Kim
"Carrie," I giggled like a teenage girl. "Get your phone."
"It's probably just the DA," she dismissed. "I'll call him later."
"Two weeks ago you were afraid to ask him to leave the office an hour early."
"Two weeks ago he hadn't chosen me as his successor. Now I can do no wrong."
"Will you answer it anyway? It could be important."
"It could be Donald Verrilli Jr., and yet, if that phone call can't get your tongue inside me, I don't care."
"Car, what if it's Clapp? Or Carver? What if they're charging the suspect, or they need legal advice?"
"Who cares?" she challenged, looking at me sternly. "I'm off the case. We both are. Now do you want to have sex with me, or don't you?"
Carrie was like a fed up mother of toddlers. I couldn't argue her logic, so I just sat there looking her incredible body up and down for another half-second before deciding that yes, ma'am, I did. Hell, I'd been waiting for this moment. I'd managed to control myself and not take her then and there in the backseat of her car that evening. I'd waited until we'd gotten all the way back to her apartment, even though I'd felt up her right leg the entire way there. The moment the phone stopped ringing, Carrie took it off the receiver and pressed the call button to leave it off the hook. That was how it stayed for the next couple of hours, and that was when I decided that I loved unemployed Carrie.
When we'd finished, she laid her head back on the headboard, her arms upstretched, this satsified, complacent look on her face, like she knew that she'd been great and was still revelling in her own greatness. Admittedly, I knew that look well, and it wasn't just one she wore in the bedroom. Even though I knew Carrie hated post-coital cuddling - and hell, I did too - I laid my head on her chest because it just felt like the right thing to do. We were both silent for a moment.
"I feel like I need a cigarette," was what Carrie said.
I laughed. "Is that right, Carrie Bradshaw?"
"That's right, Big," she snapped right back. She reached over to hit the hang-up button on her landline, before putting it back in the cradle. The second she did so, it rang. She sighed.
"Caroline Ev--"
"Carrie," I heard a man's voice nearly bellow, given my close proximity to her and the phone. "I've been calling you for hours, your phone's been off the hook."
"I know," she said, sounding quite bored.
"You know?"
"Yes, I know. I was busy."
If this was Carrie's boss, she had a hell of a nerve. But if the Green Falls District Attorney couldn't comprehend that a phone off the hook was the twenty-first century version of a sock on the door, I was concerned for our justice department.
"What's this about another break-in?"
"It could be nothing. The police are following it right now."
"I sent Maggie down to the PD. They have someone in custody matching the prints."
"Okay," Carrie said, knowing this already. "Great."
"You don't seem concerned."
"Not my case anymore," she repeated. "Out of my hands."
"Empty nest syndrome?" he figured.
"Little bit."
"The case will be fine. I just thought I should keep you updated."
"I appreciate it."
"Also," he added. "I don't know what you did to Alexandre Bellamy, but he hasn't stopped bothering me about you since last night."
***
Jenn
"I don't get it. Why her?"
"Look," he said, reclining slightly. He looked at me as though we were sharing a man-to-man, like this weren't an interrogation but simply him willing me to get real. "I know you think you were good at keeping it on the DL, but it took me a week to figure out you were crashing at her place."
"Well," I said, somewhat abashed. "Clearly I wasn't."
"I know. So who's she banging now?"
"What?"
"Never mind," he said. "Look, you got what you need, so charge me for the break-in. I didn't do anything else. I never killed anybody."
"Would you have?" I asked honestly.
"You think I'm stupid?"
"You're right, dumb question," I admitted. Of course he wouldn't give up that easy that his first intention had been to end my life. "But why didn't you try my apartment?"
"You're not in the Yellow Pages," he shrugged. "She is."
I sighed. "Of course."
"If you're not charging me, I'm going."
"Not quite," I said, taking on a bit of a sternness. "What do you know about Victor Saenz?"
"Hear he ODed."
"Not quite."
"That your catch phrase?"
I bit my lip to keep from saying something I'd regret and pushing him over the edge of requesting counsel.
"Let me explain," I said, trying to be cool. "When Saenz was murdered, whoever killed him did a dump job, in an apartment about a mile away from last night's break-in. Both apartments were entered in the same way, and as soon as the police can get in front of a judge to corroborate that, they have grounds to search your apartment. And I've got you now, I know where you hide out, where you hang around, and I've even seen your gun. So when they find it, and ballistics link it to Saenz's murder, you're doing life. So you can tell me about how McVale put you up to it and I can get the DA to offer a deal, or you can leave her out and go away forever. Your call."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you? Saenz killed Derrick's girlfriend and his daughter, Saenz is the reason he started working with me, in fact, it was one of Saenz's guys that pulled that knife. This whole mess would have never happened if it weren't for Saenz and for me, so I get that you wanted to pull the trigger on us both, and I can't say that I wouldn't want to do the same. He was your best friend, Leon."
"Fuck you."
"But I know this wasn't you alone. I know that because you wouldn't have dumped Saenz in Hayden's apartment, and I'm not buying your Yellow Pages defense either. That's all McVale, isn't it?"
"I don't know who that is."
"Leon," I tried to reason. "I want to help you get off becasue I understand your rage. But the DA will have a hard time seeing you as an EDP if you can't give an explanation for ditching the body in a decorated detective's bedroom."
"I didn't do that."
"Then who did?"
"I don't know."
"Why are you protecting her?"
"I'm not--"
"You think she gives a damn about you? I guarantee you, Leon, if I sat Lindsay McVale in this room right now and offered her what I'm offering you, she'd flip on you in an instant. These are the games people play, they're dirty and they're dog-eat-dog. No one's helping you, Leon, you need to help yourself."
"Help myself?" he repeated. "What the hell good will that do? If I flip on them, they'll find me. Bad things happen to people who rat. That's why I didn't want him to talk to you in the first place. Look where flipping got him. Hell, look where it got Saenz."
"So Saenz's murder did have something to do with him flipping on Novita."
"I never said that."
"If you agree to testify, it will seal our case. McVale will be in prison for life. She won't be able to touch you. She can't retaliate."
"You don't think there are others? There are always others."
"We can protect you."
"Like you could protect Derrick? You're going to have to do better than that. I'm not giving her up."
"You should really stop grovelling over this woman that doesn't give a hell about you."
"Yeah?" he said, standing up. "So should you."
"What?"
"She's sleeping with someone else," he said. "Consider that the last favor I do for you."
***
Carrie
"Carrie, if those are case notes you're looking at I'm going to kick your ass."
I looked up apologetically at Kim, who had been very right. I covered the file jacket with both forearms and smiled back.
"How was your shower?"
She looked up at the ceiling and shook her head, walking over to sit next to me on the couch, but when she did so, she sat facing me like we were having an intervention.
"Do you take pleasure in stressing yourself out?"
I upturned my hands, searching for an answer. "Kind of," I admitted.
"You're off the--"
"I know I'm off the case," I argued. "I've been saying it all day."
"You've been saying it, but it doesn't feel real yet."
"How do you--"
"Because it's not real to me either."
"I just can't get over the fact that we're trying one person for this, and it's her. I mean, I almost had sex with her."
"I recall."
"I keep going over all of it in my head, trying to remember some sign that she threw out, some lead or some clue..."
"Don't drive yourself crazy, Car."
"All I can think of is that she was always talking about reading people."
"Reading them?"
"Yeah," I said, trying to recall. "Assessing their speech, their presence, their body language, trying to figure them out. She was always watching, she said she relied on it in her job. She assessed me too, it was...creepy. Some shit about how I had 'unfulfilled desires,' and how I was settling for less."
"Well, spot on. Kudos to her," Kim decided. "Sincerely, the unfulfilled desire."
I rolled my eyes. "You're so conceited. How do you know you were the unfulfilled desire? Maybe it was career desire, or hell, maybe she was the unfulfilled desire."
"If she was the unfulfilled desire she would have tried banging you way sooner. And by the way, if she's so good at 'reading people,' why did it take her so long to figure out you wanted it?"
"I don't think she was quite fluent in my body language."
"Hah."
"Relied on it in her job, though," I repeated. "Why?"
"Well, she did choose the perfect pawns," Kim noted. "She was right about Saenz being so desperate for the drugs that he'd do what she said. She was right about the first two victims letting her into their homes. She was right that Devere would strike a chord with you. She was right about me being such a brave hero that I'd want to follow Grace to Saenz's apartment."
"Okay, firstly, that was not her reading you, as she didn't even know you at the time, and secondly, you're not a brave hero because you didn't even go."
"Excuse me? Did you and I not have, like, a huge fight about this? You told me not to go, you practically forbade me to go."
"Oh, what, now we listen to Carrie?"
"Everyone listens to Carrie, don't you get that by now?"
"Don't be offended," I said coolly. "If it helps, I wouldn't follow Grace either."
"Oh, that helps."
"Good."
"Do you see what I'm getting at, though? McVale's not in this alone. She selects victims and accomplices very carefully, and it works. I'd also like to point out that she has to have a lot of informants, because she knows things about me, about Grace, about you, and I don't know how."
"If you have enough money and enough people skills, you can find out anything about anyone. She had both."
"Prosecutor's opinion," she asked. "Do you think we have a solid case against her?"
"Prosecutor's opinion," I repeated. "No. Our testimony is probably good, for the malicious destruction charge. The word of two respected law enforcers against someone who's been in town a couple of weeks. But the defense could move to sever, and have the other charges thrown out on insufficient evidence. MO links the murders to each other, but not the shootings to the bombing. There's nothing hard yet, no ballistics, no recorded correspondence, no DNA."
"What, no one told you? The ME recovered a bullet from Saenz."
"What?" I nearly shouted, unable to believe that no one had decided to mention this to me. "That doesn't make any sense."
Kim shrugged, as though it weren't a big deal. "I mean, it happens all the time. Serial killers get messy when they've been at it for a while, sometimes they start getting careless about leaving evidence behind."
"No," I countered, shaking my head. "There's no way. You saw the other crime scenes, Kim. You know her MO by now. She would never leave a bullet."
"What are you saying?"
"Lindsay didn't kill Victor Saenz," I had to spell out. "We're looking at two assailants. I have to get back to the precinct."
"You're insane. This isn't your case anymore, Carrie."
"They need all the help they can get."
I looked at Kim as her phone began to ring, and it took her more than a moment to even realize that it was going off. She blinked several times before crossing the room to go get it.
"It's probably Clapp, about the guy they picked up for the break-in," she decided emptily, digging through her bag because she was one of those people that carried around a bunch of shit and couldn't organize it for her life.
"Yeah," I said, disinterested, now that I was thinking of a million other things. "Probably."
The ringing got louder as, I assumed, she'd finally located it, then I heard her inhale sharply and turned to face her.
"Okay, not Clapp," I tried to guess. "It's your mother. It's Beckett. Ooh. It's Anneliese Shaw."
"It's Grace," she filled me in, looking grimly at the screen. "I have to take it."
Taken aback, I nodded, deciding to leave the room and offer her some privacy rather than make her decide whether she should leave or stay. I decided to go remake my bed, given the evening's activities, and by the time that was done, so was Kim. She walked in and I just looked at her, expecting her to speak first because I'd silently vowed not to pry. She didn't, however, so I just went on like it hadn't been a big deal and made some petty conversation.
"That was quick," I noted.
"Yeah," Kim said quietly. "She says she's been doing some thinking."
"Damn it, Grace, when will your lies end?"
"Funny. She says she's ready to talk things out."
I nodded. "Good. That's...good."
"Yeah," she said again. "So, I'm going to go back to the apartment, and we're going to...discuss, I guess."
"Good," I repeated. "I'm going to go down to the precinct."
"Again?"
"They need a prosecutor, and I still am one."
***
Jenn
"We just need a warrant," I tried relaying to Clapp and Bagley the moment I got out of interrogation. "If I can link Leon to Saenz's murder, I know he'll flip on McVale."
"And how do we know it was him, exactly, that murdered Saenz?"
"His prints were on Carrie's door, and the doors were opened the same way."
"Anyone can pick a lock."
"He had means and motive. Saenz is part of the reason his best friend got killed just a couple of weeks ago, and I know that he has a gun."
"And how do you know this?"
"I've seen it."
"Rewind."
The door opened then, and of course it was the last person I wanted to see. It took all my maturity not to roll my eyes and click my tongue and do any number of impolite things. But really, Carrie, you just left. Why do you have to come back and ruin my day some more?
Never one to say hello when she walked into a room, Carrie's entrance line was, "Why did no one decide to inform me that the ME recovered a bullet from Saenz?"
"Hi, Carrie," Clapp said. "Good, thanks. And you?"
"Hi," she said tersely. "McVale didn't kill Saenz."
"I got that," I said angrily, wishing she wouldn't automatically assume that she was the only one who knew anything.
"You got that?"
"I appreciate you coming down, Carrie, but I have a little more experience with the suspect than you do, so thanks, but yes, I got that."
"Then why hasn't he been charged yet?"
"He's been in custody for twenty minutes, Carrie, can you cut some slack?"
"This is me cutting slack. What do you need? Warrants?"
"Nothing from you," Clapp pressed. "Carrie, conflict of interest. Walk away."
"Where is Margaret?"
"She's on her way down," I assured her. "Everything's under control. The world still turns when you're not prosecuting our case."
"Yes," Carrie said brusquely. "But it seems to turn just a little more slowly, doesn't it?"
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Press a charge, Jennifer," she ordered. "Any charge."
"I'm handling it, Carrie."
Bagley and Clapp exchanged looks like this was getting ugly and wasn't going to get any prettier, and after a mutual head nod they both left the room as Carrie and I entered a screaming match like the two of us hadn't had since we were dating.
"Then why don't we have a confession yet?"
"Why are you always putting so much pressure on everyone? It's like you can't comprehend that not everyone's as perfect as you."
"This isn't about me, Jennifer."
"Oh, it's not? You mean, there's actually something in this world that isn't all about you?"
"Grow the hell up."
"Fucking make me."
"I cannot believe that we broke up, and we're still standing here arguing."
"Yeah? Well I can't believe that we broke up and you're already having sex with someone else. But I guess we all have to be mature and move on at some point, and stop getting disappointed by things that are never going to change."
"What are you talking about?"
"Don't try to spare me, okay? I don't even want to know about it. Just tell me if it's her."
"I don't know what you're insinuating."
"I just want to know, because if I have to come in here and work with her every day, I don't want to be wondering."
Carrie suddenly looked uncomfortable, and just a little bit remorseful, but I couldn't tell whether it was genuine remorse or just shock that she'd been caught in a lie.
"It was never my intention to hurt you," was what she said after some time. "You don't deserve to get hurt, and I'm sorry. But I don't want this, right now, to characterize our relationship. I want you and me to be able to work together without these screaming matches, these fits of silence...I can't do those anymore. So if you and I are done, let's be done and move on, and just not dwell on the past from here on out. Okay?"
"I'm going back to Nashville."
"What?" she asked, caught off guard. "Why? For good?"
"No, not necessarily," I said. "My brother's getting married, and he wants me to be around to look at venues and stuff, and I've got some vacation time, so I'll take a couple personal days once this case is over, and I should be good to go. But I'm going to visit in with my old PD while I'm down there, because they're starting a new gang violence initiative in Parkway Village, in southeast Memphis, and my old captain knows the chief of detectives over there. They're looking for someone to head it, and that would be, you know, a big career jump for me..."
"Yeah," she said breathlessly. "Yeah, I understand. That's great."
"But, I mean, I don't know. See how it goes, I guess. I just...sometimes I think I could use a big change."
"This doesn't..." she began, and then stopped. "I mean, this isn't..."
"Please don't ask if this has to do with you, Carrie," I interrupted, knowing what she was thinking before she'd said a word. "For the first time in a long time, I'm considering making a decision that doesn't have to do with you."
She almost smiled, but looked at the ground somewhat shamefully. "Point taken," she said humbly.
"Now do me a favor," I said. "Go do something that doesn't involve this case. I promise I'll call you when he flips on McVale."
She nodded, taking on her softer side that I knew I would always love in some way, even if we were never together, ever again.
"Thanks, Jennifer," she said sweetly. She was gone before I could say anything else.
***
Kim
I felt like such a stranger in my own home.
Then again, it had never really been my home. It had been ours, maybe, but never mine. I knew it had been Grace's, and to her it had represented everything she hoped for. A symbol of committment, of togetherness, of building a life together. A home seemed so permanent, and permanence was what she always wanted.
"I've been doing a lot of thinking," Grace said when we sat down together, being careful to maintain a certain level of physical distance between us. This was the second time she'd informed me that she'd "done a lot of thinking." All I could think of was what Carrie would say.
I just nodded, determined to let her do the talking.
"You and me, Kim, we've been through a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I mean, I was with you when you got shot. You were with me when I got kidnapped. I was with you when you got bombed. Well, I mean, she was with you when you got bombed, but we were technically together--"
"I get it," I assured her. At this rate, it was only going to get ugly.
"But, you know? Like, we were together for a long time. I mean, we were engaged. We were going to spend the rest of our lives together. And we'd bought the apartment, I mean, we just moved in, but things were getting so serious. And you've never really done serious before, like, this was your first serious thing. And that just got me thinking, like, I understand where you're coming from. You know?"
I looked at her for several moments, before deciding that no, I didn't. "No," I admitted. "I have no idea what you're getting at."
"I know that you just wanted to get it out of your system, before we tied the knot," she said at last. "One last fling. I get it. She was there, she was available, and she's always throwing out the signs, and you'd done it before, so it was natural that you'd go to her. I'm telling you, Kim, that I understand, and I'm done being mad, and I think that in some way this needed to happen before we settled down. Now we know that we can work through things, and I'm so glad that we can. And I'm ready for you to come home, Kim. I've really missed you."
I tried not to let my eyes fall out of my head, the way I was sure that they were going to. I didn't say anything for a good, long while, just stared vacantly at her, waiting for something to happen. Part of me was expecting to wake up, or expecting Ashton Kutcher to jump out from behind my couch and inform me that I'd just been Punk'd, or expecting Grace to laugh sadistically and say "Just kidding you cheating cuntbag, I've already packed your shit, enjoy being homeless."
In fact, I almost wished that any of these things would have happened, because any of them would have been preferable to the reality. The reality was, like always, that my blurred lines in relationships had once again screwed me over.
"Okay, Grace," I said slowly after a while. "I don't think you're really getting it."
"I get it, Kim," she said. "You were scared. And it's okay."
"I'm not scared," I pressed indignantly. "I mean yeah, okay, marriage freaks me out, that's no secret, but I didn't sleep with her just to get it out. I slept with her because I wanted to, and I'm a terrible fucking person who does terrible things because I want to."
"You're not a terrible person," she assured me. "You made a mistake. We can work through it."
"Maybe on Planet Grace I made a mistake that we can work through, but in the real world, that's called cheating. I cheated on you, and it was fucked up, and there's no way things could ever be the same between us."
"We'll never know if we don't try," she said sadly. "There are workshops, there's counseling--"
"Grace," I said, quietly but firmly. "You've been so, so good to me, and I never deserved you. And I never will. You should be with someone who has what you're looking for."
To twist the knife in me just a little bit further, I had to watch her eyes fill up with tears. Grace, who had always been filled with this childlike hope and this fairytale fantasy, was all at once seeing the reality. And it came down hard, and all at once.
"You are what I'm looking for," she almost whispered. "It was one night."
It was like she was telling herself.
"It's not just one night," I said, shaking my head. "It's not."
"It happened more than once?"
"No--"
"Or it's going to happen more than once?"
"No," I persisted. "I mean, yes, maybe, but no, Grace, what I mean is it wasn't just some meaningless sex."
She looked at me like she almost couldn't bear to. "And what did it mean, Kim?"
"I'm still trying to figure that out, I...."
"Kim," she said firmly, not in her usual way. "In all these months of lying to me about your feelings for her, don't you think you at least owe me some honesty now?"
She was right. About everything. "I love her."
She rolled her wet eyes, even though I'd given her the answer she expected. The answer she was practically asking for, in a masochistic way. "How long?"
"How long what, Grace?"
"How long have you loved her?"
"How can I answer that?"
"I always knew she was in love with you," she said. "But I trusted that when you said you didn't feel the same, you were telling me the truth. And now to think that all this time, that that was complete bullshit? That you went on making me think my worries were crazy, letting her mistreat me the way she does, taking her side because you wished you were with her instead?"
"I wasn't playing you, Grace," I said mostly to make myself feel better. It wasn't working. "I hadn't sorted out what I felt for her, and I thought we'd never be together."
"So you settled for me."
"I wasn't settling for you, Grace, I loved you, I did. So much."
"Did."
"Do," I backtracked, wondering, now, if I'd ever been dumped before, because I was so, so bad at it. "It's complicated, what I feel for you and what I feel for her, but you have to admit that you and I haven't been working for a long time."
"Why do you think that is, Kim?"
I only exhaled. In this one instance, Carrie was wrong. Grace was smarter than the both of us, and we were a couple of idiots. "I think we had different expectations."
"Different expectations," she repeated. "Go fuck yourself."
"I'm sorry," I said uselessly.
"I think you should go home now."
It wasn't lost on me that we were in my home. To Grace, it probably hadn't been our home for a long time.
"I'll get my things sometime this week."
"It's really over," she told herself quietly.
I wished I could have turned back time. It should never have ended like this.
I nodded slowly, painfully.
"Yeah," I said at last. "I guess it is."