Family Reunion

Eric made his way on his crutches past the locker room. He stopped and then backed up. He watched in confusion and some amusement.

Ryan was banging his head repetitively against his locker with a thumping noise. His eyes were closed.

'You all right?' Eric asked.

'No,' Ryan said.

'What's wrong?'

'My damn case.' He sighed unhappily. He banged his head against his locker again. 'It's not going well.'

'I thought you got a lead?'

'I did. It led nowhere.' He turned around and slumped and against the locker. 'Neither the wife nor the woman he was having an affair with can be proven. The wife didn't even know he was having an affair and the 'other woman' didn't even know he was dead. I checked out their alibis again and both are water tight. I'm back where I started and now – ' He groaned. 'And now I have to go to dinner with my family. When I would much rather be trying to crack this case.'

Eric smiled. 'Good luck.'

'Oh, I'm going to need it,' Ryan said grimly, dragging a neatly covered suit out of his locker. He had obviously brought it with him, anticipating that he would finish work late. It was a smart black suit and white shirt. He had even brought his shoes, cleaned and polished.

Eric grinned again. That was so typical Ryan.

'What's the problem between you and your family?' Eric asked, aware that he was treading on dangerous ground. 'I mean, if you want to talk about it – '

'I'm the let down,' Ryan said softly. 'I'm the one who didn't get a respectable, high-flying, highly paid job. I'm the one who isn't married to some high-earner, or who's seen at the right occasions with the right friends. I'm the one who went against my entire family's wishes to study chemistry and genetics instead of law. I'm the one who joined the police force when I should have been training to become a lawyer. I'm just a massive disappointment and everyone I am related to reminds me of that whenever I see them.'

He sounded bitter and resentful. Eric was reminded how supportive his parents had been, how delighted they had been when he had joined Miami police and finally the crime lab.

'I'm sorry,' he said.

Ryan gave him a weary smile. 'Thanks, Eric. Still wish I could stay and work, though.'

'Well, I'll do some more digging for you,' he offered. 'See if I can't come up with anything.'

'Thanks, Eric,' Ryan said gratefully.

'Don't mention it.'

Ryan felt vaguely smug as he sat in the uncomfortable chair in the expensive restaurant, not because he was enjoying himself at all but simply because he had been right. This was every bit as torturous as he had expected. He had stubbornly refused to ask anyone if they were free to come for moral support just to annoy his family who had booked a seat for someone to come with him. Unfortunately, his sister had foreseen this eventuality and now he was saddled with one of her fluffy friends who giggled and flirted with him outrageously. Sandy and her fiancé, Rob, sat directly opposite them so Ryan wasn't even able to ruminate on his current case to keep himself entertained because they kept interrupting him.

'So,' the girl, whose name was Candy, short as Cassandra, she had explained to Ryan's total incomprehension, asked 'what do you do, Ryan?' She rested her chin on her hand and fluttered her eyelashes at him.

'You're a police officer, aren't you?' Rob said, smiling. He was a PA to some famous person whose name he refused to mention, making Ryan suspect that the person wasn't really famous, just rich. Whatever he did, he earned double the amount Ryan did, at the very least. That only bothered Ryan because Rob was always throwing the fact that he earned more than Ryan in Ryan's face, not seeming to realise that Ryan really didn't care.

'I was,' Ryan said.

'Ooo!' Candy said, excitedly. 'Have you ever been shot at?'

'Yeah,' Ryan said, staring glumly at his glass of wine. 'It wasn't fun. I ended up in the ER with two inches of nail sticking out of my head.'

Candy stared at him in astonishment then decided that he was joking and giggled. 'That's a funny joke!'

'It wasn't a joke,' he said.

She stared again. 'What?'

He pointed to the scar beside his eye. 'No joke.'

She blinked, then dismissed the subject, looking slightly worried. 'So you're a cop?'

'No,' he said. 'I'm a criminalist.'

'A what?'

'I work for the crime lab now,' he said patiently. 'My job is solving crimes.'

'Oh. Is it interesting?'

'It's badly paid,' Rob put in. He smirked at Ryan. 'Right?'

'I don't really care about the pay,' Ryan shot back. 'It's job satisfaction and the knowledge that I'm doing something important.'

'What kind of things do you do?' Candy asked.

He didn't think she was really interested, but he was getting annoyed now. 'Lots of things,' he said. 'We all analyse trace, gather and process DNA, study tire treads, blood spatter analysis, ballistics, fingerprints, the list goes on. We try to work out how people died and if it's murder, who killed them.'

'Oh.'

'And we have to attend the occasional autopsy as well,' Ryan added maliciously.

They all stopped and stared at him.

'I had to go to one last week where the man had been in the water for five days,' he continued in tones of inappropriate cheerfulness. 'He was so bloated that we had to have a drainage bucket underneath him.' He paused and then added thoughtfully, 'We had to be really careful when he was pulled out of the river because the floaters have a tendency to explode.'

Sandra gave Ryan a furious glare as Candy and Rob both went slightly green. Rob looked down at his garlic mushrooms and set his fork down.

'Was it something I said?' Ryan asked innocently.

'What do you think?' Sandra said furiously.

'A lot of things,' Ryan said, draining his glass. He wondered if maybe he had had too much to drink. 'I think that I haven't had enough to drink yet and I'm also thinking that I wish I hadn't driven here so that I could drink more. And I'm also thinking that I have a case to solve and I could be spending my time at the lab working on that case.'

'I told you he has an attitude problem,' Sandra said to Rob in a stage whisper.

The waiter came and served them their main course. Ryan was grateful because it meant that he had an excuse to bite his tongue and not spit out an angry comment.

'You could have been a good lawyer,' Sandra continued. 'I don't know what possessed you to join the police force, Ryan, I really don't.'

Ryan ignored this.

'If you want a change of career, I might be able to get you a decent job,' Rob said to him, smirking.

'I have a decent job,' Ryan said coldly. 'In case you forgot.'

'No, I didn't,' Rob said.

Ryan gritted his teeth and took out his frustration on the meal he had ordered, chopping it up roughly with very little interest in actually eating it. He was only grateful that his parents were preoccupied chatting animatedly with Rob's parents and were paying no attention to him at all. The other people there were all also too busy talking to each other and having an apparently good time to notice how much he was hating this.

'Stop looking so miserable, Ryan,' Sandra said sharply. 'You're totally spoiling this for the rest of us.'

'You know,' Ryan said. 'I'm not feeling too well.'

'Then maybe you should leave,' Sandra said nastily.

Ryan got up so quickly his chair crashed to the floor. 'Sandra, that's the best advise you've ever given me. I think I'll take it.'

'What? Ryan!' she snapped.

'See you, Sandra,' he said angrily, grabbing his coat.

'Ryan!' his mother said sharply. 'Ryan, where are you going? Sit down and stop making a spectacle of yourself!'

'Have a lovely time,' he said expansively. 'Enjoy patronising each other, pretending you like each other and wasting each others time. Sandra, Rob, enjoying getting married. I won't be coming, I don't think I'll have invitation after this, but please believe that I am totally sincere when I say that you both completely, totally and utterly deserve each other. And Candy, you're very sweet, but please, please, please try and find your brain.' He waved, giving them all an angry grin and hurried away.

He walked out of the restaurant, furious. People were staring at him in astonishment and curiosity. He almost collided with a waiter who glared angrily at him. Ryan muttered a hasty apology and hurried out.

His car was parked outside. He got in and thumped the steering wheel angrily before starting the engine and driving home.

He drove faster than usual, still fuming. He reached home quickly and pulled in sharply to his parking space outside his apartment, leaving tire marks on the ground.

Ryan shut off the engine and lent his head against the steering wheel. His head was pounding. He shook it, trying to clear it. He sighed. He was tired and angry and really need sleep. Huh, sleep. Something he didn't seem to be getting much of recently. He sat up and tipped his head back against the head rest, rubbing his eyes distractedly.

He got out and went up into his apartment. He unlocked the door and threw his keys onto the table as usual.

After a shower, he tried to watch some TV, but there was nothing on. He tried to read, play a game, tidied up. He couldn't relax and he couldn't sleep. Sleep had been difficult over the past few weeks anyway, but he tried to sleep. He just tossed and turned for a couple of hours and eventually got up again.

The apartment felt stuffy and close. He glanced at the clock. Four in the morning. He couldn't believe the time had gone so fast. He got dressed and picked up his car keys. Maybe he could grab a few hours at work, maybe see if Eric had found some information and left it for him. Or maybe the graveyard shift might need some help. Anything to keep him occupied.

He walked quietly down the stairs and out to his car. He got in and shut the door, pulling his keys out of his pocket.

The next few seconds went by in a blur.

Someone opened the passenger door and leapt into the car. Ryan turned, opening his mouth to shout in anger. The intruder was wearing a pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap and he was holding a tire iron.

Ryan threw up his arms to protect his face but it was too late. The iron cracked across his skull. He cried out and the man hit him again. This time blood sprayed across the inside of the car and Ryan slumped, motionless.

The man dragged him from the driver seat into the passenger seat, slammed the door and got in the driver's side. He found the keys where they had fallen out of Ryan's hand, turned the engine on and drove Ryan's car away.