"So you arrested Danny," Dempsey said, turning to glare at Harry. "Well done!"
Harry turned away from Dempsey to glance again at the paused picture of, who she now knew to be, Tony Borelli, dragging Roberto away. What a mess.
"Where is he?" Dempsey asked. "Where's Danny?"
Harry's head shot back to Dempsey. He didn't realize that Danny had been injured.
Then the telephone on Spikings's desk rang and he put up a hand to silence them as he answered it.
"Yes Sir, but there's been a slight hitch," Spikings said into the receiver, whilst pointing to the ceiling and mouthing to Harry, "it's them upstairs."
Harry bit her lip.
"The man we have in custody is Daniel Borelli, Tony's brother… yes, we did too, Sir… no, we don't know why he was registered as deceased… yes, we have only just found out ourselves, Sir…" Spikings gritted his teeth the more that the man upstairs harassed him with ridiculous questions. "No, we don't know the whereabouts of Tony Borelli… That would be advisable Sir," he said, covering the receiver and whispering, "He's checking with Immigration."
Dempsey's eyes moved coldly to Harry's. Hers flicked to his briefly, and then to Spikings as they waited nervously for some news.
Finally, the man upstairs returned to the call.
"Right Sir," Spikings replied. "Yes, Sir, I'm on my way up now," he said, hanging up the phone.
"Tony has left the country," he informed them.
Dempsey sprung out of the chair, throwing his arms in the air. "Great! Whatever happened to 'sharin' everythin'' eh Harry?" he accused.
"Well, you were working on your own lead," she replied lamely.
"Don't give me that," he came back angrily.
"Alright, alright," Spikings cut in, standing. "I can see that you two haven't changed at all…"
"I'm gonna go see Danny," Dempsey announced. "Are ya gonna tell me where he is?" he asked Harry.
"Sorry to interrupt this little tete-a-tete," Spikings began, "but some of us have more important things to consider. I've been called upstairs for a meeting. Dempsey," he began in a warning voice, "Go and see Daniel by all means, but you come back here afterwards, understood?"
Dempsey seemed to consider this for a moment before replying reluctantly with a shrug, "Sure."
Spikings gave a satisfactory nod and turned to leave, glancing over his shoulder and shaking his head as Dempsey and Harry resumed their argument. He closed the door on them.
"Where the bloody hell is he then?" Dempsey yelled.
"If you stop shouting at me for a second, I might be prepared to tell you," she grated back.
"So sorry," he replied sarcastically, "Would you mind awfully telling me where my brother from the grave is?"
She paused for a moment, trying to think of how to break the news to him. "He was taken to the local hospital. He was shot by Roberto," she explained. "But it can't have been too serious, since he's been in the hotel room for the last couple of days," she reasoned.
Dempsey looked at her in horror. "Do you know how he is? Did you bother to find out?" he shouted.
"Now hold on," she answered defensively, jumping out of her chair to face him. "Firstly, I thought he was Tony, and secondly, I rushed back here to watch the surveillance… for you," she stressed, pointing an accusatory finger at him.
"If you'da let me in on this, I'da told you before now that it wasn't Tony. Now he's left the country. You," he pointed back at her, "Lost us this case!"
"What?" she replied, gasping at his insolence. "This wasn't my fault! You're way out of order there lieutenant! Your stupid NYPD department came back with the wrong ID! And if you hadn't…" she checked herself and went on in a whisper, "if you hadn't buried the bloody body, maybe it would have been safe for you to work on this with us."
"Oh, that's real smart Sergeant! 'Cause it's real safe on Death Row, aint it!"
"We don't have Death Row here lieutenant. And besides, it hardly did your case any good by burying the body!" she pointed out.
He huffed, and then turned on her with another peeve that had been playing on his mind.
"So Sergeant, when exactly did you come back here to SI-10 to see Spikings?" he asked.
She glanced over at him. Damn it, he suspected.
"What do you mean?" she asked, stalling answering him in the hope of finding out more about what he really knew.
"Exactly what I said. What, you don't understand plain English now? When did ya bring this case to Spikings's attention?"
She folded her arms and answered him defiantly. "This morning."
"Yeah, as I thought," he said bitterly. "And when, Sergeant, did you give up workin' for SI-10?"
She was certain he already knew that she hadn't.
"I stopped full time around seven years ago," she replied.
"Full time?" he questioned.
"I work on the odd case here and there," she explained with a dismissive hand gesture.
"I see," he answered. "That's why you have the firearm then. Shoulda guessed. So, now I only got one question for ya, why didn't you tell me?"
She shrugged. "It didn't seem relevant."
He laughed. "I don't know if your lyin' more to me, or yourself. I aint wasting any more time here with you; I'm gonna go see Danny," he said, turning abruptly, wrenching the door open and storming out of it.
She regretfully watched him go.
Harry spent the next painfully slow two hours attempting to forge ahead with a report on the case. She struggled over and over again with the wording however. Every draft seemed to make her appear incompetent. But even Dempsey had been convinced that Danny was dead. The NYPD must have also thought the same because they assumed that the only Borelli's left were part of the mob. In the end, what Dempsey seemed to have not appreciated was that he was no longer a suspect. They had cleared him of suspicion. And what's more, he had discovered that his brother was alive! If she hadn't gone to the hotel and tracked him down, Danny would still be in that room right now without medical attention, instead of recovering in the hospital.
This reasoning however, was not stopping Harry from feeling wretched. And why had Spikings been upstairs in that meeting for so long? She hoped to God they weren't going to close down SI-10 over this!
At last, Harry was aware of the office door opening and Spikings's presence in the room. She glanced up at him anxiously as he passed by her desk.
"Everything okay, Sir?" she asked cautiously.
Spikings could see Harry's anxiety and nervousness written all over her face.
The last thing that Harry had expected from Spikings though was the following: his face broke out into a huge smile and he assured her,
"Everything is fine, just fine. You worry too much Sergeant," he said, giving her an encouraging wink before heading back to his office.
Harry was gobsmacked. What on earth had that been all about? Well, obviously they weren't closing SI-10 down then at least.
Dempsey arrived about twenty minutes later. He glanced across the room at her as he entered but Spikings must have heard his arrival and gave them no time to talk before he summoned Dempsey into his office and closed the door.
Another nerve wracking hour later and finally both Dempsey and Spikings re-emerged.
Both of them appeared to be in considerably good moods with smiles all round.
"Well, I'm off home," Spikings announced. "I'll need to see both of you tomorrow to tie up loose ends. Today has been… surprising," he concluded, and then he was gone.
She turned her attention towards Dempsey. "So?"
"So what?" he replied.
"So, what did he have to say? What's going on?" she asked, desperate to get some answers.
"Not much," Dempsey answered vaguely, heading for the door.
Harry jumped out of her seat, grabbed her bag and raced after him.
"Dempsey! Dempsey!" she called out, finally catching up with him in the car park.
"What?" he asked, turning to face her.
"Are you going to tell me what he said or not?" she asked with annoyance.
"'fraid it's confidential," he replied, tapping the side of his nose.
She'd have loved to pull that nose right off!
"Fine," she said, storming over to her car.
Dempsey was over the moon after his meeting with Spikings. Things couldn't be going better for him. But he couldn't tell Harry yet. Still, he'd also got another little plan for tonight. This was going to be fun!
Another chapter tonight folks! I'm on a double roll!