He's grateful for his desk, for the confines of the district, when he gets the crime scene photos of the 6 year old boy, the hole above his brow a dark red, his eyes open and still horribly clear, his head haloed by red-painted pavement. He's grateful he wasn't there in person. Still, the image is too familiar, worse when he looks at the bright child in the school photo. He barely notices the team leaving him behind as he stares at the photo in the victim spot on the board, remembering another little boy. Smartly dressed little boys with gaping bullet holes in their heads aren't the kind of thing he'd been expecting to find in mud huts in the middle of the Valley of Death. It wasn't the first time they'd seen something like that, but the cognitive dissonance was disorienting, and the boy had looked so small that Mouse had frozen. He almost didn't see the other man in the room, the one with a gun pointed at him, the one who might have killed him if Jay hadn't shot him. The man's head had jerked back, spraying blood and brain and bone in the close range and he had dropped to the ground. Even with his heart racing at the realization of the threat, Mouse couldn't stop looking at the little boy, clothes unusually clean making Mouse more aware of the dirt that felt like it would never come out of his skin, the kind of feeling people got used to living with in a place like this. They never found out who the boy was or how he got there or why he died, but his face had been one of many to haunt Mouse's nightmares over the years.
His mind is swirling with the image, bouncing up against his brain, the case and the war tangling up inside him. Not for the first time, not for the last. It's the kind of thing he might say to Jay in the middle of the night at his apartment with a documentary, except that Jay's apartment was Erin's domain now too, and Mouse had made himself a stranger there. So he does another stupid thing, because he can't help it. He says it awake, he says it to Jay nearly face to face, Atwater just out of hearing of his low voice in the concrete of the district. Stupid. Jay reacts like he should have known he would, shutting down. And Mouse is too much like Jay, because the need to talk about it presses up inside him, but Jay tells him to let it go, so he does.
Slamming down the phone, he can't help but feel that technology is betraying him more and more these days. Like this boy's killer would go free and it would be his fault and no one would ever really know what happened, and the two dead boys with holes in their heads would intertwine and hold him hostage for the rest of his life. Atwater's suggestion should have helped. It might help solve the case. But Mouse still feels useless, and Jay's hand on his shoulder still feels like a consolation prize and an apology and not enough so he doesn't look back as they leave, and he stares at his hands and tries to make the blood on them disappear. It doesn't work very well.
Later, he can hear Antonio's agonized voice from the interrogation room, and it resonates in his own chest, a lump rising in his throat at the sound, and the memories. Moments later Jay leads Antonio out, hand hovering behind his friend like he wants to comfort him but is afraid to touch. Jay glances at Mouse on the way by concern for Antonio mingling with an apology in his eyes and Mouse looks back steadily until he passes. Jay stays with Antonio in the break room for a bit, talking too quietly for Mouse to hear, and he tries not to watch through the window, focussing on his computer. When Jay comes out of the room, he pauses on his way back to the interrogation room just past Mouse's desk, hesitating, Mouse sees it in his peripheral vision and he studies his keyboard. Jay keeps walking.
At the vigil, the small crowd arranges itself around the candle-lit post, Mouse accepting a candle from a stranger. It's coincidence that he ends up standing just behind Erin at her left shoulder, the candle-light flickering across her hair as she leans into Jay on her other side. Watching them makes him feel acutely lonely, so he stares at the memorial, and that feels worse. He sees Erin shift out of the corner of his eye and turns to look automatically – and meets her eyes as she turns to look back at him. His instinct is to look away, fear of her reaction to his words weeks ago that broke open a chasm between them, but the grief in her eyes hold his. He looks, and she looks back, sadness passing between them, and for a moment he feels as though nothing has changed, as though he could step up beside her, and go home with them to Jay's apartment after this and they could share nightmares in the dark. Someone sobs, and Mouse's eyes flicker towards the sound, and Erin turns, and the moment passes. Mouse is left with grief and memories and nothing.
