The Mafia Connection Chapter 14, a law and order: ci fanfic

Liz POV

I committed a felony.

The words still echo in my brain even now, hours after I said them to Danny.

And in his defense, he stayed fairly calm.

"When you were a kid," he stated.

"I was a week away from being eighteen," I clarified.

"Okay. So…no offense, but you're a long way from eighteen. Why would someone be looking for you about that now?"

"Danny, did you hear what I said? I committed a felony. I'm married to the chief of D's. I don't think the why part really matters."

My adrenaline started pumping at that point, and I got up out of the bed and began pacing around the room.

"Liz…tell me about what happened."

"No."

"No? Just like that?"

"If I tell you, then you'll be an accessory after the fact. You'll be obligated to turn me in, or you could face charges yourself."

"Surely there's a statute of limitations involved. Unless…I mean…you didn't kill anyone, right?"

"You mean other than Pebo?" I asked as my agitation increased. "No. He was my first."

"Then whatever you did…it's done. It's in the past."

"How can you be so callous about it?" I fired back, turning my frustration onto him.

"I'm not being callous. But what else do you want me to say? I don't even know what you did."

"And you're not going to know," I said.

I opened the drawer and pulled out a fresh pair of scrubs and began hastily getting dressed.

"Where are you going?"

I looked down at myself and then back at Danny and said, "To the symphony. Where does it look like I'm going?"

"Liz," he began as he got up and walked towards me. "You're overreacting. First of all, you don't even know what the caller wanted. It wasn't the police, or they would've identified themselves. And like I said, too many years have passed for you to be held accountable for whatever it is that you did."

He made a valid point.

Which made the possibilities even worse.

"I'm going to work," I stated, grabbing up my tennis shoes and sitting down on the edge of the bed to put them on.

"It's three o'clock in the morning."

"I have plenty to do there. And it's not like I'm going to go to sleep."

"Liz, wait…"

He knelt down in front of me, putting his hands over mine, and then he looked at me with a pleading expression, silently begging me to let him in.

"I can't tell you," I said quietly. "It's a time of my life that I'm really not proud of, and that's why I've worked so hard to put it behind me."

"You think it'll make me love you less?"

"I know it will."

"That's impossible."

I closed my eyes and took a moment just to breathe.

It was easy for him to say he'd never stop loving me, but he doesn't know.

I wasn't able to look at myself in the mirror for the longest time, and then I finally decided that I had to make something of myself and make it all worthwhile, and over the course of the last three decades, I was able to do just that.

And now…now I don't know what's going to happen.

And I hate uncertainty.

But I also hate having a secret from Danny.

Before that first phone call this morning, I'd honestly completely forgotten about the whole thing.

So the fact that I never told him didn't really feel like I was keeping a secret.

It was more like a repressed memory, one that was now being painfully forced to the forefront.

So now if I continue to keep it from him, it'll be me having a secret.

And he'll know that I have a secret.

And it'll end up being a sore spot between us.

And dammit, why did this have to happen now?

We've been doing so great lately.

"Give me some time," I said at last. "I want to sort it out in my own mind first. And then I'll tell you."

"Okay," he agreed. "But I'd like to pull the LUDs on our phone and find out where the call originated. If it is cops, then I need to know about it so that we can get ahead of it."

I nodded my agreement, and he settled his hand on my cheek.

"I love you," he said firmly. "Whatever this is, we'll take care of it."

"I'll bring lunch to your office," I offered. "And we'll talk then. I just need to…be alone. For just a little while."

So I kissed him and left him alone in our bedroom. Slipping out the front door, I went to my car and started the engine, and then I sat and thought about what I wanted to do next.

Although actually, I think I probably already knew what I planned to do from the moment I got out of bed.

I drove to Sing Sing.

It only took me forty-five minutes, since there aren't very many cars on the road at this time of day.

By the time I parked and went up to the front desk, it was almost four o'clock. It's not standard protocol for prisoners to get visitors in the pre-dawn hours, but I know how to work the system.

The flash of any kind of official badge, accompanied by a twenty dollar bill will usually do it.

I didn't want to risk being declined this time, so instead of a twenty, I laid down a fifty as I showed my OCME badge.

"I need to see Jeff Anderson," I stated.

"You realize what time it is, right?" the desk sergeant asked as he slid the fifty dollar bill closer to him.

"I can tell time. I need ten minutes with him."

He stared at me for a minute and punched a few keys on his computer before buzzing someone in another room.

"Wake up Jeff Anderson, prisoner number 6458933. Put him in Room C."

He clicked off the intercom after getting an affirmative response and then looked at me.

"I need you to take off your coat and empty your pockets," he began, and then he finished the process of checking me in and within another minute, I was sitting in a chair in Room C, wondering what in the hell I was doing.

I almost changed my mind, but then the door opened.

"It's common fucking courtesy to…holy shit! Beth?"

"Sit down," the guard said roughly, shoving Jeff down into the chair across from me. Then the guard looked at me and said, "You want me in or out?"

"We're fine. You can wait outside."

The guard looked dubious for a moment and then he left us alone.

"Beth, it's been a long time, but you still look…"

"Stop it," I said sharply. "Whatever the hell you're doing, just stop."

"What?"

"What's the deal here? Are you getting ready to get out or something?"

"Yeah, but…"

"It's gone, okay? I don't have it anymore, so call off your dogs and quit harassing me."

"Beth, I'm…"

"I mean it," I said, and by this point I was standing up, leaning over the table yelling. "It has to stop."

He leaned back in his chair and looked at me in that slow, appraising way of his that always used to get me going.

Three decades in the slammer had surely made him harder, but he hadn't lost his looks.

"Listen to me, honey," he said carefully. "I'm sorry someone's screwing with you, but it's not me. I don't feel anything but love for you, okay?"

"But…" I said, and then I trailed off because I wasn't sure what else to say. I'd convinced myself that he was behind it, but now…now I have no idea.

"No buts," he said. "I don't even know what it is that you don't have, so why would I be looking for it?"

"Oh. Okay," I said, the wind having been sucked from my sail. "Um…I'm sorry I woke you up then."

"Honey, you can wake me up any time. I seem to remember one particularly nice way you had of doing that," he said with a smile.

I couldn't help but smile back. The man has charisma in spades.

"And now that's how I wake up the chief of D's," I told him. "He's my husband."

"Impressive. And you're a doctor," he said, nodding his head towards my badge that was clipped on the hem of my scrub top. "Maybe everything happens for a reason, huh?"

"That's a putting a positive spin on things."

"What can I say? I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy."

"Time's up!" the guard said, sticking his head into the room.

"It's fine. We're done," I told him as I headed for the door. I looked at Jeff and added, "Take care of yourself."

"You, too," he said pointedly. Then he smiled and said, "And Beth…you're even hotter now than you were back then. When I get out..."

"When you get out, I'll still be married."

Hopefully, I thought to myself, and then I said aloud, "But good luck to you."

So I left Sing Sing and drove back into the city.

I barely remember the drive, but somehow I ended up at the morgue.

I went into my office and sat down at the table and put my head in my hands.

Things make less sense now than they did before my trip to the prison, because now I not only have the current mystery, but I also have the one from thirty years ago.

Because Jeff said he didn't know what I was talking about.

And he's a lot of things, but he's not a liar.

I got out a notebook and a pen so that I could write down all of the facts in hopes that maybe I could shed some light on things, but that was when my phone rang.

It was Mary, asking me to run a GSR test on Anna's hands.

It's a simple test, so I handled it quickly and gave her the results.

Positive.

Which meant that either Anna had fired a gun in the last hours prior to her death, or at the very least, her hand was in very close proximity to a gun when it was fired.

And that might have made sense if there had been stippling on her head, but there wasn't, indicating that the shot had been fired from a few feet away, in which case her hand couldn't have gotten incidental GSR.

So that added a new twist to the case, but I was going to have to let them sort it out.

Because I committed a felony.

I'd really like to get Alex to help me sort out my mess if she wasn't already in so deep with this other case.

Because something's telling me that I'm missing something glaringly obvious, but considering my state of distress, I'm not exactly working at full capacity.

If only I knew a cop who was willing to help, I thought sarcastically.

And just as I was thinking about him, I got a text.

How about breakfast instead of lunch?

I quickly typed my reply, deciding that I was ready to talk to him.