CHAPTER 18 – FOCUS

They looked at the whiteboard. There wasn't much on it; the investigation 8 years ago hadn't been very thorough. Kate tried to feel optimistic – they hadn't even started. She looked at it like a job. She would have to be cold and detached. In a way, she simply had to be Sierra. Rick was calling her Kate now, but it didn't make much difference – it was just a name.

As she made this decision, she felt the relief wash over her. It shouldn't be so easy – but she was a veteran at this. She looked at Rick, completely calm and focused.

"So – when they spoke to me at the police station."

Rick gave himself a shake; he hadn't been concentrating.

"Right – yeah. So you should tell me..."

Kate nodded. That would be best. He was non-biased, and fresh eyes could be helpful. She tried to access the memory without feeling it – as though she was talking about somebody else. Playing a part, almost. Very meta...

"Well, they asked me if she had any enemies, but she didn't. Then they asked what she had been working on. I didn't know much about it but I told them what I did. She had been working on a case in Washington Heights. It was to do with... I think she was contacted by a man in prison... I remember my Dad was worried about her, he didn't like her working with someone like that. But I was so self-absorbed... I didn't pay much attention. I felt so bad at the time – but I was a teenager and she had a tendency to be completely caught up in her work. Most of the time she couldn't talk about it anyway, because it was confidential."

Rick tried not to think about her calm tone. This was a woman talking about the day her mother had been murdered. Minutes ago, she had been as he would have expected – unhappy, uncomfortable, nervous... But now she seemed totally relaxed. He hoped this was just her way of protecting herself – but even so...

"Did they ask you about anything else?"

Kate thought hard. "They asked me what she'd been doing recently, if she'd had any strange phone calls or meetings at weird times. I told them she was a lawyer, she was always in meetings or on the phone. But..."

She suddenly hurried to the whiteboard and began to write.

"What?"

"The phone call on Christmas day!"

"What?"

"I told them... Someone called her on Christmas day. We had two lines, a separate one for her office, and it was the office line that they called. She wasn't working, she had told us she was taking the day off. But she answered the phone and when she came back... She could only have been on the phone for a minute, but she was distant for a little while. She said it was a prank caller, made some joke about didn't they have anything better to do on Christmas... She came back to herself but I was worried. Mostly I was mad, actually. I thought it was to do with work.

"Were there any other calls like that?"

"The cops asked me that too. I don't know. I wasn't with her most of the time. Her office line did sometimes ring at night but that was nothing unusual."

"Did they ask you anything else?"

Kate nodded. "Yeah, loads. But just stuff about her life, and what I had done that day. They asked me if I knew what she was doing that day; I didn't know. They asked about her call, when she said she was going to be late, but she sounded normal. They asked what she was doing in that alley in Washington Heights. I had no idea. They even showed me a picture of where they found her. I'd never even been to Washington Heights, I knew I wouldn't recognise anything but they showed me anyway. Something about the place... They were really interested in it. Like, more than they should have been."

She began to write again.

"Her job explained why she might have been in that area, and she could easily have been chased into an alley. So why did they care about it so much?"

Rick watched her work. The soft, sweet, lost woman he had been with an hour ago was almost utterly gone. This was Sierra, no doubt. Her accent was even becoming more English. But Kate was in there somewhere. And he liked Sierra too.

"Maybe something else happened there. Could you find out?"

Kate nodded. "Well – I mean, I could if I had access to my usual resources. I might have to... I don't know how to find out."

"Libraries have records."

"Yeah, but not of cases."

"No. But they have newspaper records."

"Okay – but how would we find anything? We don't know when something may or may not have happened there, we don't know what my Mom was up to or..."

Rick suddenly had an idea.

"What happened to her stuff?"

"Uh... Nothing. They didn't even take any as evidence because of the gang violence stuff."

"Did she keep a diary of meetings and the like?"

"Yes..."

"So we could look at it?"

"It's in New York, though."

"Cities are the best place to hide."

Kate shook her head. "I can't. It's... My father."

Rick frowned. "I could go."

"You wouldn't know what to look for."

"You could tell me. You could even just tell me what to take."

"I don't even know if he lives there any more..."

"Would he really have thrown out her stuff?"

Kate sighed. She did not want to go down this road. She smiled weakly. "I thought we were going to LA."

Rick grinned. "We're going to do one better. We're going to solve this case."

"He can't know. He can't know I'm alive."

She sat down on the bed. Rick could see a lot more Kate again. He put his arm around her.

"Maybe he'd be happy."

"After what I did to him? I just left!"

"To protect him."

"To protect myself. I just wanted to run away from everything."

"From what you told me, I don't think you had much of a choice."

"I could have contacted him. I could have helped him somehow. He was broken, for years. He's sober now, but he hasn't been for long. And combine me with the fact that we're looking into Mom's murder – no. He just wouldn't cope."

Rick nodded. He understood. But he wished Kate would change her mind. He had a feeling no matter what she'd done, no matter how long she'd been away, any father would want his daughter back. Oh well. He had at least a day on the road to convince her.

Suddenly she looked at him.

"What?"

"You say what too much. And I just... Could we wait a day or so?"

Rick didn't understand. "Wha- I mean, how do you mean?"

"I... I'm not ready. I want to do it, I want it to be over, I want to fight but... I'm better in shoot outs. I can do guns, I can do fights, I can do car chases. I can think on my feet, when the adrenaline's pumping and it's life or death. That's what I'm trained to do, that's the job I know. This... I'm not a detective. I solve things. But the way I usually find out who's to blame is because he's pointing a gun at my head – so I shoot him first. All this... creeping about, staying off the radar, investigating by thinking and sitting... It's hard. And I don't like it."

"You want to know, though."

"Of course! But I need some time to adjust. Just a day, maybe two, before we..."

"This is about seeing your father again too. And thinking about your mother."

"Yes. I know it's going to be hard and I know I have to deal with it but Rick I just- I want some time with you first. We're going to have to think so much, I'm having to be so strong and hard and cold and all I really want to do is forget all this shit and just be with you!"

She hadn't even known she was thinking it until she said it. Rick smiled at her.

"I'm so happy you said that."

Kate smiled back. "I mean it. I... I'm not going to go all sappy and say things that can't be true, and we shouldn't pretend that this is something which can last forever. But you make me feel... I've never felt anything like it before. And it's fantastic. I don't want to leave it behind."

Rick put his hand on her jaw and drew her face right up to his.

"There are people trying to kill us. You're pretty much having an identity crisis. You're defying all your scary high up bosses. And as much as your suggestion appeals to me – is it really worth it?"

Kate looked into his eyes. "I'm Kate Beckett, and fuck it, Rick, if I'm going to die, I'd rather do it in a 5 star hotel with you than digging myself into a murder case which will rip me up inside and probably still remain unsolved."

Rick laughed. "And how you managed to make that sound hot I will never know."

"Shut up and kiss me, writer boy."

Rick did as she commanded. Then he got up, pushed the whiteboard into the bathroom, closed the door on it, and went back to the bed.