4C: James' Story
Quinis: Prison Pals: Also, I feel like we need to see James' side of this. Just him being sidewinded by the fact that his 3 kids are here and out to get him. (Not exactly what was requested, but this is where inspiration led when the idea crossed my mind on a whim this week).
Growing up, his home life hadn't been the most stable. His father worked often being away from home which left his frazzled mother trying to keep everything together for him and his siblings.
Seeing the local cops patrolling the neighborhood, he'd noticed how they seemed to drive nicer vehicles than his parents did, they lived in nicer houses than his family did, and he envied the way they garnered respect wherever they went. That was when he decided to be a cop when he grew up.
School had been tough since he had to push himself to conform to the rules and regulations, but he managed to create a good reputation. He got good at making himself into what others wanted him to be.
Once he'd graduated, he signed up for the academy and began his official training.
By this time, he'd grown distant from his family and was practically on his own. It wasn't like they'd miss him anyway, he was one less mouth to feed, one less person in the crowded space, and one less voice in the chaos.
Finally, he received his badge, and life was looking up. He was a cop.
Joining a precinct near his apartment gave him a better neighborhood than he'd grown up in and he thought he was on his way, that things would begin to come together the way he wanted them to.
And for a while, that seemed to be the case.
He met a beautiful woman with brown hair and eyes and a nice smile. She made him feel good about himself and made him want to make her proud of him. So, he proposed.
She was his dream girl so she said yes, of course.
They got married, had a brief honeymoon, and settled down into another apartment nearby.
This was the next step of his life. He was married, living in a nicer home, and he was gaining a reputation on the force which provided some initial promotions.
Then his wife announced that she was pregnant.
At first, he was over the moon, he was going to be a dad! It only got better when they learned that they were expecting a boy. His son.
However, things got more complicated when they realized that two others had been hiding behind their brother. They were expecting identical triplets!
Over the following months, the medical bills slowly piled up as his wife needed additional checkups to keep an eye on their boys. This was followed by the c-section delivery and hospital bills as the boys ended up staying for a while before they were ready to go home.
There, the bills continued to pile up.
His wife stopped working to cut the daycare bills. The three infants went through a pack of diapers every other day, wipes about as frequently, and their milk consumption had him buying formula almost daily. Then there was the laundry to clean all of their clothes and whatever else they made a mess of.
All on top of the bills that were already in place.
It was too much and they were forced to move back down to cheaper accommodations in a lower area of the neighborhood.
That was a regression, a step backward, a move in the wrong direction! His life was supposed to be on an upward progression, moving into nicer homes and driving nicer cars!
At least he'd been promoted to detective by the time the boys were starting to walk which increased his income.
The position had also given him a new partner, Kathryn Hill. She was good at the work and the two of them moved through cases faster than their counterparts adding to the positive attention.
It gave him hope. Hope that maybe things would turn around as the boys got older.
But, things changed again one day.
He was on a bust when he opened a crate to check the contents only to see a large amount of money. To say he was tempted was an understatement… and, ultimately, he couldn't resist.
Picking up a bundle of bills, he was in the process of slipping them into his jacket pocket when he heard a throat clear and felt a hand on his shoulder.
His boss was standing right behind him! How had he missed that?
Expecting to be arrested, he was surprised when the man put his hand up and refused to take the bundle.
"Take it, but you work for us now."
Confused, he didn't know what he meant, but he soon learned.
Many of the police in his precinct worked for the mob. They took money and other valuables at busts, removed evidence, and gave warnings when a raid was about to happen, anything to keep them happy and the mob in business.
It was profitable work. With the extra income, he was able to slowly filter in enough to pay off the medical bills, gain a more stable financial position despite the triplets multiplied expenses, and he was soon settling his family into a decent townhouse.
Life is one for cruel ironies though because that's when everything went south again.
Another one of his superiors apparently wasn't on the take and he began to get suspicious of him. He even went to the point of confronting him in the parking garage one day and threatening to turn him in.
Unwilling to risk losing everything, let alone the likelihood that he'd wind up in jail himself, he'd done the only thing he could do. He'd used his backup weapon and fired the shot.
The threat was eliminated with the man's life. He would never tell what he suspected to anyone.
Why wasn't he surprised to hear his partner's voice, another do-gooder, coming up behind him and ordering him to put his gun down, declaring him under arrest?
His life had ended.
He was imprisoned for murder, the mob threatened him, and then he got a call from one of the higher-ups in the precinct revealing that the mob worked for the cops. Things were complicated so he took the only out he had. He confessed to the murder, he'd pulled the trigger after all, and he turned himself over for State's Evidence by testifying against the mob and creating a fog of mystery around whether he was guilty by choice, coercion, or just framed really well and threatened into submission.
However, his marriage didn't survive his imprisonment and his wife took their boys into Wit-Sec with his former partner disappearing from his life forever.
The life of James Bennett as son, husband, father, and cop was well and truly over.
In State's Evidence, he was given a new identity, a basic life, and he faded into obscurity… at least, that's what the government thought.
No one realized that he was aware of Kathryn's investigation with Sam or that he wasn't telling the whole truth in regard to the rest of the corruption in his former precinct. Those were his secrets, and ones he hoped to make use of someday.
Sam was dead.
His identity was easy to assume. The retired cop had kept to himself on a fishing boat with little interaction other than a digital communication with an E Parker.
Parker spoke and acted much as Kathryn Hill had. This appeared to be her new identity, but she still took precautions obscuring her identity just enough that he didn't know where to go looking for her right off. He had to imitate their communication patterns and buy his time.
It wasn't long before Parker messaged that she'd met with Neal. They were both in New York City and he was looking for information on his father. She'd told him most of the truth when he turned eighteen and he'd run away, but now that she was about to be moved again, he wanted to learn more while he had the chance.
Seeing an opportunity, he made plans to set up in New York City.
The city was large, but the criminal underground knew where Neal Caffrey lived and there was a rumor about him working with the FBI.
Ellen Parker had been harder to find, but as her obituary showed up in the paper, that ended the search.
Going to the funeral had been risky. Kathryn had been murdered, Neal was there with his FBI handler, and there was a risk of drawing negative attention. But, it was also his best chance to see who was around.
What did his son look like, did anyone recognize him, and other such potentially useful information.
He didn't get the chance to gather much before two men were suspicious and ultimately gave chase, but he'd been trained in evasive maneuvers with the force and then more with the Marshals as they protected him until his sentence was up.
Slipping away, he needed to make a plan and determine his goal.
Ultimately, he wanted to see what he could do to ensure that nothing else about his criminal activities would come to light, which met dealing with the higher power from his former precinct and any evidence that Kathryn might have managed to compile in her own investigations prior to going into Wit-Sec.
Then he wanted to see what he could do towards clearing his name and paving a way for him to reenter society without the criminal record.
Life had been okay in the system, but it was hard finding decent work with a criminal record so he was usually forced into cheap accommodation even if they weren't the most accommodating… at least, not compared to what he'd always hoped to achieve.
In his dream world, he'd have kept climbing the ranks and continued pocketing his illicit side income progressing the life that he could afford for himself and his family.
Sure, his family wasn't in the picture anymore, but that didn't mean that he couldn't use one of his sons to try and recreate opportunities for himself.
His plan came together when Neal contacted Sam, or rather, him, and requested a meeting on his terms.
Using that, he set up arrangements with the intent to get Neal away from his handler. The kid wouldn't recognize him and he could begin information gathering, see what Kathryn had told him before she died. Had she left anything to him?
Things got complicated though, that Peter Burke of the FBI was too intelligent and tended to keep Neal on his toes even if he was willing to go against his order for his own purposes.
Still, he managed to learn that his son was looking into who murdered "Ellen" as he called her, a youthful slip to keep using the name he'd grown up using rather than her real name.
Since she'd been murdered, everything that Kathryn owned was being processed so if she'd left anything to Neal, it would take a while to learn about it.
That meant that he was stuck in the city and risked playing his role too long with the FBI so close, but no one seemed to be too suspicious of him. They all seemed to accept that he was Sam, that he was paranoid after having worked in a corrupt precinct, and that he was also a retired cop with resources and means of his own.
He had another obstacle when Flynn Junior, the son of the mob boss and the heir apparent for all of their operations, turned up in the city.
When he said that he wanted to protect Neal, he didn't entirely mean it in a fatherly fashion. Sure, the kid was technically his son, but he didn't know it, and he hadn't seen the kid since he was little more than a toddler. Even then, he'd been working a lot trying to keep up with the bills and manage the expectations of all of his bosses so he hadn't been home much.
No, his intent to protect Neal was more of a ploy, an intent to earn some credit with the kid so that he'd be more lenient when he actually learned anything important.
What he hadn't counted on was Burke's suspicion encouraging Neal to take a blood sample and them finding his real identity.
Maybe he should have expected his son to figure him out, at least that far anyway. He was his son, and he'd been a good investigator himself back in the day.
That changed their dynamic as Neal began to ask him questions and tried to learn a little about him. He showed curiosity and an interest in where he came from.
Telling a story from when the boys were about two years old, he thought that would create a good impression on the kid. Not that it had been Neal that had gotten away from him… at least, he didn't think it had been, he thought it had been Bryce. Still, Neal wouldn't know the difference.
Neal was putty in his hands!
He got his friend, a quirky man named Mozzie, to hide him away when things got dangerous and he had his FBI friend holding back to let them bond as father and son.
Then the boy gathered his own crew for a race against Pratt's people in the FBI for the evidence and they proved themselves intelligent and capable.
But, since he needed to get to the evidence before everyone else, he started weaving complications into the plan with the intent of giving himself an edge.
It helped; he only had Pratt and Burke to deal with as they stood in the office and faced each off. Pratt was a threat, the man wouldn't hesitate to shoot him, even in front of an FBI agent. But Burke, he was trying to keep the peace and resolve the situation without a fight breaking out.
Pushing, he knew that if he did enough, Pratt would threaten him and he could shoot him in self-defense before running and leaving Burke to deal with the fallout.
Things worked like a charm, and Burke even obliged him by firing off a warning shot which added to the evidence against him.
To finish his stay in New York City, he caught up to the evidence box back at Neal's loft where he pulled the evidence against him out, destroyed it, and fled despite his son's pleas for him to turn himself in.
Considering how Burke was being burned as an upstanding FBI agent, things didn't bode well for him if he allowed himself to fall into the crosshairs of the government! He was a crooked cop with a murder already on his record so he'd be destroyed by the media and the justice system if they ever caught him.
Fleeing, he reached out to some other connections that he'd made since he'd been roaming the city and they were willing to take him into their organization. Then he planted ideas for them to take Burke out in prison.
With Pratt dead and no other witness to discredit his claims to be innocent, he hoped that he might be able to reenter the world and build a life for himself.
What he didn't account for were his own children.
Apparently, all three of the triplets had grown up to become agents in their own rights. Junior was NSA, Bryce was CIA, and Neal actually worked for the FBI in Washington.
They worked together to protect Burke, took down the organization that he'd hidden in, and then pulled evidence from the jacket that he'd been wearing proving that he'd been the one to shoot Pratt and not entirely out of self-defense either.
Now his life was well and truly ruined!
The government doesn't like people running around and shooting politicians so the justice system gave him the hardest sentence of life behind bars in a maximum security prison.
Sure, his son had walked out of such a place, but he'd had help on the outside, something that he didn't have.
No, he was trapped. And this time, he didn't think he'd be able to get out of this one.
Thank you, everyone, for reading :D
Next Saturday is the first one I'll be working on in a long time, so we'll see if I posted on Saturday or Sunday.
