So my mom says to me, "Erin, they like you, but they won't wait forever." Had she added, "So why don't you just quit your job at the Video Vault and write this fic full time! We'll support you. Heck, we'll even fix it up so's you don't have to sleep on the couch all summer," maybe I'd have a little more kick in my fingers. But, hey, you know me, I can't complain. I'll try to keep it coming as fast as I can, I promise. I promise! Just…stop with the wire hangers, would you? I think that's a bit overkill.
A quick P.S. If anyone thinks a CI / Six Feet Under crossover is ridiculous, let me know now before I start writing it. Thanks!
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Furious
by
Fashionably Stupid
Chapter Nine: Whisper Our Secret Into Your Hands And Hold It In Between
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The details of Sam Bruyard's life were, and are, dull, gaudy, and cobwebbed. So no one cared about the car he was given before he could drive, the Polish au paire to whom he lost his virginity at age 13, not even the stately manor he stood to inherit when his parents, both immutable descendants of the original Plymouth pilgrims, effectively died. No one was particularly concerned about the luxury of his infancy, the satin lining on his crib, the Montessori school, the stream of shapely babysitters, the banquets of exotic foods, the well-oiled transition into the Mount Glory School. No, it was really just that one thing people were after these days.
"With all due respect, detectives, this is ridiculous. My son did not kill that girl." Colin Bruyard's voice was sanctimonious, but tiredly so. He was a man in his late forties, a banker, his gaunt features much reflected in his son, though the elder's posture was much more swaybacked, wearied through years of days on days.
"With all due respect, Mr. Bruyard, no one's saying he did." Eames' voice never once wavered, and with good reason. All traces of the trepidation that had gripped her previously had either vanished or become imperceptible.
"Samuel has been quite distressed since the inception of this circus. He wants to help, but I really don't see the need for an interrogation." Claudia Bruyard's voice lacked the haughtiness of her husband's but not the exhaustion. She was statuesque in body, and her face was warm and ovoid, but her features betrayed only slight rivulets of regret, guilt, and an emotion that Eames was having trouble reading, perhaps an emotion she herself had never felt.
"…If I may…" Goren began tentatively. Alex nodded for him to continue. "This isn't an…interrogation, exactly. More of a…a fact finding mission."
"We don't know if Sam was involved in the actual crime or not, ma'am," Deakins began, though without the carefulness of his detectives, "but he has suggested to detective Goren here that he may know something that we may find useful."
"We just want to…know…what he knows." Goren's smile was shy and, he hoped, disarming.
"So if you will just come with us, we'll ask what we need to ask and then it'll all be done." Alex's tone was one of brisk aplomb, keeping in mind that Samuel himself had remained silent throughout these proceedings. When she spoke, she stared straight at him. "I don't think this'll take very long at all."
"Why then, by all means, detective." Sam took a slight step forward. It was not an ostentatious move in and of itself, but Alex was sure he meant it to be momentous.
Alex turned on her heel and began to make her way toward the interrogation room. Behind her she heard the shuffle and clack of the others beginning to follow her. It was a short way, but each step was becoming increasingly leaden with thought. Was Sam guilty? She secretly hoped that she was, but her integrity as an agent of the law would not allow her to –
"This is your day."
Goren had caught up to with a quick shuffle, and he spoke softly. Alex looked up at him with a lightly skeptical look.
"Every day's my day, Bobby. Today's my day to kick ass."
Goren laughed lightly.
"What? You're just not used to me kicking ass!" She whispered fiercely, but with a grin.
Her partner was practically now, and he spoke between hiccups of laughter.
"Usually…you're the…the wing man."
"Oh, you're on a roll today, aren't you, Bobby?"
He put on a thoughtful face, and Alex couldn't tell if he faking it. "Yeah…I guess I am."
"You." Alex pointed to the observation room. "In there."
Bobby gave her a look that was the facial equivalent of a "thumbs-up" and stepped inside the room. Deakins followed, passing Alex wordlessly and with only a slight glance over his shoulder. Alex turned to the Bruyards.
"Mr. Bruyard," her eyes flitted from one parent to the other, mindful of her words, "Mrs. Bruyard. You have the choice to stay with your son during this session, but you may learn some unwelcome truths about your son and his relationship with Clare Bergman."
She took a breath, rubbing the index and middle finger of her right hand together, wishing deep in her mind that it would make a cricket sound.
"You may also," she continued with a touch of nervous relish, "be privy to some of the more gruesome details of Clare's life and death."
There was a short pause before Mr. Bruyard spoke. His face was sober, but not lugubrious; Alex felt sorry for him then. No one, she thought, deserved to be that old. When he spoke, he spoke quickly, with practice.
"I would like a chance to object on behalf of my son should he begin to waive his constitutional rights." He took a breath. "There are some things he just shouldn't say without a lawyer."
Claudia nodded benignly. "I'll leave the objecting to my husband. As a matter of fact, I'd prefer to stay out of these proceedings altogether." Her eyes pleadingly searched her husband's face.
Colin briefly latched a comforting arm around his wife's shoulders.
"You can wait in our office, Mrs. Bruyard." Alex tried to make her smile as sincere and unpitying as possible, but she could still feel her lips forcing themselves apart unnaturally and her nostrils flaring in an attempt to breathe out a fake and innocuous semi-laugh.
"Thank you," Claudia answered, her head slightly bowed, "and please, detective, call me Claudia." She retreated.
Alex ushered father and son into the grey interrogation room and took her seat at the large table, gesturing for them to do the same.
"I won't lie to you, Sam," Alex kicked off the conversation, "we don't think you killed Clare Bergen, but we're pretty sure you know who did it and why."
Sam Bruyard, who had yet to say a word of substance, let out a short but loud laugh.
"Son, I fail to see what's funny here." Colin's voice was resigned, but harsh.
"I just think it's rather rich," that voice again, "that I'm not the one they suspect, I know who they suspect, and yet I'm the one they're so zealously pursuing."
"S-" Colin was interrupted by Alex's seemingly flippant but deadly serious response.
"Of course we're pursuing you, Sam. It's our job; we're detectives, we were put on this earth to detect. And we detect that you know some very choice information about the person who cold-bloodedly slaughtered Clare Bergen. All my partner and I want is all of the information you have about it, then we'll be out of your hair until it's time for trial."
"Detective," Sam said, his brow sardonically furrowed, "you're wasting more time in…extraction speeches than you are asking me actual questions."
Alex bit her lip. The time had come to throw this boy's own gimmick back in his face.
"But you and I don't reckon time the same way, do we, Sam?" One corner of her mouth quirked up. "This is all the time you'll ever have."
"Funny," Sam replied firmly. "No, really, I think it's clever you caught on. I don't know who killed Clare. You probably think it's that Adam boy, but I don't think he has the effrontery, if you will, nor the intense rage to pull of something of such…brutal magnitude."
Alex was completely nonplussed, and her face showed as much. She shook her head slowly, her mouth betraying a touch of pity.
"Sam, I'm not asking for your albeit imaginative speculation, nor am I entirely interested in your roundly uneducated attempts at what you think it profiling. I'm here for facts. Give me facts."
Sam snorted briefly before cowing to his father's bitter gaze. He sighed heavily, and when he spoke, his voice lacked its typical steel-tipped verbosity. "Adam told me he thought his father might have had something to do with it. Good God, that man hated Clare; hated it even more that his son, that would be Adam, was being seen in public with her." There was a long pause as Sam collected his thoughts and words. When he spoke again, it was in the same humble tone. "Mr. Bettis never knew about the connection I had with Clare. I always shut up about her whenever they started their little diminishment sessions; they'd insult everything from her hair to her speech patterns, they'd speculate about her ability to produce children. The cruelty was unwarranted, detective, and it was wanton."
Alex leaned forward and clasped her hands together on the table. "Did they ever-"
"Yes. Mr. Bettis said very plainly one night, completely sober, that the country could do with one less Clare Bergen. He said he'd kill her if he had the chance."
Alex made a move to interrupt with another question, but Sam continued unabated.
"I hesitate to say, detective, that it was no more than just talk, but I can't point to anything specific that would suggest a definite beginning. He was a bad father, detective, a relentless man, and an overbearing husband."
"Did you ever see him interact with Clare, Sam? Did he ever talk to her, anything?"
Alex felt like she was seeing a man alternate personalities. Sam's head lolled for a moment, his eyes closed, remembering what appeared to Alex to a be a secret he'd kept for as long as he could remember. Her gears had started working at a double pace, and answers were beginning to converge. With great difficulty, Sam spoke.
"It was at school, actually, out back, by the dumpsters. I indulge in the odd cigarette, but smoking on grounds is strictly prohibited. I saw Mr. Bettis practically drag that poor girl back there, pulling her by the arm. She wasn't screaming, which I found odd, since that was almost like her shtick. He said something like, 'You're crazy, you just need to shut up.' It was most surreal, and he was angry as the devil. Finally, he pulled her hair, she had long hair then, this was about two weeks before…before…anyway, he twisted her hair and pulled her down to her knees. His face was red and he had his teeth bared like this," Sam pulled his lips back, producing his surgically straight teeth, "and he said, and I'll never forget this, 'Leave my son, get out of this school, pack up your second rate family and get the hell out of this town, or I'll kill you and make you watch.' He tore out a huge hank of her hair. The next day, Clare had cut it all off."
A pause.
"Oh, God, son." Colin Bruyard's voice was faint. "You can't be serious."
Sam never took his eyes off Alex, his voice slowly regaining its barb. "I wish it weren't that obvious, detective. It's been really fun fucking with your head. Your partner, too," he threw a sideways nod to the mirrored glass of the observation room, dropping his voice to a whisper, "I'll bet a thousand he dreams about you."
"Thank you Sam, Mr. Bruyard. I think we've gotten what we came for." Alex's voice disclosed a hint of a smile that spoke a volume all its own.
"Thank you, detective." Colin's voice was genuine. He extended his hand, and Alex took it without a second thought.
"It's been charming," Sam said darkly, his voice regaining its fierce smugness. Alex flashed him a look that told him to keep his hands to himself.
* * *
Alex expected to feel exhausted, but she didn't. Once the Bruyards had left the building, she followed Goren and Deakins back the their desk, plopped ungracefully down in her chair, and yawned.
"Do we have what we need?"
"That threat…that's pretty concrete…"
Deakins rubbed his chin, not convinced. "It's not enough to go to the DA. You two get Bettis in here. Tell him he's a suspect. God, this case sucks." He turned, then turned back. "Thanks again, Alex." The he was gone.
"Any time, chief." Alex was feeling gratuitously chipper. She measured it out to about two parts giddiness at this latest information, and one part pride at extracting it.
Goren sat down across from her. "You were…a real trooper in there…Alex." His voice was candid.
"Thanks, Bobby, really, but I don't need any attaboys."
"…Of course not," he stared at her blankly. "You're a girl."
Alex grinned and mimed a rim-shot.
Goren's tone turned serious as he flipped through his brown notebook, looking for the phone number he had written down for Arnold Bettis. "Eames…we can't go into this…assuming anything. The only…thing we can really assume is…that Sam Bruyard lied to us."
Suddenly, Alex didn't know what she was feeling. She was a little bit crestfallen, but mostly scared. What if the information she had so carefully extracted meant nothing? They had started with nothing and they hadn't gotten that much more. With that thought, her internal thoughts became external of its own accord.
"Clare Bergen was crazy. Everyone hated her. Someone killed her."
"We…don't know…who it was."
"And we can't assume anything."
"…God, this case sucks."
