Title: 5 Bobby Gorens who never happened to…
Warning: this chapter contains discussion of a character's childhood sexual assault
A/N: Disclaimer, etc. in the first chapter. Sorry for the delay. I had family drama, work drama and miscellaneous drama. So…here's some drama. This one isn't gonna win me many friends, but I had to do it. It's like I was compelled or something. Implied spoilers for "Anti-Thesis," "A Person of Interest" and "Great Barrier."
4. … Nicole Wallace
Detective Nicole Wallace-Fellowes watches her suspect through the glass of the one-way mirror. He's alone in the interrogation room, absently tapping a finger against the tabletop as he sits facing the glass. There's something captivating about him, but she can't put her finger on it. He's handsome, but that's not what it is. He sports a well-groomed goatee and curly salt-and-pepper hair that's just long enough to be slightly disheveled. His clothes are casual, but expensive with a designer label on everything from his black t-shirt to the frames of his glasses. He radiates an arrogance that could read as either an off-putting superiority or a compelling confidence, and she has a feeling that he's used it to both effects depending on what he wanted at the time. She knows from the previous, brief encounters she's had with him in the course of her investigation that he's bright and he's charming and he will likely be difficult to interrogate. She's ready for it, though, and the part of her that enjoys the chase is actually hoping for a challenge.
"You sure you want to take this one by yourself?" her partner asks.
"Yeah, Alex. It'll be fine."
"His lawyer's on her way."
"He's willing to talk in the meantime."
"I thought professors were supposed to be smart."
Nicole chuckles as she leaves the observation room to join the suspect. She opens the door, and he looks up at her.
"Professor Goren," she says.
"Call me Bobby," he says.
"Okay, then. Bobby."
"Lovely to see you again, Detective, though the location could be better."
She doesn't respond to his greeting. Instead, she sits down and places a legal pad and pencil on the table in front of her.
She looks at him for a moment before saying, "Let's talk about Bailey Marcus."
He ignores this and says, "Your accent. It's a Commonwealth muddle. It's been bothering me that I can't place it."
She knows he's trying to redirect the conversation, but she goes along with it for a moment, curious to see where he'll take it.
"I was born in the U.S., but I moved around a lot as a child," she says. "I spent the most time in England, Australia and New Zealand. 'Commonwealth muddle' is as good a descriptor as any, I suppose. With a little Thailand and New England thrown in."
"How'd you come to work for the NYPD?"
"We moved back to the States when I was in high school. At some point, I decided to go into law enforcement."
"Why?"
"I had my reasons." Her tone makes it clear that she's not interested in sharing those reasons.
She returns the conversation to the subject at hand.
"Bailey Marcus," she says. "Do the grad students who sleep with you often end up dead?"
"I don't sleep with graduate or any other students. It's, among other things, against University policy. Bailey's death was a tragedy, but I had nothing to do with it."
"You must have had some kind of close relationship with her. You bought her a rather excessive gift not long before she died."
"I wouldn't call it excessive. She'd mentioned that she was writing her thesis on cultural references to Melville's 'Bartleby.' I had the means to get her an early edition of The Piazza Tales as thanks for showing me around when I moved here. Yes, it was expensive. But not as much as, say, a first edition. Grad students generally don't have a pot to piss in. She appreciated it. It was my good deed for the year."
"A visiting lecturer's salary isn't going to do much for your lifestyle. With that condo you're borrowing, your expenses aren't as high as they might otherwise be, but you're still living a bit beyond your means, especially with gifts like that—excessive or not. For a man with your interests, taste in clothes and the like—what you're making wouldn't butter your parsnips."
"I make do."
"With a little outside help?"
"You're obviously trying to insinuate something. Why don't you tell me about the 'outside help' I'm supposed to be getting."
"We have reason to believe Bailey might have been caught up in a scam to get anthrax vaccine from McGuire Air Force Base in order to sell it. We've reason to believe that you put her up to it through a connection with Connie Matson, a woman with whom you were romantically involved in the past. She's stationed on the base and is now AWOL.
"First you have me sleeping with grad students. Now it's soldiers. I have to say I'm flattered. I wish my sex life was as busy and … varied as you seem to think it is. But even if I did sleep with both women, that's not much of a connection."
As he talks, he reaches a long arm over, pulls the legal pad and pencil toward him and begins to write. He's left-handed, and the movement of his hand over the top of the paper obscures what he's writing.
"When was the last time you saw Connie Matson?" Nicole asks.
Instead of answering, he pushes the pad back to her. She looks at what he's written and fights, but fails to maintain her composure. A glint lights up his otherwise cold eyes.
"That's my social security number. And birth date," she says, after a stunned moment.
"Yes," he says with a predatory smile. "It's remarkable the fountain of information that can spring from those little numbers. Your domestic partnership registration. Age and sex of your dependent child. Your parents' names. Looked them up, too. Imagine my surprise when I found out that your father's a registered sex offender."
Nicole leans back in her chair and crosses her arms, subconsciously moving away from the man sitting across from her.
"Tell me, Nicole. Do you ever take your daughter to visit her grandfather?"
"No," Nicole says, barely managing to raise her voice above a whisper. "He's not a part of our lives. I haven't seen him since his sentencing, and I don't plan to until he comes up for parole."
"To make sure he doesn't get it?"
She only nods. She's furious that he's managed to blindside her with this invasion into her privacy. But more than that, she' s furious that she's lost control of the situation.
"How old were you when he first molested you?"
She debates whether or not to answer. She's not ashamed of her past. She's proud that she survived her childhood. That as an adult, she'd had the courage to testify against her father when she found out he was accused of molesting a child in the neighborhood he lived in. Between issues with the statute of limitations and jurisdictional complications related to her international upbringing, he was never charged with what he did to her. But she was able to help to establish a pattern in his behavior, and she was able to speak at his sentencing in support of him receiving the maximum sentence … none of which is any of this man's business.
"I was three when it started," she eventually says. "My first memory is of him … touching me. It didn't stop until I was thirteen when my mother finally left him and took me with her."
"Do you blame your mother for not stopping it?"
She sees an opportunity to regain a measure of control over the interrogation and takes it.
"Stop," she says. "If this is the game you want to play, then it's going to have to be tit for tat. You have to tell me something true about you and Bailey."
She stands up and walks around the table, taking her chair with her. She puts the chair down next to him and sits so they're side-by-side. In the back of her mind, she's aware that anyone in the observation room can now see her own reactions as clearly as they've been able to see his, but she feels the need to shift the dynamic of their interaction.
He turns to look at her. His head is tilted as he examines her face, as if he's assessing her as an adversary.
"Okay," he says. "Bailey did say something about meeting a woman from the base and getting involved in something clandestine. I didn't take her seriously. I figured she was trying to impress me—to come across as worldly or more … sophisticated than she was. An inept attempt at flirting. My fault, I suppose, for giving her the book." He pauses, then again asks, "Do you blame your mother?"
"In all honesty, I don't know," she says, pain evident in her voice. "To this day she says she never knew it was going on. For the longest time, she wouldn't believe me. I was angry with her for years, but now, more than anything, I'm just sorry for her that he was tangled up in her life for so long."
She watches him as he hangs on her words, and suddenly, she understands something about him.
"My turn," she says. "Did you blame your mother when your father left you?"
She knows she's touched a nerve when his face clouds over. For a moment, she's not sure he'll answer. But it's something he started, and she knows that his ego won't let him stop.
"Yes," he says with a new edge to his voice. "She was … is … sick. I blamed her … for driving him away." He glares at her and lashes out, "Is your father why you hate men? Is that why you're with Christine?"
"I don't hate men," she says calmly and honestly. "I've had some wonderful, healthy relationships with men. I'm on good terms with my daughter's father, as is my partner. My feelings for Christine are about her, not about anything—or anyone—else." She pauses, letting the words hang in the air before saying, "What illness does your mother have that you thought drove your father from you?"
"Paranoid schizophrenia," he says without hesitating, his eyes now focused on a spot above her shoulder. After a pause, he looks down at his hands and quietly adds, "She's been slipping away from me my whole life."
She's surprised at the vulnerability he shows and can tell he's surprised as well.
"Why, if your father is the one who abandoned your mother, do you harbor such hatred for women?" She asks before he can ask her another question.
He seethes, and she can feel the anger building within him. Suddenly, he slams his hand palm down onto the table, and she can't help but jump a little.
"No!" he yells, then, "No," again, this time quietly.
"No, what?" she asks.
"I don't hate women. I don't … hurt … them."
She makes full eye contact with him as she asks, "Then why is Bailey Marcus dead?"
He's about to answer her when the door to the interrogation room opens and Goren's lawyer steps in.
"This interview is done," she says. "I'd like to talk to my client alone, please."
Nicole hesitates before standing up to leave, knowing that she was close to getting if not a confession, then enough information to build a more solid case against him. She knows it's unlikely that she'll get more from him now. She reenters the observation room, shaking her head, angry that she'd come that close only to have it taken away.
At some point during the interrogation, Deakins and Carver must have come to observe, as they and Alex all look at her with different measures of concern in their eyes. It's quiet. The intercom's been turned off in respect of the privileged conversation taking place on the other side of the glass.
"He didn't kill Marcus," she says, breaking the silence. "Or, at least, he didn't do it directly. But he did push her to get involved in the vaccine scam and she got in over her head, as he knew she would. Connie Matson is probably the one who did the actual killing. The question is whether or not she did it at his request."
"But why would he be involved in the first place?" Deakins asks. "The vaccine would fetch decent money, but not so much that it would be worth it to a guy like him."
"It's a game to him," Nicole explains, "one he's not completely conscious of playing. The money is only secondary. It's about manipulation." She turns away from her colleagues to watch him through the mirror. "He hates it when men are cruel, neglectful or take advantage of women. But he hates it more when women allow it to happen. His relationships are about emulating his father even though he resents him. They're also about punishing his mother even though he cares for her. So he'll buy a thoughtful, personal gift for the grad student he sleeps with, but he'll maneuver her into a dangerous situation as a punishment for getting involved with him in the first place—for allowing an inappropriate relationship to happen. His mother didn't have a choice in her illness, but Bailey had a choice in getting involved with him. He plays out his reactions to his parents in ways that don't require him to directly confront or blame them." She sighs deeply. Her posture's defensive, her arms folded tightly against her body. "He's compelled to do this. He won't stop."
Carver shakes his head and says, "That's fascinating … and more than a little disturbing. But there's nothing here I can prosecute."
"We need to find Matson," Deakins says.
Nicole frowns and says, "I don't know if we will."
"If he's killed anyone," Alex says, picking up on what Nicole is thinking, "It's Matson. She'd be a loose end."
Deakins shakes his head and says, "You know that I respect your intuition, but I need you to get me evidence of something. You two, keep digging."
He and Carver turn to leave. Nicole continues to look through the glass at Bobby Goren and his lawyer. She feels Alex come to stand beside her.
"Nicole," Alex begins.
Nicole cuts her off, saying, "It's okay, Alex."
"What he did in there…"
"I underestimated him. I won't do that again."
Nicole sees that Alex wants to say more, but won't in respect for her boundaries. Instead, Alex says, "Come on. We have work to do."
Nicole nods and follows her partner out the door.
A/N: So yeah, I took it there (:dodges the flying tomatoes, garbage, etc.:). A very simple what if: What if Nicole were a cop and Bobby a killer? The details are composites and inferences from various scenes with Bobby and Nicole (with a few characters and direct quotes from several episodes). I had a much more complicated scenario worked out, but it was getting far longer than I wanted any of these pieces to be.
I'm probably one of the few people in the CI fic community who doesn't want Nicole dead. Yet. The first CI I watched turned out to the last half hour of "Anti-Thesis," and it's what hooked me on the show. When VDO's contract is up, they can have a (fatal. for her) showdown, but in the meantime, Goren needs a nemesis. That he's not invincible humanizes him and makes the character a bit more believable, IMHO.
Coming in last but most certainly not least … the one and only Alexandra Eames. This one will take a while, too. Hopefully, it'll be worth the wait. In the meantime, feedback is, as always, appreciated (even of the (virtual) flying tomatoes variety).
