A/N: Thanks to everyone reading and reviewing this story.
No Such Thing as a Perfect Family (4)
Lieutenant Flynn's visit had left Sharon with a cup of coffee and a little more peace of mind, both of which she was immensely grateful for. She decided to stop hiding in her office and face the world again, even if it meant going through the day battling a constant low-level buzz of anxiety regarding those damn letters.
Those damn letters.
She needed something to get her mind off that, at least while the they solved their current murder. Sykes and Provenza were still not back with the suspect, and she couldn't possibly get as immersed into the company's financial records as Lieutenant Tao. Going through the coroner's report would have been distracting, admittedly, but not exactly her idea of pleasant reading.
That left one option.
She ran into Lt. Flynn just as he was exiting the electronics room.
"Captain."
She returned the greeting with a nod. "Is Detective Sanchez done interviewing the Starlings' mailroom boy?" And there was that half-suppressed smirk again. Her earlier irritation curbed, now Sharon was genuinely curious. "Alright, Lieutenant, since I don't find an attack on my officers amusing – even if it was just a stapler–"
"A heavy-duty stapler," Flynn amended gravely, earning himself a dry glance.
"–I'd love to hear what it is that you and Lt. Provenza find so humorous about this incident."
To her disappointment, he merely affected the most innocent mien, and held up his hands in mock-surrender. Sharon spared a warning look to let him know he wasn't fooling anyone.
"I'm starting to want to interview this mailroom boy myself," she muttered, at the exact moment that Sanchez stepped out of interview 1.
The Detective cringed at hearing her intentions, and Sharon turned an inquisitive look on him.
"Any luck, Detective? Did Mr. Dawson explain why he interfered with your examination of the records and attacked you?"
Behind her, Flynn stopped even trying and just grinned widely.
Sanchez cleared his throat. "Yes, Ma'am. It was a… misunderstanding."
Her eyes narrowed. "I'd like to have a word with this Pat Dawson."
Another cringe. "That's–uh, not necessary…"
Having already walked up to the interview room, Sharon glanced back at the smug Flynn, then gave Sanchez her are-you-kidding-me look, and opened the door.
Her eyebrows rose to her hairline.
"Finally!" A young woman threw her hands in the air. "Can I go now?"
The Captain was still getting over the surprise. "Pat Dawson." The girl looked like she was twelve, although realistically she must have been closer to twenty. Sharon blinked. "You attacked Detective Sanchez?"
"I thought they were breaking in!" the young woman squeaked. "It was Sunday evening, no one was supposed to be at the office!"
Baffled, Sharon looked to Sanchez, her eyes moving from his bruised collarbone to the scratch on his forehead.
"She took me by surprise with that stapler."
She looked back to the five-foot-two Pat Dawson.
"I do Tai Chi," the girl confirmed gravely. "I'm very stealthy."
The Captain bit her lips and smiled politely. "Excuse me for a moment." Closing the door, she gave Sanchez the same diplomatic, tight-lipped smile, though her voice, as usual, betrayed the feelings that her poker face successfully concealed: "I think you can handle this, Detective."
Sanchez sighed. "Yes, Ma'am," and glared at Lieutenant Flynn cracking up silently in the background.
It was good to know that she was still capable of finding humor in things. She hadn't felt like laughing in days; and even if the feeling faded in an instant under the weight of her worries, it still left behind a certain lightness that eased the tension from her shoulders a little.
Sharon was briefly entertaining the idea of sending Flynn and Provenza on some highly-unpleasant errand in return for their jokes at Detective Sanchez's expense (it was after all her right and duty as Captain to remind them that karma, to put it diplomatically, was not a very nice lady), when the appearance of Chief Taylor abruptly hijacked her train of thought. She mentally braced herself. She'd known this was coming.
The man did not look happy.
Unless she was highly mistaken, which she usually wasn't, Sharon Raydor was about to have a very Brenda Leigh Johnson kind of moment.
Karma indeed.
"Captain Raydor." Chief Taylor's displeased expression intensified, and he got straight to the point. "Do you know anything about the LAPD doing daily eight-hour surveillance duty at a local private school?"
Next to her, she felt Lieutenant Flynn sobering up.
"It's Saint Joseph's," Sharon provided calmly, "the school Rusty goes to."
"Oh I am aware of the specifics, trust me. It was more of a rhetorical question." He scowled. "Did you authorize that kind of operation?"
"No."
"Because you don't have the auth – what?" By the time he processed her reply, Taylor looked slightly taken aback. "Captain," he warned impatiently.
"I didn't authorize it," she maintained evenly, then virtually saw the instant rise in his blood pressure when she added:"Chief Pope did."
Definitely a Brenda Leigh moment.
Surely enough, Taylor's expression grew thunderous. "And why did the Chief of Police hear about this before I did?"
Because the Chief of Police owed her a favor.
"He must have heard it from the DA's office," Sharon offered. "I filed a petition for them to request and fund the protection assignment, since Rusty is their…material witness. " She was really developing a distaste for those words. "They must've contacted Chief Pope to negotiate."
"And now the LAPD is funding your 'assignment'. Some negotiation." Taylor pursed his lips in a dry expression. "Need I remind you that our budget doesn't allow this kind of extravagance?"
"I know, Chief," she acknowledged gravely, "which is why I suggested this solution - it's cheaper than full-time witness protection."
"The DA's office would have paid for the full-time witness protection, given the elevated threat levels against their witness."
Sharon smiled. "As DDA Rios reminded me just yesterday," she said pleasantly, "we all work on the same side. In the spirit of economy, it could be argued that saving money in one place is beneficial for both."
His eyes narrowed at her reply: "You were not hired to develop economic solutions, Captain Raydor," he bit back sardonically, "you were hired to solve cases. In the future, you should stick to that. And it would be beneficial for you to remember that requests should be processed through the proper chain of command." He gave her a dark look, but the edge was gone from his voice when he added: "I didn't think I'd ever need to remind you about the rules, Captain."
And Sharon sighed in acknowledgment. "Believe me, Chief, the irony is not lost on me."
Taylor gave her one last displeased look. "Don't make a habit of this, Captain," he warned, before walking off toward his office without waiting for another reply. Sharon watched him go, arms crossed, refusing to feel even a little bad about her decisions in this particular case.
She'd almost forgotten about Flynn's presence until he spoke again: "Wow - you went all the way to Pope with this."
Sharon gave him a silent sideways glance. She'd have gone all the way to the pope with it, if necessary.
Flynn's intervention and the relief of having at least dealt with the backlash from Taylor may have eased some of her anxiety, but Sharon's heart still leapt in her throat when her cell phone buzzed with Rusty's number. The school strictly forbade cell use except in emergency situations; a hundred gruesome scenarios flashed through her mind in the couple of seconds it took to actually read the text.
Are you at a crime scene?
Okay, so it didn't sound like a crisis. Still Rusty had never broken the cell phone rule before, and he wouldn't do it for no reason.
The reason became apparent after her reply went through and his next text popped up almost immediately.
Will E. send me away?
Her heart went out to him. He'd asked the same question a dozen times over the past two days, and each time her reassurances had fallen just short of satisfactory. But no. She'd done everything. Stricter rules. Increased measures. Now she'd even gotten the LAPD protective duty past Taylor. Rusty was essentially in a gilded cage right now, one small step above house arrest really… but it was her gilded cage and that he would put himself willingly in it just to stay with her made something in her chest tighten.
She hoped her measures and his cooperation would be enough.
No. She typed the word more forcefully than intended. It'll be OK. It had to be.
The next reply really cracked the fragile serenity that she had been building all morning.
Promise me she won't?
He was asking for so little, and with all her heart she wanted nothing more than to give it to him…
"Oh, Rusty." Her whisper echoed sadly along her office walls.
…but she couldn't do it.
She couldn't, in good conscience, make him the promise he wanted, not when it could only too easily be broken by external forces.
But say what instead? No? I can't? We'll talk later?
I'm sorry?
Every child had a right to a home. And Rusty deserved it so much, after all he'd been through. And yet they were still trying to take it away from him.
Her fingers clenched around the phone and Sharon anticipated her next thought; it was a thought she knew she would regret, but it came unbidden anyway.
If this was the price, maybe Philip Stroh should just walk.
She felt awful as soon as she'd finished thinking it.
Emma Rios was right. She had completely lost objectivity.
A rap on her open door made her turn.
"Provenza and Sykes just brought in the Starlings' tax accountant, Neal Thompson," Flynn announced. "You're gonna want to see this."
Sharon rose almost automatically, her hand still clutching the phone. As she followed the Lieutenant to the interview room, she kept glancing at the blank screen. What could she say to Rusty? Anything was better than nothing at all. But nothing at all was better than a lie...
Lt. Flynn had led her to electronics instead, rather than the interview room as she had thought. She started at the image of a bony, broad-shouldered man in his mid-thirties with just the start of a bald spot on his head. He seemed agitated, waving his hands around, and Sykes was trying to get him to settle down.
Sharon squinted. "What's wrong with his hands?"
"Says he hurt himself cooking," Provenza walked in, having left Sanchez to assist Sykes. "if you can believe it."
The Captain nodded. "Get photos of his injuries, and send them to Dr. Morales. See if they could've been caused while stabbing our victim."
"Fourteen times," Flynn remembered thoughtfully. "Bound to get messy. Hand's gonna slip…"
"What? You don't buy the roast chicken story?" Provenza sounded indignant.
Sharon sighed and took a step back from the screens. Her eyes automatically went to the phone still in her hand. There hadn't been another message. But she knew Rusty was waiting for an answer.
An answer she couldn't give him.
"Captain." Lt. Tao poked his head in electronics. "We've got a possible murder weapon."
She couldn't think about her reply and solve the murder at the same time… and the sooner they closed the case, the sooner she could go back to focusing on the letters.
Squaring her shoulders, Sharon reluctantly placed the phone on the table, pulled herself together and nodded for Tao to continue.
She saw Rusty the second he walked in, shortly after two p.m., and when their eyes met across the room there was silent reproach in his wary gaze. Sharon remembered with a pang that she never had sent that last reply; her attempt to focus on the case had worked only too well.
She smiled anyway, because every time she watched him walk through the door she was grateful that they still had that, at least.
Rusty trudged slowly across the murder room, her eyes following his trajectory until he came to stand right by her and muttered a subdued: "Hi."
"Hi, honey."
The team had been in the middle of an involved review of their suspect's testimony, but discussion simmered down respectfully around the two of them.
"Did you have a good day at school?"
The flash of wry incredulity was both painful and endearing. "You're kidding, right?" Faced with her sympathetic expression, Rusty gave a long sigh. "It was okay…nobody tried to kill me yet, so that's good I guess…"
Sharon's expression sobered, with an involuntary almost-headshake that clearly said, 'don't even joke about that'.
Uncomfortable, Rusty fidgeted a little, shifting on the balls of his feet. His hand reached into his pants pocket. "Guess I'm supposed to give you this." He pulled out a folded paper, and only at the flash of dismay on her face did he realize what it looked like. "No, no Sharon it's just a teacher's note…" He all but shoved it at her in his hurry to prove that. "Here."
Luckily she had recognized the blue flier after a second, although her heart rate took a little longer to return to normal. She arched her eyebrows slightly as she unfolded the paper, a fleeting smile on her lips at the memory of other notes she had received from her own children over the years.
"Teacher's notes…" Provenza scoffed, having obviously tuned one ear to their conversation. "Like what anyone wants to get from their kids' school is more paperwork."
Sharon hummed amusedly. "The blue ones aren't so bad," she murmured, her eyes glancing over the note, "it's the red ones I learned to really watch out...for... " Her amusement abruptly evaporated as she realized what the teacher was complaining about: Rusty's cell phone use. A sigh wrenched from her throat almost against her will.
The same question was still in his eyes when she looked up again. Promise me she won't?
Sharon folded the note and placed it on the desk behind her. "Don't worry it about this," she told Rusty. "We can talk about it later…"
And again she saw the shadow of disappointment in him. But he only shrugged and accepted what she could offer. "Okay. Fine, whatever…" He glanced unsurely around the murder room. "So… what do you want me to do?"
She felt a pang of sadness. He hadn't asked her that in months. Just a few days ago he'd have found his own answer – in fact he wouldn't even have walked up to her in the first place, not if he'd seen they were busy. He might have waved a greeting and made off to an unused desk to start on homework, or headed over to Buzz to complain about his latest English essay.
Friday's events had changed all that… And as Rusty waited uncertainly by her with that painfully expectant expression, Sharon realized that he really didn't know what to do anymore. Didn't know where he stood. Not just with her. With all of them.
She motioned briefly with her head. "Why don't you wait in my office," she offered. "Get started on homework. As usual." She hoped her smile was reassuring. "I'll come by when we're done here…"
The words 'as usual' did the trick, as she hoped they would. Rusty nodded and even managed a small kind-of-smile of his own before he headed over to her office; she watched him until he had settled in a chair, gave him one last warm gaze which was rewarded with a vague wave, and then turned her attention back to the case and their plan to unravel the main suspect's lies.
It wasn't too long after that they caught a small breather – although Sharon would have preferred it not to come about because their suspect had invoked the right to counsel. Still, their case was strong enough now, and with the further evidence that she had asked Sanchez and Sykes to bring in, it would be fairly secure, even if it did end up in court.
"– if the victim's girlfriend IDs Thompson as the guy who stalked her, we've got motive." Flynn seemed to be thinking along the same lines.
"Ah, love." Provenza hummed. "Oldest story in the murder manual."
"Yeah, although I can't believe he went from a tax fraud set-up to multiple stabbings." Flynn rolled his eyes. "Feels like he skipped a few steps, you know?"
"The IRS must have not been moving fast enough for him," Sharon opined as they walked back into the squad room, "and he got tired of waiting for his rival to take the fall for the falsified records."
"Too bad we didn't get him to admit to that before he invoked," muttered Provenza. "You know the lawyer will argue that it wasn't premeditated. Might even go for self-defense."
"With fourteen stab wounds?" Flynn scoffed incredulously. "Pretty sure the self-defense case is over after the first couple of 'em."
"With the evidence of him misfiling the victim's records and tax forms, we have intent to cause harm," Sharon picked up their case folder from the Lieutenant's desk, "so Mr. Thompson is certainly not getting self-defense. But more importantly, I think we can prove premeditation…"
"Without a confession?" Flynn sounded doubtful. "He's got no history of violence, never made any overt threats to the victim and the carving knife he used probably came from the victim's own apartment. Any halfway decent lawyer's at least gonna try for crime of opportunity. Even I'm not convinced he planned to kill the guy ahead of time."
She hummed doubtfully as she pulled a page out of the case folder and scanned it quickly. The two detectives exchanged a glance.
"My sharp deductive reasoning tells me you're going somewhere with this Captain, but I'm not seeing it." Even after she handed him the page, Provenza still frowned. "Suspect's credit card statement… there's nothing on here that jumps out, unless you're talking about his really bad taste in Italian restaurants."
Sharon made a move to grab her phone, then realized she must have left it in electronics; her eyes flickered unconsciously to Rusty's figure in her office, then she refocused.
"The day of the murder, Mr. Thompson stopped by the "Bed, Bath and Beyond" on Vine at seven twenty-three p.m." She checked the coroner's report. "Dr. Morales put time of death somewhere between eight and eleven… Lieutenant, may I borrow your phone?"
Flynn's eyebrows flew up. "You don't think he actually bought the knife on the way to his victim's house."
Provenza glanced at the credit card statement. "The charge is $108.98." He arched his eyebrows as the Captain used Flynn's phone to pull up the store website. "You're kidding me."
Sharon extracted an enhanced photo of the murder weapon from the case folder, and held it next to the phone screen, which now showed the standard picture of a carving knife. "Look familiar?"
The evidence of a murder on one of them notwithstanding, the knives in both photos looked almost identical.
"$99.99 at your local store." Flynn read. "With tax, I'm assuming it'll match the credit card charge."
Sharon handed him the phone and the photo. "Circumstantial, but with rest of our evidence it paints a very clear picture."
"I'll get this to Tao, see if we can get a copy of the receipt from the store."
Provenza shook his head. "Can't wait to show it to his lawyer."
"Let's hold off on that, and on resuming the interview until Detectives Sanchez and Sykes bring Ms. Bailey back for an identification… then we'll see if Mr. Thompson is ready to confess." She arched a knowing eyebrow. "Although I don't think he'll be getting a very good deal."
Her satisfaction dimmed somewhat as she realized that being ready to make a deal inevitably meant the return of DDA Rios. At the very least she had a chance to warn Rusty before that happened, so he wouldn't become worried all over again at the sight of the woman.
She walked over to her office, a slight smile spreading over her lips before she even fully opened the door.
Rusty looked up from his seat, a wary expression in his eyes, and that's when she noticed he was holding a familiar piece of paper; the letterhead of the DA's office was clearly visible at the top of the page.
He held up the fax with a fearful, accusing look. "What is this, Sharon?"
A/N: Next chapter, the shift into the second part of the prompt ("meeting Sharon's family"!) will finally start to happen. Thanks so much to everyone reading this story, and of course those of you who review know that it absolutely makes my day to read your comments :).