It was discriminatory to suspect the Maxwell family on the basis of them being rich, so Lassiter instead suspected them on the basis that he disliked every single one of them personally. He'd seen firsthand the miracles people with resources could accomplish. The stolen wedding ring case had about a dozen suspects whose primary excuses seemed to range between 'drunk' and 'missing because drunk'. With a little bit of ingenuity – a few greased palms, a little bit of wealth and influence to smooth the way – someone could have easily constructed a replica of the room where the crime took place. It wasn't implausible. It was batshit, but it wasn't implausible.
Lassiter had made a successful career out of following up on batshit-but-not-implausible leads, so he wrote up six separate drafts to make sure he wasn't batshit. At the end of the day, the theory did cover most of his bases. The crime was committed in front of video surveillance, but to have nothing on the tapes, no evidence of tampering… it was just too much to swallow. Barring 'theft by ghost' or 'sentient and malicious AI', a duplicate room created by a family with millions to burn no longer seemed so crazy.
He burned some cash of his own booking a suite at the De La Cruz, choosing the room right above the Maxwell wedding party. He ordered a chef salad from the kitchens and re-watched the security tapes for another hour while he parceled his croutons away from his grape tomatoes. The more he viewed the unbroken footage, the more his theory seemed to fall in place. Sure it was a little out there, but it fit. He'd come up with a lead, and he hadn't needed uppity junior partners or psychics or Interim Chief Vick breathing over his shoulder in order to figure it out.
Freshly energized, Lassiter wrapped up his investigation and called for a conference. By the end of the debriefing, the hairs on the back of his neck were up and his ears were flushed and he could have easily killed the next person who laughed, except no one else heard laughing. The laughter was apparently all in his head, and that did a lot worse than make him angry. It terrified him. "Listen, Carlton, I know how you feel about… outsourcing," O'Hara said tentatively as the rest of the officers filed out of the room. "But maybe we should… I don't know, start thinking outside the box? I mean, Shawn's had really close contact with the people involved. Whether he's psychic or not, he can still read guilt, can't he? Maybe if we had a different perspective, just for profiling purposes—"
"O'Hara." If life were fair, he'd have already gotten a promotion based solely on the fact that everyone around him was alive when he really wanted everyone around him to be dead. "If you mention that name one more time today, I swear by everything that is holy that I will stand in front of the altar on this couple's wedding day and dredge up every grisly crime statistic I have memorized while they're trying to recite their vows."
O'Hara shut up immediately, proving once again that a.) he didn't need a profiler to do his job for him and b.) he didn't need to threaten to kill someone to make his point. Also that he was getting to know her well enough to know which buttons to push, and that in its own way was just as terrifying as losing his mind.
When he went back to the front desk, the receptionist flagged him down and informed him he'd racked up over three hundred dollars on room service. Lassiter's first thought was the salad wasn't that good, and then the other pieces fell into place in his head, marking the third closest time Carlton Lassiter ever came to committing murder.
.
His inner sadist was weirdly pleased when Spencer stood up during the wedding to announce he'd found the ring. He'd been occupied trying to figure out how to drag Spencer out and kill him without disrupting the ceremony, but now that it was already disrupted, there was no propriety left to stop him.
He started forward with a hand on his gun and was stopped by an expert shift of O'Hara's weight. O'Hara was quietly radioing the chief, eyes trained on Spencer, and suddenly, in the midst of all the other stupid things happening in the room, Lassiter realized that he didn't know why he'd come in in the first place.
Why am I here. He listened to Spencer count down the clues he'd missed, watching Lacie grow more and more agitated and defensive under the scrutiny. Strangely, Lassiter's saltiest thoughts were for the now-useless character information he'd plugged into his head. Maiden names, middle names, confirmation names, birthdays, who missed what Christmas what year for what reason, who stood up whom in whose prom, who got drunk on Easter and barfed into the basket of eggs. He'd watched the surveillance videos so many times it'd stained his dreams monochrome, and in the end none of it had mattered. He hadn't mattered.
Lacie abruptly bolted, and Lassiter derailed his own train of misery long enough to get her into handcuffs. The action jarred him enough to bring back some agency. He passed Lacie off to the nearest officer, seized Spencer's arm, and steered him directly back to the front desk. He was going to get somebody for something. Impersonation, theft, trespassing, expired license, busted taillight, anything. Anything that would stick. Anything that would wipe the smirk off Spencer's face. "Do you recognize this man?" he demanded.
The men at the desk looked at each other for a long moment, then shrugged, avoiding eye contact with him. Once again Lassiter's world dismantled brick by brick, until the mortar crumbled and the dust swirled between his ears like static.
.
He let muscle memory take over for the evening. Whiteboard erased, post-its peeled off his monitor, photo evidence organized on the edge of his desk to return to filing, scribbled shorthand notes only he could decipher stacked in a pile next to his mousepad. When everything that could fit into a clasped envelope was sealed away, Lassiter rolled up his sleeves and purposefully let himself go off the rails.
He cleaned his monitor with a microfiber cloth to get the dust off the top and sides, then fetched a damp cloth to clean the screen and a third cloth to dry it before the water could smear. He blew his keyboard clean with a can of air, retaped the straw to the side of the can, set the can sideways in his bottom drawer, and went to work cleaning his mouse. After five minutes of digging still couldn't pry the grime from the groove between the buttons, he fetched a Q-Tip from the medical supply closet and spelunked until the neck of it bent in half. When the mouse gleamed like new, he got out his nail trimmers and cleaned up the fraying fibrous ends of his mousepad, then arranged the mouse so it sat front and center. He tucked the keyboard under the monitor, drew it back out again, straightened it, turned the monitor so it faced forward, and eyeballed the distance between the two until he decided he needed a ruler to make sure it was exact. Once he'd gotten it perfectly perpendicular, he shoved it all to the side so he could polish the wood.
"Okay, enough," Vick interrupted from the door of her office when Lassiter started shaking down a stray custodial cart for wood polish. "This is like watching Rain Man on cocaine. Go home."
"You could close the shades." There was glass cleaner but not wood polish, which made Lassiter question everything the cleaning staff had been doing for the past eleven years. "Or swivel your chair around to face the wall."
"I'm going to excuse that egregious insubordination as evidence that you're exhausted and need sleep," Vick said. "Go home, now. Take tomorrow off if you need it. Either way, you're welcome to leave the attitude at home."
Lassiter shoved the rest of the unsorted items into his drawer. His desk was impeccably arranged but that probably wasn't the point. It'd just be piled with new irritants tomorrow morning. He returned the ruler from where he'd stolen it, then came back to the last task of shutting down his computer. The monitor had gone idle as he'd worked, sporting a blue screensaver with a rolling bar of white text.
For the first time in what felt like days, Lassiter slowed to a stop. Professional as she'd been with him at work, Lucinda had made little games of fussing with his computer when he was away from it. Moving icons, changing his screensavers to puppies or floating sprinkled donuts, leaving him coded messages on the scrolling marquee function. The messages would be written using a different code each time, but it'd seldom taken him more than a day or two to puzzle them out. The last challenge she'd left for him had been two days before she'd transferred: a riddle about an egg using basic number substitution with a little arithmetic thrown in.
Looking at the jumble of letters and numbers rolling across his screen, Lassiter honestly couldn't remember if he'd told her the answer. She'd been gone for over a month now and had likely forgotten about it, but it suddenly seemed extremely important. Had he told her in person, or sent an e-mail?
Consumed with an irrational need to see whether or not he'd followed through, Lassiter took a seat and nudged the screensaver away with his mouse. His fingers flew through his e-mail login, and just like that the unopened e-mails he'd been avoiding for the past several weeks unfolded before him. Within a deluge of inter-departmental notifications sat a single personal e-mail: Re: dinner on Friday.
… that was a problem. Before now, there'd been important and legitimate reasons why he couldn't be expected to give a damn. Now that he was unencumbered and his masochism was knocking full-force against the bastion of his sanity, Lassiter found he'd run out of excuses.
He clicked on it, highlighted and changed the annoying cursive font to Times New Roman size 10, and read it.
Carlton,
As I'm sure I mentioned to you, I'm overseas on business and won't be back until next month, making it impossible to have dinner with you on Friday. Considering both that and the disaster that happened last time we decided to have dinner in the same zip code, I'll have to decline.
I was sorry to hear about Lucinda's transfer. I was even sorrier when she didn't give me a reason for the transfer. Considering she wasn't formally disciplined and didn't seem happy to leave, and knowing what I know about you, I'm led to a few unflattering conclusions.
Carlton, the two years we've spent apart have been two of the happiest, most productive, most enriching years of my life. I've taken up new hobbies, I've traveled, I've made new friends. I'm even trying to publish. I've redefined my own definition of happiness. At first I thought it was the novelty of the separation, of being on my own again and being away from the constant arguments and power struggles, but more and more I've come to the realization that I'm happy because I'm finally living life under my own terms. And while you were occasionally supportive of me during our time together, more often than not you were critical, overbearing, dismissive, and controlling. Knowing what I know about myself now, and knowing how happy I'm capable of feeling when I'm free to do the things I care about, I know I'll never be able to go back and be happy with you again.
The moment I realized I felt nothing when I learned about you and Lucinda was the moment I realized there was no point in trying to keep this marriage together anymore. I deserve better, and so do you.
I'll be filing a petition for divorce when I come back. As I don't want anything from you, I expect you'll find it easy to agree to the terms. I know this will be difficult for you, but I hope that we can settle this without
"—Carlton."
Lassiter realized someone had been calling him. He jerked his head up, blinking. O'Hara's hair was coming loose from its braid. She looked tired and disheveled, but her gaze was alert on his. Her jacket was on and her bag was slung over her shoulder. "Aren't you going home?" O'Hara asked.
It took him a second to find sounds. "Huh?"
"Home," O'Hara repeated. "Shouldn't you go home? There's nothing more we can do here. They've already booked her."
Lassiter stared at her a minute longer. O'Hara searched his face, growing visibly more concerned. Before he could react, she lifted her hand was pressed against his forehead. It was cold and smelled like hand sanitizer.
Coming back to himself, Lassiter jerked away and on second thought stood to tower over her. "You mind telling me what you're doing, O'Hara?"
"You completely spaced out." O'Hara didn't look intimidated. He wondered if the day's mayhem had knocked the timidity out of her. "Is there something wrong? You looked like you were reading something really serious-business."
"All of my e-mails are serious business."
"Even the video I sent you of the panda sneezing?"
"It was serious business for the panda," he snapped. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"
"I don't know yet. I can't tell what you're doing," O'Hara said. "I can't tell if this needs… intervention or not? You look terrible. Do you need a ride home? I could drive you if you want."
"I don't need a ride." He exited out of the browser and started the shut-down sequence on the computer. The icons disappeared, leaving the SBPD logo floating by itself on the monitor.
O'Hara was still hovering at his side. "Go away," Lassiter said.
"Are you sure?"
He straightened again and looked at her. This time she got the hint and stepped back.
Files in his briefcase, pens in the outer pocket. His computer wasn't shutting off, so he banged the processor to convince it. "Oh wow, okay," O'Hara said. "Um, good night."
"Good night."
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her hesitate another moment, then turn to leave. Her footsteps were quickly lost in the ever-present hum of activity in the station.
Lassiter was halfway out of the station before he remembered he'd left his coffee in the records room earlier. For christ's sake. He was beyond the need to drink it but knew himself well enough to know that an unfinished task would needle him beyond his ability to deal. Frustrated, he retraced his steps, tossed his briefcase on his desk in transit, and stormed downstairs to fetch it.
He ran full tilt into Spencer as he turned the corner. Spencer came back hard on his right leg and it buckled; Lassiter instinctively caught his arm before he went sprawling. "Lassie!" Spencer grinned, recovering quickly. "Fancy running into you here! Hey, great news. I just discovered that the real reason Lacie called off our Friday date was because she had an eye exam, not because she's a scheming murderess worried that I'll blow her cover in a room full of vengeful Catholics. Do you think the government will give her one of those pardons for like two hours? I have a half-eaten jar of olives in my mini-fridge, and I'll never be able to sleep again until I know for sure what she can do with them."
It was testimony to how locked into autopilot he was that he didn't even pause. He didn't let go of Spencer's arm, but his feet kept moving, continuing their earlier trajectory. He vaguely heard Spencer protest, but words were needless alien things and he was on a mission.
The records room ended up being locked for the night. Still holding onto Spencer, Lassiter unearthed his key ring and sorted out the master key one-handed. The door unlocked with a rasp of the deadbolt. He pushed Spencer in before him, then closed the door behind them both. The ancillary lock clicked automatically, and Lassiter slid the bolt into place above it. "Not that this isn't flattering," Spencer said, "but I should probably let you know that Gus has a policy to never let me go into a closet unchaperoned. Or come out of the closet, for that matter. Actually I should probably talk to him about his closet prejudice."
Lassiter replaced his key ring and turned to face him. Shawn was peering around with a vested interest, but obligingly shifted his gaze over when he felt Lassiter's scrutiny. "I want to know how you did it," Lassiter said.
"Did what."
"Solved the case."
"Oh, right, that," Spencer said. "Well, if you must know, it was entirely unscripted. All of my genius is ninety-nine percent organic and one percent foaming agent."
"I'm going to give you one chance to fess up. Tell me, from the beginning, how you worked out the Maxwell case. How you found out about it, what you learned in the interrogation room, all the way up to the wedding itself. And then you're going to fess up to driving up the room service bill. And then you're going to tell me why I shouldn't string you up for obstruction of justice."
"There's a lot of 'ands' in that," Spencer said. "Which one do you want me to subtly sidestep first?"
"One chance. Start talking."
"Sorry to lick the glaze off your Thanksgiving ham, but I never divine and tell." Spencer was already moving towards the door. "If you all feel like you want to pony up for lessons on how to be detectives, my door is always open. I take cash, plastic, and coupons to Red—"
Lassiter barely moved. He grabbed Spencer's shirt by the collar, drawing a yelp when his fingernails dug into the skin underneath, and swung Spencer back towards the center of the room. "Dude, hey, watch the claws," Spencer said. "Are you part chinchilla?"
"Talk."
"I already said I don't share my methods. If you're this stressed out about it, why don't you go back to the scene of the crime and run a simulation or something? Actually do some work for once?"
Lassiter took a step forward. Shawn skittered back. "Come on, man, this is straight-up entrapment," Spencer protested. "Aren't there rules against this?"
"It's not entrapment, you idiot," Lassiter said. "Do you see anyone trying to seduce you?"
"That's debatable," Spencer said. "Also, you've locked me in a filing room. How does that not count as some sort of trap-ment?"
"Tell me how you did it."
"I listened to ancient secrets whispered through a spirit tube comprised solely of bologna. Give it a rest, Lassie, what do you want me to say? You won't buy any of it anyway."
"Tell me how you did it."
"Maybe later. My spirit senses are tied to my stomach. If I try to tell you now, I'm pretty sure all that would come out would be a spicy whiff of enchiladas and cool ranch. This is for your own protection."
Lassiter waited until Spencer was next to him, groping around him for the doorknob, then grabbed his elbow, spun him back around to face the center of the room, and dropped a heel into the back of his right knee.
Spencer went down with a sound Lassiter had never heard from him before – a kind of strangled, agonized grunt, like he'd been punched in the stomach. "Tell me how you did it," Lassiter said, covering a startled flash of unease at the fallout. He hadn't intended for the redirection to be quite so effective. "If you give me the truth now, all of it, I might even consider not booking you for the charge of impersonating an officer."
"What the hell." Spencer was curled on his side, eyes squeezed shut, clutching his knee. His face had lost most of its color, save for an increasingly red stripe across his nose. At first Lassiter thought it was embarrassment, but when Spencer opened his eyes to glare across the floor, Lassiter realized Spencer was flushing out of sheer, uncensored rage. "What the actual hell, Lassiter?"
"Tell me how you did it."
"My effing knee? The knee I injured like two weeks ago? Are you serious?"
"Last chance."
"Or what? You ninja-chop me in a nerve cluster? I've already told you everything I know!"
"You've lied to me from the beginning!"
Shawn shook his head, gritting out another inventive curse against the linoleum. Despite his own anger, Lassiter could admit to being fascinated. He'd witnessed the same break in character in Karen's office during the McCallum case, but this was the first time that temper had emerged from underneath the miles-deep chasm of Spencer's bullshit to target Lassiter specifically. It was very nearly intimidating, except Spencer was on the floor and Lassiter was armed, and there was a part of Lassiter that really needed Spencer to attack him in order to make that justifiable. "From the first interrogation all the way up until now you have straight-up lied to my face," Lassiter said. "Tell me the truth, Spencer, or I swear to god I'll—"
"I already did, you raging psychopath!" Spencer yelled. "God, I would've been out of your hair in two seconds back then if you'd just let it go. This has always been your problem, not mine!"
"You're my problem, Spencer!"
"No, I'm not! Don't you get it? I didn't want to be your problem! I didn't want to be anybody's problem! I just wanted to help solve a fucking crime before I blew back out of town, is that really so wrong? Why can't you just let it go? What did I ever do to you?"
Lassiter stilled a bit in surprise at the unexpectedly vicious profanity, but his own rage was rising back up from his guilt. What did I ever do to you. Name one thing. Name ten. It'd all rolled together in a jumble that stung like an exposed nerve. What did I ever do to you.
Spencer's eyes were still on him, fists balled up as if he were about to lunge off the floor, and Lassiter realized with a thrill of out-of-body dread that he was about two seconds away from assaulting a civilian. This was rapidly shaping up to be the nadir of his career and he hadn't bothered to pack a flotation device. "You want to know what your real problem is, Lassiter?" Spencer asked, apparently either not sensing or not caring about the rising danger. "You're such a tightass you can't figure out when someone's trying to help you. You can't even trust your own partners. Which, I mean, if we're being serious, is by far the biggest offense here. Do you have a problem with strong women or something? Or just strong women you can't get away with feeling up at work?"
"Stop." His voice was a growl in the back of his throat. "Don't say another word."
"No, you stop," Spencer said. "For god's sake, just park somewhere and use the extra time to get over yourself. I don't owe you anything. I don't owe you, I don't owe my dad, and I don't owe this department jack squat. But you know who I do owe? The woman attached to the most fetching ponytail this side of the San Andreas Fault who has to put up with your bullshit every day of her life."
"Shut up, Spencer!"
"And you want to know what? I do feel bad for what I did. Because maybe if I'd kept my fat mouth shut that day, you'd still be groping your girlfriend in the interrogation room and maybe Jules would've found a partner who actually appreciated her back in Miami."
And Lassiter felt something untether in his brain like a boat snapping off its rope at dock, letting it drift out towards the threat of the undertow.
.
In the years to come it'd start getting fun to toss Spencer around, because staying in one place for more than two seconds would help the kid get some meat on him. Shoving him would become kind of like wrestling a drunk costumed mascot – a lot of handholds to work with, a lot of fluff, some squawking and flailing and generally satisfying mayhem with no real threat of injury to either party.
Right now Shawn had sharp hipbones and a fat mouth and not much else, and when Lassiter dragged him up by his shirtfront and slammed him upright against the side of a filing cabinet, Spencer hit it so hard the structure nearly tipped over. The loose papers on top poured off and Lassiter was on him before they even reached the floor, standing him upright again with a clang that echoed. He heard himself snarl something that might've been 'tell me the truth' or 'shut the hell up' or maybe it didn't matter because he had both hands fisted in the collar of Spencer's shirt and who knew if Spencer would be able to get anything out around that. It didn't matter. He was going to beat Spencer into a smear and it wouldn't matter, none of it, because Lucinda was gone and his new partnership was a disaster and Karen would never have any respect for him. He was closing in on forty and there was no more time to start over, no more room to take risks and make mistakes, no more energy to break out of the mold he'd carved himself out of.
Two things happened simultaneously even as he prepared to bury the first punch in Spencer's stomach: his phone started ringing, and Spencer's hand shot out so he could steady himself against Lassiter's shoulder.
The action – not retaliation or defense, just a flail for support from the police officer about to assault him– struck Lassiter like cold water. He froze, staring as Spencer gasped with exertion, feeling Spencer's fingers dig into his shoulder as he tried to shift the balance off his right leg. The filing room was already littered with debris, cabinets knocked askew, scattered paper and pencils still rolling across the tile. "You gonna get that?" Spencer panted.
"Huh? Oh." Lassiter moved without thinking. There was a moment of confusion where they both shifted awkwardly; Lassiter kept a stabilizing grip on Spencer's shoulder as he clumsily patted down the wrong pocket ("Lassie, Lassie, it's in your holder, your left—") and he switched hands, prying the phone from its holder and answering it just before the theme looped for the third time. "Lassiter."
"Hello?" O'Hara sounded confused. "Sorry, am I interrupting something? You sound out of breath."
"What do you need?"
"Well, I don't exactly need—" The sound of a horn in the background punctuated her brief pause. "Never mind. Okay, this is going to seem like it's coming completely out of the blue, and I don't want you to take it the wrong way as in, you know… the way you always take things, but—"
"Spit it out, O'Hara."
"I will, just give me a…" Another horn in the background, followed by her sigh. "Listen, I couldn't stop thinking about how you looked back at the station, and I just… I got to thinking that neither of us has had dinner, and I just passed a Chinese place that I really like, so I was going to turn back and pick up something to eat. I know you like your space after a case, and I don't mean for this to come off creepy or stalkerish or anything, but since we're partners and everything, what would you think of me… maybe swinging by your place on my way home to drop some off? Now, before you say no, it wouldn't be dinner-dinner. Just because we're opposite genders doesn't mean we can't meet in the same place after hours to have a meal. I respect you as a professional and a valued colleague and would never act in a way that would make you feel uncomfortable."
"I can assure you I've never once thought of you as a woman," he said. "I've always believed rookie officers should be regarded as sexless arbiters of the law until they've earned the right to call themselves true mistresses of justice."
This time her pause was much, much longer. "A-anyway," O'Hara said. "I was just thinking that both of us are probably way too tired to cook, and I can never eat it all myself and Chinese is never as good reheated, you know? Plus I thought maybe we could debrief or go over some of the details for our report tomorrow? Kind of multi-tasking, just to save us some—"
"Fine."
A startled pause. "What?"
"It's fine."
"Really?" O'Hara sounded taken-aback. "Wow, I didn't think it'd be so… I mean, okay, good. Good! Well, I already know where you live, so I guess I'll just… drop by there later? I was going to shower and change first. Oh, right, do you like spicy or not spicy? Because I was thinking—"
"You choose."
Again there was a palpably startled pause. "Okay, well, I guess that's it then," O'Hara said. "See you later? I guess? Oh, right, I almost forgot to tell you that—"
Lassiter hung up and slid the phone back in the holder. "Jules knows where you live?" Spencer asked. "I thought I was going to have to break into the Pentagon of the spirit world to get that info, and here you are just handing it out for free? What gives, man? Why are you playing favorites?"
For a moment everything in the room stood out in stark, beautiful detail: the burnt-orange hue of the walls, the beige cabinets, the black scuffs along the baseboards. There was a dead insect in the flat ceiling light overhead and a half-eaten bagel in the trashcan, and the coffee he'd intended to fetch earlier was still perched on the corner desk. If he closed his eyes he could count every page that had scattered across the floor. He wondered if the ends of all careers looked like this. An empty room, a stack of reports nobody would ever read, and the employee nobody cared about who was leaving it all behind.
He let Spencer go, said, "Close the door on your way out," then walked out of the room, and the hallway, and the main floor, and the station. He didn't bother to take his briefcase.
.
He didn't recall driving home. He was in his car and then he was inside his house and there was no memory of anything in between. It was dark so he turned on the stove light, and then he stood in the middle of his living room, blinking in the shallow pool of illumination.
He destroyed the Ugo Zaccagnini Majolica owl first by throwing it against the wall by his clock. The sound as it smashed was arrestingly pretty. The pieces had barely finished raining to the carpet before he was throwing the Hagen Renaker Papa Donkey. It missed his sliding patio door by inches and shattered instead into a cloud of dust by his TV stand.
He peeled the 1950's Florence Ceramics Claudia Southern Belle from her bubble wrap and smashed her down against the floor before she'd even left his hand. It stung briefly and the pain was unimportant. Colonial Man circa 1960s exploded against the mantle and Staffordshire circa 1980s flew apart above the hearth, showering pieces down over the card he'd received from Lucinda.
He threw Mid-Century Ceramic Boy and Porcelain Pair Love Doves down the hall and a leg of Florence Ceramics Delia slid under the couch as she burst apart, and he was crunching something underfoot which meant he was still wearing his shoes, which was odd because it was straight-up muscle memory to take them off by the door. Wedding Cake Topper circa 1960s was pounded into pieces against his kitchen table because where else would a birthday cake go, and again there was pain, and again it was unimportant.
He went through Vintage Christmas Caroler and White Sitting Mouse and Calabrisella, and something sharp got his cheek and something ricocheted off his fireplace doors with an ominous clack and then Vintage Lassie Collie was in his hand.
He cocked his arm to throw it, and very suddenly, Lassiter wasn't throwing anything anymore. He stood in the center of the room, chest heaving, cradling the little dog protectively in his hand, awash in the wreckage of the things he loved.
When he remembered how moving worked, he set the collie down very gently on the mantle amidst the shards, righted Lucinda's card, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work cleaning it all up.
He'd just finished sweeping the corpse of Vintage Christmas Caroler into a dustpan when a knock came at his door. Wondering if someone had called the department for the noise disturbance, Lassiter dumped the shards into the trash, checked the locations of his weapons, and strode over to glance out the peephole.
O'Hara was there on his porch, dressed in civvies, looking around at his yard interestedly. As he watched, she turned and beamed at the peephole as though sensing him on the other side.
Lassiter made to unlatch the door, only to discover he hadn't fastened any of his locks. "Hey," O'Hara said when he opened it. "Sorry I'm late. Did I catch you in the middle of something?"
Lassiter stared at her. Seeing his confusion, O'Hara hefted the plastic bag she was holding up to eye level. "Food," she clarified. "I hope you weren't kidding about not minding spicy. I got Mongolian beef for you and I told them to pack on the sauce. I figured you could take it."
Once again Lassiter found himself at that strange mental crossroads where things behind him and things in front of him weren't lining up. Oddly enough, the fact that he'd forgotten to lock his own door was the most jarring thing of all. He'd been triple-checking the locks on his house since he was five years old. "Can I come in?" O'Hara asked, when the silence had stretched long enough to grow awkward.
"Why are you here?"
The smile faded from her face. "What do you mean?"
"Why are you here? Did something happen at the station?"
"Carlton, I asked you earlier if I could swing by with the food."
"No, you didn't."
"Yes, I did," O'Hara said slowly. "Don't you remember? We talked on the phone. You said you'd be fine with Chinese."
"I did not."
"Yes you did. Are you sure you're—" Her gaze swept over him once again, and he watched her recoil with a sudden, horrified gasp. "What happened?"
"What?"
"Oh my god." Before Lassiter could react, her free hand latched onto his wrist, yanking it up to eye level. "Carlton, what's going on? What is this?"
"Nothing." Lassiter irritably jerked it away from her and was about to verbally lay her out for this entire stupid barrage of dumbassery when he saw streaks of blood on her fingertips. "Why are you bleeding?"
"I'm not bleeding, you are. Oh my god, your house."
"O'Hara—" but she was already dropping the bag of food and shoving past him, hand snaking into her jacket for her firearm. "O'Hara, what the hell are you doing?"
"Fall back," she ordered tersely. "I'm going to see if the compound's secure. Call for backup. Do you have your phone? Are you able to dial?"
"It's not—"
"Use mine." O'Hara dug into her pocket and thwapped her phone against his chest hard enough to make him bark out a lungful of air. "Chief Vick should still be at the station. Just press nine, she's on speed dial."
"O'Hara." Lassiter finally managed to snatch a hold of her wrist and jerk her back before she went full Steven Seagal against the monsters in his closets. "For Christ's sake, would you listen to me for two seconds? The place is secure. It wasn't a break-in. Why would I answer the door if I were actively engaging trespassers?"
O'Hara was frozen in his grip. "Because they made you answer it?"
"What makes you think they'd still be alive enough to make me do anything? Give me a break, O'Hara. I'm more in danger with you waving that thing around than I'd ever be with robbers in my house. Geez Louise."
O'Hara finally lowered her weapon, but slowly. The off-kilter combination of the porch light and the stove light was bathing her in strange contrasts, sinking half her face in shadow. "If it wasn't a break-in, why is everything trashed?"
"I did it myself. Don't worry about it."
O'Hara looked at him. Really looked at him. "And if you're going to barge in here, at least take off your shoes," Lassiter added, because it was his right to be hypocritical as hell on his own property. "I just had the carpet cleaned."
O'Hara didn't answer for a good ten seconds more. When she finally moved to reholster her weapon, he saw a bloody handprint on the fabric over her wrist. "You really don't remember me calling you?" she pressed, watching him closely.
"No. Why? What are you talking about?"
O'Hara's mouth flattened into a razor-thin line. She kicked off her shoes – sturdy Oxfords, no frills – and reached down to rescue the food bag. She shut the door behind her and made brisk work of the locks.
Before Lassiter could ask any more questions, she turned, took him by the elbow, and steered him firmly across the room. "Is this the way to your bathroom?" she asked.
He stumbled when she barked his hip on the kitchen divide. "What?"
"Down the hall. Is this the way to the bathroom?"
"Yes, but we're not—" But O'Hara dropped off the bag on the kitchen table as they passed it and kept right on going, yanking him along. The hallway was shrouded in gloom.
She didn't hesitate, barging in on one door and then another until she found the right one. "Okay, look," Lassiter began.
"Sit down," O'Hara said. She hit the light and pushed him bodily down onto the toilet seat when he didn't obey fast enough. "Where's your medical kit?"
"I don't need—"
"Where is your medical kit?"
"It's under the—" but she didn't wait for this either, already on her knees to rummage carelessly through the cabinet under his sink.
A little dumbfounded, not sure what sudden and uncharacteristic wrath he'd inspire if he got up, Lassiter kept his ass on the toilet seat and watched her bulldoze through his supplies. She tossed the six year-old bottle of aloe and mostly-empty bottle of tub cleaner over her shoulder before she came across the medical kit in the back. When she dragged it out, it was rough enough that the battered white metal made a banshee shriek against the wood. "Here," she ordered, whipping his hand towel off the rack by the sink. "Squeeze this."
Too confused not to obey, Lassiter squeezed. The action stung with surprising intensity. What, he thought, and then his body suddenly rebelled against his daze and informed him in rapid succession what else hurt: his cheek and his chin, his knuckles, his knees. "This thing looks like something out of my grandparents' attic," O'Hara said. "Even the peroxide is all dried up. How do you not have viable medical supplies in your house?"
"There's nothing wrong with the ones in there."
"I think I gave myself tetanus just opening up the lid." O'Hara opened the doors to the mirrored cabinet above his sink. She emerged a half a minute later with a more recent bottle of rubbing alcohol. "What were you breaking? I thought I saw ceramics."
"They're figurines."
"You collect figurines?"
"My wife does."
"You broke your wife's figurines?"
"Why do you assume they're hers? I ordered them for me."
He was startled to realize that he recognized the expression O'Hara gave him then. She actually pulled it out a lot during their conversations: the furrowed brow and the off-center quirk to her lips, like she was trying to figure out whether or not she liked the taste of something. Before now he'd thought it was her way of concentrating on his worldly advice, but now that he was seeing it in real-time, he realized he'd mistranslated. It was straight-up irritation. And not just any irritation: irritation that he himself was personally causing her. "I don't know how much I can do here," O'Hara said. "There could be fragments. We should really go to an emergency room."
He forced himself to focus. "There aren't."
"A minute ago you didn't even know your hands were bleeding."
"Well now I do. And I know there aren't any fragments."
Out came the expression again. She snagged his hands, a little rougher than before, and pushed them into the towel before getting to work sifting through the supplies in the kit.
He watched her until the sight of her stained sleeves reminded him. "Sorry."
O'Hara froze, hand on the package of antiseptic wipes. "For your jacket," Lassiter said. "Leave it here and I'll get it cleaned."
"Did you just apologize to me?"
"What? No. I said I was sorry about your jacket."
"Right," she said. "That's called an apology."
"I'm not saying I'm sorry, I'm telling you I'm sorry for the state of your jacket. Leave it here. I'll get it cleaned."
O'Hara looked at him a moment more. "I don't care about the jacket, Carlton."
Really? His system was clean but she couldn't possibly know that. It was unhygienic at best and dangerous at worst. "At least put the gloves on."
"I literally have your blood on my hands right now."
"Then wash your hands and put some gloves on. What are you, six?"
O'Hara lurched upwards. She washed her hands viciously in his sink for exactly fifteen seconds, then swiped his remaining hand towel off the rack and threw it out into the hallway. "At least put it in the hamper," Lassiter said.
"Shut up."
Utterly astonished, Lassiter closed his mouth. O'Hara paused just long enough to snap on a pair of latex gloves before continuing to leaf through the supplies. She unearthed the Q-Tips, a mostly-empty tube of Neosporin, and a pair of tweezers before pushing the entire kit aside with her knee. Once again she took his hands away from the towel, turning them over so the back of his wrists rested atop his knees.
He hadn't intended to look, but a quick glance revealed to him the extent of the scratch damage. There were a multitude of tiny cuts on the insides of the fingers on his left hand, a collection of longer, if shallower, slices across the palm of his right. Both hands were smeared with blood, but from the feel of it most of the cuts had stopped actively bleeding. The back of his hand in the meantime throbbed with a deeper ache; when he tilted it a little to examine it, he saw the first shadow of a bruise blossoming over the knuckles.
O'Hara tore open one of the antiseptic wipe packages and shook the tiny square out to its full size. It was mostly dehydrated. She solved the problem by tipping some of the rubbing alcohol onto it, squeezing a little to distribute it. Her hands were quick and steady, like it was old-hat to be applying first-aid in a man's bathroom after forging through an ocean of dead ceramic figurines.
Lassiter tried to start a conversation several times and ultimately failed. She'd already answered the question of 'what the hell', which was food. The answer to 'why the hell' was predicated on a phone conversation he only vaguely remembered having. She also knew where he lived, which was… had he actually ever told her that? He was fairly sure he hadn't, but then again his memory was apparently malfunctioning. Who knew what else he'd already given away for free.
Distracted, Lassiter flinched with a poorly-muffled yelp as O'Hara applied the alcohol-soaked square to the first of the cuts on his palm. She froze a moment, then relaxed with a wry look. "This may sting a little."
"Just get on with it," he snapped. He could feel his ears burning.
"Are you sure? I can blow on them like my Mom used to do with my cuts."
"I swear to god, O'Hara—"
"There is a shard," O'Hara muttered to herself, ignoring him, intent on the damage. She swiped the tweezers, toweled them off quickly with the wipe, and rooted around for a bit while he squirmed and tried not to curse. "I got it, but I have no proof that there aren't more," O'Hara reported, returning the alcohol pad to his palm. "I really think you should go to an ER to make sure."
"Quit being dramatic. They're barely papercuts."
"I'm dramatic," she echoed, deadpan.
"Look, I never asked you to barge in here. I had everything under—"
She took the bottle of alcohol and upturned it onto the cuts. It hurt like a son of a bitch. God. He couldn't figure out if he was in less or more trouble here than he would've been with Lucinda. In a way the two really weren't at all comparable. Had it been Lucinda on the other side of the door, it would've taken a lot more than reason to get her to stop from tearing apart the house for a phantom culprit. He'd seen her prevent a gunshot victim from bleeding out with one hand as she barked at the incoming paramedics on her cell with the other, but the sight of his blood in particular had always rattled something loose in her. In this case, Lucinda would have most likely paced around like a tiger and yelling at him while he dressed his own wounds. "Shawn was right," O'Hara muttered, again almost to herself. "It's one thing when you're on a case, but you really don't handle personal stress well at all. I knew I shouldn't have left you at the station by yourself."
He'd been prepared to defend his own incredible emotional maturity, but the mention of Spencer drained the blood from his face. Lassiter swallowed down the flood of words, trying to figure out how much she knew. She was irritated but being more or less gentle with him, which didn't seem like the right reaction for someone about to book him on an assault charge.
He waited until she'd thrown away the first square, rewet another, and returned to the cuts on his other hand before asking, "So he called you?"
O'Hara made a vague, questioning noise. Her brow furrowed as she addressed the largest cut across his palm. "Sorry, what?" she asked after a moment.
"He called you, then?"
"Who called me?"
"Spencer."
"About what? What are you talking about?"
Confused, Lassiter watched her. Appearing satisfied, O'Hara threw the bloodied wipe into the trash and took his hands in hers, flattening them out so she could examine them one last time. "Look, I don't know what you're referring to, but Shawn does not have my number," O'Hara said. "I'm not a masochist."
That surprised him. "I was under the impression that you liked him."
"I like him a lot. Not like that," she said quickly, seeing the expression on his face. "It's just that he can talk his way through a coma. I dated a guy like that once, and he'd call me up at like two in the morning to talk about the most random things, and while that can be cute for a while it gets old really fast. Plus Shawn seems like the type to shop around and I'm really busy with my career, so I really don't have the time to… um, you know, never mind. Why? Why would he call me? What's going on?"
Lassiter was suddenly hit with a wave of crippling exhaustion. He watched her uncap the Neosporin and squeeze it over the soft head of a Q-Tip. He didn't move as she began the process of dabbing the gel onto every one of his cuts, switching to the other end when one got too frayed, cradling his big hand in her own like his was an injured bird. "I attacked him," he said.
The Q-Tip stilled. Lassiter realized belatedly that he'd spoken out loud. When he looked up, O'Hara's eyes were wide on his. "In the records room," he said. "It was assault. He'll probably press charges."
"Wait a second." Her eyes darted over his face. "Are you saying you hit him?"
"Threw him around."
"In the records room? When?"
"Hour ago. Maybe two."
"Was he fighting back?"
"Would it matter?"
"It…" She stopped, pressing her lips together hard.
With a vague, disembodied interest, Lassiter wondered what she'd do. She had a big heart for lost causes but was possibly even more attached to the exact letter of the law than he was. This was all assuming, of course, that Spencer hadn't immediately gone to Vick after Lassiter had left. Any moment now he might be called in, and the months-long litigation and public evisceration would begin with or without O'Hara in attendance. He vaguely hoped he'd have time to eat first.
O'Hara said, "How could you let him get to you like that?"
The unexpected reaction made him blink at her. "I mean, he can be irritating, sure, but you already knew he's actively trying to troll you," O'Hara said. "How could you let him get so far under your skin?"
"Get under my—" He could hardly believe his ears. "O'Hara, I attacked a civilian! This isn't some kind of… of poker game I lost because I didn't pack my game face today. I broke the law."
"Maybe," she said heavily, and there it was: that prim little academy girl who knew the codes up down and sideways, who could quote them to him over bagels and high speed chases and in stakeouts so boring it was all he could do to keep from digging his eyeballs out with his car keys. "But you can't say this was the first time you've manhandled him. I don't even think it's the fifth."
"That was different. He was under arrest for murder."
"Yeah, like, once," she said. "But not any of the other times. Did you actually hit him, or did you just kind of toss him up against something like you usually do? I don't know. The two of you are weirdly… physical. I've just learned to kind of roll with it."
"I'm not physical."
"You are, though. You really, really are," O'Hara said. "Not ever with women, but you're pretty rough with men. Chief Vick never calls you on it, so I figured it was some sort of… Santa Barbara thing. But you've definitely thrown Shawn around before where others can see."
Had he? He sat still, puzzled and nauseated, feeling himself sway for a while in the bright lights. "It makes sense, though, now that I think about it," O'Hara said. "You sounded really off when I called. Why didn't you tell me what was going on?"
"I don't know."
"Or afterwards? I would've helped you."
"I don't know."
O'Hara continued to watch him, a peculiar, pained expression on her face. "I'm sorry," he said, because she seemed to need something.
The bathroom was silent a while. Lassiter wondered if they should put the Chinese in the oven to keep it warm. Would she want to eat with him now? He kind of hoped so and kind of hoped she never wanted to see him again. Either would solve pressing concerns.
After a long time, O'Hara let out a slow breath. She silently turned her attention back to his hands, meticulously smoothing ointment on the last of the tiny cuts before throwing the Q-Tip away. She unwrapped a square of gauze, neatly centered it over his palm, and taped it down. "I'll see what I can do about getting you a recommendation," Lassiter said. "When they transfer you. Your credentials are good – you should find placement within the week."
"They're not going to transfer me."
"Don't be naïve. Ten to one he ran straight to Vick after I left. I'm just lucky she hasn't stormed the place with imperial guards yet."
"He's not going to turn you in," O'Hara said. "Honestly, he's probably already forgotten about it. The only one caught up over it is you."
Lassiter thought of the volcanic anger that'd distorted Spencer's voice after he'd been dropped to the floor. Until that moment, Lassiter had failed to see any resemblance between him and Henry. It'd taken helplessness and rage to draw the similarities. "Not this time."
"The only reason it feels any different to you is because this entire day was piloted on nightmare fuel," O'Hara said. "You're thinking too hard about this, Carlton. I promise. I mean… yes, I wish you two wouldn't go at it so much, and I don't think you should be manhandling him so much, but I don't believe you two did anything worse to each other than you usually do. I know you better than that."
"I took this job I took an oath to protect the innocent and uphold the law. I have to take responsibility."
"So you hurt yourself to make up for it," she said.
No, he— but also, no. This wasn't the way he intended to let this conversation to go. He didn't deserve the bastion of that pity. He'd gone off the deep end willingly and had splashed around until his anger had drowned, and any collateral damage had been the consequence, not the goal. "Listen, Carlton, what you did was wrong and I'm not going to pretend it wasn't," O'Hara said. "But you have to look at the context, and you have to look at mitigating factors. You're the one who always tells me that details matter. I know for an absolute fact that Shawn didn't go to Vick tonight, and I also know that if you try to do it, he's going to deny anything happened."
"That's his prerogative."
"If you're doing it to save face, you're only going to lose it. If you're doing it to try and right your wrong – why not talk to him? Apologize to him? Let him decide how to proceed. Put the power in his hands, and let him judge your actions."
"Who the hell cares what he thinks?"
O'Hara just looked at him. "Stop trying to justify weaseling out of it," Lassiter said. "That's not how I work, O'Hara. Spencer isn't a judge and a jury. If I broke the law, I deserve to be tried for it."
"You're right, he's not a jury. He's the wronged party," she said. "And if you exchange more than two insults a day with him, I think you'll figure out that getting rid of you isn't his goal. In fact, I can guarantee it's the exact opposite."
"Right, I forget how much of a character expert you are. Mind sharing your evidence with me, or is that classified too?"
O'Hara finally hesitated. Considering her calm authority up to this point, the suddenly silence was extremely telltale. "What?" he said, suspicious.
"It's nothing."
"And I'm Marie-Louise of Austria," Lassiter said. "Spit it out What do you know?"
"I just…" O'Hara licked her lower lip for a bit, then sighed. "Look, don't you see how much fun he's having? How it's all just a big game to him?"
"So? He's an idiot. This isn't news."
O'Hara sat back on her heels at last and stripped off the gloves, dropping them inside-out into the trash. Agitatedly, compulsively, she began setting the materials back into the kit exactly how she'd found them. "Listen, I know you don't like him," she said. "But he's smart, Carlton. I mean reallysmart."
"The man flails around the station like a coked-up Kermit. Again, what evidence are you quoting?"
"I'm not talking about him being psychic or not. I'm saying that he's smart. Our profilers say his IQ is off the charts."
Our profilers. Lassiter understood in an instant, and the pain from his hands suddenly seemed inconsequential again. "It's not that you're a game," O'Hara said. "I'm saying that to someone as smart as Shawn, this whole thing is a game. Everything. Every part of it. Chasing criminals, solving crimes, even putting his life in danger. It's not like it is for us, where it's a duty or a calling. It's fun for him. It challenges him where nothing else can. It's not even going to occur to him to report you, because he likes that you challenge him."
Lassiter felt strange. It sounded a lot like O'Hara was implying that Spencer solved unsolvable cases merely to fuck with him, but that way of thinking would lead him straight back out over the deep end.
Instead he concentrated on the thing that hurt more. "You set the profilers on him without telling me?"
Strangely, O'Hara looked like she wanted to cry. The vulnerability was just as disconcerting as her ball-buster persona from earlier. "Yes," she said. "I'm sorry."
He said nothing. "I wanted to know why he was bothering you so much," O'Hara said. "I figured you were on him because you suspected him for something. So I trusted your hunch and tried to gather some information from the inside. But they couldn't give me anything except to say that he was here because he wanted to be. I didn't think that would help you, so I didn't say anything."
Lassiter leaned his head against the wall. He was tired. "Please say something," O'Hara said.
"I give up," he said.
She tensed. "What do you mean, you give up?"
He was surprised to feel almost relaxed. He'd smashed hundreds of dollars of antique ceramics but he didn't have to cook tonight, so the evening was an even mix of fair and foul. He'd be able to live off Lucinda's cookies for at least two more weeks while he searched for a new job. Something menial and forgettable like lawn-mowing or dog-walking. "What do you mean, you give up?" O'Hara repeated, voice rising a little. "Carlton, talk to me."
"You're right. I'm a toy and he's a genius and the whole, wide world's a game. Tell you what," Lassiter said. "You take the lead on the investigations from now on. Because clearly, I'm just not with it anymore. You're so busy running around behind my back whenever I'm trying to run a straight operation, you might as well just do it out in the open. So by all means, take the lead. Take everything. Hey, you know what? I'll even throw in my desk. Solid oak. Take that. And my computer, I won't be needing that."
O'Hara looked horrified. "I have a gun at the bottom of my dirty clothes hamper," Lassiter offered. "Why don't you take it as a souvenir? Wait, wait." He patted around for his phone. "Can you call my wife? I'm sure she'll give you everything you need. Take her too. I'm not using her anymore."
"Are you having a breakdown?" she blurted.
Yes. No? "From now on, outsource all you want, O'Hara. Just climb right up the ladder without me."
"Carlton, this is crazy. Just wait a minute and I can—"
"Do you like cookies? I have cookies. Take all the cookies. You can bring them to the celebratory potluck they throw at work after I leave."
"Carlton—"
"Who knows, maybe your new partner will have a death wish and let you drive. Just make sure they signal ahead to clear the roadways so there aren't any civilian lives lost in the—"
She slapped him. The impact didn't knock words out of his mouth as much as the sight of her did just then: her hair escaping its tie and drifting around her face, her cheeks flushed with anger. Lassiter wondered what was up with his karma that he kept getting thrown together with beautiful women he wasn't allowed to touch. Life loved teaching you little lessons that hurt like hell. Touch, suffer. Don't touch, and wonder why it still hurt.
Then he was in her arms, pressed against her chest, and he forgot about it in favor of leaning into the warmth. Her chest was jumping a little like she was crying, but her grip was strong and stabilizing. "Don't," O'Hara said somewhere above him, sounding a little choked, "say that to me ever again."
It was hard to talk against the pressure . "Say what."
"Everything you just said. I mean it. Never again."
"Let go."
"No," she said, and now she was almost laughing, frustrated past the point of anger and right into hysteria. "You know what? I give up too. I can't figure you out. I have tried everything to show you I want to be here. I don't know what else to do."
O'Hara pulled back and pressed her hands to the sides of his head, cradling it. It was bizarre how intimate it wasn't. He tried to compare the feeling and came up with only vague memories as a very young child: his mother's hands over his ears during a loud fireworks display, shielding him from stimulus, holding his anxiety back by sheer force. "We're partners," O'Hara said. "You're not a stepping stone, I'm not looking for advancement, and what we do isn't a game. When I saw your record, you have no idea what went through my head. All the cases you worked, all the things you'd seen? I thought, 'This is someone who won't take it easy on me. This is someone who'll make me tougher.' I knew you wouldn't pull any punches, but it was okay, because that was what I wanted. It's always been what I've wanted, and you were the first one to give it to me."
He stared at her. "You wanted this."
"Yes."
"To work with a pregnant interim chief, a crackpot off his meds, and his bald tap-dancing sidekick?"
"Yes," she said, and now she actually was laughing, and christ there were tears in her eyes. "Yes. To all of that."
"You wanted to work with me?"
"Yes."
"They didn't throw you in here?"
"Carlton, you're the best the department has to offer. One of the best in the state. How could I not want to be here?"
There was an immensity to what she was saying that he could barely wrap his brain around. Lassiter sat there stupidly. He could have easily killed himself for the next thing that came out of his mouth, which was, "But Spencer—"
"I'm sorry for always investigating behind your back, but I mean, if we're going to be fair, you kind of forced me to. I tried to talk to you but you never seemed to want to hear what I had to say. So I did my own research so I could be ready to fill in the gaps. I would've told you if you'd asked. You just never wanted to hear it."
"So this is my fault?"
"Kind of," Juliet O'Hara said, and smiled tentatively.
Lassiter opened his mouth to yell, then stopped, realizing there was nothing to say. If her words hadn't knocked it out of him, her expression would have. "I'll check in more," O'Hara said. "I'll tell you what I'm looking up. I'll see if it's okay with you before I bring him in, and we can decide as a team. Okay? But I mean, if you won't listen to me, I can't do anything. But I have your back. Always. I just… need to know you have mine too. That's all. It's all I want."
Lassiter sat on the lid of his toilet for a long time, hands hurting, ass protesting the unyielding plastic, and thought about how fucked up his house was. There was shrapnel and dust and probably blood everywhere. He'd cleaned up some in the dark but it'd be infinitely worse in daylight. The carpet would require steam cleaning or possible replacement and the walls might need to be painted, which meant strange people under his roof. He'd need to hide everything valuable, which would be easy, considering most of the pricier things in his house were currently lying in pieces all over his carpet.
His partner was still kneeling before him, his blood on her jacket, not caring that his blood was on her jacket. He expected to see Lucinda when he looked at her, but all he saw were bright eyes and mounds of impractical hair and an open, expectant face. It made him tired to look at her. He knew she needed him to say something, but he'd already forgotten what it was.
He licked his lips and said, "O'Hara."
"Yes?"
… maybe he could paint his own walls. It'd be a bitch tearing up carpet by himself though, which meant he still needed to prep his house and his hands hurt too much for that. He could live with it for a while.
He opened his mouth to say something important, but all that came out was, "I'm hungry."
An expression came over her face that he would've paid in blood never to see again. It was reminiscent of Lucinda's but opened up a new, infinite number of past and future hurts.
She reached up and took a hold of his wrist, just above the bandages, and just this once, just this once and no other time ever, he let her. "Okay," she said, and that was that. Which didn't feel momentous, but in all likelihood probably was.
