Disclaimer: I do not own Crossing Jordan.
Note: Happy New Year! I'm really, really sorry it took me so long to update. At first I had too packed a schedule, then I had a kind of writer's block. Finally, I almost finished the chapter when my laptop ran out of battery (while I wasn't in the room) and not even that useful thingy called Auto Recovery was able to save it.
In case you forgot where we were (and - trust me - I wouldn't blame you in the least bit): Jordan had a very unpleasant encounter with a guy called Pete, and Woody - realizing he needs help - made a phone call.
If anybody is interested, the title of this chapter comes from a song by Megadeth. It's one of their finest (at least as far as the lyrics are concerned), so if you don't know it and have some free time... :) I didn't have it in mind while writing, though. I remembered it a minute or two ago, so I changed the original title. :)
Last, but not least, I would like to thank my wonderful reviewers - Mexwojo, ruth609, lbcjfan and BugFan4Ever. I really appreciate it that you took the time to tell me what you thought about chapter four. :)
Woody was sitting in a pretty comfortable big black leather chair in the office of Dr. Howard Stiles, more certain than ever than he had made a mistake. This didn't even look like a shrink's office. For starters, it was pretty dark – thick burgundy drapes were only half open. Then, it was cluttered with something that to him looked like souvenirs from Egypt or something. There were also some strange glass thingies – at least he didn't know what they represented, as well as kinetic balls. He couldn't notice any further details as he was feeling more uncomfortable by the second. He felt blood rushing to his face, adding to his discomfort. It was ridiculous, really. He wasn't a kid. But that shrink was giving him the creeps. Hadn't he greeted him on arrival and talked to him last night, he would suspect Dr. Stiles was mute. Fidgeting in the chair, he focused on the psychiatrist's nameplate, trying hard to memorize its every scratch.
Dr. Stiles narrowed his eyes slightly, silently studying the man in front of him. As he had only seen him once or twice, in passing, his call had certainly surprised him. The detective had hesitated, sputtering while explaining that he had gotten the number from Lily Lebowski and that he would very much like to see the doctor if possible. Stiles hadn't failed to notice the hint of despair in the man's voice, so he scheduled the appointment immediately. Now he knew he had been right – Woodrow Hoyt was at the very edge. The man's hands – twitching, clutching his slacks, playing with car keys – were telling him that. Having assessed him, Dr. Stiles patiently waited for the detective to speak. He knew that the moment was near.
Indeed, Woody finally spoke. He tried to sound casual, but couldn't hide the irritation in his voice. He was fed up. Why had he come? He didn't know what to say, what to do. Wasn't this man supposed to help him? "Aren't we gonna talk?"
"Sure, let's talk," Stiles answered cheerfully, as was his custom. He seemed completely unmoved by the other man's harshness. "I wasn't sure you wanted to."
"Why would I come if I didn't?" Woody blurted out, his tone a notch higher than before.
Doctor looked him in the eyes, and retorted, this time in a serious voice, "You tell me."
"Aren't you the shrink?" He had been struggling with himself the entire night. To come or not to come. He came, and what did he get? This clown pretending to be a shrink.
"So they say." Stiles smiled at him, unfazed.
"This is a complete waste of time!" Woody sprang from the chair.
"And it's can't be anything else until you stop refusing to open that can of worms," the state psychiatrist told to his back, warningly. "It's going to open itself eventually, you know," he added, almost softly. "If you open it, and do it in time, maybe the worms won't eat you alive."
Woody turned and reoccupied his seat, sighing. What that funny little man had just said sounded terrifying, but – not so deep down – he knew it was true. Basically, it was now or never. Survive or fall so hard that it would be impossible to rise ever again.
Stiles allowed himself a little smile. "Now, let's talk."
"I don't know where to begin," Woody confessed.
"Beginning is usually a good place to do so."
"Okay. Let's see…" His lips twisted in a grimace that was supposed to be a smile. "It was a nice, sunny day in Kewaunee when I was born. Mom was just going to iron some Dad's shirts when-" He suddenly stopped, flashing his dimples at the psychiatrist apologetically. "Oh, but you didn't have that beginning in mind, did you? You wanted to know when things got screwy, didn't you? Well, it didn't take long – Mom died when I was four. Then Dad got killed in the line of duty when I was sixteen, so I had to take care about my younger brother, who is good for nothing." He paused a little. When he went on, his voice was even more bitter. "AA, ADATSA, you name it – he's been in every damn group out there and he won't ever learn a thing. I won't know even if he does anyway. I kicked him out a few months ago. After he had gotten some of my friends and… some of them killed. And then, about two and a half months ago, I was shot by a nothing and I faced the possibility of paraplegia and kissing my job goodbye. How's that for a beginning?"
"Good." Dr. Stiles said simply. "But," he frowned a little, "I'm more interested in what you didn't mention." As the detective stared at him blankly, he explained. "Why yesterday evening? Why did you decide to start speaking precisely then? What happened?"
"Yesterday? Nothing special." He clutched at the chair, hoping that he sounded convincing.
He wasn't convincing enough for Howard Stiles, apparently, as the psychiatrist insisted. "What happened yesterday, Woody?"
"Yesterday…" he started, squirming. "Well, this woman and I, we almost…" he looked at the doctor sheepishly, before finishing incoherently, "…in her office."
Stiles smiled knowingly. "And that's a bad thing?" He seemingly joked, but – as the morgue employees had learned a long time ago – every single of his comments and questions had a purpose.
"Yes. Yes, it is," the younger man replied seriously. "It is… Because I think she… I think she thinks she has… feelings for me." The image of Jordan in her office, straightening her skirt, crying, her hair a mess, was so vivid; it was as if she was in front of him, and he cursed himself inwardly again. "And I don't want to take advantage of that because… I-I'm not who she thinks I am."
Dr. Stiles leaned towards him a bit. "Who are you?"
"I don't know. That's why I need your help." He obviously wasn't aware of how big a step he had just made – he had officially admitted he needed help. He just stared at the psychiatrist, looking like a lost puppy more than ever.
"Sure you already know who you are." The doctor smiled, almost warmly. "Accepting it is a whole new ball game. But you have to handle it."
It slowly dawned on her that that high-pitched beeping sound wasn't in her head. It was coming from her alarm clock. It seemed now like she had set it up in another life. She sat up on the bathroom floor, shivering. Her hair was damp, her clothes drenched, and that clock was making the noise from hell, but she just kept on sitting there, not wanting to move. Finally, she slowly lay down again, placing her head onto a carrot-orange towel, which was wet from her hair. Her teeth chattered. Apparently, standing under a shower of icy water fully dressed hadn't been a smart idea. Sleeping in the same outfit on ceramic tiles afterwards had been even more stupid, as it seemed. 'I've never been the brightest crayon in the box anyway,' she mused, curling up. It was so cold. But hypothermia could be a nice way out. She'd just fall asleep. That would be so easy; her eyelids felt heavy already. Placing her hand under her cheek, she shivered again. Her fingers felt colder than the tiles. It really was high time she got up, got dressed and went to work. But no, she couldn't go to work. She couldn't look them in the eye, talk to them. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. Or never. She embraced the vague hope that Garret would fire her if she just didn't show up for some time, without any explanation. Then she could stay here forever, without having to deal with people ever again… Nah, that wasn't Garret's style… He would come, wanting to know what was wrong. No, hypothermia was a far better solution. She didn't even have to do anything but keep lying there and wait for the never-ending sleep to claim her. 'But I somehow doubt I'd be that lucky,' she thought grimly just before her eyelids fluttered shut.
The doors to Trace opened abruptly, but that went unnoticed by the only person currently occupying that room. Bug slowly and quietly approached the leftmost desk, shaking his head slightly.
"Nigel," he called in a low voice, tapping his colleague's shoulder. However, the criminologist, who was "just resting his eyes," didn't raise his head from his arms, which were folded on top of the desk. "Nigel," he repeated, more loudly, but the Brit's sleep remained undisturbed. 'Third time's the charm,' Bug thought to himself before raising his voice even more.
Third time was the charm indeed as Nigel jumped, disoriented. "Checking, checking…" he mumbled, trying to sound enthusiastic.
"Checking what exactly?" Bug couldn't stifle a little laugh.
Although more than a bit embarrassed, Nigel intended to keep his dignity intact. "Whatever there is to check."
Bug had work to do too, so he let it go. "Fine," he said, taking a folder from the desk his friend was sitting at and heading towards a computer at the other side of the room.
Nigel followed. "I refuse to be everybody's computer lackey any longer," he whined. "No, seriously," he continued as if Bug had said something, though his colleague hadn't uttered a single word, "I spent the entire night trying to find anything on that audio tape for Capra." He rubbed his eyes, sighing a bit theatrically.
"Oh, come on, Nigel!" Bug shook his head. "You do that only because you don't want people to go to Sidney. If you would just-"
"Oh, hush, Buggles!" Nigel interrupted. "The new guy has some talent, I must admit. But we both know that the kid doesn't come close to the master of sweet computer science, so creative, but so exact at the same time…"
Bug just shook his head again at the now starry-eyed Nige, wondering why he had to wake him up.
In the middle of his rhapsody, Nigel's eyes fell on a pile of disks. "Oh yeah," he remembered, "then there was Woody with his surveillance tapes. He gave them to me yesterday afternoon and I haven't seen him since." He frowned – Woody didn't act like that. He would follow his progress closely. Actually, he would be so close that he would literally breathe down his neck.
"Nothing that Woody does these days can surprise me very much," said the entomologist, guessing his friend's thoughts.
However, Nigel wasn't listening to him at all. "I wonder…" he spoke almost dreamily.
Bug frowned. "You wonder what?" He wasn't really interested, but he knew he would have to hear it anyway.
"I wonder, Buggles, I wonder…" Nigel grinned from ear to ear. "You see, I left him with Jordan. In the same room; the automatically locked door, the tension you could cut with a knife. Maybe they took off for some place more private."
"Or maybe they killed each other," 'Buggles' offered solemnly.
Nigel didn't manage to express his opinion on that possibility because the door opened once again, and Garret popped his head into the room.
"Have you seen Jordan?" he asked without further ado.
"No," the entomologist answered simply.
The criminologist, on the other hand, couldn't be satisfied with that only. His gossip sensors had been activated. "Why? What's up, Dr. M?"
"She isn't in her office. Nobody has seen her. And Emmy says she hasn't called, either." Chief ME looked slightly worried.
Nigel, however, grinned again. "Maybe she just overslept."
The street was barely lit. It was blustery, and the cold was biting. She smiled, relieved, when she saw the light shimmering in The Pogue. Now that she had a clear goal in front of her, spring returned to her step. She hurried down the street, smiling, disregarding violent gusts of wind. The sign said "closed," but she knew her dad would be there. She slowly turned the doorknob and entered quietly. Max was there indeed, a cloth in his hand and a pile of glasses in front of him. She made a step towards him, but his voice stopped her dead in her tracks. He wasn't alone; he was talking to somebody sitting at the bar.
"You should have listened to me, Hoyt," he said in his thick Boston accent. "I warned you a long time ago."
She was relieved. It was "only" Woody. She opened her mouth, but remained silent upon hearing him sigh.
"I told you, Max. I thought you were protecting her."
Oh great, they were talking about her.
Her dad shook his grey head in disbelief. "Protecting her? From you?" It seemed to her that he was stifling a tear, and her heart broke a little. "You really know how to make a man laugh, kid." So, he had been stifling a tear. Because he had been laughing. What the hell was going on? "Jordan," Max continued, pronouncing her name like "Jahden" or something, like only he did, which made her smile again, "never needed protection from men. It's actually the other way round, I'd say. She simply throws herself at them."
Her smile vanished. She began to shiver, feeling sick. No, she must have heard it wrong. She became all ears, trying to catch every single word of the conversation.
"What do you think why I left? Everybody around here knew she's my daughter. I couldn't stand the humiliation any longer."
She couldn't stop trembling. Feeling that her legs were going to refuse obedience any moment, she gripped a pillar. This just couldn't be true. Was this really her dad? Was it all some cruel joke? She would have asked him, but Woody spoke and she held her breath, hoping that he would finally say something nice.
"I know that now, Max." was all he said, and she wished to disappear. How could they?
"I even bought her a ring," he added after a time.
His tone cut her to the core. He sounded as if buying her a ring was the most stupid idea he had ever had. She wanted to tell him something, anything, but she couldn't – so big the shock was.
"Don't be too hard on yourself, kid." Max comforted him. "I got fooled by one of the same kind. Consider yourself lucky."
That was too much. "No!" she finally managed to say. She couldn't scream it, though, even if she wanted to. "No, I'm nothing like that! I'm not," she tried to defend herself. The two of them just stared at her, confused, probably wondering where she had come from. "I'm not," she sputtered while their faces got amused expressions. "I love you both so much. Just let me show you… Please…" They weren't even listening to her. Their hysterical laughter was the last thing she heard before diving into the darkness.
*
Suddenly, everything was clear again, and she was sitting at a table in the back of The Pogue. Woody was beside her. They were both looking at the ring glimmering at her left hand. It was the "friendship ring." She smiled, and he planted a small kiss on her lips.
"Just a little longer," he whispered, taking her hand and kissing it.
"And then-" she started, but was cut off by a male voice.
"Picking up strangers in bars again, eh, Jordan?"
Pressing her lips together, she turned to the newcomer. It was as though a thunder struck her when she saw who was grinning at her, barely an inch from their table. It was nobody else but ADA Jay Myers, a man she – inexplicably – had found attractive at one point in her life.
Feigning that he just recognized Woody, he addressed him. "Oh, it's you, detective! But she knows your name, doesn't she? Too bad." He clicked his tongue, as though to show his sympathy for the detective. "It reaaaly turns her on when you bed her after only five minutes of acquaintance," he continued, lowering his voice a bit and tilting his head towards Woody, feinting to give him advice in confidence. "But she's pretty darn good anyway, isn't she?" He winked at the other man, laughing heartily.
What she didn't understand wasn't so much why Woody wasn't reacting, though it did bother her that he just kept listening to Myers degrading her. What she really wanted to know was why she wasn't doing anything about that. Instead of giving the bastard what he deserved, she sat there, motionless, shivering constantly.
"You know what she likes most?" The despicable man went on, gracing her with a long, leering look. "When you-"
An intense buzz of unknown origin filled her ears. She could see his mouth moving, but couldn't hear a word, and for that she was thankful. She closed her eyes, hoping that everything was going to be back to normal when she opened them. When she dared to do that, however, she realized how futile her hope had been. Instead of one, she was now facing two of her ex-… whatever who were reveling in the opportunity to spread some scuttlebutt about her.
"I'll repeat it, dude," she heard Tyler say as her sense of hearing was gradually returning. "You're not even close. What drives Jordan crazy…" he made a pause to size her up and give her a big, lazy smile, "is actually-"
"Take my advice, man." She gaped as Tom Crane materialized and started talking. "Just screw her. And I don't mean literally." He let out a small chuckle mixed with a snort. "She's more trouble than she's worth. My wife tried to kill herself because of her. And you really can find better than her at every corner."
She opened her mouth, but it was so dry, her tongue so heavy that she wasn't able to utter a word. Feeling helpless, she turned to Woody. Her heart sank completely when she saw him leaned forward, his eyes opened wide as he diligently listened to the ghosts from her past like a student would to his teachers. Another voice made her shudder.
"I'm telling you, pal," said Pete, a little smile tugging at the corner of his lips, "she was begging me to do it."
At that point, Woody got up from his chair. He slowly nodded to each man. She knew what the gesture meant. He was thanking them silently. He was acting towards them as they were some gentlemen who had just saved his life. At the same time, he was dismissing her as the biggest whore of them all. When he slowly headed for the exit, a part of her whispered that it was for the best, that he obviously didn't love her, that she should let him go. Another one screamed to go after him, make him understand. He must love her. And she couldn't lose him, no matter what. But she wasn't able to move. She kept shivering uncontrollably, unable to stand up. She did manage to speak, though.
"Woody, please… I'm not like they say. You know me." Although her voice was so low that she could barely hear herself, she somehow simply knew he heard each and every word. "Just don't go. Let me explain. Please, don't leave," she begged as he approached the door. With each step he made, she found it more difficult to breathe. "I told you what you wanted to hear… You can't trust them; let me tell you everything, the whole truth. Just don't go… Please?"
He never looked back. As the door closed behind him with a thud, she jerked up.
*
It was dark, and she looked around, alarmed. It took her some time to realize that she wasn't at The Pogue, but still on the bathroom floor. She obviously hadn't dreamed the shivering part. What was more, her head was about to explode and her throat was as dry as sand. She grabbed the edge of the hamper. Forcing her disobedient body to comply, she slowly got up from the tiles. Inch by inch, cursing her wobbly knees, she finally got to the washbasin. In accordance with that old saying about beggars and choosers, she bent down and drank the tap water lustily. The need fulfilled, she turned the faucet off and straightened. She didn't feel any better. On the contrary. She threw herself onto the rug beside the toilet just in time.
She didn't dare move from that spot for the next hour as the urge to vomit was coming back in regular intervals. Sitting there, gripping the rug and crying soundlessly, she couldn't but wonder whether she had ever felt so miserable in her entire life. The conclusion was affirmative, but that fact wasn't really helpful. What should she do? What could she do? She didn't have a clue. As her throat started burning again, her old mantra started playing in her head, "Whatever they throw at you, you're not gonna let them beat you. You can get through it." 'Yeah, right,' she thought.
His talk with Dr. Stiles hadn't been a lengthy one, but he was finally doing something about his problems. Moreover, he had made another appointment for tomorrow. All that made him feel better, almost good. He entered the morgue almost cheerfully. As usual, he found Nigel in Trace.
"Hey."
"Hi, mate. I was just about to call you. I finished with your tapes." Nigel motioned towards the disks.
"And?"
"And I'm not very happy I have to tell you this…"
"Tell me what? That it wasn't the wife?"
"You're right, it wasn't her. Jordan says it took him about half an hour to die, and the widow spent about a minute in the apartment, some ten minutes before the uniforms arrived. But," Nigel's face turned sympathetic, "nobody else entered or exited Reilly's apartment for more than twenty-four hours. I've called a friend from the CSU, and one of the windows would be a possibility because the fire stairs are right beside it, but it was locked and…"
"Whoa, whoa, Nigel!" He felt the first signs of a promising headache. "Are you telling me..."
"That your killer is a phantom," Nigel finished Woody's sentence.
Woody took a deep breath. "Pack your bag, we're going back to the crime scene. And find Jordan."
"I'm afraid you're stuck with Bug. Jordan called in sick half an hour ago," Nigel informed him on his way to the door.
Woody hurried after him. If he had something to do, something to keep him busy, he wouldn't have the time to think about her. About what he had done to her. But it couldn't really have been him, right? What had happened yesterday wasn't nearly enough to shake Jordan up that much. Right?