A/N:
We are pretty much at the halfway mark now but a lot has yet to happen! I hope you're all enjoying it so far, even though it's crawling along at a snail's pace, but bear with me.
Now that I actually have some time off work (insert disco dance here), I'm hoping to make some progress on the sequel to this - cross all your fingers and toes for me!
Anyway, thank you for all the reading and reviewing, it is much appreciated!
The Light-Bringer
"And?"
Brenda looked up from her phone and at Fritz who leaned against the kitchen counter with a can of coke in his hand. He hardly ever drank it, he lived on coffee and tap water, usually.
"She has Sergeant Elliott there with her."
Fritz sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. "Can we watch TV now?"
"I just wanna wait, make sure the patrol car turns up." Brenda looked at her phone again. "I'm worried, is all." She had a hard time admitting it, especially to Fritz who felt less than favorably towards her friend. "I have a feelin' the first thing this guy will do, when he finds out we're lookin' for him, is get darned angry."
"And you think he's going to direct his anger at Raydor."
"My gut just tells me so."
Fritz nodded; he could relate to that.
In fact, her gut had not stopped churning all day which was why, when Tao had called to inform her of SID's findings, she had Flynn and Provenza knock on the guys door. She had had them sit there in front of it for the better part of the evening, waiting.
Her phone rang in her hand. It was Sharon. The patrol car must have turned up.
Brenda sighed in relief and answered. "Yes, Sharon?"
"Help me!"
"What happened?" The blonde asked almost automatically and looked at Fritz.
"He's in the house, Crawley's in my house!" Sharon whispered yet her voice sounded loud, urgent.
"Where?"
"I don't know. In the bedroom, I think." Brenda heard a deep breath and then, "I locked myself in the bathroom. Oh, god! I shot him-"
"Sharon, stay there, I'm on my way. Just let me call dispatch-"
"No! Don't hang up. Please." Sharon's voice quieted a little, her labored breathing decreasing.
"Okay," Brenda scratched her eyebrow, trying to calm her wildly beating heart. "Okay. Fritz. I need patrol cars at 3391 Oak Wood Drive South, right now. And an ambulance."
Fritz had his phone out already, dialling.
"Sharon, listen. We'll have patrol cars with you in..?" Fritz held up four fingers. "Four minutes."
"Okay," the brunette whispered.
"Do you have your gun?"
"Yes."
Brenda grabbed her purse and keys. "Just...just put it in the bathtub." Just in case, the blonde thought.
"It's in there. It's in the tub." Sharon took a deep breath, as if disposing of the gun had somehow calmed her nerves. "It wasn't Sergeant Elliott."
Brenda didn't know what to say to that, the mere mental image too disturbing to her. She got in her car and she drove with lights flashing, listening to Sharon breathing calmly on the other end.
"They're here," the brunette said, sirens in the background. "They're breaking down the door."
"Okay," Brenda said, somewhat relieved. "I'll be there in just a minute."
Sharon hung up without another word.
Brenda counted at least eight black and whites and two unmarked cars littering the street right in front of Sharon's house.
She drove up as close as possible then came to a jarring halt and threw her car door open. Try as she might, Brenda couldn't recover a single shred of composure and it must have shown because, before her, a sea of people parted.
"...my glasses. Please."
It was Sharon's voice, loud and clear, measured as per usual. Brenda's lips quivered as she fought the tears in her eyes tooth and nail. Then she saw Sharon, blurred through stinging tears, sitting on the back of an ambulance, an EMT tending to a cut above her left eye.
"I can't see without them," the brunette said to an older patrol officer.
"For heaven's sakes," Brenda ripped into him before she even got there. "Get the glasses, now!"
"Ma'am, this is a crime scene."
"My scene," the blonde hissed and pulled out her badge. "Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, Major Crimes. Now. Get the glasses."
She was furious, and she wanted to be sick with relief, she wanted to empty her tummy of all the worry. Her body shook as the officer waltzed away, she wasn't sure whether it was anger or shock, or maybe both, but Brenda had a hard time getting a hold of herself.
"This was a brutal assault on a fellow officer! A Captain of the LAPD, for heaven's sakes!And I want y'all to treat it that way. Is that clear?"
Around them it had gotten silent after Brenda's outburst then everyone sprang into motion. The blonde watched, breathless, dimly aware that losing her temper in front of all these people wasn't perhaps entirely appropriate.
"Brenda?" Sharon had wrapped her delicate fingers around her wrist. "Chief Johnson?"
The blonde felt like crying, she really wanted to throw herself at the woman and just cry for an eternity but she had a job to do, didn't she, and that had to come first.
"I'm okay, Brenda. I'm okay."
The blonde took stock; she saw it all, the cut above the eye, a bruise forming around it, the angry red mark around Sharon's neck, the torn blouse. Blood on her chest. Her skirt askew. Her knees, bruised. Her bare feet.
"Did he..?"
Sharon looked at her with wide eyes then shook her head. "No."
Brenda wanted to say something, anything, but her mouth just wouldn't form the words. Instead she took off her favorite cardigan and wrapped it around Sharon's shoulders.
Then the officer arrived with the glasses, handing them over with a blank face.
"Thank you," Sharon said, ever polite. "Thank you very much." She grinned at Brenda, as if they were sharing a secret and slipped the glasses onto her face. "That's better."
Sergeant Elliott chose that moment to arrive, his frantic eyes searching Brenda's when he spotted them. "What happened? Captain, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Sergeant, thank you."
"Crawley broke into the house," Brenda said.
"I heard the APB and thought I'd better get here and then..." He shook his head and wiped his face. "Oh, man..."
"Sergeant, I need you to pull yourself together now," Brenda said gently but not leaving any room for discussion. "Call Lieutenant Provenza and have him get the squad down here ASAP. Then call Chief Pope and apprise him of the situation."
"Yes, Chief."
"And then I need you to take Cap'n Raydor to a hotel-"
"I have to give my statement. And I discharged my firearm which immediately triggers-"
"Sharon," Brenda interrupted then took a mighty breath and decided to do things Sharon's way, just to placate her. "Fine. Get her lawyer down here. Provenza can take the statement."
Sharon rolled her eyes - the simple act made Brenda feel tons better; she was already annoying the brunette, thank goodness.
"Oh, and get me Taylor down here." She looked around at the chaos. "I need someone delegatin' this circus."
"Got it, ma'am," Elliott nodded and gave her a smile - grateful, it seemed.
"Thank you, Sergeant. Cap'n Raydor."
With that she began the difficult task of getting everyone the hell out of the house.
"Buzz," Provenza grumped. "What took you so long?"
"Sorry, Lieutenant," Buzz huffed. "Traffic."
Brenda nodded as they approached. She wanted to get this interview done as quickly as possible and then have Sharon brought to a hotel. True to his word, Elliott had arranged for Sharon's lawyer to come down even though the brunette insisted she didn't need one.
Her lawyer, as it turned out, was an old friend.
"Gavin, I really wish you'd just go. I'm fine. I don't need a lawyer."
He shook his head and pushed a strand of sandy blond hair aside. "I'm not going anywhere, doll."
"And, please, don't call me that."
Brenda just snorted.
"You're both insufferable," Sharon said evenly, then trained her eyes firmly onto Provenza and Buzz. "Can we get started now? I want to get this over with. Oh, uh, and Sergeant, could you, maybe, uh, call the rest of the squad and let them know that I'm fine. Please."
Elliott blinked at the unexpected dismissal but obliged. As he walked away, his phone going up to his ear, Sharon cleared her throat.
"I'm sure you understand that I'd like the details of this incident to be kept under wraps, Chief Johnson."
"Of course," Brenda said immediately and looked pointedly at Provenza. He nodded solemnly, his features hard and angry.
"Let's get started then," Brenda said and gave Buzz a nod to start filming.
"Okay, go."
"Brenda Leigh Johnson, Major Crimes. I'm here with Lieutenant Provenza and Gavin Baker, interviewing Captain Sharon Raydor. Captain, can you, please, give us a detailed account of what happened here tonight?"
She wasn't going to ask questions - she knew the answers but rather didn't like them. A part of Brenda wished she could just surrender control and hand the whole thing over to Taylor because deep down she knew she wouldn't catch a wink of sleep for at least the next two months.
"As I said, I was expecting Sergeant Elliott. He was supposed to deliver his finished report so that I could take it to the Commissioner straight away in the morning. So. As I opened the door...and I should've checked, but I didn't..."
Sharon trailed off, her eyes dull as she turned introspective - a look Brenda had seen much too often.
"Cap'n Raydor?"
"Right." Sharon shook her head, wrapping Brenda's cardigan tighter around herself. "I started opening the door, until I realized it wasn't Sergeant Elliott but he forced it open which is how I received this cut."
"Buzz..." Brenda wanted every little nick, every bruise documented.
"I realized it was Crawley. We struggled in the hallway and I managed to hit him with a picture frame. I ran into my bedroom because that's where my gun was. In my drawer. He followed me and tried to force me onto the bed."
The blonde bit down on her lip - if he weren't dead already, she sure as hell would kill him herself.
"We struggled and he managed to push me down, on the floor next to the bed. He started...choking me," Sharon's hand went to her neck. "But I kicked him. As hard as I could and got hold of my gun. And then I shot him."
"Thank you, Captain." Brenda put on a steely expression to hide how upset she actually was. "Now, Buzz, could you get a good shot of the perimeter, please?" Or Sharon's house, rather.
"Yes, Chief."
As he left, followed by Provenza, she turned back to the brunette, sparing the lawyer a glance and reached for her hand. Her fingers felt cold, yet her palm was clammy. "Sharon, I-I just-"
"I know." Sharon patted her hand. "But I'm fine now."
Brenda nodded and let her feelings show, unafraid, even in front of this stranger. "Can you give her a ride to the hotel?"
"Of course," Gavin said, a hand on Sharon's shoulder.
With that Brenda turned to the house and the mammoth task at hand. SID had arrived and she was glad to see Tao dealing with them - he had good friends there.
"Buzz!"
They entered together and he filmed the door that had been ripped off its hinges. "The responding officers broke the door down to gain entry to the house," she said to the camera. "Get the picture frame right there, Buzz. It has blood on it."
He zoomed in. The golden, antique picture frame laid broken on the floor. The glass had shattered and blood marred a corner of the painted wood.
"Get all of this as well. Signs of a struggle." The pictures that had always hung on the wall left to the door were mostly askew. Some had fallen. Beneath their shoes, shards of glass crunched. "And this, please."
The little three-legged table upon which Brenda had put the pie just yesterday had been knocked over sideways, the legs not lending much support. The remaining mail was strewn across the wooden floor boards and several letters had been splattered with small droplets of blood, red and angry against the stark white paper.
"Ma'am?" Sanchez appeared in the doorway, hands gloved up. "The coroner's here."
"Thank you, Detective. Send him in but don't let him move the body yet."
"Yes, Chief." He waved at Kendall who then ascended the steps to the front door and brushed past them.
The mood was certainly solemn and subdued. Unusually so, as if a black cloud was hanging above the house.
"Okay. Buzz, let's move down the hall." They walked further into the house, a house Brenda was fairly familiar with. Short of the bedroom, a vase had fallen off a dresser and shattered. It had been a nice piece of pottery, some designer, Brenda was sure as she remembered it standing there with a bunch of white roses in it.
The water had spilled all over the floor, across the floor boards and the flowers strewn everywhere. Sharon must have knocked it off when she had dashed into the bedroom. "Lieutenant Flynn."
"Yes, Chief."
"Get somebody to mop this up when we're done, okay?"
"Of course."
Sharon would thank her for it - or at least the floor boards would.
In the bedroom Kendall knelt next to the body. Gabriel and Provenza stood over him, arms crossed. Crawley was on his back, still clutching his stomach. His white t-shirt was completely blood soaked, his blue eyes were wide open but starting to dull. He wore black jeans and a leather jacket.
Beneath him the blood had soaked into Sharon's cream colored rug and spread across most of its entirety.
Brenda still remembered how it had felt beneath her bare feet, how her toes had dug into it, how soft it had been.
The sheets on the bed were ruffled, the lamp on the left bedside cabinet thrown over, still alight and dangling by its power cord. The bottom drawer was open, nearly ripped out, where Sharon had kept her gun, and its contents partially spread on the floor around it.
"Looks like a through and through," Kendall said.
"Yeah," Gabriel crossed the room and pointed at a mark above the door frame. "Looks like it ended up in here."
The angle was odd but corroborated Sharon's version of events - she must have been on the ground when she shot him.
"Chief?" Tao leaned into the room. "We've got the gun in here, if you want to get that on tape before SID collects it."
"Okay. Buzz?"
"Coming, Chief."
They left the bedroom and went straight across into the bathroom. Sharon's Beretta was in the tub where Brenda had told her to put it.
"We haven't found the shell casing yet," Tao said.
"Might be on the bed...or under."
Tao picked up the gun with his gloved hands and ejected the magazine. "Sixteen and one in the chamber," he said and reassembled it. "There's her cell phone, too." Also in the tub.
"Okay. Thank you, Lieutenant."
"Chief?" Sanchez appeared again. "We found his van a couple blocks down the road."
Brenda nodded and took a deep breath. "Take Lieutenant Provenza with you. And Buzz, please."
It was nearly two hours later when Buzz had returned Downtown with the crime scene footage. Tao had gone with SID who had vowed that all this was first in line - a call from the Pope had helped, of course.
Provenza and SID had cleared out the van of notebooks, newspaper clippings, pictures and, most disturbing of all, pieces of random trash that, more than likely, belonged to Sharon.
An empty bottle of expensive French wine. A bag from the bakery down the road. A wrapper for dark Ecuadorian chocolate.
Brenda vowed she wouldn't tell Sharon any of this.
"Know thy enemy," Provenza had grumped and stalked off down the road, hands on his hips.
Brenda had just looked at Julio. "He's upset, ma'am."
"Upset?" Provenza didn't do 'upset'.
"You told him to look into Crawley the other day but..." He had looked around the van and shrugged.
But then this happened. "Oh. Well, the Lieutenant wasn't to know."
The blonde had left them to it, angrily marching up the street, pulling her gloves off. She had found her car exactly where she had left it with the door still wide open and had gotten in.
That's where she sat, hands on the steering wheel, staring at the crime scene tape. Brenda burst into tears, forehead pressed against the wheel. It was relief this time and all sorts of feelings she didn't know what to do with.
Anger. Mostly directed at Crawley but a little bit at herself, too. Shame for having failed. Shame for crying hysterically in her car over a woman she had always thought she felt not an iota more for. Fear, even though Sharon was fine - or maybe not fine, just alive.
Terror.
But most of all, sorrow.
There was a knock on her passenger window. Brenda's eyes shot up and she immediately wiped her cheeks as the door opened and Mikki Mendoza got in.
"Are you okay, ma'am?"
Brenda nodded empathetically. "Yes. Yes, Detective." The tears stopped the more she wiped them away, sobless and silent. "What are you doin' here?"
"Oh," Mikki looked away, her dark curls falling here, there and everywhere. "I was just wonderin' if there was anything I can do to help?"
Brenda sniffled, embarrassed by the state she was in. "Oh."
"Ma'am?"
"Yes, Detective?"
Mikki looked at her, eyebrows drawn together in a frown as the blonde pulled out a tissue. "Are you sure..." She trailed off, her hand hovering just above Brenda's arm then the Detective pulled away.
"Um, I think Sharon might appreciate if you saw about gettin' her door replaced..."
Mikki smiled widely and nodded. "What an excellent idea, Chief."
Brenda nodded, smiling back.
"You take care now, Chief."
"You, too, Detective."