More Than Luck

By: Kadi

Rated: M

Chapter 15

"I still don't get it," Rusty said to Sanchez when they stepped out of the elevator. "How is that not better than the original? Those special effects were amazing."

"It's RoboCop," Sanchez stated. "Some classics should not be messed with. It was a good movie, decent explosions, but I like the other one better."

"I don't know." Rusty shrugged. "I think I've only seen it once, and I don't remember a lot about it. I think it was okay, but I liked this one."

"You're young," Sanchez smirked as they rounded the corner, but it faded. The hall was empty. There should have been a uniformed officer on duty. He frowned. It didn't seem likely that the Captain would have dismissed her protection detail. "Was the Captain going out tonight?" Maybe she wasn't home.

"No, I don't think so." Rusty thought about it. "She didn't say anything about it. She usually tells me." He pulled out his phone to check for a text. The last thing he had from Sharon was her telling him to have fun.

"Huh." Sanchez wasn't sure why he felt odd about it. The Captain didn't tell Rusty she was going out, and he knew for a fact that Flynn went to meetings on Thursday nights. If she was out, she wasn't with him. "Hey, Rusty, do me a favor. Let me see your key."

"Yeah sure…" Rusty handed it to him with a frown. Sanchez was acting odd all of a sudden. He'd gone stiff, like at work. He watched the detective reach for the door and turn the lock. It gave way and the door pushed open. Rusty felt cold suddenly. "Sharon wouldn't leave the door unlocked."

"No, I don't think she would either." Sanchez gave Rusty back his keys and held out a hand, indicating he should wait. Sanchez eased the door open and looked in side. Music was playing, that indicated someone had been at home. Sanchez reached behind him to the gun tucked into the back waist of his jeans. "Hey, Rusty, stay here. I'm going to check it out. Maybe Flynn got home early and, you know. You don't want to see that."

"Saw enough of that, actually," Rusty stood with his back against the wall beside the door. He focused on the opposite side of the hall. His hands felt damp, he rubbed them against his jeans. There was something in the air, something heavy and dark. It made his heart beat faster and his stomach roll with a thick, uneasy feeling.

"Right, so stay here. You two…" He pointed at the two officers that made up Rusty's security. "Your eyes do not leave him. He does not move from this spot." When he had their acknowledgement, he moved forward. Sanchez scanned the entry way. When he saw that the chain was cut, he pulled the gun and held it against the side of his leg. "Captain, it's Detective Sanchez. Ma'am, are you home?" He called out, hoping for an answer. His head inclined, listening for any sound. All her heard was the music playing. His eyes swept the living room as he walked quietly into the condo. Sanchez glanced down the hall, and that was when his gut twisted painfully.

The captain was slumped against the wall, head bowed, and not moving. The large red stain stood out in contrast to the pale green sweater, and smeared in a downward arch against the wall, indicating that she had, at one point been on her feet. Sanchez's jaw clenched tightly. The first instinct was to rush forward, but training held him back. He lifted his gun and swept the outer rooms of the apartment first. He checked every corner before his feet drew him down the hall. They felt heavy, and he thought of Rusty waiting in the hall and swore quietly when he knelt beside his captain.

"Ma'am?" He was silently hoping for some visual sign of life. Her gun was laying beside her, hand still covering it. Sanchez reached out, feather light touch as he pushed her hair aside and laid his fingers against her neck. Relief so thick he wanted to cry swept over him with the steady thrumming against his fingers. She moved, drawing in a breath, and mumbled something. "It's okay, Ma'am, I've got you." He lifted the arm draped over her side and winced. The cut was deep and several inches long. Sanchez set his gun on the floor beside him and shrugged out of his jacket. He pulled his t-shirt off, leaving him in just the plain white muscle shirt he wore underneath. He folded it over twice and pressed it against her side.

Sharon hissed. She hummed in pain, and shook her head in an attempt to clear it. "Bedroom," she said again, more loudly. Her head felt too heavy, as did the rest of her. "Julio…" It was a struggle to stay awake. "Rusty?"

"Waiting in the hall ma'am." He tipped her head back against the wall, looked into her eyes. "I'm going to check the bedroom. Is Lieutenant Flynn here?"

"No," she sucked in another breath. Her side ached, she supposed that was a good thing. "Meeting… then here."

"Good. Good, okay Ma'am." Sanchez lay her arm across the makeshift bandage to hold it in place before he curled his fingers around his gun and stood up. He put his shoulder against the opposite wall and walked slowly toward the first open bedroom door. There was blood smeared on the frame, marking that as the room she was trying to tell him about. His gun swept the room when he looked inside. He found one perp down, in a puddle of blood. Sanchez nudged the figure's leg with his foot. He didn't move. He scanned the floor, saw the knife. He kicked it farther away and then used his foot to push the subject over. He recognized the guy. Hadn't seen that one coming. "You came after the wrong lady, pervert." Julio identified two bullet holes and knelt down to get a pulse. He didn't feel one. He felt some grim satisfaction in that, but the Captain wouldn't. Sanchez stood up and reached for his phone. He still needed to sweep the rest of the condo, he did that while he dialed for back up.

He checked the bathroom, found another gun on the floor. Then he stepped back into the hall and moved toward Rusty's room and the secondary bathroom, then the small laundry room that was really more of a closet. "This is Detective Julio Sanchez, Major Crimes division," He he spoke to the dispatch officer, gave her his badge number. "I need units and two ambulances at the following address. I have shots fired and an officer down." Satisfied at the emptiness of the rest of the rooms, Julio walked back into the hall. Movement at the end of the hall had his gun raising again.

He and Flynn stood, guns pointed at one another. Seconds ticked by as they realized who they were looking at. Sanchez lowered his first. "It's clear," he said. He followed the other man's gaze. He was pale, ashen. His arm fell limply to his side as he made the same, first heavy walk down the hall that Sanchez had made earlier. "She's alive." Julio could spare him that at least. "Bus is on its way. The other guy isn't. She got his ass."

"Of course she did." Flynn knelt down, cupped her face. "You've seen her shoot before. Was there any doubt?" For that one terrifying moment he had a glimpse of life without her. Finding Rusty in the hall, pale, eyes dark with panic, and not even capable of speaking had knocked the air out of him. Seeing Sharon slumped in the hall, bloody, and not moving, had nearly felled him completely. "Hey babe, you want to open those eyes." He saw them flutter, she was trying. "Come on, sweetheart, let me see you. Sanchez, can you…"

"I have Rusty." He strode quickly back to the door. The kid was slumped, sitting. He looked up, terror on his face, tears in his eyes. His guards had positioned themselves only a few paces from him, one on each end of the hall.

"Is she dead?" His stomach twisted painfully, and he thought he might lose his dinner. Rusty inhaled deeply. "Just tell me if she's dead, I don't want to hear the rest of it. The stuff you normally tell people… the fam—families." He bit his lip hard, bruising it.

"She's not." Sanchez knelt down and put a hand on his shoulder. "She's hurt. It's pretty bad, but she's alive. Rusty, it's over." He held the kid steady, pressed him against the wall as an anchor. "The guy… I think he was your letter writer. She got him. He's dead."

"Who…" Rusty saw bright spots behind his eyes. She was alive. It kept echoing in his head. Hurt. Sharon was hurt. She was alive. "Who was it?"

"Douglas Grand." Sanchez saw no need in lying to the kid. The kid tried to get up and he held him back. "No, Rusty. Just stay here. Trust me. Don't get up yet. Just breathe a minute." He took his phone back out and began dialing again. "Sir, it's Sanchez…" He kept an eye on Rusty while he filled Provenza in on what they'd found.

By the time he was off the phone with Provenza, the first officers were arriving. Sanchez lifted his badge. "I'm LAPD. Inside there is another LAPD detective, he is with the victim. This is her residence. She is an LAPD captain, you'll find the suspect in the master bedroom, dead." The officers eyes fell to Rusty. "This is the Captain's son. He's unharmed." Sanchez stood up slowly. "There was supposed to be a patrol officer on this door. I want to know what happened! I want every inch of this building checked. Do you understand me? You speak to everyone. You open every door. Do you got me Donnelly?" Sanchez recognize most of the officers, and they him. He was getting angry now. Now that he could afford to get angry, he was letting himself feel it. "Some asshole came in here and hurt my Captain. I want to know where the hell her protection is."

It was while Sanchez was busy yelling at the uniforms that Rusty made his move to get into the apartment. He crawled on his hands and knees to the door and then stumbled inside on his feet. He was struck, at first, by how absolutely normal the place looked. Then he saw Flynn in the hall, bent over a familiar dark head. "Sharon? Oh god. Sharon!"

"Rusty, damnit." Sanchez caught him and pulled him back. "You cannot go in there." He wrapped his arms around his torso and pulled him back.

"Let go of me!" Rusty struggled. "Sharon!"

The kid was skinny but he was strong. Sanchez pulled him out into the hall, grunting the entire way. "Rusty, you have to stay out here." He pushed the kid up against the wall again, this time with his arm stretched across his chest, under his neck. "Stop fighting!" Julio got in his face, yelling loudly, like he did with suspects to get their attention. When Rusty stopped, he lowered his voice. "You can't go in there, Rusty, because it's a crime scene now. Okay? They're going to bring her out. The paramedics will come, and they will bring her out. But you can't go in there. I'm sorry, but I have to secure the scene. Do you understand?"

He was breathing hard, but he nodded. Rusty forced down the bile that had risen in his throat. "You promise she's alive?"

"She's alive," Sanchez said again. "It looks bad, I know. She was talking, Rusty. She was able to tell me where to look and to ask about you. That's a good thing." The kid needed facts. It usually calmed him down when they gave him cold, hard, facts. "He cut her. It was deep, and it looked like maybe she got a little banged struggling with him." Sanchez nodded to the paramedics coming down the hall. "See, they're here already. When they put her in the ambulance, I'll put you in a car, I'll send you with her. Okay?"

"Okay," Rusty breathed. "Okay," he said again. "I'm…" Rusty nodded. "I'm sorry. I just…" He pushed his hands into his hair. "This is my fault."

"No," Julio said firmly. "No it isn't. Grand screwed up. He did it when he decided to pick you up on Sunset Boulevard. He screwed up again when he took the coward's way out and instead of trying to learn from his mistake, he decided to scare you and come after the Captain. It's on him, Rusty. Not you. You made your mistakes. They weren't part of this."

"That's what Sharon says." Rusty said quietly.

"Yeah well, start listening to here," Julio told him. There were other officers arriving, uniforms and SIS. Buzz walked up with his camera, looking shaken.

"The Lieutenant called me." Buzz shrugged. "It's an OIS, but… he wanted me here. He's on his way."

"It's going to be complicated," Sanchez agreed. Major Crimes couldn't work the scene because it was their Captain. FID would have similar conflict of interest.

"He was going to call Chief Taylor," Buzz said. "Rusty, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." He nodded slowly. He was staring at the floor. "I'm just… waiting."

"Paramedics are inside," Sanchez explained. "Soon as they leave with the Captain, you can start filming."

"Right." The three of them fell silent. It didn't seem there was anything else that could be said.

It felt like it took forever before the paramedics started through the door with the gurney. Rusty jolted again, but Julio was ready. He kept an arm on his shoulder. Strapped down, covered with a blanked, and with an oxygen mask covering her face, Sharon had never looked so small. He made a noise, lost somewhere between a whimper and a sob.

Flynn was behind them, he stopped in front of Rusty. "She's stable." It took everything to stand there. To not follow the gurney into the elevator. The sharp ache in his chest had not eased or stopped. His stomach twisted when he looked at the kid. "Come on…" He jerked his head at Rusty. "You're with me."

"You're not…" Rusty looked confused. "You aren't going with her?" It almost seemed crazy to him.

"Are you kidding me?" Flynn shook his head. "Look, kid, if I leave you here she'll kick my ass. You're comin' with me." He put a hand on Rusty's shoulder and pulled him forward. "We'll take my car, once we know how she really is, we'll call the other two."

Buzz and Sanchez watched them go. When they disappeared around the corner, Buzz looked at Sanchez. "Ready?"

"No." Julio sighed. "Guess we need to do it anyway."

They were both reluctant to step into the condo, but they went… and in the course of filming and investigating, they tried to keep SIS from trashing it too thoroughly or invading their Captain's privacy beyond what was absolutely necessary.

Lieutenant Provenza arrived a few minutes after the Captain was taken away, hot on his heels were Assistant Chief Taylor, Lieutenant Monroe and Sergeant Elliot, both of FID.

"Sanchez," Provenza called him over. "What do we know?"

Julio moved down the short hall, skirting the bandages that the medics had left littering the floor, and joined them in the living room. "Sirs." He nodded to each of them. "Uniforms found Officer Scott in the stairwell. He was unconscious and bound. It looked like he had been tazered. He and the Captain have both been taken to Cedars." Julio took them down the hall. "Okay so… the chain was cut. In the bag," he nodded to it near the hall entry, "they found lock picking tools. Looks like he used those to get around the rest of it. The Captain was back here. When I arrived, there was music playing."

They stopped outside the bedroom. The body had not been touched. They were still waiting on Kendall, or someone else from the Medical Examiner's office. "Good lord," Taylor muttered.

Sanchez followed his gaze to the blood smearing the door frame and the wall. "It's the Captain's, sir. She was cut pretty badly." He stepped into the room and stopped. He pointed to his left, toward the open bathroom door. "Water in the tub, music playing, I don't think she heard him enter, not at first. The water was off when I got here, so I don't know. She might have heard something, gone to check. She knew that Rusty would be late, he sent her a text that we caught a later movie. Lieutenant Flynn goes to the AA meeting at the church near his place on Thursdays… but she was expecting him. Anyway," Sanchez continued. He pointed at the frame. "Bullet hole and casing in the hall. He missed the Captain, and they struggled here. It looks like she hit him with the lamp. She had her gun with her, we'll probably find that the one on the floor there," he pointed to it, "is the suspect's. So they struggle, the Captain was able to get her gun, double tapped. One in the shoulder, one in the chest. We think the blood there," he walked over and indicated the smear near the bed, "is hers. We found the phone under the bed. It's too far out of reach, so I think she tried to make it to the living room. We found a cell phone by the sofa. It looks like the Captain's."

Taylor was nodding slowly. "That's what we think happened, detective. What do we know?"

Sanchez nodded. That was his preliminary report on the scene. Now for the official. "When I got here with Rusty, it seemed odd that the officer wasn't on the door. I didn't think the Captain would get rid of her protection detail, not after the last few letters. She's been really adamant about Rusty having someone on him all the time and busting his chain for ditching them those first few times. It didn't seem like her." Sanchez gestured with his notepad to the hall. "I tried the door and found it unlocked. I heard the music, and was hoping Lieutenant Flynn skipped his meeting. I asked Rusty to wait in the hall, while I checked it out, just in case. I found the Captain in the hall, injured, and the suspect dead. Lieutenant Flynn arrived as I was clearing the rest of the apartment." The Detective shrugged. "After that, I was in the hall, with Rusty. We felt it was important to keep him out of the apartment. Lieutenant Flynn stayed inside with the Captain until the paramedics arrived. But he did tell the uniforms that the Captain normally keeps her gun in the table by the bed when she is home." He shifted, uncomfortably, because now they were getting into that mirky area where they started invading the Captain's privacy. They all knew how Flynn would know that, but it wasn't discussed openly, not at work anyway. They were now straddling that gray line where work was personal.

"Okay, alright." Provenza nodded. "Thank you, Julio. That's enough. Why don't you join Buzz outside."

"Lieutenant," Taylor turned to the FID officer. "What do you want to do?" There was a Federal mandate on officer involved shootings that he couldn't override.

He and Elliot shared a look. They felt just as helpless. "We still have to work it as an OIS. It's pushing the line, but she isn't our boss anymore. I don't think we have a conflict of interest. Unfortunately, Captain Raydor is the one that I would check with…" Even now, after her transfer.

"This is what we're going to do," Taylor decided. "FID and SIS will handle this," he could see Provenza gearing up to protest. "I understand the delicacy of the situation, but had the Captain not put two in the suspect who broke into her home, I would let Major Crimes proceed. We're in a tough position here, Lieutenant. I cannot undermine a federal mandate. However…" Taylor's voice rose. "We are talking about an LAPD Captain, and so I expect both FID and SIS to walk the line. This case will be treated with respect. Am I clear?"

Monroe nodded. He would have it no other way. "Yes sir."

"You don't have to worry," Elliot directed it toward Provenza. "We get it." Officially there might not be a conflict of interest due to her transfer, but she was still one of theirs.

Provenza wasn't thrilled. "Julio, Buzz," he started toward the hall. "Let's go. Major Crimes isn't working this one." He hadn't expected they would, but it was worth a try. It was why he had sent Tao and Sykes to Cedars. "If we're needed," he tossed back over his shoulder, "We'll be at the hospital."

Buzz with his camera, and Sanchez with his hands in his pockets followed him out of the condo. The three men were silent until they stepped into the elevator. "Julio," Provenza spoke quietly. "What do you really think happened?"

Sanchez drew a breath. "I don't know, sir. He surprised her. Probably because she thought he was Lieutenant Flynn. After that, all I know is… she kicked his ass, sir."

"That she did," Provenza shook his head. "That she most definitely did."