Chapter Forty Five:

The people back home would likely not be surprised to read Enos Strate's psyche evaluations. When he decided to go back to L.A., a lot of people in Hazzard tried to talk him out of it. Worried he wasn't cut out for it. Too soft headed. Too soft hearted. He'd thought so too, for a long time, until Turk persuaded him to try again. The only one who didn't try to talk him out of it was Sheriff Rosco.

With enough credits for three years of college courses in Criminal Justice under his belt before he even left Georgia, the soft headed argument flew out the window. And, as it turned out, a high degree of empathy wasn't something the LAPD necessarily considered a bad thing as long as it helped, rather than hindered, him in performance of his duties. He had proven he could handle the stress. It would never be – easy.

Scenes of violent crimes, by their very existence, were distressing. No one ever gets used to it. You simply get past it to do the job. Once, he and Dylan Greer, his patrol partner at the time, had been first on a scene so gruesome that, even as seasoned as they were by then, had made them both vomit up their lunch.

Sunday, November 2, 1997 – Los Angeles, CA – Cedars-Sinai

Closing his eyes as tight as he could manage, he tried to close his mind to the dark thoughts. Thoughts even darker than those dredged up by the saddest thing he had ever heard. But try as he might, unbidden and uncheckable, Enos's mind conjured up images of what it must have been like for Kate. The pain. The terror. She must have put up a fight.

She would have put up a fight.

As angry as he had been at the state of little Radmilla's battered body, he was even more so now. This time, he didn't push it down or try to keep it at bay. He let it in. He wanted to hang on to the anger - at whoever had taken Kate, at himself for not being able to remember, at whoever had made him that way when she needed him.

He had failed her.

"Turk," he said quietly.

Turk had been camped out in the room since daybreak. Elbow propped on the arm of what had to be the most uncomfortable chair in the hospital, he leaned his cheek on his fist in a spurious half-sleep. They had talked a little about the squirrely CI that Turk had identified for Inez. Enos didn't want to talk about anything else - unless it was the flint directly related to sparking his memory. He wanted to think. He needed to remember.

"Turk."

"Hmmm? What? You need the nurse?"

"No, I need some paper and a pen."

"You remember something else?"

"No. Maybe. Just wanna organize what I do remember and try to fill in the gaps."

Turk left the room and returned with a legal pad and a couple of pens and deposited them on the rolling bed tray, positioning it over Enos's lap.

"You got those faxes Inez sent over? The timelines Soonie and Daisy wrote?" Enos asked.

"Yeah," Turk said, and dug them out from under the pile of papers Inez had either faxed or sent by Angie Kim. "You want a sounding board, might help?"

"Not right now. I need to think. Don't you have a task force to run?"

"It's Sunday. Team hasn't had a break in three weeks. We all needed some down time."

"Then Shawnee must be fit to be tied you're not home with her. When you gonna marry that woman anyway?"

"What are you, my mother? Tell me why we're friends again?"

"Turk, I really need some alone time. Need to think."

"Okay, I'll go get something to eat in the cafeteria and try to drag it out. Will a couple of hours be enough?"

"If I can't get rid o' you for good, guess so."

Turk grabbed Enos's go-bag from the closet and started to head out the door.

"You don't trust me?"

"Not any farther than I can throw you Buddy Roe, and you outweigh me by a few pounds."

By the time Turk returned to the room, Enos had nearly filled the pages of the legal pad with notes and questions. He handed them to Turk.

"See if any of that makes any sense."

Putting the go-bag next to the chair, Turk started reading, shaking his head every once in a while. He hadn't quite finished his review when Doctor Reubens arrived around 2:00 p.m.

After checking Enos's chart, he did a cursory physical check and informed them he thought "it would be prudent for Detective Strate to stay in hospital overnight."

"But you said last night you thought I could be released this afternoon. What changed?"

"Just erring on the side of caution. With everything that has happened I don't think it's a good idea for you to go back to work. And I suspect that is exactly what you would try to do. Releasing you was with the proviso that you get plenty of rest and no duty for at least a week. The swelling is definitely decreased but stress, both physical and psychological…"

Enos listened patiently as the doctor reiterated his concerns and all the reasons he should stay, then gave the doctor a pretty good idea where he could shove his prudence.

By that time, Turk had already picked up his go-bag from the side of the chair and hefted it up on the nightstand.

"He'll go crazy if you don't let him out of here and probably take the rest of you with him. Trust me. You need to let him go."

"Thanks Buddy Roe."

Sunday, November 2, 1997 – Los Angeles, CA

Daisy jolted awake to find herself in a Jacuzzi tub of hot water, in the posh apartment of a woman she had met less than two days ago, while someone she thought she knew was up to his eyeballs in a web of mystery and intrigue.

And 'Who the hell was Kate!?'

She had been told that Kate was a friend and that she worked with a non-government organization that aided in the rescue and aftermath care of missing and exploited children. But just exactly what Kate Broussard was to Enos that had affected him so, she had no idea. And she wanted to understand. She wanted to be there for him. She needed to be there for him. Something she knew now she should have done long ago. Before it was too late. She just wasn't sure what to expect or what was expected of her.

He had just started to try and explain about 'Soonie' when Inez came into the room and turned the world upside down.

Kay needn't have worried about matching Daisy's swagger, not today. Daisy felt neither demonstrative nor forthright at the moment. She had been properly and thoroughly humbled to the point she had accepted Kay's invitation to stay at her apartment until Inez could find a place for her, or, until she could go back to Georgia. She might have called the invitation magnanimous but thought it was more like 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer.' Then, she thought how mean and spiteful that sounded…thoughts borne of exhaustion.

She was so tired. So bone weary from worry about Enos that she'd almost fallen asleep, nearly slipping under the hot water like a wet dishrag, in the private bath of the guest room of his girlfriend's apartment. Even though, in her mind, she knew that she had brought this on herself by getting on a plane without calling first, it was all still more than a body could bear.

Soonie busied herself collecting anything in the apartment that would shout 'Enos was here' and putting them in her bedroom closet. Like photos on the fridge of their trip on the south end of the PCH, him in the garden of her uncle's house in San Francisco, him with the baseball team he helped to coach, and a photo of him teaching her how to aim a pistol taken by Dylan Greer. His old SWAT ball cap. The plaid shirt he wore and spilled saucy dumpling on when she had made hot pot was still hanging in the laundry room.

"Just hang on to it," he had said when she tried to return it, freshly laundered. "I'll need it next time I spill something.'

There was also a spiral notebook on the end table next to the sofa with case notes in his handwriting he had forgotten to take with him on Thursday morning. When she picked it up, the cover flipped over revealing personal notes scrawled at the end of the top page:

Call Mr. Hargrove about the property.

Hazzard for Thanksgiving.

Ask Soonie to marry me.

She rubbed her finger over the indentations in the paper the pen had made and felt a pang of guilt for being happy. Enos was devastated and there was little she could do to console him, except be there for him.

She had an advantage over Daisy, albeit unintentional, in that she knew about her, had known for months. Daisy had no idea Soonie existed until Friday night and she found out in a way that no one should have to. It was no wonder she was resentful. The least Soonie could do was not rub her nose in it.

Daisy had finished her bath, dried the tips of her hair, and changed into jeans and a plaid button up shirt. It was the last set of clothes she had brought with her for the three days she thought she might need to get answers – on his turf, not hers.

It was a little after three when Turk Adams called up from the street entrance of Soonie's apartment.