A/N: Okay. I'm updating at snail's pace. I know. I'm sorry. I suck. But, um...for some of you I think this might be the moment you've been waiting for. Or at least one of the moments you've been waiting for. So. Yeah. Enjoy. :)
***
Carrie
"The defense has upheld throughout the course of this trial that the irrefutable, concrete evidence that has been presented to you is somehow insufficient. We have heard the defense counsel attempt to challenge the work of celebrated detectives, exemplary crime lab technicians, even the work of the Chief Medical Examiner, to try to burn a hole of doubt through a case that has already been formed. They've drawn up this uncorroborated premonition that the highly trained and very objective officials who have promised their candid testimony today are somehow trying to mislead you. But facts are stronger than premonition."
"No, that's stupid," I admonished myself out loud.
"But facts are strong, and premonition is not."
That's even worse.
I put that damn summation down in utter frustration, having known a long time ago that even if I tried my hardest, the words wouldn't come to me tonight. It was past eleven at night now, and I had court in the morning, but I was trying not to think of it. I kept seeking refuge in this fantasy I was drawing up, where come morning I would walk into this trial, stand up to read my closing argument, and the words would just come to me like I was a prophet.
Yet, prophetic visions are few and far between. Planning is something you can always count on.
The rain outside felt like another way to dramatize what was going on in my life. It was dark, and my thoughts were loud and scattered, the clouds were harried, and frankly so was I. I sighed at the sound of it, attacking the glass of my windows and leaving noises that sounded like gunshots resonating through my entire apartment.
No, I definitely wouldn't be getting any work done. I'd probably have to wake up early and finish what I hadn't tonight, which would mean that I'd have to set back a meeting I'd acquiesced to have with a colleague, which meant...
I was shaken from that thought by what sounded like someone at my door. I wasn't expecting company. In fact, I hated company. The first thought in my mind was that it was Kim, coming at me with one of her malformed apologies, maybe offering some variety of alcohol to make up for it. I decided that if it was, I'd shut the door in her face, but then I decided it probably wasn't. I'd been out of line with her too, maybe even more so, and I knew that she only apologized when she was positive she was at least 75% at fault.
I considered then that maybe it was someone showing up to take my life, which wasn't far outside the realm of possibility, but this was a strange time for my attempted murder. Everyone I was prosecuting at the moment had been remanded for the duration, or had just been put away. No, I was pretty sure I wasn't in mortal danger. At least, not today.
So then, I didn't really know who to expect. Maybe it was just the wind. Maybe I was hearing things. Or, for all I knew, maybe it was the DA checking up on me to see if I really was sleeping. Which of course I wasn't. I was sitting there drawing up guesses as to who was hanging out outside my door at eleven at night.
But I felt strangely calm for someone with an unknown stranger at her door, or at least I had been, until I heard that door open.
Who the hell had I given my key to?
I didn't know whether to approach the situation head on, or make my way for the window and hope for the best. I decided, though, that I lived in a loft apartment, and my chance of survival was probably worse if I jumped than if I faced an armed stranger making an attempt on my life. No, I didn't feel like defenestrating myself, not tonight, so I figured, what's the worst that can happen?
"Hello?" I called out, hearing my voice echo in the seemingly empty apartment.
"Guess who?"
My interest was piqued strangely at the sound of Jennifer's voice. I had a weird Pavlovian response to it, where previously I was feeling tired and generally curmudgeonly and toiling over a stupid summation, and suddenly all I wanted to do was sit down with Jenn and complain and be needy.
"Well, the stupid accent sounds a lot like Jennifer's, but she's off on an investigation in the hood."
She smiled, appearing in my living room, as though to affirm that it really was her in the flesh. She was holding flowers but I didn't say anything about them. "Did you just call my accent stupid?"
"Stupid in the best way. Why are you home?"
"I'm not home," she pointed out. "I'm here."
"Clever. You know what I mean."
"I know. I had to come back to run a plate and pick someone up. I'm going to make an arrest and I can't go in alone."
"An arrest?" I questioned, like it was the best news I'd heard all year. I then considered that maybe it was. "Who?"
"I'll tell you all about it later," she promised. "Right now I have one night to be with you, so can we just pretend work doesn't exist for like, an hour?"
"Fine," I conceded. "Flowers?"
"For you," she said unnecessarily. At this point if they weren't for me, I'd have been both perplexed and a little bit disappointed. Even though I wasn't really a flowers person, or an affection of any sort person.
"Thank you," I said cordially, standing up to find a vase for them. Once I'd found one she handed me the bouquet, which I was just properly seeing for the first time.
"Azaleas," I noted. "These are my favorite."
"I know," she said. "You told me."
"I did?"
"Yeah. A few days ago."
I tried to push my memory back that far, but I couldn't. I had no idea what she was talking about.
"I've been working too hard," I decided. It was probably more than that that was causing the present lapse in memory: the fact that there were too many things on my mind, the fact that I'd probably paid little attention to that conversation, the fact that I told her a lot of things and couldn't pick out one random minutia at the drop of a hat. But I chalked it up to the job, like I did most things that were wrong with me.
"I bet you have," she said genuinely.
"Thank you," I said again, setting them on my counter. "They're beautiful."
"So are you," she grinned before draping her arms over my shoulders and raising on tiptoe to kiss me.
"That was pathetic," I criticized.
"Most women love it when you use stupid lines like that."
"I'm not most women," I reminded her.
"Well, I could've told you that. Come on, let's go."
"Where?"
"Out."
"Out where?"
"To take a walk."
"It's raining."
"It's drizzling."
"There is precipitation."
"Get over it."
"It's eleven at night."
"We're grown-ups. We don't have a curfew, remember?"
"I set my own curfew. And frankly, it's more than imprudent to go take a walk in the rain right now with no destination. It's plain crazy."
"Yeah, so? When's the last time you did something crazy?"
"It was a couple years ago. It culminated in something to the effect of, 'Sure, Jennifer, I'd love to go out with you.'"
"Funny. As if you said it like that."
"Okay, you're the one with the superhuman memory today. How did I say it?"
"Something to the effect of, 'I suppose it wouldn't kill me.'"
I bit my lip, suddenly feeling bad about the realization that I could count on my fingers the number of times I'd displayed affection for her.
"Okay," I said after a while. "Let's take a walk."
***
Kim
"Don't you think it's a little late for a house call?"
In spite of my words, I stepped out of the doorway to let her in. Not only because I didn't really care about a late night visit, as someone who didn't sleep anyway, but because I would have been stupid to shut the door on a friend I hadn't seen in months.
"I know," she said apologetically, passing by me as I shut the door. "I didn't mean to just turn up lke this, but I was in the area and I thought you could use a heads up."
"Heads up?" I repeated, the sense of urgency that the words carried scaring me a little bit. "What for?"
"Well," she began, sitting down in my living room and placing her bag down in front of her. "Nothing is certain yet."
"Are you going to keep making me guess or are you going to cut to the chase?"
"Well I figured you'd at least warm me up to the chase by asking me how I've been doing."
"I'm sorry. Was I impolite?"
"As always," she said, even though she was smiling. "But I'll try not to take offense."
"Good. Do you want coffee?"
"Do you know what time it is?"
"I'm a cop, I drink coffee like it's water. And you used to be too, you know, back when you were cool."
"I'm still cool," she argued, sounding like someone's mother. "And I'm still a cop. Kind of."
"No you're not," I pouted. "You're a fed."
"Same thing."
"Don't insult me."
"Okay, fine. I'm a fed. Okay, but that's kind of what I wanted to talk about."
"What's up?" I asked, sitting down across from her and leaning forward slightly, not feeling good about this.
"Your rape homicides," she said plainly. "The two of them, plus the attempt the other day. So, you know, that's two and a half. I know you've been putting a lot of hours in on them, but so far there's no suspect in custody."
"God, they say the FBI can know everything about your life, but you don't really believe it until you have one of them sitting in your living room relaying the events of your entire week to you."
She smiled slightly. "It's gone media crazy, Kim. You guys are making headlines. And, to be honest, it's making you look a little...Well, you know."
"A little what?"
She bit her lip a little bit before shrugging and looking up at me. "Soft."
"Okay, we are trying. I am on this night and day, Griffin hasn't slept in weeks, let alone Carrie, who's on drugs because of all of this stress—"
"Hey, hey," she cut me off. "I know how hard you work. I was just telling you how it looks. The papers can spin it however they see it, and...Did you say Carrie's on drugs?"
"Well, prescription, and...I probably wasn't supposed to say anything," I considered, running a hand through my hair, feeling rather restless now for some reason.
"How is she, anyway?"
"What do you care?"
"Curious, I guess."
"Well I mean, she's nuts, like always, and she works too hard, but...Overall, she's good."
"Hm," she considered. "That's too bad."
"Don't be like that."
"Anyway," she continued. "I came by to let you know that a lot of the time with these things, three strikes and you're out."
"I don't follow."
"I'm saying, I wouldn't be surprised if I get an order to pick up your case."
"What?" I spat out, caught in disbelief. "No. Why would you? This has nothing to do with you."
"Three rape homicides with only slight differences in MO," she summarized. "It kind of screams organized crime. Not to mention someone carved your name at one of the crime scenes? And given the gang vendettas against you that I happen to know personally about...Well, it's already been said. This could easily go federal."
"How did you know about that?" I questioned. "We never released that detail."
"I talked to Griffin today," she admitted for the first time. "He told me everything."
"That dick sold me out to the feds."
She just rolled her eyes. "I like to think of us as part of the same system. That's why I came to warn you."
"So this is official?"
"No," she said. "But it may as well be, in my opinion."
"I'm not so sure," I argued. "We get serial rapists all the time, you guys are never interested."
"That's because you guys never take this long to close them. Look, you're all pissed, the DA's pissed, the US Attorney's probably pissed, and, hell, I'm pissed. And what's more, John Q. Public is pissed. People are afraid. The government wants answers, and if they don't get them, we all lose credibility."
"What about the police? What about our credibility, when it hits the press that we lost our case to the big guns because we couldn't solve it?"
"Come on," she tried to assuage me. "This isn't a territorial issue. We're all on the same side here."
"If you really mean that, then let us keep it. We're working on it. We just need time."
"It's not my decision, Kim," she tried to remind me. "If it were, you know I'd oblige. I know you guys better than anyone and I do trust you. But like I said..."
"It's your bosses. I know. Have you gotten any definitive orders to investigate?"
"No," she said. "I'm just surmising. But I didn't want you to be blindsided if I show up sometime soon asking to go through your files. Unfortunately, you can't really fight on this. Once the federal government decides to prosecute, that's kind of the end."
I sighed. "Can you at least do me one favor?"
"I can try," she offered.
"Just, try to put it off as long as possible. Give us as much time as you can. I know we can figure this out if we work at it."
She nodded slowly, looking through her mind for some way to forestall what she seemed sure was coming, and probably coming up empty. Nevertheless, she made it seem as though she could.
"I'll do my best," she said.
"Thank you," I said honestly.
"So," she began, on a different note. "Everything else is good?"
For a moment I considered telling her that everything wasn't good. I considered telling her that, in fact, everything was a mess. I almost told her about Grace, and how we'd sent Carver into the roughest part of Oakland to track her down with no leads and no evidence at all. I almost told her how everything had gone to shit when that first rape homicide went down, and we all knew it but wouldn't discuss it. I almost admitted that it was taking a toll on all of us, and we were all physically and emotionally drained past our breaking points. Hell, I almost told her how I'd gotten drunk and made out with Carrie. How after two years thinking I could go straight, I'd fucked it all up by cheating.
I could have told her any one of those things, and I knew she would have listened. She may have moved up, career-wise, but she was still a detective at heart. She would have understood.
But the less she knew about our cases, I was sure, the better. She couldn't know that it was even worse than the papers made it seem. Because every second it looked more grim, we were that much closer to losing control of the whole situation. And the personal tie I had to the cases was far too close for me to let go of it.
"Yeah," I lied. "Everything's good."
I think she knew I wasn't telling the truth. She could probably tell I was lying, because even though it had been a while, there had been a day when we had been partners. And partners know each other inside and out. If any one of the detectives I'd ever worked with was lying to me, I'd know it.
But she probably understood like I did that the less she knew, the better. So she let it go.
"That's good to hear," was all she said. "I should get going."
"Thanks for coming by," I said. "I do appreciate it, even though I wish things were different."
"I know," she agreed. "And I'm sorry."
I forced a smile where it wasn't genuine and tried to make light of a really dark situation.
"Don't be," I promised. "It was good seeing you, Allison."
***
Carrie
The truth was, I was being a little bit dramatic about the rain. It was still coming down, though most of it had dissipated into a sad, hanging curtain of humidity. It was the kind of moisture that didn't come down in drops, but scattered itself throughout the atmosphere, invisible, but just present enough to ruin your hair.
"So why are we out here?" I asked impatiently as Jennifer and I wandered aimlessly in the area around my apartment building. She reached out for my hand and I aquiesced, figuring that even if we were anywhere near either of our workplaces where we could be somehow found out for our taboo relationship, it was too dark for either of us to be identified anyhow.
"Because if I know you - and I do - you haven't seen the outside world all day."
"That's not true," I upheld. "I saw it twice, leaving home to go to the office, and leaving the office to finish my work at home."
"Okay," she said, obviously realizing that she'd been right. "Prosecution rests."
"No, I'm the prosecution," I reminded her.
"I know," she smiled. "But I always love it when you say that."
"You love it when I say ''Prosecution rests'?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"I don't know," she mused. "It sounds so authoritative."
"Well alright," I commented. "If that's what you're into, you might as well just come out and say it."
She shoved me playfully with the hand that wasn't attached to mine. "You know what I mean."
"I know what it sounds like you mean."
"Well aside from that," she continued. "I sometimes think that's the only rest you get."
"You're so funny, Jennifer," I approved, not meaning it in the least.
"Are you okay?" she wondered out loud.
"Yeah," I said. "Why?"
"Just making sure. I worry about you."
"I'm fine," I told her. "Although I'm wet."
"Damn, Carrie, all I did was hold your hand."
"Wow, two in a row," I noted. "Comedic double entendres seem to be your forte tonight."
"I have many fortes."
"Is that another double entendre?"
"No way," she lied. "I can't help it if you have a dirty mind."
"I don't," I argued, however fruitlessly as I'd been the one to bring it up. "But it does seem like an appropriate time to bring up that forte is Italian for loud."
She laughed at that slightly as the rain began to return with a vengeance. "Triple entendre?"
"Perhaps," I considered.
Before I could say anything more on that note, Jennifer was kissing me. It was chaste and innocent, but didn't fail to elicit in me a whole fresh wave of guilt. It was stimulation overload, sealed with a shot to the heart. If the impromptu visit, accompanied by the flowers, the concern for my well-being, and the staggering kindness hadn't done it already, the kiss certainly did. I couldn't deal with knowing that for her, this was the first time since our last time - but that I'd cheated in between. And the worst part was that I knew it would have been worth waiting for.
It would have taken a person far more virtuous than me to confess right there and then. I could have succumbed to the guilt and just spit it out. Told her what I'd done, then thrown myself in her mercy and begged for her forgiveness. But that all sounded so uncharacteristic of me that it was obviously off the table.
So, in an act that was far more in line with who I was, I pretended that nothing was wrong, then overcompensated by trying to get her into bed.
I decided to return her kiss with far more vigor than she'd initiated, and prove to her that she hadn't come for nothing. It was like I was trying to wipe Kim off of my lips completely, like maybe if I kissed Jennifer enough it would somehow cancel out. Of course, it didn't. But in a weird way, it did make me feel better. At least, it helped me to forget, however ephemerally.
"What's gotten into you, Counselor?" she questioned, momentarily parting her face from mine but leaving her grip on my body.
"I just, really missed you. That's all," I said smoothly enough to make even myself believe that that truly was all. I tried to kiss her again, but now she was all about talking for some reason. All I wanted was sex, and it seemed like all she wanted was a conversation. Women.
"That's nice," she smiled. "But I'm soaking now."
"Yeah, me too," I dismissed, paying her words little attention and refocusing my attention to her neck.
"No, Casanova," she chided. "I mean, the rain is picking up. Let's go inside."
"Now you want to go inside?"
"Well fine, Carrie, if you want to finish what you've started out here in public—"
"No, you're right," I argued in frustration. "Let's go upstairs."