Chapter 6:

You've Never Heard Me

"Who are you again?" the gruff older cop asked.

She rolled her eyes on the inside. "Maura McBrayer," she said again.

He pursed his lips and looked at his partner. The other man shrugged. "I've never heard of you," he told her.

Maura rolled her eyes. "Well, now I'm crushed. Since you haven't heard of me then I've surely never written anything worthwhile. I should just hang up my press credentials and go home."

Sanchez sat on the corner of his desk. "You're a writer?" he accused.

She nodded. "Sun," she said by way of explanation.

"We're sick of writers right now," Flynn told her.

"I know. I read the piece. I hate Ramos. I'd like to take a stab at the real story and maybe take him down a notch or two."

"So you're not writing real pieces now?" Gregory asked. "What do you do?"

"Public interest," Maura told him.

Daniels leaned forward. "Fill-ins? Traffic? Weather?"

"Lifestyle sections?" Sgt. Gregory suggested.

"What the Hell?" Maura corrected.

Tao smiled. "Yeah, right."

She met his smile with a smirk of her own. "Ready to talk now?"

Tao nodded. "I've read it. It's good. I don't always agree, but it's good."

She rocked her head back and forth. "Sometimes it's over the top. But it's meant to get people thinking for themselves, not accepting half truths because they're the status quo. I think it amuses as often as it offends and I think it only offends those with a guilty conscience. So I sleep well at night."

"And you want to do us next?"

She shook her head. "I want to do shabby reporting practices in the next What the Hell?, not you guys. You I want to do for the cover."

Brenda snorted. "You aim high."

Maura nodded. "I do."

Surprisingly, Provenza wasn't the most resistant to the reporter's efforts. That crown went to the newest member of their team.

"Why does she bother you so?" Sanchez asked her quietly one afternoon when they slipped away to enjoy a quiet lunch together. Things were slow. Or maybe not slow, but there was none of the frenzied urgency that television portrays on law dramas. It was the more routine, the mundane, that occupied them that day.

Tanner shrugged. "I don't know, Michael. I have a hard time opening up sometimes."

He let out a long breath and turned, stretching his arms out across the back of the bench to enjoy the sunshine.

"I think large families can be very, very similar," he began. "And yet, they can be very, very different, too."

Tanner dropped her sandwich wrapper into the bag between their feet, then finished her bottled water. This, too, she crushed to be disposed of when they rose. She still didn't respond to what she thought was his obvious change of the subject. He found her unresisting when his hand came down on her shoulder. With pleasure she let him guide her closer and snuggled in to lean against his chest with his warm, steady arm around her back to keep her safe.

"In our family," he continued, "there is always someone there - - always someone to be your best friend or your confidant, always someone to take up for you. Of course, there's always someone to team up against you as well," he laughed.

"I get that," she told him. "There were more of us than there were of you guys."

Sanchez watched the shades of red and gold and mahogany that the sun picked out in her hair blow in the slight breeze.

"I think, though, that somehow girls are different. I think, even with all your parents money, with all the attention that your mother gave you girls in staying home rather than working, that you grew up lacking-"

"We didn't lack for any affection, sweet pea," Tanner smiled. She gently shook her head. It was like lunch with Sally-Jesse Raphael.

"I think that you each lacked privacy. As a group and individually. Always there is someone watching you, judging you. The older girls had to watch out for - - had to be mother to - - the younger girls. The younger girls had to guard their indiscretions against not only your mother but you older ones, too. What your parents didn't catch the protocol officers would have had to have brought to their attention. In some places so large a family as yours becomes a spectacle in itself. Especially one with a prominent father and only girls. Hmm?"

"Hmmm," she echoed flatly.

"Who did you tell your secrets to?"

"I have no secrets to tell, Michael. I am an open book."

Sanchez let his head fall back as he laughed.

Tanner reconsidered. "Okay. I got good at keeping to myself."

He nodded and then bent to press a quick kiss to the crown of her head. "So good, in fact, that it became very difficult for you to open up and talk about yourself?" he suggested. "So private, in fact, so routine did your self-containment become, that you do it still? Or is it that there were so many voices, and yours became hard to hear? So you gave up and stopped screaming?"

She shrugged. "You always hear me. Always heard me."

"I love you, Tanner, with all my heart," he whispered.

"I love you, too," she whispered back, her arms tightening around his middle. "You make it easier for me to be me."

He smiled, although it was a bittersweet emotion in his heart.

She made it easy to love her. Keeping her safe from her own harsh self-judgment was another challenge.