Northern Re-Exposure

by jacik

Charlie has a lot of misconceptions about Don's past. Some of them were due to deliberate misdirection on Don's part.

2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Landscape and Portrait

N.B.:

There's an homage to a lovely little story called "Merry Christmas, Dr. Fleishman" by Isis in this chapter.

I just watched NE Season 5 and it's making continuing this story a bit harder… forgive me for going slightly AU. For one thing, we will have to ignore the fact that Joel's parents visited Cicely in Season 5.

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Charlie stepped off of the coach behind his brother and breathed the cool Alaskan air in. "This is Cicely?"

"This is Cicely," Don agreed, noting the combination of appreciation and wonder in his little brother's tone. Don pointed to the cluster of buildings ahead of them. "Come on, I'll show you around."

"Okay." Charlie hurried after Don, whose long, sure strides bespoke familiarity with his environment. Charlie quickly counted up the buildings that appeared to make up the town's main settlement; only ten, and Don-worldly, urban Don-had survived here for almost six years?!

Don stopped in the single main street that cut through them and pointed. "That's the store-also the post office, last I checked-there's the library, radio station-yes, there is one-Holling's house; Holling's bar; the clinic, and O'Connell's house-that's where we're staying. But we should go to Holling's bar first."

"Why?" Charlie asked.

"Because it's the easiest place to find people," Don replied. "I want to show you off. Come on."

"Okay…" Charlie was beginning to feel about like he had in the third grade: Don's tag-along little brother; good for show-and-tell, but the usefulness wore thin quickly.

The Brick was surprisingly full and in fact did seem to be a thriving restaurant. Don sidled up to the counter, hands in pockets, and Charlie followed behind. "Hi, Holling," Don said to the man behind the bar. "Seen O'Connell?"

"Uh huh," the man said, nodding, while wiping a glass with a dishrag. "Pretty sure she said she was going over to Doctor Billings' to help Ruth-Anne get home. Her arthritis is something awful these days."

"Oh?" Don said, politely. "Holling, you should meet my brother, Charlie. Charlie, this is Holling Vincoeur. He and his wife Shelley run the best restaurant in town. Holling, Charlie Eppes."

Holling reached out a hand. "Still the only restaurant in town, Joel," he added, then turned to Charlie. "How do you do?"

Charlie shook the hand. "Fine, thank you, Mr. Vincoeur."

"Please, it's Holling," the man grinned. "We're all pretty laid back around here."

"Sure thing, Holling."

"Right," Don said. "Listen. We'll just go see if we can't catch O'Connell. You tell Shelley I said 'hi'."

"Okay, sure." Holling waved them out.

"That takes care of that," Don said as the door jingled shut behind them.

"Takes care of what?" Charlie asked.

"Holling will tell Shelley about you, and the whole town will know who you are by tomorrow afternoon. Come on. I gotta find O'Connell."

"Who's O'Connell?" Charlie asked, following his brother's brisk pace once more. For some reason Don didn't bother to answer, but he stopped outside the little town clinic and ran his finger across the hand-written letters on the window. "They've gone through about three physicians since I was here," he commented with a shake of his head.

Charlie still couldn't believe that the window, which now read 'Patrick Billings, MD', had once read his brother's name, even if that name had been 'Joel Fleischman'. It was hard to picture.

Inside, Don seemed instantly ill at ease. Was it due to some odd mixture of familiarity and change? Or maybe, a feeling that he didn't belong here anymore? Charlie watched his brother cast a sharp eye around the place. A heavy-set Native American woman looked up from behind the front desk. "Twenty minute wait," she announced with preternatural calm, ignoring the stares of the other five patients-in-waiting who, Charlie thought, were probably wondering if they would all be seen somewhere in those twenty minutes.

"That's okay, Marilyn," Don said, running his fingers through his hair. "I'm just looking for Maggie. Have you seen her?"

The woman nodded.

"Where is she?"

"Out back."

"Okay. Thank you, Marilyn." Don gave the taciturn woman's arm a pat and turned.

"Your brother Charlie is very handsome," she called after them.

Charlie watched Don turn beet-red. "Uh, sorry. Charlie, this is Marilyn. Marilyn, you obviously already know this is Charlie."

"Ed told me," she murmured.

"Hi," Charlie said weakly, hoping she wasn't going to pat his curls.

"Sorry, we have to run," Don said, steering Charlie out of the danger zone. "We need to find O'Connell."

"'Bye, Joel."

Don led Charlie out the door and around the building. "How did she know," Charlie started.

"News travels fast," Don said, by way of non-explanation. "Oh, good. There's O'Connell."

The object of Don's search was buried up to her elbows in the engine bay of a large, green pick-up truck. She lifted her head when he called out her name. "Hey, O'Connell!"

"Hey, Fleischman," she retorted, reaching for a rag to wipe her hands off with. "I see you brought Charlie with you."

A look of mystified confusion crossed Don's face. "How did…"

"Ruth-Anne told me."

"Just before she told Ed. Right." Don cleared his throat. "Well, anyway, introductions may be superfluous on one side, but Charlie, this is Maggie O'Connell. We're staying at her place. O'Connell, this is my brother, Charlie Eppes."

Maggie shook Charlie's outstretched hand warmly. "Oh," she said to Don, an odd spark in her eye. "This explains the name," she said with a knowing smirk. "I'll bet you guys will be wanting to share a room, won't you? Which is good, because I only have the one spare bedroom. Just don't let Maurice catch on. You know how he is about that sort of thing…"

"One bedroom or two, it really doesn't matter, O'Connell," Don cut her off before Charlie got any more bewildered. "We're just here to work on the case."

"Sure, Fleischman," O'Connell said. "Well, you've still got my spare key, and you can help yourself to whatever blankets and pillows you need. I've got to make a run to Anchorage tonight, and won't be back until late, assuming this truck gets me out to the airfield and back."

"Need a lift?" Don asked, left eyebrow quirking upwards.

Maggie O'Connell shook her head. "Nope. Just a few more minutes of elbow grease here. I think the carburetor is trying to die, but I refuse to let it. Ruth-Anne should be done with her appointment soon, and I promised to run her home."

"Okay," Don said, turning to go. "Call me if you get stuck somewhere, including tonight. Even if it's late. I usually hear my phone ring."

Charlie nodded, knowing Don was right; he had to, for his job. He could be called out any time of day or night, when he was on duty. Maggie simply smiled and re-buried herself in her engine.

"What was that about?" Charlie queried, as they once more found themselves striding down Main Street in the afternoon sun.

"What was what about?" Don responded.

Charlie threw a side-glance at his brother to see if he was teasing him with his implied innocence of the question; but no-rather, Don was oddly impassive.

"You know," Charlie replied. "The whole 'one bedroom or two' thing. Does Maggie think you're…"

"O'Connell always jumps to conclusions," Don said firmly. "It's in her nature, I think."

"Oh." Charlie raised an eyebrow and waited, but Don didn't elaborate, and Charlie went on. "Another thing… why do you always call each other by your last names?"

Don smiled. "I dunno, Charlie. We just always do. Look," he added, "this is O'Connell's place. We're staying in the basement apartment."

"The one-bedroom basement apartment," Charlie added, with a smirk.

"Yeah. Don't worry, I was already planning to stake out the couch."

He let them in the front door, leading Charlie through a neat, no-nonsense living room, inhabited by comfortable furniture and throw rugs, to a hallway closet. "Here," Don said, shoving a tall stack of quilts at Charlie. "It gets really cold at night."

Charlie's eyebrows went up. "Don, if you could carry some of these…? I've got this suitcase…"

"Sorry, buddy." Don was dragging out his own stack of sheets, blankets and pillows. "I gotta make the couch up." He led the way back through the house, then outside and around to the little basement stoop which led down into the downstairs one-bedroom.

As Don had said, there was a green pull-out sofa, with a coffee table; a kitchenette, complete with microwave, and the queen-size bed and dresser in the otherwise unfurnished bedroom, with a tiny bathroom attached. Charlie set the blankets on the bed and came back out to watch his brother deal with the couch. "I'm pretty sure that's a hideaway," he said, watching Don carefully tuck a sheet in around the the cushions.

"It is," Don agreed, "but if you knew how old the springs were you'd know why I'm not sleeping on it like that."

Charlie watched Don finish spreading out the blankets. When he was done, he sat down heavily into the made-up sofa. "C'mere, let me show you the files," he said, laying the contents of a couple of folders out on the glass coffee table.

"Okay." Charlie sat down next to him and peered at them.

"This guy," Don said, stabbing a finger at a glossy mugshot of a young-looking Italian in jeans and wife-beater, who was trying very hard to look disinterested, "is the guy we're after. This here's his father."

"Uh huh." Charlie picked up both photos for a moment. The other picture was a newspaper clipping labelled 'Giancarlo Vincetti Receives Mayor's Award for Business". The person in question, despite being heavier-set, did bear a striking resemblance to the kid in the mugshot.

"Giancarlo Vincetti, Junior." Don answered the unasked question. "Although when I knew him, everyone called him The Pup. Fairly derogatory, and probably part of the reason he was trying so hard to prove himself in his father's organization."

Charlie was flipping through the stack of papers in the file that went with drug deals, extortion cases, kidnappings, and a number of cases where people simply disappeared. "Don, this stuff is all ten years old or greater. I'm gonna need a lot fresher data if I'm going to do any sort of predictive analysis…"

"I gotcha, buddy." The older Eppes dropped an additional file on the stack. "It's thin, but it's everything we have on Vincetti's movements so far."

"Okay," Charlie said, reaching for it. "Between this guy's most current actions and his past habits I may be able to put together something."

"Okay, Charlie," Don said, "that's good."

"So this guy," Charlie continued, still thumbing through the thin folio. "He wanted to, you know, kill you, years ago, in Albuquerque?"

"Nah," Don said. "Not then. His dad did, though. My F.B.I. testimony put Vincetti, Jr. in prison for life. Vincetti, Sr. had the hit out on me for doing that."

Charlie's eyebrows were all the way up. "Then what happened?"

"Well, I holed up here, like I told you."

"Witness Protection."

"Until they finally put Senior in prison for racketeering. His organization pretty much fell apart, and he died in prison a couple years ago."

"Vincetti, Jr. blames you for that," Charlie said.

"Yeah, I guess so."

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Six hours and a large stack of area maps later, Charlie laid down his pen, shut his laptop and stretched. Don stepped out of the kitchenette where he'd been microwaving two bowls of ready-to-eat Chinese noodles, and eyed his younger brother. "Hey, buddy," he said. "Dinner is served."

"Good," Charlie said. "I'm starved. My brain has completely burned through those pancakes, I think."

Don suppressed a grin. Charlie had been so deep in his work that he'd waited to interrupt him until his own stomach had become insistent. He set the bowls down, careful not to slosh them on his brother's scribblings, and sat down next to him. Don picked up the map on the top of the pile, which showed Alaska east of Anchorage. There was a series of dashed lines and circles on it, which he traced with one finger, studying it. "Your best guess, huh?"

Charlie nodded. "Not exactly a guess. I based it on the bus route data and my analysis of Vincetti, Jr.'s evasion tactics when you chased him down the first time. The unknown variable is how much he was able to glean about your own movements six years ago. But we have to assume that somehow he found out you were in Cicely, so that narrows his target area considerably. I believe he'll make his base somewhere near here." He indicated a rural highway stretch with a large number of little-used logging roads. "It's close to a town, but hard to search by air, and within striking distance of Cicely. He's probably going to try to reconnoiter this town without being noticed by local law enforcement."

"Okay," Don said. "Thanks, Charlie. This really helps narrow things." He picked up the noodle bowl and stirred it. "Now that I have an area to cover, I can call in reinforcements for a manhunt."

Charlie raised his eyebrows but said nothing, attacking his own bowl of food. Now that he had finished his analysis, there was time to think about its implications. Somewhere not too far off was a man who wanted Don dead. A hunter, just as much as one who was being hunted. He suddenly very much wished they were both on a plane back to L.A.

There was a knock on the door to outside. Don rose and checked the peephole, then opened it. "Hey, O'Connell," he said with a grin. "You're back early."

"My fare back from Anchorage cancelled," she said, moving inside. She set a couple of brown paper bags on the kitchenette peninsula. "So while I was down there I shopped."

"Oh, hey. Thanks," Don said, reaching in the bags. "You didn't have to." He pulled out a box of dry mix. "Latkes." He laughed. "You remembered."

"That Christmas?" she said, in a tone that was almost a challenge. "How could I forget? I also brought those little peanut butter cookies you used to like."

He smiled. "Really, O'Connell. I owe you one." He continued emptying the bags into the refrigerator and cupboards. "So I guess the truck held up on you."

"So far, so good," she said. "Well, I guess I'll leave you two to your work," she added, eyeing Charlie and the mound of files on the table. "If you need anything—"

Don nodded. "I'll know where to find you."

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The next morning, Charlie slipped past Don, who was still asleep on the couch, peacefully, one arm slung over the edge so that its fingertips just brushed the floor; and quietly opened the door to the outside steps. The sun was already bright, and Charlie was of a mind to observe what he could of his brother's adopted town in the morning quiet, from the vantage point of the porch. He was surprised to find it already occupied. Maggie O'Connell was seated, hands around her drawn-up knees, staring at the sky, he thought, with its cold white cloud cover. He took a similar position next to her, curious about what she might say. For a moment, she said nothing; then, she spoke without turning her head. "You really are brothers, aren't you."

He chuckled. "Yes." He wondered what had convinced her. She answered his unasked question.

"Joel liked to sit and watch the sky, too. Once he got used to there being so much of it."

Charlie considered. "You knew my brother really well, didn't you?"

"For five years," she said stoutly. "Although, he never told me he had a brother. The only family I ever heard about was his parents and an aunt in Queens. And a girlfriend at Columbia University."

Charlie raised an eyebrow. "He told you about Aunt Irene? Don hates Aunt Irene."

"He made her sound like his only living relative. And he doesn't hate her cooking."

Charlie thought about that. "You may know my brother better than I do," he admitted, thinking about the unknown university girlfriend. "We've really only been close the last couple of years."

She shrugged. "Well, I thought I knew him back then," she said, ruefully. "He kept you a secret, and now he's a law enforcement officer." Her eye-roll seemed to suggest she was more unsettled than the mere words themselves gave reason for, and Charlie wondered.

"Maybe it's none of my business," he asked, watching her, but were you and Don ever…?"

She shook her head quickly. "No, we were never really a couple."

Charlie knew he wasn't as socially astute as many people, but he was pretty sure there was something else behind the words and the shake. Not a couple, but… "Another secret," he murmured.

"Yes," she said, following his train of reasoning. "Joel—or Don—seems to have kept a lot of them." The words were challenging in tone. "He's never talked about me, has he?"

Charlie shook his head. "I think," he said, "Don doesn't talk about things if they're important to him."

Maggie laughed softly. "He talks about everything else."

"Listen," Charlie asked, changing the subject to his other burning question. "Don was practicing medicine here, right?"

"Yup."

"Was he, you know, was he good at it?"

Maggie's laugh was infectious. "Not at first," she said. "Oh, I'm sure he was technically competent, but his bedside manner was appalling. He didn't want to be here, you know, and he sort of took that out on all his patients."

"I'll bet," Charlie said, trying to imagine.

"And he was grumpy all the time for months. Most of us thought he'd never settle in to Cicely."

"But he did," Charlie prompted.

"He did," Maggie said, "and a lot of us were just as surprised when he left suddenly. Cicely is…" she stopped and laughed again, a sparkling laugh that Charlie could imagine swaying his brother's emotions,—not a couple, but—"Cicely is magic. It gets in your blood. When Joel left it was like he'd proven himself in some quest, I guess," she added, "and he had to go back to 'civilization' to apply some lesson from it. But I always figured he'd come back."

Charlie thought about that in companionable silence for a moment. Don had his reasons for staying where he was in L.A., not the least of which was Charlie and their father, Alan, which he'd never shared with her. Before that, Quantico and then Albuquerque. Knowing his brother, it was just as likely he was running from something on his return to 'civilization' as he had been when he left it. "And now he has come back," Charlie said, instead.

Maggie O'Connell nodded. "Cicely hasn't changed, but Joel has, I think."

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Don stepped out on the porch in time to catch the tail end of Maggie's statement. He looked around the street in an instinctive, sharp-eyed safety assessment before announcing his presence to the conversant pair. "Charlie, Maggie, I see you're getting to know each other." He grinned as his little brother startled out of an apparent deep focus and scrambled to his feet.

"Don. I thought you weren't up yet."

"Who could sleep through all that chattering outside?" Don countered in friendly argument, running a hand through hair he knew still proclaimed his recent residence on the couch cushions. "Besides, I'm cooking breakfast. Pancakes. You're welcome to join, O'Connell," he added, reaching a hand to help her up.

She gave him a skeptical look but accepted his help. "And risk my life to your cooking?"

"Hey," Charlie pointed out. "Don's gotten very good at microwaving things lately."

"Hey…"

Charlie fended off his brother's shove. "Don, you know I'm not actually big on pancakes. And I had them yesterday."

"They're good for you," Don said reasonably. "Besides, they're what we have, and you can smother them with syrup like you used to do Mom's. We have a long day to prepare for."

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