Jenn
I'd made it known from the get that if they wanted to send someone in after Kim Hayden's girlfriend, that I was not only willing but eager to do it. I wanted to close that double rape homicide, not only for justice, but to get on the map. Was that self-involved? Yeah, probably. But any career you enter is about the politics, and getting some attention from a case that on the outside appeared merely forgotten by law enforcement was bound to get me somewhere. The newspapers would boom, and maybe my name would be in them, and back at the PD they'd say, "Hey, Carver. Good work. Here's a promotion."
Or maybe nobody would care at all, but hey, for justice, right?
And I knew that Kim was perfectly willing to go herself, up until she randomly made the decision that it would be better not to. Hell, we'd all been strongly advising her to stay out, and she'd been strongly ignoring us, but then one day, she said we were all right. I didn't fully grasp the change of heart, but I didn't denounce it either. The last thing I wanted was internal affairs looking at the Green Falls police under a magnifying glass.
I asked Carrie how she would feel about it before volunteering to go, and to be completely honest, I kind of wished she'd protested more adamantly. But what she'd said made sense.
"We agreed from the beginning that this relationship would only function if it didn't interfere with work," she'd reminded me. "I can't be on your mind when you make decisions about the job."
And of course that was hard. I knew that she was right, but she was always on my mind. I couldn't put her out of it if I tried. The best I could do was pretending she wasn't on my mind, and volunteering the next morning to go out on a mission with no solid leads because that's what an overly ambitious detective does.
"Do you have a plan of action?" Carrie asked, sitting on the side of my bed and watching me pack away a very few things.
"Oh, Caroline," I smiled, waving her idea away. "You and your plans."
"So what, you're just going to get in your car and see what happens?"
"No," I said simply. "I'm going to get into a department car and see what happens. Can't use a private vehicle for investigation."
"Jenn, you know what I mean."
"I know. But you're getting so serious it's making me nervous."
"You should be nervous. Maybe it'll scare you into using your head."
"When have I ever not used my head?"
She opened her mouth to speak, always having a repartee, but I cut her off.
"Don't answer that."
"Can you please show a little bit of concern, for my sake?"
"Carrie, it's not a big deal," I assured her. "It's going to be like a little vacation."
"Really? Do you take a Glock 22 and a bulletproof vest with you on vacation?"
I shrugged. "Sometimes."
"Jennifer," she continued to nag. "If we're looking at who we think we're looking at, we're talking hardened criminals, professional hardened criminals. One of them shot Kim, and one of them shot her partner."
"Then if we're looking at who you think we're looking at, they have terrible aim."
"Jenn."
"Baby," I said seriously, turning around to earnestly look her in the eye. "I am going to be fine. I'm in homicide, okay? This is what I do."
"These aren't straight homicides. There's other crime involved, rapes, and drug trafficking..."
"I'm from narcotics," I reminded her.
"You're from Nashville narcotics."
"Okay, Nashville has a serious crime rate--"
"Shh," she cut me off. "Just stop talking and listen."
I sighed and sat down crosslegged on my bed, facing her. "I'm listening," I promised.
"I need you to be safe," she said.
"Carrie, I--"
"That's talking. That's not listening."
I looked down. "Sorry."
"I need you to be safe, because it is dangerous out there. And I..."
She stopped midsentence, dropping the idea.
"And you..." I tried to prod along.
She inhaled to speak again, and kind of dropped her shoulders as though she was letting out her reserve and speaking from the heart. Her voice was level and indifferent as always, but her words were vulnerable.
"And I don't know what I'd do, if something...were to happen to you."
I couldn't hold it in much longer than a few moments, and found myself squealing, "Aw, Carrie, come here!"
"No, no," she protested, standing up, not wanting to look soft even for a minute. "No, this isn't an Aw Carrie moment. This is a watch your ass, Jenn, moment. I mean it."
"Okay, okay, okay, no sentiments," I promised. "I'll watch my ass."
"Do you have any idea where you're going?"
"Yes," I pretty much lied. "Clapp narrowed it down to one neighborhood, on the east side of Oakland. I just have to get myself in there, show the picture around, and see what I come up with. In no time, I'll have a lead I can follow, that will take me to the next lead, then I'll have tracked Grace down, and by any stroke of luck, track down our killer."
"It can't be that simple," she lamented quietly.
"Hey," I said to her, lightly turning her face with my hands to look at me. "I'm going to be fine, okay?"
"Okay," she said mechanically.
"Can we hug now?"
"You want to hug?" she said as though the idea were completely juvenile and overrated.
"Yes, please."
"Okay," she said again. "Whatever."
Yes, that was how my girlfriend showed affection.
***
"Do you have your gun?"
I rolled my eyes at sex crimes Sergeant Griffin, who was grilling me as though I'd never done an investigation before. "Yes."
"And your vest?"
"Yes."
"And your phone?"
"Yes."
"And its charger."
"Yes. And a department car. And GPS so you can track me. If the investigation goes belly up, trust me, you'll know."
"What does she mean investigation goes belly up?" I heard Carrie whisper to Kim.
"Fails, goes wrong, DOA, I don't know, it's probably a southern thing."
"What do you mean goes wrong?"
"Nothing," I assured her, letting her know that I could hear her mild freak-out. "Nothing, nothing, nothing. I'm going in, I'm fixing this, and I'm coming out. Okay?"
She tightened her mouth, wanting to say something else but deciding against it. "Okay."
"I'll call," I said in closing.
"Be safe," they all implored. I didn't know if that was a sex crimes thing, to chorus "Be safe" every time someone went on an investigation, but I could have gotten used to it. Made me feel loved, even if it was weird.
"Thanks," I managed, walking out the door with absolutely no idea where I was going.
***
Carrie
"Well," I said unceremoniously to dismiss myself from the precinct. "My intern is waiting at the office."
"You just came to bid your fair maiden au revoir?" Kim wondered.
"Yes," I said plainly. "Is that a problem?"
"No problem," she sang, then made that whip cracking sound she had gotten into the habit of making.
"Kim I swear to God--"
"Relax," she cut me off. "You're so serious."
"Happy Groundhog Day," I muttered. "Do you have any new criticisms to throw at me?"
"Have I covered uptight, aggressive, workaholic, and your shirt is too low-cut for the office in the past twenty four hours?"
"Check," I said flatly.
"Then no, I'm good."
"Goodbye."
"Something the matter, Counselor?" she questioned condescendingly.
"Nothing at all," I lied coolly. That was becoming my favorite lie recently, and I noted the way it was starting to just roll off my tongue.
"Don't let my criticisms get to you," she smiled. "No one around here is really complaining about your low-cut shirts."
Not at all knowing how to take that, I walked myself out of the precinct.
***
"I'm sorry I'm late," I said to Margaret-Maggie upon entering my office, though apologies weren't really my thing. "I got tied up at the precinct, and I had to stop by the courthouse."
"No worries," she assured me, because what else could she say, really? It's not okay?
I put my attache down next to my desk, then went about organizing some papers before getting back to work. I wasn't much into making small talk, especially not today, and it probably showed.
"You had some calls," she said, picking up whatever notes she'd taken about them.
"Okay," I said. "Shoot."
"One from a Counselor Morstein. He says--"
"Next," I abnegated that idea. Her look was confused and inquisitive, and so I explained, "Defense counsel."
She nodded. Apparently I needed to say no more.
"A call from your brother Robert," she went on, piquing my interest slightly.
"What did he say?"
"Nothing specific, just that he was your brother and could you give him a call when you had the chance."
"Okay," I said, vowing to myself to do so. "Anything else?"
"Yeah, a call from a Kim Hayden," she said nonchalantly, reading her notes. "She says she's sorry. I didn't ask for details."
"You didn't need to," I said. "Call her back, tell her Carrie says suck it."
She put her hand over the phone, fully prepared to do so. I was starting to like having an intern; when I said jump, she said give me your case notes.
"Really?" she checked.
"No. Anything else from the precinct? Anything about a Detective Carver, or an investigation in Oakland?"
"Nope, nothing," she said ambivalently, unable to know everything that was behind my hopeful question. "Just those three, and your mail, which is right there."
"Thanks," I said, deflatedly, sitting down. It was stupid of me to be disappointed; really, what was I expecting? A call from Jennifer? Hey, I caught them in ten minutes, be home later tonight?
"What's eating you?" Margaret asked, picking up on my demeanor.
"Nothing," I lied. "Just...nothing."
"Except you're worried about Detective Carver investigating in Oakland?"
I looked up from what I was writing, completely floored. "What?"
"I just, synthesized."
"You're very intuitive, aren't you?"
"I was right?"
"Well, I don't worry. I'd go more with, concerned."
"Aren't they the same thing?"
"No. Only weak humans worry, but even animals can show concern."
"Are you calling yourself an animal?"
I sighed. "Yes, you'll make an excellent attorney someday," I muttered.
"What?"
"I'm saying, that to worry would be a show of weakness, and I'm a winner. And I don't care how ridiculous that just made me sound."
"Your parents were hard on you, weren't they?"
"Excuse me?"
"They raised a winner," she continued to 'synthesize.' "Right?"
"No, I mean, I..." I dropped my argument, unable to come up with one solid reason why I should lie. "Yes. They were."
"But how do you deal with that? I mean, as a lawyer, you have to lose sometime."
"No, you don't," I said after a while of thinking it over. "The law isn't as black and white as they make it out to be in law school, okay? Take it from me, and we'll call it lesson one."
She nodded. "Go on."
"As a prosecutor, you're not always fighting for the conviction. And for that matter, you're not fighting for the victim. The victim isn't your client, the people are. What you're working to do, then, is get justice for everyone who's been wronged, and you're doing it, by presenting the facts. If the defense can throw enough doubt onto your case to convice twelve people of it, then there's a good chance you wouldn't be earning a just conviction anyway. So if you win, you've won, and if you do your best and you still don't win, maybe you shouldn't have in the first place. If you've followed all the leads, you've met with all the witnesses, you've done your paperwork, you didn't cut corners, and you read over those notes every night up until the trial, and you still lose? Then there was a reason. You still presented the facts, you still represented the government, and you gave the people a voice. That was your game, so yes, you still won it."
"So that's what you do, then?" she asked. "You don't stop working until you win?"
"That's what I've done my entire life," I said in complete truth.
"Wow," she said. "Maybe I'm not cut out for prosecution. I sure as hell work, but I feel like I lose way more often than that."
"You're more cut out for prosecution than any of the other interns here," I said simply. "You don't need to be as much as a hard-ass as I am. You have a lot going for you. You have intuition, and your analytical skills are impressive. I told the DA that you have a lot of promise."
"You did?"
"Sure," I said. "I'm not saying you're perfect, and I mean, nobody's perfect."
"Except you."
"Except me," I agreed. "But I'll let you know that I'm not expecting you to answer my phone for the rest of your time here. I'm going to work the hell out of you, and I'll turn you into a prosecutor if it kills me."
She looked frightened, but at the same time empowered. As always, her response was, "Wow. Cool."
I nodded, getting back out of my chair and picking up the files I needed. "Right. Cool."
"Where are you going?"
"Arraignment in fifteen," I informed her for the very first time. "You're coming."
"Oh," she said, immediately getting up and making her way to follow me out the door. "You weren't kidding."