Hiatus woes hitting hard again! Too much happened this season, and it's scrambled with my brain and feels again to the point where I'm back to braving two ongoing multi-chapters at once. Who needs sanity, anyway...
This is my second attempt at a story that's relatively team- and case-heavy, so please take it with a grain of salt since crime drama is still nowhere near my strong suit. Just like before, this story picks up a few weeks after the events of the season finale (*unhappy sounds*), and will draw heavily on canon in terms of where the characters are and what they're dealing with.
Phantom Hazards (1)
"I don't think anyone is happy with what we've just watched."
Sharon let out a silent sigh, and couldn't find a way to disagree.
The TV screen in Chief Taylor's office was paused on an image of one of her team's interviews from several months previous. Before that, they'd watched brief clips from various other interviews, and the collective did not paint a happy picture.
FID Sergeant Staples heaved a sigh of his own and continued, "But," (he gave a lopsided nod) "it's also true that as far as this complaint against Det. Sanchez goes, the suspect's lying. I've reviewed all the evidence, myself. The detective never touched him."
"I don't care if he did or didn't!" The other person in Taylor's office beside Staples, Sharon and the Assistant Chief himself, City Attorney Gloria Lim looked like a woman on the warpath. "There's a complaint, and there's a long-standing pattern of excessive use of force." She glared at the rest of them, "If your suspect's lawyer gets his hands on these incidents, forget the complaint – we'll go straight to a lawsuit!"
Taylor and the sergeant said nothing, but their pinched expressions clearly showed agreement.
Sharon stepped up. "Det. Sanchez is aware of the issues regarding his professional conduct. He's received several warnings, and is in mandatory anger management training – "
"And according to Sgt. Staples," the city attorney interrupted, "the psychologist's report at the end of the first month shows that Sanchez is uncooperative and shows no real interest in the anger management! Which is probably why we're here now discussing your suspect's claim that the detective beat him up!"
Sharon didn't let her composed tone slip. "That claim is completely spurious – and as the sergeant's just made clear, there is plenty of evidence to prove so."
"This time. What about the next complaint, or the one after that?" The woman actually pointed a commanding finger at her as she lectured, "We need to be fully covered here. I want Sanchez on desk duty, or suspended or – anything, I don't care if you have him fetching you coffee, as long as he's no longer allowed contact with persons of interest in your cases."
Sharon's eyebrows drew together. "You're suggesting that I punish my detective because a murder suspect lied about being assaulted," she clarified.
"Well he made a great lucky guess who to lie about, don't you think?"
"That doesn't make it any more justified to take action against Det. Sanchez on that basis."
Taylor cut in before the city attorney could retort. "The point remains, Captain..." He pursed his lips, frowning. "If Julio isn't taking anger management seriously, if he's not putting an actual effort into correcting his conduct... then he's out. This department doesn't need another lawsuit." He gave her a warning look. "Neither does Major Crimes."
Sharon wished that she had grounds to argue. But little as she liked the city attorney's meddling, not to mention her inflexible, dismissive approach...the point did remain. This wasn't coming out of the blue.
She dipped her head slightly. "Det. Sanchez has personally assured me that he would take the training seriously," she stated. "I will talk to him again today... and if necessary, we can all have a meeting with him..." (she glanced at the calendar on the wall) "early next week, to discuss his progress on– "
"Tomorrow." At Sharon's look, the city attorney clarified: "The meeting with Sanchez. Tomorrow. Look, I don't think you realize just how urgent this issue is," she argued when Sharon's eyes narrowed. "If word gets out, if another Peter Goldman comes along and starts pooling the complaints together, we could have another lawsuit for tens of millions of dollars!"
"There are no other complaints against Det. Sanchez –"
"Because no one's gotten those men that he beat up organized! If some lawyer with a grudge hears about this..." The other woman threw her hands up. "It's a damn goldmine! We've had six incidents in the last year – and I'm not even counting the time he discharged his gun on a street full of civilians."
"The man he discharged it at had just shot one of our witnesses twice, in a drive-by," Sharon enunciated. She saw the point in having this discussion, yes, but the manner in which it was being conducted was wearing on her patience.
"FID also cleared Det. Sanchez on that count," Sgt. Staples put in, "and decided that he acted fully withi- "
"On that count!" Lim didn't even let him finish. "How about that man he beat up not two months ago, who ended up dead?! Or – what about that suspect who came in with a split lip and a black eye, a week and a half later? Plus everything we've just watched on these interview tapes." She crossed her arms and turned to Taylor. "Something needs to be done."
"Something is being done," Sharon said firmly. "Julio has been given an official warning, and he's being closely supervised by myself and my lieutenants. I'll talk to him again today about his progress in anger management training."
Taylor nodded. "Good," he agreed, cutting off the city attorney's further argument. He rumbled a displeased sigh, "And tomorrow, I want him in this office, explaining to us why he's not taking it seriously. And he better make it a good explanation," he added, with a meaningful look to Sharon. She dipped her head again in acknowledgment, and he looked satisfied. "Alright. We'll discuss what other measures to take, if any, at that point."
He caught Sharon's gaze for another brief moment, as though to repeat his earlier point about Julio making a good case for himself; then his attention was diverted by the ringing phone on his desk. "Excuse me," he murmured, dismissing the two officers with a brief nod before he walked over to pick up the phone. "This is Assistant Chief Taylor..."
Sharon absently wondered how many years in the position it would take to make him sound less irritatingly smug about it.
"Look, Julio never touched that guy. I was right there with him, and I can tell you – there was none of the... usual enthusiasm." Provenza at least had the decency to grimace when she cut him a wry look. "Now, I know what you're thinking, but I'm telling you, that complaint against Julio is complete and utter bull– "
"I know." Sharon cast a tired glance at the cup on her desk, but there was no tea left in it. "I know, Lieutenant," she repeated. "The video of the arrest shows that the complaint is ungrounded."
"Then why were FID and the city attorney in Taylor's office with you?"
Why, indeed. She sighed, and shook her head without a response. Through the glass wall of her office, she could see Julio's desk clearly. He was watching them, too; his gaze dropped when it met hers. There was a stubborn hunch to his shoulders.
Sharon looked back to Provenza.
He mirrored her unhappy head shake, and muttered, "Damn it."
She returned a quiet hum of agreement. After letting a moment pass in silence, she let out a breath and straightened her shoulders. "Would you mind sending Julio in here, please? I need to talk to him."
The lieutenant's eyebrows arched in alarm. "Now – wait a second... you're not going to do anything drastic, are you? Look, Julio's been acting – well, he's been acting more hotheaded than usual, I'm not saying that's not true, but..."
"His behavior over the past year has escalated to a documented, alarming pattern of excessive use of force," Sharon said flatly. "And I'm currently seeing little evidence of an effort to correct it." She met Provenza's eyes, her voice quiet but determined. "That's more than hotheadedness, Lieutenant. You know that as well as I do. It would be irresponsible of me, as Julio's commanding officer and as someone who cares about him, to stand by and let things continue on this path."
"Well that's why you've sent him to anger management, isn't it?" the lieutenant protested, exasperated. "That'll get him back in line – hey, look how well it worked for Flynn all these years! He can even go... weeks, now, without someone complaining about him!"
She remained unamused. "Just send Julio in here, please."
Provenza exhaled, and he gave her an ambivalent expression.
Sharon's eyebrows arched slightly. When he still didn't show any hurry to do as she'd requested, she asked mildly, "Is there anything else...?"
The lieutenant opened his mouth, but changed his mind about it halfway through.
He wasn't crazy about the manner of his dismissal – but the Captain had been shorter-tempered lately, and he didn't need to wonder why. His gaze slid, involuntarily, to the pile of papers stacked on far corner of her desk.
She seemed to have dedicated that one corner solely to documentation on the search for Phillip Stroh, and he could tell that the stack grew higher and messier each week. But with over a month gone by now and no real leads... it wasn't looking so good. He'd been on the force enough to know how these things went. The trail went cold after the first few hours. A day cut the odds by almost three-quarters. A month... well, Stroh might as well have been gone for ten years at that point, for all their chances of tracking him down. Provenza knew that, and he knew that Raydor knew that just as well.
He didn't begrudge her the shorter fuse.
And he wouldn't admit it to anyone, either, but on his way out of work, he drove by her building almost every evening. Just in case. An extra look couldn't hurt, could it? Not that Stroh was stupid enough to be hanging anywhere near there, of course, he was probably halfway across the world by now...
...But an extra look didn't hurt.
Provenza wasn't so sure that he was the only one doing the extra looking, either. He could've sworn he'd spotted an awfully familiar-looking Prius, once.
It was a goddamn miserable situation, and he was too old to expect life to be fair but damn if he didn't feel goddamn angry about it.
Maybe Sanchez wasn't the only one around who could use the anger management.
Under Raydor's pointed look, he gave in and groaned, "Yes, I'll send Julio right in, Captain...". He left her office with a muted grumble under his breath – and as he stepped out into the murder room, he glared his displeasure at Julio, for good measure.
Sharon watched the lieutenant walk over to Julio's desk, and lean over it slightly to mutter what she assumed was the thirty-second version of a 'get your act together' lecture before he sent the detective to her office. She couldn't see Julio's face to tell how he was receiving the lecture – but she could tell that everyone else was trying very hard to look like they weren't eavesdropping. They were terrible at it.
She let her head drop, looking yearningly at the teacup again. Her stomach hurt a little; she glanced at her bag, estimating if she had enough time to take some sort of antacid before the detective came in. Probably not. It could wait.
She glanced at her phone, instead. Its screen was blank and quiet.
She was developing some sort of neurosis around that phone, she thought. It felt like she hadn't put it down in over a month. She carried it everywhere, these days. On her person. At hand. She charged it religiously and hadn't switched it to silent mode in weeks, and still there was a constant cloud of anxiety hovering around it, that made her heart jump whenever it rang and her chest tighten whenever it didn't.
The specter of Phillip Stroh cast a frighteningly long shadow.
The stack of notes on the left side of her desk was growing every day. But there were never any news, no leads, not a scrap of real information to speak of. As much as she could, she tried to not let it interfere. Sometimes, she even managed to think about other things.
She was halfway through another sigh when there was a light knock on the open door. She looked up, fully expecting to see Julio. But it wasn't – Andy was standing in the doorway, instead, and the surprise easily dissolved the stern expression that she'd been about to adopt.
It threw her off-balance, a little, too. "Andy...Where's Julio?"
He gave a slight nod toward the murder room. "We might have a case. Taylor's waiting for you before he gives us any details."
"Oh." It took her a moment to shift gears, and she directed a somewhat-absent look over into the murder room. Taylor was there, looking all business. "Alright..."
Andy gave her a concerned onceover as she pushed her chair back to get up. But he didn't say anything, only stepping aside to let her pass in front of him, before following her over to where the Assistant Chief was waiting.
It was running hot on the news – the grainy aerial-view images of a nondescript Sedan rolling down I-10, a good half dozen police cars blasting their sirens behind it. After a few seconds of high-speed car chasing, the film cut to a different scene, of the now-motionless vehicle stopped by an empty stretch of road, the cop cars surrounding it on all sides. Then the camera panned over an ambulance sitting a few yards away, paramedics pulling a sheet over a body on the ground while officers milled about wearing grim expressions.
Taylor muted the TV, and turned to the Major Crimes team gathered around the conference room table.
"Car chases never end well," Tao murmured knowingly; it prompted a derisive scoff from Flynn:
"Yeah, especially when the driver tries to shoot at the police. What kind of idiot drives himself into a dead end, then figures he can shoot his way out against a dozen cops?"
"Maybe he didn't want to be taken alive," opined Amy.
"If that was the case, he got his wish," Taylor deadpanned. "And became a star on all the local news stations in the process."
With a flick of the remote, he flipped the channel, only to have a very similar scene show up again, and a third time when he flipped to another news broadcast. With an annoyed grimace, he turned away from the TV and faced them again.
"I can't help but notice that none of these channels give his name," drawled Provenza. "Might our mystery drive be someone... important? Someone we wouldn't want all over the news channels? A friend of the Mayor's, for instance?"
Taylor rolled his eyes at the derisive tone. "The driver's name was Johnny Farris," he provided wryly. "Small-time crook, Robbery-Homicide's been looking for him in connection to one of their cases a few months back. Traffic officer pulled him over for a broken taillight and noticed that the vehicle was flagged in the system."
"Huh. Nice when that actually happens," commented Amy.
Taylor only continued to look sour. "The officer called for back-up, but Farris caught on and took off." He waved at the TV. "Made his way west on I-10 until he decided to exit at the Fairfax avenue exit...then he took a bad turn into a road under construction. When there was nowhere left to go, he pulled out a gun." He sighed, then added, "By that time, there were a couple of news helicopters circling. Caught the whole incident on camera."
Tao arched his eyebrows. "Should make it easy for FID to clear the officers involved, at least..."
"That's not the problem."
"So if the guy's dead," frowned Andy, "and he was just a small-time robber anyway, what about this makes it a major crime, exactly?"
Taylor heaved another displeased sigh. He glanced back at the TV screen, just in time for the reporter's face to cut back to another recording from the scene; the news crews had obviously not been allowed to get too close, but they'd gotten a good enough angle to show one of the officers pop open the trunk of the car.
The cameras were also close enough to show his startled expression, that quickly turned into a grimace of involuntary disgust as the young officer pulled back. Within seconds, a few others had gathered around the open trunk. They all wore similarly grim looks and wrinkled noses. Someone half-heartedly waved one of the paramedics over.
The TV screen then cut back to the reporter.
"Ah," said Provenza. And he exchanged a knowing look with Sharon.