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ninety6tears[See Master Post]
I called out when I finally saw the beam of a torch licking across the trees. Someone who didn't look to be tactics came running, trying not to blind me with the flashlight once he caught sight of me.
As soon as my eyes adjusted I recognized that it was Rock. I stood up, nodding down and finally letting off my phaser hold when he had his cuffs out and clapped them around Rigen's wrists.
"Congratulations," Rock procedurally declared, "you're under arrest for the murder of William Kenley that occurred on the night of 2261.7, or ND's November the fourth—"
"Don't you mean attempted murder?" Rigen muttered as he was hauled off of the ground.
Rock laughed a little wickedly. "Oh, you are gonna be so much fun...Hey. You alright?"
I'd started back towards the house when he yelled that after me; instead of answering I tiredly asked, "Is Pike here?"
"Can't help you with that. Janice and I were right in the area, he would've come on his own."
I gave him a lazy signal of thanks and dragged myself farther away. Once I was in the yard I went around to the front—I didn't feel right going through the house again—and the first figure who turned at the sight of me and came walking up was Toni, her body all slack and numb-looking.
I realized there was an ambulance, that that had been the reason for the sirens. Toni's mouth opened but seemed to fail at getting anything out as she looked me up and down. She came up and reached her arms out to me, but I took her by the shoulders and kept her at that distance, examining the deep blotch that started in a nebula low on her pastel blouse, noticed the slick of blood running up one of her arms. The blood was green.
That was when I saw the small tangle of Ken and Gaila trying to get past a couple medics, and the stretcher, and I was walking towards it without even thinking. One of the tactics people must have recognized me and assumed I knew what I was doing, but I didn't really know. One second I was scrambling to make the long way around to the back door of the ambulance and then the stretcher was moving by, a heaving bloodied body and Danek's hand grabbing at my shirt, hard. I looked into a pair of dark, desperate eyes gasping for air and begging me for something, and I meant to say "We got him," but I ended up just nodding. His hand loosened away and they lifted the stretcher up and slammed the doors on him, and the ambulance revved off.
"Will!" Ken was yelling at me as they were ushering the other residents away, taking them in for the questioning parade. I saw Janice mutter something to him that made his pale face finally look away, momentarily appeased as they got into the car and were driven off. Only when the traffic started to clear and I was stood alone on the driveway did I hear Chris yelling something that sounded like my name.
It occurred to me belatedly that I must have looked like shit. I could feel the blue-black pain of a monster bruise forming around my ribs, and places on my face felt like they'd been scratched clean open.
Chris had just gotten there. He was stopping in front of me and grabbing at my shoulders in an urgent shake and saying, "Oh, fuck. Are you alright?"
For a second I kind of forgot to answer the question. My brain was beat half to death, a week's worth of my snap-instinct all used up in one go, and it wasn't until I looked straight into Chris and saw something in his eyes that shocked me a little, sobered me, that I patted back at one of his arms. "I'm okay."
I was down to Will's last Slatroy, alone in the third interview room at the homicide headquarters.
I'd always thought they could have made these rooms a bit more eerie but most people find them chilly enough, with the cold echo of every tiny motion you make and the ghosts on the other side of the black glass. Even though they were basically identical, I would've been able to tell you this was the third one down the hall if you'd marched me into the offices with a bag over my head.
Spock and I got our first confession in this room. That beginning was eventually book-ended, naturally, with Sarah March. I could still see her sitting across from me in that one second her usual act was set down just long enough to give me a glinting look over a little smile, letting me know she knew she'd won. I could feel all over again that sink and sickly spin I'd felt in my stomach even as I was calling her a liar and getting out of the room.
I didn't want to remember her. I let myself think about Spock instead.
There was something I hadn't thought of in a while: We'd had this tap rhythm, seven notes I'd randomly pulled out of a movement of Mozart I had stuck in my head, that we used once as code for when I wanted to be able to signal to Spock whether I thought a suspect was lying without it being obvious we were communicating. I'd make like I was boredly tapping my stylus or a thumb against the table, or lightly kick a leg of his chair. We used the code again and again, but the meaning was always different, and over time there were ways we used it without really establishing beforehand what it meant. We would just catch the other's eye and somehow know. After a point it wasn't just for the info digging: It meant I'll take care of this, it meant I'm right here. It meant She totally wants to sleep with you and I'm too much of a gentleman to mention it out loud.
I felt along the edge of the tabletop and there was the first of the chipped notches in the wood. I'd started going at the table with my pocket knife once like a bored kid in the back of a classroom, one of a few tricks I'd use to make a suspect forget we were being filmed. After a point I'd started adding a notch every time Spock and I got a confession. The afternoon after the Marches' bodies were found, I could remember having to lug our work into these rooms because of the maintenance being done in the regular offices, and automatically picking this one, my hand fingering to count the marks as I sat down.
"Is he thinking about putting us with a third?" I asked, swooping a chair out and straddling it backwards close to the table.
"He said he had not decided yet. It should depend on what the next two or more days of the investigation yields."
Spock was going through the stack we'd just brought in in some half-hearted attempts at preliminary organization, until he stopped, saying my name.
I looked up over after a few seconds. "Hmm?"
"How long have you known?"
I looked up, doing coy for a couple seconds until I made myself get serious. "You mean that you're Amanda Grayson's kid?"
"For all the time I've known you, you only mentioned it today, when you pulled me aside to talk to me about the pendant."
"You don't think I've wanted to ask you about it a million times? You just never brought it up, and I figured you would have if you wanted to talk about it, so I made myself keep my mouth shut."
Something heavy and distant came into his expression, and he spoke carefully. "I couldn't claim to have ever told that many people, but there was a point when I made a rule of no longer doing so...Many who come across that information find it apparently difficult to restrain themselves from asking me if I am 'sure' that I don't remember anything that happened. The reason I left Vulcan at such a young age was to seek out a place where few people would even connect my name to the incident. You may appreciate the irony that I found myself returning to the area of the disappearance after that, but my mother's name is what people prominently remember, and if they remember mine they likely dismiss it as a common one."
I looked right at him, suddenly a bit pained. "I'm sorry. God, I've wanted to say it for years. I'm so sorry."
Spock straightened himself a bit. "It has been twenty years since it happened."
"I found out, I don't know, a couple months after we partnered up. Somebody mentioned that case when we were hanging out at Billy's, and I guess there's only one cop in a blue moon who's cynical enough to actually look up the file just because he can, and I was one who did. For a while I thought it couldn't be possible, that there had to be dozens of Spocks from Vulcan, but...you mentioned to me some time after that that your mother was human. And I guess it explained a couple things about you, why you've never talked much about your family...."
"I was wondering whether you'd known even before we were acquainted."
"What, and that I'd had some grim fascination with you?"
"I hardly would suspect it now," he granted, "but I am grateful you were wise enough not to mention it close to the start of our partnership."
"So you would've thought it then?" I gave him a look that went somewhere between a disbelieving squint and a teasing smirk. "You mean to tell me you don't know what made me want to be partners with you and you've never actually asked?"
Spock said, "It was apparent that we would be well matched; I fail to see how it would be a mystery why you would want to work with me."
I gave him a look that said I knew he'd just backpedaled, but I let it go. "Are you going to be alright on this case?"
"Obviously it should be of some official concern that I'm of a personal relation to a potentially related case, but it isn't strictly prohibited, assuming a supervisor approves it. I have already spoken with Walsh and he is confident that I will be able to handle the investigation."
"Yeah, except it wouldn't occur to Junior that it could ever be a problem. He thinks you're a walking computer."
Spock was blinking down at the table, as if pretending to be a little distracted. "...You believe I'm emotionally compromised by the subject of the case?"
"Spock." I said it solidly, waiting patiently for him to look straight at me. "I'm not worried, if you're not worried."
The opening of the door yanked me up by an inch, made me mutter, "Fucking finally" before I fingered forward the ashtray and put out my cig. The woman from records introduced herself as Mary Sanchez, and she wasn't going to like me by the end of an hour. I generally hate giving verbal reports, and I was antsy as hell to know what the hell was going on, especially since no one had any way of directly contacting me. Will's comm had wriggled out of my pocket at some point, probably during the wrestle, and my own comm was still collecting dust at the bottom of Pike's desk.
"Do you know why we're doing this here?" I asked. I sounded a little whiny but I couldn't really help it.
"I thought it was a little weird, but it's as good as anywhere, isn't it? They didn't want you at senior headquarters...They made it sound like that's what you'd want. Pike was convinced you'd be comfortable not being at risk of running into any of the other victims."
"Well, you can scrap that idea." This was the exasperated comment from Janice Rand, who had just opened the door to peep her head in, apparently looking for me.
"What are you doing back here?" I asked.
"I'm here to give you a ride," she said in a sympathetic sigh, "over to senior. To talk to the residents."
I figured I knew where this was headed. Shaking my head, I said, "Wait, is Chris over there with them? They're not actually...Jesus Christ, they cannot be telling them about Will—?"
"Apparently they weren't going to try, but—" Janice was interrupted by an alert from her comm; it was on the dispatch setting and she set it up on open speaker on the table. I was hoping for Chris, but it was some grumpier member of records personnel.
"Is he there?"
Sanchez interrupted, "What's going on? I still need to get a statement from—"
"I'm sorry, but we can't get the residents to calm down. They're really anxious about Will and are refusing to talk about anything until he's with them. They were very confused, they were convinced he was in trouble for having an illegal firearm or something, and they were being so stubborn about wanting to know where he was it was getting very hard to work with..."
My hands went up covering my face for a couple seconds.
"So Detective Pike was attempting to...explain some things to them, and they are apparently refusing to be persuaded."
"Their friend is in the hospital, for fuck sakes," I growled. "The statement can't wait?"
"It's extremely unwise to wait. The more time victims have to talk to each other, the more the details can be unreliable..."
"It's on recording. Put Pike on."
"I wouldn't know anything about the level of surveillance, but I know there was no visual. I could put Pike on, but this is outside of his jurisdiction—"
"Okay, look. If what you need is someone who can convincingly attest to being a genetic source, couldn't you try to get a hold of somebody else who could be even more convincing?"
Janice looked at me, considering. "Spock?"
The records fuckwit drawled, "Pike already asked me to contact Detective Spock. He said he'd like to be of assistance, but he's taking care of something over at Dalaigh Park."
Still looking my way, Janice crossed her arms, and with a careful boldness said, "Try Spock again. Tell him this time Kirk's the one asking."
For about a second there was a vindictive part of me that thought that was just a swell idea, but I pulled myself out of it, sighing. "Nevermind...If he says he's busy, it's probably a hell of a night."
And with that I was already throwing my jacket back on, leaving Sanchez groaning in annoyance. Just as I got up I traced my finger along the table edge one last time, counting the braille of the notches that used to feel like yes, yes, yes.
Of course part of me had felt like it would come to this and that it was cowardly of me to even try to wriggle out of it. I was in a bad state on the drive over to headquarters. I'd gotten the worst of my wounds taken care of before getting sent over to Murder, but I still had a tight pain in my bones. I kept getting excessively peeved at improper drivers because Rand didn't have anything she could say to make me feel like this could go well and I didn't want her to worry about trying.
"Hell of a night," she muttered in belated agreement once we hit a block of traffic that was leaving a stadium event. "So. Rock said he heard this guy squealed right to your face."
"Yeah. I guess he was in trouble when they thought he hadn't gotten the job done, so..." I shrugged. "Getting a real confession will be another thing."
"Joey can work him. Oh God, he's going to be pissed, though, that all this research we were doing wasn't for anything. Did you know I was working all the way back to checking up on your first year arrests?"
"It's not down the drain. It'll go on your record."
For the next couple minutes I would've told Janice to hell with it, just use the flashing lights, but I couldn't make myself feel in a rush. When we finally pulled back into smoother traffic, Janice spoke again.
"I couldn't believe it," she said, "when Joey told me you and Spock aren't speaking anymore."
It isn't easy for somebody like Janice to set me on edge. I couldn't tell if the way I was reacting to the subject had mellowed down a bit and it was something I could at least acknowledge at a distance, or if I just didn't have any room for getting revved up on that particular night.
"The crazy thing is, I figured he was the reason you left the squad," she added after a moment. "...But I didn't think it was over something bad."
"...What?" It was like I'd lost an epic staring contest or some other childishly stubborn gamble: Janice, of all people, had gotten me to speak up, because I had no idea what she'd meant. When I looked over I thought she was blushing, like she suddenly regretted bringing it up.
"Forget it, it's just...I always kind of looked up to you. Which is a little embarrassing if you think about it, but I did. And I guess I just assumed it would have to be for something you really wanted, for you to leave. Which makes it sound like I'm disappointed or..." She scoffed weakly at herself. "I'm just trying to say, it must have been bad, and I'm sorry."
Before I could start wondering what the hell to say to that, we were pulling up to the lot.
On the way through the entrance and the security and the lifts, I couldn't think of what I was going to say to them. It was almost like a part of me knew that what I was about to tell them wasn't something for words. I couldn't imagine what I was going to do. Giving them the strong-armed compassion and encouraging them to drink some water would have felt terribly impersonal, but I had no place to treat them as anything else.
Even with all that, it wasn't much of a blessing that I didn't end up having to say anything at all. Gaila took me off guard by being in the hallway rather than affixed in the predictable location of one of the witness rooms, her hand at the handle of a door I presumed Toni and Ken were waiting on the other side of. I don't know what she was doing. They must have been told that this person named Kirk was coming to talk to them.
The second she saw me, I knew it wasn't going to be that simple.
"Oh, Will." Running up to me with her eyes wide and pleading and relieved all at once, clutching a hand at my forearm. "What the hell is going on—These people aren't making any sense...They've been telling us this crazy stuff, and we...Will?..."
It wasn't anything I did or said: Gaila's eyes looked straight up into mine, and then something in her came to a full stop.
I don't know what it was she saw. I only heard Danek's words coming back to me, ringing cold and bitter against the bricks and the metal doors and the yellowy light catching little fires in Gaila's curls. Now that I know, it's so obvious. Gaila's face, with a terribly slow dawning to it, shut down into one of dismayed horror. I could almost see the moment when it led into the stab of irrational, inevitable guilt, that sickening feeling like she'd failed a test of some kind, that she could have scrapped everything into reverse and that none of this would have ever happened if she had only somehow known. Her hand curled back from my arm in a motion of revulsion and then up to cover her mouth. Her entire body snapped and sank into desolation, as if I wasn't even standing there, when the first sobs came.
One of the interns got her gently by the shoulders before I'd even realized anyone else was there, and through the muddled feeling of paralysis somebody was gently taking me by the arm and then by a shoulder and leading me away.
Chris had called Bones to make sure I had a ride back. He was saying, "You're alright, kid," and nudging me back into the lift when I didn't seem to realize that was where I was supposed to go.
It was a long time before I was free to go home, but Bones waited me out. For half of the ride to my place I didn't say a word, but when the silence depressed me too much I started asking him about what he'd been up to, which I really was curious enough about. He told me there had been several cases of an unusual virus that had kept him pretty busy until he was able to hone down a way to detect it as a cause of death. By the time we were in my neighborhood I realized I was so exhausted I was hardly hanging onto anything he was saying, but being mostly tired felt like an improvement.
"Hey. Comm your ma," Bones nagged at me as I was getting let off. "But don't do it when you look like hell."
"Yeah, yeah." As I was sliding out of the passenger seat I said, "Thanks, Bones."
"Goodnight."
It was late, but not too late for Molly to be up. She was my next-door neighbor, a likable mother of three boys whose names I couldn't seem to keep straight. My apartment complex is one of several in ND that was once a hotel resort, so we enjoy the unusual view of a swimming pool a couple floors down outside our doors. She was leaning on the balcony and having a cigarette when I came by.
"Hey, Jim."
"Molly. Got an extra?"
She let me knuckle out a smoke and I patted at my pockets, realizing I still had my lighter at least. After a first drag I realized I was holding it by my pinky and moved it back, telling my hands to stay steady.
"How was your vacation?" Molly asked.
I let out a long sigh of smoke, and I settled on saying, "I almost never came back."
I was thrown onto the R & R and talk therapy belt by default, and besides my first counseling session with Doctor M'Benga, I had nothing to do for the first few days after the operation besides dust my apartment and sink into my couch, weighed down by the nagging hollowness of being back home. I was jetlagged back into my own life, waking up at Will o'clock sharp for the classes I wouldn't be going to. The last time I'd left undercover, I'd slept like a baby for a couple days, partied for two more, and then got to work applying for homicide with a sudden excited instinct about it. My only reason for worrying much about when I'd be returning to Domestic Violence was wanting to see my rookie through to the end of his preliminaries.
Chris finally found the time to come by on the third day of my little vacation. He'd kept me up to date on the important particulars: I knew that Joey and Rock had worked a confession out of Rigen, and that Danek was recovering well and had cooperatively spoken with Pike the same day he was on his feet. I did not know yet whether Chris knew that I had lied to him.
"Well, some interesting stuff came out of Rigen," Chris said as he took his favored seat on the easy chair. "It looks like he himself had no idea why the higher-ups wanted this guy out of the picture...He was just some newbie chump trying to impress somebody and took out Will because he'd seen a picture of him. After getting nothing out of him we pressed on the gents you stunned, and the one with the hand did say that he heard some of the gang talking about somebody who was trying to offer bribes to get the heat off of somebody who'd ratted out a few of their weapons smugglers...I think it goes without saying that Will's tenacity was what got him in trouble there. If they're so hot on something that they're not interested in money, you better haul your ass and never call back. I can't imagine why he felt the need to keep messing with it. He had no reason to think these guys knew where she lived."
"Somebody must have struck up a deal, for him to go back again," I said after a moment. I'd had more time than Chris had to think about this. "Maybe it was Rigen. I'd bet he's lying about not knowing the whole deal about Will. He saw that the boss wasn't one for negotiating but thought he might be able to skim off of Will under the table, so he gave him the time and place. Maybe he was planning on offing him all along just for the status points, maybe it was Will figuring out what was going on and being too much trouble. And if Rigen didn't mention this, maybe he had a sidekick he's trying to protect. Somebody who would be in possession of a suspicious amount of money they can't account for."
The moment where I could have pretended not to know everything about Will had passed, and Chris didn't look surprised. I only wondered now if it was Danek who'd told him or if he'd figured it out on his own. The first thing Chris finally asked was, "Where do you think he got a huge enough amount of money to bribe somebody?"
"Stole it," I said, shrugging. "If you're good at hacking...I know the basics of how somebody could do it."
Chris scoffed. "Jesus, Jim, I don't even know what to do with any of it."
My glance was fixed somewhere forward, sobering before I said, "I'm sorry. About how things went at the end."
"Ah, fuck it. It was your hunch against mine and yours was dead right."
"Still." I couldn't help asking, "Did Danek tell you?"
"No. At least not until he knew that I suspected what had been going on. Speaking of..." He reached into his coat pocket. "I've got something he gave me."
At first I was confused, but then I realized what it would be before he handed over the small data storage chip. Danek had made me a copy. It took me a second to form words. "Did you watch this?"
"It is not within my division, it's IS evidence. As for that copy, no cigar either, because he expressly gave it to me to give to you and only you."
I looked up at him and then back at the chip, dazed. When I met eyes with Chris yet again there was something that was almost a smirk there, and I shook my head.
"He hates me," I said, surprised by the gravel of emotion I heard in my voice as it came out.
"I really don't think it's that simple," Chris said carefully.
"I really don't think that we're being honest with ourselves. If we try to pretend this is something we did for them," I replied coolly, but the bitterness rose up the more I spoke. "I did this to them. And on top of that, the entire thing was a fucking waste."
Chris patiently demanded, "How?"
"We've got absolutely nothing on finding who made them, and we would have known that much earlier. And the moment they knew Will was dead, it would have been just a matter of time before Danek watched the chip, and then...maybe he would have kept it to himself, but anyway, if Gaila knew Will was dead she would have probably said something about the threats."
"Okay, even if. If Gaila had said anything to us from the start about these guys, she's still saying to us now she's never seen Rigen before in her life. He wasn't involved in the threats, so the chances of us having been able to pull him in without you having been where you were at the time that you were?...Pretty damn low, Jim. And the thing about Danek is...he wouldn't trust us at all if it weren't for you."
I gave a dubious wince. "How do you figure that?"
"Because Will didn't trust the police, and he just recently found out that Will knows more about a lot of things than he does. We could have gotten nothing out of them regardless of how scared they were, Danek could have gone on pretending the chip didn't even exist as far as the law's concerned. And you might as well know: He refused to cooperate with any of my questioning until I reassured him that nothing he told me was going to compromise your job."
I didn't know what to do with that. It didn't exactly change my mind about things, but I felt a bit like the breath had gone out of me just the same. "I guess I have him to thank then, huh?"
"Well, on that subject...I trashed the part of the audio file where you got your attitude on, so no boy scout in the records team is going to get you in any trouble."
I looked up, one corner of my mouth twitching up helplessly. "Oh."
He let out a long sigh, something in his expression kind of playfully still pissed at me before he said, "I wanted Jim Kirk back. And that is what I got."
He was up and getting back into his jacket, when he paused. Something in me wanted to brace for it, but when he spoke his voice was almost gentler than I'd ever heard it before, and that took me off guard more than anything.
"Look. You're a hell of a cop. I don't know what it was that made you forget that." He shook his head. "But you shouldn't let it matter anymore. I'm not going to pretend I know what it is you need to do, son, but I want you to know I never would have lifted a finger to try to pull this operation if I had any reason to think you were perfectly happy where you are now."
I felt like too much was itching through me and it took a good effort to even look back at Chris for a second. I finally managed to give a short nod of understanding.
"And for fuck sakes, give me a comm every once in a while," he pointed back at me on his way to my door. "I'm not letting you get under my radar this time."
This time I got out a smile. "Yes, sir." Chris was already halfway to the door, and I sank onto my back on the couch, listening to his footsteps dissolve after the latching. I lay there doing nothing but thinking until I fell asleep.
In my dreams I was Will pretending to be Jim, or I was walking from his bedroom into my bathroom and there were movements of myself in the mirror when I wasn't twitching a muscle. He was always at the edges, but I was never quite fully into his skin or my own. There was always something poisoning one life with the other.
I called out when I finally saw the beam of a torch licking across the trees. Someone who didn't look to be tactics came running, trying not to blind me with the flashlight once he caught sight of me.
As soon as my eyes adjusted I recognized that it was Rock. I stood up, nodding down and finally letting off my phaser hold when he had his cuffs out and clapped them around Rigen's wrists.
"Congratulations," Rock procedurally declared, "you're under arrest for the murder of William Kenley that occurred on the night of 2261.7, or ND's November the fourth—"
"Don't you mean attempted murder?" Rigen muttered as he was hauled off of the ground.
Rock laughed a little wickedly. "Oh, you are gonna be so much fun...Hey. You alright?"
I'd started back towards the house when he yelled that after me; instead of answering I tiredly asked, "Is Pike here?"
"Can't help you with that. Janice and I were right in the area, he would've come on his own."
I gave him a lazy signal of thanks and dragged myself farther away. Once I was in the yard I went around to the front—I didn't feel right going through the house again—and the first figure who turned at the sight of me and came walking up was Toni, her body all slack and numb-looking.
I realized there was an ambulance, that that had been the reason for the sirens. Toni's mouth opened but seemed to fail at getting anything out as she looked me up and down. She came up and reached her arms out to me, but I took her by the shoulders and kept her at that distance, examining the deep blotch that started in a nebula low on her pastel blouse, noticed the slick of blood running up one of her arms. The blood was green.
That was when I saw the small tangle of Ken and Gaila trying to get past a couple medics, and the stretcher, and I was walking towards it without even thinking. One of the tactics people must have recognized me and assumed I knew what I was doing, but I didn't really know. One second I was scrambling to make the long way around to the back door of the ambulance and then the stretcher was moving by, a heaving bloodied body and Danek's hand grabbing at my shirt, hard. I looked into a pair of dark, desperate eyes gasping for air and begging me for something, and I meant to say "We got him," but I ended up just nodding. His hand loosened away and they lifted the stretcher up and slammed the doors on him, and the ambulance revved off.
"Will!" Ken was yelling at me as they were ushering the other residents away, taking them in for the questioning parade. I saw Janice mutter something to him that made his pale face finally look away, momentarily appeased as they got into the car and were driven off. Only when the traffic started to clear and I was stood alone on the driveway did I hear Chris yelling something that sounded like my name.
It occurred to me belatedly that I must have looked like shit. I could feel the blue-black pain of a monster bruise forming around my ribs, and places on my face felt like they'd been scratched clean open.
Chris had just gotten there. He was stopping in front of me and grabbing at my shoulders in an urgent shake and saying, "Oh, fuck. Are you alright?"
For a second I kind of forgot to answer the question. My brain was beat half to death, a week's worth of my snap-instinct all used up in one go, and it wasn't until I looked straight into Chris and saw something in his eyes that shocked me a little, sobered me, that I patted back at one of his arms. "I'm okay."
I was down to Will's last Slatroy, alone in the third interview room at the homicide headquarters.
I'd always thought they could have made these rooms a bit more eerie but most people find them chilly enough, with the cold echo of every tiny motion you make and the ghosts on the other side of the black glass. Even though they were basically identical, I would've been able to tell you this was the third one down the hall if you'd marched me into the offices with a bag over my head.
Spock and I got our first confession in this room. That beginning was eventually book-ended, naturally, with Sarah March. I could still see her sitting across from me in that one second her usual act was set down just long enough to give me a glinting look over a little smile, letting me know she knew she'd won. I could feel all over again that sink and sickly spin I'd felt in my stomach even as I was calling her a liar and getting out of the room.
I didn't want to remember her. I let myself think about Spock instead.
There was something I hadn't thought of in a while: We'd had this tap rhythm, seven notes I'd randomly pulled out of a movement of Mozart I had stuck in my head, that we used once as code for when I wanted to be able to signal to Spock whether I thought a suspect was lying without it being obvious we were communicating. I'd make like I was boredly tapping my stylus or a thumb against the table, or lightly kick a leg of his chair. We used the code again and again, but the meaning was always different, and over time there were ways we used it without really establishing beforehand what it meant. We would just catch the other's eye and somehow know. After a point it wasn't just for the info digging: It meant I'll take care of this, it meant I'm right here. It meant She totally wants to sleep with you and I'm too much of a gentleman to mention it out loud.
I felt along the edge of the tabletop and there was the first of the chipped notches in the wood. I'd started going at the table with my pocket knife once like a bored kid in the back of a classroom, one of a few tricks I'd use to make a suspect forget we were being filmed. After a point I'd started adding a notch every time Spock and I got a confession. The afternoon after the Marches' bodies were found, I could remember having to lug our work into these rooms because of the maintenance being done in the regular offices, and automatically picking this one, my hand fingering to count the marks as I sat down.
"Is he thinking about putting us with a third?" I asked, swooping a chair out and straddling it backwards close to the table.
"He said he had not decided yet. It should depend on what the next two or more days of the investigation yields."
Spock was going through the stack we'd just brought in in some half-hearted attempts at preliminary organization, until he stopped, saying my name.
I looked up over after a few seconds. "Hmm?"
"How long have you known?"
I looked up, doing coy for a couple seconds until I made myself get serious. "You mean that you're Amanda Grayson's kid?"
"For all the time I've known you, you only mentioned it today, when you pulled me aside to talk to me about the pendant."
"You don't think I've wanted to ask you about it a million times? You just never brought it up, and I figured you would have if you wanted to talk about it, so I made myself keep my mouth shut."
Something heavy and distant came into his expression, and he spoke carefully. "I couldn't claim to have ever told that many people, but there was a point when I made a rule of no longer doing so...Many who come across that information find it apparently difficult to restrain themselves from asking me if I am 'sure' that I don't remember anything that happened. The reason I left Vulcan at such a young age was to seek out a place where few people would even connect my name to the incident. You may appreciate the irony that I found myself returning to the area of the disappearance after that, but my mother's name is what people prominently remember, and if they remember mine they likely dismiss it as a common one."
I looked right at him, suddenly a bit pained. "I'm sorry. God, I've wanted to say it for years. I'm so sorry."
Spock straightened himself a bit. "It has been twenty years since it happened."
"I found out, I don't know, a couple months after we partnered up. Somebody mentioned that case when we were hanging out at Billy's, and I guess there's only one cop in a blue moon who's cynical enough to actually look up the file just because he can, and I was one who did. For a while I thought it couldn't be possible, that there had to be dozens of Spocks from Vulcan, but...you mentioned to me some time after that that your mother was human. And I guess it explained a couple things about you, why you've never talked much about your family...."
"I was wondering whether you'd known even before we were acquainted."
"What, and that I'd had some grim fascination with you?"
"I hardly would suspect it now," he granted, "but I am grateful you were wise enough not to mention it close to the start of our partnership."
"So you would've thought it then?" I gave him a look that went somewhere between a disbelieving squint and a teasing smirk. "You mean to tell me you don't know what made me want to be partners with you and you've never actually asked?"
Spock said, "It was apparent that we would be well matched; I fail to see how it would be a mystery why you would want to work with me."
I gave him a look that said I knew he'd just backpedaled, but I let it go. "Are you going to be alright on this case?"
"Obviously it should be of some official concern that I'm of a personal relation to a potentially related case, but it isn't strictly prohibited, assuming a supervisor approves it. I have already spoken with Walsh and he is confident that I will be able to handle the investigation."
"Yeah, except it wouldn't occur to Junior that it could ever be a problem. He thinks you're a walking computer."
Spock was blinking down at the table, as if pretending to be a little distracted. "...You believe I'm emotionally compromised by the subject of the case?"
"Spock." I said it solidly, waiting patiently for him to look straight at me. "I'm not worried, if you're not worried."
The opening of the door yanked me up by an inch, made me mutter, "Fucking finally" before I fingered forward the ashtray and put out my cig. The woman from records introduced herself as Mary Sanchez, and she wasn't going to like me by the end of an hour. I generally hate giving verbal reports, and I was antsy as hell to know what the hell was going on, especially since no one had any way of directly contacting me. Will's comm had wriggled out of my pocket at some point, probably during the wrestle, and my own comm was still collecting dust at the bottom of Pike's desk.
"Do you know why we're doing this here?" I asked. I sounded a little whiny but I couldn't really help it.
"I thought it was a little weird, but it's as good as anywhere, isn't it? They didn't want you at senior headquarters...They made it sound like that's what you'd want. Pike was convinced you'd be comfortable not being at risk of running into any of the other victims."
"Well, you can scrap that idea." This was the exasperated comment from Janice Rand, who had just opened the door to peep her head in, apparently looking for me.
"What are you doing back here?" I asked.
"I'm here to give you a ride," she said in a sympathetic sigh, "over to senior. To talk to the residents."
I figured I knew where this was headed. Shaking my head, I said, "Wait, is Chris over there with them? They're not actually...Jesus Christ, they cannot be telling them about Will—?"
"Apparently they weren't going to try, but—" Janice was interrupted by an alert from her comm; it was on the dispatch setting and she set it up on open speaker on the table. I was hoping for Chris, but it was some grumpier member of records personnel.
"Is he there?"
Sanchez interrupted, "What's going on? I still need to get a statement from—"
"I'm sorry, but we can't get the residents to calm down. They're really anxious about Will and are refusing to talk about anything until he's with them. They were very confused, they were convinced he was in trouble for having an illegal firearm or something, and they were being so stubborn about wanting to know where he was it was getting very hard to work with..."
My hands went up covering my face for a couple seconds.
"So Detective Pike was attempting to...explain some things to them, and they are apparently refusing to be persuaded."
"Their friend is in the hospital, for fuck sakes," I growled. "The statement can't wait?"
"It's extremely unwise to wait. The more time victims have to talk to each other, the more the details can be unreliable..."
"It's on recording. Put Pike on."
"I wouldn't know anything about the level of surveillance, but I know there was no visual. I could put Pike on, but this is outside of his jurisdiction—"
"Okay, look. If what you need is someone who can convincingly attest to being a genetic source, couldn't you try to get a hold of somebody else who could be even more convincing?"
Janice looked at me, considering. "Spock?"
The records fuckwit drawled, "Pike already asked me to contact Detective Spock. He said he'd like to be of assistance, but he's taking care of something over at Dalaigh Park."
Still looking my way, Janice crossed her arms, and with a careful boldness said, "Try Spock again. Tell him this time Kirk's the one asking."
For about a second there was a vindictive part of me that thought that was just a swell idea, but I pulled myself out of it, sighing. "Nevermind...If he says he's busy, it's probably a hell of a night."
And with that I was already throwing my jacket back on, leaving Sanchez groaning in annoyance. Just as I got up I traced my finger along the table edge one last time, counting the braille of the notches that used to feel like yes, yes, yes.
Of course part of me had felt like it would come to this and that it was cowardly of me to even try to wriggle out of it. I was in a bad state on the drive over to headquarters. I'd gotten the worst of my wounds taken care of before getting sent over to Murder, but I still had a tight pain in my bones. I kept getting excessively peeved at improper drivers because Rand didn't have anything she could say to make me feel like this could go well and I didn't want her to worry about trying.
"Hell of a night," she muttered in belated agreement once we hit a block of traffic that was leaving a stadium event. "So. Rock said he heard this guy squealed right to your face."
"Yeah. I guess he was in trouble when they thought he hadn't gotten the job done, so..." I shrugged. "Getting a real confession will be another thing."
"Joey can work him. Oh God, he's going to be pissed, though, that all this research we were doing wasn't for anything. Did you know I was working all the way back to checking up on your first year arrests?"
"It's not down the drain. It'll go on your record."
For the next couple minutes I would've told Janice to hell with it, just use the flashing lights, but I couldn't make myself feel in a rush. When we finally pulled back into smoother traffic, Janice spoke again.
"I couldn't believe it," she said, "when Joey told me you and Spock aren't speaking anymore."
It isn't easy for somebody like Janice to set me on edge. I couldn't tell if the way I was reacting to the subject had mellowed down a bit and it was something I could at least acknowledge at a distance, or if I just didn't have any room for getting revved up on that particular night.
"The crazy thing is, I figured he was the reason you left the squad," she added after a moment. "...But I didn't think it was over something bad."
"...What?" It was like I'd lost an epic staring contest or some other childishly stubborn gamble: Janice, of all people, had gotten me to speak up, because I had no idea what she'd meant. When I looked over I thought she was blushing, like she suddenly regretted bringing it up.
"Forget it, it's just...I always kind of looked up to you. Which is a little embarrassing if you think about it, but I did. And I guess I just assumed it would have to be for something you really wanted, for you to leave. Which makes it sound like I'm disappointed or..." She scoffed weakly at herself. "I'm just trying to say, it must have been bad, and I'm sorry."
Before I could start wondering what the hell to say to that, we were pulling up to the lot.
On the way through the entrance and the security and the lifts, I couldn't think of what I was going to say to them. It was almost like a part of me knew that what I was about to tell them wasn't something for words. I couldn't imagine what I was going to do. Giving them the strong-armed compassion and encouraging them to drink some water would have felt terribly impersonal, but I had no place to treat them as anything else.
Even with all that, it wasn't much of a blessing that I didn't end up having to say anything at all. Gaila took me off guard by being in the hallway rather than affixed in the predictable location of one of the witness rooms, her hand at the handle of a door I presumed Toni and Ken were waiting on the other side of. I don't know what she was doing. They must have been told that this person named Kirk was coming to talk to them.
The second she saw me, I knew it wasn't going to be that simple.
"Oh, Will." Running up to me with her eyes wide and pleading and relieved all at once, clutching a hand at my forearm. "What the hell is going on—These people aren't making any sense...They've been telling us this crazy stuff, and we...Will?..."
It wasn't anything I did or said: Gaila's eyes looked straight up into mine, and then something in her came to a full stop.
I don't know what it was she saw. I only heard Danek's words coming back to me, ringing cold and bitter against the bricks and the metal doors and the yellowy light catching little fires in Gaila's curls. Now that I know, it's so obvious. Gaila's face, with a terribly slow dawning to it, shut down into one of dismayed horror. I could almost see the moment when it led into the stab of irrational, inevitable guilt, that sickening feeling like she'd failed a test of some kind, that she could have scrapped everything into reverse and that none of this would have ever happened if she had only somehow known. Her hand curled back from my arm in a motion of revulsion and then up to cover her mouth. Her entire body snapped and sank into desolation, as if I wasn't even standing there, when the first sobs came.
One of the interns got her gently by the shoulders before I'd even realized anyone else was there, and through the muddled feeling of paralysis somebody was gently taking me by the arm and then by a shoulder and leading me away.
Chris had called Bones to make sure I had a ride back. He was saying, "You're alright, kid," and nudging me back into the lift when I didn't seem to realize that was where I was supposed to go.
It was a long time before I was free to go home, but Bones waited me out. For half of the ride to my place I didn't say a word, but when the silence depressed me too much I started asking him about what he'd been up to, which I really was curious enough about. He told me there had been several cases of an unusual virus that had kept him pretty busy until he was able to hone down a way to detect it as a cause of death. By the time we were in my neighborhood I realized I was so exhausted I was hardly hanging onto anything he was saying, but being mostly tired felt like an improvement.
"Hey. Comm your ma," Bones nagged at me as I was getting let off. "But don't do it when you look like hell."
"Yeah, yeah." As I was sliding out of the passenger seat I said, "Thanks, Bones."
"Goodnight."
It was late, but not too late for Molly to be up. She was my next-door neighbor, a likable mother of three boys whose names I couldn't seem to keep straight. My apartment complex is one of several in ND that was once a hotel resort, so we enjoy the unusual view of a swimming pool a couple floors down outside our doors. She was leaning on the balcony and having a cigarette when I came by.
"Hey, Jim."
"Molly. Got an extra?"
She let me knuckle out a smoke and I patted at my pockets, realizing I still had my lighter at least. After a first drag I realized I was holding it by my pinky and moved it back, telling my hands to stay steady.
"How was your vacation?" Molly asked.
I let out a long sigh of smoke, and I settled on saying, "I almost never came back."
I was thrown onto the R & R and talk therapy belt by default, and besides my first counseling session with Doctor M'Benga, I had nothing to do for the first few days after the operation besides dust my apartment and sink into my couch, weighed down by the nagging hollowness of being back home. I was jetlagged back into my own life, waking up at Will o'clock sharp for the classes I wouldn't be going to. The last time I'd left undercover, I'd slept like a baby for a couple days, partied for two more, and then got to work applying for homicide with a sudden excited instinct about it. My only reason for worrying much about when I'd be returning to Domestic Violence was wanting to see my rookie through to the end of his preliminaries.
Chris finally found the time to come by on the third day of my little vacation. He'd kept me up to date on the important particulars: I knew that Joey and Rock had worked a confession out of Rigen, and that Danek was recovering well and had cooperatively spoken with Pike the same day he was on his feet. I did not know yet whether Chris knew that I had lied to him.
"Well, some interesting stuff came out of Rigen," Chris said as he took his favored seat on the easy chair. "It looks like he himself had no idea why the higher-ups wanted this guy out of the picture...He was just some newbie chump trying to impress somebody and took out Will because he'd seen a picture of him. After getting nothing out of him we pressed on the gents you stunned, and the one with the hand did say that he heard some of the gang talking about somebody who was trying to offer bribes to get the heat off of somebody who'd ratted out a few of their weapons smugglers...I think it goes without saying that Will's tenacity was what got him in trouble there. If they're so hot on something that they're not interested in money, you better haul your ass and never call back. I can't imagine why he felt the need to keep messing with it. He had no reason to think these guys knew where she lived."
"Somebody must have struck up a deal, for him to go back again," I said after a moment. I'd had more time than Chris had to think about this. "Maybe it was Rigen. I'd bet he's lying about not knowing the whole deal about Will. He saw that the boss wasn't one for negotiating but thought he might be able to skim off of Will under the table, so he gave him the time and place. Maybe he was planning on offing him all along just for the status points, maybe it was Will figuring out what was going on and being too much trouble. And if Rigen didn't mention this, maybe he had a sidekick he's trying to protect. Somebody who would be in possession of a suspicious amount of money they can't account for."
The moment where I could have pretended not to know everything about Will had passed, and Chris didn't look surprised. I only wondered now if it was Danek who'd told him or if he'd figured it out on his own. The first thing Chris finally asked was, "Where do you think he got a huge enough amount of money to bribe somebody?"
"Stole it," I said, shrugging. "If you're good at hacking...I know the basics of how somebody could do it."
Chris scoffed. "Jesus, Jim, I don't even know what to do with any of it."
My glance was fixed somewhere forward, sobering before I said, "I'm sorry. About how things went at the end."
"Ah, fuck it. It was your hunch against mine and yours was dead right."
"Still." I couldn't help asking, "Did Danek tell you?"
"No. At least not until he knew that I suspected what had been going on. Speaking of..." He reached into his coat pocket. "I've got something he gave me."
At first I was confused, but then I realized what it would be before he handed over the small data storage chip. Danek had made me a copy. It took me a second to form words. "Did you watch this?"
"It is not within my division, it's IS evidence. As for that copy, no cigar either, because he expressly gave it to me to give to you and only you."
I looked up at him and then back at the chip, dazed. When I met eyes with Chris yet again there was something that was almost a smirk there, and I shook my head.
"He hates me," I said, surprised by the gravel of emotion I heard in my voice as it came out.
"I really don't think it's that simple," Chris said carefully.
"I really don't think that we're being honest with ourselves. If we try to pretend this is something we did for them," I replied coolly, but the bitterness rose up the more I spoke. "I did this to them. And on top of that, the entire thing was a fucking waste."
Chris patiently demanded, "How?"
"We've got absolutely nothing on finding who made them, and we would have known that much earlier. And the moment they knew Will was dead, it would have been just a matter of time before Danek watched the chip, and then...maybe he would have kept it to himself, but anyway, if Gaila knew Will was dead she would have probably said something about the threats."
"Okay, even if. If Gaila had said anything to us from the start about these guys, she's still saying to us now she's never seen Rigen before in her life. He wasn't involved in the threats, so the chances of us having been able to pull him in without you having been where you were at the time that you were?...Pretty damn low, Jim. And the thing about Danek is...he wouldn't trust us at all if it weren't for you."
I gave a dubious wince. "How do you figure that?"
"Because Will didn't trust the police, and he just recently found out that Will knows more about a lot of things than he does. We could have gotten nothing out of them regardless of how scared they were, Danek could have gone on pretending the chip didn't even exist as far as the law's concerned. And you might as well know: He refused to cooperate with any of my questioning until I reassured him that nothing he told me was going to compromise your job."
I didn't know what to do with that. It didn't exactly change my mind about things, but I felt a bit like the breath had gone out of me just the same. "I guess I have him to thank then, huh?"
"Well, on that subject...I trashed the part of the audio file where you got your attitude on, so no boy scout in the records team is going to get you in any trouble."
I looked up, one corner of my mouth twitching up helplessly. "Oh."
He let out a long sigh, something in his expression kind of playfully still pissed at me before he said, "I wanted Jim Kirk back. And that is what I got."
He was up and getting back into his jacket, when he paused. Something in me wanted to brace for it, but when he spoke his voice was almost gentler than I'd ever heard it before, and that took me off guard more than anything.
"Look. You're a hell of a cop. I don't know what it was that made you forget that." He shook his head. "But you shouldn't let it matter anymore. I'm not going to pretend I know what it is you need to do, son, but I want you to know I never would have lifted a finger to try to pull this operation if I had any reason to think you were perfectly happy where you are now."
I felt like too much was itching through me and it took a good effort to even look back at Chris for a second. I finally managed to give a short nod of understanding.
"And for fuck sakes, give me a comm every once in a while," he pointed back at me on his way to my door. "I'm not letting you get under my radar this time."
This time I got out a smile. "Yes, sir." Chris was already halfway to the door, and I sank onto my back on the couch, listening to his footsteps dissolve after the latching. I lay there doing nothing but thinking until I fell asleep.
In my dreams I was Will pretending to be Jim, or I was walking from his bedroom into my bathroom and there were movements of myself in the mirror when I wasn't twitching a muscle. He was always at the edges, but I was never quite fully into his skin or my own. There was always something poisoning one life with the other.
