The faint knock on the door was enough to let Mike know his partner was exhausted.
Carelessly tossing the dish towel onto the counter, he wiped his wet hands on his dress pants and walked over to the front door.
The sight matched his expectation.
With his shoulders slumped, Steve looked decidedly low-spirited, the knot of his red tie loosened below the collar and sitting askew, one button on his checkered dress shirt undone.
Smiling warmly, Mike opened the door wider to let his partner in, reaching out an arm to grab his overcoat.
"You look like I feel, Buddyboy."
A quiet grunt was his only answer, as Steve stripped out of the beige sportscoat, then loosened the tie all the way before carelessly draping it over his shoulders. With a shaky hand, he opened the top three buttons of his dress shirt, finally realizing one had been open already, before staring at Mike sheepishly.
"That made for a long day."
"It sure did.", the Lieutenant countered and hung up the coat, before gently guiding his partner over to the living room, "Well, after a day of knocking down doors, I've got a bunch of checked off lists to show for, but that's about it. I hope your weather was nicer than ours. It began to pour around 3pm. Made for miserable working conditions."
"Weather was good until I hit the bottom of San Francisco…", Steve breathed, almost sounding cryptic, as he let himself drop onto the oxblood couch, spending a moment stretching his sore shoulders and running a hand across his face.
"Well, don't keep me waiting, will you?", Mike nudged, as he sat down in his rocking chair, noting the haunted expression in his partner's usually warm green eyes.
Something was bothering Steve.
The stoic behavior, the slightly flushed cheeks, the irregular breaths coming from across the small dining room table indicated that the young Inspector had discovered something. And whatever it was, he'd spent the entire drive back brooding about it.
"Well, I stopped at both parents' places, and the trailer park Brody was kidnapped from, like you said. And I went to the place where the body was found and then I talked to Lieutenant Pierro over in San Jose…"
Nodding eagerly, grateful that he got his partner to talk, Mike leaned forward in the chair, hands clasped anxiously.
"No wonder it took you all day. Got anything from the parents?"
Steve's eyes shot up at him like a deer in the headlights. Nervously kneading the seam of his expensive dress pants, he nodded quietly.
"Anger, frustration with law enforcement, panic, grief…and possibly a new connection."
"Oh?"
With his eyebrows raised, Mike leaned forward a bit more, the chair protesting his move with a slight creak.
"Yeah. There's something. It might not be anything but it…it raised a flag in my mind."
Realizing that he'd never even offered his partner a beverage or pieces of his leftover pizza, Mike got up, his senses cued on Steve even when he entered the kitchen for a moment to grab a cold bottle of beer, opened it, and then put it in front of him.
"What kind of flag?"
Unnerved, the young Inspector exhaled slowly, eyes staring at the light gray carpet below as if he hoped it'd give him the courage to answer.
"Well…I am still going to check up on the bishop rotation in the area to exclude the catholic connection, but this one…well, it's an odd one. Seems that both boys, for one reason or another, went to a spelling bee contest."
"Spelling bee…that's where they throw all these big words at little people…", Mike mused and leaned back in the rocking chair, eyes sternly focused on his upset partner, "It's a possibility, and a strong one. Whether we're talking about the church or some after-school activity, there's a certain…a continuity in this that fits our case."
"That's what I was thinking…", Steve mumbled and helped himself to several gulps of beer, that haunted expression never leaving his eyes, even when he stared straight up at the ceiling.
Mike watched his partner's strange demeanor with growing curiosity, counting the swigs of beer making their way down his throat one gulp at a time. When he arrived at five, the Lieutenant decided to interrupt and leaned forward again.
"What all do you know about that spelling bee contest so far?"
There it was again. That slight flinch running through the entirety of Steve's body. It had been very subtle, but strong enough for Mike to notice.
"Just pictures. Both sets of parents had pictures from the event. They happened to take them at the same location inside the school. That's when I made the connection.", Steve said, hesitating, as if something was stuck in his throat, before speaking up again, "And that it was held in Modesto."
"Oh."
At those words, Mike felt his heart drop.
One seemingly peaceful location, a medium sized town southeast of San Francisco, and yet, so many difficult emotions were associated with it. Anger, disappointment, resentment, a life-changing falling-out, a painful family situation.
No wonder Steve hadn't been his usual self.
Mike chewed on his bottom lip for a brief moment, trying to figure out a way to steer the conversation into a different, more productive direction, hoping to prevent his partner from clamming up completely.
"Well, ehm…we will check into it first thing in the morning. See how often it's held, who attends, who judges it. Could just be an odd fluke, but we definitely should check into it."
The aimless blabbering was duly noted by the young inspector.
There was a distinctive sense of dread in Steve's features when he glanced back over at the Lieutenant and nodded faintly. Sitting in the corner of his couch, he looked downright lost, like a beaten puppy terrified to go outside. Mike wondered just what sort of terror had gone on in the Keller household to cause such a volatile reaction in a young man he knew to be so well-balanced and even-spirited.
And for the past few years, Stephen had done a fine job in shielding him from those demons. But now, at the eve of some of that family trouble bubbling to the surface, Mike couldn't help but wonder how it would affect the young Inspector during their investigation.
"Like you said…could just be an odd fluke."
He sensed anxiety in Steve's words, a deeply ingrained dismay, built over years of hardship that had put all his senses into fight or flight mode. Shifting around nervously, the young Inspector played with the beer bottle in his hands, as if it was a life ring.
"You don't have to go along with me, if you don't want to."
The well-intended offer seemed to cause the opposite reaction when Steve shook his head vehemently, never looking up from his beer bottle, jaws clenched and so frighteningly still that Mike couldn't even be sure he was breathing.
"This is both of our case, remember Michael?...And you were the one telling me about not letting old times get in the way of what's happening at the moment."
"I certainly did.", the Lieutenant countered, his voice growing somewhat stern, "I hope you remember what that means too. I don't want any tempers flaring. What's in the past needs to stay there. I need you focused on this case, one-hundred percent. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Sir."
The dreaded remark was intended to upset him, Mike knew that much. In times of emotional duress, Steve had the unwelcome habit to lash out at those closest to him, a caged animal biting his well-meaning rescuer; as if the self-enforced solitude his rudeness caused would somehow ease his struggles.
Glaring at the young man with a mixture of mild annoyance and impatience, Mike let the tense stillness between them settle for several awkward seconds. Finally, Steve looked up at him, the agitation in his eyes quickly dissipating and turning into deep regret, as he shifted farther into the corner of the couch.
Then, summoning all his energy for the next few words, he drew in an overdue breath, his long fingers digging into the soft fabric of the seat cushion below his thighs.
"Like you said Mike, the past is the past."