Present

Head Detective of the SBPD Carlton Lassiter stood stoically in Chief Vick's office, listening to her announcement, noticing how her voice wavered. The thin lines that had recently appeared on her face seemed suddenly more prominent. Her eyes avoided his, for once not direct. The sick feeling in his stomach the past couple of years warned him it was coming, but not how abrupt it would be. The light glinted of the steely hair Karen no longer dyed, another sign of how the years had aged her.

He should be happy. After all, he took great pains to represent himself as a workaholic, self-centered, heartless SOB and caring hadn't ever really been his thing, but especially not now. Still, the news struck him hard.

"Lassiter," her voice was rough, weary. Watching, Lassiter saw her brace herself against the mounds of paperwork that cluttered her desk. Glancing down at his hands, Carlton found himself wondering when, exactly , had she grown so exhausted, and how he had missed it.

"I'm retiring," One hand waved in an abrupt gesture, brushing away the words she had given him no chance to utter. "...and don't protest, we both saw this coming. You'll do for my job, and your record isn't tainted so much in relation to The Incident."

They both knew what incident she was referring to, and Chief Vick had born the brunt of it, even during the IA investigation. Everyone had always known Lassiter was skeptical of His abilities. That was, of course, the He who betrayed them all, almost destroyed Santa Barbara's Boys in Blue, and single-handedly crushed the city's respect for law enforcement. Ever since The Incident, the crime rate had increased rapidly and the solve rate decreased exponentially. However much of a SOB Spencer had been, at least he was effective. Now here was something else ruined by Spencer's downfall. For a second, he allowed himself to reminisce on what it had been like, before Guster's idiotic comment ruined Shawn's 'psychic' plot. His mind crushed the thought. Now, and for the last six years, they had paid for their crimes.

Chief Lassiter felt duty-bound to continue with his protests, even though he knew they were futile.

"No, Detective." Vick cut him off. "Besides, it will give me a chance to spend some time with my daughter, or as much as I can anyway." For a brief moment, the grief Karen bore was visible on her face, etched into the lines that Spencer had left, the only remaining record of Spencer's work. The fallout from the Spencer Incident had ruined the one marriage Lassiter had thought to be infallible, the one that had almost made him believe in love. Now, Karen Vick had joint custody with her ex-husband but, with the influx in crime, still didn't manage to see her daughter much.

"Here," she handed him a manila envelope. It's light weight in his hand seemed horribly final. "Take this. It's your new case, your last case to be precise. Call O'Hara in on this one."

Lassiter nodded in compliance. With so many cases on their workload nowadays, Detectives often dealt with cases single-handedly. In fact, Lassiter struggled to remind himself of the last time he had seen Juliet. The once-blond haired beauty now went by Maggie, after Margaret, her middle name, taking the place of the one that held too many connotations, too many reminders of the past. She perhaps, had been hit hardest by the events six years ago, changing a great deal. Lassiter could not remember one time she had mentioned Shawn's name in the last six years. She simply cut him out of her life like a paper doll. Lassiter had always been afraid of the depth of her hatred for what Shawn did, because it showed how much Spencer, that SOB, had hurt her, a crime more brutal than any case Carlton had ever been assigned.

Lassiter pulled himself out of his admittedly morbid thoughts of what he would do if he ever saw Spencer again and started looking through the case file. Apparently there had been at least one homicide in a Santa Barbara maximum security prison. Lassiter frowned, puzzled by how vague the incident report was.
Couldn't the people even write a report? Great, now instead of actually getting to sleep in his apartment for once (instead of his desk), he would be heading off to some godforsaken hellhole with O'Hara. She was going to be pissed when she found out...

He grabbed his phone and pressed number one on speed dial, suddenly all to aware that the only numbers in his phone were the hospital, 911, poison control, the bomb squad, SWAT, the Feds, the Fire Department, take out restaurants, O'Hara, and the Chief. He pressed send.

"O Hara." The voice that barked into the phone was abrupt, cold. Lassiter felt a familiar tightness in his chest.

Dammit, Spencer, you bastard.

"Maggie. We have a case"