A Tangled Web (20)
"Hey."
Buzz closed the door behind him, quick enough that only a few snippets of sounds drifted through from the murder room. Too little to make out any words, but the tone was the same – urgent, frustrated...tired.
"It's kind of late for lunch, but…" The man set down a plate with a burger and some fries.
Rusty glanced at it for about half a second and muttered an automatic "Thanks," before his anxious gaze went right back to the murder room. Lts. Provenza and Flynn and Detective Sanchez were engaged in some sort of debate with lots of wild gesturing. "Have they found anything? What's happening?"
Buzz grimaced. "Still looking. They've got some good leads," he said as reassuringly as he could; still, his words had little effect. With a sigh, he nodded to the untouched food. "If you want something else, we can go to that sandwich place across the street…"
Rusty just glanced at the plate again, almost confused to see it in front of him. How was he supposed to have lunch? It just felt so wrong, him sitting there eating burgers when Sharon… when… when they didn't even know… Shaking his head, he pushed the plate away. He didn't want food. He wanted…
"I know cafeteria food isn't exactly great, especially this late in the afternoon, but..." Buzz trailed off, realizing that to remind the boy of just how late it was wouldn't help; not that his words got much of a reaction either way. Silently, he sat himself down in the opposite chair. "They're doing everything they can," he said in a quiet, serious tone. "Looking everywhere. They'll find her."
Rusty averted his gaze.
How often did the team find missing people? No – how often did they find them alive? Maybe it happened more often than he thought, but at the moment Rusty couldn't remember one single instance.
So what was he even supposed to be waiting for?
"Rusty, I know you're not hungry but you still have to eat, okay?" Buzz sighed again, "The Captain would tell –"
"Don't, Buzz!" The boy glared at him, suddenly vehement. "Okay? I'll eat it. Just… don't."
He didn't want to hear any of that. It was just... no.
Instead he looked over to the murder room again. "What's going on? Where's everyone going?"
Buzz glanced over his shoulder, his brow furrowing. "I don't know. Following another lead, I guess…"
They both fell silent when Lt. Provenza caught Buzz's eye and with a curt gesture, waved him over.
Why would the team need Buzz? They didn't need him to follow leads. If they needed Buzz, it meant they needed him to film something, and if he had to film something that meant they had a scene, and if they had a scene–
"Oh god... Buzz..."
"Don't jump to conclusions," the man hurried to tell him. "Rusty – don't make up stories in your head, okay? That's not going to help anything." He stood up, and grimaced sympathetically when the boy scrambled to his feet as well. "You know you can't come with us."
"But –"
"I'm sure Lt. Provenza will tell you as soon as they find anything," Buzz assuaged. "No – Rusty –" He had to physically get in front of the door, because the boy wasn't listening. "Listen, you can't go out there, you know that."
"You don't understand…!"
"I do." He swallowed, blinking back his own tears. "I do understand, alright? And – I promise, if Lt. Provenza doesn't, I'll tell you whatever it is we find – alright? I'll call you and I'll tell you, Rusty, just…" he squeezed the boy's shoulder, "try to have a little more patience, please."
"I can tell you that the victim is male," was the first thing that Dr. Morales said to them at the crime scene, and profound silence fell in the wake of his words.
Provenza took another step closer to the half-charred body. "Are you sure?" he asked in a low tone; it earned him a sharp glare from the ME:
"If I weren't sure, I wouldn't be saying it," Morales snapped. "You people. You know how long since I've been out to an actual crime scene? I wouldn't be here at five p.m. on a Saturday," he railed, "if I didn't want to be sure. So yes, I'm sure." He got up, pulling the blue tarp back over the body with an abrupt gesture. "It's not Captain Raydor."
Then he turned his back on them, marching off toward one of the transparent garbage bins that the crime scene techs had set up, where he tore off his gloves and tossed them in with more force than necessary.
Behind him, everyone was slowly letting go of their business masks, stony expressions morphing back to something more normal. Sanchez muttered something under his breath in Spanish. Amy swallowed, managing to look at the now-covered body for more than two seconds at a time. Sounds began to pick up again – calls for gloves and kits, footsteps on the roadside gravel.
Dr. Morales took a deep breath and turned back around from the trash bin. "Okay," he called out. "I'll be taking more questions, now."
Provenza signaled Buzz to get various angles around the damaged minivan and the body, and walked over to the doctor.
"Was there an ID on him?"
"Not on the body, there might be one in the car." Morales crossed his arms, and exhaled slowly again. "In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not feeling entirely my usual self right now. And you should consider firing whatever idiot called the ME's office and jumped the gun," he added, "because I drove up here expecting to make a totally different identification, and it was not a good forty-five minutes."
The lieutenant just shook his head. It was better to not even go there. "How did this man die?"
"That, I can't tell you. I was looking for gender markers and other signs, so I didn't actually get that close a look at his wounds." Morales grimaced. "But given the condition of the body, chances are you'll have to wait until the autopsy for cause of death. I can tell you," he said after a second, "that he was an adult male, probably in his early or mid-twenties, and if you don't find an ID, I can probably get you usable prints and dental records."
"I doubt that'll be necessary," said Provenza, causing the doctor to arch his eyebrows:
"You already know who he is?"
The older man glanced back at the body under the blue tarp. "We've got a pretty good idea."
"Danny Murray, twenty-two years old." Flynn pinned the photo to the murder board, below the young man's name. "James Donnell's idiot buddy. Who we think was in the garage with Jensen and Captain Raydor at the time of the explosion."
Sanchez shook his head. "He was in here just a few days ago. We should've..." But he wasn't even sure how to end that.
Hindsight was leaving a bitter taste in everyone's mouths. If only they'd asked Murray more questions. If only they'd checked into Jensen when he reported the missing explosives.
"So… we think that Erik Jensen killed this guy?" Sykes frowned, a little confused. "Why would he do that? If he's acting out of a grudge against his ex-wife, that doesn't really fit."
"He's a psycho, he doesn't need a reason," Flynn muttered angrily.
"And let's not forget that this is the second impressionable young man who ends up dead after presumably assisting Mr. Jensen in his plans." Provenza's lips were set in a thin line.
"Only James Donnell jumped off a bridge," Amy pointed out. "It's not like Jensen could've planned that…"
"And Morales says that Murray probably died from smoke inhalation, despite the blow on the back of his head," the lieutenant replied in a wry tone. "That's still two suspicious deaths connected to our man, and I don't care if he planned them or not, I'm not much liking the body count." His expression was grim, starting to show signs of his own impatience. "We have got to find this guy!"
"We've got eyes on his house and workplace, and went through the entire list that his ex-wife gave us," said Julio, "but he hasn't shown up anywhere yet. Still got an alert out on his car, too. Lieutenant…" Sanchez looked conflicted. "I know you said he'll be easier to find if he doesn't know we're looking, but we're over the twenty-four mark since he took the Captain…"
He didn't have to finish the sentence. Captain Raydor had been missing for just over a day, and other than an increasing body count, they had very little in the way of figuring out what the hell had happened or where she was.
Things weren't looking good.
"…shouldn't we put Jensen's picture out? Let the public know we want him?"
Provenza exhaled slowly.
"Not yet."
"No, he's right," Andy disagreed. "We've got no information to go on – if anyone saw anything…"
"Once we plaster this guy's face all over the news, we'll have five hundred people come forward, and probably none of them with anything useful," the older lieutenant countered. "We don't have the time to go through dozens of phony leads in the hopes that someone saw something real, and," he emphasized, "we have no idea what he'll do if he figures out we're on to him and panics. No," Provenza repeated, "you heard his ex. Jensen's all about low-key and under the radar. It's not going to do us any good to go public with this."
"We don't have any other way to find him!" argued Flynn. "We're out of options!"
"No we're not!" At his desk, Tao was putting his phone down. "I just called SID to ask for an update. They're still working on the minivan, the fire destroyed a lot of the evidence inside, but," he took a deep breath, "there was a FasTrak transponder on the windshield, and they were able to get its serial number. I'm running it now – if Danny Murray was on any toll roads in the last twenty-four hours, we'll know in just a few minutes, and we might be able to get a better idea of where he went after the bomb went off."
The atmosphere in the room shifted with renewed sense of purpose.
"Can we do the same for Jensen's car?" asked Provenza. "Does he have a FasTrak?"
Mike nodded. "Already looking." A second passed, and then..."There's something else…" His voice had lowered a notch, become more hesitant. "SID found small traces of blood in the back of the van. It's hard to make much of it because of the damage from the fire – but it seems to have come from two different people." He tried to ignored the sudden apprehension on his teammates' faces. "Most of the samples were O-positive, and the lab matched them to Danny, but one sample wasn't a match. Blood type was B-positive… which is the same as Captain Raydor's."
Heavy silence followed his words.
Flynn passed both hands through his hair, in a gesture half-frustrated, half-helpless.
"How much blood?" Provenza asked quietly.
"Not much – not enough to…" Tao grimaced, and repeated, "Not much. There's no way to be sure that it's the Captain's, either, but… it could be evidence that she was in that minivan after the explosion."
"Yeah, and bleeding." Andy gritted his teeth.
For a moment, Provenza's eyes drifted back to the conference room, where Rusty was still waiting, pacing, complying with the request to stay there but visibly losing his grip on his patience. It was a lot to ask of him, to voluntarily stay out of the loop, accept to be uninformed… but what was the alternative, when the only developments they had so far were either dead ends or dead bodies! And now the blood…
He averted his eyes before the boy's silently imploring gaze.
There was nothing to update him on.
He sighed and beckoned, "Buzz." It was better this way, than having Rusty there if... things went badly. "You're taking another break. Get your car keys."
As the civilian nodded his silent agreement, Tao made an abrupt movement in his seat. Pulling his keyboard closer with a sort of nervous energy, he called, "I've got the electronic toll records!"
Buzz said something about phone calls and company and whatever, but the words flew by, fuzzy and broken, like noises from a poorly tuned radio. 'Need anything' and 'stay' and other things that didn't really matter.
"Yeah… thanks." Head bowed, Rusty managed to stick the key into the lock on the first try, and the door opened into a quiet, dark apartment.
They'd sent him home in the end.
After another two hours of waiting, in which he'd seen the team come back and more pictures go up on the murder board (but not Sharon, not Sharon, not. Sharon.), and Lt. Flynn shouting orders at uniformed officers, Lt. Tao carrying ten-pound piles of folders, everyone moving and gesturing and… at the end of the day they still had nothing.
Around seven-thirty Lt. Provenza had come into the conference room and told Rusty that they'd be there through the night, but he was to go home. By that point, he'd been too drained to even argue anymore.
So now here he was. Home.
Alone.
His coffee cup from the previous morning was still on the table. Sharon's boots stood against the wall, and his stomach twisted painfully because what if…
Somehow, Buzz left and Rusty made his way to the sofa. The cushions sank beneath his weight, with a sound that seemed almost mournful. One of his algebra books sat next to him, abandoned from Thursday night, and there was a stray sock under the coffee table. Sharon must've missed it in her laundry frenzy…
He lowered his face in his hands, doubling over, pressing his fingers against his eyes until bright spots erupted behind his eyelids, and he let his mind whirl until he was so disconnected from reality that he almost thought that he'd open his eyes again and it would all turn out to be just a bad dream.
But when he finally did open them, the apartment was still quiet. He was still all alone.
"Sharon…" His lips moved to the shapes of her name, though barely any sound came out. Please come home.
He couldn't go to his room. He couldn't even think about going to Sharon's room. So he sat there, curled in a corner of the sofa, folding himself into as small a form as he could manage around the icy hollow inside his stomach. His eyes kept darting to the door, as though he expected her to walk in any minute, and even though he knew it wouldn't happen, he looked over again and again and again, until his chest hurt and the sight of that closed door was the saddest thing in the world.
Sharon would've told him to go to bed.
Her voice rang out in his head, the words such a familiar refrain that he could recite every inflection by heart. Time for bed. Go to your room. Lights out. Take it to your room, Mister. Don't stay up too much later.
He was suddenly afraid that he'd forget what her voice sounded like.
His fingers curled around one of the throw pillows. No, there was no reason to worry about that, because she was there, in his head, and he was pretty sure that he could live to be a hundred and still hear Sharon reminding him that bacon wasn't a food group and to put the forks the right way up in the dishwasher.
It had taken him over a week, when he'd first come to live with her, just to unpack and move into his room; he'd tried to convince Cynthia that Sharon made him keep his things in trash bags. And then he'd told Sharon that he wasn't her child.
Which he wasn't.
But everything he was – everything he liked about what he was, all of that was from Sharon. Everything.
What you are, is who I love.
Without her…
He clenched his fists. No. No, because life and God and the universe just couldn't do that. No!
What you are...
He didn't like what he was, before Sharon. Sometimes he still didn't like what he was, but Sharon always liked him. Even at his worst, even when he told her that she didn't have her life together or accused her of stupid, ridiculous things that came out of his mouth without filter, she liked him.
Or… no, maybe she didn't always like him, but she loved him.
Even when he didn't love himself, Sharon loved him. Rusty knew that, because she'd made sure to tell him so, even when he was awful – especially when he was awful. When he'd done things that he'd thought for sure would make her turn away, she'd pulled him closer instead. Every single time.
Rusty wasn't sure that he'd ever made it as clear to her as she'd made it to him. But he loved her, too.
She had to know it. Even when they fought so much she had to know it, because he'd told her so but oh, he should've never fought with her at all. He wished now that he'd just shut up and let Sharon do whatever she wanted, because it mattered so little, who had the better argument and who was being unreasonable, it didn't matter at all, really, not now when Rusty knew that he wanted to be loved a lot more than he wanted to be right.
He squirmed painfully in his corner of the sofa, trying to make himself even smaller, because his entire being just hurt, and he had no idea how to make it stop.
His eyes flickered to the closer door again, and his stupid heart beat hopeful for another moment, and then sank once more.
The house was silent and it smelled like Sharon's perfume and nobody was telling him to take off his street clothes and put them in the hamper.
Please please please Sharon.
Please come home.
It had been a long time since he had felt so alone.
"Damn it – this doesn't tell us where he took her!"
Provenza shot his partner a silent look, half-understanding and half-'cut it out', and turned his attention back to the large map that now occupied a good quarter of the murder board.
"We've got the minivan on the 110, southbound, at six-forty p.m. yesterday – that's one possible route to 'Sun Plaza' from both the USC campus and Danny Murray's house – but more importantly," colored pins in hand, Tao marked another spot on the map, "the records show the van back on 110 at Central Av., Northbound, at eight-oh-nine p.m."
"They could've taken some side roads, avoided the major intersections on their way out," Sykes reasoned. "Explains why we didn't see the van on any traffic cams near the mall. The timing works… thirty-two minutes is a lot to drive from the mall to 110, but if it took them a few extra minutes to get themselves and the Captain out of the garage…"
Provenza nodded, having made much of the same assumptions.
"The last record of Murray's transponder is just past Alameda St., at one of the checkpoints on I-10," Tao continued. "Based on that and traffic cam footage from the exit intersections, I think it's most likely he went on to I-5 northbound… There are cameras on that freeway every ten miles or so," he prepared another pin, "the minivan passed the one at exit 135, didn't make it to the one at 144, so he must've gotten off somewhere between those two exits."
It wasn't much. But it was something. A place to start...
"That explains why we found the minivan on San Fernando," said Amy. "It runs parallel to the freeway in that area."
"That still leaves, what, all of Glendale to consider." Flynn shook his head. "Not to mention…"
He cut himself off abruptly.
There was a beat of silence, then…
Sanchez's jaw clenched. "Griffith Park."
The park, thousands of acres of land, a good portion of it rough and untamed.
The perfect place to make someone disappear.
Provenza fixed a dark stare on the map.
"I want a list of all possible places in Glendale that have any connection to Erik Jensen or Danny Murray," he said curtly. "Extend that to Northeast LA if you have to. Just search that entire area and find the connection! Sykes – contact Northeast and Foothill Divisions, tell them to put patrols on the streets looking for this guy. Sanchez – help Tao. Flynn." He turned to his partner, with a determined look. "We're going to talk to Ms. Crowley again."
"What for? She hasn't told us anything useful yet." Andy couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice.
"Because even with a narrowed search area, we could be wasting too much time looking for this guy," said Provenza, "time that we don't have." Time that the Captain might not have. "While Tao and Sanchez get us a new list of locations, we're also going to try for a… different approach."
He cast another brief glance at the boy in the conference room.
"I'm tired of being two steps behind this bastard. Let's give him a reason to come out of hiding."
You know that scene of Buzz asking Rusty to please try to have a little more patience? That's me, now. Rusty is all of you. So please hang in there and don't do anything drastic such as, oh I don't know, decide to go out and look for Sharon yourselves.
Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing, and another big thanks to my guest reviewers. I love hearing from all of you :).