CHAPTER NINE: PHOTOGRAPHS
Avery was cold. And hungry. They'd given her clean clothes when she'd shown up at the district in her old jeans and parka, teeth chattering and knees wobbling, slightly dizzy at the combination of having not eaten a proper meal for about three days and having just witnessed a murder, but as she sat in the break room, she felt really, really cold. She was nursing a mug of coffee – the worst coffee she'd ever tasted, without a doubt – and trying to will herself to feel something. She should be devastated at the death of her friend. Heartbroken. But instead she just felt completely empty. And God, she was cold.
They had put her into a group home last night, just to sleep, and then the Sergeant had come to pick her up that morning so that she didn't have to stay longer. He'd just sat her down in the break room, made her a mug of steaming coffee and told her to wait. It had been early when she first arrived, and there was only one cop there – sitting at a desk in the corner, a beanie hat on, and he appeared to be slumped over his computer keyboard. "Alvin!" the Sergeant had barked, and the cop had woken up.
"Oh, hey," he'd said, sounding slightly dazed.
The sergeant had just made a strange noise somewhere between a tutting sound and a snort, and shook his head.
Now that she'd been there for several hours, Avery had taken in every aspect of the room. The huge "MEN AT WORK" sign over the sink and the dent in the table and the rip in the fabric of the couch. She'd gotten used to the smell – coffee and carpet, if she had to describe it – but every time she looked at the fridge on one side of the room or the corkboard on the other, she found herself staring at the photographs pinned there. There was one that she particularly liked, of the entire unit, save for the Sergeant, whom she assumed was taking the photograph. They were at a bar somewhere, and they all had a beer in one hand and the other draped over another member of their team. Erin was right in the middle. She was laughing at something, and her head was slightly tilted back, her mouth open and her hair falling onto Halstead's arm, which was sprawled over her shoulder. She looked so happy.
There was one of Burgess and Sergeant Platt from the desk downstairs; one of Atwater and the young, hot one whom Avery presumed must be Ruzek; one of Antonio, a blonde woman and two kids; a photo of the entire unit alongside a bunch of firefighters; one of the desk-sleeping cop and the Sergeant alongside a woman – one of their wives maybe? – two teenagers and a young girl. The young girl had wild, curly dark hair and a big, toothless grin, and one of the teens was a boy with a chiseled jawline and a slightly disgruntled-looking expression, as if he had been caught off guard. And Erin. Avery frowned. The photo was old – the Sergeant had brown hair instead of grey and his face looked far less worn, and Erin looked like she couldn't be more than eighteen.
Avery was so engrossed in the photographs that she jumped when the door opened, spilling coffee over her hand. "Shit," she swore loudly, and immediately put her hand in her mouth to numb the burn of the coffee. She looked up and saw Erin leaning against the door frame, frowning slightly.
"You alright?" she asked.
"What's it to you?" Avery spat back. She didn't mean it to come out so rudely. After a few hours – more than that, really, since she had barely slept that night – to think about what had happened the previous day, Avery had begun to feel slightly bad about the way that she'd treated Erin. Some of the things she said weren't exactly fair, she knew that, but she was still angry. "Sorry," she added, consciously. "I'm fine."
"Here, let me see," Erin reached over, taking Avery's hand. The second she touched it, Avery snatched it back.
"I'm fine," she insisted.
"Well, at least run it under the tap," Erin ordered, and Avery hesitantly complied.
After a few minutes of only the sound of the running tap and Erin nervously tapping her foot, she switched off the water and sat down.
"So what do you want? To ask me more questions?" she stared back down into the coffee cup and the murky brown liquid that had spilled all over the table in front of her, refusing to make eye contact.
"Um," Erin began, and took a deep breath. "Actually, no."
"Well, if you're here to apologize, you can save it. I'm over it."
Erin raised an eyebrow. "Yeah," she said sarcastically. "I can see that."
"Whatever," Avery muttered.
"Okay, listen." Erin drew up a chair to the opposite side of the table and sat down on it the wrong way round, her legs either side of the backrest so that she could lean forward enough to engage in a conversation but still remain detached and impersonal. It was a tactic that she liked to use when interrogating suspects, especially ones that she thought were likely to get under her skin. "I've got a proposition for you."
Avery sighed and rolled her eyes. "Here we go. I don't want a handout, okay?"
"I'm not offering you a handout," Erin snapped. "Will you just listen to me?"
Avery just continued staring at the coffee on the table, and started tracing patterns in the droplets.
"You have two options right now. We need to put you in protective custody –"
"What?" Avery looked up suddenly. "Why?"
"Because this case is bigger than just Luca."
"What do you mean?"
Erin sighed. "Okay. None of what I say is going to be repeated, but we're the Intelligence unit for a reason. We've been sitting on a ring of drug smugglers who are funneling drugs into the city and selling to the rich white kids who then distribute them. They use the kids as a way to get to the money in the city, but the kids are getting too big for their boots and dropping like flies."
"And?"
"And Luca's uncle was the head of the whole operation."
"Holy shit," Avery breathed.
"You can say that again," Erin smiled slightly.
"So why does this mean that I need to be in protective custody?" Avery frowned. "I'm white, but I'm definitely not rich. I don't think I'm on the top of their hit list."
"Well, turns out that Luca was working as a Confidential Informant for a gang unit working to take them down – we've just found out about this now – and so that means that they know we're onto them."
"Okay, but I still don't understand what this has to do with me…?" Avery looked confused still.
"You're a witness. Not just to the murder of a homeless boy, but your testimony puts the entire operation at risk. If they found out that you saw the killer, and can ID him and link him back to their organization, then we'll be able to do some serious damage in a courtroom."
"And if Luca's uncle is willing to kill his own nephew to cover up their operation, I'm sure he wouldn't think twice about popping me, huh?"
Erin just swallowed, pursing her lips together and shrugging her shoulders slightly in lieu of a response.
"So what are these two options?" Avery inquired.
"Well," the detective in front of her took a deep breath. "It's up to you whether protective custody is a fake name and a new foster home out of state, or…"
"Or what?"
"Or you can come and live with me until the case is solved and we know that you're safe."
"Are you kidding me?"
Erin shrugged. Now it was time to give Avery the tough love that she knew she needed – that she herself had needed. "That's the offer. You'll be in Chicago. You'll be close to whatever other friends you have. And you'll be able to help with the case and get updates on how it's going. You'll be a hundred percent safe under my watch but we can't guarantee the same out of state if someone finds out where you've gone and who you really are."
"So what's the catch?" Avery asked.
"The catch is that you'll be living with me, for starters, which means that you're gonna have to learn to forgive me, or at least tolerate me. And Detective Halstead."
"Woah. Halstead from the interrogation, Halstead? You live together?"
"We're dating, yes. Not the point." Avery smirked. "Anyway," Erin continued. "You can come and go as you please. But you'll have a roof and a bed and food and someone to talk to. Of course, it depends how long the case lasts, but I can get you a place in a school. I can get any criminal records you have sealed. And I will do absolutely everything that I can to help you make a better life for yourself."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why are you so willing to help me?"
Erin sighed, wanting to keep this as impersonal as possible – a business proposition more than a promise – but she should probably have known better than anyone that business, especially police business, is about as personal as it gets.
"Because when I was your age I was in the exact same position," she said. "And a cop helped me the same way I am trying to help you, and now that cop is my boss, and I have a life better than anything I could have imagined when I was your age."
Avery stared at her. She had no idea. "Is that where the photo is from?" she mumbled.
It was Erin's turn to look confused. "What…photo?"
Her eyes followed Avery's arm as it extended slightly and gestured towards the old, torn one of her, Voight, Al, Lexi and Justin pinned to the corkboard. "Yeah," she whispered. Her eyes began to sting slightly at the tears that immediately sprung to the surface when she saw that the photograph had Justin and Lexi in it, too. She had completely forgotten that that photo even existed, let alone that it was pinned up in their office.
"Who are the others?" Avery asked.
Erin coughed, trying to cover the thickness in her voice. "Uh, Voight you know, obviously – he was the one who took me in – and Alvin, who you've probably met, and his wife, Meredith, before they split up. Al's daughter Lexi, and Voight's son Justin."
"Where are they now?"
At the look on Erin's face, Avery backtracked.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"
"No, it's – it's okay," Erin shook her head.
You need to set the parameters for this relationship, Erin. That was what the social worker had told her when she took Avery in the first time, five years ago. If you want her to be honest with you, you have to be honest with her. She took a deep breath.
"Justin died about three years ago now. He was twenty four."
"How did he die?" Avery asked slowly. She didn't want to be nosy, but she genuinely wanted to know – she had been so caught up in her self-pity, so caught up in this vision of Erin being a tough-as-nails cop who only lived to serve others, that she had never even considered the possibility that she had other things going on in her life.
Erin just shook her head. "That's a story for another time," she was fighting the tears, Avery noticed. "Lexi…" Erin continued. "She died too. The very next year."
"Sorry," Avery said. She hadn't meant to push.
Another shake of the head. "Listen, Avery, I'm not helping you because I want to make amends with you, okay?" she changed the subject. "I just want to see you get better. I'm not expecting you to decide now, I'll give you until the end of my shift, and then, if you want to come and live with me, I'll set it up. If you don't, you'll go to a group home in the center of the city for a few days, and then you'll transfer to Indianapolis as soon as we get the paperwork done and all the official statements that we need from you regarding the case. Or, you can live with me, see how you like it, get over your petty teenage resentment to me and try not to ask any more difficult questions, and then you'll have until the end of the case to decide where you want to go from there."
Avery was about to snap at her for the comment about petty teenage resentment, but when she looked up, the detective was smiling.
"Why should I trust you?" Avery sneered.
Erin opened her mouth, but Avery cut her off.
"Why should I believe anything that comes out of your mouth when I know you're just gonna chuck me back into the system again the second I've helped you with your case?"
The expression on Erin's face had changed from extremely hurt to extremely angry in a millisecond.
"Why should you –" she near-shouted, but stopped herself mid-sentence. Taking a breath and unclenching the fists that had tightened unconsciously at her sides, she continued, "because I am the only person right now who is fighting for you." She spat out every word with as much power as she could, chewing them around in her mouth and then firing them at the girl in front of her as if they were bullets. Good. She wanted them to leave a mark.
Before Avery could respond, Erin left, slamming the door shut behind her.