Killing Game

By Kadi

Rated T

Disclaimer: This is only a sandbox that I like to play in. Sadly, it is not mine.


Chapter 3

The trip downtown was made in silence. The Lieutenant had only just pulled the Explorer into his usual parking space when the Captain's phone rang. It was Detective Sanchez; Doctor Morales was ready for them. The Lieutenant offered to go in her stead, and for just a moment Sharon wavered and almost agreed. It only took a second, barely the space of a breath, but she shook her head at him instead.

"No," she told him. "I need you in the Murder Room." He looked like he would argue, but Sharon offered a small smile. "Check on the security footage download. Make sure that Lieutenant Tao and Buzz have not gotten distracted."

He seemed only too pleased to do just that, and so Sharon parted with him in the parking garage and made her way to the morgue.

It was not a place that she was particularly fond of, but then who was? She hated it. Despised it even, and everything that it stood for. The darkness of the walls, the dim lighting, the smells and the way every sound seemed to echo, it all heralded a single feeling. Loss. This place represented a light that had burned out too soon. It was darkness and despair, hatred, greed, and jealousy. Sharon always felt cold in the morgue, and that had little to do with the fact that the temperatures were kept low for obvious reasons.

She was usually able to push it out of her mind. It was a necessary part of her job, the visits that were made here. Someone had to speak for their victims, and this was the place where that began. That was a thought that she tried to focus on now. Doctor Morales was very good at opening those dialogues, even in his own quirky and sarcastic way. She understood his temperament. He was with this destruction all day. He saw the worst that humanity could accomplish and he was called upon to make sense of it, to give them facts and a starting point to find those responsible. If they thought that their jobs were difficult, she could not imagine what the doctor must feel at being called upon so often. He was the voice of their dead. Sharon wondered if anyone ever bothered to express to him that he was appreciated?

Detective Sanchez was waiting for her at the end of the corridor, outside the entrance to the autopsy room. He was already robed in one of the blue, sterile paper smocks. A frown drew his brows together as she neared. When the captain reached for one of the smocks on the shelf that lined the wall, he shook his head at her. "Captain, I can go in and talk to the doctor. You don't have to be here." No one expected her to be there for Morales's presentation. That was asking a lot, even for the Captain.

"Yes I do." Sharon glanced at the detective and then concentrated on pulling on the sterile drape. "I appreciate the offer, Detective, but I would hardly be doing my job if I allowed myself to skip this." Sharon shook her head. "That is what Sergeant Elliot needs from me now. It is what he would expect, and it is what I expect of myself." She reached behind her back and tied the smock before she let her arms drop. She offered the scowling detective a small smile. "Julio, it is going to be okay." Knowing the victim made it more difficult, there was no reason to attempt to deny that, but this was another case. It was another day, and they had things to do. Miles to go before they slept.

He didn't think that she believed that. Julio didn't believe it either. What was okay in a situation like this? Sometimes he wondered at the senseless nature of it all. In a matter of minutes, seconds really, two lives could end. One person would be dead, another would be going to jail, and so many others would be affected by all of it. Friends and family on both sides of the murder would be forever damaged, always changed, and always lacking. It never ended. They had a reason to come to work because people in the world insisted on hurting others. It really was a hard job. Who else could understand it but the people that they worked with? That is what made it worse when they had to investigate the death of another officer.

Julio sighed. He took a half step back and turned. He waved a hand toward the door that was separating them from the body of Sergeant Matthew Elliot. "Yes ma'am," he said quietly. "Doc is waiting on us." He really didn't want to let her go in there, but short of body blocking her, Julio didn't think that there was anything that he could do to stop what was about to happen. He understood why she felt like she needed to do it, but this was going to be hell, and wasn't it his job to protect good people from bad things?

Sharon walked forward but stopped beside him. She laid a hand on his arm. "Thank you, Julio." She spoke quietly and gave his arm a squeeze. He nodded only once. He wasn't pleased, but he wasn't going to fight her on this. There was a time, when she was much younger and felt as though she needed to prove herself as an officer, that she would have resented the attempt. She would have challenged him, rather than accepting his help and taking it as the sign of respect and assistance that it was meant to be. She would not have been able to look beyond her own arrogance to see that at the heart of it all, Julio was a natural protector and while that sometimes got him into trouble, she would never want to change him. With Julio it was a matter of channeling that energy, directing it in a more positive way. This was something that he was learning, and doing very well at, even as he came to terms with the demons of his past that pushed against his ability to control himself.

The temperature around them shifted, and so too did Sharon's thoughts as they stepped into the dimly lit autopsy room. It was cooler here, a necessary requirement for the room, but she couldn't help but think that it and the lack of lighting, reflected the dark nature of the room's purpose. Her gaze circled the room. She wasn't ready yet to look at the sheet draped figure on the steel table in front of them. She eventually spotted the doctor. He was standing near the workbench, making notes in a file. As they stepped further into the room, he looked up.

"Ah, Captain. I was beginning to wonder if we would see you." Morales put his pen down and turned toward the table in the center of the room. He started to walk toward it, but when he realized that she was attempting to look at anything but that table, he stopped. He glanced at the Detective beside her. If it was possible, Sanchez was looking even more pensive than usual. The Detective was staring at him. It was almost as if he was daring him to do something, or to say something, that might give him a reason to release his pent up concern. Morales resisted the urge to roll his eyes. It was a difficult situation but he was not going to make it worse. He let his attention move back to the Captain instead. He inclined his head at her. "I am very sorry, Captain. I know that you were close to the Sergeant. This isn't going to be easy."

No, but it had to be done. "Thank you, Doctor." Sharon took a step forward, and then another, until she came to a stop beside the table. Her gaze moved slowly along the prone body, beginning at the Sergeant's feet. The doctor had moved as quickly as he could, she realized, or as he dared, considering that the tell-tale signs of an autopsy were already present, along with the fact that he had put the body back together… at least in so much as was possible at this stage. Sharon crossed her arms over her chest. In death he was so still. She remembered the Sergeant being full of energy. He could rarely sit still. He always had to be active, whether it was physical or mental. He was one of those people who needed to have several tasks going on at once. Sharon recalled that she found it alarming when he first came to work for her. She could not understand how, while she was training him, that he could be listening to her while simultaneously paging through old reports or looking up over night sports scores. He would read reports while running on a treadmill or listen to an audiobook while writing his reports, and because she could never find any fault in his actual work, she just allowed it.

Sharon knew that his time off was spent being just as active. Matthew always had to be going. He wasn't going anywhere now. She gritted her teeth at the sight of the familiar y-incision that marred his torso, along with the puckered and raised skin around the single bullet entry to the left side of the midline. That wound would have been enough to end his life, but it was not alone. Her gaze travelled further upward. His face was slack, and thankfully his eyes were closed, but the left side of his head, just above his ear was slightly indented inward. The doctor had shaved the area immediately around the bullet hole. Sharon didn't want to think about the other side of his head, but she forced herself to look. The sergeant's skull had been blown outward and was missing a large chunk to the back right of his head. Her hands clenched tightly around her upper arms as her stomach churned. Sharon forced herself to look away and instead focused intently upon the doctor. "What did you find?"

If her voice was thicker, lower than normal, the doctor ignored it. He shared a look with the detective before gestured to the body in front of them. "Two entry wounds and a single exit," he began. "The wounds were received at roughly the same time, so I can't tell you what order they came in, but…" He reached for one of the trajectory sticks. "As your detectives surmised, and Kendall agreed, the body was not moved after the Sergeant was shot." He placed the stick at the opening of the chest wound and stopped. Morales looked up at them. He met the Captain's gaze. "You may want to cover your ears."

The captain's back straightened but she didn't move. Sanchez stepped up beside her. "Just do it." His dark eyes were hooded and held a warning. Be quick about it, he thought. The sooner they were out of there, the better.

Fernando didn't say anymore on the matter. He had tried. He knew that the Captain was sensitive to sight or smell. He wouldn't call her squeamish, exactly, but she didn't always appreciate the things that went on in his morgue. He tried to take heed of that during the more sensitive cases, specifically with children or abuse victims, the ones that he knew were harder on some officers than others. It wasn't only with her that he attempted to be mindful, as he reminded them quite often, he didn't work for them. Morales slipped the trajectory meter into the entry wound and worked it through the path that the bullet had taken. As he expected, the usual sounds came from the body, the squish of tissues and organs being pushed aside, and the sound of those parts sliding against the plastic of the thin stick.

Sharon stared hard at the stick as it moved into the body. Her nails bit into her upper arms. She swallowed back the bile that was rising in her throat and arched a brow as the trajectory meter was put into place. She took a step to one side and tilted her head. "It confirms that he was sitting," she said.

"Yes." Morales straightened and stepped back. "The Sergeant was seated in his car and his body was angled a bit toward the window, I would guess. I say that, not just because of this bullet path, but the other." He wouldn't use a trajectory measure this time. That would just be cruel. Morales pointed to the entry wound above the Sergeant's left ear. "The bullet entered at an angle, and exited toward the back…"

"But the front passenger window was shattered," Sanchez finished, "and not the back." He frowned at the body. "Like this…" He walked around and grabbed a chair from the workbench. Julio rolled it over near the table and then grabbed Morales's shoulders. He maneuvered the medical examiner into the chair, and ignored his scowl, then turned his body slightly. "He was seated behind the wheel of his car," Julio said, and gestured to where that would be. "But someone was standing at his window." He moved alongside Morales. "Unless you are bending down, you can't really see who you're talking to. So whoever it was, would have been standing like this." He did a half pivot back and twisted his body so that he was angled toward Morales and the back passenger side of the car.

"There's a mirror here," Morales said and turned his body slightly so that he was half facing where the window of the car would have been. "I want to make sure that I'm facing you, because I'm listening to what you are telling me. I still have my seatbelt on," he pointed out to the detective.

"Right. So you must know me, because you put your window down, and we probably aren't arguing because you haven't reached for your service weapon," Sanchez stated.

"Which was still in the center console of the Sergeant's car," Sharon stated, recalling from memory where Matthew kept it when he was off duty. She walked around the table and stood next to the two men. "It was within easy reach, but it did not look as if he had gone for it."

"That's right," Julio agreed. "His badge and ID were in the console too. The Sergeant never reached for either, ma'am. He was taken by surprise. He was talking to his assailant and then…" He lifted his arms and pantomimed firing off two shots, without the verbal sound effects he normally would have used. "One in the chest, and one in the head."

"Then our killer policed his brass," Sharon pointed out. "There were no casings found at the crime scene." She turned toward Morales. "What caliber was the bullet that you extracted from the body?"

"Your run of the mill .45," he stated. "Nothing at all special about it." Morales held up the evidence bag that the bullet had been placed in and passed it to Detective Sanchez.

"Same caliber as the bullet that we pulled out of the neighboring vehicle at the scene," Julio told her.

"Hm." Sharon let her gaze drift as she thought about it. They would take the bullet that Morales extracted to SID, but she was sure that they would find that it matched the other bullet that they retrieved. The bullets were left behind, but not the casings. Two kill shots, and the Sergeant had obviously known whom he was speaking to. Sharon's jaw clenched again. "Thank you Doctor," she stated. "I think we have what we need. Detective…" Now she wanted to get out of there, and quickly. Sharon did not like the direction that her thoughts were taking.

"Yeah." Julio continued to stare at the doctor. "Thanks, Doc."

Morales watched them go with a frown. When he was alone again, he looked at the body on his table. "Pity the fool that gets in her way with that one around."

Outside in the hall, both officers began pulling off their sterile drapes. Sharon had only managed to get hers half untied when she realized that it felt as if it was smothering her. She tugged at the paper garment and ripped the ties apart before jerking it from her body. She quickly wadded it into ball and pushed it into the trash. "Excuse me for a moment, Detective." The words were barely out of her mouth before she was walking away from him, to the ladies room at the end of the hall. Her feet carried her at a clipped pace, and her heels echoed loudly in the morgue corridor. The sound of it filled her ears. She concentrated on that and not the sudden heat that she felt rising up her chest and into her neck.

The moment that she was alone inside the ladies room Sharon braced herself against the sink and leaned over it. She turned the faucet on, and made sure that the water was set to cool. Her eyes closed and she finally drew in a long, shuddering breath. It caught in her throat and she almost gagged on it. She pressed her eyes more tightly closed and swallowed past it. The ache in her throat throbbed painfully. She pressed her hand into the cold water and let it coat her skin. Then she laid it against the back of her neck and tried to concentrate on breathing.

Having her eyes closed, she realized too late, was a mistake. A jumble of images collided together. She could see the Sergeant slumped dead in his car, and then laid out on the morgue table as she had just left him. She heard the sounds that his body made as it was manipulated for their investigation and thought that she might actually be sick.

"Try this instead."

The voice startled her. Sharon looked up and found the Detective standing nearby. She blinked at him a couple of times before she accepted the folded napkins. They were already wet and cool. Sharon averted her gaze and looked down at the item in hand. She straightened and shook her hair back. Her eyes closed again. She turned off the faucet before stepping back. Then she turned and backed up against the wall opposite him. Sharon kept her head tilted back, but her fingers closed around the wet napkins, holding on in case she needed them after all.

It had only taken Julio about half a second to decide that he should follow her. He hadn't let himself waver or think about it. He leaned against the wall behind him and folded his hands in front of him. The lights in the ladies room were much brighter. The fluorescents overhead almost hurt his eyes after the low lighting in the hall and autopsy room. Beneath them the Captain looked even worse, almost gray in her sudden, blanched appearance. It was a lot to handle, this particular case. Not that many of their cases were all that easy, they usually weren't, but they also didn't usually know their victims. The captain came from a department where they did usually know their suspects, though. Julio couldn't help but wonder if that was why and how Elliot had been taken so off guard when he was killed.

At the moment he wondered if maybe the Captain was trying too hard to pull herself together, mainly because he was there. He shook his head. "Better?"

"Yes, I think so." The room was no longer spinning around her. Sharon lifted her gaze to the harsh fluorescent lights above them. She exhaled quietly. "Thank you, Julio. It has been a difficult night."

"It's going to get harder," he said quietly. Julio continued to watch her. "I think we both know what probably happened."

Sharon's gaze fell to the Detective. His dark eyes were burning intensely at her. There was the promise of vengeance in them. Her brow arched. "Do we?" She shook her head at him. "Julio, we have only just started piecing this night together. Just because Sergeant Elliot appeared to have known his killer does not mean that it was another police officer."

"No." Julio agreed. "But who else would have picked up their casings? The bullets are from a .45, and that is common enough to find on the street. Whoever the shooter was, he wasn't too worried about leaving them behind. The casings…"

There could be prints on the casings and they both knew it. Who besides an officer, or former officer, would have the knowledge or wherewithal to worry about that? Sharon's brows drew together in a frown. "He was off duty," Sharon said, "and on his way home…"

"The shooter had to know where he would go before he went home. He killed him there instead of in his driveway." Julio blinked once. "There was less chance of being seen or getting caught if he waited until the Sergeant got home. He kept it away from the Sergeant's family, didn't involve them."

Sharon's eyes fell to the tiled floor between them. She stared at the plain, gray patterns, and while her eyes tried to make sense of the shapes in the grout, her mind worked over what the Detective said. She had weathered a lot of threats during her time with Professional Standards. They either came in anonymously or got delivered in person. Most of the time, they were delivered in person. "When you investigate other police officers," she stated, "they tend to hold a grudge. There is a line that exists between Professional Standards and other divisions. Once it is drawn, it is almost impossible to cross. No one likes to be disciplined or reprimanded; no one wants to be told that they are doing the job that they love wrong. None of us appreciate having our mistakes pointed out to us, or to our superiors. Recommending another officer for disciplinary action, or even termination, is not a simple matter. There are a number of steps that need to be completed first and only specific actions for which termination is immediately warranted. It is not impossible that this was a revenge killing." Sharon just didn't want to believe that was the case. "Your point is valid, and seems to support that. I received my share of threats over the years. None of them were ever made against my family. I was the source of the anger, and that is usually all that it is. Those situations always resolve themselves and go away in time."

"Us and them." Julio continued to watch her. "That is how it has always felt. We go out and do the hard stuff. We find the scumbags and lock them away. We get shot at, sued, and raked over the coals by brass and reporters. Then here comes IA poking their noses into everything and trying to tell us how to do it better." He sighed quietly. "So it always feels like it's us and them."

"Exactly." Sharon stared back at him, just as intently. He wasn't judging, simply stating the truth. She had felt a little like that since transferring to Major Crimes. Not necessarily in the same way he voiced, but the line was there. She had stepped across it and it had been shored up behind her. "I told Lieutenant Provenza earlier this evening that I tried very hard to maintain a distance from the people that I worked with, but it wasn't possible. In large part because of what you just described. Working in Professional Standards is not easy. It can make you feel insulated, cut off from the rest of the department. There is a certain level of objectivity that is required, but on the whole, PSB always felt like a small police department all it's own within the LAPD. Unfortunately it is a necessary evil." Sharon shook her head. "If it were not for past transgressions, that seem to be repeated over, and over again, rather than being learned from, there would be no need of such a division. FID came out of a public outcry to make officers accountable for the level of force used during arrests and confrontations. Too often in the past we have had trigger-happy rookies and arrogant long-standing officers who have felt as if their badges put them above the law. I told Chief Johnson once that FID would exist as long as it continued to be needed, and as long as there was no better solution. Sergeant Elliot felt that way too. Not everyone can work inside Professional Standards. It takes…" Sharon shrugged. She gestured with her hands as she tried to find the right words. "Not just a certain level of ethical value, but a kind of…"

"Thick skin?" Julio stepped away from the wall. "Someone who can take the crap and not react to it, just keep moving forward and doing the right thing? Even when the rest of us think it's all a load of crap." He tilted his head at her in askance.

"Something like that, yes." Sharon managed a small smile. "When we recruit into Professional Standards we are looking for a certain type of officer. Thick skinned, but also one who values everything that this department stands for above his or her own reputation. Someone who believes that protecting the public can also mean protecting the public from us too. Sergeant Elliot understood that we were, none of us, above the law that we are here to defend."

Julio looked down for a moment. He thought back over his own troubles and then further back, to other instances where FID and Professional Standards had been involved in his work. "No one ever says thank you when you protect them from themselves," he pointed out. "You're right, no one likes Professional Standards, and we really don't like FID…" The corner of his mouth twitched toward an almost smile. "But we need them. To stop us when we can't stop ourselves. To protect us from things we can't see. It's not just about protecting the public." He shrugged at her. "We're the public too."

Her answer was a soft smile. Sharon knew that Julio understood it now. They had several long talks while he was on suspension the previous year. He was angry at first, and hard to reach. Nearer to the end of his suspension, he had finally started to open up to her. He could see where he had gone wrong, even if he couldn't fully understand why yet. He was still working hard, she knew, to maintain the tight grip that he had on his temper now. One of his greatest strengths and talents as an officer was his ability to make it appear as if he was pushing the line, to enforce and intimidate without overstepping. He stumbled just a bit, for a time, but she felt like he was back on solid ground again. "So at the very least," she said, "we should be looking for a former officer, perhaps someone that the Sergeant recommended for termination given the nature of the shooting and how we believe that it occurred."

"Someone he didn't feel threatened by," Julio pointed out, "but yes. We should have the security footage back by now. Maybe we got lucky. The car could have been in view of the camera."

"We should pull the footage from the traffic cameras at both ends of the street," Sharon decided. "If the gym cameras didn't pick anything up, we might be able to pull something from the traffic cams and cross reference those with any cases that the Sergeant worked recently."

Julio's brows shot up. "Can we do that?" There was a certain level of confidentiality that existed around Professional Standards. He didn't know of any case where another division had managed to pull data from one of their cases.

Sharon mimicked his expression. Her head inclined. "Detective, who is going to stop me?"

Julio's mouth snapped closed. A small smile curved his lips. He folded his hands together in front of him again. "That is a very good point, ma'am." He couldn't think of a single person that would attempt it, and was reminded that she had come by every single one of her nicknames honestly. As they left the ladies room Julio held out a set of keys. "I drove your car back ma'am. It's parked in its usual spot." He left his service vehicle with patrol. They would see that it was delivered back to the PAB when the crime scene was closed.

"Thank you, Julio." Sharon palmed the keys and slipped them into her pocket. She left the keys with Andy when she left the crime scene with Provenza. She expected that he would drive it back, but then realized he probably sent it with Julio since closing out a crime scene like this one could take a while. Everyone wanted to make sure that nothing was missed.

"Ma'am." Julio followed her to the elevator. When they stepped into it, he slanted a look at her. "I'm very sorry about Sergeant Elliot. He was my favorite."

Sharon lifted her gaze to the digital reader above the door under the guise of forcing back the tears that suddenly stung her eyes. "Yes, Detective. He was mine too."

-TBC-