What is Not Understood

By Kadi

Rated T

Disclaimer: This is not my sandbox, but it is my favorite place to play.

A/N: All Season 5 Spoiler Warnings remain in effect.

Chapter 4

"Let's go through it again." Detective Eric Lawrence paced around the small interrogation room that was located within the Robbery Homicide offices. Their suite was much smaller than the ninth floor murder room and support offices that were maintained by Major Crimes. What they had on the fourth floor was half the size. They only had a single interrogation room and it was currently occupied.

At the metal table, Lieutenant Flynn sat with a disposable cup filled with coffee on the surface in front of him. His suit jacket was hanging on the back of the chair that he was seated in. His sleeves were rolled up and as the statement was made, he leaned back with a sigh. This was the first time in his career that he had been on this side of the interrogation table. He didn't much care for it. It was bullshit in his opinion. His teeth ground together in frustration as he struggled to hold on to his temper. His eyes burned darkly as he looked up at the two detectives in the room with him. One was pacing, the other was leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest.

"You left Joe's Bar at eight o'clock Friday night," Lawrence continued, "give or take a few minutes. Then what happened?"

Andy arched a brow. He leaned forward again and folded his hands together on the surface of the table. "I drove home. There was a wreck on the freeway. I sat there for almost half an hour before I was able to get off at Jefferson. I cut through the city, up through Miracle Mile and across to Fairfax. Have you ever tried to get anywhere in this city at that time of night when half the population is on it's way home from work and the rest is headed out for a night on the town?" Andy shook his head at them.

"That doesn't take an hour and a half," McNeil pointed out. "You didn't get home until around ten. Maybe there was a reason for that. Maybe you weren't in too big a hurry."

"Or maybe you took a little detour that you don't want anyone to know about?" Lawrence smirked at him. "Come on, Flynn. We all go way back. We know what it used to be like." Lawrence had been in Robbery Homicide with the Lieutenant. He was younger, but not by much. "So what was it, stop off for a drink? Or maybe there was something else that you wanted that you can't get at home?" He walked forward and pushed the crime scene photos back toward the lieutenant. "How about our friend Trina, here? Maybe you took her for a little ride. No one would blame you. She ain't bad on the eyes. I seem to remember the time when the little busty ones were all you cared about." He leaned over the table, hands flat against the surface. "So is that it? Maybe you decided that Davidson and Mitchell were on to something."

"Maybe you thought that what you needed was a private party," McNeil said, picking up the theory where the other detective left off. "There wasn't a whole lot that you could do with your entire division around, not when you're sleeping with the boss. So I think that you took Trina out to show her a good time where none of them would be any the wiser. Did you bang her? A little good time without the old ball and chain knowing about it? No one here is going to blame you." He flashed a mean, smug smile. "I mean, it can't be easy, right? So is that what you did? You took Trina out, showed her a good time?"

They had been over this once already. Andy was well aware of their strategy. He simply stared back at them, looking more bored than upset. He was annoyed as hell, but he wouldn't give them the satisfaction. "No," he repeated. "I got in my car, I drove home, and if you talk about my Captain in that way again, I will file a complaint with Professional Standards."

"Come on Flynn!" Lawrence slammed his hand down on the table. "You screwed her, we all know you did. It's only a matter of time before the DNA comes back and proves it. Save us all some time and at least yourself some pride and admit it. You took the prostitute up on her offer and that's why you were so late getting home to your girlfriend. We're not looking to get you for solicitation. We don't care. What I need to know is if Trina House was still alive when you finished banging her, or if you freaked out realizing what that ball buster that you're living with was going to do and strangled her yourself."

They wanted him to lose his temper, and god only knew it was right there, brimming beneath the surface, but Andy wouldn't give them the satisfaction. His tongue swept over his lips. He glared back at the detectives in front of him. He stood up slowly. The muscles of his long body bunched and stretched. His back and legs ached from having been sitting so long in one position. His shoulders were tight with tension. "If you were going to charge me, you would have done that already. You can't charge me because you don't have anything. You don't have anything because there is nothing to have. This is over."

"It's only a matter of time," Lawrence told him. "You know that we can hold you without charging you." He folded his arms across his chest. "We don't have to let you go anywhere."

"Nope." Andy snatched his jacket off the back of the chair. "You won't." He cast one long, hard look back, "you don't have the balls to try it." To prove their point he walked out of the interrogation room. There was no one waiting on the other side and none of the officers on that level tried to stop him as he stalked through the Robbery Homicide bullpen on his way to the elevator bank. All eyes were on him but Andy stared straight ahead.

It was not until he was in the elevator that he allowed his shoulders to slump. Andy moved to the back of the lift and leaned against the wall. He let out the breath that he had not realized he was holding. He rolled his head around on his shoulders and felt some of the tension pop in his neck. There was a pounding in his ears and an ache behind his eyes, a sure sign that his blood pressure was up. He concentrated on breathing while the elevator rose slowly toward the ninth floor. When it opened he stepped out and made his way toward the Murder Room. There was only one thing on his mind, get his stuff and get the hell out of there as quickly as he could.

He had been downstairs for a couple of hours, so Andy wasn't surprised to find the murder room empty. It had been cleared out and everyone sent home. All except for a single individual. Sharon was seated in his chair, at his desk. Her purse was on the desk beside her and her jacket was in her lap. She was staring at the floor in front of her but as he approached she looked up. Her eyes were tired and a little sad but there was a burning anger behind her gaze. She stood up when he reached the desk. Sharon laid a hand on his arm. "Let's go home," she said quietly.

"Yeah." He spoke stiffly. Andy unlocked his desk drawer and took his gun out. He slipped it into his holster and then he palmed his keys and his phone. "Let's go," he told her. Andy stepped back and let Sharon walk by him. He joined her, walking silently beside her. Normally he would have laid his hand against her lower back, but there was too much emotion simmering beneath the surface. He didn't want to touch her while there was so much bitterness inside of him. When Sharon curled her hand around his upper arm he looked down, a little surprised at the action.

Sharon walked close to him, with their shoulders touching. She tilted her head toward him. Her voice was pitched low. "Look as angry as you need to," she stated, "but do not give any of them the satisfaction of seeing you emotional."

His teeth ground together again. "Won't be hard," he bit out. "I'm pretty damned pissed off."

"Good." They stopped at the elevator and she looked up at him. Her green eyes were burning; they were darker than he usually saw them. "So am I."

They left Andy's car parked in the garage across from the PAB and drove home together. It was not always practical for them to carpool, but on this evening, they risked it. Sharon knew that there was very little chance of her division being rolled out during the night, not with recent events.

The drive home was made in silence. Neither of them was prepared to discuss what happened or their current predicament. Sharon sat in the passenger seat with her hands folded in her lap, gaze turned resolutely out the passenger side window as the city moved past. She was perfectly aware of Andy beside her, tense and just as silent. She had glanced at him only once; his hands were gripping the steering wheel tightly and his jaw was clenched. When they reached the house, Sharon didn't wait for Andy to come around and open her door for her. She climbed out of the car the moment that the engine was off.

Rusty's car was not in the driveway, but she sent a text while she waited for Andy to unlock the side door that would let them into the house from the garage. The response came while she was hanging up her jacket and resetting the house alarm. Rusty was with Gus, and anticipated being out late. Sharon stepped out of her heels and carried them with her as she made her way upstairs. She didn't know where Andy had gone, but he wasn't in the bedroom when she stepped into it to change for the evening.

Before she did anything else Sharon wanted to shower off the disgusting feeling that day's conclusion had left her with. She set the water in the shower to as scalding as she could stand it and stood beneath it. She let it rain down on her, let it sting and burn and turn her skin red. When she left the shower, despite the heat of it, she was freezing. With her skin flushed and glowing from the near brutality of the water's heat and the way that she had scrubbed herself clean, Sharon dressed in a thick sweater and a pair of leggings. Only then, feeling not exactly better, but at least a little more human, she went in search of Andy.

She was not at all surprised to discover that he had done the same thing. Andy had used the downstairs guest shower and had discarded his suit in exchange for a pair of pajama pants and a long sleeve t-shirt. She found him in the kitchen. He was standing at the counter, glaring at the coffee maker as it filled, going much too slowly for his liking. Caffeine was probably the last thing that they needed at this hour, but that was what Andy did when he was upset. He made coffee. Sharon would rather have had tea, but she chose to ignore it. She walked to the cupboard and pulled down a pair of mugs. Then she stood beside him and waited.

Andy glanced at her but he shook his head. The meaning was clear. Not yet. He didn't say anything as the carafe finished filling. Except for the sound of percolating coffee the kitchen remained silent. When it was ready he filled both mugs and turned away from her. He walked over and took a seat at the breakfast table. He sighed and ran a hand over his face, it moved into his hair and made the still slightly damp strands stand on end. When he looked up his eyes were tired. They were still filled with anger and disappointment, but there was a fatigue there that very nearly bordered on defeat.

Sharon walked over and sat down across from him. She set the mug of coffee on the table but kept both hands wrapped around it. She allowed the heat that was seeping through the sides chase away the chill in her fingers. "I think," she began carefully, "that we should discuss hiring an attorney."

His head bowed. Andy swore quietly. He exhaled a sigh before he nodded. He didn't like the idea, but he was beginning to think that she was right. The idiots from Robbery Homicide didn't have anything on him because he didn't do anything, but that alone wouldn't stop them. It could ruin his reputation and hers. It could undo some of the cases they had worked recently. It could just be a lot of trouble altogether. He looked up finally. His shoulders were aching. "There's a little left over from the sale of the house…"

"Don't worry about that." Sharon wasn't concerned with their financial situation. "We will work it out." She reached across the table and covered one of his hands with hers. "We," she stressed, "will get to the bottom of all of this. I'm not entirely certain what Captain Patrick and his team of miscreants thinks that they are doing but you will not be questioned again without representation. Let them deal with a criminal attorney while we focus on unraveling their case and then solving it for them."

"We can't do that." Andy's eyes narrowed. They couldn't take over the case, not with two of their division marked as suspects and the rest of them possible witnesses.

Her brow arched. Sharon's eyes glittered with determination. "Try me." She shook her head at him. "Andy, half of the LAPD was in Joe's Bar on Friday evening. I'm certain if we look, even a little, we'll find that members of Robbery Homicide were present too. As long as you and I are not actively involved in any investigation that we conduct, it's perfectly fine. What I want you to focus on is writing down your exact route home. You'll give it to your attorney and then it can be submitted to Buzz and Lieutenant Tao so that the footage from the traffic cameras can be pulled."

There was something in the way that she said the word attorney, the way that her lip curled just a bit in disgust that had the hairs on the back of Andy's neck standing on end. He studied her closely. Andy was a little wary of the answer as he asked, "Who were you thinking that we should retain?" When she looked into her coffee mug and wouldn't meet his gaze Andy's eyes narrowed. Then she mumbled a name that had him swearing. He drew his hands away from her and leaned back in his chair. "I didn't think it was possible, but this just got worse."

They spent the night talking strategy. They would not allow the bad timing of a tasteless joke to defeat or ruin either one of them. The next morning Sharon placed the call that had Andy stomping around the house in a foul mood. The attorney would be meeting them at the PAB to discuss the situation. Their trip to work that morning was just as silent as their trip home had been the previous evening, although this time Andy's displeasure was more visible in the way that he fidgeted and sighed.

Once they arrived at the office, however, the matter was not discussed again. They both went back to work. There was an obvious cloud over the murder room. The team wanted to talk about the events of the previous day, but knew that they couldn't, or shouldn't with all of the support staff present. There was work to be done too, the reports that were cut short by the arrival of Robbery Homicide. They all focused their attention on those, at least until mid-morning when Flynn's attorney arrived.

He gave Sharon a truly disgusted look after the lawyer was shown into her conference room. "Do I have to?"

She rolled her eyes at him in a bland look. "You do," she stated. "Andy, this is necessary."

He sighed again and folded his arms across his chest. "Couldn't you just call Gavin?" He almost looked a little petulant.

"No," Sharon drew the syllable out as she struggled to maintain her patience. "Gavin is not a criminal attorney. If we decide to sue the LAPD when this is all said and done, he's our man. Until then…" She waved a hand toward the conference room.

Andy's brows screwed into a deep scowl. "Then can we call Jack?"

Her lips pressed into a thin line. Her patience was beginning to wane even more. "We cannot afford him," she said. They could, financially. That was not a problem, and she would have even forced him to work the case at half his usual fee, but it was the headache that came with Jack that they couldn't afford, and didn't want. He would take far too much personal pleasure in Andy's plight, quite possibly to the tune of working the case pro bono, and with everything else that was happening, Sharon was not going to put either of them through that. She sighed and suppressed the impulse to pinch the bridge of her nose. "Andy."

"Yeah, okay." He winced at the brittle sound in her tone. He had pushed her just as far as he could, but dammit, it was his ass on the line here. They both knew that Sharon was a distraction. "I'm going. But I don't have to like it." He started toward the conference room, but not without muttering, "she's the devil."

Sharon smirked at his back. "Didn't you used to say that about me?" He grunted at her, but said nothing else. Sharon watched as he walked into the conference room. Her smile slowly fell. She drew a breath and let it out slowly. They had hired Linda Rothman.

Andy wasn't entirely wrong. As criminal attorneys went, she was one of the best, and that made her one of the most… dubious that they happened to know. The mere fact that she had once defended Phillip Stroh made Sharon's skin crawl, but good and tough were what they needed.

She met the other woman's gaze through the glass. Rothman was adamant that she meet with Flynn alone. If she was taking this case, then he was her defendant. If he chose to talk about their meeting with his captain and fiancé, that was up to him, but she would not have outside interference. There was a certain arrogance about the other woman that annoyed Sharon to no end, and when she reached up and closed the blinds to the conference room, Sharon's jaw clenched. Rothman wasn't wrong. In shutting her out they had effectively separated Sharon from Andy's defense. She turned away from the conference room and focused on the rest of her team. It was time to get to work.

They had a case to solve.

It did not take long for word to get back to Robbery Homicide that Flynn had lawyered up. Within the hour Captain Patrick and Detective Lawrence were striding into the Murder Room. They were not willing to show their hand immediately, but they wanted Flynn back in the interrogation room.

Sharon knew that Andy had given Rothman his route home. She waited until the Lieutenant and his attorney left the murder room to adhere to the request from the other division, and then she handed her copy of that route over to Lieutenant Tao. "Start pulling it," she instructed him. She wanted to get ahead of this investigation. Robbery Homicide had used her as a distraction the previous evening. It was her turn now.

It took time. Most of the day. Andy was with Robbery Homicide for almost two hours before the message came to her that he was going to be meeting with his attorney for the rest of the afternoon. She instructed him not to return. They needed to take care of matters from both sides, and Sharon wanted him to be scarce while she took care of hers.

When Tao and Buzz had compiled all of the camera footage from Andy's route home that Friday evening, Sharon joined them in the RACER room, along with Lieutenant Provenza and the rest of their team. "We have him getting off the freeway at Jefferson," Tao explained. As he spoke, Buzz panned the images that they had of the Lieutenant's car on the large screen against the far wall. Mike walked around and pointed at each one. "He stayed on Venice for the most part," he pointed at each of the photographs that were taken at intersections along that road. "Then he got off on La Brea and headed north. We have clear views of the Lieutenant's car until he reached Santa Monica Boulevard. It gets a little harder to track him after he gets in to the hills because there are fewer intersections with cameras."

"There was an accident on the freeway," Sanchez told her. "Traffic was backed up for almost an hour, it isn't hard to believe that the Lieutenant sat there for thirty minutes before he was able to get off."

"Then all we have to do is figure out why it took an hour and a half for him to drive from Arlington, where he exited the freeway, to Coldwater Canyon." Sharon folded her arms across her chest and stared at the screen. "Traffic doesn't look that congested. Were there any other accidents or detours?"

"No. But there's a problem." Buzz wasn't the one that wanted to point it out. He highlighted the two photos in question. "We have the Lieutenant's car at La Brea and 3rd, and again a few minutes later at the intersection at Beverly." Buzz highlighted the third picture and zoomed in on the time stamp. "His car doesn't cross Melrose for forty-five minutes. It only takes ten minutes to get to that intersection in rush hour traffic. At nine on Friday, it should have taken about five."

Sharon's head whipped around. She stared him. "Are you sure?" She felt her stomach drop and then clench painfully. Where would he have pulled off? "Are there any other traffic cameras along those smaller side roads?"

"No." It was Tao that answered. "I pulled the plates on other cars that crossed those intersections at the same time that Lieutenant Flynn did. Their cars moved through the Melrose intersection seven minutes later. Lieutenant Flynn was not with them."

"Then where the hell was he?" Provenza's arms had dropped. He scowled up at the camera.

"What do we have along that route?" Sharon walked around to stand beside Buzz as he pulled the data up on his tablet. Andy hadn't mentioned stopping, but that didn't mean that he hadn't.

"It's mostly residential." Buzz pulled up a city map and zoomed in on the location. "There are some small businesses, a few retail locations, but nothing significant." He looked at the others before his gaze turned back to the Captain. "I checked for churches and family centers, there are a couple in that area, but none that had any Recovery meetings going on Friday evening."

"Captain Raydor."

Chief Howard drew her attention from the door. He beckoned her over and motioned her into the hall ahead of him. "Chief." Her mind was still reeling. Sharon still looked as though she were reeling.

Fritz regarded her for a moment. She looked rattled, and from what he had seen in the RACER room, he could understand why. He sighed as he held out a file. "Judge Grove signed a warrant. Robbery Homicide is picking Flynn up, and SID has been dispatched with them to do a search of the house. I'm sorry, Captain."

It made her feel a little nauseous. Sharon opened the file and on top was the evidence that had played right into the other division's hands. It was a grainy black and white photo but it was clear enough. It looked to be from a security camera. In the photo, Andy was leaning against the hood of his car. Trina Shiloh was perched on the edge of the car beside him.

He had definitely stopped on his way home. He had seen Trina Shiloh again after leaving Joe's Bar, and he had lied about it.

-TBC-