Sometimes, I wondered why my father had used to say that he hated the job. I knew he didn't, really, but there were some days when he would just come home and say nothing. He'd open a bottle, and take a sip, look at me, if I was around, and tell me that he hated it. And I, having been the fourteen-year-old idiot that I had been then, once told him that I wanted to be a cop. the look he gave me stuck with me to the point where I couldn't forget it, even now.
"Mikey," he'd said, because he was really the only one who could get away with calling me that, "One of these days, you'll find something you want more, and you'll forget all about being a cop."
I wondered now if he'd said that so that I would think nothing more of going into the academy and then taking a beat. The look he'd given me, I realized, once I became old enough to take it seriously, hadn't been one of anger, or disappointment. Rather, it had been one of an intense sadness that I could recognize in other cops, and even in myself. It was an odd feeling. Sometimes I found myself wondering what my father had seen that day to make him look at me that way. But at the same time, I knew that I wouldn't get the answers I wanted.
Now that I was a cop myself, I found it a lot easier to understand why it was that he'd sincerely hoped I had no real intentions of ever following in his footsteps. Some cases were just too hard to handle, emotionally. This had been one of them. It had begun, it had ended, and yet…it still ate at me. To the point where I'd been called out on it by Captain Ross, who'd taken me into the office to ask exactly what my problem was. I'd told him it was nothing, because right then, it hadn't really been anything. Now, however…Now I sat at my desk across from Wheeler, in silence, until she broke it.
"You wanna tell me why you've had that look on your face for the past hour?" she asked.
"I had to talk to your captain," I replied, sarcastically. She gave me a look.
"I'm serious," she said. "We're partners. Partners talk. You can talk to me."
Her logic was valid. I knew she hadn't particularly wanted to talk to me about what she'd been up to a few weeks ago. But she'd opened up that night after a cup of coffee and something to eat. I supposed it was only right that I talked to her now.
"What's the one thing in the world that you regret, more than anything else?" I asked. Wheeler looked at me with raised eyebrows.
"You really think we should have this conversation here?" she asked. I shoo my head and rose to my feet, reaching down for the jacket I always wore.
"No," I said, "I think we should eat. Come on, I'll buy."
Wheeler got to her feet and followed me out of the squad room and into the elevators.
"So," I said, "You gonna answer me or not?"
"The thing I regret the most…I don't know. Let me think a minute."
Well. At least I wasn't the only one who actually had to give it some consideration. Even though, technically, I didn't really have to. I already knew.
"I got it," said Wheeler, as the elevator doors opened on the ground level of headquarters. "I regret never being able to help my mother until lately. I told you my dad walked when I was ten…I had to wait eleven years to actually be able to do something. It still bothers me."
"Anything else?" I asked, slowly.
"Yeah," said Wheeler. "I regret not wringing that man's neck when I saw him on the streets two years later. Mom still doesn't know I saw him then."
There was silence as we left the building and I reached into my pocket for the keys. Wheeler gave me a sideways look as she got in on the passenger side.
"So, what's your biggest regret?" she asked. I sighed, knowing that I shouldn't have opened this particular can of worms, but I had, and now there was no going back.
"It's a long story." I said. "Do you have time to listen?"
Wheeler nodded. "It's what I'm here for." she said.
"Any of this gets back to Ross, I'll know it was you."
"Come off it, Logan, d'you really think I'd do that to you?"
I looked at her with raised eyebrows; she rolled her eyes as we continued to drive.
"The one thing I regret the most…" I trailed off as a familiar burning feeling started in my throat. It was the same one that always came when I thought about it. "Running away from home."
"You're serious?" Wheeler asked, incredulously, and I nodded.
"I'm serious." I turned into the parking lot of the place we had gone to the last time, and turned the car off. "Like I said, it's a long story."
Now Wheeler was the one looking at me with raised eyebrows. But she got out and followed me inside anyway.
"You going to tell me what this story is?" she asked quietly, as we sat. I looked away, unable to keep a mirthless laugh from escaping me.
"I was fourteen," I said. "Same age as our victim's next of kin. Got into a fight with my mom. If she hadn't tripped, that bottle she'd been holding would've landed on my head. So I ran."
I noticed the stunned look on Wheeler's face and sighed. I hadn't told her about my so-called childhood, but I had told some of it to Barek. This was the first time that Wheeler and I were going down this particular conversation path.
"Where was your dad? Didn't he…" she started, but I cut her off.
"He knew. He tried everything he could to stop her, but nothing worked, and he was always on the job."
"He was a cop?" Wheeler asked, and I nodded again.
"Yeah, he was a cop." Suddenly I trailed off, not sure I still wanted to go there. But I had been the one to ask her in the first place, and the one to tell her that it was a long story. Technically speaking, I had no choice. "Told me once he wanted something more for me, but here I am."
Wheeler offered up a faint smile at this. "So, what happened?" she asked.
"I stayed away. I thought my mom was out to kill me, which I wasn't too far off, either. I crashed with my friends, went to school…" I trailed off again and focused on a point outside the window, past Wheeler's head. "I knew he was looking for me, because Mom didn't know where I was, and I didn't come home, but no one would tell him where I was."
My voice broke on the last word. Now that I was really thinking about it again, it hurt. I wondered what my father had thought, when he'd realized that I had made it so that he wouldn't find me. Wondered if he knew that it hadn't been him, but rather my so-called mother.
"What does this have to do with the case?"
Wheeler's voice broke into my thoughts, effectively breaking my silence.
"I found two uniforms on my doorstep," I said quietly. "When I finally got the nerve to go home. Just like that girl found you and me standing there. My mother…she wouldn't open the door."
"Why?"
"Because she thought someone had finally called her out on beating me. So she made like she wasn't there." My voice was shaking, bitter. It had been a long time, but I was still not over it.
"So they kept trying?"
"Three days. Three days, they tried to tell someone in his family that he was gone, and then…then, I finally decided to come home, and they finally have someone to tell.
"That can't have been easy."
Thank you, Detective Obvious, I thought, sarcastically, and didn't feel one bit guilty for it. Of course it wouldn't have been easy. Even now, it wasn't easy.
"Yeah," I said finally, barely managing to keep civil with her, "It wasn't easy. Still bothers the hell out of me today. I mean, he didn't even do anything, and yet I was avoiding him. Guess we all do stupid thing when we're teenagers."
Of course, not everything was as stupid as what I had done. After a long moment of silence, I took a sip from the mug of coffee in front of me, because for once, I didn't want to eat, and then I spoke. "Actually, it's not so much the running away as it is not being able to say goodbye to him. Not knowing that I'd never have another chance to say goodbye, because he wasn't going to come home."
There was silence between us again. Wheeler said nothing, and instead looked down at the food in front of her as if she were afraid to look me in the eye. I was half tempted to laugh at her for it. But I didn't.
And it was all because my thoughts had shifted, and I could remember another look, one shot at me only a few weeks ago, by a fourteen-year-old girl who'd come home to find that Wheeler and I were standing on her doorstep. All because her mother had been murdered. She hadn't known. Hadn't known that she would never have the chance to say goodbye again, never have the chance for even half of a conversation again, never have the chance to say 'I love you', because there was no going back in time. And her mother would never be there again. At the same time, the consequences of actions we made, of things we did, sooner or later always came back to bite us. Some were just worse than others.
But then again, playing the runaway, and coming home to something like that, well…I could still remember the expression that had been on my face when I'd bothered to look in the mirror after getting that news, and knew that not knowing because you weren't there hurt more than knowing because you were.