Easy

The Captain of Major Crimes is Not Happy.

That is something he has a gift for, though Blair keeps that thought to himself. Simon Banks is a solid leader, a good policeman, a great detective, and yes, someone who has easily made such an art form of Not Being Happy that Blair is thinking of doing a psych paper on it.

Being brighter than the average observer, Blair never tells him this, though he has to admit it would inspire new and probably invaluable levels of Not Happiness for him to study. On the other hand, getting his observer's pass yanked would not help any study at all. A pretty easy choice, really.

Even easier is the decision to for once keep his mouth shut about the newest Major Crimes case, the cause of the Not Happiness surrounding the unit's Fearless and Currently Pissed Off Leader.

Not because it wasn't an easy case. The only not-simple part was working out how it got labeled a Major Crime (the rural vote, he suspected, had something to do with it. Or the Mayor being a gluttonous gourmand. One of the two). Blair noticed quite early that tough cases actually makes Simon quite - almost - cheery (whether because he likes the challenge or because he likes to see his detectives well and truly challenged, Blair isn't sure. Probably 40/60 each way).

Long, complex militia conspiracies? Wonderful.

International organised crime? Fine.

Murder/embezzlement/grad theft auto? No trouble.

Honestly, though, Blair doesn't see the problem. Simon's best detective - the Sentinel of the Great City - spent rather less than a day on the case before making an easy arrest; the Mayor is happy about the breathtakingly speedy solve rate, the return of a precious local resource and the rural votes he expects from the publicity; and it isn't really anyone's fault that Major Crimes will now be first in everyone's mind for cases - easy or not - involving grand theft... umm, foodstuff...

Or Not...

Not this time, man.

Yes, I know I write all too many reports around here. That's because I'm the one who knows how to spell obfuscate, as well as how to do it in thin-blue-line-ese, and triplicate. It's not that difficult, honestly. And hey, I don't complain, do I?

No, I don't. Jim.

Okay, maybe I do, if it'll get you to do a deal - you, Great Sentinel, do the tests I want and I, Humble Observer, fix your reports to cover up the Great Sentinel bits enough to pass officialdom. And one of these days I'm going to learn to haggle so you do the tests without the whining, but what the hell man, results are results...

But not this time, man.

Solving the Great Giant-Cheese-Wheel-Napping of 1998 may have been easy - you just followed your nose, right?

Explaining it might not be all that difficult, either. Like I said, Jim, I know how to obfuscate.

But writing it up seriously, like with a straight virtual face...? Hell, that's too difficult even for me, man.

-the end-