A Tangled Web (13)

Saturday, 12:40 a.m.

Wisps of black smoke still rose here and there, escaping through shattered windows and cracks in the charred walls. The desolate crumbling structure drew a macabre outline against the night sky.

" – finished clearing the debris from bottom floor –"

" –no signs of life –"

" –clear."

In the crowd below, radios buzzed with spontaneous bursts of information on several channels. The night was dark, but dozens of flashlights and floodlights, as well as the flashing sirens of multiple service vehicles, bathed the area in a blinding glow. A utility vehicle beeped somewhere nearby.

Uniformed officers, rescue crew members as well as several other people of ambiguous affiliation milled about with purposeful, if agitated, attitudes.

"We can access the top floor from the east side, that wall's holding –"

" –contained damage, but I'm not liking these tremors. Could be that the whole area is unstable…"

" – get the goddamn press away from here –"

"It's been over four hours, I want to know when we're going to see some results." Assistant Chief Taylor had abandoned his usually saccharine tone for a menacing low baritone, as he accosted one of the rescue team coordinators. "This operation is taking too long. You need to prioritize getting out the survivors –"

"Sir, there are no survivors." The man wiped his dusty hands on his pants. "Like I said, we saw no heat signatures or any other evidence that there was anyone inside at all. We can't hurry this up or the whole thing will collapse even more, and …"

"Now, you listen to me," Taylor's voice dropped even lower. "I know for a fact that there were at least three people in there when that bomb went off, and the fact that you haven't found them yet doesn't look good for you and your team." He gave the man a scathing look. "So I suggest you stop trying to convince me that there's no one alive in there, and find those people – before I start questioning your competence even more than I already am."

The rescue team leader looked unhappy with the scolding, but he went off without further protest. Taylor pulled on the hem of his jacket, and directed another somber gaze to the scorched husk of the building, surrounded by the intervention crews.

Three days before...

Wednesday, 11:10 a.m.

"Captain Raydor."

The Assistant Chief sounded displeased, as she'd imagined he would. He paused right inside the doorway to the murder room and gave Sharon a slightly irritated look.

"Has Robbery-Homicide sent someone over yet, about that double shooting?"

She clasped her hands behind her back and gave him her most pleasant mien. "Not yet, Chief."

He surveyed the murder room with an almost suspicious look. "A detective should be up here any minute, to brief you and your team on the details. As I mentioned this morning, they're a little short-staffed. They asked Major Crimes to lend a hand."

"We'll do our best to help out," smiled Sharon.

"I'm sure," Taylor said dryly. "Captain – can I see you in my office, please?"

She was too old to feel chastised by that phrase. From his seat, Provenza gave her a lopsided shrug as though to say, 'you knew this was coming'. Sharon allowed one of her shoulders to twitch almost imperceptibly in return, and followed the Chief out.

Her folder lay open on the desk when they got to his office. He picked up the file inside and waved it at her. "What is this?"

"It's the updated report on the Donnell case," she said – unnecessarily. Taylor knew just fine what it was. He just wanted an intro to what was likely to be a detailed expression of his dissatisfaction.

"I didn't think I'd have to explain to you, Captain Raydor, that the 'Assessment' section of an after-action report is for analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of your team's actions," he scoffed, "with a view toward improved performance on future operations. It is not –" (he flipped to the offending page in the report) " – a place to introduce wild eleventh hour speculations."

"It's also the section for discussing any avenues that weren't explored in the investigation of the case," Sharon pointed out, "and potential loose ends or leads that didn't fully pan out that might be relevant in the event of a reopening of the case…"

Taylor looked halfway between angry and exasperated. "This case isn't going to be reopened," he said, "because it's over. The man is dead, of natural causes. We didn't find a bomb. There was no evidence to indicate any other threat." He shook his head. "Do you know, I was in a meeting with the Mayor this morning, in which I assured him that the aftermath of this case would be handled discreetly and with no potential for negative publicity." His lips pursed in a wry expression. "Imagine my surprise when I come back and find that not only have you continued to dig into an already solved case, but you hijacked a patrol car and had them stake out a bridge for half the night."

"Not at all, Chief." Sharon's composed smile remained in place. "They merely included the bridge on their patrol route, so they'd drive past it a couple of times an hour, nothing more."

"And if I ask, will I find that their scheduled route was actually halfway across the city, and they had to change it to accommodate you, Captain?"

"We asked if they were already patrolling that general area," she defended. "One of the officers assured us that they were."

Which was true.

Sort of.

The previous evening...

Tuesday, 6 p.m.

" – and according to the responding officers' report, they never checked around the bridge for Donnell's bike. Guess they didn't really need to, at the time…"

"No," Sharon acknowledged Lt. Tao's point, "but it might have told us something more about why the young man was there... It might be worth checking, still." Only with the Chief unequivocally having ended her team's involvement in the case, she couldn't exactly authorize a surveillance action. On the other hand… "Besides, if something is going on at or near that bridge, I'd like to keep an eye on it."

But how?

"It's not that far from here," Tao offered half-heartedly, "we could at least drive over and check for the bike… but keeping an eye on the bridge might be trickier."

"Try 'impossible'," Andy muttered. "Taylor's never gonna approve a minute of overtime for this."

Provenza hummed loudly. "Well, gee," he drawled with mock thoughtfulness, "if only we knew someone on patrol, who's on duty right now, and who'd really, really, really love to help us."

Sharon groaned mentally at his pointed look.

It took her a few seconds to weigh the pros and cons and wonder if instead she might not send Julio and Amy after all. Possibly sensing her line of thought, and disinclined to leave right before their pizza delivery arrived, Sanchez piped in:

"If that kid's on duty now, Ma'am, I think we should tell him to go look."

He was, unfortunately, right.

"Alright. If someone can please contact…" (another mental sigh) "…Officer Cooper, and see if he and his partner can check the Sixth Street bridge, and maybe include it on their route for tonight. Oh – but make sure to ask if they're already in the area, first."

Provenza let out an amused huff. "You heard the Captain, Sanchez. Contact their patrol car, ask if they 'happen' to be in the area we need them in. Oh – and if the kid says no, they can't help us," he added, "you might want to call down to the FID office next and ask if they need to borrow some space heaters. Because I assume it'll have frozen over."

Sharon gave him a dry glare.

Wednesday, 11:10 a.m.

"Captain." Unaware of her private musings, Taylor was still leafing irritatedly through the report. "Leaving aside for the moment your unorthodox requisitioning of resources – what would possess you to actually include two whole paragraphs revisiting the notion of 'suspicious death' over 'accidental overdose'? And don't even get me started on this ridiculous idea of an accomplice… you do know that the Mayor's office is going to want to read this, correct?"

"Chief, the report says that the case of the potential bomb threat is officially closed," said Sharon. " We can prepare a statement to the press to that effect, as the Mayor wanted..."

"If the case is closed," Taylor returned wryly, "why am I currently reading a sentence that includes the words 'unclear circumstances', 'discrepancies' and 'further investigation'?"

"Taking another look at the circumstances surrounding Donnell's death, we found some further discrepancies that pointed to the possibility –"

"What discrepancies?" He sounded exasperated. "Captain, what could you possibly have uncovered since 5 p.m. yesterday, that you didn't see in three days of investigating this case?"

"Our entire investigation prioritized preventing the bomb threat," Sharon explained. "But last night, after everything was over, we took the opportunity to look at the case from a different angle…"

Taylor sighed. "What angle?"

Tuesday, 5:45 p.m.

"Forget about the bomb."

That earned her a few crooked looks from her team. Fair enough, the potential bomb threat had been the driving force behind the case all along – but …

"At the moment, the evidence consistently points to James Donnell not having carried out any sort of bomb plot, regardless of whether he planned to do so or not," she admitted. "So let's put that whole angle aside, and look at this just as a suspicious death." To make the point, she took an eraser and removed the quotation marks around the word 'Victim' on the board.

"Uh, Captain…" Andy rolled his chair slightly to face her better, "the guy jumped off a bridge 'cause he was high. If anything, that's the least suspicious part of this whole thing."

Sharon hummed noncommittally.

"Ma'am." Sanchez looked up from a pile of notes on his desk. "Sykes and I just went over the timeline of Donnell's schedule on Saturday again. If you put everything together, it doesn't look like he walked to the bridge from the university."

"The last entry on his sign-in sheet at work was nine forty-one p.m. in the one of the colony rooms in the Genetics building," Amy explained, having rolled her chair over to Julio's desk. "The records from the electronic card readers show that he accessed the frog lab in Biochemistry, at nine fifty-three. Biochemistry and Genetics are in the same building," she added, "so it wouldn't take long to walk from one place to the other."

Sharon pondered the information for a moment, then remembered something else. "The lab that reported the stolen supplies … that was in the same building, too?"

"Geochemistry." Sanchez checked his notes again. "And yes. Explains why the guy might've targeted it. Easy to get to."

She nodded. "So, shortly before ten p.m. on Saturday," she recapped, "James Donnell got to the frog lab, where presumably he extracted the toxin that he meant to use together with his friends later that night… Lt. Tao, how long would the extraction process take, do you think?"

The question gave him pause only for a moment, then the lieutenant shrugged. "Assuming he knew what he was doing – which I guess he did, Danny told us he'd done it several times before… fifteen-twenty minutes? Ballpark…?"

"The footage from the cameras at the building entrance show him leaving right before ten-thirty," Sanchez noted. "So that timing all works out. The video from the bridge first puts him there at eleven forty-six."

"There are over six miles between the research building and the Sixth Street aqueduct," said Tao. "At regular walking speed – and considering his intoxicated state, Donnell was probably slower than that – it would take an hour and a half or more to make the trip. Especially across downtown LA at midnight on a Saturday… I'd say closer to an hour forty-five."

"Okay. So he didn't walk over," concluded Flynn.

Mike was looking something up on his computer. "And… there are no bus routes that would get him there in that time frame, either, not between those hours on a Saturday." He looked up from his screen. "He did have a bike though. It only takes about half hour to bike over from the USC to the bridge, so he'd have had plenty of time."

"Too much time," Sharon murmured. "If he biked over, or if someone drove him, there's almost an hour before his death that we can't account for. And since he had his employee ID with him on leaving the USC , but we didn't find any wallet or phone on him, it must be sometime in that hour that he lost them."

They considered that thought for a few silent moments.

"Maybe he got mugged," Andy suggested. "That'd explain the delay, and why we didn't find his stuff. Hey… scrawny kid, biking alone across downtown at that hour?" He shrugged. "Easy target."

"His body was probably too damaged from the fall to tell if he'd been beaten before jumping," Tao admitted, "but the enhanced video from the bridge scene didn't show any visible injuries, though. And his credit card or phone weren't used since then…"

Wednesday, 11:15 a.m.

"So maybe he stopped by a diner, or just took a roundabout route to the bridge." Taylor shook his head, replacing her report on the desk. "Just because there are a few extra minutes to account for doesn't make his death suspicious. The lab confirmed it was the frog toxin in his tissue, and there's ample evidence that he used it voluntarily."

"Dr. Morales said that his last meal had been several hours before his death," Sharon addressed that point first. "And given the severity of the toxin poisoning, he wouldn't have had much appetite, anyway. As to his voluntary use of the toxin… that's actually one of the things that bothers me, Chief."

He pursed his lips, a silent indication that the fact that things were still bothering her, was bothering him.

"Danny and Diego both said that Donnell had extracted the frog toxin at least half a dozen times before, for the past year. He'd researched how to do it, and once he figured it out, he was cautious and clever enough to never get caught. None of the researchers in the frog lab suspected anything," she reminded him, "and they work with those animals all the time. So how did Donnell suddenly get so careless as to essentially kill himself with an overdose?"

"That's why it's called an 'accidental' overdose."

It was Sharon's turn to sound unconvinced. "Maybe. There's more…"

Tuesday, 7:10 p.m.

" – can add that to the list of our unanswered questions..." Why the Sixth Street Bridge? Why the unaccounted time? Why not have the explosives assembled, or at least take them with him? And the fact that James Donnell's parents and friends swore that he was so smart and good and wanted to help people…

Sharon wasn't even sure anymore why she wanted to know so badly what had happened to the young man, but a part of her couldn't bear the thought of letting his story be remembered as what it was now. Somehow, it felt important to figure out the rest. The elusive missing page that would've reconciled evidence and character testimonies, and made the picture whole.

Her eyes wandered across the murder board again, and she simply, frustratingly, couldn't see it. "There must be something else we're missing here."

But they'd been at it for over two hours – not even counting the three days they'd worked on it already – and all they were coming up with were more loose ends, sprouting from all sides of this case. Small, nagging, seemingly unconnected loose ends, so easy to dismiss…

"Uh, Captain…?" Lt. Tao looked up from his computer. "I don't know if this is important, but I did find one thing that the bridge and the mall might've had in common…"

Everyone paused what they were doing, directing their attention to him. Provenza took another slice of pizza from the last not-yet-finished box.

"I looked into that old, abandoned irrigation project some more," said Mike. "Like I said earlier, there isn't a lot available on it through the online public records, but the city does have to keep open records of capital and recovery projects, so I got a couple of things from that."

For everyone else's benefit, he recapped the information that he'd already given Sharon earlier in the day.

"This was first proposed ten years ago to one of the old urban planning commissions, and it was meant to establish an underground water network that would redistribute water more efficiently from the LA river to several inner city parks, which usually have irrigation issues due to poor placement and funding."

"Sounds just like the kind of thing this Donnell guy would've been into," remarked Flynn.

"Only ten years ago, he'd have been…what, thirteen?" Sanchez shrugged. "Pretty sure he wasn't involved then, Sir."

"The project was spearheaded by a team of civil engineers, architects and so on," Tao continued, "and it got approved in 2005… then they did some 'preliminary survey work' – I suppose that means looking into existing piping and sewer systems, land surveys and so on – and built some of the ground infrastructure… but then the notes in the archives say that the project was abandoned in 2007 because of 'logistic and financial challenges'."

"Go figure. " Andy rolled his eyes.

Sharon nodded. She'd already heard most of that from Mike that morning. "What does it have to do with the bridge?" she asked. "Or the shopping center?"

"Well – you know how earlier I said that the water redistribution network was based on a series of nodes, and the Sixth Street Bridge was one of them?" The lieutenant pulled up a document on his computer. "I dug a little deeper, and found an old record of the proposed infrastructure. Checking the addresses of the other nodes, it turns out that another one of them was supposed to be right around where 'Sun Plaza' is, now, by that part of the LA river."

There was a brief silence as they all processed the new information.

"What does that mean?" Flynn asked eventually, but Mike just shrugged, unsure:

"Uh… nothing really, as far as I can tell. This all happened over six years ago, and according to these records, they didn't really get around to building most of the proposed infrastructure before the city pulled the plug on the project… but it is still a little weird to be a coincidence…"

Wednesday, 11:20 a.m.

"It's not just a coincidence."

Things rarely were, in their line of work.

"There's a connection," said Sharon, "between the bridge and the shopping center, and that abandoned irrigation project. James Donnell saw that connection, and somehow it made him want to plant a bomb at 'Sun Plaza', and then somehow, it ended in his death."

Taylor let out an annoyed breath. "I'm not saying that it's not possible. But it's still irrelevant. The man is dead, the threat is gone. And we can stay here and speculate until I'm old enough to retire, but it's still going to be just that," he raised his eyebrows at her, "wild speculation …much as the 'Assessment' section of your report."

"With respect, Chief," a phrase meant to remind her to mind her tone when she was losing her temper, "I don't think James Donnell intended to hurt all those people at the mall. There's more to his story, more to why he did what he did, and we owe it to him and to his family to understand –"

"No." The man spoke over her in a firm voice. "We don't owe them anything of the sort, and especially not wasting the time and resources of the Major Crimes division to set anyone's mind at ease. Captain – this has gone beyond thoroughness or sympathy for that young man's bereaved parents," he warned. "Your perspective on this is clearly not objective anymore...and I'm starting to wonder what kind of personal issues you're bringing into this."

Her own eyebrows arched in response, and she adopted her own look of warning. "This isn't about personal issues –"

"Isn't it?" Taylor took off his glasses with deliberate slowness, placing them on his desk before turning back to her. "How are things going with Rusty?"

Instantly on alert, Sharon narrowed her eyes. "Fine," she said, a chill to her tone. "This has nothing to do with Rusty."

"I don't pretend to be an expert at this, Captain," he said, "but it seems to me that it might. If you're preoccupied… Well, Mr. Stanton casually mentioned to me that he heard you two arguing yesterday…"

What? She couldn't help the flash of indignation across her face. Who did that man think he was? He didn't even know them!

"Are you having…difficulties?" the Chief continued. "Is the boy getting into any trouble?"

Sharon couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Rusty is fine," she repeated, and the man's ambiguous hum only served to make her angrier.

"If you say so, Captain. The boy's birthday is coming up, isn't it?" There was no mistaking the suggestiveness in his tone. "Have you thought about what will happen when he turns eighteen…? Talked to him about his… options…?"

Her hands automatically sough her pockets, her fingers curling tensely into fists.

She really hated Chief Taylor sometimes.

They'd all assumed that the chat with Taylor wouldn't go great – really, most conversations with the Chief left one with a mild feeling of frustration, but the Captain's expression when she walked back into the murder room still made a surprising sight. That wasn't 'mildly frustrated'; she looked furious. Or as close to furious as she'd allow herself to look, which meant that her lips were set in a thin line and her shoulders were rigid and her eyes tense around the corners.

She was making a beeline for her office, when the newly-arrived Robbery-Homicide detective called out to her. "Captain Raydor…"

To her credit, she managed to not turn him to stone as she looked over.

Andy shot his partner a wary look, to which Provenza returned an imperceptible shrug. Everyone else waited quietly.

"Detective…" Her tone was a good octave lower than normal, and her hands firmly hidden in her pockets (what the hell had Taylor said to her?), but she did keep a more or less composed expression as she faced the man. "I assume you're here about the double shooting case."

"Uh… yes, Ma'am." Good, even he must've read the signs enough to tread carefully. "We were uh, just waiting for you before I started briefing your team…"

There were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, then the Captain let out a slow breath. "I'll be with you in just a moment," she told him, then resumed her way to her office, where she spent an inordinate amount of time with her back to the glass walls, under the guise of going through her bag.

When she came out again, pretty much nothing had changed in her expression, but she was holding a notepad and a pen, and a cup of what Andy assumed was really cold coffee. He silently moved the files occupying the corner of his desk, leaving her enough space to lean against it and set the cup down.

"Everything okay?" he asked in a low voice, as the Robbery-Homicide detective began a lengthy exposition that included the word "bullet" way too many times.

Sharon just glanced over, her lips pressing together, and gave him a 'fine' that managed to successfully convey the exact opposite, then she reached for her cup so abruptly that a few drops spilled over onto the side of his desk.

He only caught her alone later in the afternoon, after some hours spent chasing down leads for Robbery-Homicide and yelling at that asshole Ross who did everything backwards just to spite them. As if it hadn't been him who'd asked for help from Major Crimes in the first place. No good deed and so on.

Sharon was in the break room when he walked in, pouring hot water over what he hoped was herbal tea. With the tension that had been rolling off of her in waves, caffeine did not seem like a good idea. She looked over her shoulder at the sound of his footsteps, and a bit of her mask slipped back on. Her body straightened a little, the faraway expression replaced by something more reserved. But she smiled when he asked if there was any peppermint tea left, and reached in the nearest drawer to pull out a teabag for him.

"Did we get the video footage from the club side entrance?"

Of course she started by talking shop. "Buzz is looking through it now. We got a partial license plate number already, Robbery-Homicide is running through the list of possible vehicles."

The Captain nodded. "Good…" Despite her best efforts, she still looked a little distracted. Maybe a little tired – as they all were. It had been a hell of a long week. And she'd probably stayed up late the previous night as well, writing that final report on the whole bomb threat case…

"You know we're gonna keep looking into this," Andy told her. "What happened to that Donnell kid. You're right, those are a lot of questions we should answer … and when we do, maybe you'll be able to tell his parents that he was a good kid, after all." A stupid kid, for sure, but maybe not a killer.

His reassurance however fell short; Sharon only shook her head. "They're burying him tomorrow," she said. "Whatever else we find out – if there even is anything to find out," (there was a note of doubt in her tone that definitely hadn't been there the previous evening), "it's not going to make a difference to them."

Andy let the hot water fill his own cup. "It might." She made no reply, instead stirring the honey into her tea with absent motions, and he let a few seconds pass in silence, before asking: "So what did Taylor say? Did you get in trouble?"

He'd meant it partly as a joke, but when Sharon averted her eyes, he felt a surge of anger. It wasn't something entirely new, he'd experienced this a couple of times before. When Taylor had laid into Sharon for not doing things more like Chief Johnson, once… and another time when SIS Lt. Cooper had said the words 'we just drove off', and Andy had wanted nothing more than to reach through the phone and strangle him…

"The Chief thinks I let my preoccupation with Rusty color how I saw the Donnell case."

That took him aback for a second. It wasn't what he'd been expecting. His irritation on her behalf mixed with a small degree of confusion. What did the kid have to do with any of this?

"He thinks I'm… projecting, somehow. That I'm insisting to look further into this as a way to keep my mind off my … personal concerns," Sharon continued, and now Andy couldn't help rolling his eyes:

"Yeah, well we all know Taylor's an idiot."

"He might be right."

She'd spoken so quietly that he'd barely caught it, but after a second she picked up her mug and, staring thoughtfully at the table top, repeated:

"I think… to some extent… there could be a bit of truth to that."

The admission surprised him again, but only for a moment. He gave her a sympathetic look. "You're worried about the kid?"

"I'm always worried about him," Sharon replied, matter-of-factly.

Wasn't that the truth. "But now there's no reason to," Andy said. "He's fine, we got that psycho who was sending the letters, he's back in school… he's safe. You don't have to worry anymore."

He wasn't entirely sure about the almost pitying look she gave him.

"There's something else…?"

Sharon hesitated for a long moment, long enough in fact to make him think she'd retreat from the conversation instead of saying anything else. But in the end she took another sip of her tea, and spoke again. "Rusty's birthday is coming up."

It took Andy a second to make sure he'd heard her right. That was way too much concern over what to get the kid as a birthday present, right? Sure, eighteen was a pretty important birthday, but hardly worth th – "Oh."

Oh.

Her phone buzzed, then, and checking the screen she smiled in a strained sort of way. The lieutenant's eyes drifted to the clock display on the microwave. Three-twelve p.m. That was probably the kid, texting to tell her that he'd made it home from school. All of them on the team had figured out what those regular afternoon texts were, eventually.

When Sharon met his gaze again, there was still that heartbreaking concern in her eyes, and Andy had no idea what to say.

" –license plate came back as belonging to a car owned by one of the victims' former employers, and… uh-oh, that's interesting." Lt. Tao's eyebrows arched. "Apparently he's also victim number one's former husband. Ronald Miller."

Sykes matched his expression. "Motive?"

"I suppose we'll have to look at their divorce settlement to answer that."

"What?" Robbery-Homicide's detective Ross frowned. "That's impossible, we checked backgrounds for both victims and none of them had ever been married."

"Your check might've missed it because they were married in New York… and divorced in Massachusetts," Tao explained. "I usually run searches through the national database, exactly for this kind of reason... I mean, it's not frequent that we see it, but… sometimes it pays off."

Ross looked a little sour. "I'll have my men bring this guy in," he said, and he and the younger Robbery-Homicide detective stepped outside to pass the message on to their own division.

Tao craned his neck to make sure the two were out of earshot, then turned to the Captain. "I've put in a request with City archives to get the full file on that old irrigation project, but their regular response time is about a couple of weeks unless I file under 'ongoing investigation'," he grimaced, "and then I'd need to give them the case reference number, and… well…"

Sharon saw his point immediately. "You were right not to do it," she nodded. "I'll see if there's another way to get an expedited request in. Thank you."

She started to turn away, then paused:

"Lieutenant… I appreciate that you're still looking into this – all of you," she glanced at everyone else in the room. "But it's important that we don't let it interfere with our current investigation. It's… " she sighed. "Chief Taylor's right. That case is officially closed, and we can not use our resources on it to the detriment of an ongoing case."

"Don't worry, Ma'am," Julio piped in from his desk. "We're sticking to the rules."

"As always," joked Flynn.

Sharon smiled a little, and dipped her head. "Thank you." There was another moment of silence, then she sighed quietly to herself and picked up the coroner's report on the two shooting victims, and Robbery-Homicide's briefing statement. "Please let me know as soon as the ex-husband is brought in."

With that, she began to walk over to her office, her expression still holding a vague note of preoccupation. With everyone else going back to their tasks, Provenza took the opportunity of the brief moment of privacy to lean toward Flynn.

"So what'd Taylor say to her to put her in that mood earlier?"

Also following the Captain with his eyes, Andy only half-got the question. "She's worried he's gonna leave."

Provenza looked at him like he was crazy. "Taylor?"

"What? No," Flynn finally caught up. "the kid. Rusty." He focused his attention on the conversation, turning fully to his partner and rolling his eyes. "Sharon thinks he'll want to go once he's officially out of the system. Apparently some idiot told her that the kid's gonna turn eighteen and just up and leave to look for his mom."

Silence.

"What."

"Yeah – can you believe this?"

Provenza groaned.

Many thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter. I love hearing from you guys :).

Sorry if the timeline of this chapter was a little wacky or confusing. Another one of those things that are sometimes fun to play with, but don't always work...! If anyone was confused - the present time in the story is Wednesday. The Tuesday scenes were from the previous evening (i.e. where we left off last chapter.) The Saturday scenes were from the future and please don't come after me with pitchforks and torches :D! (Seriously, save them until we actually get to that chapter. You'll feel much more strongly about murdering me, then, trust me.)

Thank you all for reading :).