February 2002
With a frustrated huff, Sharon removed her glasses and placed them none too gently on the stack of paperwork before her. The mountain of forms before her was daunting. It wasn't that she was unaccustomed to the minutiae her position entailed, but some days it was just more difficult to stomach than others. Today was one of those days.
She could feel the beginnings of a headache accumulating behind her eyes. She rubbed them with the heels of her hands, trying to stave off the inevitable. There was too much to do to succumb to a blinding headache. Too many reports to review, investigations to oversee, court documents to verify. There was just too much of everything.
Sharon leaned back in her chair, peering myopically out into her squad room. Without the assistance of her corrective lenses everything was blurred beyond recognition. However, that didn't mean she didn't know which vaguely humanoid blobs were members of her division and which were not. Like the one stopped at Lieutenant Pratt's desk. That person was not one of her detectives. That person was a stranger. And was now headed toward her office.
Quickly replacing her glasses, she watched the now crisply clear young man in a suit advancing on her. He didn't look familiar, which meant he was not an Internal Affairs officer. He didn't look like one of the angry young officers who occasionally stormed into her office armed with threats and foul language. He looked out of place. And that scared her more than she cared to admit.
Her eyes followed him as he made his way past occupied desks, noting how her detectives watched him progress. The looks of confusion, concern, and just plain curiosity were not lost on Sharon. It was always noteworthy when someone advanced on the boss's office. She steeled herself for whatever fresh hell was about to be unleashed, sitting up a bit straighter in her chair and calmly shuffling the papers on her desk.
"Sharon Raydor?" the young man asked as he pushed the door to her office open. He stood, awkwardly shifting his weight from foot to foot as he waited for an answer.
"Yes," she replied, her eyes narrowing warily.
The young man stepped to the edge of her desk, withdrawing a manila envelope from his inside jacket pocket and placing it gently on top of a stack of papers. "You've been served." He turned without looking at her face and practically ran from the room. Sharon didn't notice. Her eyes were on the envelope.
Envelopes only meant one thing when it came to process servers. Envelopes meant law suits. Shit.
For a moment she continued to just stare at the envelope. She could feel the eyes of everyone in her division on her. She wished she'd closed the blinds earlier. Then she wouldn't have to acknowledge the looks her detectives were currently throwing her way. Distractedly tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, Sharon finally reached for the envelope.
She slowly pulled out the bundle of papers, taking no pleasure in the gentle sound of paper scraping against paper. What could this possibly be about? Who could possibly be suing her?
When her eyes lit upon the top of the first page, one word stuck out. 'DIVORCE.' This was shaping up to be the worst day she'd had in a long, long time.
Lieutenant Richard Pratt was the oldest member of Force Investigation Division, the man with the most experience, the one other detectives seemed to look upon as a grandfatherly figure. He'd never understood why. He wasn't particularly sweet or even pleasant. But he was very good at his job. And his job was to investigate.
The moment the young man in the suit entered the squad room Richard felt nothing good could possibly come from his appearance. There was something about the young man's slightly nervous demeanor and ill-fitting suit that raised his hackles. Something was afoot, and he was going to get to the bottom of it. "Hey, you!" he called, gesturing for the young man to approach his desk. He waited impatiently as the guy made his way through the desks. "You looking for someone? Filing a complaint?"
"I'm looking for Sharon Raydor," the young man said, offering no further explanation. He eyed the elderly detective as if trying to size him up. Richard merely raised an eyebrow.
"Why?" It was a simple question, but one loaded with just the barest hint of a threat. Richard stared at the young man, his eyes narrowing. He had a soft spot for Sharon, always had and probably always would. She was his protégé and if he could keep something bad from happening to her, he would do anything in his power to do it. Even if it meant staring down scrawny twenty-somethings in the middle of the squad room.
"I have a delivery for her." The Boy's voice shook slightly, a fact that gave Richard immense pleasure. "It's from her husband."
"Oh. She's over there," he said, gesturing toward Sharon's office. If this nervous messenger was from the illustrious Mitchell Kohl, then there was no real threat, was there? Sharon probably wouldn't think so. "Knock first."
He and all the others present watched in silence as the young man walked toward the office. And they all cringed when he neglected to knock on Captain Raydor's closed door. "Damn it, I told him to knock," Richard mumbled, his eyes still on the Boy.
Every eye was on Sharon. Richard knew this, but he did nothing to correct the situation. He was guilty himself. Plus, he reasoned, he couldn't make them do anything at the moment anyway. FID was curious about the personal goings-on of its leader. He couldn't undo that by yelling at everybody, could he?
But when the young man bolted, he knew that something was up. Something bad. Damn it. He should have gone with his first impulse. But the words 'from her husband' had thrown him off the trail. He continued to watch Sharon through the glass walls of her office. He watched as she eyed the papers, as she slowly withdrew them from the envelope, as her face fell. Shit, shit, shit.
"Okay! Everybody back to work," he said, standing up and waving his arms back and forth. "We have cases, people. Ramirez! Allen! What are you still doing here? Didn't you just get a call out? Use your heads, people. There's work to do."
He stared out at the people around him, daring them to defy a direct order from the second in command. Ramirez and Allen were already half out the door, and most of the others had the good sense to at least make themselves look busy. Richard gave a satisfied grunt before making his way calmly over to the desk of Detective Katie Janiszewski.
"Pratt, I'm not going in there. You can't make me go in there," Janiszewski said without preamble.
"I wasn't going to ask you to."
"You were going to order me, weren't you?"
Richard smiled down at the young detective. She was a sharp one, Janiszewski. "Right."
"Why am I the one who has to go in there? You know her better." She stared defiantly up at him. She had a legitimate point, and she knew it.
"But I think you'll have better luck getting a truthful answer out of her."
Janiszewski laughed, a sharp sound that cut through the relative silence of the squad room. "This is Sharon Raydor we're talking about, right? If she doesn't want to talk about it, she's not going to. To anybody."
Richard sighed. Janiszewski was right. No one could force Sharon Raydor to talk about something if she didn't want to. No one would get an admission that anything was wrong either. Not unless Sharon was the one to initiate the discussion. Damn it all.
All discussion halted with the gentle 'whoosh' of closing vertical blinds. All eyes turned toward Captain Raydor's office. The slats swayed slightly, giving quick glimpses into the office. Sharon was pacing, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Richard's eyes widened. She only did that when something really, really, really bad happened.
The gentle clacking of the still swaying blinds reminded Sharon that now was not the time to collapse. Now was not the time to let her emotions get the better of her. She had work to do. She had responsibilities. She paced her office, wanting desperately for the floor to open up and swallow her whole. Why had Mitchell done this? Blind-sided her, and at work no less. Was he trying to humiliate her? If that was his goal he'd certainly succeeded.
She wanted to cry, to scream, to throw things. She wanted to disappear. A lump formed in her throat, choking her. She couldn't breathe. She could feel the breath trapped in her lungs, trying desperately to escape. She was suffocating on her own stupid feelings.
Undoing the two top buttons of her blouse, Sharon felt a bit more control over the situation. At least she could breathe. She stopped pacing. Pacing accomplished nothing. And she had much too much to do today to let anything derail her. Even if that thing was the complete destruction of her private life. She had to focus. If she just focused now, everything would be fine.
Taking a seat behind her desk, she slowly pulled herself closer to the desk. She forced herself to take a deep breath. If she relaxed now she could fall apart later. Alone in the comfortable confines of her own home. Now was not the time and this certainly was not the place. No. With a slight shake of the head, Sharon straightened her shoulders and reached for a pen.