It wasn't until Hughes' secretary came in with the court order required for the prison to release Neal's body that it really sank in. Neal Caffrey was dead. Bureaucracy had taken over and the last glimmer of hope had been stamped out. "Peter, you're needed there for identification and to accompany the b… to take Neal, to the morgue." Hughes handed Peter the paperwork with a concerned look. "You sure you're up to this?" "Of course, I'm up to this!" Peter snapped. The Assistant Director ignored the tone of voice. He knew Peter was doing his best just to keep it together. It had to be Peter who went; he had put Neal in that prison twice and now he would be bringing him out for the second, and final time. He had never expected that it would be in a body bag.
"Need a driver, boss?" Diana asked, concerned, as he started out of the office. "No, thanks for the offer Diana, but I have to do this by myself." He could feel his legs tremble slightly while he waited for the elevator. Diana watched him while he stood there, shoulders slumped, eyes lowered to the floor. She has mourning Neal, but she could not begin to fathom how deep Peter's sorrow must be. The cheerful ping of the elevator as the doors opened seemed grossly inappropriate. Peter, mercifully alone, entered and pressed the button for the parking level. She saw him lean against the wall, let out a deep sigh and close his eyes. Silently she wished him strength for the task ahead.
How he got to the prison, Peter could not recall. It seemed like one moment he was pulling out of the parking garage and the next he was stopped at the security checkpoint outside the prison gates. Well over an hour had passed, and yet he could not recall a single moment of the drive. The guard handed him back his ID with a sympathetic look. Word had spread throughout the building that the FBI criminal consultant had been set up by Officer Sandona and his buddy on the outside. Sandona had already been picked up by the FBI together with the inmates who had strung Neal up. They had been quickly identified from the news footage; all lifers who had nothing to lose by giving what they thought was a pedophile, his due.
However, even convicted felons don't like being tricked into doing someone else's bidding and once they had realized that they had been conned they were quick to offer up Sandona as the bad apple. In turn, Sandona had given the FBI Officer Olsen as the instigator of the whole sordid affair and he too had been brought into the White Collar Crime Unit for questioning. Everyone had been at a loss as to what could have been Olsen's motivation until Mozzie saw his picture at the morning meeting in Hughes' office. He had let out a gasp and then a disgusted hiss as he picked up the photograph and recounted the incident in the park the previous day. "So this creep arrested Neal?" He spat out. "A dirty copy and an abuser, poor Neal, he must have been terrified when he recognized him."
"Neal, oh Neal," Peter thought to himself, "Why couldn't you have just left well enough alone?" But, of course, he knew the answer. There was no way Neal would have witnessed the cop's cruelty toward his girlfriend and said nothing. What were the odds that it would be the same cop to pull him over that night? If only he had taken Neal to the exhibit himself. The officer might not have even noticed Neal if Peter had been driving. There would certainly have been no arrest, no incarceration, and no death.
Peter felt crushed by the immensity of his guilt; his chest ached as though a heavy weight had been placed there, pushing down and restricting his breathing. He began to realize that what he was experiencing was his heart actually breaking.
TBC
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