Sunday, December 19, 2004
If things had been different, she might have chosen a career in forensics. The science of it, the facts and constants of the work fascinated her. Suspects and perps and even family members of victims lied and deceived for one reason or another. To cover up a murder or indiscretion or something they never wanted people to know.
In forensics, though, you had truth. Fingerprints and blood and hair and all kinds of evidence -- none of that lied, none of it. You could bet money on it. If things had been different, she might have been the one hunched over a microscope or searching through fingerprint records for matches. Then again, she might not even want a life like that, if things had been different. She wouldn't have Matt and she wouldn't trade him for anything in the world.
The lab techs moved around quickly, shouting about this and that with words that sounded more like noises she'd expect an animal to make. She bent closer, leaned on her elbows in rapt fascination as the tech in front of the computer put in the print they'd taken from the crime scene and searched for a match.
They matched it against Kenneth Mercel's prints and she blinked when it came back negative.
"He was our guy, " she said, finger now pointing to the screen in disbelief.
The tech shrugged.
"It's negative, Detective. These are someone else's prints."
"Whose?" she mused aloud and the tech shrugged again.
She turned away, scratched a lazy hand against her forehead and sighed.
"This case doesn't make any sense."
*
The car had been new once, shiny with the tint of fresh paint and unblemished perfection. It must have had that new car smell once too, the one that hung around the leather and steering wheel and attached to the seats for at least six months; the smell that made you feel important because you had this car, had made it far enough to get a car like this.
Government-issued, sure, but it had still been a nice car once. Older agents got the new cars, had earned the fresh metal by doing what they did far too long to even remember when they'd started. They deserved it, he guessed. And really, this car wasn't so bad. Old, yeah, but still running good. He rubbed at the dashboard and smiled.
Okay, now he was bored. He was having sentimental feelings for a car he'd never thought twice about before. Sometimes, tailing someone was incredibly overrated.
"How's Reggie doing, Viv?"
She'd been watching the red brick intently, waiting for a piece of the wall to fall maybe. It would certainly make things interesting. She looked at Danny, moved her arms inside her coat.
"Better. I was worried last year he might be getting away from me, but he's good, Danny. He's good."
She rubbed her gloved hands together, adjusted the heat. The rain had turned to sleet, but it wasn't falling too heavily and they could still watch the front of the station with enough clarity. Turning on the wiper blades would give them away. Although, she doubted very much that no one hadn't figured them out, given the hours they'd been sitting here. She glanced at her watch. It was pushing three hours now.
"Whatever happened to that girlfriend of yours?" she asked, watching the brick again.
He'd broken up with the fire inspector, Chris Sanders, for a number of reasons. He'd initially been attracted to her beauty and ambition, that spark of fire in her eye that must have leaked through from the work she did everyday. And they'd had fun together, gone to movies and concerts and did things...well, did things that friends did. Until one day he realized it was more about the physicality of being together than emotionally being connected.
And Danny...Danny was tired of it. He wanted to be in love or...hell, just love someone even. Love them as a friend or sister or brother or whatever. He just wanted it. So they'd ended six months ago and he was content to wait again like he'd done before.
"Chris? We -- we're just friends."
"Friends? Those are always good, " she smiled.
"Right."
He drummed a brief rhythm against the steering wheel, sighed, and rolled his head back against the seat.
Just as Danny was about to ask, for clarification purposes, why they were still here, a knock on his window caught his attention. He rolled it down only a crack so the sleet wouldn't get into the already cold car. There stood Lieutenant Joseph Marro, hood pulled over his head and smiling.
"Just wanted to let you guys know I'm grabbing a bite, " he said, knocking the glass with this knuckles softly once and walking away.
Danny rolled the window back up and shared a stare with Vivian.
"Well, that was pointless."
She nodded. "I'll call Jack, hang on."
While she spoke, Danny bit at his nails, a nervous habit he'd only recently picked up, although, he didn't really bite his nails when he was nervous. He bit them more out of boredom than anything.
"He wants us to head back. He's at home right now."
"Why?"
"Someone's threatening Maria."
*
The room was familiar. She'd done a lot of her best work in this room, staring down liars and would-be killers, daring them to lie to her face in the eye of justice. The room...it did things to you after a while. Whether you were the suspect or the interrogator.
It was drab and measly. And rightly so, of course. It reminded her of a room they might use to debrief spies and crack communists, but it served its purpose, so who was she to question it? But sometimes, sometimes she just wanted to step out of this room and question a suspect in the conference room or an office somewhere.
Just to escape these white walls and mirrors you couldn't see out of. If you stayed in here long enough, you might start thinking you were the only one left in the world. Maybe...you didn't have to be in this room to feel that way.
Matt stood on the other side of the mirror. Martin might be joining him soon, she wasn't sure.
Kenneth, she surmised, wasn't very smart, but he was capable of hiding things, capable perhaps of assisting at least in the murders. No way he could've done it alone, but he knew things and she would crack him. Already, she could see his confidence slipping away.
She pushed photos of the previous victims in his face, got satisfaction from his flinch. Then she pushed a picture of the latest victim, Stacy Klama, in his face.
"You knew her, Kenneth, tell us how you knew her."
He rested his cuffed hands on the table, interlaced his fingers.
"She -- she was my girlfriend."
Samantha drew in a breath.
"When did you see her last?"
His eyes scanned the white walls, looked for a way out.
"You're here with me, Kenneth, and we're not leaving until you tell me when you last saw her."
He scratched, or at least tried to scratch, at his head with the pointer finger of his right hand. It was messy and looked like it hadn't been washed in days.
"Uh, shit, uh...'bout two days ago, I guess."
"Uh-huh, " she said, not convinced in the least.
Just then, the door slammed open and Jack burst in, slammed his fist on the table.
"Did you send that letter? Did you!?" he asked, eyes on fire. He slammed his fist on the table once more for good measure and felt satisfied when the guy jumped on the second one.
"W-what letter? What the hell are you talking about?" the fear in his eyes rose now as Jack leaned into his face.
"Don't play dumb, Mercel, don't you do it, " he yelled.
Samantha moved towards him, lay a hand gently on his arm and Jack relaxed, only slightly, at her soft touch.
"Jack, we'll get him. We've got enough to hold him for now, let's put him in a cell and let him think about what he's doing and who he's trying to protect. We'll get him, " she repeated, fractionally unnverved that she was making this decision and not him and attributed it to his frenzied emotions.
Jack nodded and didn't even blink as an agent came in and took him away.
"Jack, what's going on?"
He looked up, his dark eyes brewing with emotion. He had all these feelings he wanted to just efface from his mind and forget about, crawl into a bed and sleep uninterrupted for once.
"He threatened my wife, Sam and -- I don't know. He says he's going to kill her tonight."
"You don't think it's Mercel, do you?"
He shook his head, ran a quick hand through his hair.
"No. No, it's someone else. Mercel's working with him, I'm sure of it, but he's not the one."
Matt overheard what they were saying, walked up behind Jack.
"My partner's at the lab, I'll check in with her and see what we've got. You want some detail on your house tonight, Jack?"
Jack met Matt's eyes, nodded silently. Matt nodded back to him, patted his shoulder quickly.
"I'll be in touch, " he said, and left.
Jack turned back to Samantha.
"I've got a favor to ask, " he spoke, trepidly.
"Sure."
"I don't want the girls in the house tonight. Could you -- could you take them?"
"Oh, Jack, I --"
"Samantha, please, it's just one night."
She was silent for a moment before nodding.
"Okay, Jack."
*
Matt found his partner fairly quickly. In a room of lab-coated techs, her dark trenchcoat wasn't hard to spot. She liked being on the street and picking up clues, digging around crime scenes for details and impracticalities. She lived for it, but sometimes, he saw her light up around this kind of thing, the forensic aspect of it, the ability to dig deeper.
She was like a novel, one you never put down; always something new wrote itself on the next page and twenty years from now, they might have put an epic together between them.
"You got anything yet?" he asked as he moved next to her.
She flung her hands up in the air.
"The whole damn thing is like invisible ink, that's our case -- this invisible ink you can't see until you throw apart entire lives and all you've got left is...more invisible ink."
"So I take it we didn't get a match on the prints?"
"How can our previous prints match Mercel's and now...now this woman turns up dead and he's nowhere to be found?"
"It was his girlfriend, too."
"His girlfriend? Oh, peachy. It just gets better and better. All right, " she sighed, rubbing a hand through her dark hair.
"Lex, what have we got on our blood and semen?"
She covered her mouth with her hand lazily, rubbed up and down along the skin.
"Nothing. We've got to have a blood or semen sample to match it up against, so we're drawing a blank there. If there's more than one killer out there, we're running out of time. And if that's Kenneth's blood and semen, we've got him anyway. Which still leaves us with another killer."
"You hanging around here for a little longer?"
She nodded.
"Another half an hour, maybe, see if they can give us anything else. You want to meet for dinner after that?"
"Sure. Gennaro's?"
"You know it, " she winked.
*
Jack took a moment to gather some things from his office. If he was going to camp out at his house for the rest of the night, he wanted to have something to occupy his time. Filling a bag, he stopped when he heard a quiet knock at his doorway.
"Jack, " Martin said, "I uh, I got what you wanted."
The folder flopped up and down in his hand. Jack would've expected a pride in his eyes at his find, considering it had taken him the better part of the day, obviously, to track the information down. And drive back to Manhattan. And traffic at five o'clock, even on a Sunday, was a bitch. But he didn't see pride or the look one might have when they were awaiting acknowledgment of their achievement.
Instead, he looked...upset about something.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
Martin looked behind him quickly, hoping to avoiding spying eyes or prying ears. He stepped further into Jack's office and swallowed hard. He wasn't sure really why he was upset. It could have been a number of things, but maybe it was because he, like his colleagues, suspected there was more to Vincent Marro, much more -- something sinister, even -- than they'd originally thought or even considered.
And to think...to think of who had once been his partner, sent chills down his spine. So he swallowed hard again and handed the folder to Jack, stood back.
"Samantha ever tell you she worked in Narcotics?" Martin asked, trying to be casual.
Jack nodded, silent as he flipped through the pages.
"She tell you who her partner was?"
Jack looked up now, shook his head no.
He had stopped flipping and Martin, knowing the exact page the revelation was on, flipped backward once, pointed to the information at the top of the page, and waited. Jack's eyes widened and the hairs on his neck raised, perhaps more so than Martin's because he was even surer of Vincent's psychosis.
"Vincent, " Jack said, "her partner was Vincent."
*
6:05 p.m.
They'd settled on takeout and spread the Chinese boxes in front of them. Matt had thrown his coat over her couch, grabbed a carton for himself and dug right in, his body reminding him he hadn't eaten in a day.
She watched him and wondered how they fit together and what the world meant by putting them in each other's lives. If she had the chance, one day, she might ask. But for now, she smiled at her luck. Fate, actually. Fate had put them together. He'd been a lost soul once, had a drinking problem, no real direction, and then he'd become a cop.
She'd been a kid for a while, then remained a kid in a relationship that took and took from her before she could get anything out of it that meant what love should mean. She'd been with a man who'd hurt her physically and emotionally and she'd left and still been a kid until she came here and became a cop and then the two of them, searching for a friend, had found each other.
Funny how it worked like that -- fate. Sometimes it screwed you and other times, well...it just kind of worked out nicely.
"Sam was asking me about Vietnam today, " he said, shaking his head with a painful smile.
"Why?" Alexis wondered, sitting on a kitchen chair.
He put down his carton, looked up, suddenly realized he'd never told Alexis about that part of his life. Shit. Well, he was in it now.
"Because I -- I fought in Vietnam."
"Matt, why didn't you --"
He waved her off, picked up his lo mein again and held it in his hand.
"It's not important."
"It is."
"No, it's not, " he stressed again, his voice growing louder.
"If it wasn't important, why are you so upset?"
"I'm not upset!"
"You are, you're yelling, " she pointed at him, as though spotlighting his anger in direct view.
"Lex I -- goddammit. I don't even know why I brought it up."
"Yes, you do. You want to talk about, but you don't think you do."
"What the hell kind of sense does that make?"
"Matt --"
"No, " he reiterated, waving at her again, his fork doing circles in midair.
There were things now that she hadn't known about him. Although, in retrospect, maybe she should have. Once, it had been stifling hot. They'd been grilling a suspect in the interrogation room for hours and hours, the sweat running in beads down parts of their skin they hadn't known could sweat. Matt had rolled up his sleeves and stormed out for a moment, so hot, he said, he needed a break. For a minute, he unbuttoned the top of his shirt to let some air in and she'd seen it -- this jagged scar. Not big, really, but there. Old...old and angry and faded, but imprinted on his skin forever.
She'd always meant to ask him about it.
"That's where you got the scar, isn't it?" she asked gently, moving forward.
He didn't speak and she took it as a good sign, moved forward some more, still slowly and cautiously like one might approach a strange dog. She touched his chest at the spot she remembered the scar being, rubbed a hand down his shirt.
"It's there, Matt, right there above your heart. Your scar."
He breathed deeply, shut his eyes, and she knelt in front of him, stroked the hair falling in his eyes.
"Tell me, Matt, tell me..."
He took a deep breath again and stood abruptly, shaking his head.
"I can't. I can't now, maybe not ever. It's just -- it's just a part of my past that I want to forget so let's forget it, okay?"
"Matt, are you sure you're not still there with that war?"
He paused and she continued.
"You can't -- you can't stay in the pasts with your ghosts."
"You're so smart, aren't you?" he asked, suddenly upset again.
"You think you know me and what I did. You think we're friends, Alexis? Well, friends stop when you ask them to stop. Just...just leave me the hell alone for a while, all right? Can you do that?"
In all her years with him, she'd never seen this side of him. Maybe she would never understand the things he'd seen and done, but she wanted to and he wouldn't let her. This...this was all they needed now. Shit. They had a serial killer on their hands and they couldn't even keep themselves together enough to find the guy.
Friends.
Friends, she thought, did quite the opposite. Friends didn't stop when you asked them to if they knew you were reaching for a lifeline to pull you in. Friends...friends forgot your ghosts and exorcised your demons and left you as the only person you'd ever been.
*
9:38 p.m.
His weakness, he now knew, was Samantha. They had this...this beautiful thing between them that wasn't about sex or obligation. They were simply, perfectly, best friends. Put together almost fortuitously -- or not, he couldn't be sure -- they'd found common ground and grown together both professionally and emotionally.
He watched her move from this guy to that guy, the sex brief and emotionless, waiting for her to just...find someone worthy of her.
And she'd found Jack and the religious part of his mind screamed at this infidelity, wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her until she realized what she was doing. That was, until, he'd seen the look she got when she saw Jack or heard him mentioned.
When he'd broken it off with her on that bench in Foley Square, he'd seen a look once more, the one of love for Jack and regret for what she'd done and loss...just overwhelming loss. That bench in that square...it had been so gorgeous once, angelic, almost, in its purity and beauty.
And now...now if you walked by it or sat there long enough it...it just lost something. If you sat in Foley Square, thinking of the woman who'd cried on your shoulder asking why she always fell in love with the wrong people, you didn't think of its beauty anymore. Foley Square, that had once been so innocent and idyllic just...began to look ugly.
So here he was, at her apartment, after being conned into helping her watch Jack's girls while he spent the night with his wife, cops monitoring the outside building.
The girls had taken to them quickly, both of them adoring Danny's playfulness and Samantha's kindness. Together, he mused, they weren't half bad for babysitters.
He heard giggling from the hallway and looked up from the page he'd been coloring with Hanna to see Samantha balancing Kate on her hip, rubbing a towel at her wet hair and telling her jokes or funny stories that made her laugh.
"Danny, " Kate giggled, her knuckles pushed up against her mouth in laughter, "you slipped on ice and your shoe fell off."
She giggled again and Samantha pointed at him, pressed her cheek against the little girl's wet hair and smiled with her, winking at Danny to play along for Kate's sake. If he had to be the butt of a joke, he'd do it this once for that sweet little face.
"Sure did. Sam and I were walking to get hot dogs and I didn't see this piece of ice, " he spoke as he stood from his picture, Hanna now watching him with interest as well, "and I started to slip and Sam tried to grab me, but it was too late. I fell and my shoe flew off and hit Sam in the head. Fell right on my butt."
He winked at Samantha. A wink that seemed to say, I got you, girl.
Hanna stopped her purple crayon in midair over her Mickey Mouse drawing, glanced at Samantha with a giggle growing in her eyes.
"It hit you in the head, Sam?" she asked, her eyes twinkling at the outrageous story the two agents had conjured up out of thin air for her and her sister.
Samantha nodded, bouncing Kate up and down again on her hip, making her giggle even more.
"I looked like a rhino for a week."
"I bet daddy was laughing, " Hanna said, a smile still on her face as she went back to her coloring.
Samantha nodded, her smile slowly slipping away. She set Kate on the ground, who promptly launched herself into Danny's arms. He smiled and fell against Samantha's couch. She'd switched the heat on, but the falling temperatures outside seemed to be permeating into the tiny apartment and Danny was glad for the sweater he'd decided to wear.
Samantha sat down beside Hanna, crossed her legs Indian style and peered over at the girl's drawing. Hanna covered it with her hands, laid her head on top for extra protection.
"I can't see?" she asked.
Hanna shook her head vigorously. "It's a surprise."
*
Jack hadn't said much to Martin before leaving, couldn't assure him of anything or verify something he couldn't be sure of. He'd left hours ago and it stayed with him so intensely. Why, he thought, hadn't Samantha just told him when he'd asked her who her partner was? Unless...unless he'd been like his brother and done something, or tried to do something to her as well. And Samantha would have to tell him why she'd kept that fact a secret, but for now, he pushed that thought away.
He found comfort in the knowledge that his girls were safe, he could keep a much better eye on Maria without worrying about them as well.
Jack finished his glass of water, looked down at his clothes. It was the first time he'd worn jeans in...God, weeks, it must have been. And his sweater hadn't been worn since last winter. The clothes felt foreign to him, like they belonged to a family man. He was...well, he was just Jack Malone, FBI agent.
He set the glass down, walked into the living room, and found Maria reading a book by the lamp. She looked up as he neared and smiled.
"Thanks for staying, " she said, removing her reading glasses.
"Of course, " he said, running a hand down her arm.
Maybe they hadn't -- at least in their minds -- been married for a long time, but she knew what he wanted as he looked at her.
"Jack, " she said, gently, "I appreciate you wanting to stay, but there's half a dozen cops, some of your agents, and a dog or two all over this place. I'm safe, I really am. You want to see the girls, go check on them. Okay. You won't sleep until you do."
She patted his arm.
They weren't married in their hearts, but sometimes, they still remained so in their minds.
*
Kate had fallen asleep before her sister and Danny had carried her into Samantha's room, tucking her in. Hanna followed soon after and asked that Samantha tuck her in. She'd clutched the blone agent's hand as they walked, smiling with a secret as they entered the bedroom. Samantha picked her up and tucked her in next to her sister, knelt down and brushed a bang out of her eye.
"Sleep tight, " she said, smiling.
As she turned to leave, Hanna grabbed at her arm.
"Sam, " she whispered, "I've got a present for you. It's a Christmas present. I colored a picture for you."
She handed the paper she'd folded to Sam, smiled with that childish innocence and Samantha melted. God, these girls were precious.
"Thank you, honey, now get some sleep, " she smiled back.
She put the picture on her refrigerator with one of two magnets she had and stood back to look at it for a minute. It seemed surreal to look at it. If she detached herself for a moment, she could pretend it was her own child who had drawn the picture. But, she couldn't dwell on fantasies, had to root herself in perspicacity and things that would truly happen.
"How many people you figure ever find that one great love of their life?" Danny asked behind her.
She shrugged.
"Offhand? Not many. But...maybe you find someone just as good."
"Or maybe you don't and you're unhappy."
Samantha turned around to face him.
"I don't know what's worse: being alone or not being able to have the one you love."
"You've been both, you tell me."
She shrugged again, leaned against the kitchen counter.
"Maybe I don't know anymore. They both feel the same."
Danny stood, moved to her.
"Sam, Jack --"
"Don't, Danny, just...just don't, please."
He pulled her against him and she felt ashamed that he was doing this again for the second time that week. She didn't cry this time, though, just...breathed in the stringy fibers of his itchy sweater and sighed.
"Sam, " his chest rumbled, "when you find your great love, just hold him like hell and don't ever let go and you'll never have to worry about either of those things again."
A knock on the door broke them apart and Samantha's chest tightened when she opened it and standing there was Jack. She moved aside to let him in.
"How are the girls?" he asked, pulling his hood down. Snowflakes coated his jacket and his cheeks were red with cold.
"Great. They're asleep. They were perfect, Jack, little angels, " she said.
He beamed with pride.
"Thank you both, I know this is...unconventional, I just --"
"Jack, no worries, it's fine, we're glad to help, " Danny said, waving an arm in reassurance.
Jack wandered down the hall to peek in on his daughters and came back out, hands moving against the few scant snowflakes still clinging to his coat.
"I'm just...really grateful for you two. Just -- this thing with Maria -- if anything happened to her, I just -- " he broke off.
Samantha felt her chest tighten again and Danny must have noticed because he said, "Hey, Sam, why don't you get some fresh air? I saw you needed milk anyway."
Samantha shot him a grateful look and grabbed her coat off the hook, relieved at the out she'd been given. The room suddenly seemed smaller and hotter. She pulled her winter hat over her head, wrapped her scarf around her neck and zipped her coat tightly, walking out briskly.
Jack soon followed, caught up to her as she marched with a purpose to nowhere in particular.
"Why'd you lie to me, Sam?" he asked loudly.
She stopped, turned around.
"What?"
"You said you didn't remember who your partner was in Narcotics. It was Vincent Marro, Samantha, and you knew all along. Why did you hide it?"
She tucked her hair further into her hat, rubbed at her already numb cheeks.
"Because he was like that woman said Joseph was. He -- he was mean and unfeeling. He didn't give a shit. And one night, he tried to rape me and I reported him. He was put on probation, but his brother got him a lighter sentence. He couldn't work Narcotics anymore and that pissed him off, you know why? 'Cause he had this nice scam going with the local drug dealers for money. Wasn't so easy now that he couldn't work Narc anymore. Told me the last time I saw him that he wouldn't forget what I had done. So that was my partner, Jack, you happy? I need milk, " she said, walking fast again.
"Your store's that way, Samantha, " Jack shouted above the cars whizzing by and the howling wind.
She sighed. "I don't need milk, Jack, I need to get away from you."
Brutal honesty, she decided, was all she had left for him now. She didn't have anything left in her to do this dance -- this lightning waltz, as Lex had called it -- with him.
He caught up to her swift pace and grabbed her shoulder, spun her around. He'd known her for so long that her face was just normal, routine, even, to him. He'd become, in a word, numb to all the physical perfections that had first caught his eye once he'd gotten to know Samantha Spade the person. Well...not so much numb as...used to it, he guessed. If he was numb, he wouldn't feel it and now -- standing here in the freezing cold with godawful wind blowing snow on their face -- her beauty blew stars against his chest.
"What do you want me to say, Samantha? What do I need to do?"
"You should know, you should, " she said, shaking her head and tugging at her scarf.
"What? What should I know?"
"Jack! For God's sake, you -- you pulled me along. And I -- I loved you, Jack. I fucking loved you. You..."
She trailed off for a moment, hit at his chest in anger.
"You fucking asshole. You can't just -- you can't just do that to people. I would've given you everything I had. I did give you everything I had. And you just..."
She continued to hit him, growing weaker with the sobs that took over her chest, rose up through her voice.
"Christ, " she said, wiping at her eyes, "you broke my heart, Jack."
His hands were on her arms instantly and he pulled her against him. She resisted for a moment, but he held tight until she sagged into his chest, mumbling how's and why's and asking for answers he couldn't give.
They had this Eden, him and her, this paradise where they could forget who they were on the outside and who they knew they were all along on the inside. They had this Eden where they could be together and that...that Eden was burning.
She finally looked up, rubbed once more at her eyes and they both leaned forward, lips touching with this raw, insatiable passion. He pushed her against the brick wall, thankful for the relatively sparse street, and felt her enter his mind and heal the holes she'd left for over a year.
As soon as it began, it was over.
"Jack, " she said, "you...you need to go home."
"Sam --"
"Shh, " she cut him off, placing a finger to her lips, tears pricking at her eyes again, "shh. Go home, Jack."
And just like his dream, she whispered, was gone, and he was the last person on earth in a ferry that would never touch ground again.