AN 1: OMG I have literally been waiting to write this chapter for 2 years. And fretting over it. And then on March 31, 2012, it just sprang out fully formed, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus.
Huge thanks to awesome authors Metisse & Weathergirl, for their invaluable input and guidance regarding the all-important upcoming interrogation scenes. Ladies, I took your suggestions thoroughly to heart, but I hope I will still surprise you! And if anyone's burning with 'rabbia' after reading this chapter, don't blame W or M! They didn't know what direction I was going in, they just did an expert job of helping me read the map of where I'd been.
One of my inspirations for this chapter was the interrogation scene in the movie True Lies. Heh.
And to anyone who thinks Bobby's way too harsh in this chapter, all I can say is the Robert Goren I know has it in him. And he has two really good reasons for doing it.
To quote Hannibal Lecter, this is really gonna hurt.
~.~.~.~.~
CHAPTER TWENTY: RABBIA, AMORE, PIETA', DESIDERIO
LVPD Interrogation Room 1 Las Vegas
12:31AM Tuesday morning
Bobby sat down with his back facing the mirror and slapped his binder down, then straightened his tie. "Detective Eames," he said by way of greeting.
What the fuck was going on? Realising that Bobby was her visitor was a physical shock to Alex, equal almost to the moment she found Carruthers. Here was her partner of all people, sitting in front of her with – not only a visitor's badge, but some other official LVPD insignia – and out of his binder spilled Nina Carruthers's casefile, complete with pictures. She felt darkness creeping in around the edges of her vision.
"What's going on here Bobby, are you… are you, on the job? With Major Case?" She could hear the hope in her own voice, cringed at the futility thereof. "Are you… investigating me?"
"Detective Goren, if you please," he muttered, his carefully blank face panicking and enraging her more than even his audacious words. "I'm here at the request of LVPD and the DA's office, to assist them with their investigation." He leaned back and looked at her while he fiddled with his tie.
What? It couldn't be. He wouldn't help them. He wouldn't help – that woman. But her own thoughts and Dreyfeus's words from earlier in the day came back to mock her… Dreyfeus had said he'd just been on his way out for drinks… with her? Had the ADA spun him around just like so many others had, until he didn't know his partner from a hole in the ground?
No, it couldn't be. As close to physically ill as she'd been during this whole ordeal, Alex glanced around the tiny room for the wastebasket, in case her hours-ago dinner decided to come back up. Even as her partner nodded balefully towards the grey cylinder in the corner, all the possible scenarios to explain his presence collided in her head with sparks and the almost palpable sensation of twisting metal.
Unpredictable. The man she loved, worked with, would take a bullet for, gnashed her teeth over, occasionally wanted to strangle, was first and foremost unpredictable. Would he do this to her because he thought she was guilty? Would he do it because he was infatuated with the ADA? Out of curiosity? Because he was following orders for the second time ever?
She felt her face grow hot as injustice bubbled up, threatening to cut off her breath. "No!" she bit out, jumping up and kicking her chair back, "I'm not doing this!" She smacked her hand on the table, hard. "Not with you!" For the second time today, she felt tears pricking behind her eyes… on top of everything, she couldn't handle having to go through this with him here, judging her, ferreting out the secrets she'd kept from him, flirting with the ADA. She scrunched her whole face up, willing the moisture back where it came from, conscious of how unattractive she must seem. To the peanut gallery behind the glass. To Bobby.
"Detective Eames." Bobby's voice was quiet and soft, his reasonable voice. She cursed herself for the wretched softening she felt in response to hearing her name spoken that way. "As I said, I'm here at the request of LVPD and the DA's office, to assist them with their investigation. Sit down please." She peeled back her sticky, gritty eyelids and looked glumly down at him.
He looked good, she had to admit to herself. Better than the Bobby of her imaginings. Freshly shaven, wearing her favourite tie and the cufflinks she gave him last Christmas… Neat and pressed and contained, just the way she liked him. Well, one of the ways she liked him. She found herself wondering what time he'd arrived, what had he been up to? Was he wearing the same suit he'd flown in on? The same one he'd put on this morning? It didn't look like it. Except for a couple of brief periods, he'd always taken great care with his appearance during interrogations; they were something he planned for, like a date. Had he prepared carefully for this debacle? Was he planning to take her down?
She was glad to see him, she realised. She could feel herself relaxing in his presence despite the extra stress he'd brought with him into the room.
Meanwhile, he just kept staring at her. His dark eyes hungry, she felt, for any morsel she exposed to his sight.
Still fiddling with his tie.
She looked down at his restless fingers playing over the smooth ribbon of silk. A kind of a funny red, like the shade of everything wild and tame inside him. Rage, love, mercy, desire.
And the cufflinks. Black Onyx, for the 'O' in his name, she'd told him. And for his eyes, she'd told herself.
"Have you seen Lieutenant Becker since the murder?"
"N-no, of course not," she stuttered.
"Why not? He's free now, isn't he?" She blanched at the question, but he continued, tipping his head like a bobble-head doll. "D'ya think he'd take you back?"
o.o.o.o.o
Alex felt the blood drain from her face – surprised that there was any left after this day of horrible firsts – while her mind raced. She felt the sweat beading under her palms as she forced herself to settle in the chair. Feel your sitting bones, her sister's yoga instructor used to say. Feel yourself connected to the earth, no matter where you are.
He knew about her and Phillip.
Of course he knew, he'd read the casefile. But still, hearing it was a shock.
He would have learnt sooner or later, she rationalised, although everything she'd said and done over the past 18 hours had been to preclude that eventuality.
Still trying to take in the implications of Bobby's question, she shifted to mirror his stance, his stillness. His eyes moved to the handprints she'd left on the bare table, then back to meet her gaze, a ghost of a shit-eating grin on his face.
A grin she longed to wipe away. "I dunno, why don't you ask him?"
Hah! He showed brief surprise at her retort, and she revelled in the tiny victory. She felt her spine stiffening, preparing to defend herself. She would fight, she had it in her. For her pride, for her freedom, and for the bastions around her heart. She'd fought her partner many times before, but always when she'd had the upper hand. It wouldn't be pretty. Would she end up flayed and shredded and trembling as she'd left him in the past? Perhaps it was fitting.
But he quickly rallied. "I did," he muttered, tilting his head as was his wont. "And what if I told you he, ah, said you'd be the most convenient solution? To the problem of who murdered Nina Carruthers?" His words held a mere hint of adenoidal drawl.
"I'd say that we both know you're allowed to lie to suspects, but that sounds like him." Firmly seated, her back ramrod straight, nausea banished, she forced herself to meet her partner's eyes. Firing off zingers in the interrogation room was familiar at least. Made her feel a tiny bit more herself.
"How does it make you feel that he'd throw you under the bus like that? Cuz, if it were me I'd feel pretty crappy."
Bobby's delivery, calm and smooth, was grating on her nerves. She marshalled her irritation and snapped back at him, "Really? Because he doesn't seem to me like your type."
Bobby's jaw twitched slightly but he didn't move. "Just answer the question, Detective."
"I do feel pretty crappy," she growled, "But not because of Lieutenant Becker. Unless he killed Carruthers."
"Really?" Bobby ignored her veiled question. "But you must feel something. I mean, you were lovers for what, seven years?"
Alex blanched, then kicked herself as Bobby noticed her reaction with interest. Facing the fact that he knew so much about her and Phillip made her skin crawl with embarrassment. She cringed at the words, accurate though they were, feeling a need to defend against them. "We didn't see each other outside the conferences."
"Aah," he said, nodding. "So it was a matter of… convenience… for the two of you?"
OK that was worse. "That's not how I would have characterised – it."
"Oh? How would you describe your – ah – liaisons?"
She swallowed, arguing internally the futility of finding something to rub in his face. So far she'd been vascillating between rage, terror and humiliation, but finally his measured, carefully worded questions were making her stabby. With all due respect to the deceased.
"A fling," she said finally. "We were having – a fling."
"A fling!" He exclaimed, raising his hands in mock triumph. "A few days of escape, huh? Like that Bernard Slade play, Same Time Next Year."
She nodded cautiously.
"Except that those two, they got married in the end if I recall," he deadpanned.
o.o.o.o.o
"What about CCTV?" She blurted. "There must be video."
After his last jab about Becker, Bobby had left off grilling her about her relationship with the ersatz Lieutenant, and ignoring Alex completely, had balanced his portfolio on his knee and shown her his back while he scribbled.
Her burst of adrenaline leeching away in the stillness, Alex felt every second of her long day and realised, she was on the verge of really losing it. The knowledge that Bobby had seen the casefile, knew all about her and Phillip… Read her evasive answers, canny enough to know instantly she was hiding something. Saw the pictures of her in her bare legs and feet, being taken into custody as a material witness by a parade of uniforms.
What did he think of her? What was he thinking right now? Staring at his broad back as he leaned over and flung his tie over one shoulder, brought to mind unbidden a memory of seeing him in his shirtsleeves once, cuffs rolled up to reveal his smooth strong forearms. That had been a long time ago, before she'd loved him. But the image stuck; power, prowess, and somehow, humility.
The thought of losing all that, and the fear of what was to come when he finally turned, wrapped around her heart and squeezed, leaving her in pain and gasping, the lone witness to what might be the end of her briefly-nurtured dreams.
Stiffening but not looking up, Bobby started as if to say something, then pursed his lips and made a show of stretching and straightening his sleeves and shirt cuffs. His pen stilled as he turned to show her his profile. "The video's been gathered and is being reviewed," he muttered. "It'll be, ah, an important part of our case."
"But not against me," she snapped.
"We'll see," he replied.
o.o.o.o.o
"How did you feel when you first saw me?"
Lost in thought, she hadn't noticed her partner turn back from his note-taking and re-focus his attention on her.
Trying to formulate an answer to his unexpected question, she examined the tableau she and Bobby made. His right hand and her left were so close to each other, she could have reached out a finger and touched him. His presence was calming, despite everything about it that was making her position more precarious.
She noticed that there was sweat on his brow, but his cheek was a tiny bit papery, as though he were dehydrated. She found herself biting back an admonition that he take better care of himself.
The familiar brown eyes that she'd been forcing herself to look directly at were alert but bleary, the skin pale and creased. This had been a very long day for him… with the time difference, he'd been up for the better part of 24 hours. Something he'd shrugged off many a time, but still it wasn't good for him.
And he seemed… different. In the minutes since he'd finished grilling her about Becker, something in his aspect had changed, a tiny bit. Perhaps the tilt of his head was less bullish, perhaps the curl of contempt was gone from his mouth. It eased her, drew her in.
And she noticed, Bobby hadn't yet whipped himself into one of his trademark lathers, but yet there was a peculiar energy about him. He'd refrained from any of his usual stress-relieving physical gestures such as jiggling his leg or rubbing the back of his neck; the nervous tension she thought she saw in him was evident in the rigid way he held his neck and shoulders, and in the way he'd make a fist, then look down at it puzzled, then carefully relax.
Alex on the other hand knew her behaviour had been rife with 'tells'. She'd caught herself more times than she'd have liked, being forced to look away, hiding behind her hair, tossing her head like an agitated mare. She'd heard her voice go tight and brittle, crack even, with fury and stress.
And yet she hadn't lied. Oh, she'd lied earlier, to the detectives who'd first interviewed her. About minor things, things she'd thought she'd never be called on, because she was innocent! A mistake, perhaps.
And Bobby's tack had been rather more obscure than that which she'd been reluctant to respond to earlier, and yet she'd been completely truthful with the man across the table from her. The man she couldn't read, whose mien was out of context with his approach, whose questions seemed to go nowhere, and who'd almost seemed to reach out to her once or twice.
She had no angle, no traction. Was he being directed by the ADA? Was Dreyfeus, or Bobby himself, getting anything useful out of her answers? Was he playing a deeper game than even she could recognise? The relatively dim but somehow piercing lights pounded against her forehead like a sledgehammer, and suddenly she was so very tired.
This is how they break you, she thought. But there was nothing she could do. He was her partner, and she would tell him the truth.
Trying not to think of the ghoulish Dreyfeus and her unnatural hunger to feast on Alex's fragilities, she answered. "I – Bobby…" The informal address slid from her lips unbidden. His eyes widened briefly, but he didn't chide her. "For a second, I was, glad. I've missed you." Disgusted at herself, she couldn't help but sniffle a bit. "Then I was afraid." Was it her imagination, or did his expression soften for a microsecond at her admission?
Fuck, she'd given him an opening. Now would have been the perfect moment to pounce. But he bunted. "Afraid? Why?" Alex rolled her eyes. "Because…?"
He had softened, she hadn't imagined it. His face was still carefully blank, but he'd leaned imperceptibly towards her. Phantoms of a thousand manipulated perps danced around her, but she shooed them away. He couldn't be playing her. He wouldn't.
But it didn't matter anyway. She could feel her reserves finally emptying, and with that clicked open the locks and bindings keeping her together. Like a bath left running too long, the overflow – too great to be contained – began to slowly spill over the edge.
"Because you're the best," she said, her voice husky from the moisture going down her throat.
She watched her partner's breath hitch as he looked keenly at her for a long moment, then shook his head and turned away. "The best detective," he said softly, and she shrugged.
"The best," she repeated, watching him as for the first time he wouldn't meet her eyes. When he finally did look at her, she felt the full force of the Goren Stare for the first time since he'd raked her over the coals during the Burnham case.
"But you have nothing to hide, do you Alex," he murmured, and although the fear was back as she could feel herself careening towards an actual confession, mesmerised despite herself by this man's burning gaze, something in his voice, his quiet taut demeanour, touched her body in a wholly carnal way. For the first time in their entire partnership, she was going to surrender to him rather than fighting.
"No," she said forlornly. This time a couple of tears made it past her lashes, and she no longer fought them. This wasn't Detective Goren interrogating a suspect, it was just him and her, talking. Even as she wondered if this was going to end badly, wondered what Dreyfeus and the other detectives thought of her, she felt herself surrendering. She was in a room with the best person, her favourite person, and she just couldn't hold it together any more. Let him get what he came here for – whatever that was – and everything else be damned.
"Alex," his voice was soft. "Why him? Why Phillip Becker?"
There were no tissues in the room so she wiped her face with her forearm, even as she felt herself gearing up for a really good cry. Belying her recent thought about openness, now she backpedalled.
"Bobby," she mumbled, shaking her head, "That's not important. What's important is…"
"I decide what's important," he said fiercely, abruptly bouncing up and pacing behind his chair. "Why. Him."
She shook her head again and closed her eyes, not wanting to look at him as she felt herself crumpling in front of him. "Don't make me say it."
The room was deathly still, so much so that Alex could feel it through her skin though her eyes were closed and her own pulse was pounding in her ears. Her partner, whose very presence pulsed with life, energy and movement, felt to her remaining senses like a lifeless hulk. Or rather, in stasis, hanging in suspended animation over the edge of the table.
Feeling as though the truth was already hanging in the air, she swallowed a gag and answered. "Because he… he reminded me of Joe." Saying the words made her feel so exposed, so ashamed, she only barely registered the tapping on the one-way glass, one of the observers conveying a message. She felt the change in air pressure as Bobby dropped back into his seat with a heavy sigh.
Alex peeked at her partner through hooded eyes to see him scowling pensively at his binder. He licked his lips. "For the record, Detective," he muttered, "The 'Joe' you're referring to is your deceased husband, Detective Joe Dutton?"
"Yes," she hissed, directing all the resentment of that one word towards the person on the other side of the glass who was prodding her partner.
"And… how long has he been deceased?" Slumping over his portfolio, Bobby looked as tired and defeated as she felt, his apparent capitulation leaving her perversely afraid. Robert Goren asking rote questions for the record was not what she was used to.
"Almost 12 years." So long ago.
Bobby stared at her blearily. "But you're still not over him," he stated rather than asked.
Alex could recall the moment, shortly after they'd arrested Manny Beltran for her husband's murder, when she'd realised that she'd been over him for a long time. "On the contrary, I am."
"But you're dating his avatar."
"Not any more," she muttered.
Bobby didn't miss a beat. "You still have a picture of him at your bedside." He'd been in her bedroom on two occasions; Gage and Burnham. But he hadn't seen it recently.
"Not any more."
"Why not?"
She thought about the day she'd packed up all her pictures of her dead husband, the bedspread his grandmother had made them, and put them in storage. She thought about why she'd done it. Who she'd done it for. "It's not really – I can't –" like a little girl, she wanted to crawl under the table and hide.
Bobby's face lit up with an utterly unwholesome, feral grin, then he scowled. "Were you afraid of putting off a… gentleman caller? Becker?"
"No."
"But you were working your way up to something."
"Not with –" Alex stopped herself, aware of what she'd almost said. "I chose Phillip Becker because he was safe. An escape. A way to – get, something, I thought I needed – with no strings."
"If there were no strings, then how did you feel when he dumped you?"
She frowned, stung by his contemptuous tone and confused by the question. "Dumped? Me? Is that what he told you?"
"Do I have to remind you again who's asking the questions?" Her partner had regained some of his vitality, his body twitching as he drummed a tattoo on the table with his strong fingers.
"Again, Detective. Is that what he told you?"
He just looked at her. There was another tap on the window.
"He didn't dump me, as I'm sure you well know. I – ended it."
"You –" At that he seemed genuinely surprised. How could he not know? That bastard Phillip. "When?"
"Last year."
His obsidian eyes bored into her, and she couldn't look away. She could see the gears turning in his head, see him counting the hours and days and months, counting back to the moment – although he didn't know it, nor had she in fact – when she'd decided to give herself to him. She felt something shift and bloom in her chest as she witnessed him figuring it out; the scowl was gone, and a look of almost boyish hope and wonder had replaced it. What if it wasn't too late? What if she hadn't ruined everything? Relief accomplished what eighteen hours of badgering had failed to do, and Alex propped her elbows on the table and wept openly into her hands.
"Why?" he whispered.
She managed to choke out a reply. "Because I, I was ready to move on."
"With… someone?" Came his wistful voice.
She heard the door open. "Detective!" The ADA hissed through the crack.
~.~.~.~.~
A/N 2: The title of this chapter is from the easy listening Italian pop song 'Il Sole e La Luna' by Ron. I think of G&E when I listen to it, AKA the moon and the sun.
Little man you know not how I loved
On the nights of summer, winter…
(~ rage ~ love ~ mercy ~ desire ~)
But you were chasing your misery.
Eames is Goren's spinach… and reviews are mine!
WORDS: 3912 UPLOADED Tuesday, June 5, 2012