"But you know how I am. I push too hard. I get ahead of myself. I keep ruining everything I touch by turning it into gold. But I'm learning how to be gentle."
- the long and short of it, Richard Siken
This whole Chief of Police parade for Will is starting to get annoying. And the new building is a nuisance, another thing Pope walks around acting like he owns. And, and, and, it's putting Raydor on her professional radar.
Her squad gave her less than amused looks, exaggerated groans and heads on desks for that one. Brenda thought it was rather clever.
She texts Sharon during work, when Will's comments get to her. Do you think I'm losing my touch?
Sharon writes back, If what I've seen is 'losing' your touch, I'd be afraid to see you at your best.
Seconds later, another text came through.
What's making you doubt yourself?
Brenda's fingers had hovered over the keys, before she took a deep breath and replied, I can't really talk right now, but your faith in me helps wonders.
I have to get back to work. Thank you, Sharon.
Sharon sent back, For what?
Just being there.
However, despite all the progress they've made, having Sharon over her shoulder buzzing like a bee in the middle of spring drives her absolutely crazy. Come the next time she goes to work, Sharon is waiting for her with a folder and questions.
She's got her squad on their toes and they're running her in circles now, too. This whole business has her strung out.
The smoldering looks and glances, the snapping back and forth, they're all so distracting. And Sharon won't answer any of her questions about what her investigation is about, even though she knows it's just a background check for Will's application for Chief.
And all the invasive questions! And backhanded compliments. Or what she thinks are backhanded compliments. They might just be insults, coming from Sharon.
"And how long have you been with the L.A.P.D.?"
"About five years."
"Really? Feels longer," Sharon replied, still taking notes.
"I could probably be more helpful if I knew what your investigation was about," Brenda had said next, trying to be useful and make this go faster.
"You'd be surprised how many people think that," Sharon replied without looking up, still filling things out.
Bitch, Brenda had thought, looking out the window of her office to see Commander Taylor and Provenza hovering conspicuously. She gave them an unimpressed look that she hoped communicated, shoo!
And then with her rule-booking, her smart remarks during the case about it's status as a Major Crime and the Mayor being able to call in favors from the L.A.P.D. — of which she had no control over, Pope was her boss! — her comment about using her lockpicking and the notes she takes but won't let her be privy to.
Oh! That woman!
Then they're in the morgue and all she can focus on is Adriana and how she's going to get justice for her. Morales struggles with this one, and Captain Raydor inhales sharply with every finding. Brenda just stares at her in the same numb, unaffected way she always has. Save the pain for later, Brenda Leigh, she hears in her Mama's voice.
She took that advice with her to every job she worked. Save the pain until the case is closed. They need you to be at your best while you try to find justice, so you put the pain aside until you can feel it later.
"Something must have set him off," she had murmured, staring at the rage in the wounds on her, at the electrical marks on Adriana's back. The violence in her assault.
Later they sit down with the family she worked for and tell them about Adriana's death and assault. She lets them go once it's clear she isn't going to get anymore from the distraught mother and detached, middle class father.
She sends her team out and Sharon, hips swaying, approaches from the door she'd been leaning on. "Chief, with all due respect — it's been amazing observing you and your team in action today — but didn't your key suspect just walk out the door? Gregory Disken's alibi is weak, he has motive, and—"
"Lieutenant Tao, he was sitting on the left," she interrupts, waiting with her arms behind her back.
Lieutenant Tao, who had entered from the same door Sharon had been leaning on, picked up the bottle with gloved hands and a box cutter in the other hand. Sharon follows him to the sink, interested.
"I'm going to cut the bottom half of the bottle to drain it, and allow it to dry so as not to contaminate the DNA," Tao explains to her with a grin.
Sharon turned to Brenda, her cheeks slightly red but impressed. "Hmm."
Brenda raised a triumphant eyebrow. "Hmm, indeed, Captain."
Sharon watches the interview with Marisol, watches Brenda touch somewhere inside the woman with her words. She watches her provide what comfort she can while asking her to identify her attacker, watches Brenda's face fall in despair when Marisol cries resolutely, "I don't know nothing. I don't know nothing," over and over again.
Brenda retreated to her office and slammed the door behind her, closing the blinds to have total privacy. Marisol was too afraid to talk - but Lupe Nava might not be, if she could find her.
She keeps a pack of twizzlers on her desk to keep her hands and mouth busy while she hits dead end after dead end. Her boys redirect Sharon when she tries to interrupt her alone time, brooding and stewing and probably not good company, anyway.
She's glad her squad knows what she needs. She can't take Sharon invading her space and her senses right now, as it is she stares longingly at her blazer that she still has failed to return sitting there mockingly in her purse, through the move to the new building and the dinner at Sharon's house. She has to eventually, but she likes to wear it when she needs comfort and allows the comforting embrace of Sharon's perfume to surround her.
What she needs to focus on is finding Lupe Nava. Lupe Nava. Lupe Nava. She calls in federal assistance, begrudgingly, and Fritz is the one who finds her - but she's been deported. After a useless stop at the house of the family Lupe used to nanny for, they return to the Disken's, to Avery, hoping the child can lead her to the answers she's looking for.
When they click through Ruben's photos and find Agent Meyers, it feels like the room gets colder. Someone inhales sharply.
"Who's that, Avery?" Brenda asked in a wane voice.
Avery shrugged. "His dad, I guess?"
"Detective Sanchez… have you called Agent Meyers about Ruben?"
"I left him a message, would you like me to call again?" Sanchez replies, but she shakes her head.
"No. We're going to pay Agent Meyers a visit."
And then they're at Agent Meyers house, his child traumatized and bruised. There's stun-gun darts on the floor and blood on his face and she feels red for a brief moment, before she remembers she gave him all of her material on this case.
"No, no, no," she muttered, pacing frantically. Her team and Captain Raydor watched as she thought out loud. "Where is he going? He targeted undocumented immigrants."
"But Adriana was an American citizen," Sharon says, trying to help her.
Suddenly Brenda's back straightened. "Marisol. He could silence the other's by deporting them. He's going after her."
"But we have his DNA," Sharon points out, her hand half curled in front of her, like she wants to reach out and touch Brenda's shoulder.
"That's what I didn't tell him. And he's really, really mad," Brenda says with a shaking voice, rushing out the door so fast she was a blur of blonde hair and her blue L.A.P.D. coat, already on her cellphone. "Fritz, you're closer — you have to get there. We're on our way… back up won't get there in time. Just take a left on Valley Ridge."
Gabriel says on the radio, "Okay, Tao, Flynn, box him in, box him in!"
Captain Raydor didn't have a good feeling about this at all. She was at the end and followed the others, watching them box his van in.
And by the time she was out of her car, joining the others behind Gabriel's crown victoria, she had a perfect view of Brenda, completely exposed, her gun lowered to the ground, a hand outreached towards an irate Meyers.
"What is she doing?" Sharon said hoarsely, feeling the blood drain from her face.
"What she always does," Gabriel replies, his gun trained on Agent Meyers and his expression set between fury and fear. "Something reckless and stupid."
"Chief, back up!"
Sharon couldn't deny that. Brenda's team kept yelling, screaming at her to get back. It was hard to have a vantage point from where she was, as it was she couldn't hear Brenda or Meyers very well.
"Chief!"
"Chief, get back!"
It was amazing in a way. Brenda didn't react to any of them. She just kept talking to Meyers.
"We can walk out of this peacefully, Agent Meyers," Brenda is saying, "There's only one way for all of us to get out of here alive."
"I'm not waiting for SWAT to get here. Move your cars or I'll blow her brains out!"
"This is not a negotiation," Brenda cocked her gun and pointed it at him now, instead of the ground as she had previously.
Despite the authority she projected, her hands shook. She felt herself losing control of the situation if something didn't happen soon…
Brenda swallowed and shouted at him, "If you do not let her go, we will shoot you. If you run, we will shoot you. Let. Her. Go. And get on the ground, or we will shoot you!"
"Then I'll kill myself, this whore and maybe take you with us too," Meyers snarled, tightening his grip on Marisol's neck, who gagged and cried out wordlessly in his arms, causing everyone to tighten their grips on their guns. He shouts, "just move your cars!"
"This is your last chance," Brenda shouts, swallowing and readjusting her grip on her gun. "Let her go!"
The sound of helicopter's grew closer and a spotlight shined down onto Agent Meyers. His face became, somehow, more furious, and he turned his gun on Brenda, aiming at her head.
"Bitch!"
This is it, she thinks. I should've been a better daughter. A better wife. A better friend.
Brenda prepared for the shot, even relaxed instead of tensed, but a louder shot rang out, and she was still standing. Her ears rung, either from the shot or the helicopter or the blood rushing in her ears. Meyers dropped to the ground and Marisol took off.
In a daze, she rushes to direct her to Gabriel. "You're okay. You're okay, you're okay," she assures the sobbing woman as much as herself, staring at the bullet wound in Agent Meyers head.
That was almost me.
Fritz, rifle in hand, strides forward and grasps Brenda by the upper arms and shakes her. She feels like a ragdoll, looking up into his eyes. He was scared, she could see it.
"You almost got yourself killed!" He shouted, his face close to hers. She felt spit hit her face distantly. "Never do that again! You hear me? Ever!"
"I'm-Fritz, I'm sorry," she said over and over again, a bit in shock.
He crushes her to him in a hug and she hugs him back, feeling strangely numb. It was almost my brain on the pavement today…
"Chief!"
Brenda's attention once again is taken by the case and she snaps out of it. The back of the van makes her sick, and by the time the office is finally quiet it's one a.m. and the women's families, if they had any, have been contacted.
There's a soft knock on her door. "Come in," she says without looking up. "What can I do for you, Captain?"
"I just wanted to say… that you showed remarkable bravery today. That or great stupidity," she smiled to show she was joking. "That being said, I have concluded my review."
"Oh, thank goodness. You know, we all knew it was about Will's application for Chief of Police."
"Except it isn't," Sharon grinned almost predatorily at Brenda's expression.
"Huh?"
"I am the L.A.P.D's Women's Alliance Coordinator and I was asked by the Mayor to find a strong female candidate to apply," she smiled softly. "And that would be you."
Brenda took the filled out forms slowly, not saying anything. Her face was completely blank, like Sharon had handed her a foreign object to identify.
"All potential applicants have two weeks to turn that in. I know you hate paperwork and so does everyone else, so I filled it out," Sharon said when Brenda still said nothing, leafing through the application. "Just put your signature at the bottom."
Brenda looked up at her, looking lost. "Captain Raydor—"
"Sharon, Brenda. Anyway, I hope this doesn't cause any friction between you and Chief Pope," the twinkle in smug green eye's tells Brenda that she's hoping it causes a lot of friction, actually. "Two weeks, Chief Johnson."
"I—"
"And Brenda?"
Brenda looked up from the forms, still confused.
"Try not to repeat today, please. Today could have ended… I don't want to… Just… be more careful."
Brenda was lost in the echoing click-clack of Sharon's heels as she left.
Go out to dinner with me, is the text she wakes up to.
You almost sound like you want to be my friend, Captain. she wrote back.
Sharon didn't reply until later, and by that point she was working on closing the end of the case. Her phone beeped in her purse and she saw it at the end of the day.
What did you think I'd been doing this entire time, Brenda?
The use of her name set Brenda at ease and let her know that the other woman meant it, which was sweet. She just sent back a smile.
chapter title from hvy mtl drmr by des rocs