CHAPTER 3 – Learning Truths
Charlie made it home and breathed a great sigh of relief. He stood at his kitchen window with a longneck beer in hand and dragged it across his forehead. The beads of sweat from the bottle moistened his face cooling it. The darkness in his head seemed like a fire in his brain. He thought of the bloodied body of the mangled child.
Children…he'd always wanted a house full of children. Back when he and Jen were together he'd imagined chubby little blonde toddlers with blue green eyes and cherubic smiles. It was a dream he held onto even while he rotted in that cell all those years in Crescent City. Children were innocent. They were to be protected, not broken, not battered, not brutalized.
He wanted to visit pain upon someone, but they did not yet know who that person was. Anger raged inside him with no outlet. He walked to the deck, unsettled and uncertain. He drained the beer and looked around the canyon as the sun lit the sky in chestnut and orange hues. The brick wall of his house warmed by the sun welcomed his angry blows. When he stopped it was dark, blood stained and his raw bleeding knuckles ached, but the anger was gone – for now.
Dani Reese stared at the evidence. They were nowhere but she refused to voice that thought aloud. She knew what Crews' response would be, "You can't be nowhere." It would make her grit her teeth so she didn't give voice to what she knew, to where they were.
Her partner sat quietly at his desk. His hands were in his lap, but she'd seen his knuckles and ached to ask who or what he'd beaten badly enough to do that to himself. He was conspicuously quiet, oddly so. He was still mired in the darkness that consumed him at the crime scene. He needed to feel useful, to be useful. But right now they had nothing to do and nowhere to go. Naturally that meant they needed to leave, especially before the new Captain saw Crews' hands.
"Come on, Crews. Let's go," she demanded.
"Where?" he mused softly.
"Anywhere but here," she brooked no argument.
They walked in silence to the car and she watched him flinch as he flexed the muscles of both his hands. Blood oozed from the scabbed knuckles. Charlie Crews would never do something as mundane as wear a Band-aid. His face transitioned from pain to a hard mask that hid any emotion and Dani felt the warm comfort of a fireplace in winter sitting next to him in the car. What did it say about her that when her partner was at his darkest, she felt most drawn to him?
"You wanna tell me what happened to your hands?"
"No," was all he said.
"Okay," she drew the word out stalling for an idea. Shit! She thought I'm not the talker of the team. The instant reaction most common to her seemed the correct one. So her old standby, anger, emerged. "Let me put this another way. Tell me what happened to your hands, Detective."
"Nothing happened," he said continuing to be aggravatingly obstinate.
"Hey, this doesn't work if you do sullen and withdrawn. That's my mood."
He smirked slightly at her mild attempt at humor. "I did this to myself," he admitted what she already knew.
Sarcasm dripped from her reply, "No kidding?"
He shot her an ugly look she'd never seen from him before.
"I know this case bothers you. What I don't know is why? You wanna tell me why?"
"No," he laughed darkly, "I really don't."
She had no response to that so they drove in silence and she reached for the radio to drown it out, when his hand on hers stopped her. His larger hand was warm as it enveloped hers, but the sight of his knuckles made her wince.
"It doesn't hurt anymore," he lied.
"Liar," she called him out but his hand stayed on hers until she withdrew it and carefully placed it on the steering wheel. She realized he was watching her reaction.
"I don't want to tell you," he started and then paused, "but I need to."
He began to talk in circles and she did not interrupt. She felt the fear edging at the corners of his speech, unspoken but there. He looped closer and closer to why this was personal for him, working his way to the point. She drove for a while aimlessly, but eventually parked the car and turned in her seat to give him her full attention.
He rambled and meandered, but the story was there and it was one she knew.
Abusive father, shy saint of a mother and their only offspring, a young recalcitrant child with a rebellious streak; it could have been her story. The lead actor in her story was a rambunctious dark haired girl instead of a lanky freckle faced red-haired boy; separated by almost ten years time but growing up in the same world. It was the story of every kid who grew up bullied at home by someone who picked on, belittled, bullied or abused a child to make themselves feel better.
As a child, she remembered wondering why people who obviously hated kids bothered to have them. Later, after the Academy, she'd learned that profound confidence problems sometimes manifested themselves in meanness and brutality.
Many cops' kids were abused, some physically, others verbally, often both.
It seemed counterintuitive in a cop, except that not all policemen were in that field because of their desire to protect the weak and abused. Some men were drawn to the supreme power and control a law enforcement officer exercises. It was a heady mix for a guy nursing a confidence problem – having a gun and a badge.
Charlie finished and stared out the windshield at the scene in front of him. "Any particular reason you brought us here?"
Dani looked up at the playground in front of her perplexed and shrugged; she hadn't given it conscious thought.
"Say something," he said in a voice that sounded an awful lot like a plea.
"You know I'm…ah, not good at talking, so…" she paused and looked sideways at him. "You're not the only one," she confessed. "My dad… you know…" she segued to what he knew intuitively.
"Hit you," he finished.
"Yep," she nodded, owning her unspoken admission. Their shared bond of battery lay between them made more real by the view through the windshield of children playing happily.
"Yet another reason to hate him," he said cryptically.
"For you or me?" she wondered aloud.
He snorted something that sounded like a failed laugh, but did not answer.
"Why'd you become a cop?" She wasn't conscious she'd spoken the question aloud.
"Is this really you and me talking?" he answered back. "Are we really having a conversation about something personal? Do I need to check and make sure you haven't been replaced by a robot?" he joked trying to close the topic having already revealed too much.
"Yep," she popped back, "and we're not done." His arched brow told her she was in dangerous territory. "You still haven't told me why you did that to yourself."
"Anger," he replied simply.
"I know that feeling," she looked into her lap.
"You hurt yourself too," he explained, "you just use someone else to do it." It was heartbreakingly honest and laid her bare.
"Okay," her ire rose to meet him, "so you know. Everyone knows. We aren't talking about me, we're talking about you."
"No, we're done talking." And with that he simply became an impenetrable fortress. His mask was back in place and even the most pointed glares simply bounced off him. Damn him, she thought, I don't want to care, and he makes me and then does this. It infuriated her. She started the car and drove with far more vigor than necessary.
"Reese," the gentleness of his tone drew her eyes, "I'm sorry. It's all I'm capable of for now. Let's just work the case?" She considered his offer and nodded her assent and with it her anger melted away like spring snow in the mountains.
"What do we know?" he began.
"Nothing," she replied bitterly.
His look was dangerous, as he held her eyes. "No what do 'we' know about people who hurt kids?" She got his meaning immediately.
"It's most likely someone they know," she professed.
"And someone they love," he finished. "Let's go see them." She nodded and steered them toward the family home.
