"Thank You" is a song by Dido that really inspired me. The first time I heard it, I had just come home from Disneyland. The year before that, my boyfriend and I had gone to Disneyland together. The best way to describe that boyfriend would be "violent psychotic," so going back to Disneyland brought back a lot of memories, and I started to cry. A redheaded friend of mine, Ryan, comforted me and turned it from the worst day of my life into the best.
This story is dedicated to him. Thank you, for real.
Chapter I: Thank You
Half an hour later, Kendall walked into the waiting room with a measuring tape in one hand and another form in the other. "I need to measure you for your uniform, and I need your emergency contact information."
"Should be fun," Varda took the form and put it on the desk so that when Kendall tried to measure her leg, Varda's hands were free to take the tape from her. "I know how to do things myself, Ms. Novak."
"Alright then," Kendall took her leather purse and walked out.
"She has a purse made out of cow skin when she works at Animal Cops. How do you date her?" Varda demanded.
"You wanna know the truth," Ryan suddenly became bashful. "I don't. Anyway, are you my new partner?"
"Yes. I'm Varda Swan and it's very nice to meet you," this time, Varda managed to complete her handshake. When it turned out to only be four seconds in length, she looked at the man sideways. "Ryan Wolfe, you have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, don't you?"
"What?" Ryan leaned closer for four seconds, and then leaned away.
"People with OCD have patterns in what they do, and the most common pattern is a pattern of four," Varda smiled. "I work as a psychologist part time."
"Doesn't psychologist pay more than cop?" Ryan asked.
"I love animals. I think it's disgusting, the way they're treated sometimes, as if they didn't have feelings," Varda's voice finally changed from the polite monotone she gave Kendall .
"Then we should get along fine," Ryan said firmly.
Pearl hated wearing her hospital gown on the beach. She supposed she should be grateful that she could go out again. But there was a part of her body left very vulnerable to the sea breeze. Just flap, flap, flapping in the breeze—the hospital gown, not the body part. At least the salt air cleared some of the demons in her head.
"It makes no sense, does it?"
"Excuse me?" Strangers didn't speak out of the blue, no matter what the fairy tales say, and not males, especially.
"The benches are backward. They go into all this trouble to build a city beside the ocean and nail the benches away from it?" the man could be a TV newscaster or a politician. He was clean-cut and had that tenacious look in his eye. His thick red hair was neatly combed and shining in the last of the afternoon sun. His suit and tie (in this weather?) called attention without being flashy. There was something about the cut of material that seemed rich, but when the man reached inside for his wallet, he frowned at how little there was. Still, he went to the vendor and came back with a Coke and vanilla ice cream. He smiled as he gave them to her, and she smiled back because he reminded her of her father. It's not that they looked alike, but they looked at her the same way. Like they were genuinely interested in what she had to say.
"Thank you," she said graciously.
The man's smile grew wider. "That's a voice I haven't heard in a while."
"True, Walden, true."
His smile disappeared. "Don't call me that," he said quietly.
"You haven't called, you haven't written, you haven't even visited me in the hospital yet!" Pearl hissed. "And you certainly haven't the right to tell me what to do!"
"I'm sorry," the man said sadly, drawing back. His eyes held some sort of hope.
"Who are you?" she asked. "If you aren't Walden, who are you?"
"I'm Horatio Caine. John Walden was an alias while I was undercover."
Pearl sighed and shoved her desserts aside. "Undercover for what?" she crossed her arms in front of her chest with her contrary tone.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you."
"Because then you'll have to kill me, right?" Pearl picked up the sundae.
"No, because someone else will," Horatio said with an intensity that made her stop trying to antagonize him.
"How's Callia?" Pearl patted the side of the bench next to her for him to sit on.
"She'll be alright. I trust she's competent?"
"Mercilessly driven to do good," Pearl looked haunted for a moment, thinking of how haunted Callia must be from all that she's seen and endured. Why had she not thought of how much Callia had suffered up to now? Then again, Callia was tough enough to keep sweet-toothed Pearl from her junk food. Speaking of which, Pearl picked up the ice cream and ate ravenously.
"Hungry?" Horatio smiled.
"No. I just haven't had unhealthy, sugary, icy-cold, bad-for-you stuff for a while," Pearl licked the spoon.
Horatio laughed.
Pearl tossed the empty sundae cup into the trash. "Spit it out," she said offhandedly.
"What?" Horatio sounded cautious.
"You came here to interrogate me about the plane crash; you want to know what I know. So ask. I'll tell," she looked at him, waiting.
"What happened before you landed?" Horatio asked. "Before the plane crashed?"
"Um, there was a lot of shaking," Pearl squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember. She heard somewhere that if she pictured how it smelled, then how it sounded, it was easier to pretend she was actually there.
"Okay, can you remember anything before the shaking?" Horatio leaned forward, elbows on his knees, looking sideways at her.
"Um," Pearl swallowed. She shook her head, abandoning the sound part of the plan. "I-" she gave an odd choked gasp.
"It's alright," Horatio said suddenly, moving as if to leave.
"No, it's not," Pearl said. "Callia's hurt and I can't help," she moved to brush some hair away from her face. Horatio instinctively moved to help her. Pearl stiffened, but not because of Horatio. "I remember…a woman screaming."
"Alright. Can you remember what was going on while you heard the woman scream? Was there a gunshot, perhaps?"
"The door was open," Pearl said. "I remember because my gloves were sucked right off my hands," she extended her annoyingly tiny hands. "But there was no gunshot."
"Good, very good," Horatio nodded. He stood up. "I think that's all I'll need for now, thank you," he said, looking down at her.
"And thank you. This has been a terrible day. You kept it from being the worst day of my life. Just one thing," Pearl piped up, unable to contain her curiosity. "How's Megan Donner? Her husband died. Is she okay to go back to work so soon?"
"How'd you know her husband died, Belle?" Horatio sounded actually frightened now. He had no control over the situation or how it might end.
"Belle?" Pearl raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, well if you don't know about it yet, don't worry," Horatio nearly ran away, leaving a very confused Pearl on the bench.
"Winnie," Jaunie Kim called, running over. "You're an idiot! You shouldn't be up and around!"
"Well, I couldn't sit down and stay there either," Pearl grumbled.
Jaunie scowled. "Well, you have to have another x-ray to make sure that hairline fracture on your skull is gone."
"X-ray away," Pearl smiled, getting up and putting a hand to her temple. She felt her blood pumping extra hard in that area, and she was worried. But she wasn't worried enough to tell Jaunie.
"What do you have there?" Varda asked.
"Two swans were killed," Pearl sounded sad as she stared at the swans. "I didn't find any traces of poison, but the necks were snapped. They at least died fast."
"Good," Varda's smiled in relief. "Who did it?"
"Judging by the shape and pattern of the bruises left on the sides of the swans' necks, I think we're looking for this guy," Pearl said, showing a picture of a guy whom she knew had done it.
"Did you do a necropsy?" Ryan asked as he entered.
"No," Pearl said carelessly.
"Did you actually check to make sure it was strangulation?"
"Nope," Pearl looked at him indolently.
"Are there any bruises?"
"Not that I know of," Pearl looked at Varda and they both fell into giggles.
"So you did nothing except glance over them," Ryan said, folding his arms together, not appreciating the fact that he didn't understand the joke.
Pearl assessed him. "I'm sorry, boss. I'll give you some reasons that," she leaned into the computer, "Terry Kirk should be arrested. Like the fact that the swans and the ropes that killed them were both on his property."
"Now I'm with you." Ryan went out to arrest the man.
Pearl giggled. Varda sighed.
"Someday, my little psychic, you'll make a mistake," Varda warned. "Trust yourself, not the machine. Haven't you ever read 1964?"
"Well, I'm not a machine, but yes, I have read it, and I hated it. I cried for hours, and not in a good way," Pearl shuddered. "The book scared me more than R.L. Stein could ever hope to."
"Then I believe Eric Blair has truly done his job," Varda smirked. "I should write him a letter of commendation." She imitated writing in midair, "Dear Mr. Blair, my friend thinks your book was the scariest thing she ever read, even worse than horror novels."
Pearl slapped Varda's hand away and they kept chick-fighting until Pearl 's phone rang. " Pizza Palace , may I take your order?" Pearl answered.
"Ha, ha, ha," Callia chuckle dryly. "Can you come over? It seems to be 'Take Your Annoying Family Member to Work Day,'" she said sarcastically. "And I need a good psychic. This whole bomb business makes me nervous."
Pearl laughed, "Be right there!"
"So what's happening?" Pearl hopped off Varda's silver Rolls Royce and into the lab. She paused. "Hey, is that coffee I smell?"
Horatio was shaking his head at her frantically.
"Yeah. It's Café Cubano," Eric said. "It'll put the hair on your chest."
Pearl took one sip and nearly gagged. "It'll put the hair on your liver!"
Calleigh entered, smiling perkily. "Don't you just say the sweetest things?" Pearl was gagging and spitting for the next ten minutes.
"Don't say I didn't warn you," Horatio laughed.
Pearl flashed him a dirty look. "You didn't warn me."
"Can you stop getting attention for five seconds and look at the news?" Callia snapped.
Pearl put the mug meekly on the table, careful not make a sound, and focused her attention to the news report as if her life depended on it. Horatio frowned.
"Is the bomb threat serious?" Eric asked.
"Change the channel," Horatio didn't take his eyes off the stock-still Pearl .
Every channel seemed to be covering the same story. Callia snorted. "Don't news crews usually hang around police stations waiting to report instead of the police hearing it from the news?" she was indignant.
"Can I help?" Pearl looked at the sour-faced Callia.
Horatio tensed, ready to step between the irresponsible Pearl and the irrepressible Callia if it came to blows. But, to his surprise, Callia laughed.
"Of course you can help!" Callia took Pearl 's arm and they walked out with the rest of the team. Horatio found himself in the back and last, to his chagrin.
"I didn't know they made Kevlar in triple-extra-large," were the first things Pearl heard Horatio say when she hopped off Callia's car.
"They make jockeys that size too, but you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" the guy who clearly knew Horatio laughed. They embraced, if you could call attempting to shatter each other's spines an embrace.
"I don't know how men don't get eviscerated when they hug like that," Pearl said dubiously as she watched Horatio and Al Humphries thump each other's backs.
" Pearl , just because you are as delicate as a butterfly doesn't mean everyone is," Callia said snidely. Pearl rolled her eyes.
"Horatio Caine, back from the dead. Found any good fiber recently?"
"Just enough to keep me regular," Horatio grinned at Humphries. He turned to the crime scene. "What do we have here?"
"Well, we have a Schedule-80 PVC collar clamped around the victim's neck," Pearl said. "And, if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Humphries here is going in to 'John Wayne' it."
"That I am, and call me Al," said Al.
"That's not the way you taught us, big man," Horatio said, mildly alarmed.
"I've got no choice," Al said. "Disarming the bomb remotely isn't an option."
"Well, Al, you have the best hands in the business," Horatio smiled.
"We'll have fun seeing those hands fly by us at a thousand miles per hour in a few minutes," Pearl said under her breath. Callia looked at her, alarmed. They watched Al pick up his case and turn back to Horatio, pitying expressions on their faces. "Look, I've got to go do this thing, but let's grab a beer later. Catch up," said Al.
"So long, Al," Pearl said, now beside Horatio. Horatio frowned at her. Pearl looked up at him with her sparkling, vivid blue-green eyes showing that she knew too much for her age. Those haunted (or maybe he was looking for the word haunting) eyes stared at him as he took the x-ray of the bomb and looked over it. She removed her eyes from him for a single moment to watch a chirping bird, and then the windows were blown out. She screamed and covered her face. Callia ran for cover. Horatio wanted to run and protect Pearl. All he actually did was put his hand to his ear. It came out bloody.
"No," he mouthed.
I'm going to hope that isn't going to go after me for the copious amount of funny material I just couldn't help but steal. I use only the feeble excuse that I'm not making money off of this, so please don't sue me, and if you still don't like it, I'll take it down, no questions asked, alright? -hides-
This wasn't a very cheerful chapter, was it? (Not to mention after I wrote it, I told my friend that I killed someone with a bomb-Humphries-and she looked at me like I was crazy). Well, here's something to cheer you up with:
Pearl's mouth opened in a silent protest, but she just shook her head and swiped a ham sandwich off Horatio's desk. She didn't have to put herself in danger. She just had to keep him from doing anything stupid.
Which, judging from the looks of it, was a full-time job.