Chapter 2: Déjà vu
Author's note: I am absolutely floored by the number of responses I've thus far received from the readers—and by the number of people following the story. There are a lot of mature themes in this novel, but central to all of it are the relationships all of our various characters share with each other that allow them to do 'whatever this is', as Joss calls it. So for those looking for action, yes, there will be plenty of it starting about Chapter 8; but I'm starting this off with an in-depth look at how I perceive these characters relate to each other because it's going to be very important in the second half of the novel when they team up to take down HR. Yes, HR is going down—as I said, it's a revisionist history—but HR is going down my way. I loved what the producers did on the show, how they did it, and I realize they never planned for Joss Carter to be a character on the show past the third season, and the way they tied off many of the loose ends in 'Crossing and 'Devil's Share' was masterful (Elias taking out Simmons because of a 'remaining debt' was perfect)—it's just not the way I would have done it. Joss is staying on the team because there are so many issues John Reese has, emotionally and mentally, that can be explored in the relationship he has with her.
Some of the reviewers are already familiar with my writing (thanks, Bronwyn, for being willing to read something that you don't have a frame of reference for!) but for those of you who haven't read any of my previous writing (almost all of which is posed here on ) all I can say is buckle up and brace yourself. I'm about to take you on a wild ride!
2013
There was a weird sense of déjà-vu, this time.
Deserted railroad yard, which Carter got a strange feeling she'd seen before. Abandoned wooden railroad ties in various states of age and dilapidation lay scattered around; nails and screws and bits of rusted metal that might once have been nails and screws and other similar hardware littered the ground. A pile of rope off to one side of the yard lay somewhat scattered, as if someone had gone through the pile looking for pieces of usable length.
And then as she and Laskey, her new young rookie, rounded the corner of the dilapidated railroad depot building, it hit her all over again. Same yard. Same ties. Same nails and bits of metal.
Different victim.
This woman was the same age as the other one, from a couple of years ago. Female, in her late twenties to early thirties; nude from the waist down and nailed to a makeshift cross made of discarded railroad ties. But there was significantly more blood this time, Officer Carter saw as she stepped close enough to the body to scan it with a detective's eyes and a detective's instinct. Although the skin this time was milk chocolate, she could see more blood around the nails in the palms, and the fingers were half-curled in a spasm of agony—her hands had been nailed while she was still alive. Shirt and bra cut open, laying bare the torso; jacket same as last time, wrapped around the victim's head, prominent bulge right where the mouth would be.
Carter remembered with sudden clarity the coroner's report from the victim in her case two years ago; the woman, identified later as Annelise Murry, had been viciously beaten about her head and face while gagged, which had caused her death; she'd sustained significant head trauma and vomited. The gag hadn't let her clear the bile from her mouth and throat, and she had aspirated it into her nasal cavities, then into her lungs, essentially drowning in her own vomit; when she'd been unconscious her killer had wrapped her jacket around her head. A small mercy; she'd been dead by the time he'd nailed her hands down and cut her belly open in a ritualistic gesture that still mystified Carter two years later; the killer had never been found.
And as she stared at the black woman crucified on the cross in front of her, she again felt a surge of angry regret, too familiar lately, that she no longer had her detective's badge. As the investigating detective on the last murder, this would have landed on her desk, and she would have been given a second chance to catch this killer. Months had gone by after Annelise's death, and her case remained unsolved, and many in the department had hoped that it had been the work of a transient killer, someone just passing through New York on his way…somewhere else. Although Carter hated the thought that someone else, somewhere else, might die, at least no one else who had been murdered the way Annelise had been murdered had shown up in New York.
Until today.
Laskey had already started taping off the railroad yard, preserving the crime scene; but due to the cold, there were (thankfully) few onlookers. A woman had been walking a dog, the dog had slipped its leash and run, and the woman had found the dog in the abandoned railyard sniffing interestedly at the dead body. And that was how Carter and Laskey had ended up here.
She heard the crunch of gravel from another car's tires behind her, and knew it would be whatever detective had caught this case this time; but she ignored their presence fro a moment, focusing on something. With Annelise, the killer had used military knots to secure her arms to the cross. On this body, it was the same; the discarded railyard ropes in a chain hitch down the arm to a clove hitch around the wrist…
A hand grabbed her arm, yanked her up, and she looked up into the scowling face of a male detective. "No contaminating the crime scene," the detective snarled.
"I wasn't going to touch the body, Detective Robinson," she snapped, though inwardly wondered at the strangeness of the world. Full circle, but the roles now were reversed; Robinson had been an officer at the last crucifixion murder, and now he was the detective…and she was the officer. She had to fight down another pang of angry regret. "In case you don't remember, this is the same place we found another murdered, crucified young woman two years ago, Annelise Murray."
"Yeah. And you know what else I remember?" Robinson snapped, leaning so close she could smell alcohol on his breath. "I remember I'm a detective now and you got busted back to an officer. I don't have to listen to you anymore, you have to listen to me. And I don't want you near my crime scene. As soon as another set of uni's get here, I want you and your greenhorn out of this yard."
"All right," she said with a sigh; no use arguing with the man. "But, Robinson…the knots tying this victim to this cross are the same military-style knots that tied Annelise Murray two years ago."
He paused in mid-stride, caught in the act of walking away. She was sure he heard her; but when he turned around his face was cold and hard and set. "I don't recall asking for your input, Officer," he said, the tone of his voice on the last word making it more of an insult than a title. "Now take your greenie and get out of here."
What could she say? She couldn't argue with the man—she was a mere officer, he was the detective. "Come on, Laskey," she said to the young rookie standing off to one side, sure that he'd just heard the entire exchange and mortified at what he might be thinking at the moment. "We got another call." A clear lie, but he didn't call her on it; just got in the car and they peeled out of the yard. And fortunately for her, they did catch another call a minute later and the rest of the afternoon was spent trying to break up a disturbance between a divorcing couple, and she had her hands full trying to keep an angry woman from going after her husband with an eggbeater.
It didn't help her mood any when she got home; It was Taylor's weekend with his father, and she had the apartment to herself. She slammed into the apartment, slammed the door, slammed her keys and purse and gun on the table, and stomped her way into her bedroom, where she changed into a shapeless, comfortably worn pair of jeans and an equally shapeless, equally comfortable hooded sweatshirt. Then she stomped her way into the kitchen and sat at the kitchen island determined to acquaint herself with the bottom of a half-gallon of rocky road.
But when she finished it she was still no closer to a good mood than she'd been when she sat down. The folder with the details of the murder case, swiped from Robinson's desk at the precinct, sat on her table, silently mocking her; right next to the folder with Annelise's case in it, a two year old unsolved cold case, and in a shock of momentary fury, she hurled both folders across the room, ignoring the snowfall of papers that showered her couch and living room as she stomped into her kitchen. Pitching the now-empty ice cream container in the trashcan with disgust, she fumed her way into the bedroom, stuffed her feet into her running shoes, grabbed her purse, and headed on foot out of her apartment building. There was a bar about two blocks from her apartment building, and if she got drunk enough maybe she wouldn't care about Robinson's snub, about the new dead girl, about Annelise Murray, about the Crucifixion Killer, as he'd now been unofficially dubbed.
She was halfway through a bottle of barely-decent cheap whiskey when a shadow detached himself from the other shadows surrounding this booth she'd found empty at the back of the bar, and John Reese slipped into the seat facing her. "Mindreading again?" she asked acerbically. She wasn't mad at him, she was just angry, in general, and she had drunk just enough, by now, to not care anymore who she lashed out at.
John Reese studied the woman across the booth tossing back another shot glass of whiskey. He knew she wasn't angry at him. Knew she was angry about something, but it wasn't him. She was hurting and lashing out, and he understood even while a part of him, that overprotective male instinctive part of him, wanted to go hunt down whatever or whoever had made Joss Carter angry. It wasn't a rational thought, wasn't reasonable, didn't make sense, but there it was. He'd long since come to grips with the fact that where his life and Joss Carter's life entwined, touched, few things were going to make sense, nothing was going to fall into a neatly-definable, compartmentalized box. And truth to tell, he was rather intrigued at how her simple presence could bring chaos into his well-ordered mental world.
But tonight wasn't the night for this; this wasn't the time to quietly analyze anything. It was really very simple; Joss was hurting, and he was her friend, and if lashing out at him would alleviate her hurt, he didn't care if she used him like that. What else were friends for? But he'd figure out what was bothering her, and fix it. He could fix anything.
Or so he thought until she started talking.
She was well past 'getting drunk' and more than halfway to being 'completely drunk.' Just enough alcohol to release the curb she usually kept on her mind and her tongue, and the tumble of words that came out showed him just how much he'd missed. It had been a few weeks since they'd had a chance to talk; none of Finch's numbers had been to anyone that the NYPD, and Carter specifically, could help with, and he hadn't needed to ask her or Fusco to help with information either. And she was very good at hiding what she was feeling, usually…but the harsh looks, the snubbing she'd gotten from the people at the precinct at her having been broken back down to beat cop, her being saddled with this incompetent Laskey when they both would rather have been somewhere else, doing anything else but ride a beat patrol together, had been wearing on Carter's patience until Joss had snapped.
He listened to her in silence, offering an occasional noncommittal syllable here and there, until she had talked herself out and was on the verge of collapsing. That was when he silently paid her tab for her and got her out of the bar. She drank, but she was responsible about it. He already knew this; when she wanted to do some serious drinking she never took her car, she always walked, and even inebriated she never drank so much she wasn't aware of her surroundings. She was walking in a straight line, more or less, when they left the bar, and when they got to her apartment it only took a few seconds of fumbling before she got the door open and he followed her inside.
She didn't apologize for the scattered papers; he didn't comment on it either, just raised an eyebrow at this very un-Joss-like burst of sloppiness. She gathered up the papers in a jumble, slapping them down on the table, and flopped down on her couch, turning on the TV. And the first thing they both saw was Robinson speaking to a news reporter about the Crucifixion Killer having struck again.
Tears rolled down Joss's cheeks, and John quietly sat on the end of the couch. She hunched against the opposite arm, sniffling, and he handed her tissues as he listened with one ear to the news repot and used the other to listen to Joss's disjointed rambling. "He wouldn't even listen when I told it's the same kind of knots—military style knots in the ropes used to tie the new victim. Just like the knots used on Annelise Murray. Damn it, I should have tried harder to find the killer when Annelise turned up—if I had maybe this new victim wouldn't have died…" And then she was crying, harsh racking sobs shaking her, and John couldn't bear to hear those guilt-ridden sounds coming from her. He wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned against him and cried.
He held her, and just let her cry; Joss, for all her stubborn ways, toughness and confidence, had her breaking points too. This was one of them, and John was just glad that he'd had a sudden urge to stop by tonight and check up on her. She probably wouldn't have called him just to say she wanted to talk; she was very undemanding, rarely initiated conversation unless it was an emergency, and never would she have initiated contact on her own behalf. If he hadn't stopped by, she would have gotten drunk, saw herself home, then curled up in her own bed and cried herself to sleep. Alone. He held her as her sobs quieted into sleep, exhausted by the emotions of the day, and only when he heard her deep, gentle, rhythmic breaths and was convinced she was asleep did he untangle his arms from around her, settle her back into the couch cushions, then head for her linen closet for a blanket to tuck around her.
That done, he returned to the kitchen and sorted through the mess of papers on the table, figuring out which reports and paperwork went with which victim's folder. He studied the pictures carefully; sure enough, Carter was right. The ropes binding Annelise's arms to the cross were tied in a chain hitch, tied off at the wrist with a clove hitch, and few of your normal, run-of-the-mill killers would have thought to use these particular types of knots. Yes, kids were taught these types of knots in organizations like the Boy Scouts, but no mere Boy Scout would have remembered those knots so far into adulthood, and neither would they have been so proficient at tying them. This had to have been done by someone in the military, and also someone with medical knowledge.
The cut on Murray's belly had been precise; easy to do when she had been dead at the time the cut was made. But on the second victim, it was evident that the cut was equally precise even though the massive amounts of blood smeared on the dark skin of this second woman showed she had still been alive when the cut had been made. The hands, curled spasmodically into agonized claws, caught his attention next, and he studied them carefully, knowing why Joss felt so angry. The way in which the second victim was murdered had clearly been a step up from the first case, Carter's case, two years ago—Murray had been dead when the nails had been driven into her hands, and this was clearly not the case with the second.
He sat down, then, and read the coroner's report on Murray; asphyxiated on her own vomit, driven from her by a vicious beating about her face and head that, even if the killer hadn't chosen to murder her, would have likely produced irreversible brain damage. Anger surged in John; anger on the new, still-faceless victim's behalf, anger on Murray's behalf, and anger on Joss's behalf. Joss felt guilty that she hadn't tried harder to find Annelise Murray's killer; John was angry with himself. That night, two years ago, when Joss had met him at The Tavern, he'd been in a good mood, so had she, and he'd only skimmed the case folder, not paying much attention because he didn't want to ruin the evening.
Maybe if he had ruined that evening, Joss's evening wouldn't have been ruined tonight.
He was going to have a talk with Finch about why the Machine hadn't given them this new victim's number; why it hadn't given them Annelise's number. Or, if the killer had randomly picked these two women out, why the Machine hadn't given them the killer's number. John had no doubts that this was a serial killer, the two murders were too similar. The victims were apparently about the same age, and although at the time the crime scene photos had been taken the jacket hadn't been unwound from the second victim's head, John felt sure that they would find that she too had asphyxiated in her own vomit from a similarly severe, vicious beating. John was positive the killer was escalating, and that each killing had been carefully thought out and planned, yet the Machine had known nothing about it.
And as he studied the second victim's picture, a disturbing thought passed through his mind, and his fist closed involuntarily, so tight his knuckles whitened. He never noticed it. In his mind's eye, he saw Joss tied down, choking as she was beaten…
"No," he barely recognized his own fear-distorted whisper. "Not Joss." It was unlikely, highly unlikely; she was a cop, tough, capable, able to take care of herself, trained in self-defense by both police and military. But still his life had taught him that anything was possible, and while he couldn't imagine a situation where Joss would ever be this helpless, he still couldn't discount it altogether.
He'd lately been thinking of teaching her some of the more unorthodox moves that he knew, moves that hadn't come from any military training manual or civilian cop self-defense class. The dirty tricks that would win you a street fight and quite likely leave your opponent crippled, if not dead outright. And looking down at these pictures, and imagining Joss there—the two victims were about the same age, same body type, and one was an African American woman, with skin only a few shades lighter than Joss's own…no. It hurt too much for him to even think of her as a victim.
There were few things in his life that John Reese was afraid of, and none of them were for himself. And honestly, not much for Harold Finch, or Zoe Morgan, or Sam Shaw either. All of them had chosen to do what they did, outliers on the fringe of society, watching it but not part of it except insofar as they took out whoever was disturbing society. Joss Carter, though, was different. She was part of society, an integral part, and she touched so many lives, helped so many people, that yes, there would be a significant hole left if she were no longer a part of it. And although he didn't examine his own heart and soul too carefully, deep down inside he knew that if something happened to her there would be a wound left in his own soul.
Self-defense classes, then. Wonder if I can talk Shaw into giving Carter her Nano? Or get her one of her own? And I'm going to talk to Finch about this. Why didn't the Machine give us these women's numbers, or the killer's when he picked them out?
