The Temptation Of Goren: Part Three.
(You know the drill. I don't own anyone but Maria and I ain't making money out of this. Wish I was, though.)
Composing himself took Goren half an hour. By that time, he'd stopped crying and straightened his suit. Marching stiffly out of the bathroom, he returned to his desk to find a worried-looking Deakins with Eames.
'Goren, a word if you will in my office,' the captain muttered gruffly. Goren shot a look at Eames, who just looked at him blankly. Following his advisor's outstretched arm, Goren wandered into his office, praying to every god he knew that this wasn't what he thought it would be.
Deakins closed the door quietly and sat down at his desk, studying his prized detective curiously. Goren couldn't hold the eye contact.
'Sit down, detective,' Deakins said firmly. Goren felt like he was back in school and had been called to the headmaster's office to be caned. He sat without a word; twitching his fingers nervously. Deakins sat back.
'Would you like to tell me just what the hell is going on?' the captain said simply. Bobby twitched nervously. Deakins waited for an answer, before continuing in the silence.
'Eames told me about your run-in with Maria today, Goren. I have to say I'm surprised at you. I wouldn't have thought you could have been this unprofessional about it. Then, I come out onto the floor to find Eames on her own; up to her ears in data for the case you both should be working on, as well as my new junior detective in tears over what happened. Now I want an answer, Goren!' Deakins shouted. Goren jumped at the mention of Maria crying.
'Sir, I'm sorry for my misdemeanour, it won't happen again,' Bobby mumbled.
'You're damn right it won't, Goren!' he replied loudly. Bobby swallowed and looked at Deakins, a sad look on his face. Deakins sighed.
'Bobby, I've known you for years now. If it was someone else, I would have strung them up by their hair. But you…' Deakins trailed off. Goren understood. The captain massaged his forehead.
'You may go, Goren,' he muttered. The senior detective got up and walked to the door. As he turned the knob, Deakins looked up at him.
'Goren,' he started. Bobby turned around.
'Yeah?'
'Just… play nice.'
As Goren made his way back to his desk, Eames tossed a folder across to him.
'Heads up. We gotta case to deal with,' she said firmly. Goren looked at her, bewildered.
'You're being snippy,' he pondered aloud. Eames looked at him, shocked at his accusation.
'I am not!'
'You are. You were. I swear!'
Eames frowned at him.
'I was not. I'm just going to put up with you mooning over my niece.'
'Yeah, about that…' Goren began, sneaking a look over his shoulder at Maria's desk. The young detective was tapping away at her keyboard, utterly engrossed in the document she was typing. Bobby Goren sighed and returned his gaze to her aunt. Eames looked thoroughly unamused.
'We're over-due at Times Square. Some jumped-up teen druggie over-dosed and the reports show that it probably wasn't intentional,' Eames filled him in, grabbing her coat. Goren looked at Maria again, who was chattering on her mobile and reaching for her 'Wild Ridge' hikers bag.
'What about Maria?' he asked, following Eames' brisk pace to the elevator. Eames punched the button.
'Maria has her own cases. She works alone.'
The lift doors slid open and the pair got in. Pity, Goren thought, as the doors slid shut.
'Not a problem, I'll be there in ten,' Maria replied to the beat officer down her phone.
'We hate to bother you, Detective, but since Senior Detectives Goren and Eames haven't arrived yet…'
'No, it's perfectly understandable,' Maria said, racing down the seven flights of stairs and jumping into the beaten-up Holden Acclaim that Eames had bought for her to drive. She started the engine and revved it into first.
'You really can't trust Goren to be on time. Or trust him at all in my opinion,' she said sharply, pulling out of the car park. She noted that Eames' SUV wasn't parked in the lot, but this meant little to her.
'Thank you, Detective. We'll see you soon.'
'You said Times Square, didn't you?'
'That's correct.'
Goren nearly jumped clean out of his skin when Eames' niece arrived on the scene. It was a shock to Maria as well.
'What are you doing here?' they asked in unison. Goren swallowed, running a hand through his hair swiftly.
'This is my case,' he said, looking down at Maria as she paced over to her aunt.
'Why are you here?'
Maria looked up at Goren.
'I'm here because the beat officer called me when you and Eamesy didn't show up after half an hour,' she replied coldly, watching intently as Bobby winced at the icy remark. She looked at Alex.
'So what've we got?' she asked smoothly. Bobby gaped. That was his line!
'Teenage girl, drug overdose, age seventeen, no I.D,' Eames rattled off, checking her own notes. Bobby, feeling rejected, edged nearer to the women, who were consulting the paperwork. Then Maria did the unthinkable. Reaching into her pocket, she tugged out a pair of plastic gloves and examined the body.
'The victim appears to not have been a habitual user,' she said to Eames. Eames looked up.
'How can you tell?'
Maria indicated to the back of the dead girl's right ear.
'Habitual users eventually build a tolerance to the amount they're using, which is why they frequently increase their dosage. From the colour of this patch of skin, which is highly sensitive, the girl would have lost circulation in her proprio-receptors. That, in most cases, never happens to a user,' Maria concluded, eyeing up Bobby, who was nodding in fascination.
'That's right,' he murmured, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. Eames grinned at her partner and helped her niece to her feet.
'Told you she was a whiz-kid,' Eames muttered under her breath to Goren, looking at him intently. Goren missed this and sighed as Maria walked around to the other side of the corpse.
'How long has she been dead?' Maria asked the beat officer, who had been standing nearby. He shrugged, shaking his head.
'Dunno. Three, maybe four hours,' he hazarded a guess. Maria nodded reassuringly, shifting the hair away from the girl's neck.
'Think I might just have found the answer to your riddle, Eamesy,' she said loudly. Bobby jumped over the body and landed next to Maria. Crouching down, he observed a small tattoo of a penguin next to two puncture wounds. She looked up at the senior detective.
'Do you know what that is, Robert?' she asked snippily. Goren cleared his throat, images racing through his mind, her scent reviving his memories of her in his bed…
'Yeah, drug trade ring, Gotham,' he replied. Maria tilted her head slightly and nodded, a smile playing on the edge over her lips.
'That's right,' she said quietly.
'The Gotham Trade Ring initiates members by tattooing a penguin on their necks. These two punctures are probably from the injections delivered straight after they had finished,' Maria said, taking swabs of the area and pocketing them. Bobby swallowed, experiencing the same feeling he had when he had fallen on top of her on his couch the previous night. He fought the urge to reach out and wind his fingers back through her hair, to feel her soft skin, to taste her lips…
'ROBERT!' Maria shouted, knocking him backwards off his feet. He landed with a soft thud, returning quickly to the present. The buildings slid back into focus and he got up, with a bit of help from Alex. Maria straightened up.
'I'll take these back to the lab and run the tests myself,' she said, looking sadly at Bobby before turning on her heel and walking back to the Holden. Alex watched her leave, then turned and slapped her partner. Hard.
'Yowch!' Goren yelled, rubbing the place on his arm where Alex had hit him. She frowned at him.
'You really don't get it, do you?' she shouted at him. Goren looked stunned. Alex never shouted at him like this.
'I don't get what?' he asked stupidly. Eames groaned.
'She's CRAZY about you! You can look in her eyes and see how much she wants to be with you! Bobby, you can't just leave her!' Eames continued, pacing up and down the curb. Goren struggled to find the words.
'I thought you weren't mad at me?' he ventured. Eames spun around.
'I'm not mad at you, Goren, I'm furious! First of all, you slept with my niece! MY niece! Your partner's niece! Do you get that? At first, I was totally mortified. But then I thought to myself "Goren has finally found someone who shares his isolation and intelligence, who really cares about him, who truly loves him! Maybe she can teach him how to love in return"! Then, you come to my desk, lie to me and then tell me that you can't see her anymore while she's standing there! Do you have any comprehension of what that does to a woman, Bobby? To be so in love with a man and then have him ripped away, because he was so dammed loyal to his job?' Eames sobbed, pummelling his front.
Bobby swallowed. He now knew that it wasn't his actions towards Maria that were solely being addressed. Eames was likening it to losing her husband. Goren looked down at his partner, who flashed him a wild-eyed look. He caught her hands.
'Eames, you are the one person I trust more than anything,' he said softly.
'Which is why I have to be honest with you. I was wrong to think that I could get over Maria. She's a part of me now. I love her with all my heart and I never want to let her go,' he said in a broken voice, face ashen. Eames hiccoughed and wiped her eyes. Bobby went on.
'I thought her age would be a problem, but as it turns out the only person who had the problem was me. I love her, Alex. I want to marry her one day,' he said simply, holding back the tears as he watched the obvious pain glide across his partner's face. Her face cleared and she smiled.
'You're telling the wrong woman, Bobby,' she said.
'Go tell Maria that.'
Bobby grinned wildly, a new hope swelling inside him. He hailed a taxi and set off for the labs. Settling in the back of the cab, Bobby's hyper-driven mind sped over the conversation with Eames. If I can remember exactly what I said, maybe Maria will forgive for the abysmal way I acted, Bobby thought. A lump in his right pocket caught his attention. Curious, he reached into his pocket and withdrew the offending item. When he saw it, Bobby felt a tear of happiness roll over his cheek. It was the CD Maria had left at his apartment. Recalling the words she had hummed to him in bed, Bobby Goren sung softly; From the very second, baby I already knew, I'd end up head over heels in love with you…
Eames rubbed her shoulders, the icy wind chilling her. Looking down at the dead girl beside her, she was glad that her niece was finally going to be happy. As was her long-suffering partner. This required a celebratory drink. Alex Eames grinned at the thought of her partner racing across town to be with the woman he loved. It was so obvious that he loved her.
'An Academy-worthy performance, even if I do say so myself,' Eames chuckled to the corpse. She packed up her files and allowed the ambulance to take the victim away. Jumping back in the SUV, Eames felt satisfied that she had definitely done a good job.