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I hope you will like the new chapter. If you will let me know I'll be very happy!
I edited the last part of chapter 2. Minor changes just to clarify things a bit. Of course Jack wouldn't go running off to Chicago while in the middle of a "warm" case!
Three months later
Vivien is concerned. They all are. It is hard to watch what is happening to him. He is aging rapidly, his face gray, reflecting much more clearly than he knows the state he is in.
Vivien is not surprised that he takes it that hard. She has known him for a long time and he is that kind of man. She is glad that he has no reason to feel guilty about Sam's disappearance. She is not sure he would survive that.
But apart from that there are other problems to deal with. As hard as it is, but life is moving on, even without Sam. Vivien's health could be better. She has a hard time accepting that she can not really depend on her body any more. She feels a kind of betrayal.
Martin is having problems with his new girlfriend. He loves her but his worry about Sam is taking a toll on the new relationship. The girlfriend is aware that there are still feelings for Sam under the surface and now she suddenly wants to marry! Martin, needless to say, is not ready for that. Danny on the other side has surprisingly enough suddenly produced a girlfriend. It is the crime scene investigator he met when they found Sam's coat and boots in Central Park. Now marriage is the uppermost thought in his mind. His girlfriend, though, is reluctant. She thinks, rightly so, that thinking of marriage is his reaction of dealing with the stress and grief of losing a good friend and colleague.
To make bad things worse they have a new member in the team. It is a young agent named Agatha Brown. She is a totally different type than Sam, which is good. On the other side she has taken an almost instant dislike to Jack. That does not help much.
Vivien raises her head. Jack is leaning on the partitioning between the desks, looking at her with concern.
"Are you all right?" he asks.
"Just a little tired," she answers, taking the papers that he is offering her.
Vivien longs to see him smile again. He has never done that much in the years that she has known him, but she has seen him happy occasionally. As a general rule these occasions either involved his daughters or Sam. She remembers how his smile can lighten up the room.
And she thinks that Agatha would like a smiling Jack much better. She only knows him as the disgruntled, bad-humored old agent that she has met on her first day. Vivien has tried to explain, but Agatha, brilliant only child of a wealthy family, fresh out of the academy and not really familiar with the concept of strong emotion or even love, does not understand.
"I mean, come on, he should pull himself together," she tells Vivien innocently, "Life does go on after all."
Vivien had to fight down a sharp reply. It would certainly be easier for all involved if Jack would "pull himself together" and go on – but then he would not be Jack. He would be colder and less caring and certainly not as successful in his job.
The phone rings. Agatha answers it, saying "Yes" a couple of times, writing something down on a slip of paper. She then goes to see Jack. When she returns she tells the others:
"It looks as if the search for Samantha Spade is over. That was the coroner's office. They found a body yesterday, pretty decomposed. Probably her, they say. They want Agent Malone to have a look."
Vivien, Martin and Danny stare at her in shock. Agatha, becoming aware of her insensitivity mumbles:
"I'm truly sorry."
"I don't believe that!" Martin blurts out and Agatha, not understanding what he is referring to looks guilty.
Vivien rises, glancing across the bullpen to Jack's office. He is signaling her, wanting her to go with him. He looks okay. There is a stern, professional look on his face but Vivien sees the darkness in his eyes and knows it is a mask. He does not utter a word while they ride down in the elevator. When they get to the car, he merely states:
"You're driving."
The words sound squashed.
The whole ride he stares blindly out of the window, not noticing the bustle on the streets.
The morgue is cold and uninviting as usual.
He forces himself to keep his eyes open and focused when the cloth is pulled back, revealing the face of the victim. He looks closely, wanting to make sure and a relief floods him that is so great he can feel tears spring from his eyes.
Vivien is grabbing his arm.
"Jack, I don't think it is her."
"No," he says, wiping the tears away.
Later he feels almost guilty about his reaction. That girl, too, was someone's daughter, someone's friend and maybe someone's wife and someone's mother. She was loved. And now she is gone.
Sam does not know how much time has passed. Time is becoming a blur. She is eating tasteless food, she is trying to move around in the dark but most of the time she is sleeping. She knows she is being drugged and it is hard to think a coherent thought. She is weak and she feels herself growing weaker all the time. Her memory is fragmented. That worries her. There are gaps and holes that she can not fill. She is starting to have a really hard time remembering what happened in the "Table of Contents". She still knows what Jack did – but the memories are becoming hazy and a great loss is filling her. She is starting to loose him.
She is being moved. She is going on a journey that lasts for a long time.
There is a blow to her head.
Everything turns gray.
The memories grow dark.
Then there is nothing.
One year later
Maria finds her ex-husband and their daughters sprawled on the park lawn. It is a hot day and they seem to be asleep. A book is resting upturned on Jack's chest. It looks as if he has been reading to the girls, but Maria suspects that it is Hanna who has been reading to her sister and her father. Probably something that Kate is still too young to grasp.
Maria doesn't regret the divorce. She fell out of love with him a long time ago, even before he started the affair with Samantha Spade. But that did not prevent her of harbouring a lot of bitter feelings. Maria had started to resent the way he came home at night, withdrawn, his mind preoccupied with people and issues much more important to him, it seemed, than his family.
If he came home at all.
He never talked much about the cases and what he went through, but there were days when Maria sensed a darkness about him. A darkness she did not understand. Something she started to be afraid of.
It made her want not to touch him any more, not to look into his black eyes – made her want to discard him and live a normal life again.
With a man more stable and more sane, she thinks. Someone like Bernard Scoggins.
No, she does not regret the divorce; she does not regret not being with him any more. But in that moment, watching him sleep in the warm sunshine, his daughters' dark heads resting on his shoulders, she feels an unexpected surge of the old love. That warm feeling she had for him in the beginning of their relationship. She knows that he loved her far more than she loved him. That was part of his attraction. It was also the reason the affair had hurt her so much. Not the simple fact of his infidelity, but the realization that his feelings for Samantha Spade were so much deeper than anything he had ever felt for her. She would always be second best after that and it made her want to hurt him as much as he had hurt her.
She understands now that she has hurt him too much.
Jack opens his eyes and sees her. She notes an invisible veil going down, closing her off. They talk about everyday matters and about their daughters. After the deposition he has never again betrayed a single shred of feeling toward her.
Actually Jack is not betraying many feelings at all these days. He is not talking much either. If anyone were to ask Vivien, she would say that he is loosing the ability to communicate, at least on a personal level.
The last year has taken its toll.
Kate snuggles closer to her father. He is flying back to New York in the evening and Maria knows there will be tears again. Hannah and Kate want him near. They need him. But what they also sense without being told, is that he needs them. They treat him like a bird with a broken wing. At least that is the picture that comes to Maria's mind.
Jack arrives in New York late at night. His first stop is at his office. He is not sleeping much any more and he often works until the early morning hours. His job, always something of a mission with him has become an obsession. It is not just about Sam. It is about everyone going missing. He feels he owes it to them and their families to do his very best. Actually their percentage of solved cases has gone up in the last year. He has even solved a couple of old ones. There are those in the FBI who claim he is developing a sixth sense to find missing persons.
When he comes in, he finds Agatha still at work. She is going over the old cases he has solved, studying every detail, trying to determine what exactly it was that led him to success. She is starting to realize that in order to become really good at her job she has to develop the right amount of understanding and dedication. She does not yet understand that she will also have to care.
Jack is drawn to the pool of light around her desk. They change a couple of words but they are still not beyond the frosty stage of their relationship. He retreats into his office. Two hours later she finds him asleep at his desk, newspaper clippings spread around him. She looks at them. There are pictures with lots of smiling faces in them. She realizes he is collecting stories of missing people that came back.
TBC