It had been a week since Crews got her back from Roman, Dani refused to think of it as "rescued", no matter how many times Tidwell said it.
Right now, Tidwell was going on about again about how happy he was to have her back. Reese was glad to be back – she just wasn't happy to be here. She wanted to be back on the street – back with Crews.
Then Tidwell was staring at her like she was supposed to respond to something he'd just said; something she wasn't listening to and hadn't heard. She felt bad, but simply shrugged and that was sufficient for him to continue.
Dani Reese did not consider herself an introspective person. But weeks of the FBI pressuring her to become an informant against Crews forced her to consider a lot of things. Her relationship with Tidwell, her position with the Department and lastly and most importantly her relationship with her fruitcake enigmatic partner, Charlie Crews.
During that time, she considered her relationship with the rumpled Captain of Detectives. Tidwell was oddly able to circumnavigate her carefully constructed defenses. He wasn't terribly good looking, but he was attractive, confident and usually and surprisingly charming - when he wasn't talking too much. She liked the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled and his self-effacing humor. While he was not her usual "bad boy"; he was bad enough for tats and three ex-wives. His NYC accent was growing on her, like an episode of the Sopranos. Tidwell was nice, safe, supportive and it was beginning to wear on Dani.
She needed to get back to work – back to Crews.
Something the FBI asked her on her polygraph nagged at her conscience...Her reasons for joining LAPD. They were no longer clear to her and very mixed up with her need to earn her father's approval. Jack Reese never had time for his daughter. SWAT Team leader and ranking member of the department, their house was full of cops – parties, barbeques, poker games. He was well known to everyone but her. Alone in their home, he was not the gregarious, tough SWAT guy, but a sadistic man who was impossible to please and who drank too much. Maybe this was why she sought out troubled men.
Lastly, her relationship with Crews. It was based on nothing tangible, nothing tied them together. They were both deeply flawed people. People the system had broken, but both survivors. As she sat hooded in the dank basement of one of Roman's warehouses while people, shuffled and talked around her, she had ample time to examine her fears and hopes. What she discovered was how many of her hopes and fears involved Charlie Crews. She knew with certainty that Crews would find her - or dying trying. She remembered their first case together when he'd asked her "Looks like the dog took a bullet for the kid and then took off the finger of the shooter. Anybody ever love you that much?" The answer then was no. The answer now - well, it confused her. She saw something she didn't want to see, something she wasn't ready to see. She saw her partner, Charlie Crews, the man who had surrendered his life for hers in trade.
At times he he was a complete enigma; capable of unfathomable cheerfulness, tuned into things that other people missed, but then there was his darker side. Charlie Crews also a stone cold killer. The switch in him that triggered the change from a rambunctious ten year old boy in awe of the world at large to cold, focused killer was milliseconds. What provoked that change was something she didn't quite understand, but was immensely thankful for.
Over the past week, snippets of information leaked in through phone calls, the ones to her, about her and the quiet, hushed ones Tidwell tried to have when he thought she wasn't listening. Roman's body was found in a burned out Cadillac Escalade, but the ME determined his death was from asphyxia, a single blow to the throat.
Reese knew Crews delivered that blow – without ever asking – she knew. Crews, who could gain the trust of even the most suspicious, shy and reserved child, had snuffed out Roman's life with sufficient force to crush Roman's windpipe and watched him suffocate. It made her perversely happy to know that Crews killed Roman and she wondered if he did it for her.
She was thinking about the first discussion they would have, when Tidwell stopped coddling her and the Department cleared them both to return to work. She the questions she had tumbled over each other in her mind.
Did he see himself killing Roman before it happened? Did he like it?
Did Roman really kill her father? She knew Crews would help her find out.
What did Crews do to the Corrections Officer in Pelican Bay?
Was it the same lethal blow to the throat?
Probably not, she reasoned. If Crews killed a prison guard, they'd have never released him – even if he didn't murder the Seybolts. Still…she had wondered about it from the first day of their first case together – when they visited Mark Rawls in prison and those guards got in Crews' face, trying to provoke him. After his conduct at the crime scene and that scene at boy's parents house, she expected the worst. Dani replayed the scene in her mind…
"Yeah, we know who you are. Know you did your twelve years. Maybe you were innocent. Maybe not. It don't make no difference to us, because we know what you did to that correction officer in Pelican Bay. That makes you a con. Don't it?" She remembered the guard - angry and hostile, "You gettin' angry, convict?"
Reese could still see the tight smile on his Crews' face. He was restrained, not relaxed, but spoke in a tone that belied the stress he felt. "Anger ruins joy. Steals the goodness of my mind. Forces my mouth to say terrible things. Overcoming anger brings peace of mind. Leads to a mind without regrets. If I overcome anger, I will be delightful and loved by everyone."
The stunned look on the guard's face was priceless. "Are you making fun of us?" continuing his effort to provoke Crews. Calmly, Crews responded "It is the universe that makes fun of us all."
Reese remembered being impressed. Most male officers, even seasoned detectives had a hard time walking away from a direct challenge. All the testosterone coursing through their veins, most guys can't walk away, but Crews did and he did it with style.
Outside she checked to see if he really was as calm, cool and collected as he seemed. "Why would the universe make fun of us all?" she asked. "Maybe it's insecure." He quipped. She remembered distinctly thinking maybe this guy will work out – maybe he's not such a nut roll after all.
Strangely, Dani was neither fearful nor apprehensive about being reunited with her partner. She looked forward to it, like one did coming home after a long trip. She craved their connection. Without him, she felt unfettered and off balance; he was a "known" to her, but he was also an "unknown" – cute, she thought how very Zen, how absolutely Charlie Crews.
Most people would be uneasy knowing someone who sat three feet from them in a unmarked or parked at a desk staring them in the face all day - had just killed a man with his bare hands, Reese wasn't. She smiled - wondering why he hadn't just used that damned knife of his? The one she took from him and then gave back – after she'd realized he could kill with more than a knife.
The knife was just a tool – Crews was the weapon.