Chapter 6

As Mark gazed in horror at the screen, too dismayed to listen to the low murmur of the commentary, a creak of the bedsprings behind him alerted him to Steve's return to consciousness. In a futile, but instinctive, effort to shield his son from the traducing of his reputation, Mark switched off the TV as he turned towards the bed. He caught a glimpse of Steve's shocked face before a dispassionate professional mask dropped into place.

Mark scoured his mind for something to say that would offer comfort, but his own anger at the injustice made his words less than conciliatory. "We should have stayed home and fought this."

He only realised how accusatory his words sounded as he saw the brief flash of hurt in his son's eyes before Steve looked away, levering himself up against the pillows without attempting a reply.

"I'm sorry." Mark went over to sit on the edge of the bed. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I just hate this, it's so unfair. You did nothing wrong."

"It's okay, Dad. It's not important," Steve asserted stoically. "The people who really matter won't believe it."

That might be true, but it didn't really lessen the anguish of knowing that hundreds of thousands of people believed him to be a killer. Mark knew that his son was experiencing the same feelings of rage and frustration as he was, but that he was suppressing it for his father's sake.

In an effort to defuse his own anger, Mark focused on the prosaic. "How are you feeling?" He saw the answer framed on his son's lips and continued in mock disgust. "Yes, I know, you're fine."

There was an answering twist of a smile as Steve scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Actually, I'm hungry. I don't think I ate a thing yesterday."

Mark brightened at the reassuring familiarity of the complaint. "Now that's almost enough to convince me that you really are fine. Why don't I go and rustle up some breakfast?"

Steve's smile vanished abruptly. "This isn't a nice neighbourhood, Dad," he cautioned. "Wait for a minute, and I'll come with you."

"Oh no you won't." Mark hastily squashed that idea. "You need to take it easy today. Give yourself time to heal. Besides," he added ruthlessly, seeing his son's mutinous expression, "with your face blazoned all over the TV, it's too risky."

Steve subsided in frustration. He hadn't considered the difficulties presented by this unexpected loss of anonymity. "Well, it looks like I'm going to grow a beard for a disguise," he grumbled, again rubbing his scratchy face. A mischievous grin quirked the corners of his mouth. "Maybe you should shave off your mustache to help disguise yourself."

"This beauty," Mark cried in mock outrage, twirling the ends of the mustache like a histrionic movie villain. "Sacrilege!"

Steve was relieved to see his father in a more relaxed mood than he had been the previous day, and capitulated on the breakfast issue. "Go and get some food. Turn right as you leave the motel and you'll find a basic sort of deli two blocks further down. Just... be careful."

"And don't talk to strangers," Mark supplied helpfully.

Steve's smile acknowledged the irony of role reversal but was touched with an edge of disgruntlement at his current inability to protect his father.

"Don't pout," Mark admonished him with a paternal twinkle in his eye.

"I'm a cop," Steve answered with great dignity. "And cops don't pout, they scowl."

"And are always mature and thoughtful," Mark added gravely.

"I'm going to throw this pillow at you if you don't get out!"

"But in a mature and thoughtful way, I'm sure."

The pillow thudded against the door as Mark hastily closed it behind him, but the exclamation that followed it caused him to peek round the door remorsefully to check that his son hadn't pulled out any stitches in his hasty exertion. Steve waved him off with a broad grin on his face, and Mark left feeling happier for the foolishness.

He acquired the food and paid for two more nights in the room without incident, and returned to find Steve watching the television, but he turned it off without comment at Mark's entrance. He'd washed and dressed, Mark noted with rising ire, though, since he hadn't specifically forbidden these actions, he chose not to carp. Steve looked pale around the mouth, but he seemed steady enough on his feet, so Mark merely placed the food on the table with a cheery encouragement to eat up.

However, he soon noticed that, although Steve professed great hunger, he wasn't eating a great deal and seemed lost in thought. Watching his son carefully as he pushed the food listlessly around his plate, Mark glimpsed something in his expression that gave him some forewarning of the direction of this intense mental activity, and he was prepared with an appropriate rebuttal when Steve started his proposal with a tentative, "Dad..."

"No!"

Steve's jaw closed with an audible snap, and he glared at his father in exasperation. "Just once, I'd like to able to finish a sentence without you pulling that telepathic act. Don't think that you know what I'm thinking because I've only just thought it myself...I think!"

Mark stared back with consummate innocence. "You were thinking that I should go and hide myself somewhere, maybe at Dora's, while you surrendered yourself to the authorities and tried to sort out this mess."

Steve threw up his arms in disbelief, wincing as a sharp pain reminded him that he needed to keep his gesticulations to a minimum. "What? I'm the only kid in the world who came with an instruction booklet?"

Mark chuckled at the mental image the words conjured up. "I have sworn not to divulge the secrets of my psychic abilities," he intoned solemnly, spoiling the effect by waggling his eyebrows.

"You're trying to distract me," Steve accused, suddenly realising how far they'd drifted from the original point of the conversation.

Looking at his father's resolute face, he decided that such an intimate knowledge of each other's mental processes could work both ways. For once in his life, Steve Sloan decided to play dirty and go straight for Mark's Achilles heel, with an appeal to his son's personal safety, knowing it was the argument most likely to succeed.

"Listen, Dad, I don't like this anymore than you do, but I can't concentrate on my own defense when I'm worried about you. I'll be watching out for you instead of looking over my shoulder for the next attack." He risked a glance at his father to find him gazing at him intently, wearing a benign and encouraging expression which seemed to say that once again he knew exactly what his son was attempting. Steve wished he could get up and pace the floor to escape from those penetrating eyes, but he didn't think that it would bolster his case if he hobbled around the room bent over and groaning as he had earlier when his father was out.

He was useless at this sort of persuasion, he thought ruefully. Words were never his weapon of choice; he wielded them with no finesse. However, Mark was as adept with them as he was with a scalpel when he chose. He was now leaning towards Steve, the earnest look on his face the exact expression that his son had recently attempted to paste over his own. Steve yielded to the master.

"Steve, I knew how important my safety is to you, and I appreciate that, and I certainly don't want to be a burden to you, but you're in no condition to fight at the moment. Stealth has to be the watchword of the day, not confrontation. The truth is, we work best as a team, and it's going to take both of us to beat this thing. You know I can help."

The blue of his eyes seemed to deepen to a cerulean reflection of the warm ocean, and Steve could see he was moving in for the kill, though he could also hear the unequivocal sincerity in the low timbre of the words. "Yesterday, I thought you were dead. For 12 long, terrible hours, I thought I'd lost you. I never want to go through that again... I can't." He gave a slight, self-deprecating smile to lessen the emotion. "I'm not sure my old ticker would take it. I can't sit somewhere safe, not knowing if you're hurt and need me or even if you're dead. The only saving grace of this whole mess is that we're in it together."

Steve deflated like a popped balloon, completely disarmed. Instead of the blatant manipulation that he himself had attempted, his father convinced him of his point of view through his willingness to display emotional vulnerability. Mark belonged to a generation where men didn't discuss their feelings, and for all his amiability and good humour, Mark rarely deviated from this code. The strength of his love was conveyed not in words, but in the worry in his eyes when Steve was hurt, in his willingness to immerse himself in his son's interests and in the little touches of consideration around their shared house. For him to verbally acknowledge his distress revealed the depth of his certainty that they should stay together, and Steve couldn't ignore that appeal.

He relaxed back into his chair. "So what do we do next?" A slight emphasis on the plural pronoun signaled his surrender, but when he looked at this father there was no triumph in his expression, only a slight apology.

"I tell you about my date with Elise," Mark stated reluctantly.

Steve raised an eyebrow at the seeming non-sequitur, but, noting the grim set of Mark's face, forbore to tease him about his romantic conquests.

Mark tried to gather his splintered thoughts into a coherent whole. It was hard to know where to start. There were topics long-postponed that he needed to broach with his son, but now was not the time. There were also confessions he needed to make that he was dreading.

"Elise's last name is Latiere," he announced at last.

"Latiere? As in the wife of Robert Latiere?"

At Mark's nod of confirmation, Steve started to laugh. "And I thought I had the world's worst taste in women. Maybe I inherited that gene from you after all. Leaving aside the fact that your date was with a married woman, do you have any idea who Robert Latiere is?"

"I've pieced together a good guess in the last 24 hours, but not specifically, no," Mark admitted in a low voice.

"Remember our good friend, Ian Trainer? Well, when he was killed, guess who became the new accountant for the Ganza crime organisation."

"Robert Latiere," Mark supplied miserably, the full picture lighting up in glorious Technicolor in his head.

"He was one of the men we were supposed to arrest last night, and you were having dinner with his wife. Well, that explains the scapegoat remarks." Seeing that his father was looking genuinely upset, Steve motioned to him to continue with his story.

Taking a deep breath, Mark recounted his conversation with Elise as closely as he could recall it. Watching his son's face, he saw the moment comprehension dawned, and he fell silent, unable to speak past the constriction that seized his throat as he waited for Steve's condemnation.

Steve dropped his gaze to the table, needing a few minutes to sort through the implications of his father's story. He felt a moment's anger at the realisation that Mark's foreknowledge of a meeting on the pier could have prevented the deaths of many good officers, but that negative emotion was swept aside by the very real anguish in his father's eyes. Mark didn't need recriminations from him; he had almost certainly already flayed himself more brutally than the omission had deserved. His father's earlier traumatised state was now easier to understand. Guilt was a cancer that cruelly devoured a man from the inside out.

He'd waited too long to speak, and Mark's pained voice broke through his reverie. "I'm so sorry. If I'd just had the sense to discuss this with you before you left that night, I could have stopped any of this from happening in the first place - the task force would still be alive and you..."

"Don't!" Steve cut in sharply, the impact of Mark's remorse resonating painfully between them and cutting him to the quick. He continued more gently. "Don't do this to yourself. It wasn't your fault. You had absolutely no way of knowing what was going to happen. You kept a promise to a friend because you are an honourable man, but if you had had any reason to suspect that what seemed like a simple meeting between an accountant and his boss would have wider ramifications, you would have told me. So don't beat yourself up about this, okay?" He reached over and grasped his father's knee, hoping the comfort of touch would compensate for any inadequacy in the words.

Steve's forgiveness surged through Mark's veins with cleansing force, washing away the clogging, decaying crust of guilt and allowing the normal flow of reason to resume. Even if he wasn't quite ready to forgive himself, Mark could appreciate the common sense of Steve's argument and let the matter rest. He continued his story feeling inexpressibly lighter. Knowing he was approaching another emotional minefield, he tried to skate lightly round his experiences with IA, both the interview with Simmons and the later visit by the three rogue officers, but even still, he could feel the palpable tension roiling from his son. Steve didn't say anything, but the heat of the incandescent fury in his eyes would have melted pure steel, and Mark knew from experience that, when angry, his son expressed himself better with actions than words, an outlet currently denied him.

However, his satisfaction and pride were equally in evidence when Mark described the measures he took to deprive IA of the notebook, and as Mark brought his narrative to a conclusion, he fished out the ledger, and soon two heads, one white and one dark blonde, were bent intently over the carefully inscribed entries.

It didn't take long before Steve's vision was glazing over and an incipient headache was building behind his eyes. However, a quick glance at his father showed Mark in his element, his eyes sparkling as he pitted his wits against a new puzzle.

"Do you really think this is written in a breakable code?" Steve asked dubiously.

"Absolutely," Mark declared with confidence. "Robert Latiere described this as his insurance. If it were unintelligible to anyone but him, it would do little good. No, it's not supposed to be understood at a casual glance, but it can be decoded. Look, this first column of six numbers is clearly dates."

"I thought so too, at first, but some don't seem to fit. Look at this one: '231102'. There aren't 23 months in the year."

"I know, but Robert was first generation American. His family immigrated here when he was a teenager, and in most of Europe, they reverse the order of the day and the month, so that would make it the 23rd of November."

Steve looked at the book with renewed interest. "That certainly makes more sense; then all the dates would fall within the last two years - since he's been working for the Ganza organisation."

Mark frowned. "I've never understood how that worked. Now Ross Canin is in charge of the Ganza organisation, why doesn't he prevent the smuggling of drugs and the violence and misery associated with such crimes?"

Steve sighed and shifted uncomfortably in the sagging chair. "It works along the lines of 'the devil you know'. If we closed down that den of thieves, another would just move into the vacuum it left and we'd just have to start again from scratch. And don't forget, Ross Canin's true identity is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the PD. Only a small handful of people know who he really is. Since I rejected the Chief's offer of a job there, I'm not exactly privy to the ins and outs of their operations, but I know the Task Force has had unprecedented success the last two years in closing down major parts of the other Californian crime organisations and seizing major shipments of drugs and guns, so I'm sure Canin is passing on useful information and also ensuring that the drugs that do reach the streets are at least clean."

"It still seems bizarre to me," Mark commented, a distracted frown on his face as he contemplated the ramifications of such a system. "Did I tell you how relieved I was that you didn't accept the job with the Task Force? It always seemed to me that it would have required too great a compromise of integrity, and I'd hate to see you put in that position."

"I said more or less the same thing to the Chief... although not in quite the same words. Questioning his integrity, no matter how indirectly, would not have been well received."

That reminded Mark of a question he'd been meaning to ask for a while. "Do you really think that the Chief is involved in this corruption?"

"No. I'd be willing to stake my life he isn't, but I'll be damned if I'm going to stake yours," Steve stated with determination.

"I think he was trying to warn me when he came to the house, but I didn't really hear anything beyond the fact that you were dead." Mark's voice thickened slightly in remembrance.

"Before hanging you out to dry," Steve declared, his voice suddenly harsh and strident, and Mark could tell that, whether Masters was guilty or not, there would be a reckoning between the enigmatic police chief and his son before long. He just hoped that Steve didn't throw away his career if they managed to preserve it.

He directed Steve's attention back to the notebook, hoping to divert his anger into a more productive line of thought.

"The next column is just one digit, and I would assume that it's just some sort of categorisation, maybe drugs, prostitution, weapons, some sort of business dealing. But look, this is the column that interests me the most, it's the only one on this page with both numbers and letters so it's not just accounting. I think that it's the key." He jabbed an emphatic finger at the paper.

"But what is it, exactly?" Steve asked, wanting something more concrete with which to work.

Mark was unable to give him more than a nebulous hope. "Some possibilities have occurred to me, but I need to get to a computer and do some research."

"That's a slight problem, isn't it?" Steve cast a disparaging look around the room. "We're a bit short on technology right now. In fact, we're short on just about everything. To get back to practicalities here, there's a lot of things we need and few resources with which to get 'em. Most importantly, I'm driving a hot car, which isn't the smartest move for a fugitive."

Mark stretched, working the kinks out of his neck. "Jesse and Amanda will help us," he stated confidently. "We have to let them know we're alright anyway, they must be worried stiff."

Steve demurred. "That's the first thing they'll expect us to do. You know they'll be watched, and it wouldn't surprise me if their phones are bugged too. As much as we need their help, there's no way we can safely contact them."

Mark turned back to his son, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. "Yes there is. I've got a plan!"