What is Not Understood
By Kadi
Rated T
Disclaimer: This is not my sandbox, but it is my favorite place to play.
A/N: All Season 5 Spoiler Warnings remain in effect.
Chapter 7
It was early. Fritz liked arriving before the building began to fill up. He liked to move through the quiet halls before he settled into his office for a day of paperwork and conference calls. His office. He was still getting used to that. It wasn't a bad set of walls to spend most of his day in, but he preferred being out and about. There was a part of him, too, that missed the smaller office that he had occupied over at the Special Operations Bureau. This felt like too much space at times, but it served its purposes. It also still felt a lot like it belonged to someone else. That would fade with more time; it had only been a few months since Chief Taylor's death. They were all still in a transition phase, trying to find their way in the unexpected vacuum that was left behind by that shooting and the events of the case.
In the wake of all of those changes, Fritz had learned quite a few things, about himself and those that were now serving under him. He felt like he had come to know what to expect. Fritz had a pretty good idea that no amount of telling Raydor and her people to leave Captain Patrick's case alone would actually work. Even if he hadn't already known those people, he knew that he could not expect that they would easily turn their backs on one of their own. Fritz knew that was asking too much. He had done it though. He told the Captain to back off, to let the other division handle everything. He didn't like doing that, but there was a lot about this job that he didn't always enjoy. That was something else that he was getting used to.
Doing this job, being a cop, he knew that wouldn't be simple. There were always compromises that would have to be made. More times than he wanted to think about, the greater good came before personal preference, before beliefs and the expectations of what the world was really like. The same was true with wearing this new mantle of authority. Sometimes he wondered if he was really cut out for that. Raydor would have been his choice. In fact, when he was asked, that was his recommendation for the job. She compartmentalized better than any one person that he had ever met before, even Brenda Leigh. What he found most interesting was how well she moved between each of those mental compartments when the situation called for it. He had watched her shed the Captain and become the mother before his very eyes, without missing a beat between either responsibility, only to return to the other within moments. Fritz had watched the partner, carefully concealed between layers of professionalism, in how she dealt with Flynn and maneuvered through the reality of working alongside someone to whom she was so closely involved. With her team, she wore her authority as well as she wore one of her well-tailored jackets. He wondered how that situation would pan out during the early days of her transition into Major Crimes, but Fritz was not surprised that she had easily turned the division around and made it her own. He wondered if anyone else could have.
What surprised him was walking into his office, early in the morning, and finding the Captain already present and waiting for him. He supposed that he probably should not have been, but the surprise was there. She was seated in one of the chairs in front of his desk. Her appearance was as impeccable as always, and if not for the tired smudges beneath her eyes, he would have wondered how she could sleep so well with the current situation that was surrounding her.
He watched her as he settled behind his desk. Her legs were crossed and her hands were clasped together in her lap. She was looking up at him, and someone who didn't know her might have described her expression as impassive. Chief Howard knew better. There was a fire burning in those green eyes. He braced himself for what was about to come. "Captain, what can I do for you this morning?"
Her brow arched. He knew exactly what she wanted. "You can give me an explanation. I would like to know why you placed a member of my team undercover without informing me ahead of time."
Her tone was biting. Fritz almost winced. He sat back in his chair with a sigh. She wasn't even trying to hide what she had already figured out. "You and your team are faster than I thought." He had given them two days until Major Crimes had the entire thing mapped out. He didn't count on it happening in less than eighteen hours. Probably twelve if he really had to guess, considering that she had obviously been home, and from the state of the Murder Room when he walked through it that morning, so had her team. "Captain, I cannot emphasize enough," he said seriously, "just how important it is that you and your people step away from this operation."
Her head inclined. Sharon almost wanted to scoff at his insinuation that they would, somehow, put an undercover operation in jeopardy now that they were aware of it. Instead her lips pursed and she regarded him coolly. She was silent. He was staring back at her. Sharon waited until he shifted in his chair before her chin lifted. "We already have. We would not have needed to get as close to this operation as we did if I had already been apprised of it. I could have directed my team's efforts in an entirely different direction and given you the time that you obviously need to complete… whatever it is that you are doing. I can only assume that this still involves the murder of Trina Shiloh and that the real suspect is a member of the department. Beyond that I am at a complete loss as to why you would assign a member of my division to any operation without full disclosure to his immediate supervisor."
He had her now. Fritz leaned forward. He clasped his hands against the surface of his desk. "Which part of this bothers you more, Captain? That I took a member of your team and placed him in an operation that you know nothing about, a necessary action that I will get into shortly, or that for even a few minutes you were left to wonder whether or not your boyfriend was cheating on you." He watched her eyes darken. Yes, he definitely had her. If she were the type, he could just imagine that her lip would curl in disgust. Instead, her eyes narrowed. In her lap, he saw her hands clasp more tightly together. "Maybe it's option number three," Fritz continued. "You got complacent. You're too comfortable. You forgot who you were dealing with and if you're mad, it's at yourself. You didn't know about the assignment and you questioned your personal situation because he played you. He played you because that was his job, and underneath it all, you can't fault him on it, because he's done the one thing that you've asked of him since that little romantic situation began last year. Flynn kept his personal life separated from his professional responsibilities." It was the Captain's turn to shift in her chair, to fold her arms across her chest and glare at him. "Maybe you can give yourself a break?" Fritz smiled at her. "I'm not going to tell anyone if you don't. We needed your reaction to be a genuine one, and it was. If you want to be mad, be mad at me." He leaned back in his chair again. "The poor guy down on four is worried about what you're going to do to him when this is over with."
Sharon looked away from him. "As well he should be," she said stiffly. There was going to be a conversation, but at the moment, the Chief was correct. It was herself that she was the most upset with. She should have trusted Andy, even with all of the mounting evidence to point to the contrary, but at the same time, he laid the groundwork to make sure that she questioned him. He would not have known on Friday evening what would transpire, so he could not have precipitated their entire argument for this purpose, but he certainly used that to his advantage. Howard was correct. He played her. It came from the one direction that she never expected it to. Even before they were romantically involved Sharon knew that the one member of her team that she could count on to be solid, above all others, was Lieutenant Flynn. Her put himself in her corner. He was the first one to come on board after she took over the division. He saw things so much differently than she did. He looked at the world rather simply sometimes. There was good and bad. Dirtbag, not a dirtbag. For Andy there was so little in between, so little gray. He accepted the necessities of their job, even when he regretted them. It was fluid for him. It had to be. It was part of his recovery. He bore the weight of what he could change, he had faith that there were reasons for the things that he could not.
She tried to accept that philosophy now. Sharon drew a breath and let it out slowly. She felt some of the tension flow out of her shoulders. "You knew that we would look," she said.
"In our defense, and with absolutely no offense captain," Fritz smirked at her. "We thought it would take longer for you to figure it out." He shrugged. "I thought we had a couple of days. Flynn said that was pushing it, but I was counting on the... " He grimaced as he said it. "Personal aspect of the case to be a bit of a distraction, for your entire team, not just yourself."
"Hm." She decided that she would ignore that. It was a given that she would be affected personally, and she was. "The SID reports need to go into the system," Sharon said. "Your team needs to get the DA's office involved. It was the lack of authenticity that tipped us off. If we figured it out, someone else will too… perhaps just not as quickly."
Fritz smirked at her again. "Hobbs was concerned that falsifying the SID reports might hurt us in the long run. You and I both know that there was nothing to find in your home or Flynn's car. At the end of this assignment there will be a suspect, and if Hobbs can't get the deal, she's going to have to go to trial. The argument could be raised that if we would falsify SID reports to incriminate Flynn, we would do it to incriminate another suspect. Then the question would be raised if we had ever done that before. We decided that it wasn't worth it, not even for an undercover op. SID has it all listed as pending. We had to send it for processing, so we had the appearance of a real investigation, but they aren't in any hurry to get to it. There's plenty of real evidence to work."
"With no evidence, Andy can't go to an arraignment." Sharon's eyes narrowed. "You won't have to worry about the appearance of a biased judge either, since your false suspect won't be appearing before him. You will keep Andy in jail pending the results from SID, and in the meantime, someone is actually working this case? I assume you already know who your suspect is."
She was fishing now. Fritz nodded. "We do. I can't tell you who that is. I can't even tell you who is working the case. What I will say is that I have someone working this from another angle. We have a lot of suspicions and not enough concrete evidence to move just yet. I'm going to need you to be patient for just a little while longer. When we move, you'll know about it. The fewer people we let into this, the better. Everyone involved knows exactly what they are doing here, Captain. Trust that."
"Twenty-four hours." Sharon pushed out of her seat. "The team that you have working this has twenty-four hours to complete their assignment or Major Crimes is taking over the investigation." A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "You have a murder victim and a conspiracy to conceal within the LAPD. That seems like a Major Crime to me, Chief. It falls directly under the mandate and purview of the division, as Chief Pope created it, more than ten years ago. Furthermore, when the division was redesigned to fall within the guidelines of the Mayor's office, a much broader scope was applied. One that I think you might be very familiar with." It was Sharon's turn to smirk. His wife had managed to maneuver that little divisional design change. "Twenty-four hours and then this case is mine."
The Chief's brows rose in amusement. "You know, Captain, some people might interpret that as a little bit insubordinate. Don't you work the cases that I assign you to work?"
"As I recall, Chief, when you took this office you went out of your way to make certain that I knew that you did not want to step on my toes." He wouldn't get involved in the politics; her division would not become a tool for his ambition. "My team works the cases that I assign them to work," she stated, "so long as they fall within our mandate. Twenty-four hours," she reminded him.
Fritz watched her go and shook his head. Damn. He left himself wide open for that one. He sighed. "Better than nothing, I suppose." Howard sat forward in his chair and reached for his phone. He needed an update, and to warn his undercover team that they had been made. They were going to have to move fast. He hoped they had gotten everything else in place.
"Tell me you've got something," he said, the moment the officer on the other end answered.
"I do." Staples sighed. "Detective Davidson rolled over on his client list to stay out of jail."
Getting the Detective to do that hadn't been easy. Fritz nodded. "What did it cost us?"
"He's resigning. He gets his full pension, but we've got the list." His report for the Chief would be finished by mid-morning. They had only just wrapped up the finer aspects of the deal the evening before.
"And?" Fritz asked, sounding as impatient as he felt.
"We were right. He's on it. You've got your motive." Staples shrugged, despite the fact that it couldn't be seen. "We'll be able to put everything together and move. We can probably bring him in for questioning this afternoon. It just depends on whether or not you think we might end up spooking him before then. Can you put your case together without him finding out?"
"We're going to have to, Sergeant. We don't have any other option." Fritz tapped a pen against his desk blotter. "Get your report written up. Send it and the evidence over to my office. I'll put the other pieces in motion. We will do what we can." He ended the call and leaned back in his chair. The Captain had given him twenty-four hours; he was hoping to wrap it up in ten.
Captain Nolan Patrick moved through his bullpen with purpose. He was getting leaned on, hard, to get answers to the Chief's office. The brass wanted this one wrapped up fast, and he couldn't blame them. All of their butts were on the line this time. His team had already spent the day trying to wrap this up, but it looked like it might be morning before all of the final pieces were in place. That hadn't really gone over well with the Chief, but it was the best that they could do, considering the circumstances.
He stopped at Detective McNeil's desk. "What have you got for me?"
"Call logs and financials," McNeil reported. "Everything lines up with what we already thought. We need the physical evidence, and then we can haul the suspect in for questioning again." He turned in his chair and looked up at the Captain. "Half the division just rolled out to Sherman Oaks. We'll have to send a team in the morning."
Patrick sighed. His team wasn't like Major Crimes. They didn't get to just work a single case at a time. At any given moment they could have a couple of different homicide investigations going, along with the robberies, and anything else that Major Crimes decided it didn't want to take on. There were moments when it felt like his division got all of the grunt work; this was their opportunity to change all of that, though. What they could not change were the realities of their situation. They were short-staffed. "Yeah, I figured as much. I already told the Chief that. Get the entire preliminary written up tonight. We'll be ready to go with our second search first thing."
"Sounds good, Captain." McNeil turned back to his desk. He had already been planning to do just that. In an hour he planned to be out of the office and headed home.
Patrick made his way back to his office, but not without stepping into their small electronics room to check up on their inmate. He had been checking in on Flynn throughout the day. The man had seen his lawyer again near noon, but had been confined to his holding cell for most of the day. He took turns pacing the cell or stretching out on the cot. He had gotten into it once with Lieutenant Lawrence, when the man had accompanied him back to his cell after his visit with his attorney. Beyond that, he was being silent. He wasn't speaking to anyone and he wasn't asking for anything. Patrick decided that was just as well, all things considered. The quieter they kept all of this, the better.
He had a report from the night shift, and knew that Raydor and Provenza had been in to see the man, although neither of them had come down to the fourth floor during the day. Patrick was perfectly aware that they were running against the clock where Major Crimes was concerned. They were going to have to wrap this case up before the other division got tired of being patient and decided to toss its weight around.
The Captain returned to his office. He had reports on the body in Sherman Oaks to read through and authorize. He would do that while his team was in the field. They would collect the evidence tonight and send it off with SID. In the morning they would begin their investigation. When Patrick finished that, he checked in with McNeil again. The younger detective had his reports ready to go. Patrick filed it all in preparation for the next day's activities, and then he left for the day.
He had seen a lot of things in all of his time with the LAPD. This latest case was a little different. He never had to do things quite like this before. Something else that Nolan Patrick had never seen before was the swarm of police cars and officers that he found when he turned his car onto his street. The moment he made the turn at the stop sign two squad cars moved in behind him. Patrick's car slowed to a roll and finally a stop. There were squad cars in his driveway, on the street in front of the house. There was even one that had pulled up onto the curb.
He sat in his car for a moment. There were officers watching him. Two uniformed officers nearest his car had their hands on their guns. They were walking slowly toward him. Patrick placed one hand where they could see it and used the other to open the door. Then he held both hands up as he got out of the car. Lieutenant Lawrence strode across the yard toward him. Patrick scowled at the man. "Aren't you and this team supposed to be in Sherman Oaks investigating a murder?"
"We found a crime scene right here." The Lieutenant jerked his head toward the house. "Let's go inside, Captain. We have a few questions for you." His team had been on the premises for over an hour already, processing the scene and collecting evidence. "Officer Michaels here is going to take your weapon so that we have a nice, friendly conversation." He nodded to a uniformed officer to do that, and then to accompany them into the Captain's home.
The front door was standing wide open as officers moved into and out of the house. Patrick scowled as he looked around. "Where's my wife?" She should have been home by now.
"Shelby has decided to take the kids and stay with her mother for a few days," Lawrence pointed out. "I think you know why." He waved the other man into the house. "Let's talk."
"Let's." Patrick glared at him. "I think you have some explaining to do, Lieutenant."
"I think he's not the only one." Flynn was leaning against the archway that separated the kitchen from the rest of the house. He was back in street clothes, wearing jeans and a button down beneath an LAPD windbreaker and Kevlar vest. His arms were folded across his chest.
The Captain stared at him. He had just checked on the man. He was still in his cell. There was no way that he was able to get changed out of his inmate jumper and across town in as little time as had passed since Patrick looked in on him. "Why is he out of his cell?"
"I've been out of that cell all day. Where have you been?" Flynn smirked. They pulled him out to meet with his lawyer, and that was when they had laid the plans for the afternoon. He only went back long enough to make sure that Patrick knew he was in the cell. Then the security footage was put on a continuous loop. Flynn had joined Lawrence and the rest of his team. He would have liked to shower and shave before that, but there wasn't enough time. "I think the bigger question is whether or not you're ready to trade places with me."
"You could have gotten away with it, you know." Lawrence shook his head at the other man. "You just screwed up when you tried to shift the blame. You could have just buried it."
Captain Patrick folded his arms across his chest. He continued to glare at both men. "I don't know what you're talking about. The only one here that has anything to worry about being blamed for is Flynn, and we all know why."
"That was where you screwed up." Andy pushed away from the frame he was leaning against. "You heard about the incident in Joe's. You figured, that's great; I'll make everyone think that poor bastard did it so he wouldn't get caught. You just missed out on a few things. You weren't at Joe's so you didn't see the thing go down. You also didn't see the fact that IA was there. Old man Morris retired, they were sending him off."
"So you didn't know," Lawrence picked up the story, "that when Flynn left, Staples called him. The Sergeant already knew that Davidson was using Trina Shiloh as a bankroll. He got greedy. He turned her loose on a commissioner, and the commissioner's wife got wind of it. Thing is, she just happened to be friends with Staples' wife. IA opened up an investigation on Davidson; they were just looking for the proof. When Staples saw the incident go down at Joe's…"
"He gave me a call," Flynn said. "Wondered if I would be willing to help him grab the son of a bitch. Of course, I was still a little pissed off at the time, so I went along with it. I met up with Staples and he filled me in on what he knew. Staples already had Shiloh on record. He had her statement and they were waiting for the right person to come along as her next mark. She was going to turn evidence, she would get a walk, and Davidson would get what was coming to him. My job was going to be to get Davidson to hook me up with Ms. Shiloh later. Then we would see if he pulled his usual game. Considering who all the players were and how he felt about them, we were both pretty confident that he would fall for it."
"What they weren't counting on was Trina Shiloh's current client list," Lawrence said. "She didn't give the whole thing up. She didn't mention you. Even if she had, no one could really anticipate the fact that you weren't just another asshole that was cheating on his wife. Pissed you off when Davidson came back around asking for more money to make sure that your boss didn't find out that you were soliciting prostitutes, didn't it? I mean, that was the common theme in his game. He'd find people that had more to lose than just their marriages and he would stick it to them."
"Except getting rid of the guy who put the whole thing in motion wouldn't do you any good. When a cop goes down, everyone starts looking," Flynn explained. "So you got rid of the weapon that he was using against you. Mistake number one." He stopped. His head inclined. He waved a hand at the Captain. "Well, number two. Mistake number one was screwing around on your wife to begin with." He circled around Patrick. "You got Trina Shiloh to meet you Friday night. Thing is, you couldn't just kill her. You got your rocks off first. What do you call that, one for the road?"
"You dumped her body in the alley," Lawrence continued. "Then by the time you got to work on Monday, the rumor mill was all over the incident with Flynn on Friday night. People could not stop talking about Davidson trying to stick it to him and Raydor, so you thought, why not? Toss all of the evidence at Flynn, use him as your patsy, and get something out of it in return… aside from avoiding the whole Capital Murder side of things."
"You had your eye on Major Crimes," Andy took a step closer to him. "Captain Raydor was supposed to move up and your hat was in the ring to replace her. She decided to stay put instead, and you lost your nice, big promotion to the A-team. How many times is it now that you've been overlooked for that job?" He sneered at the other man. "Really couldn't stand losing to a woman, could you?"
While Flynn was looming over the man, Lawrence took another step closer, just in case the situation got out of control. "If everything had worked out, you'd send Flynn down for the murder. The icing on the cake would have been Raydor. You were betting that she would be so professionally destroyed by it, that she would retire. She would take her pension and slink off out of your way. People would wonder how much involvement Provenza had, or if he could really be trusted, considering how long he and Flynn have been partners. Chief Howard would have to fill the slot pretty quickly, and there you would be. The guy who cracked it all wide open."
"Just one little problem with all of that." Flynn's lip curled. "You're a moron. You were so busy worrying about the endgame that you failed to cover your ass."
"Your number was on Trina Shiloh's phone records," Lawrence said. She called you several times. She wasn't a professional escort. She was a prostitute. She was using her own phone to conduct business."
"And you had no alibi for Friday night," Andy grumbled.
"Shelby was out with her sister and a couple of other friends," Lawrence said. "But you told me on Tuesday that you went home and spent the evening watching TV with her. That got me to wondering why you would lie. Then when I questioned Davidson later that week, he said that I would be surprised by who was on that client list of his. What really bothered me, though, was how fast you jumped at the idea that Lieutenant Flynn was our suspect. We had nothing to go on, no reason to really suspect him. Then you did something that I just couldn't figure out. You started tossing around all kinds of crazy ideas, like maybe Raydor did it. Neither of those ideas just really did anything for me. So I pulled Andy aside. I questioned him outside of our official meeting at the PAB. He told me about his plan to work with Staples. That was easy enough to corroborate. We knew that Flynn didn't kill Trina Shiloh; he was with Staples at the time that the murder took place. I didn't start to really suspect you until we searched the house."
"We knew someone inside the LAPD was involved," Flynn said. "We just didn't know that it was you. Not until you pushed for the warrant to search my place. Sergeant Staples and I decided that we would work with Eric to figure out who was behind it all."
"But when we searched the house," Lawrence explained, "you got a little careless. "You didn't realize that I was running the inventory log. I guess you thought I wouldn't notice if a couple of extra items showed up in evidence that weren't on the inventory. Items that I distinctly remembered you handling."
Flynn's teeth ground together. "You took one of Sharon's nightgowns out of the laundry. I guess you thought there would be evidence on it." His eyes burned darkly. At his sides, his hands clenched into fists; they were itching for the chance to knock this creep across the room.
"Andy already knew that he might have to spend a night in the cell to make our investigation look real. He knew he couldn't tell his Captain what was really going on. We didn't know that you were actively trying to frame him. Not until then."
"You don't have anything." Patrick spoke for the first time. He stood there, quietly fuming throughout their little story. "There is no evidence at all linking me to Trina Shiloh."
"Nothing except the DNA that you left behind," Flynn bit out.
"And the clothes with her blood on them that we found in the tool closet of your garage, strangling her wasn't enough, you had to hit her over the head," Lawrence told him. "DNA will tie it all up, but we already have a type match back from Morales. We're pretty sure your hands will match the bruises on her neck too. We've also got the evidence tampering, since we found the original photos you photo-shopped together to make it look like Flynn met with the victim Friday night. So that adds to the solicitation, conspiracy to conceal a murder. We've got a lot."
"Including the client list and proof of transaction from Detective Davidson," Andy said. The other detective had handed it all over, along with an agreement to testify for the opportunity to stay out of jail and keep his pension in tact. It was a shitty deal, but sometimes that was the job. "It's more than enough."
Lieutenant Lawrence took his handcuffs off his belt and held them out. "Lieutenant, would you like to do the honors."
"Gladly." Andy took them. He stepped behind the Captain. "Nolan Patrick, you have the right to remain silent…"
-TBC-