I came looking for a way to forget, if only for the moment. This was a place where I knew that I could reflect, somewhere I could let all my worries float away for a little while. This was what I needed, especially after the events that had been our latest case. Goren and Eames and Logan and I had worked this case together, and had so far come out of it together, as sets of partners, and as a squad. But alone time had apparently still been in order nonetheless; Captain Deakins had practically forced the lot of us out of the squad room, and we had all gone our separate ways.
That was why I found myself sitting on a bench in an indoor skating rink, bending down to tighten the laces on my skates. I didn't often have the chance to do this, but I had it now, and I had taken it, gladly. I had seen much since coming into the Major Case Squad, but this…this topped it all. I wasn't really surprised to find that I was still reeling, just thinking about all of it. In truth, it wasn't what I wanted to be mulling over, but it was one of those things that I would mull over until I'd come up with some sort of an answer. The problem with this was that I doubted there was any such answer to come up with.
We'd been gone after before, all of us had, on separate occasions, in our old precincts, because of things we did, shadows in our past, whatever. It had never seemed to matter before. But now, oddly enough, now that we were in one of the most elite squads the department had, now it mattered, if only because everyone's eyes had been on us for the entire run of the case. Then again, I supposed it wasn't any different than any other case, except for the fact that we'd caused a bit more trouble than usual on top of arresting a judge. Intimidation was something that some people did well, and as much as I hated to admit it, it was one thing that said judge had been good at.
My partner, I thought, was one of those people that anyone would go after, if only because of his past, and the temper that some said he was cursed with. He'd been the first one targeted. Stories of things he'd done back with the two-seven, and on Staten Island, and then, an incident from the first case we'd worked together…it had all come back to bite him, but Logan, stubborn, sometimes even loveable idiot that he was, hadn't seen fit to back off. Neither had I, really; this was, to me, anyway, not only a case that had left two girls murdered, but one that had someone thinking he was above the rest of the criminal justice system. I didn't think anything could annoy me more.
And then, there was the whole issue with Goren, the one that had him more flustered than I'd ever seen him, if only because he couldn't leave right away to go to wherever it is that he obviously had to go. No, he'd been stuck there on the midtown in that moment, just like the rest of us, but it couldn't have been more obvious that he'd wanted to leave. But there was no way he could, even though the rest of us would have covered for him. He'd disappeared that night and none of us had seen him again until the morning, and even then, Logan and I were left knowing nothing, though I wasn't exactly surprised by this. Eames knew, that much I knew for sure, but she had said nothing, which I'd expected, solely for the fact that some things were meant to stay between partners, and that was that.
We'd found out during the trial, though, what had happened, that this so-called judge had paid someone off to go and bother Goren's mother, when it had all finally been dragged out into the open because apparently, discretion wasn't any defense attorney's strong point. A lot of other things had come out, then, as well; nothing that affected me directly, other than the fact that I'd hated being in the FBI, that is, but honestly, by that point, I was beyond caring; I was NYPD again, and besides, free speech was protected by the Constitution, and there was nothing they could do about it. I had the feeling that I was the only one to really come out unscathed throughout this whole thing, and it bothered me, because there we were, putting on a united front to show the city that we weren't going to back off, and this judge that we couldn't be intimidated and forced to stop doing the jobs we were paid for. But that wasn't what bothered me the most.
Ironically enough, it was the letter. The one thing that had nothing to do with me, or with Logan, whatsoever, and it was the one thing that bothered me the most. I wanted to be pissed off at Deakins for not saying anything, for not warning us, or at least warning Goren and Eames, that it was one of those little skeletons in the squad closet that might come out. He'd known, and he'd said nothing, and I wanted to be annoyed, but I couldn't. There was a reason, or so I was hoping, even as I got to my feet and finally went out onto the ice, hoping that I wouldn't fall and make myself look like a total idiot. I wondered if he'd refrained from saying anything because he hadn't wanted to make things more complicated than they already were, or if it was because he'd truly forgotten.
I hoped it was the latter. Five years was a long time, certainly long enough for anyone to forget about something as trivial as that. I bit back a snort at that thought; this was anything but trivial. And it still had nothing to do with me, and I was thinking about it. It was probably more out of a desire to make this defense attorney sorry he'd ever dared screw around with something like that, but there I had it. It was unpredictable, the things those people would do, I thought, disgusted, distracted momentarily by this thought. I only barely managed to catch myself as I started to fall, back towards the ice. I hadn't even realized I'd jumped.
I went on, anyway, despite this minor setback, and continued to think. I knew damn well that this whole thing had left us all shaken, but how much it had shaken us was yet to be seen. I almost dreaded returning to the squad room in the morning, was half tempted to call in sick, but I wasn't about to let the idiot that had done this to us get away with thinking that he'd managed to break us, because, damn it, he hadn't, and he wouldn't. Or so I was hoping. I knew that even if my fingers weren't physically crossed, they were, mentally, and would remain so until I saw where all of this would lead us.
Just another fire for us to walk our way though, I thought, another fire for us to hope that we came out of without being burned, but the problem was that three of us had already been burned. I had, too, if only by association; I hated the thought that there was so much shaky ground now, and there was too much of it, but there we were, standing on it, and waiting to see if we would fall, the way I almost had mere minutes ago. A faint, almost bitter smile crossed my face at that one; we had come so close to the edge, and yet we were still the same way we had been before, or rather, we would be, until the cracks that had been made in our armor finally showed.
That was the problem with armor, though, I thought, as I jumped again, and went spinning momentarily before landing again, on my feet, thankfully, the sound of my breathing the only thing that I could hear. The place was mostly deserted, but it was open; it was just the fact that there were rarely any people here this late at night. I looked at my watch as I stood there, almost frozen, and then stared out into the vast empty space that surrounded me. It wasn't even that late. But I had lost all sense of time and had only just realized this now. I laughed, then, the sound odd, and echoing through the rink, and it scared the hell out of me.
I knew why, too. It was because of the fact that the lines between personal and professional lives had been blurred, and I wasn't sure how to handle it. I didn't think any of us were. But then again, we all kept up our facades, and I'd have easily bet that the others were thinking about the same things that I was currently mulling over. We all wanted answers. That much I knew for sure. But the answers would be hard in coming, and so the only thing we could do was move on, and hope that nothing else would come along to shake us. I had the feeling that there would be other things, however; in a job like this, it was almost impossible to keep things from shaking you. The levels of depravity that one saw when one was a cop in this city was something I didn't want to think about, but ironically enough, it was what I was thinking about now.
Something inside me snapped, then, and I started to move again, closing my eyes and ignoring my surroundings. I knew I'd probably end up staying there until the place closed, hours from now, trying to forget, but I knew I would be unable to. Things like this, I thought, would continue to happen, no matter how much any of us tried to make it stop, and they would happen at any place and time, but no matter what, there would always be someone to come along and find the one who'd made it happen. There would always be someone to come along and fight for the justice that the victims we came across deserved. And now, if only for the moment, that someone was me, and my partner, and the other two, because it was what we did, and what we would continue to do.
And as I continued to think, to skate, I realized that we could hope all we wanted to, but there would always be a moment where we were off guard, where someone could take us and make us fall, if only because we weren't paying attention. This had been one of those moments, one of those times that had left us unsure of where we stood. Things like this, I thought as I continued, starting to get cold, but not really caring, had no sense of time, either, the same way I didn't, right there in that moment. They would happen at any time, and the one who was doing it didn't really care who got called out to figure it out, didn't even think about it. The ones that happened during the daytime, when the sky was light, and there were people around were the so-called easy ones to deal with.
But this one, like all those other ones that happened in the dark, when no one was around to see what happened, and the streetlights cast their eerie orange glow over everything, and most normal people were asleep…this one was a hard one. It was odd, I thought, as I finally came to a stop, and braced myself on the partition wall between the rink and the benches, it really was. And I tried in that moment before I took off again to think of it in a different way, to come up with a different theory, but there was none.
And I knew then that no matter how hard I thought, it would always be cases like this, the one that happened in those dark first minutes of the morning, that would end up hurting the worst.