DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters, except for Matthew and Moxie. The rest of them belong to James Duff and the Major Crimes franchise.
Chapter 9
Sharon and Andy arrived at the PAB and Andy parked the car in his usual spot. They got out of the car but Sharon stopped him as he opened her door. "I do want you to take it easy Andy, okay?" she said to him as she placed her hand on the front of his jacket. "We have our move Wednesday and Thursday is Thanksgiving, I don't want a repeat of last year when you had your surgery" Sharon said in a quiet voice. Andy looked at her and smiled. "Yes, ma'am" he said to her and held her hand as they started to walk towards the building.
They got off the elevator and headed towards their office when Chief Howard stopped them in the hallway. "Captain, Lieutenant" Chief Howard said to the two of them. "Chief, do you need something?" Sharon asked him. "I just wanted to commend you both on your dealing with Croelick the other day. Believe me, I know how he can be and how he creeped Brenda out when she dealt with him" Chief Howard said to them and then he headed for his office. "Should we tell him he's been hanging out, watching us?" Andy asked Sharon as they entered their office. "No, not yet. Not until we have something" Sharon said to him. "Does he want to keep his position as Assistant Chief?" Andy asked Sharon as they stood out in the hallway. Sharon looked at the direction Howard went and then looked back at Andy. "He might, I'm not sure" Sharon said. Andy looked back at her. "Any thought of you putting in for that job?" Andy asked her. She was lost in thought when Andy asked her that. He asked her that before, but for some reason with everything that has been going on in both of their lives, she didn't want to think about a new position. Sharon looked back at Andy and just shook her head no.
Everyone was already there as Sharon and Andy made their ways inside. Provenza and Mike were discussing something at Mike's desk when they walked in. Sharon nodded to the two of them and then pointed at her office. Andy followed her into her office. Sharon sat down at her desk as they all made their way inside. Mike closed the door behind him and took a seat. Andy leaned up against the table and Provenza sat across from Sharon. "Okay, do we know anything more, off the record?" Sharon asked Provenza and Mike. "Yes Captain" Mike said as he handed a report to her. "The dumpster in your building had residue of charcoal, lighter fluid, and linseed oil" Mike said to them. "Was it set deliberately?" Sharon asked Mike. "With that combination, I would tend to say yes, but we don't know for sure as there were no cameras in the area" Mike answered her.
Sharon looked up at her Lieutenants. "Anything else?" she asked them. "I managed to pull fingerprints off of the dumpster and ran them in our system, none of them matched Croelick's" Mike said. "Dammit" Andy muttered and Sharon looked over at him. "Okay" Sharon said as she got an idea. "Mike, is there any way you could see what Croelick was looking at on his phone while he was here?" Sharon asked him. "Not remotely, Captain. I would need his phone in order to do that" Mike said to her. "Is there a way we could get him to give up his phone for, what Mike?" Provenza said to him. "A couple of minutes would be all I need to mirror it" Mike said to Provenza. "However, we would need a court order in order to do all of that, gentlemen" Sharon said to them. "There's got to be another way" Andy said to them.
"Mike, when you ran the fingerprints you collected, did any of them pop up in the system?" Provenza asked Mike. "Yes, a few" Mike said as he handed that report to Provenza. "There's only three people listed on this report, you pulled at least ten" Provenza said to Mike. "Nobody else had a criminal record" Mike said as he shrugged his shoulders and looked at Sharon. "What are you getting at, Lieutenant?" she said to Provenza. "We run these three names, see what comes up" Provenza said. "Off the record, of course" he added. "Okay, go ahead and do that" Sharon said and Provenza and Mike left her office. Andy stuck around afterwards. "Maybe Mike can pull up the surveillance camera from the conference room at a different angle to see if we can see what Croelick was looking at on his phone" Andy said to her and he leaned over the chair in front of her desk. "Perhaps" Sharon said and then Andy left her office and headed towards Mike's desk.
Andy stood next to Mike who was sitting at his desk. "Um, Mike you got a second?" Andy asked him. Mike looked up at Andy. "Sure, what do you need?" Mike said to him. "I was wondering in the surveillance footage of Croelick sitting in the conference room, he is on his phone but the one angle I have doesn't really show what he was looking at" Andy started to explain. "You want me to look at the possibility of other angles from that footage?" Mike asked him. "If you could, maybe that's our other way" Andy said to him. "I may need Buzz's help on that" Mike said to Andy as he looked over at Buzz.
Mike and Andy walked over to where Buzz was sitting at his desk. "Buzz, are you busy?" Mike asked him. "No, did you need something Lieutenants?" Buzz asked them. Mike and Andy both looked at each other. "Uh, Buzz, we need you to help us look for something, but we need it to be off the record" Andy said to Buzz. "Off the record, sir?" Buzz questioned. "Yes, Buzz" Mike said as Buzz got up and the three of them went into electronics and closed the door behind them.
Provenza informed Amy and Julio that they needed to run a background on the names that Mike's fingerprint analysis came up with. Amy questioned Provenza about it. "As a favor for the Captain, this needs to be kept under wraps, off the record, if you will" Provenza said to the both of them. "Understood, sir" Julio said to Provenza and started to work on his person. "Sure" Amy said as she looked into her person.
Buzz was working on the video footage and Mike and Andy both watched him pull up the video of Croelick in the conference room. He then worked his magic and switched to a different angle when Croelick sat back down on the chair. "There, can you pause that?" Andy said as he pointed to the screen. "Sure Lieutenant" Buzz said to Andy as he did what he told him to do. He paused the screen the moment Croelick went to his phone. "Can we see what he was looking at?" Andy asked Buzz. "I'll try to blow it up but the image may get distorted" Buzz said to him. Moments later they had a good view of what Croelick was looking at on his phone, but just like Buzz said, it was a little blurry. Andy looked up at Mike. "Hang on, let me try something" Mike said to them as he left the room and headed over to his desk.
"The Captain and I appreciate you doing this Buzz" Andy said to Buzz as they waited for Mike to return. "No problem sir, you are like family to me with everything you and the Captain have helped me with" Buzz said to Andy. Mike came back in electronics with a disk. He handed it to Buzz. "Place this in the laptop and run the software on it. It should clarify the picture enough for us to see something" Mike said to Buzz. Buzz did as he was told. Moments later, the image on the screen was perfect.
"That son of a bitch" Andy said as he huffed. He looked at Mike and then at Buzz. "Looks like he was doing research on the both of you while he was sitting there" Mike said to Andy. "Keep it on the screen, I'm going to get the Captain" Andy said to them as he exited the room. He closed the door behind him and waited a couple of seconds before he headed towards Sharon's office. In that tiny span of fifteen minutes, Croelick had looked up both of Andy's children and saw both of their divorce decrees online, all public records for that matter. Andy walked towards Sharon's office and knocked on her door.
"Come in" she said and Andy opened the door. "I think you may want to come see the video in electronics" Andy said to her. "Do we know what Croelick was looking up?" Sharon asked him. "Yes" Andy answered. Sharon got up and walked over to Andy. She placed her hand on his arm and looked at him as she walked passed him towards electronics. Andy followed her inside the room. Sharon looked at the screen and saw frame by frame what Croelick was looking up on his phone. First he searched for Andy Flynn and saw his divorce online, which then led to finding out about his children. Then he searched for Sharon Raydor and saw her divorce from Jack, which in turn led him to know about Ricky, Rusty, and Emily. This made Sharon feel super uneasy. "He must have seen your nameplate on your desk" Mike said to Sharon.
"So, now we know how he knew about our children" Andy said in a low voice to Sharon. "But why? Why did he need to know that?" Sharon asked them. "Leverage down the road perhaps, Captain?" Mike said to Sharon. "But for what?" Sharon asked him. Mike shrugged his shoulders. Sharon continued to look at the screen, watching Croelick. "Now do we have enough to bring him in?" Andy asked her. "For what?" Sharon asked. "Stalking for one thing. He was at that park and seemed to be watching us. He looked us up" Andy said to her. Sharon thought for a moment. "But what would we bring in him for questioning on, Lieutenant? The park is a public space, anyone can go there" Sharon said to Andy. She had used his rank to address him and Andy had picked up on it right away.
Sharon left electronics and headed back towards her office. She did not want to get into an argument with Andy, especially in front of Mike and Buzz. Andy was riled up about this whole thing. She was too. It was a little uneasy knowing that Croelick knew that information. Luckily, when they had purchased the new house, they told Michael that they didn't want that information available to the public for police purposes. Sharon made it back to her office and she knew Andy was right behind her. She sat down at her desk and he closed the door and the blinds in her office before he spoke. "Yes, Lieutenant?" Sharon said to him as he turned around.
"Captain, Croelick obviously is fixated on us. We need to do something about it" Andy said to her in a harsh tone and then corrected himself. Sharon looked up at Andy and then looked away. "This is exactly what I didn't want to happen. Our personal life being brought into the office" Sharon said to him, quietly. Andy knew what she meant. They promised each other a while ago that they would keep personal out of their professional lives. But that was before Croelick came into the picture. Andy took a seat in front of Sharon's desk. "So what do we do now?" Andy quietly asked her. She had a lot on her mind as she looked at him from across her desk. Andy's health was the most important followed by Matthew, the move to the new house, and now dealing with Croelick, who either was or wasn't stalking them, she really couldn't determine that.
"We wait for him to slip up if he stays in town" Sharon said to Andy. She knew he would defend her and protect her at all costs. She needed him to heal properly with this rib issue now and didn't need him going off on his own against Croelick. She didn't know what Croelick was capable of, but she read the reports about him and she knew he could be dangerous.
There was another knock on her door. Sharon looked back at Andy. "Are you okay?" she asked him quietly. He looked up at her. "Yes" he answered. "Come in" she said to the person on the other side of the door. Provenza opened the door with Amy behind him. "Uh, Captain" Provenza said as he looked at both Andy and Sharon. "Oh, are we interrupting something?" he asked Sharon. "No" Sharon said as she shook her head. "Okay, well we've come across something I think you want to see" Provenza said as Amy closed the door behind them. Andy adjusted in his chair when they walked in. "What is it, Lieutenant?" Sharon asked Provenza. Amy handed Sharon the report she put together on one of the fingerprint matches that Mike had found.
Provenza looked at Andy who was looking back at Sharon. Andy then glanced over at Provenza. "What?" Andy asked him. Provenza shook his head. "Nothing" he said and then focused back on what Sharon was reading. "Where does she live, Amy?" Sharon asked her as she paged through the report. "In LA, Captain. Inglewood to be exact" Amy said to Sharon as she glanced over to look at Andy, then went back to looking at Sharon. "Do we know if she has kept in touch with Croelick since he was released from prison years ago?" Sharon asked Amy and Provenza. Andy moved forward in his chair, not knowing who they were talking about. "No Captain, we are still looking into that" Provenza said to Sharon. "Wait a minute, who's everybody talking about?" Andy inquired. Sharon looked up at him and handed him the report. "Apparently, Croelick had an admirer while he was sitting on Death Row. She sent him all kinds of letters back then" Sharon explained to him. "So, why were her fingerprints pulled off the dumpster from your condo if she lives in an apartment in Inglewood?" Andy said to Sharon. "That's a very good question" Sharon said to them.
TBC