Okay, this is a connector chapter designed for me to get out several minute details that will be important later. But I was not feeling inspired at all. Beginning is lots of LS. Then, case.
AN2--Thanks to artificially sweet, seeingstars27, Longislanditalian2, and jambled for reviewing the last chapter.
Lilly couldn't sleep. That was the problem with her—her sleeping patterns sucked. If she got too little, she was hazy all day. And if she got too much, she could damn it all to hell. And with the addition of her nap during the train ride that afternoon, there was nothing to do but sit on her side of the partition, read, and hope not to wake up Scotty.
Lilly didn't know it, but Scotty couldn't sleep either, for an entirely different reason. He was itching to go somewhere, do something. It didn't make much sense to him to be in a city he didn't pay to go to, in a hotel all expenses paid, with a perfectly attractive woman less than twenty feet away, without taking advantage of it. He didn't know if Lilly would consent to go anywhere with him, but he decided that it was worth a shot.
"Hey, Lil. Lil?"
Lilly rolled over and didn't answer.
"Lilly, are you sleeping?"
"Yes, Scotty, that's why I'm answering you."
Laughter from the other side of the partition. "I wanna go out."
Lilly knew exactly what he meant, but messing with Scotty's mind was way too much fun not to do. "Then go."
"C'mon, Lil. It's Friday night, we're up in hotel we didn't have to pay for in an awesome city… and we're just sitting here playing house. Don't you see a problem with that?"
"No. But for the moment, I'll bite."
"You like to dance, Lil?"
"Oh, no. No. No. No. I'm not going dancing with you, Valens."
He couldn't see her face through the curtain, but he could almost hear her rueful smile, which told him there might be a tiny possibility.
"Come on, Old-head, live a little. I know you aren't gonna be asleep anytime soon."
"Whatever Scotty…" She sighed. On the one hand, she didn't want to blur the professional line any more than she always did, but on the other, she knew she would regret not taking this opportunity later, and Lilly hated regrets. How many times would she ever have this again? "You're always trying to push something…two hours, and not a minute more, got it?"
Thirty five minutes later, and Scotty was hitting one of his natural highs. Lilly had changed out of her work clothes and into a pair of jeans that he would not have pegged her to have owned. But a lot of things about her were surprising him tonight—the first one being the fact that she could actually dance, matching her steps for his, even challenging him past her. Back in Philadelphia, they had embarked on an intellectual battle of the wills, and here, they had the physical version. And Lilly's two hour curfew would up almost doubled, collapsed completely by her own volition. But for Scotty, the best part of the night was the end, when they collapsed on the hotel room couch at three am. Her porcelain skin was flushed like cotton candy, and her smile was nothing like the calculated one he was used to seeing—it was genuine, unrehearsed, and above everything else, feminine. He certainly liked bad-ass, take-no-shit Detective Rush, but the woman she was off hours, Lilly, might have had something on her.
"I can't believe you did that—you coulda got us in so much shit!" Lilly was doubling over in laughter.
"Me? You dared me to…"
"Since when do you listen to me?"
He shrugged. "May as well throw you off occasionally…"
Comfortable silence fell over them for a little while, as both tried to gather their strength to get up. Lilly cocked her head to the side, and appraised him through her blue eyes.
"Hey, Scotty?"
"Yes?"
"Thanks for pushing it."
Just like that, she disappeared behind the curtain, leaving Scotty more gratified than he'd been in a long while.
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Cases with young victims got under Will Jeffries' skin. And even more than that, cases that didn't receive due attention. The Renee Hutchinson case was both these things—the murder of a pretty young teenager, who by all descriptions was living the dream—her case didn't get the time of day because the guy working it was too caught up in his own drama. Will hated that.
From what he heard from Vera, Rush and Valens had gone to talk to the guy, who admitted that he had been off his game in '03. Lilly and Scotty, the youngest and the newest to Homicide were more willing to forgive the mistake, while he and Vera shared the combined opinion that half the battle of being a cop was being able to put your personal shit aside.
But not even Vera, cynical as anything, was as insane with this ideal as Jeffries. Will had seen first hand a few months ago what the cost of bad police work could be, with the Tibbs case and execution. And since then, he had very little patience with it. Sure, everyone was allowed a mistake or two, but deciding a girl commited suicide without an ounce of evidence? Putting a family through that? There were times when an "I'm sorry" simply was not enough.
Presently, he and Vera were being let into the house by the father, and (rather reluctantly) the mother.
"I put this to bed already, detectives. Now, you want me to revisit it? Why now?"
Vera looked nonplussed. "Why not now? Your other daughter, she wants to know the truth about what happened to her sister. We want to give her that."
Jeffries and Vera stood by the doorway of the living room, waiting to be invited to sit. The invitation hung suspended in the air, never coming. Jeffries could tell that the father simply had little in the way of hosting skills, but got the distinct impression that the mother would consider whatever she had to to boot them out of the door.
Vera finally made the first step—clearing his throat and motioning toward the couch in that way that said, Come on. Take the hint, we're not leaving. Vera sat, as Jeffries examined the pictures on the wall—there was a framed photo of Laina, A new years photo of the family taken in 2005, and a picture of the parents taken back in what looked like the eighties.
The father smiled at the picture Jeffries was looking at. "That was 1985. Two years before Renee was born… Kate had just gotten back from DC, and I was so happy to see her."
"Why DC?"
Kate looked uncomfortable. "Journalism job—one year thing. What do you need to know?"
Jeffries took the hint and sat next to Vera on the couch. "We've already begun looking into some things… her myspace, for instance. She mentions 'the game' in one of her blogs…?"
Leroy spoke up. "I ran a neighborhood football league a few years back. Renee wrote a newsletter for us… but it just stopped being fun, after—Someone else heads it now, over on eighth street."
"I'm sorry," Vera said simply. "Did you know of any boyfriends, anyone she was seeing?"
Kate spoke up for the first time. "She dated a boy from around here, Eli Brooks for a while. She broke up with him sometime in December '02. I remember it, because I liked him."
Jeffries started to stand, and Vera followed suit. "We'll be back if we find anything."
The door was shut behind them, and for a second, Jeffries was so stunned that he couldn't even speak. Something, something wasn't hitting him right. And he knew he wasn't alone when Vera did his trademark cynical arched eyebrow at him.
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It was eleven o'clock that Saturday morning, and Vera was sitting in the passenger side of one of the precinct SUV's, clutching a cup of large coffee in his hand that Jeffries had sprung for. At present they were sitting outside of eighth street park, where the dad said that a neighborhood league played flag football. According to a call that he'd gotten last night from Rush, they were looking for someone in particular, a Dante something. He'd called back later around eleven, realizing that he hadn't gotten the last name, but Rush hadn't answered. And then he'd called Valens, but no answer from him either.
"I hate these stakeouts," Vera said.
"This is hardly a stakeout. We're just waiting for people to start coming to the games."
"Are we even sure they're today?"
"It's a league for school kids. When else would it be?"
Vera sighed. There were times when the job started wearing down on him, and recently, he was having one of those times. After he and his wife separated a few months back, Vera had been throwing himself into work for no other reason than that there was nothing better to do. Granted, when he was married he never spent any time at home, but it was nice to have a home base.
And of course, this was one of those busy days. Lilly and Scotty were expected back by three that afternoon, and in the meantime, it was up to him and Jeffries to do the legwork. Lucky bastards, he thought. He loved Boston, and he hadn't been in years. He just never seemed to have time for it. He decided to occupy himself by thinking of all the places he would go if he went again, and wondered, vaguely, if Rush and Valens had hit any of those places.
"So, where do you think Lilly and Scotty were last night?"
Jeffries looked nonplussed. "You still bitter they didn't answer you?"
"Oh, come on. They didn't answer, because they were doing something."
"Mind out of the gutter, man. Lilly isn't exactly a 'painting the town bright red' type of person."
"But Scotty is—and we all got secrets—hey, there's somebody."
Walking directly in front of their car was a boy who looked in his late teens. He was struggling to carry first down marker poles, a scoreboard, and a few bags of what looked like uniforms. Vera motioned to Jeffries, and the two hopped out of the SUV.
"Hey," Vera called, "You need help with that?"
Jeffries held out his police badge, and the kid smiled a little, handing one of the bags over to Vera.
"Detectives Jeffries and Vera. We'll cut to the chase. We're here to reinvestigate the death of a Renee Hutchinson. You know her?"
A bewildered look covered the boys' face, then a small smile, as if recalling fond memories. "Terrell, and of course. Her dad used to run the league, I played on his team. We were friends. I had the most pathetic crush on that girl."
Jeffries laughed a little. "Did she reciprocate?"
"Of course not. She was three years older than me, so there was no shot."
"Did she ever mention any problems she was having? Boys? Home…"
Ryan shook his head. "We weren't that kind of friends. We didn't talk about stuff like that."
Vera cut in. "What did you talk about?"
"Football. She's still the only girl I ever remember being able to hold up her end of a football conversation. She used to call Westbrook the glass running back… I told her that him getting hurt that season was just a temporary thing, but she turned out to be right—like always."
Vera sighed. Nothing about this conversation was panning out as helpful. But he asked one last question as a desperate hope. "Do you ever remember her being really upset? Or stressed? Even if she didn't tell you why?"
"Well," Terrell responded, "Once."
Terrell is throwing a football around, shirtless, with one of the assistant coaches, Darryl. He looks up and sees Renee, climbing into a gray Honda. Diverting his attention away, he throws a pass that comes off several yards short.
"Sorry." He says.
Darryl laughs openly at him, tossing the ball back. "Give it up, Romeo."
Terrell takes the ball and nails Darryl in the chest with it. An offended look crosses Darryl's face, and Terrell responds, "Mind yours."
He looks up again, and sees Renee, climbing out of the car, tears streaming down her face. "Screw you Dante," he hears her yell, "You're just trying to mess me up."
Renee runs down the stairs and almost collides with him, attempting to give him a smile, but failing miserably.
"What's up, kid?" She whispers.
"Renee… Renee what's--?"
"It's nothing, really. Nothing. Did—did you catch the game?"
"Game five, Eagles, of course."
"Glass running back strikes again. What did I tell you?" Renee laughs a little. "Go back and practice. My dad'll have your head if you aren't on your game."
Terrell sighed. "Maybe I should've pressed more. But I thought—you know. I thought it wasn't a big deal."
Jeffries reached out and clasped Terrell's shoulder. "This is no time to play the blame game with yourself, okay? You can go now."
Terrell took back his equipment from Jeffries and Vera, and ran down the stairs. Vera looked at Jeffries.
"I heard one word louder than all the others. Dante."
Had to throw in Eagles references. Especially the westbrook thing—me and my dad call him that. lol. Please R&R.
