Killing Game

By Kadi

Rated T

Disclaimer: This is only a sandbox that I like to play in. Sadly, it is not mine.

Chapter 12

The interview room was silent. The minutes were ticking by; it was going on five minutes since the officers had taken their seats. Detective Ryan Fiess sat staring at them. When nothing was said, he shifted where he sat. They were staring at him, as if waiting for him to make a move, or offer some piece of information. They had sent him to a jail cell just a couple of hours before, and as he saw it; there was no reason to pull him out again. He hadn't given them anything, and he wasn't planning on it now. So the big question was, what did they want?

Lieutenant Provenza slanted a discreet, sideways look at the Detective beside him. Julio remained silent and unmoving. He had agreed to let the other man lead the interrogation, mainly because the Julio had a way of getting answers out of the difficult perps. This wasn't going to be much different, but he also thought that Sanchez would be able to put voice to what they all wanted to say, in his own unique and Scary Sanchez way. When he only sat there and didn't speak, Provenza had to wonder what he was doing. Only the ticking of the other man's jaw indicated that he was still present in the moment. Still, time was passing, and it was not time that they had to waste. Whatever he was up to, he was going to need to say something soon.

He could sense that the Lieutenant was getting ready to intervene. Julio waited until the last possible moment. When he felt the older man shift in the seat beside him and lean forward slightly, his head tilted. "I knew that you were stupid," Sanchez said quietly, while his gaze never left Fiess, "but I didn't know that you were dumb." He leaned forward slowly and his gaze darkened as he stared harder at the other detective. "Did you really think that we would overlook that?"

Fiess looked between the two. The old guy was watching him curiously, but Sanchez was fuming. His glare was all anger and darkness, and the promise of pain if he didn't answer in just the way that he wanted. Fiess's eyes narrowed. "Miss what?" He shrugged at them. "You've got nothing to miss. I told you before. I don't know what you're talking about."

Julio's hands moved. He placed a folder on the table and slid it slowly forward. "You know exactly what we are talking about, because when you got booked in, you were allowed to make one phone call. You didn't call your lawyer because your union rep already did that for you. You called someone else, didn't you Ryan?" He tapped the folder that lay on the table between them. "When you make arrangements to have someone shot, asshole, you should make sure that the gun used doesn't come back to a case that you worked." He watched the other Detective's eyes widen and grinned. "Oh yeah. Didn't know that did you? The goons that you called, the ones that you asked to take care of your little problem, they screwed up man. Better than that, we now have you on evidence tampering too. You're the only one who has signed the logs on that gun. Guess what, you signed it out, then you signed it back in. Here's the thing, the gun you put back in to evidence, isn't the same gun. We already checked. Your idiot friends used it."

"I don't know what—"

His hand slammed against the table with enough force to rattle it. The sound it made echoed through the room, making even those in the electronics room jump. Julio leaned forward. "Don't tell me that you don't know what I'm talking about," he said slowly, "because the bullets that came out of that gun, landed in my Captain." Fiess shifted in his seat and looked nervously around the room. Julio's smile was slow, and it was mean. "Oh yeah dumbass. We already got one. Doctor pulled it out of her half an hour ago. Guess what, it matches the bullets in her car. Your pals screwed up man. Not only did they use a gun that you got out of evidence for them, and not only did they not kill her, they shot her kid too." Julio rose from his chair to lean even farther over the table. "The last time her kid was in danger, you know what happened? You have to know. Everyone knows man. She brought the whole LAPD down on that asshole's head. Guess that makes you the asshole this time, doesn't it?" Julio shook his head. "Big mistake," he whispered, "huge mistake. Bet you're really wishing you had just killed her yourself…"

Detective Fiess shoved at the table. He pushed back from it with enough force that the chair he was seated in was sent toppling backward. "If that bitch," he snarled, "had just kept her nose out of all of this, none of that would have happened!"

While two uniformed officers moved in to the room to help contain the Detective, Julio slowly reclaimed his seat. He picked up his file folder and settled back in it. "Yeah, but if you hadn't been such a coward, you wouldn't be going away for the rest of your life. Murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, evidence tampering," he looked to his right, where the Lieutenant still sat. "With consecutive sentences he will never see a parole hearing."

"Nope." That was not at all how he had expected it to go down. Provenza was having a hard time containing his smile. He just inclined his head and stared at the still standing Fiess. "But if the Detective would like to talk to us now, I think we might be able to work something out with our friend DDA Hobbs. What do you think?"

"I think she might be willing to chat." Julio shrugged. "It's hard to say. She's really fond of Rusty. She might be in a bad mood."

Provenza winced. "That could be bad for Ryan," he nodded to the Detective. "When Hobbs ain't happy, ain't no body happy," he drawled. He shared a look with Julio before they both turned their gazes back on Fiess. "What is it going to be?"

The Detective pointed a finger at them. "I want my lawyer," he said. He shook his head. "Then I want Hobbs. You can't make a deal with me. You don't have the authority. I'll talk to Hobbs. Only Hobbs," he spat. "You assholes aren't going to stack the deck."

"You already did that yourself." Julio stood up and walked to the door. He opened it and the DDA stepped into the room.

"This is how it's going to work, Detective," Hobbs moved over to stand just behind the Lieutenant. "You will give these officers all of the answers that they would like to have, and I will talk to my boss about allowing you to plea to a single life sentence. Refuse, and we go to trial. With the evidence that I have, it won't be hard at all to file for Murder One, with Special Circumstances."

"No way." Fiess shook his head. "I want the deal that you offered earlier. Murder Two, twenty-five to life."

"That deal went away when you decided to try and have Captain Raydor killed on her way home," Hobbs told him. "Murder One, life in prison. That is the only thing that I have on the table right now. It's going away in five seconds unless you tell these gentlemen who you contacted to do the actual shooting." Her brow arched and her head inclined. "You're responsible for the death of two police officers, the shooting of a third, the injury of her son, and that doesn't include the minor injury of yet another police officer. I haven't spoken to him yet, but I have a feeling Lieutenant Flynn will probably want to press charges. There isn't a judge in this state that would give you bail under those circumstances. You'll be waiting in county for the trial. I'm not sure if you've heard or not, but we're having a population issue there. I simply cannot guarantee that we will be able to keep you separated from the general population." She waited a beat and crossed her arms across her chest. "Your deal is ticking away, Detective. You have four seconds left. Three…"

"You can't do that." Fiess smirked at her. "It's illegal. Not to mention it's against the regs. I could have all their badges," he waved at the two detectives on the other side of the table. "It's the Johnson Rule. Something I think that they're pretty damned familiar with."

"Actually it isn't." Hobbs's lips pursed. "You haven't given me any reason to believe that you would be in any specific danger. Are there persons in county that might think you pose a significant danger to them?" Her gaze never wavered. "Two seconds… when the clock stops ticking, I walk out the door and the next time you will see me is at trial."

Julio clasped his hands together. "I would listen to her," he said quietly. "What do you think all the gang bangers in county are going to do when rumor gets around that you were helping their rivals? But all we have is suspicion right? We don't have any real proof…"

The moment he was placed in County lockup he would be a target. Detective Fiess ran a hand through his hair. The DDA had counted down to one and was beginning to turn away. "Okay. Alright. Fine! I'll give you the names, but you can't put me in general population. That will get me killed and you know it."

Provenza placed a notepad and a pen on the table and slid them across it. "You know what to do," he said. "Write it all down."

"After you repeat it all in front of a judge," Hobbs said, "we will see to it that you are transferred to a secure cell."

They waited for him to pick up the pen and begin writing before Provenza and Sanchez stood. They would leave the Detective in the care of the two uniformed officers while he wrote his statement down. In the hall, the Lieutenant shook his head. "What the hell was that?"

Julio shrugged. "Captain doesn't like it when I beat the crap out of people."

Provenza watched him turn and start walking down the hall. "Where are you going?"

"Hospital," he called back. "I told Amy that I would trade places with her for the arrest. Captain doesn't like it when I shoot people either."

When he looked at her, Andrea shrugged. "He's not wrong." She folded her arms across her chest again. "Is the Lieutenant still there by himself?"

"No." Provenza sighed. "Gus is there, and the Captain's son arrived a little while ago." He looked at his watch. "Her daughter's plane was supposed to take off fifteen minutes ago. She should be in the air now, or any minute now. I sent Patrice over earlier, I thought they might need a translator for all that medical mumbo-jumbo crap that everyone is throwing at them."

"Rusty?" Andrea hadn't asked for an update when she arrived. She hadn't wanted to go into the interrogation room with that on her mind, in case the update wasn't great.

"Still in surgery." Provenza ran a hand over his face. "They were trying to save his kidney. He can live without it, but he's young. Flynn told them to try. Patrice thought it was a good idea, as long as he's stable. Sharon is in recovery now, but she's going to be out of it until at least morning. Ricky is there now," he said tiredly, "he and Flynn are trying to guess at what she would tell the doctors to do." Before she could ask, Provenza snorted. "The hospital staff thinks they're married and we're allowing them to keep thinking it. The Captain has Rusty's medical power of attorney, but she's unavailable. Ricky thinks that his aunt has hers, but he hasn't been able to get in touch with her," the Lieutenant waved a hand. "It's a damned mess. Someone made the assumption that they were married and we went with it. Ricky hasn't corrected them, so…" They were biding their time and hoping that someone didn't slip up before both the Captain and Rusty were out of the woods.

"No, that makes a strange amount of sense. Someone has to make the hard calls, and Ricky is what, twenty-six? Twenty-seven? This big brother job is still very new," Andrea said. "I can imagine that he feels a lot better having back up, and besides, it's never easy the first time that we have to become responsible for our parents." She smiled sadly. "I can't imagine that it's all that easy on the Lieutenant either."

"He's an idiot." Provenza threw his hands up. "First him, then her, and the kid, and probably him again before we're done." If Flynn didn't have a heart attack, it might be a minor miracle. "They're all making me old."

"You know," Hobbs suggested, "it might not be a bad idea to let SOB handle the rest of this. They can do the arrests. You've done the hard part. Why don't you take the rest of your team down to the hospital? I'm sure that everyone will understand, including Chief Taylor, if Major Crimes chooses now to strategically step aside. In the end, it might work better at trial." She didn't imagine that they would be able to make deals with everyone. Some of them would go to trial. There would also be the media perception, the defense attorneys. In the end, it really would look better if another division was responsible for bringing in the shooters.

"I agree." Taylor strode toward them from the direction of the Murder Room. He had watched the interrogation with the rest of the team. "I'll have Chief Howard and his teams handle the rest. Your team has done enough, Lieutenant." His pushed his hands into his pockets. He was considering heading down to the hospital too. That would have to wait until the arrests were made. He would need to brief Chief Pope and talk to the press. There was still some work ahead of him. The rest of them, however, had done their best. "I already dismissed Lieutenant Tao and Buzz. Detective Sanchez was packing up to leave. Get out of here."

There was a part of him that wanted to see it done. There was another part that knew he might just shoot one of the suspects in the face if he was with the arresting team. Provenza sighed. He nodded slowly. The last few days were catching up to him. He felt old all right. Damned old, and tired. His body ached with it. "Thank you, Chief." It always chaffed to have to say those words, but this time he was beyond petty irritations. He jerked his head back toward the interview room. "Fiess is writing up his statement."

"We have it from here," Taylor assured him. "Well done, Lieutenant." He paused for a moment. "Give my best to the Captain's family. I will be along as soon as we have this wrapped up here."

"I will tell them." Provenza fought the urge to snort. Wouldn't Flynn just be tickled pink to hear that?

MCMCMCMCMCMC

Within the hour they were able to fill the waiting room. Tao had gone home to his wife first and she had joined him at the hospital. They brought food for everyone, although no one was in any mood to eat. When he arrived, Provenza was told that Rusty was out of surgery. Flynn was nowhere to be found. He assumed that he had gone to sit with the Captain, but Gus explained that he was with Rusty. The young man was in surgical ICU and they were only allowing family with him until he was moved to a room. That would be happening sometime the following morning, if he did okay overnight. Gus explained that Ricky had smuggled him back for a few minutes so that he could see Rusty, but the charge nurse on duty had not bought the explanation that they were brothers. They were planning to try again after shift change.

"Ricky is with his mother," Patrice explained. She joined him at the entrance of the waiting room. "Andy saw her for a few minutes after she was moved to a room, but he went to sit with Rusty when he got out of surgery." She laid a hand against his arm and let it slide slowly downward until her hand wrapped loosely around his wrist. "They were able to save the kidney," she told him, "they're going to have to watch him for infection, and make sure that it doesn't fail, but he is young and he's strong. He should be okay." He had two of the organs, and the other was still in good working condition. Rusty could live with a single kidney. He would need to be mindful of that for the rest of his life, but he could do it, easily. Patrice had agreed, though, that they should allow the surgeon to save the organ if he could. As long as Rusty was stable and tolerating the surgery, it wasn't a problem. In the end, it seemed to work out. The next few days would be critical for him, if his kidney function remained and he didn't develop an infection, he would be out of the woods.

Provenza nodded slowly as he wrapped his head around all of that. "What about his leg?" He looked over at her. "I thought they said it was superficial?" There was a lot of information that was tossed out in those first couple of hours after the shooting. He was trying to make sense of it now, although to begin with, he had simply focused on alive and left the rest for later. It was later.

"There was some minor tissue damage," she said. "They had to repair some vessels. He may be on crutches for a couple of weeks, but his leg will be just fine too."

"Rusty isn't the problem." Julio was seated nearby. He looked up at the Lieutenant. His eyes were still burning with anger. Now that he was there, and he had nothing to do, he could feel it. The problem was acting on it. That was what usually got him into trouble.

Patrice sighed quietly. "No, he really isn't." Her fingers tightened around Louie's wrist. "Sharon is doing okay, but she's probably going to need another surgery. They did what they could about the immediate danger, but her shoulder is in pretty bad shape." At his questioning look, she shrugged. "It will depend on how she heals. They will watch it, and she will have physical therapy."

"It might be a while before she's back," Provenza concluded, finishing what she didn't want to say. He shrugged. "Most of what she does is paperwork," he blustered, putting the others off and trying to keep them from worrying too much. "Anyone can do that with one good arm. It'll be fine."

The others didn't look convinced. Even Mike turned his gaze away. Provenza sighed. He understood the concern. At her age, and depending on how long it took for her to get cleared to come back, the department could just decide to retire her. It was Sharon who had prevented them from doing that to Flynn; no one would dare suggest it as long as he was reporting to her. Who was there to look out for her? None of them exactly trusted Taylor to do it. It was a worry, but one that Provenza decided to push aside until another time. They would cross that bridge when they arrived at it.

"I'm going to go and see Rusty," he decided. "We can send the idiot back to his girlfriend." He took Patrice's hand as he turned. "I would really hate to see a grown Flynn cry."

Patrice shook her head as she went with him. He was going to grumble and complain but he was worried about all of them, including his idiot partner.

They were silent as they made their way down the hall to the elevator banks. Rusty was on the fifth floor. Sharon was in a room on three, but due to the severity of his surgery, Rusty had been placed in the Surgical ICU ward for close monitoring. There was a waiting room on five, but the team had already camped out on the third floor, so there they remained. Patrice had already been in to check on Rusty once; Andy had gotten her in by claiming that she was married to family. She wisely kept it to herself that he had told the nursing staff that Louie was the boy's grandfather, at least until Andy was out of the room.

Flynn was sitting exactly where Patrice had left him earlier. He was slumped in a chair next to the bed, quietly tapping his phone against his leg while he stared at the monitors that were mounted on the wall. It wasn't as if he could make heads or tails of them, but it was something to look at other than the pale young man that was lying silent on the bed. When the glass door of the small ICU room slid open, Andy sat up and turned. He stood as the other two entered the room and joined them beside the door. The nurses had said that Rusty would be unconscious for a few hours, in part due to the anesthesia, but also because of the heavy pain medication that he was on, so it was unlikely that they would disturb him, but Andy didn't want to risk it.

"Hey." He scratched his thumb across his forehead. He had changed just before Ricky arrived. The t-shirt and jeans that Cooper had gotten out of his locker was a lot more comfortable than his ruined suit. "What did you find out? Was it Fiess?" Amy had mentioned at one point that the team was leaning in that direction, but he hadn't spoken to her in a while.

"We got him." Provenza nodded. "One of the guns used tied back to a case that he worked last year. Hobbs is working on it now. Taylor turned the rest of the case over to Howard and his SOB teams. Fiess has contacts from his Gang Intel days. He's been helping out a couple of guys..." Provenza sighed and waved off the rest of the explanation. They could talk about the case later. "We've got them," he concluded. "It's done. One way or another." He looked around Flynn and nodded toward the hospital bed. "How's he doing?"

"Still stable." Andy glanced at the bed and shrugged. "They said he would be out for a while. They have him on some pretty heavy drugs." He shoved his hands into his pockets. It had been a long day, a long few days actually. Andy sighed. "If he does okay tonight, they will move him to a room on the surgical ward tomorrow. So far he's hanging in there."

He was pale, and the stark whiteness of the sheets on the bed was doing little to improve his color. He looked as though he might have been asleep, if not for the fact that his leg was in a surgical brace and propped on a foam support to keep it elevated. There was also the tubing from the IVs and the wires from the monitors to contend with. Provenza shook his head. It was a hell of a thing. How long and hard had all of them worked over the years to prevent this very thing? Yet here they stood. Rusty had been seriously injured and almost killed; and the worst part was, he should have been completely safe. That was the part that was the hardest to reconcile.

Provenza tapped the fingers of his free hand against his leg. The other continued to hold his wife's hand. He looked at his partner again and jerked his head toward the door. "Go on," he said. "Get out of here. We can keep an eye on Rusty. Go sit with Sharon."

Andy glanced back toward the bed. He seemed torn for a moment. His body seemed to lean toward the door, as though propelled there by some will that was not entirely his own. "Nah," he shook his head. "I can't leave him." The woman he loved was laying in a hospital bed of her own two floors down, but she had used her own body to shield her child, and he was the only thing that she had cared about right up until the moment that she passed out. Andy wasn't leaving that room. No matter how badly he wanted to.

"You really are an idiot." Provenza rolled his eyes at his partner. "I think we can handle babysitting an unconscious, grown adult." He waved his hand toward the door. "Go," he said again, and this time with less patience. "Rusty doesn't need all three of us keeping an eye on him. Besides, if Sharon wakes up and you're not there to tell her that he is okay, she is going to bully her way up here."

He snorted quietly. "She would do that anyway." Andy debated for another moment. Finally he sighed. "Yeah, okay. I'm going." He ran a hand over his face and into his hair. "If he wakes up…"

"Oh my god. You're turning in to an old mother hen." Provenza waved his arm at the door again. "We will call you if he wakes up. Go!" His partner seemed to finally catch a clue and trudged out of the room, but not without hesitating to shoot one more worried look back at the boy on the bed. "Good grief." Provenza rolled his eyes. "He's worse than she is sometimes."

Patrice shook her head at him. "Be nice," she said. "He's been through a lot today. They all have. He's doing the best that he can considering the fact that his girlfriend and her son were shot, at the same time, and right before his eyes. Maybe we can cut him some slack, just this once."

"Sure." Provenza walked toward the bed. "And I'll knit him a blankie while I'm at it." There were two chairs in the room. He pulled a second one over beside the chair that Flynn had been occupying before taking a seat beside the hospital bed. He studied Rusty for a moment, the pale skin and the subtle rise and fall of his chest. Provenza slowly shook his head before asking, "how the hell did we end up here?"

It wasn't a question that he was expecting an answer to. Patrice took a seat beside him and laid a hand against the center of his back. "We can't predict the bad things that are going to happen to us, Louie. We can only try to survive them when they do."

"He's had enough," he said quietly. There had been enough bad in Rusty's short life, more than he should have had to experience. Rusty's arms were laying at his sides, hands loose and palms resting against the mattress beneath him. Provenza reached out and touched the one nearest him. The skin was cool, and he didn't move. He gave it a gentle pat before he shook his head again. "More than enough," he whispered. Rusty had been through too much and now he had almost been killed, and for what? Because some moron was pissed off that he had gotten caught doing something wrong? Getting rid of the Captain would not have stopped their case from moving forward; it was vengeance pure and simple. They had gotten it wrong though, the idiots responsible for this, and what was Rusty? Collateral damage? Just the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong moment? That was hard to believe. He was a boy, sitting in a car, on his way home with his family. There was nothing simpler or more innocent than that. It was not a drug deal; this was not about a serial killer, or a case of witness intimidation. It was senseless. That was the one thing that Provenza simply could not stand, not this time. He had seen a lot of senseless crap over the years, but just maybe he had finally reached his limit.

The pressure in his chest was just too much. Provenza let his head bow. He covered his face with his free hand and took a shuddering breath. Rusty was just a boy that wanted a normal life. He wanted to go to school, to write his articles, and have friends his own age. He wanted to tease his mother and annoy her boyfriend, and probably worm his way into hamburgers for dinner. Just a boy. A twenty-year-old boy that was probably doing all of those things, complaining and laughing and being a general pain the ass, right up until the moment that the first bullet entered his body.

He might grouse and complain, shake his fist and order them all about. He may mutter sarcastically and roll his eyes every time someone made a comment about the co-parent or the grandfather and occasionally even the kindly old uncle, but nothing would ever change or deflect from just how much he loved that kid. Patrice rubbed his back slowly. It had been a long and terrible day. She remained silent, but close by, and let him feel what he needed to feel. Whatever else he was, Rusty was family, and they'd almost lost him. Patrice didn't fool herself into thinking this reaction was only about the boy. He wouldn't admit it, and she wouldn't ask him to, but they had simply come much too close to losing all three of them.

It wasn't completely over yet, but tomorrow would be better than today. It had to be. How much more could any of them take?

-TBC-