version of a gesture he'd employ at another time, in another place. His voice clears the swirl of her thoughts. "You should maybe take a deep breath or two." Her answering stare must carry a lingering hint of anger, because he gives her a pointed, placating nod. "Humor me?"
She fixes her eyes skyward, drawing in a lungful of chilled air without much conviction. But something in her starts to release as she allows it to glide back out of her body. She repeats the sequence. And again, each exhale filtering tension from her chest.
By the time she trusts herself to speak, they're almost at the end of the block. A fleck of humor sneaks into her read of the situation. "Are we going to keep walking until we hit Santa Monica?"
"That's probably the best option." Andy squeezes her elbow. "But that wouldn't solve the problem, would it?"
She feels herself returning from the clutch of anxious anger in pieces, starting with the warmth of fondness for the man at her side. She grins softly. "No. I guess it wouldn't."
Their actual destination becomes clear when they reach the intersection, where his car is parked at the curb. She stops walking and fails to avoid the prickliness that her well-rested self would. "I'm not leaving."
"Just-" Andy bites off whatever he's going to say, no doubt battling his own lack of sleep. He holds his palm up, trusting silence over words as he unlocks the car. He crouches inside for a moment and retrieves a small package from the center console.
By the time he returns to the sidewalk with her, Sharon has figured out what he came for. "Pretty far to walk for gum."
He shrugs, making a benevolent omission, allowing her to pretend that the walk wasn't the point. But then he surprises her - as he tends to do - with a helping of practicality:"It takes the edge off, and, uh," he waves his free hand in the general vicinity of his jaw, "helps avoid the teeth-gritting."
With that, he takes a piece for himself and holds out another for her. He'd noticed, then. (Of course he'd noticed. That's why he'd pulled her out of there.) Sharon accepts the offering with a nod. "Thanks."
Andy drops the gum into his coat pocket and they linger, taking a moment in their little respite on the corner. "So what would solve the problem, if strolling beyond city limits isn't an option?"
"Sleep." The word escapes without much thought on her part. She winces against the equally obvious and impossible solution.
"Sleep and breakfast, yeah." He says this with the kind of wistfulness reserved for talk of hitting the lottery.
While they're on impossible scenarios, she adds, "And the ability to keep Mark Hickman away from this investigation."
Their interlude bursts at her mention of this very real problem. Andy frowns at the sidewalk, turning over the situation. "As much of an annoyance as he is, he could just as easily be our perp."
"All the more reason to keep him away."
"At least until we can get him into an interview room."
Sharon nods in response. Fueled by her list of threats from before, she sifts through the ways she might get him there. Andy locks the car and they set back off down the sidewalk. The eastern sky is tinged with the first hints of sunlight, glowing pinkish on the horizon.
While they're still several houses from the crime scene, he rests his arm along the small of her back. She can't bring herself to deny wanting it there. "I defend your right to kick Hickman's ass, if that's what you want. But I think we both know that it isn't." She hums in agreement.
He drops his arm and resumes a more professional distance as they draw near the glow of SID's halogen lights. "I think he might hate you almost as much as he does Mike."
She looks at him sidelong. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"No, it's just an observation." He stretches his hand flat before curling it into a tight fist, his voice following suit. "And it helps explain why I'm struggling to keep my promise to not punch him in the face."
Sharon pats his wrist, hoping that the gesture conveys her appreciation for his restraint.
After nodding at the patrol officer guarding the scene, Andy says, "I'm going to say something that you're going to find hilarious coming from me."
Intrigued by this, Sharon lifts an eyebrow. "Hilarious?"
"Well, amusing, at the least." He takes a deep breath. "I know it's easier said than done, but just keep in mind that Hickman trying to push your buttons."
Sure enough, the words bring to mind a parade of situations in which Andy has allowed his buttons to be pushed, most often at the slightest of provocations. She bites her lip, though, not wanting to cheapen his offer of advice. It's sweet, really, as long as she focuses on the intent rather than the message.
Sharon affects a frown and tries to sell the idea that she has no idea what he's talking about."I don't allow my buttons to be pushed."
Having delivered his message of obligated responsibility, Andy just shrugs. He lifts the yellow tape at the front gate of the property and, as Sharon steps near him to duck under it, she adds, just loud enough for him to hear, "Not by anyone of Hickman's caliber, anyway."
His response, while delayed, carries a smile. "Can't argue with that."