Dangerous Journey

Disclaimer: Don't own iCarly

A/N:

Chapter 17 (Discussing the Case)

"You told her?" Freddie was stunned by the news, and his father wasn't saying a word. John remained still in the recliner with his right ankle on his left knee and his right finger curled over his moustache. Freddie jumped up from the couch and was staring across the coffee table at Sam with wide eyes. "You told her everything?"

"Not necessarily everything." Sam paced to the right and ran her hand in a vigorous motion on the back of her head. "I didn't know how to be as discreet as needed when telling her about Jason…" She cringed and exhaled a nervous breath of air. "Besides, she's pregnant." Freddie's arms fell to his sides and his mouth hung open.

John's eyes darted up at her and squinted. "Well that's a load of shit right there." Sam raised an eyebrow and frowned as the man lowered his hand. "If she's pregnant, then we do need to hurry the hell up and get her out of there. The question is how?"

"Well, she said this guy…one of Tori's friends, wound up going into Mr. Vega's office and screwed up his security system." John rolled his head to the right and sighed. "I'm not sure if Robbie is in any kind of danger or not."

"Robert Shapiro? Yes, I know that boy well. He's been in the police department from time to time, but only over minor infractions. Creeping people out with his puppet tends to be the primary issue with him."

"He's been stalking both girls."

John hummed softly and returned his hand to his face, bending his fingers under his chin and extending his index finger to his temple. "Then given David Vega's nature, I'm surprised he hasn't attacked Mr. Shapiro already." Freddie sat back down on the center cushion and shrugged.

"Maybe he just doesn't want to do anything to warrant police intervention," Freddie replied. "You know, playing it safe." Sam nodded and John's eyelids closed.

"Perhaps." He opened his eyes back up and the bristles of his moustache seemed to float for a split second. "Sam, you might want to let Spencer and Carly know about Trina's pregnancy."

She hesitated and looked at him skeptically. "Are you sure?" It seemed a dangerous time to bring it up, especially with them. "They're trying to let us work, but Carly's already gone against me once by going to see Trina at the martial arts school she's going to." Spencer and Carly were too unpredictable as Trina's siblings. There was no telling what would happen if they discovered Trina was currently with child.

"I agree," Freddie replied. The skin around his eyes shifted and his nose wiggled for a second. "If either of them are told, there's a chance they'd try to take matters into their own hands. If I remember what Carly's like, she's more likely to do that than Spencer."

"They may find out on their own anyway." John lowered his hand to his knee and glanced at the window. "Bear in mind that Trina attends a martial arts academy taught by her brother's fiancé. A school like that, if a student becomes pregnant, they need to tell the instructor. It's regulation, they and the school could get in trouble if something happens to the unborn child."

Sam's heart sank and she dropped her head. She contemplated whether or not to just tell Sasha. Sasha wouldn't want to keep anything from Spencer, but she would have to know Trina was pregnant regardless.

If she didn't tell them and Trina had to tell Sasha, Spencer and Carly might be upset if they thought Sam knew and didn't tell them. "Well then, I guess…" She trailed off and scratched behind her ear. "I guess I'll just have to find a way to let them know while making sure they know not to do anything. They can't take matters in their own hands, it just isn't safe. For them or for Trina."

"Of course not. If they did that, they'd not only endanger themselves and their sister, but they'd be doing vigilantism. That would be yet another problem." Sam walked around the coffee table and sat beside Freddie. She focused her thoughts on the nightmares that Trina was talking about, and the conversations she had with David.

"I want your thoughts about something, Mr. Benson." John straightened his posture. "Trina says she has nightmares where she remembers the confrontation between David and her mother."

"She may have been a toddler at the time, but she witnessed a traumatic event. She witnessed her mother's murder. Even if age forgets, the subconscious never does."

"Yeah I know." She pressed her hands together between her legs and looked down to them. Her lips brushed against each other and smacked. "She says she remembers a struggle, like Camille grabbed the gun and tried to overpower him." John's eyes squinted and lines stretched out from the corners of them. He pulled the corners of his mouth back into his cheeks and hummed softly.

"Then the shot fires, and she collapses into his arms. Like he didn't mean to shoot her or something. The way he talks about her…Could Camille's death have been an accident? Is it possible Mrs. Shay wasn't supposed to die that day?"

John folded his hands over his stomach, tangling his fingers together and tilting his head gently to the left. "Mrs. Shay's body was found with a single gunshot wound. An entry wound beneath the sternum with the trail moving upwards." Sam's throat tightened and her muscles tensed while veins in her hand pushed up beneath her skin. "The bullet punched through her heart and left her right armpit. It grazed the bottom of her arm and lodged itself in the nearest wall."

She raised her hand over her heart and pushed down the nausea in her stomach while picturing the scene. John moved his head upright and a wrinkle broke between his eyebrows. "There was trace on her clothing and skin, trace that signifies the gun was within close range."

Freddie leaned forward and hunched his shoulders forward as well. "She was also a mom watching someone she knew taking away her child." He looked over to Sam and a crater formed in his left cheek. "She was involved in the military as well. If Mr. Vega tried to frighten her with a gun, and she tried to take control of it, and ended up getting shot in the struggle…It wouldn't surprise me."

John gave his son a nod and his brown eyes slid towards Sam. "Samantha." She raised her head and her eyebrows rose. "A wise person once said, what makes humans truly dangerous are their emotions. A killer doesn't just become a killer for the sake of killing, a person that abducts someone doesn't do so just because they can. Anger, jealousy, pain, sorrow…all of these can lead to someone committing a criminal act. Even love."

She was startled by the last one mentioned, to the point she responded with almost a scoff. "Love?" John's chest expanded and the wrinkle between his brows flattened.

"Love is raw, it is pure, it can be honest and true. The most powerful emotion sure…but at the same time it can be irrational, it is conflicting, left uncontrolled it can turn selfish. If you love someone and you're betrayed, you become angry. If you're angry enough to commit a crime, you may find yourself doing just that."

"So? What are you suggesting?"

"Let's say for the moment." John raised his hand in the air and held it there, looking sideways for a moment. "Actually they were together, based on your conversation with him, it could be safe to say that perhaps he had loved her. He loved her enough to trust and believe her when she told him she was pregnant, when she told him that was his child."

"Okay."

"He loved that child, and then she did what?"

"Tore his entire world apart." She bowed her head and closed her fingers around the bottom of her shirt, tightening the cloth between her fingers. "I…I don't know why I sympathize-"

"You're human, and like it or not he was wronged. It doesn't justify the crime, it doesn't mean that what he did wasn't a criminal act." Sam smiled slightly and raised her head. "Remember that as you go into the criminal justice field-and you're interested in Criminology…you'll need to know the inner workings of the mind of a criminal. There are going to be those you sympathize with, there is nothing wrong with sympathy, it isn't your job to be their judge-unless you are a judge-it's your job to enforce and uphold the law."

"And the law is you don't abduct a child, you don't kill a parent in front of their own child."

"Right." He raised his hands to his chin, perching it on his knuckles. "And the victim? How are you feeling about her right now?" She hated to admit that she felt angry towards Camille for what she had done. There was no excuse for letting a man believe he was the father of an unborn child that was conceived through an illicit affair. "Be honest."

Sam bit her lip and narrowed her eyes. "Angry. She deceived Mr. Vega like that. There's no excuse, no reason anyone should go that far. She lied to him, led him on, made him believe he was going to be a father…then crushed him."

"Good that's normal. It means you're seeing a broader scope of things. Rather than seeing black and white, you're seeing grey." She furrowed her brow and John started to smile. "You absolutely must remember there are very many times where-no one 'deserves' to be murdered, so don't think that's what I'm getting at."

"Okay."

"If you work in the criminal justice field, you will find victims of crime that have less than good repute or have done things that appear to show a grievous lack of morals. The whole 'the victim was such a good person, they never had any enemies' that you hear from people on television shows? It's media, it's dramatized."

"Clearly a victim has enemies or they wouldn't be where they are, right?"

"Well sure, you just have to keep an open mind. And as a probation officer you will find people who have made mistakes and some people who are looking for a chance to change to improve." John swept his hand in the air and closed his eyes. "Camille committed a crime of deception, and unfortunately that did catch up with her. That's the truth of the matter, like it or not."

Hearing it was like a punch to the gut. She didn't care for it, but she couldn't deny the truth. There was no telling what she expected David to do, she dumped him like he was nothing and he gave his life to her and to that unborn child. She made a mistake, a terrible mistake that could have been done much differently with greater tact.

"That deception pushed him over the edge," she whispered. John smirked as she began to feel a surge of confidence. Hitting the nail on the head wasn't hard when she began to understand the why of the crime. "If she had simply cheated on him and told him the truth when she got pregnant, maybe he would have left the relationship"

"There's no telling what could have happened. But you're getting the idea. Now I want you to think about your theory, would it make sense to suggest that he didn't want her dead?"

It was possible, and she had a theory that she already developed previously. "If he loved her so much, maybe even years down the line if he still cared about her but was still angry…still felt like he was robbed of a child…he may not have wanted to kill her but simply make her feel the pain that he felt?" John's smirk grew and his eyebrows bounced.

"By taking a child that she came to care for. She 'stole' his child, so he stole hers."

"And she's a mother, she's protective of her children. She catches him, he flashes a gun, what happens?"

"She goes for the gun."

"They struggle. Gun goes off, she falls." Sam took a deep breath and reached up, tucking her hair over her ear.

"The other issue I'm having now is finding a way to get Trina out." She had respect for David as an 'opponent', and as intelligent as the man was, he ran on logic. "If I just take her out from under his nose, I feel like that would be going about it the right way."

John hummed for a moment and ran his finger over his chin. "You might be right. David is unpredictable, we have to be delicate and avoid pushing him over the edge to where someone might get hurt."

"I can still try and get more information out of him. I don't know what I can get, but I can try."

"You've already told Trina more than what she probably needs to know right now." She frowned and crossed her arms. "I think it would be a good idea to focus your energies on Trina right now"

"I will, but I still want to keep up those chess games. It puts me on the same playing field with Mr. Vega. If anything, it's a distraction."

"Okay then. Keep at it." The best she could do was to be careful. There was still a great deal at stake, and she still had to find a way to tell Spencer and Carly that Trina was pregnant while trying to keep them from trying to take Trina out herself.

She needed a trump card, but she didn't have one. While John went through the investigation procedures, she wasn't sure if she could hold off that long. He was close, and it was likely they were going to have to question David soon, and when that happened, she had to make sure he didn't have any reason to believe she had anything to do with the case at all.

What trump card do you think would be good? Mr. Shay's coming to California pretty soon. What are your thoughts on the discussion here? John had some good advice, don't you think? It rings true. I hope you guys know why David has become one of my favorite antagonists as well, as they talked about here in this chapter you really can see the true contrast between black and white, good and evil. David's not good, but he's not evil. He's human. What happened between him and Camille isn't just black and white, there's grey.