Everything is Connected

A Civil War

This time the case involved two dead Persian kids with oil poured all over them and "go home" written over their bodies in the frozen foods section of a "stop and rob" in an immigrant heavy part of town. Good kids caught in bad circumstance and all they got for their trouble was dead. Another boy was missing and that meant they went all out, all night – the whole squad - a manhunt. It was win or go home; until they got the boy back alive or his body lay on a slab in the morgue.

The lead detectives were still dancing around each other stinging from their last personal exchange. It figured they'd have to pull an all-nighter together. The kind of case where reality recedes from a combination of many hours that merge into days and lack of sleep makes the world seem surreal. The kind of place where Charlie Crews would feel completely at home – the white rabbit of Wonderland in his Armani suit.

Her conversation in Farsi was a revelation to him. She'd hidden her ancestry. Her father made it seem as though it was something to be ashamed of. But Crews seemed impressed rather than repelled by it. He got stranger the longer she knew him. Everyone else believed all Arabs or Persians were terrorists and Charlie Crews believed they were novel, even interesting. It figures he would.

Of course, he was in prison for 9/11 so maybe he wasn't as affected by the country's fear as everyone else, but it was still something she felt. People assumed she was Hispanic and she let them – it was easier. She was still thinking about the strangeness of her partner's response when he took them to previously uncharted waters.

"Maybe life is a dream and we wake up when we die," he mused in the car on what seemed to be day three of the longest night of her life.

Yeah, sure, her mind answered, because my life up to now has been such a cakewalk. God's gifts to me thus far are scotch, blow and Charlie Crews - lovely. She'd better hope he was wrong.

He took her snorted laugh as a commentary on his initial comment and smiled. Her smiles had become something of a holy grail to him lately. She was closed to him in a way that perplexed and befuddled him, but he returned to what he knew – the partner, not the woman.

The Department rumor mill in the ladies locker room described him as "suave" with a smattering of "handsome" thrown in. Her response when looking at him right now? Goofy, with a smattering of "I hate the way he looks at Mary Ann Farmer" thrown in for good measure. Dani Reese did not do jealous, but she was hovering very close to that line; too close for her liking, it grated on her like the sound of nails on a chalkboard.

Still when Crews remarked that he respected all the woman had achieved, Dani grumbled. It served Farmer right that Jeffery, her surf rat son, was hell bent on punishing both Farmer and her Persian drug-dealing lover. In the end everyone went to jail, except poor tortured Jeffery, whom SWAT put a bullet in. Jeffery had it coming though – he was a sadistic freak.

At the end of things, Crews sat on the curb with the woman he "respected" before she was hauled off in handcuffs and Dani offered him a paltry cup of coffee – as if their night had not been filled with a dozen such cups. Charlie took it and her hand and an uneasy truce settled over them.

When she dropped him at his house, the sun was already high in the sky and they were each headed for their respective beds, too tired for any extracurricular activity. She didn't want any more drama, nor did he. But when he leaned, she didn't move away. He kissed her lightly on the cheek and said "good night, Dani," in the bright sunlight of midday.

She missed him before she got home. He only called her Dani when they were alone, never at work. He was good at that; separating work from play – she wasn't. Her little flirtation with the green-eyed monster showed her that. He was too close; he was never supposed to mean this much. Hell…he was never supposed to mean anything.


He stood at his kitchen window with his hand playing in the strong sunlight. He drank orange juice and wondered how much better his pale hand would look against her tanned skin. She was an itch that never got enough scratching. Even poor bedraggled Ted noticed how he'd winnowed himself off the garden-variety girls. His taste ran to the Middle Eastern these days – a certain closeted half Persian girl who spoke a strange language fluently. Even harsh guttural words sounded lovely off her tongue.

He shrugged and collapsed into his big bed alone. He'd dream of her saying unintelligible things in a foreign tongue as his hand roved over her body in exaltation and supplication. She was the last thing he thought of before sleep took him and he'd bet she'd be the first conscious image in it when he woke.