Monday found Bobby at his desk early, using the printer in the bullpen to print out various pieces of information he had collected relating to the 'Friday Crier'. He gathered information about the university's psychology alumnae, thinking she might be so comfortable in that library at that table because she had spent time there as a student. He tracked down all the references on the pieces of paper he collected from the wastebasket; he recognized some quotes from Bruener, and there were quotes from Williams, McGraw, and other prominent psychologists; there were also various song lyrics, all attributable to George Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass' album. He was researching local grief support groups when Eames arrived at her desk, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly as she sat down. Bobby looked up at her, noticing for the first time how uncomfortable she seemed to be in her own space. He wondered briefly if it was because her space was so close to his. He didn't like where that thought led him, so he redirected it.
"Eames, do you know if anyone here has guitar knowledge?" he asked.
Her eyebrows shot up. "Why? Did something come up on the Richardson case?" she replied.
"No, it's personal. Just wondered. It's not important, really," he countered. She took another deep breath and exhaled it slowly. "Want coffee?" he continued, standing.
"Sure," she replied, her eyes a bit unfocused, as if searching for something in her memory. When he returned, he saw that she had found it. "Ritchie plays guitar."
"Okay, thanks. If you don't mind, I'm gonna try and catch him before he heads out for the day."
She nodded, then opened the Richardson file. "I'm gonna verify our interview time with Miranda Phelps for this morning." Bobby nodded, stood up and grabbed a printout of a red guitar, then headed to Ritchie's desk.
As he approached, Ritchie eyed him warily; Goren imagined he could see sweat starting to appear on his balding head. He thought to himself, 'Okay, turn off thoughtful look that people find intimidating, approach with curiosity about his interests...' He forced a half-smile to his face as he approached. "Ritchie, I'm wondering what you can tell me about this guitar other than it's a 12-string Rickenbacker."
Ritchie's eyebrows rose. "It's a sweet axe. Yours?"
Goren smirked. "What I know about guitars would fit on the back of my business card with room to spare. A friend of a friend plays one like this, and I've been invited to a birthday party..."
"Ah, so you need a gift idea. Well, it's the modern version of George Harrison's guitar; does your friend's friend play a lot of Beatles tunes?"
Bobby thought about the song lyrics written on the pages on his desk and forgot to answer the question he'd been asked. "Would Harrison have used it on 'All Things Must Pass'? I know he plays stuff off that album..."
Ritchie shook his head in reply. "No, the Rick was strictly a 60's sound for Harrison; '64 to '66. When they stopped touring he stopped playing it."
Goren tilted his head as he absorbed that information. The he queried, "What do you get a guitarist you don't know all that well? What does every guitarist need?"
"Strings, man, especially with a 12-string," Ritchie replied. He scribbled on the back of a business card pulled from the holder on his desk. "I know a couple of vintage shops that stock good quality ones; if you don't find them there you can order them online." Bobby took the card Ritchie proffered. Ritchie tentatively offered a small smile. "Now you have two business cards worth of knowledge."
And then the strangest thing happened. Goren laughed.
**********************************
After finishing her phone call with Ms. Phelps, Alex turned to watch her partner wave his hands in concert with something he was saying to Ritchie. She was surprised by Goren's unusual chattiness this morning. She couldn't remember the last time he'd initiated a non-work related conversation with her, and even though it was an extremely short conversation, she took it as a sign of progress. Alex looked back to her computer, called up directions to the Phelps residence, and printed them out, in addition to some forms she needed to fill out for the case. She went to the printer, picked up her pages and a few printouts that had Bobby's name at the top, and walked back to their desks, sorting through them as she went. Then she noticed that Bobby's pages held information on local grief support groups. She froze, wondering if she should return them to the printer so that he wouldn't know she'd seen them; she didn't want to do anything to cause him embarrassment, keep him from getting help. Alex decided to shuffle them to the bottom of the stack and set them on his desk. As she walked over to do just that, she heard something. It was a sound she recognized, but hadn't heard in quite a while. Bobby was laughing.
Standing absolutely still, she turned her head to look at Ritchie's desk. She suddenly noticed that the squad room had quieted, and she wasn't the only one looking on as Bobby put a business card in his front coat pocket, thanked Ritchie, and then turned back toward his desk. She quickly moved from his side of the desk to hers, trying to keep the amazement at his good humor off her face.
"Is it quiet in here?" Bobby asked quizzically as he sat down at his desk.
"I hadn't noticed," she lied. "Are you ready to head out?"
Goren grabbed all the pages she'd brought back and placed them in his portfolio. He began rifling through the file folders on his desk. Alex held the Phelps file out to him. He nodded, taking it from her and adding it to his portfolio, then zipping it up and standing. "Ready to go."
She nodded back at him, took a quick look toward Ritchie, who seemed no worse for his encounter with Bobby, and then turned for the elevators.
***********************************
He stopped at the vintage guitar shops Ritchie had recommended. He discovered that Rickenbacker 12-strings weren't all that rare in New York City, and that neither of the places he stopped had easily accessible records of who had purchased packages of Rickenbacker strings. He also discovered that the visual style of that guitar hadn't changed much over its 30+ years of production, and without the video, he'd never be able to determine the year it was made in order to narrow the scope of his search. Bobby decided that this line of research had hit a dead end and he abandoned it.
Over the next few weeks, Bobby visited a few of the grief support groups on his printout, knowing he couldn't really ask around for the woman he sought, but hoping he'd luck into finding her. Although he was surprised to find it somewhat cathartic to listen to how others were dealing with their grief, he felt no compunction to share his own grief with the people in attendance. He realized he had an idealized notion of the woman in the library; that somehow she could help him, and that others could not. And yet, it was a feeling he couldn't shake off. So he continued looking for her.
In the end it was traditional legwork that brought her back into his sphere. He had made a special effort to visit the university library every Friday he could, his work causing him to miss only two Fridays in the past few months. As he had every time, he walked over to the shelf with the Bruener, checking to see if it was there. It was, as it had been every other time he checked. Then he circled around the floor, walking past the doors of the study room, not pausing as he glanced in each window.
And then he stopped. There she was. Just like the last time she had items spread all over the table. Just like last time, her head was down on the table and she looked as if she were asleep. Quite inappropriately, a humorous quote popped into his mind; "It's deja vu all over again."
A calm came over him, caused him to pause. How long has it been since he felt calm instead of despair? Even in the interview room, he had still felt an underlying sadness, hollowness. This was different. It was just... calm. Or it could be numbness. That wouldn't be a good thing. Better not to think too much about that. He tapped on, then opened the door.
"Get out," she said flatly, without looking up. Another wave of deja vu washed over him.
He knew she couldn't leave without picking up all the things she had strewn about - he had at least one minute to keep her there. He stepped in, moved to the chair opposite her, and sat down, placing his portfolio down on the table, elbows on either side, and lacing his hands in front of his lips he fired his opening salvo. "You can't intimidate me the way you have the young men who work here."
Refusing to take his bait, she sat up and began collecting her things; the photos shoved back in an envelope, a messenger bag pulled from under the table. He knew he had to get her talking. If she was talking, she wasn't leaving. Bobby paused, knowing what he would do next would truly be disruptive, and giving one more thought as to whether it was a good idea. He opened his portfolio, and brought out the copious notes he had made on parenting children through grief. The discarded pages he had harvested from the wastebasket were on top of the stack. She stopped. He saw her recognize her own handwriting; saw her eyes flash with fury. She brought her eyes up to him. The sharp look she had given him before was back; only this time instead of a feeling like a stick poking him, it felt like an entire tree. He had to draw upon every once of self-control not to flinch under her unwavering gaze. He kept his hands apart on the table, body posture open and inviting, hoping that it encouraged her to stay, even if she wasn't yet talking. He took a deep breath and forged ahead.
"You might get more out of newer psychology researchers; Tomiyama has focused most of her career on children and grief, and Tiemens has done a lot of work on parenting through grief," Bobby observed. "Why were you looking at Bruener and McGraw? Their research is way out of date - it's at least 25 years old. It doesn't deal with the realities of today's older parents and smaller families. I pulled some of the more relevant research for you..." He began pushing the stack of papers towards her.
Pointedly ignoring the stack of paper now sitting in the middle of the table, she finished packing. "I can't fathom why you think my family issues are any of your business," she seethed, then stood and slung the strap of the bag over her shoulder and turned toward the door.
Before she could open it, however, Bobby walked over and placed his hand on it, making it impossible for her to continue out the door. She stood, hand on the door handle, eyes staring at his hand on the door, her irritation barely held in check. "Remove your hand," she bit out. When Bobby did not make any movement, she added in an even more acid tone, "Please."
"Wait," he started, standing behind her, and only able to see the back of her head, "I just wanted to talk..."
"Look, Professor," she snarled, "I'm not some charity case, and the last thing I want to do is talk about it."
"I'm not a professor; I'm a detective," he snapped back. "I'm in therapy so I can stay on the job. The man I talk to hasn't lost the person that..." Here he stopped, struggling with the next word, "...defined him. When I saw you here a couple of months ago, I thought to myself that you looked as tormented as I felt." He heard her intake of breath, and wondered if he was finally making a connection with her. With his hand still on the door, he leaned forward, tilting his head so that he could see her profile. Her face was a blank, as if her thoughts were far away, but her hand was shaking on the handle of the door.
"I don't want to 'share' with a counselor, I want to talk with someone who knows what hell feels like. So I've been looking for you." With his free hand he rubbed the back of his neck, hoping what he'd shared would be enough to convince her to stay; he honestly couldn't think of anything else he wanted to reveal before she agreed to stay and listen, so he pushed his hand off the door, and moved back to the far side of the table. He would have paced if there had been enough space in the small room, but since there wasn't, he stood there, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, waiting for her reaction. She was quiet for what felt like an hour, but couldn't have been longer than a minute. He started to panic a bit, wondered what else he could say, when her voice cut through his swirling thoughts.
"Who was it?" she asked, without turning around.
Bobby froze in place, wondering why the hell he'd started this in the first place. He sat at the table and rubbed his forehead with his hand. Knowing it was too late to change his mind now, he answered. "Who did I lose? My mother. She, uh, she had schizophrenia. And cancer. I've been the son of a sick woman almost all my life. The dutiful, responsible son. Now she's gone, and I can't..." he trailed off. "I'm not... I don't know how to be just me. Without her."
She turned to face him, tears beginning to gather in the corner of her eyes. She squinted, as if to will them into non-existence. "My daughter would say that what you have is a great big ball of suck."
Bobby tilted his head at the unusual idiom. Then he slowly nodded. "Well, suck must be an avalanche running downhill, because everything has gone straight to hell since she died. My brother was killed recently, and my old mentor had a hand in his death. I don't enjoy my job anymore. I've lost everything that made me who I am. I often wonder if dying would be easier than living through this shit."
She sat, then nodded. "I wonder that, too, sometimes. I don't know what you expect me to be able to do for you. I'm barely handling my own life as it is."
"I don't know that I want you to do anything for me. I just felt connected to you, somehow. You made me think of my mom before she got very sick. Right after I met you, I was able to laugh for the first time in in what seems like forever. I don't know why. I thought if I saw you again..."
"...you'd feel all better?" She tried to smile, but it came out as more of a grimace.
"...that I could help you somehow." He motioned toward the stack of papers still sitting in the middle of the table. She glanced at it warily. "I pulled all this research, because I knew where to find good information on children and grief. I don't know if it will be of any use to you. Maybe knowing you helped someone else would help you. I can't really explain my motivation. I haven't looked at it too closely."
She took a deep breath. He reflected that everyone seemed to be breathing deeply around him lately. She placed her hand on the stack of papers, pulled them to her; she raised her eyes up to meet his. "Thank you for this."
He looked away, folded his hands together on the table. "Where are your kids now?" he wondered.
She looked at his hands, sniffed away another tear. "With my mother-in-law. She works in the Administration Building next door. She takes them for a weekend once a month. They're all she has left of her son."
Bobby nodded. Now her choice of the library made perfect sense. Since she had opened up to him once, he wondered if she'd do it again. "Your daughter looks like your husband. Does that make it tougher on you, to see him in her every day?" he queried.
"Some days. Other days it's a comfort to us both."
The question that had burned within him since their last meeting came next. "Why did you ask me if I could play guitar?"
The address system above their heads crackled to life, announcing that the library would be closing in 10 minutes.
She stood and quickly stated, "Time's up."
He stood also, but pressed on with his questions as she gathered her things. "It just seems like an odd question. Here I interrupted your space, and you wanted to know if I had something in common with the person you were grieving for. Not the choice a lot of people would have made." Bobby's eyebrows now folded on themselves, causing deep furrows. "Did you want to talk about music? Did you want to talk about how well he played, what he liked to play? Is it the only subject you can focus on and feel some sort of happiness about?" He paused, waiting to see if she would respond. When she didn't, he continued; "I don't have to be able to play to..."
She interrupted him, her words coming out in a rush, laced with layers of emotion. "You have hands like his. That's why I asked you. Your hands look like his." Her hand slammed over her mouth after this revelation, as if holding in her words would somehow stop the anguish she felt.
Bobby took a step back at the maelstrom of emotions radiating from her. He could see the love she felt for her husband, the anger at being left behind, the guilt she felt for being angry; he wondered how she managed them all. Hell, he knew he hadn't managed to handle similar emotions regarding his mother.
She closed her eyes, trying to gain some control over her pained expression. After a few moments, she dropped her hand from her mouth and opened her eyes. She looked at his right hand, holding his portfolio. "I loved his hands." Her voice cracked as she said this, and Bobby felt a lump form in his throat. She turned and left the room without saying another word.
He thought about following her, but he figured he had caused enough trauma today. He wondered how long it would take her to find his contact information, which he'd written down in the notes he'd copied for her. He wasn't sure that she'd call him even if she did find it. He would have to be content with the thought that she had his information and would contact him if she wanted to. That would just have to be enough.
He realized he'd forgotten to ask her her name. He shook his head, snorted at his own self-involvement, and left the room.
