Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine. Any lines from the books are hers too.
Witness
AN: Follow up to Because and Safe. Also, this chapter has a small mention of human trafficking and child abuse, just to warn everyone.
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Gale hates lineups.
They're stupid in his mind, archaic.
Eyewitnesses are fallible. Half the time they're scared panicked people who've been through a traumatic event and are then forced to try to relive it and the other half only had a moment to take notice of the perpetrator and are now being asked to identify someone off a flashbulb memory. It's ridiculous and not the way he wants to get convictions. He wants solid evidence, not partial IDs that some jackass lawyer can get thrown out on a technicality.
Plus, finding five one-eyed women to use as fillers was hard as hell.
Crystalle Otto, herself, had been damn near impossible to track down.
She'd been an heiress to a perfume company, but she'd gambled her family's fortune as well as most of her trust fund completely away within a few years of inheriting it. After that, her whereabouts had been hard to determine, but from what Gale and Katniss had managed to find out, she'd fallen in with a rough crowd.
Her rap sheet was long and impressive. Despite growing up in luxury, Crystalle had taken to her new, violent lifestyle without difficulty.
She'd served time for armed robbery, assault and battery, and possession, not what anyone would expect from a girl who'd been given everything on a silver platter since the day she was born. All her hard living had cost her an eye, her looks, and any friends in high places she might've still had.
They hadn't been able to find the connection between her and Snow yet, but they knew there had to be one.
"Who else would want to kill Haymitch?" Madge had asked, looking truly puzzled by the thought.
Gale almost told her that the list of people that would like to kill her beloved boss would fill several volumes. Abernathy's ex-girlfriends alone had kept the investigation busy for several weeks. He kept that thought to himself though. She adored the jerk, and Gale didn't want to hear an hour long speech about how great he'd always been to her.
"If we don't have her come in and make an ID the defense will say we didn't have confidence in our witness," Madge points out.
"And if she doesn't ID her then they'll use that to prove we got the wrong person," Gale grumbles.
He hates lawyers and all their judicial gymnastics.
Well, most lawyers anyway.
In his mind, he should be able to collect the evidence, catch the bad guys, and lock them up. Simple, clean, efficient.
It isn't that simple though.
Evidence is lost and tampered with, the bad guys have money and fancy lawyers, and locking them up is halfway to impossible.
Meanwhile, Madge is bottling everything up, pushing every painful emotion down to her core and plowing through work. It's her coping mechanism, Gale knows that, but he still wishes there was more for him to do to help her.
She isn't falling apart, she's been through too much in her life to do that, but the careful seams she's stitched into her being are frayed and loose. Little bits of her fear and panic are managing to leak out despite all her hard work.
In the weeks since the shooting, she's stayed with Gale.
There'd been so little fight in her against it, almost no protests that he was being ridiculous, that Gale instantly knew she needed him around, even if she wouldn't say as much.
Most nights she can't sleep.
She stays up later and later, pouring over case files, looking at evidence, searching for any little thing she might've missed the first hundred times she'd looked, until Gale makes her go to bed.
"I'm just not tired," she always tells him, getting up to give him a hug, trying to hide the dark circles growing under her eyes. There are too many demons living in her mind to rest.
He tells her about his day, stupid things he hears, dirty jokes, an update on the cat that lives behind the station house, anything to calm her down and get her to sleep. She never stays that way though.
Some nights he wakes to find her whimpering, curled into a ball, tears leaking out her eyes. Other nights she wakes up screaming, panic in her eyes as she looks around for a phantom shooter.
All he can do is hold her, rub little circles on her back and hum her the lullabies his mother had sung him when he'd been little and afraid, until her sobs quiet and her breathing evens out.
It turns his stomach that one person could turn a lunch into a bloodbath and Madge's mind into a place she's too terrified to let rest.
He wants to put that person away for the rest of their natural life, but that power isn't his at the moment.
"She'll make the ID," the dark haired woman beside him says, green eyes narrowed on the door.
Annie Cresta, an ADA a few years older than Madge, watches the door across from them, waiting for her witness to come out.
She's pretty, but intense. Madge had told him that she'd been a defense attorney for a while before being recruited by Mags Cohen, the DA before Abernathy, after one of her colleagues was murdered in front of her by a client.
"It really traumatized her," she'd added. "Almost left law altogether, before Mags talked her out of it."
She'd been part of the team that had dismantled several of Snow's sex slave rings, one of his most lucrative and secret projects.
Finnick Odair, one of the more popular young men in Snow's inventory to be used and abused, had been the key component in the takedown.
"He went to the police after he'd been brought a new 'recruit' to break in," Madge explained. "A twelve year old girl."
Odair, despite what he'd been through, still had a conscience. He'd been horrified at what he was being asked to do, and helped the girl escape before going to the police and divulging every dirty detail he knew. Not that it saved her.
That same twelve year old, who'd only been trying to help her family pay off their debts to one of Snow's low level lackeys, had been Madge's first case.
"People aren't property," Gale remembers Annie saying during the trial, "and anyone that treats them like they are deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
Snow had been too slippery, slithering his way out of being implicated in the twisted dealings of his human trade by having too many people afraid to cross him and point fingers, but Annie had gone after every other name on the list of clients she could find. There are fewer open cells in the penitentiary because of her.
Madge and Annie had met at that time, traded notes on Snow, and eventually come to share a mutual desire to see him burn for all the lives he's ruined.
Odair hadn't been able to implicate Snow directly, but he did name names, and that put cracks in the infrastructure of his world. The fewer wealthy people of power he had in his pocket, the more vulnerable he became. Despite the girl's death, Odair's willingness to speak up had led to the downfall of at least a fraction of Snow's empire, and it should have cost him his life.
The only reason Odair is still alive, that Gale can figure out anyways, is that Snow sees a use for him in the future, a sentiment Madge agrees with.
"I've told Annie, and she's managed to get plainclothes officers on him while he's down at the shelter helping out," Madge told him, her expression still deeply worried. "If anything every happens to him, Snow won't get a trial if Annie has anything to say about it."
If the hardened look on Annie's face as she watches the door to the lineup is any indication, Gale thinks Madge has her friend's bloodthirstiness pegged pretty well.
The door finally opens and the witness, a red-headed woman with a sly face, is escorted out by Thresh.
Gale feels a cool hand wrap around his, and when he looks over, he finds Madge, grim faced and silent, waiting for any signal that the witness has given a positive ID.
Thresh meets Gale's eyes as he places his hand on the red-head's shoulder, guiding her out, and gives him the smallest smile.
They got her.
Madge doesn't see Thresh's signal though, she's too preoccupied with staring at the door, waiting for Paylor to come out.
Carefully, he untwines his hand from hers and wraps it around her shoulder, pulling her to him.
"She picked our girl," he whispers.
He presses a kiss into her hair and takes a deep breath as he feels the tension melt out of her bones.
The woman that had shot Abernathy is off the streets. It's nothing short of a miracle.
Annie's lips curl up and she nods.
"I knew she'd do it." Annie gives Madge and Gale a grin. "If we could just connect her to Snow it would be perfect."
Gale nods. "Yeah, but I'll take what I can get for the moment."
And if all he can get is the woman that shot Madge's mentor behind bars, he'll be happy.
Paylor comes out of the room, a triumphant expression on her face.
She crosses over to them and Madge starts to pull back, but Gale keeps her anchored to him. Paylor or no Paylor, he isn't letting her go when she's just had to go through such an emotionally exhausting day.
"Why don't you take the afternoon off," she tells him. "Take Madge and get something other than take out to eat."
"Oh," Madge shakes her head, "Chief, I'm going with Annie to work on-"
"You're going to eat," Annie cuts her off. "I'm meeting with Finnick for lunch. We've earned a break, even just for an afternoon."
Despite barely knowing her, Gale finds himself liking Annie. She has her priorities straight.
Madge finally wiggles away, chewing her lip. "Annie, don't you think-"
"I think a lot, and what I think is we should take an afternoon to ourselves." She closes her eyes. "If there's one thing Haymitch's shooting has taught me, it's that we need to remember we aren't guaranteed a tomorrow. Work can wait for the morning."
She crosses her arms and raises her chin a fraction, daring Madge to argue, but none comes. All she manages is a weak smile.
"Fine," she finally says. "Tomorrow we get to work though."
A bright smile ticks at the edges of Annie's lips. "Sounds good."
After half an hour of finishing up a small amount of paperwork, and letting Katniss know he's taking off for the day, Gale leaves the station with Madge's hand firmly locked in his and wary eyes on every face they passed.
They end up at the grimy little cafe a few blocks away, sitting across from each other in a booth, the broken plastic of the seats cutting into their legs.
It probably isn't what Paylor had in mind, but the food isn't being eaten out of Styrofoam containers and they aren't using plastic silverware, so it's a definite improvement.
The burgers are greasy and the music playing in the background is whining, but they're out in public, not hiding away in Gale's apartment or hold up in her office. It's a small moment of normalcy and he'll take it.
Madge picks at her food, another trait she's acquired since the shooting.
"I'm just not hungry," she's told him time after time.
"I heard your stomach from across the room," he'd grumbled, more than a few times before shoving something microwaved and greasy at her. "Just eat your damn burrito."
His mother would be appalled at the amount of precooked meals he's ingested since the shooting, but he can't worry about that. There just isn't time for making real food.
He can already hear her reply to that.
"Well then you should come home a little more often and eat with your family."
He's actually considered taking Madge over to his mother's for a real family meal several times, but stops himself. Not only does he want to explain that he's suddenly living with a girl that only a few months ago he was complaining to her about, but he isn't sure Madge is up to the level of grilling his mother is likely to subject her to.
No cop alive has the interrogation skills his mother has, Gale is certain of it.
Besides, his brothers would be there too, and Madge has suffered enough already.
Picking up a one of his fries, Gale dips it in the ketchup and holds it out to Madge. "Stop playing with your food and eat. You're wasting my hard earned cash here."
A little smile twitches on her lips, breaking her somber expression a little.
"Yes, dad."
Gale leans in, across the table. "Save that for the bedroom."
Madge snorts into her fries. "Ew."
He shrugs, sitting back and popping the fry into his mouth.
It was a bit crude, but it got her to laugh, and that's not an easy accomplishment these days.
For a minute it's almost like they're on a real date, flirting and acting like normal people instead of a detective and an ADA tied down by one of the most elaborate and volatile cases in the past seventy-five years.
But they aren't. They haven't even officially been on a real date. She's living with him, even if just temporarily, and they haven't even been out to the movies together, haven't gone to a fancy restaurant, haven't even discussed what their relationship is yet.
They're doing everything backwards, but that doesn't seem to matter. Gale feels closer to her than he has any girl he's taken the traditional route of dating with, so maybe they were always meant to be a little unconventional.
Just as quickly as it had come, the laughter dies from Madge's lips and she's back to poking at her food.
"Do you think we'll be able to connect her to Snow?"
Gale shrugs. "Hopefully."
Madge nods, sinking back into her seat. "Hopefully." She rubs her hand over her face, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose. "What if we don't though?"
He doesn't answer, just lets the chatter of the cook and the waitress tossing around short orders and the sound of the grill sizzling fill the silence.
She already knows what happens if they don't connect Crystalle Otto to Snow.
Abernathy wasn't killed this time, and they even caught the shooter, but next time Snow might not be so sloppy, next time Abernathy might not walk away.
There's a little hope in the whole mess though.
This attempt was an aberration, a crack in Snow's otherwise flawless veneer. He's letting his emotions get the better of him and he's making mistakes. His network of killers and flunkies is drying up as his empire crumbles around him.
They're winning, and Snow knows it. That makes him dangerous, but it also makes him stupid.
"He's making mistakes, Madge," Gale reassures her, reaching across and stilling her hands as they shred a paper napkin. "Even if we can't connect Otto to him, he's making mistakes and he's going to make more."
They have him against the ropes and that's what they need to remember.
Another small smile flicks up at the edges of Madge's mouth. "Thanks."
Gale frowns. "For what?"
She turns her hand over and gives his a squeeze. "For cheering me up."
He huffs, smiling a little. "Yeah, I'm a regular ray of sunshine."
Madge snorts again. "You certainly are."
Pushing his almost empty plate away, Gale scoots out of the booth and stretches before offering Madge a hand. "Let's go home."
He's gotten half a real meal down her and Abernathy's shooter is locked away, at least for now. It's been a good day and he can only hope that means they'll have a good night.
Madge winds an arm around his middle and he wraps his around her shoulder and steers her out and to the street.
Maybe they're not a regular couple. They go to trial as instead of movies and eat cheap take out instead of going to a real restaurant, but it works for them. They understand each other better than some couples, so it must be okay.
"Wanna watch a movie?" He asks as they make their way back to the station and his car.
She shrugs against him. "What movie?"
Gale doesn't care. Anything that isn't the news and a rehashing of the shooting, Snow, and all the misery around them, is fine by him.
Before she can even make a suggestion though, a wide yawn finds its way out and she gives him a sheepish smile.
"I don't know if I'll make it through a movie."
Giving her a quick kiss, Gale speeds up.
A celebratory nap, after all the sleeplessness the search for Abernathy's shooter has caused, sounds just fine to him.
"Well, I'm never going to argue against more time in bed with you, even if it's just to sleep."
Madge laughs, and it's music to his ears.