"What's shakin', Sweet?"
Maura was idly rearranging the shot glasses at the end of the bar when the Nick embraced her from behind.
"Nothin' much." She leaned her head back on Nick's shoulder and rested against him. The customers had cleared out, the band packed up and Vachon and Miklos gone for their late night prowls.
"How long have you been ready to leave? Why didn't you come get me?"
Maura rotated in Nick's grasp but kept her head on his shoulder. She loved being close to him like this, the respite they gave one another from their complicated lives was the most complete comfort she could imagine, and she must have been certifiably mental to try to back away from it. He felt like home to her, he always had.
"You and Janette were talking, I didn't want to interrupt you."
Nick tightened his embrace and chided gently, "Janette and I have been talking for centuries. You wouldn't have interfered with any grand enlightenment."
"Yeah, still. You needed it."
She felt him nod in the affirmative. "I suppose I did. Even without enlightenment sometimes it just helps to, well, ruminate with someone who's known you forever. Just dump it all out, no need to worry if you're saying the wrong thing." Some women would be hurt by hearing their lover speak that way about another woman, or anyone really, but Nick knew Maura understood. Now she straightened and looked in Nick in the eye. They seemed less dark, more calm than before.
"I got a little talking-to from Vachon tonight."
"Really?" Nick's surprise was evident. He knew Maura and Vachon had become good friends but was unaware of any particular confidences between them.
"Yeah, he told me to stop keeping score. Like trying to figure out how to pay back what I fucked up as if it's some cosmic balance sheet, you know? He told me the ups and downs smooth out when you stand back far enough. He said I needed to let things get fixed by the people that knew how. I mean, I didn't tell him what was going on, just that I'd messed up big time. So he laid on me, you know, a bunch of that vampire-perspective shit that I never come up with on my own. You probably tried to tell me yourself but who listens to the people you live with?"
"Familiarity breeds deafness? Interesting." He gave up the tease when her expression remained serious. "So did he make sense to you?"
Nick's arms were around her waist; she could feel his thumbs working back and forth along the edges of her backbone. "Yeah, in fact I felt kind of stupid I never thought of it before like that. You're the detective, detective, and even if I'm the one that threw everything out the window you know better than me how to get it back. Or something."
It sounded reasonable, but he wasn't entirely convinced and looked deeper into her eyes. "So you agree with that? Can you let me handle it, whatever I end up managing to figure out, and stop trying to fix things by suggesting I turn you in, or by hiding in the corner?"
"The roof," she corrected a little sheepishly, "I've been hiding on the roof." He didn't respond, just kept gazing steadily into her eyes awaiting her answer. "Yeah I think I can. I mean I'll still get the urge and all, but I promise I'll hang in there and not run away like a big chicken."
"A really, really big chicken. Well I'm glad to know I'll no longer be your role model for self-flagellation." The lightening humor that warmed Nick's face began to spread to Maura. Maura had been staring at him with a look that said, all right I give up, you're right, I was wrong, but now the serious expression dissolved in a smile that lit her eyes. "Good news for both of us," she admitted.
"You can't look at me like that without getting this," and he kissed her.
"Nicolas, Maura, please don't think I am not pleased you're so devoted but would you kindly indulge yourselves in your own home?"
Nick turned to look at Janette, then faced Maura with a put-on chastened expression. "I think we've just been told to get a room."
"This is a room," Maura told Janette, who smiled a little too tolerantly. "I think Janette wants to call it a night," she informed Nick.
"This is a night," Nick retorted smartly, but released Maura and went to give Janette an embrace and kiss goodnight that would have had any "normal" girlfriend hissing and scratching someone's eyes out. As it was, Maura taunted, "Hot stuff, you think you can buy anyone off like that don't you?"
"It's worked fine for 800 years," he commented with a wink. Janette removed herself from Nick's embrace to stand by Maura's side, then both women looked at each other and laughed, causing Nick to stop in his tracks and regard them both a little uneasily.
"I'm not sure I'm in such an enviable position, now that I think of it." As if on cue Janette and Maura each took one of his arms, hugging close to his shoulders and kissing him on each cheek as they made their way to the front door.
"Bullshit, Bats, you never had it so good. Instead of spending every waking minute trying to keep yourself in line, you have us to do it for you."
Nick stood in the open doorway as Maura and Janette, standing shoulder to shoulder, smiled at him. "You say that like it's a good thing…" he muttered, only half kidding.
"Good night, Nicolas," Janette closed and locked the door after Maura joined Nick outside.
Seeing the sky brightening faintly at the horizon, she tugged nervously at Nick's arm. "Let's roll, detective, we're burning moonlight."
Back home just under the sunrise, Maura grabbed the remote and closed the shutters so quickly they banged against the sills. After he'd returned from the kitchen with a half-guzzled bottle Nick asked observed with obvious relief, "You really are feeling better, aren't you? I don't believe it was just Vachon, either, but I think together we might have slowed you down enough for logic to catch up." He set the bottle and glass down on the coffee table and joined Maura on the sofa. "You think?"
"Yeah," she leaned over and gave him a kiss. Not nearly enough of those had been happening lately, she realized. "I am doing better, and you guys did help drag me to a halt. I know it's still a messed up situation, but I think I can hold myself back while someone else tries to straighten it out. I mean, how many more shoes can be waiting to drop?" Next evening she was sorry she asked.
Nick had already left for work when the phone rang.
"Hey Maura, it's Don."
"Hey, Schank, he just left about ten minutes ago. You should see him soon."
"No, it's you I wanna talk to. About this Mitchell thing. I didn't want to bring Nick into it right now because he's wound so tight."
Maura could feel a ball of ice in her stomach. "But what can I tell you?"
"More than you have, I think. Look, I'm not accusing you of anything, and I sure don't want to talk to anyone else about this right now. But it's just not adding up. People just don't go poof into thin air while in police custody. Especially scrawny mental midgets like Mitchell was."
Was. Shit.
"I don't understand."
"You working tonight?"
"No, I have Tuesdays off. Why?"
"We need to talk about what's been going on. Just you and me. And I don't wanna do it on the phone."
"But what can this have to do with me?" She could feel her denials running out of steam.
Schanke snapped at Maura abruptly, which surprised her. "Stop, okay? I've been Nick's partner since way before you came along, he wouldn't be with anyone as dense as you're playing. Don't insult us both, okay?" She'd never heard that edge in his voice except when he completely frustrated by a case.
"Okay. Where and when?"
"How about I come over there? You said Nick's on his way in, I'll leave him a message saying I've gone out to talk to a witness." There was a moment's pause before he continued, "That's not far from the truth, is it?" There was none of the usually Schanke hesitance in evidence, none of the slight awkwardness she'd become accustomed to. Tonight Nick's partner was nothing but cop, and nothing but business.
"Okay. I'll be here."
"Twenty minutes."
"Okay."
She had twenty minutes to think of more lies, or to come up with a way to tell the truth that wouldn't put her in the booby hatch and Nick before an IAD board of inquiry. By the time the buzzer sounded, Maura had decided to try to split the difference.
"Hey," Maura greeted Schanke, who looked as businesslike as he sounded on the phone, but with an undercurrent of something she couldn't put her finger on. Not awkwardness, no. Reluctance, and disappointment, like someone determined to do something he really didn't want to do.
"We both know this isn't a social call," he replied when she offered him coffee to go with the donuts she assumed were in the paper bag he was carrying.
"Talk to me, Maura."
"Does Nick know you had questions for me?" she asked as she sat on the sofa, Schanke in the leather armchair nearby, setting the paper bag on the floor.
"No. If somebody's gonna try to lie to me I'd rather it was you."
This pushed a button in Maura. "Nick would no more lie to you than,"
"Yeah, actually, he would," Schanke interrupted, "but for only one reason. He'd do it to protect you, even if you don't believe he would. Some of what makes him the best cop I ever knew stops short where you stand. And he's the best partner I've ever had, and I need to trust him like I always have, so I'd rather not have to face that. So I'm asking you instead. What did you have to do with Kevin Mitchell's disappearance." It wasn't even a question. He knew it was her.
Maura couldn't take her eyes from Schanke's unwavering gaze, much as she wanted to. She knew this man, she even supposed she loved him for what he knew and did and was to Nick, for watching out for him in ways she never could and for the support he'd given to her when Nick was beyond her reach. For accepting Nick in a more meaningful way than Maura ever could because he did it without any of his questions being answered, and he did it without question.
"You're right. I set it up. I wanted him dead." It was the truth, after all.
"And you figured maybe he'd be shot resisting arrest. Or at the least have more years added to his sentence."
It was so exactly the "explanation" she'd proposed to Nick when she'd begged him to turn her in, she was shocked into silence for a moment.
"Maura? Is that it?"
"Yeah, Donnie. That's it. Though I don't know that I was thinking all that clearly." True again. "I persuaded this guy I know, he came by the bar from time to time but I don't even know if he lives in Toronto," it was easier not to lie than she thought, "to do what those cops said he did. Distraction."
"But how could a second's 'distraction' allow some skinny punk to overpower two trained, armed officers? It doesn't add up."
"This guy, he's got this talent I guess you'd call it. He can hypnotize people, or confuse them enough at least for a few minutes so they're not sure what's going on."
"What's his name? Can we find him if we have to?"
"I don't imagine so, he's transient. And he picks up names along the way, so who knows what his real one is. Kind of a poser. I didn't even have to pay him, he did it for kicks." If she'd ever defined LaCroix more succinctly she was unaware of it.
"You're telling me this friend of yours hypnotized two Toronto police officers long enough for Mitchell to get away." Schanke's face said he wasn't buying it, not right away anyway.
"He's not my 'friend'. And I don't know exactly what happened, I know he said he could do this thing, and I figured well if it didn't work he'd just walk off and no harm done."
"No harm done. You were setting up a prisoner escape and no harm done?"
Finally she looked away, rubbed her eyes. "Donnie, I was mental, okay? That's not an excuse, or a defense, it's just the way it was. Do you really think if I was thinking clearly I'd do something that would put Nick's nuts in the wringer? Or yours, for that matter?" She looked straight at Schanke then, no artifice and no attempt to convince him. He considered her for a moment.
"No, Maura, I don't expect you would. But what were you thinking?"
"Besides wanting the killer of possibly my best friend dead? You see this shit a lot, Donnie, how much room usually is there in somebody's head for anything besides that?"
"Not much," he admitted. They were both silent for a few minutes, Schanke's eyes wandering to a photograph taken at that year's department picnic, the first at their new precinct. Maura followed his gaze; in the picture Schanke and Myra, Nick and Maura, were standing near the beach bonfire laughing at someone's bad joke, so out of control they had to lean on each another for support. "So does Nick know about all this?" Schanke asked finally, and clearly he already knew the answer.
"Yeah." For just a second Schanke appeared on the verge of either a rage or a meltdown. "I'm sorry Donnie, I wanted to go to the cops with it just to get it off my back, you know? Nothing noble, but I couldn't stand what it was doing to Nick, how it killed him to keep anything from you and the others. But especially you. No he said, no, no, no, we fought over it more than once. And for the first time ever, I did something I didn't wanna do because it was what Nick wanted. I figured I owed him that." She misread Schanke's vague expression. "I know what you think of me, I'm making some whining excuse for bailing my own ass out, 'poor Nick, I was only trying to help him' as I hung him and you out to dry. Do what you want with this, Donnie, but please don't blame Nick. Everything that makes me want to come clean stops short where he stands. If you tell Cohen he knew, I'll take it all back. I'll say I lied out of desperation, I'll plead insanity beginning to end. I don't care. I won't let him hang for this. And yeah it's a little late to be thinking of Nick, no shit, but I swear I won't let him go to the block just because he loves me more than the law." She knew she was beginning to sound a little hysterical.
Schanke surprised her then by leaning forward to take her hands in his and squeeze them firmly. "Calm down, okay? Nobody's going to Cohen with anything. I came here to find out what was going on for my own information, not to gather evidence for IAD."
"But why? Why find out if you're not going to do anything with it?"
"I needed to know, for myself. No matter how this played out I didn't like the idea of spending the rest of our lives wondering when I look at you, or at Nick, what didn't you trust me enough to tell me? What else might join the list if I don't do something about it now? Look, Maura, this whole thing is driving all of us to the edge." He studied her for a moment, then sighed. "I guess the more of us that join the daisy chain, the less chance anyone goes over."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that in the grand scheme of things one slimy killer more or less is a drop in the bucket."
She shook her head, confused. "Come on, you don't mean that."
"I do if he's dead."
Maura braced herself before a wave of nausea. There was no way Schanke could even suspect what had really happened, not without knowing all about Nick and the Community, everything. He was opening the bag now, and pulling something out.
"We picked up a drunk and disorderly vagrant vandalizing a warehouse by the waterfront. He was wearing these."
Oh, shit. Kevin's sneakers, the ones that Christopher had given him. The ones that didn't burn. The ones she'd ignored when she let "success" blind her to everything but what LaCroix instructed her to do.
"They were identical to the ones Mitchell was wearing when he took a powder, so I sent them to the lab on spec."
Oh my god. "Natalie?"
"Not the morgue, the other forensics lab. Natalie's sharp, but she doesn't do everything. Anyway, we found traces of soot and greasy ash on them that looked to be human remains. DNA matched the exclusionary blood sample we took from Mitchell when we were testing the knife and his jacket."
"So they're his, so?" She couldn't imagine where he was going with this.
"So the guy wearing them had been vandalizing a warehouse near a utility shed that had been torched the day before. There'd been enough leftover paint and other stuff to turn it into a real crematory, this was probably all that was left. Not even bone fragments. Any human ashes would be so contaminated by everything else, DNA tests would be a joke."
"But why didn't they burn?" Now she was talking like a detective, indicating the filthy sneakers.
"They were in the doorway, the guy said, and they were pretty wet, probably seawater or something from earlier. Forensics say the deposit patterns are consistent with them being on the wearer at the time of the fire. Maybe he kicked 'em off trying to get out, or something. Guy said they had all sorts of crud in 'em so he dumped 'em out and took 'em."
"You're sure he's dead?" Maura asked this with an intensity that Schanke read as a thirst for revenge.
"Well as sure as we can be, I guess. We won't be looking for him anymore, anyway. Frankly I can't say I've used up too much Kleenex over it."
Suddenly Maura remembered someone else. "What about Karen? Does she know?"
"We had enough to go on that I talked to her about it this afternoon before she flew back to Seattle. She's okay, she knew the direction he was headed in and knew where he could end up. She asked me to thank you, by the way."
"You didn't tell her what you suspected?"
"No reason to, with him dead. She said you treated her decently, with respect, and she hadn't known if she could expect that given what her brother did to your friend. And to you."
"Guilt by association," Maura dropped her face briefly in her hands, "lot of that going around." She sat up straight. "So are you gonna tell Nick about this little interview?"
He shrugged. "I guess that's up to you. Selective honesty has been part of our partnership for so long, who am I to break tradition?" Maura moved quickly to kneel by Schanke's chair and grip his arm.
"Not lies, Donnie. There's a difference between keeping things to yourself, and making up something to cover your ass. The first one is just bad judgment, isn't it?" She could live with the second, if Nick and Schanke came out of it okay.
He nodded, and smiled a little. "Yeah, sweetheart, you're right. And bad judgment is gonna keep me from telling anyone else about this, especially Cohen. All she knows is I came to confirm the i.d. on the sneakers. Like I said, why break tradition?" He put the sneakers back in the bag and rose. "Well I guess we're through here." On the way to the door he paused. "Good thing we're not Catholic, huh?"
Maura shook her head, puzzled.
"Well considering all the ethical gymnastics we're doing, you me and Knight could be spending the rest of our lives in confession."
Maura stopped Schanke before he could enter the elevator.
"Donnie I know I've put you and Nick in a hard place. I've spent the last two weeks apologizing to Nick…"
Schanke hugged an arm around her and kissed her cheek and intoned with Mickey Spillane bravado, "Hard places are my favorite hangout, sister. Now I gotta get back to the precinct before I have to spend two weeks apologizing to Nick."
"Thank you? Pretty lame, isn't it."
As the elevator door slid shut Maura heard Schanke laugh cynically. "Thank your man; if it were anyone else I'd have thrown you to the dogs."
She had a hard time believing that as she reached for the phone to call Nick.
