Kate continued downstairs and met Sargent Tracy exactly on time. He took her back through a warren of corridors to a small room with a large table and twenty six piles of paper matching all the letters in the alphabet. At first glance it looked like the As, Cs, and Ts had an inordinate amount of interactions with police. Once seated, he began, "Chief Gates came to see me about you earlier. She wants to set a far stricter tone than Captain Montgomery."
"Unfortunately, your little screw-up with Ann has given her the perfect opportunity to do just that on someone most believe deserves it. No one here has you on a pedestal anymore, and if you want to regain some of what you lost, you need to be seen taking your medicine without complaint. We are a service department, and I want no complaints that filter up to Gates. For you, that means saluting, smiling, and doing regardless of whatever crap your coworkers unleash." Kate hoped this was the end of his rebuke, but that was not to be. "Regarding your mother's case, it is now locked away in my desk. Go near it, and that will be the last thing you do as an NYPD officer."
When his message delivered, Tracy got down to the tasks at hand. Within minutes his reverence for every aspect of records were palpable. Today it would be about scanning and batching to Hera and Zeus. Her experience scanning suggested this was both simple and redundant; he showed her it was not. Many line officers in their rush to disseminate critical information left large omissions in the documents they scanned. This made the record incomplete and fodder for defense motions for all sorts of delaying tactics and baseless explanations of the events. The key point was the scans to Hera and Zeus had to be identical and complete. Nothing else was acceptable.
For the first week, he would load into one and she the other. They would then run the match program and fix the errors. At the outset he suggested doing about thirty minutes of scanning so she wasn't overwhelmed by what he knew would be a ton of errors. When the reports came, he was surprisingly understanding as they went over each one to insure it did not happen again. She had expected a lot of rancor and impatience, but that was not the case. He was all about focusing on the task at hand and happy for the help regardless of how it came to be. By the end of the morning, she knew this part of her job would be tedious and tolerable provided she stayed both humble and far away from his desk.
When lunchtime finally came, she followed Castle's instructions and was seated with him in the lush greenery of the restaurant within five minutes of leaving the precinct. Up until then, she never savored lunches at the precinct. You sat, chomped, and swallowed with only one goal - getting done. This was totally different. The company, the food, and the natural environment were in stark contrast to her gray sterile harshly lit workspace where she would spend her days. Add to that Castle's unending ability to distract her with long stories about Alexis, his mother, or random musings, and you had an engrossed, fed, and very happy lunch date. It was just the reprieve she needed to prepare herself for what she later deemed the afternoon slog.
That first afternoon was where the punishment part started to sink in. It was when, as Tracy called it, the window was open. What that meant was she was at the mercy of all her coworkers with questions or special requests. Either by phone, email, text, or in person, the contacts never let up. Coworker interactions with Tracy seemed strictly professional; dealings with her were anything but. Her miscue with Ann was now common knowledge, and the troops were primed to express their disdain. Everything she did was wrong, incomplete, or not fast enough. Some yelled, some snarled, and all were impolite.
Even some of her close colleagues like Karpowski got in on the act. She came around mid-afternoon with a list. Without any greeting, she said, "Here's is what I need, and I will wait. These are all homicide investigations so they should get priority." Kate looked at the pile of priority requests already on the shelf to her right and replied, "Karpowski, everything on that pile is supposed to be priority."
"You know Kate, I have worked with you in the bullpen for over three years, and you have never used my first name. Do you even know it? Colleagues do that out of mutual respect. Somehow that never occurred to you, and Montgomery let it slide. Yes, you have a great closure rate, but we are not a bunch of bumbling idiots either. I am happy Gates is making an example of you. What you did to Ann was reprehensible. Now - fetch those files, or I will file a complaint which Gates will not be happy about." Being at the window was the worst, and Kate soon understood disparaging remarks, glares of impatience, and hardly any gratitude would be standard fare for the duration of her time with Tracy.
After that first couple weeks, things settled down to where she was rarely seen outside of records except for time with Gates discussing a replacement for Espo. Gates told her she was pretty sure no one from the precinct would be applying out of their respect for Ann and disdain for her. Apparently her public apology had not done much to sway the court of coworker opinion. The person would have to bond with Kevin, work with her and all her baggage, and understand their odd relationship with Castle.
Both agreed the key to a successful transition back was Kevin. His involvement in the selection process and his reaction to how things worked in those first few cases would be scrutinized by his peers. Kevin was not as gregarious with his peers as Javi, but he had plenty of credibility to influence his coworkers one way or the other. If Kevin was happy, it would go a long way towards returning things to normal. With Gates being in such an agreeable mood, she took a calculated risk and brought up Ann and her future. "Captain, I was the experienced officer who forced her into an untenable situation. She is new and just made a lapse of judgement. If there is a culprit here, it's me. We need good young unis like her, and anything you do will be remembered long after it should be. If you feel you need to do more, I will accept whatever you deem necessary without complaint."
"Kate, that is a commendable gesture on your part, but it is my decision." Kate was not expecting one. However, her years of reading people in the box strongly suggested she had found a receptive audience. She was also confident that her gesture to shield Ann would get out and hoped her coworkers would see it as a another step her apology tour.