Disclaimer: 90 of this isn't mine. Rock Band and XBOX 360, while I do own them, I don't own them. Make sense?
Author's Note: Now, I'm saying anything for sure, but just a heads up, there might, might be a spoiler or two from Endgame. So you've been warned. :-)
The stage lights rose and the crowd cheered. Emmie Handsen positioned her fingers over the frets on her Fender Stratocaster, ready for the first notes of the song. She looked over at the bassist and grinned slyly.
"You ready, Rick?" she asked.
He smirked back. "Let's do it."
They both turned back to the crowd just in time, and started playing.
"Rick, you're messing it up, we're down in the yellow!"
"I'm sorry, it's a tough one!"
"It should be tough, it's on hard!"
"Look! You filled your meter, go into overdrive!"
"I'm trying! It's not—okay, here I go."
Rick and Emmie stood in the living room of Emmie's Brooklyn apartment, in front of the TV, each holding a plastic guitar plugged into an Xbox.
"Red, Emmie, it's red!"
"I know, I know!" she squealed.
The crowd was booing now. "Uuurrrgh!" Emmie growled out. She hit the start button, pausing the game. She looked at her partner.
"You said you were good!" She playfully slapped him on the shoulder.
Rick held up his hands in a defensive posture. "Yeah, I'm good, on Medium! I'm not used to the orange button yet!"
Emmie held up a finger and moved it toward Rick's face. "Listen. If we're gonna do this—"
She was interrupted by the ringing of her cell phone. She turned her head to look at the offending gadget lying on the coffee table. She turned back to Rick.
"One moment," she told him, mock-threateningly.
She set the plastic guitar controller down and picked up the phone. "Hello? Yes, speaking… Hi, what's up?" Rick watched as Emmie's expression became confused. "Okay, I'll be there in an hour." She set the phone down and looked at Rick.
"What's wrong?"
"That was one of the detectives…"
"From yesterday?"
She nodded. "They want me to go in to talk to them."
"About what?"
Emmie shrugged. "The case I guess. She didn't really say. She just said they needed me to go in to clarify a few details."
"All right," Rick said, setting his guitar controller down. "I'll come—"
Emmie shook her head. "No, no, stay. I'll be fine. Besides. You need a lot more practice." She smiled at him, but didn't get one in return.
"Are you sure?"
"I'll be fine, Rick. I'll see you at work."
She gave him a quick peck on the cheek, as though that made everything right, grabbed up her keys and cell phone, and was out the door.
Emmie stepped off the elevator and stopped the first cop she saw. "Hi, sorry, Goren and Eames?"
"Straight down there," he said, pointing.
"Thanks."
She went in the direction he'd indicated, coming to the end of the hallway which opened up into the bullpen that was the Major Case Squad. Pairs of desks were scattered all over the big room, detectives walked across to the fax machine and rushed to answer ringing phones. Straight ahead was the pair Emmie was looking for.
Goren saw her coming first. "She's here," he muttered to Eames, standing up.
Emmie smiled politely. "Hey, what's up?"
Goren gathered his papers into his binder. "We're going to talk in that conference room right over there."
Emmie nodded. "Okay." She turned and headed over.
After everyone was settled around the table, Emmie on one side, Goren and Eames on the other, Emmie offered a helpful smile.
"So. What can I do for you?"
"Actually, Ms. Handsen—" Eames began, but Emmie interrupted her.
"Oh, um, you can call me Emmie," she said. "It, uh. . . 'Ms. Handsen' just. . . Well, you can call me Emmie."
Eames smiled, humoring her. "Okay. Emmie. We're having some difficulty pinning down why Wallace would come after you. We were hoping you could help us, maybe come up with some ideas."
Emmie was lost. "Like what? I'd never met her before I arrested her."
"Maybe she knows someone you arrested in the past," Eames led her on. "Maybe you gave a ticket to one of her friends. Is there anyone that stands out?"
Emmie couldn't quite suppress a snort of amusement. "I'm a white cop in Harlem, everyone has a problem with me. Whenever I need a collar, all I have to do is try to write someone for double parking. 90 percent of the time it either ends in a summons or an arrest."
"You must have quite a. . . Quite a way of talking to people," Goren said.
Emmie shrugged. "You know how it is, when you need a collar."
Goren nodded.
"So if no one stands out from work," Eames continued, "maybe it was someone outside of work."
"What, like I pissed someone off by taking the last dryer at the laundromat?"
"Or," Goren said, "maybe it has something to do with this?" Goren opened his binder and pulled the top sheet out. He slid it across the table.
Emmie looked down at the paper. "What's this?" She tried to act as though she really didn't know, but her voice had lost a lot of its confidence.
"That's a record of files your computer ID was used to look up," Goren told her. He pointed at a line with his pen. "See here. . . Here's where you looked up the serial killer, Mark Ford Brady. And then, a few days later. . ." He moved the pen down the page. "You were looking up Nicole Wallace."
Emmie stared at the spot on the page Goren indicated. She was keeping a cool exterior, but inside she was trying frantically to come up with an explanation.
"I took a forensic psychology class in college," she said. "I remembered Nicole Wallace from the papers a few years ago, I thought I could access more information on the department database."
"To satisfy your own curiosity," Goren stated.
"Right," Emmie confirmed.
"And it was the same thing with Mark Ford Brady?"
"Yeah," Emmie said. "After his execution, there was that rash of news stories about him. It was the same thing as Wallace, just to satisfy my own curiosity. I didn't print anything out, I didn't divulge any of the information to anyone outside the department. . ."
"No," Eames cut in, "see, you looked up the files on Brady a month before his execution. In fact, he still had one appeal left when you looked him up."
Emmie said nothing. She looked down at the paper in front of her for lack of another place to look.
"We did the math," Goren said quietly. "We know. . . that Brady is your biological father." He ducked his head, trying to catch Emmie's lowered gaze. "What we need your help with. . . is figuring out why you were looking up Nicole. It's just too much of a coincidence for us to believe that you looking in her files and her coming after you are not connected."
Emmie looked up with watery eyes. "And just how would she know that I typed her name into a department search engine? Short of knowing in advance that I would, and put some kind of spyware in the system." Emmie cleared her throat, blinked her eyes and stood up. "I have to leave if I'm going to make roll call."
Goren let her turn the door handle before he spoke. "Jamie Soloman is dead."
Emmie froze, still holding the door two inches open. She took a breath. Then another. Then slammed the door and spun around.
"What?" It was barely above a whisper.
Goren nodded, rising from his chair. "She was murdered last night, someone put cyanide in her beer, in her apartment."
"Cyanide in her beer, Rohypnol in yours," Eames chimed in. "See a pattern?"
"B-But," Emmie sputtered, "then it is coincidence she came after me! Jamie didn't have anything to—That psycho is just going after cops?"
Goren shook his head. "Nicole doesn't do anything randomly. Everything she does has a purpose."
Emmie's knees shook and she sank back into the chair. "But Jamie had nothing to do with it. Unless. . ."
"Unless she was involved on Nicole's end?" Eames finished.
Emmie looked up, a fresh wave of tears streaming down her face.
The detectives watched Emmie walk to the elevators from their desks. After she had rounded the corner, Eames looked at her partner, who seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, still staring at the point where Emmie had disappeared.
"Bobby," she said softly, "did you ever find out—"
"Not for sure, no," he interrupted. He sat at his desk and opened his binder, organizing papers, needing a distraction.
"If it's true, if Brady is that girl's father—"
He nodded. "She could be my sister, I know." He stopped shuffling papers and looked up. "Spyware."
Eames looked at him. "You think Nicole actually did?"
"She's obsessed with me," Goren explained. "She would want to be able to check up and see what I'm doing, if I'm thinking about her. Maybe she caught Emmie Handsen looking instead of me. Looked up her file, paid a visit to the 2-9. . ."
"I'll call TARU," Eames said, already dialing.
So are you in suspense now:-)