187 - Tidwell's POV
Author's Note: 187 is the code call for homicide in the LAPD
It was the call they all dreaded. It was the one they knew would come.
It was a scene she wasn't allowed at, but one he knew he couldn't stop her from going to.
They raced there in his car, with her driving like she was riding a rocket.
As the body was wheeled away in a heavy black plastic bag, strapped stiffly to a gurney, she stopped them with such command in her voice that the medics froze. He asked her not to look, knowing full well she had to.
The stench of death and decay hit him as soon as her trembling hands unzipped the bag, overwhelming all other senses. He felt her shake and recoil, but he stood solidly behind her holding her up as they all watched. There was a shock of bone white hair, matted with dirt, a blue shirt and a crucifix hung on a gold chain around his neck. The wallet in the pocket of his pants gave them enough to make the initial call on ID.
Jack Reese, hero cop, SWAT commander, dead in an unmarked grave, shot in the head with his hands duct taped behind his back. The tape would match the type used to keep his daughter tied to a chair in a dark basement, until he came for her.
He remembered like it was yesterday, the bitter emptiness and hollow fear that gripped him when he saw it – the chair. The one from the videotape delivered to Crews – the one where the woman he loved begged for another man. He came for her but she wasn't there - she was with Crews. She was always with Crews.
He was drawn back to reality by her gaze shifting. He felt her leave him long before she moved, inexorably drawn to the tall, thin man climbing from a sleek, black car. This time she would not return – the pull of her partner was undeniable, like the tides turning she returned to him.
The red haired man stood awkwardly apart from the other police, but she felt him. Many of the faceless nameless cops on the scene cast looks his way that communicated his offense – he shouldn't be here. This was family business. A police family buries their own. Jack Reese for all his sins was one of them. Crews wasn't. He wore the badge but stood apart. But Crews didn't come for them – he came for her – and he always would.
He felt his heart break as, without a backward glance, she walked away from him and went to her partner who closed the distance in long strides to meet her. Crews wrapped her in his long lean arms and held her gently in the hollow of his chest as she cried quietly, tears staining his expensive shirt. She did what she'd never do with him. To Crews alone would she show her pain.
Tender words of whispered encouragement he could not hear fell from her partner's mouth into her hair and a tear thumbed from her cheek completed the intimacy of their embrace. They both seemed unaware of the throng of people watching them, but he didn't miss it. He wished he could miss it, ignore it awhile longer, pretend she still loved him – but the only people who did not recognize and even respect the depth of their love was his dark haired diminutive detective and her sunshine clad protector.
Light bent around him and she absorbed it, like they were meant to match. And on this darkest day, Crews would even coax a smile from her with some inane comment or anecdote unheard but for her benefit he played the fool. He would take her away from this. He would have never let her come. Only the finding of her father's remains on their day off prevented him from stopping her. Tidwell could not tell her "no" – even about this most painful thing.
The dark look Crews gave him communicated the man's disgust with his weakness and for letting her see her father in his unearthed grave of maggots and clumps of stained dirt. His protective streak was not for the dignity of Jack Reese but for his daughter, who Tidwell knew he prized more than any of his possessions, his fortune or his precious freedom. Crews would risk anything, sacrifice anything, give anything for her – they both knew it. His look said it.
The pale man waved a hesitant good bye to her lover and steered her toward his car, and once she was safely ensconced inside, allowed himself one ragged sigh over the roof before climbing in to take her away. In truth, he'd taken her away that day in the orange grove; it just took her awhile to physically leave. Only she seemed to not recognize she wasn't there anymore – her heart was with Crews. Maybe it always had been. She had kept it locked away for so long, she'd forgotten who held the key.
But he knew - it was the mercurial and merry convict come detective with a penchant for knives and whose heart had room only for her. He was the salve to soothe her tortured soul, the trusted protector that let her relax and be a woman instead of just a cop. And it was his name that tumbled from her lips when the demons came in the night; no one knew that better than him. He swore there were days on which he was certain he could feel the teeth marks of time rending his flesh and tearing her away, and this was one of them.