Chapter Ten

Gail wasn't exactly sure how she made it home. She moved on autopilot, muscle memory taking each turn as it came.

Somehow, she managed a couple of hours of fitful, teary sleep. She hated herself for what she'd done, and yet she wouldn't – she couldn't – go back. She couldn't look Holly in the eye, and tell her that she wasn't still in love with. The problem wasn't that it was a lie. No, it was just the opposite.

The problem was that Gail Peck was head over goddamn heels. She was in love with Holly Stewart, and that was one of the scariest things that had ever happened to her.

It wasn't that she'd never been in love before; once upon a time, she had loved Nick, but that had started to die the second time he left her without a word. Chris, she had liked, but she wasn't sure she had ever really loved him.

She wanted desperately to be a better person. She wanted to not be insecure, and paranoid, and angry at everyone that pissed her off even the slightest.

This morning at the range, her shots were wildly off, and no amount of pulling the trigger could make her feel any less shitty.

After three magazines, she gave up, scrunching her target into the trash can. The tears were coming back up again, and she pushed them away like she had so many other times before.

If she was lucky, she could probably make it through the locker room and sneak into the back of parade before people started asking questions. It wasn't that—

'Peck,' came a voice. Gail turned. She wasn't sure who she was expecting it to be. It was Callaghan.

'Sir?'

He appraised her, no doubt seeing the redness of her eyes, the hollow look on her face, not to mention the fact that she'd called him "sir."

'You feel like riding with me today?' he asked. 'I'm running through some persons of interest that had links to the victims that the pathologist identified yesterday.' It was news to Gail that Holly had IDed some of their victims, but then, they hadn't exactly had a chance to talk properly last night.

'Uh…sure,' she said. She knew that if she said anything else, everything would start spilling out. Callaghan might have already seen her at her worst, but she wasn't really intent on letting him see anything more. Frankly, she was surprised he was coming to her. Usually, he went to his perfect princess Andy.

Though, she imagined that he probably wasn't all too happy about seeing Nick and Andy together either, and the thought of having something approaching an ally comforted her a little. If she couldn't have one in Holly then she might, at least, have one in Luke. Sleeping with him would probably be taking the "self-destruction" thing one step too far.

'Out in the cold again?' Luke asked, and there was a look of understanding in his eyes, as they pulled out of the divisional parking lot. Even though they didn't always agree on things, Gail got along with Callaghan more than she did a lot of people. He understood her desire to isolate herself from other people, and he didn't judge her for it.

Gail gave a sort of half shrug.

'Want to talk about it?'

'Nope.'

'Okay,' he said, and it really was okay. Callaghan was an asshole sometimes, but you didn't have to dig too deep to figure out he was a nice guy. 'So our first victim was Jason Holder; he has a few priors, and some known associates that are interesting enough to keep looking into.'

Gail looked over Holder's arrest record. 'Assault, Assault with a deadly weapon, possession with intent…' she started. 'Charming.'

'Yeah,' Luke agreed. 'If we'd found him a little more out in the open, I might've thought we were looking at someone trying to clean house. You haven't lost a uniform lately, have you?'

'Ha ha.' Gail gave him a look. To her surprise, he smiled. It wasn't a big smile, but it was a smile (and a non-sarcastic one, which was more than most people got. 'No psychics, either.'

That, he actually laughed at, and Gail found herself relaxing. She bit her lip. 'About that time…there was something I never told you. The reason my uniform was in the car was because I…I was kind of living out of it.'

Luke didn't say anything, but he had definitely heard her, so she continued.

'I'd…just broken up with Chris, and I was too…proud to want to go live at home again, because at my age, when other people are getting mortgages, that just felt…I don't know. Pathetic.'

'You're not pathetic,' Luke said, and for a brief second, Gail got the impression that he'd been there at one point as well. 'If you were pathetic, I never would have brought you along.'

That, Gail laughed at. It wasn't a happy laugh, exactly, but she was starting to feel a little better.

'So why tell me now?' he asked, almost casually. 'I mean, it's not as though I ever would have figured it out.'

'Well I'm trying this whole "being honest" with people thing, because it's come to my attention that I'm kind of an idiot about telling people how I feel.'

'Wow,' he said. 'That bad?'

'Do you want me to get started on everything that's wrong with your life, Homicide? Because that's a pretty long list.'

Luke just grinned.

…

Traci had just closed her locker when she heard a knock on the open door of the locker room. She looked up to see a dark-haired woman with glasses. She looked vaguely familiar, and it took Traci a few seconds to realize that it was Gail's...Holly. Her eyes were red, and she looked like she'd been crying.

'Holly?' Traci asked, frowing.

'I screwed up,' said Holly, bluntly. Traci stared at her, torn between surprise and confusion. They'd never even spoken properly before, but for some reason, Traci felt like she should have expected this. Not because she thought that Holly would "screw things up," so to speak, but because she knew that Gail was...well, Gail.

'She bolted in the middle of the night, huh?'

Holly looked at her, a little surprised. 'You sound like you saw that one coming.

'I've seen Gail Peck run away from a lot of things. When she and Chris dated, half the station was taking bets on how long it would take for her to do something to send him running. What they didn't get was that it was always going to be the other way around.'

Holly frowned, and Traci realized that she wasn't sure if Holly knew that Gail and Chris had dated.

'What I mean is that when something goes wrong, and her first instinct is to run as far away as possible, instead of actually trying to fix the problem. If you really like her, then my advice is to still be around when she musters up the courage to come back.'

'She's not...' Holly seemed to struggle with her words. 'I just...I've been burned by a lot of straight girls who get turned off men, and just want a quick fling.'

Traci was speechless. She felt like she'd missed the point completely. There had clearly been some major miscommunication somewhere along the line, and if Gail wasn't answering her phone, it mean she was almost definitely trying to avoid the issue.

'Holly,' she said, firmly. 'We both know that Gail is not the best person about telling people how she feels, but I need to tell you that she is goddamn crazy for you. I have never seen her so happy as when she's talking about you.'

'She talks about me?' Holly asked, in a softish sort of voice.

'At first I thought she got replaced by an alien imposter,' Traci said, with a laugh, and the realization that she'd probably been letting Leo watch way too much science fiction. 'Give her a couple of days. Eventually, she'll pick up your calls.'

Holly nodded. There was a long pause. Finally, she said, 'I'm Holly, by the way. Nice to meet you.'

...

Working with the Detectives was usually interesting, but today seemed to be just as boring as canvassing neighbours, only maybe with a much narrower focus.

'That's ninety percent of the job, Peck,' Callaghan told her. 'You should know that.'

Well then that was ninety percent of the job that she'd probably suck at. Detective rotations were coming up again, and Gail was toying with the idea of putting an application in again. If only because she'd get the "Elaine Peck disappointment treatment" if she didn't. Talking to people had never really been her thing.

Her phone vibrated in her vest, and she swore. She wasn't even sure why she even bothered having it on; everyone that had tried to call her had been given the silent treatment. Maybe that was a little petty, but they'd get over it. She wasn't ready to talk yet. When she was ready to talk, she would answer.

Holly had tried about eight times today– well above the next in line, which was Traci at four, which probably meant that Holly and Traci had talked. Another time, Gail might have been upset by that, but for some reason she wasn't, and she had no idea why.

Gail stared at it, deciding whether or not she wanted to answer.

'I'll catch you up,' she told Luke and he nodded, continuing up the stairs.

'Excuse me,' said a voice, and Gail jumped. She slipped her phone back into her pocket, and turned to face the man that had spoken. He was about thirty, with sandy hair, and a strangely vacant expression on his face. In one hand, he was carrying a plastic grocery bag, filled with what looked like cat food.

'Is everything okay?' he asked, his voice even.

'There were some bodies found not far from here,' Gail told him. 'You might have had some officers come around asking questions?'

'No, I haven't been home.'

'You know a guy named Jason Holder?' Gail asked, and the guy's expression didn't seem to change. His eyebrow lifted slightly, but that was it.

'Yeah, I mean, he was my neighbour.'

'You know of anyone that might want to kill him?'

'Well, he was kind of a dick.' The guy lifted a hand to scratch his cheek. There was blood under his fingernails. Gail tried not to let the frown show on her face.

There was something wrong. He was way too calm, too cocky, for someone being asked about his neighbour's murder, even if his neighbour was a scumbag. They were half a block from where the bodies had been found. There was no way it was that easy.

Gail clawed through her memory for the names of one of the other victims. If he'd known one...

'Does the name Philip Wilder mean anything to you?'

He gave her a look, as if evaluating her level of threat, and then half a second later, Gail found herself hit in the face with a bag full of cat food. She stumbled backwards, swearing.

The guy (she didn't even know his goddamn name) was running like crazy, and Gail had to recompose herself for half a second before she could give chase.

'In pursuit of suspect,' Gail called into her radio, following it up with her location. She didn't have time to call out for Callaghan, but with any luck, he would figure things out.

Half a block down, it quickly became pretty damn clear he was heading back to the dump site, which gave a little credence to the theory that he was their serial killer.. She put another call out, hardly paying attention to whatever responses came.

Gun out, she moved forward quickly, but cautiously. The dark of the trees closed on on her.

If this was the guy that had left a bunch of bodies in a pit, then he knew the place a lot better than she did.

The tree root came out of nowhere, and Gail didn't quite manage to stop herself before she tripped head over heels, landing heavily on her arm. Her weapon had flown from her grip, and she had no idea where it had landed. What kind of metaphor that was for her life, she didn't want to know.

His hands went to her throat, and the first thought that ran through her head was, this is not going to happen to me again.

Heel of the palm to the neck, knee to the groin, and a foot to the face for good measure. At least, that was how it was supposed to go; the neck strike hardly left an impact, and the kick missed entirely, but not even this guy was going to ignore a knee to the junk.

Gail's head was spinning, and she was pretty sure she might have sprained something. There was no time to think about any of that, because he had a gun, and hers was who the fuck knows where. Her eyes darted, and she spotted it just within arms reach. Her fingers clutched the grip the moment he lifted his gun and fired.

From an early age, Gail had been taught about guns.

Before she'd ever even touched one, she learned that before it was a weapon, a gun was first and foremost, a tool. There were a hundred other options you could take before you pulled the trigger.

Every day, her mother and father brought their service weapons home. Many a time, Gail had watched as they locked them away in the gun safe in their bedroom closet. More than once, as her father tucked the keys back into his pocket he would say to her, 'Remember, Gail – guns are not toys.'

They had point blank refused to let her play with toy guns – not that she really wanted to. But their insistence on the matter had kickstarted her stubbornness streak.

The day she turned fourteen, they took her to the shooting range. Well, it was supposed to have been "they," but her mother and father had been working, so it had fallen to Steve to take her. Steve, who was a few months shy of twenty-four, and half-way through his first year in the force.

Her first clip, not a single shot hit the target. More than a few hit the ground in front of the target, and one clipped the edge of the cardboard, but she knew that that didn't really count.

'It's not kicking back too much?' Steve asked, trying to hide the frown that was spread across his face.

'No.' Gail shook her head.

'Okay.' He thought for a few moments. 'The target's probably too far away for you,' he said, decidedly. 'Let's try it at ten metres.'

Ten metres was a little easier – at least her shots were hitting the target now. She got a few pretty close to the centre, but no bullseyes, which was a little disappointing.

'Want to try the nine millimetre?' Steve asked, and Gail panicked slightly. 'It's not so bad,' he continued, seeing the look on her face. 'As long as you keep a firm grip, and a solid stance, you'll be fine.'

The nine millimetre would have been enough for Gail, but apparently that was not the point of whatever lesson her parents were trying to teach.

'Mom made you do this, didn't she,' Gail said, miserable. She had managed a single shot with the .45, before the wrist pain became too much.

'She wanted you to have experience with some of the more powerful weapons,' Steve said, which was pretty much a straight "yes." Gail rolled her eyes. It wasn't as though she even wanted to be a cop anyway. She didn't know what she wanted to do, just that it had to be something completely unrelated to law enforcement.

The targets came forward, and Steve reached up to pull Gail's down.

He pointed out the hole from the .45, in the middle of the 8 ring. It was a little under a centimetre in diameter. Gail stared at it. She could almost poke her index finger straight through it. Whatever damage it did to a piece of cardboard was nothing compared to the damage it would doto a person.

The next day, she could barely move her arms. Steve seemed to find that fact highly amusing, given that he'd been the one that wheedled her into actually doing what Mom wanted.

'What are they trying to prove?' Gail grumbled.

'They're trying to make a point that you only pull the trigger if you really have to,' Steve told her. His voice had a certain gravity to it, and it wasn't until a few years later that Gail learned he'd shot dead a murder suspect not three days prior.

Gail had been a police officer for four years, and she had thankfully managed to avoid shooting anyone. Unfortunately, all she did have to show for her time was the incessant nightmares, a pay cut, and a string of broken relationships (both sexual and otherwise). Everyone else was moving forward, whereas Gail's life seemed to go backwards every step she tried to take. She would have considered it ironic, if she had any patience for the concept.

There were two sides to the coin; being a Peck might have meant that some things were easier (even if that hadn't really helped her much at all), but it also meant she was held to a higher standard when she fucked up. It meant that it wasn't just her superiors that were disappointed or angry, but her mother, and her father, and everyone else.

Everything she touched turned to crap, and today was just the same as any other day.

The first bullet hit her thigh, and her body started to crumple. Everything started moving in slow motion. An eternity passed – enough time for a million empires to rise and fall. Her head pounded. Her body shook. Her finger squeezed the trigger as she fell.

The second bullet hit her vest, just below the heart. Gail had never been hit in the ribcage with a sledgehammer before, but she imagined that it felt a little something like this.

The third bullet hit her neck, close enough to her arm that she might call it her shoulder, but she didn't even realize it until she had dropped to her knees, hand to her throat. She was aware of how fucking hard it was to breath before she even registered the pain. The blood seemed to pour through her fingers, as though they were nothing more than a ghostly visage. Another eternity passed, and her knees buckled beneath her. She fell awkwardly, vaguely aware of a jarring pain as her elbows hit the dirt.

It was less than a minute before her hands were covered in blood, and she heard Callaghan's voice calling her name. The sound was muted, as though the words were coming from another world.

'Medic's on the way,' he said, and maybe it was her imagination, but there was a streak of blood across his cheek. Had he been hit, too?

'Luke,' Gail started, and the blood bubbled on her lips. Must've bit her tongue. She wasn't sure if the words were even coming out. She was still half on her side, which made things awkward, but Callaghan knew better than to move her too much.

Death's cold hands brushed against her, and for the first time in her life, she knew she was going to die.

It was hot – so freaking hot – and the trim of her jacket was itching against her neck. It was probably sticky with blood by now, which meant that she'd have to take it to the dry cleaners. Again.

She closed her eyes, and thought of Ross Perik. On some days – the lowest of the low – she wished to God that it had been her, not Jerry, that had died at his hands. Considering how much she'd screwed up her life since then, it would have been better for Traci, and for everyone else, if he'd lived and she had died.

Holly…well, she never would have known Holly. And maybe Holly would have been better off for it. At least now, she could find someone that treated her the way she deserved to be treated. Someone that didn't pull away at every turn. Maybe in another life, they could have been happy, and Gail wished like hell that it could have been this one.

Is this how Jerry had felt, lying there, bleeding to death?

Helpless, and yet…

Accepting.

There was too much blood, too much pain, for it to end any other way. The pain was giving way to numbness, and the only thing Gail could feel now was Callaghan's hand holding hers. He spoke to her, and she spoke back, but she wasn't really sure what she was saying. They'd never really been close close (she's not really close close with anyone), but she was glad that he was there. The thought of dying alone was…

She only wished it was somewhere a little nicer. Out here, the sound of the birds was starting to piss her off. The sunshine hurt her eyes.

When it started to become dark, and cold, and quiet, she was almost relieved.

Okay, *now* you're allowed to kill me.