Work Text:
The sky had cleared while I was finishing the paperwork for the ADA. I had noticed a few stars through the windows of the bullpen. Now, even down here in the parking garage, I could smell the bay. The wind must have changed, too. I was glad I had the leather jacket. Home, a beer, some leftover chili. Bed was sounding good. It had been a long day.
"Ellison!"
"Lanny, how've you been?" The uniform showing up for the night shift had been a regular feature of my time in Vice. Adam squad covered Cascade's version of the Tenderloin, and the bars that served the dockworkers. Vice had never been boring. But Major Crimes was better.
"Nightshift agrees with me. Gives me more time to see my new granddaughter."
I oohed and aahed over the photos that Lanny produced from his wallet. Then his two-way crackled, its mike pinned high on his shoulder.
"Adam 27, you on duty yet?"
"Ten-four," Lanny responded. He was early for his shift; I knew he technically wasn't on duty for another half an hour. Maybe Adam squad was shorthanded tonight.
"EMT's requesting backup at an overdose. Can you take it?"
"Responding, sir, repeat the location?" Lanny was grimacing, already heading for his cruiser. I followed, thinking that I hadn't heard the end of the story he was telling me. His shift supervisor repeated an address -- not far from Rainier's main campus; an apartment building. Kind of a crummy neighborhood, on the edge of a bad part of town, but popular with students for the cheap housing.
Lanny confirmed, and shrugged at me. He meant it as an apology and goodbye. But I just ignored that and followed him, pulling open the passenger door of his cruiser, listening while Lanny changed channels on the two-way and talked with the ambulance dispatcher as he drove out of the garage. We punched up the siren and the lights.
He said, "So you're in for this?"
"Don't worry about the OT. My dime." Lanny nodded. He switched back to the main police frequency and told dispatch that David 24 was with him for backup, one more piece of protocol handled.
"Be like old times," Lanny said, screaming around a corner, watching the traffic on Beaumont part.
That reminded me of a chase we had once gotten a piece of -- a motorcycle gang fleeing from a sting gone bad, and reminiscing about that took us through arriving at the apartment building, parking half on the sidewalk, and finding two nervous EMT's waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
As soon as they caught sight of us, they barreled on up -- four flights of smelly carpet and old oak. It was an antique building, remodeled and later trashed, maybe 70, 80 years old, and showing every year.
"Patient combative," one of the EMT's offered over his shoulder, and Lanny nodded and followed. I was right behind him.
The apartment door was open, and I had to shake my head to try to clear it, because already the fumes of candle smoke, incense, chemicals and fear were coming at me like an attack. There were confused voices back in there, too.
What is wrong with you? Get a grip!
This kind of thing had been happening way too often lately, since the stakeout in the woods for the Switchman. I had barely hung on through the difficult digging in that case, the tracking of leads from bomb fragments and military connections, that had finally broken it. Joel had done most of the work, Joel and, if I was honest with myself, Carolyn. Simon had been way too patient with my meltdown. He deserved a detective at one hundred percent, not whatever weird half baked performance I'd been turning in since that stakeout. The time off he'd insisted I take after the case was over had not helped, nor had all the medical tests. Get a grip! That was weeks ago. Come on. I took a deep breath and tried to focus, absently putting a hand on Lanny's shoulder. That seemed to help. His shoulder was warm, and he didn't look back.
A girl was coming toward us. "Oh man -- thank god, in here," she said, slurring everything, pointing toward a bedroom, barely able to walk. The apartment seemed claustrophobic, but all I had to do was follow Lanny. It was Lanny's case, Lanny's turf. He and the medics went on into the bedroom. I leaned against the doorjamb, folded my arms, and watched. Being still and hanging back seemed to let my balance return.
Against the far wall of the bedroom, a young, nervous-looking man was grappling with another man, trying to hold him down. The nervous guy looked at the paramedics, then slid his glance to Lanny.
"Bad trip, guys. Help." Then he turned to his disturbed friend. "Hey, Blair. Blair! Help is here, man... help."
The man on the floor kept struggling, blindly, single-mindedly trying to get up, get away.
"What did he take?" one of the EMT's asked, snapping on gloves and edging nearer, with a pleading glance at Lanny. The cop was right behind him.
"Acid. We didn't... he usually..." The nervous guy trailed off, willingly giving up his grip on Blair's shoulders to the EMT.
I felt almost sorry for the kids. The one called Blair was thrashing hard, muttering, his long hair tossing as he turned his head from side to side. His vacant blue gaze connected with mine and suddenly he sat up, shaking off the paramedic's hands.
"Shit!" Blair yelled, looking right at me. "Don't let it get me, man, don't let it get me, who let it out of the jungle... Shit!"
"Easy, easy," the EMT said, holding on again, confident now that he had two cops with him. "No one's gonna hurt you, it's okay." He tightened his hands on Blair's shoulders. Blair had managed to sit up and scoot further toward the corner of the room, still staring at me. He raised a hand, reached out.
"No, no, you're right, you're right man, he would never hurt me, he would never hurt me, just a pussy cat, right? You're just a pussy cat ... you're my pussy cat."
"Come on, it's okay, it's okay, can you walk? Can you get up?"
Blair cooperated, all the fight gone out of him, his gaze locked on mine. He moved as the EMT held on to his shoulders. He fumbled to his feet and came straight at me. As that weird blue stare approached, I straightened and unfolded my arms, ready for anything. Definitely a bad trip. I made sure the snap was tight on my gun.
Blair just kept coming and staring, and he was muttering, "Nice kitty, nice kitty," and his hands came up and all of a sudden he was hanging on to me, hanging on tight, looking at his hands and my arm like he was seeing the most important thing he'd ever come across, like it was a treasure. Then he studied my face, intent, not frightened, and then he was actually petting my shoulder. What was next? Scratching under my chin? I started to back up, thinking as long as he was cooperative and distracted we could get him closer to the ambulance under his own steam, no cuffs.
"Easy, easy," I said, and I backed up, backing us all down the hall, Blair's gaze fixed on his own hand on my shoulder. The kid was still muttering, "Nice kitty," and then his voice dropped and I had to strain to catch the next few words. I was still backing toward the stairs with one hand on the banister, trading bemused glances with Lanny, but I was listening harder, trying to catch the snatches of whispering. The shock of what I heard was like a sudden cold breeze, because it wasn't English. The kid was whispering in...
Blair pitched forward, his weight solid and surprising in my arms, and it was all I could do to hold him up without falling backwards down four flights of stairs. The paramedics surged toward us, taking over. They got the unconscious kid downstairs and headed for the hospital with no more surprises.
When I was back in Lanny's cruiser again for the return trip to the station, I found I was barely able to listen to him reminisce about LSD and the old days. This stranger, limp in my arms. The kid's touch and smell -- sweat and cotton and fear and warmth, the clean scent of his hair. Such warmth. Such a shock, the heavy hot weight of Blair's body. It had a weird familiarity that I could not begin to figure out. And right before he passed out, Blair had been muttering, not in English, but in Chopec.
I got through the paperwork for my part in the call, as the backup, and I escaped from Lanny's offer of a midnight diner breakfast, but once I was in the truck, I couldn't go home. Soon I found myself parking in a space marked "Reserved For Police" near the ER entrance of Cascade General, and talking my way into Blair's room.
The beeping of his monitors was comforting -- rhythmic and monotonous and at a pitch that said all was normal. I glanced around, to make sure no one was looking, and felt the kid's forehead and his neck to check for fever. His skin was warm and dry, not hot, his neck soft as silk. Here was Blair Sandburg -- flashing the badge always got you information from the floor supervisor -- and here was I, sitting in something that resembled a vigil at his bedside. Trying not to wonder what I was doing here, waiting for this guy to wake up. The light was white and clean, and the smells were, too; astringent and not quite overpowering.
Sandburg was still, but his breathing was smooth and easy. His heartbeat was strong. I could tune in to it without effort, a solid, living thump thump thump that was echoed by the irrelevant chirp of the monitor. The wash of his blood, rushing in and out, was comforting, like listening to the ocean. Steadying. Got to be losing my mind. I realized I was bending over him, tasting his breath, and I leaned back, shaking my head to try to clear it, working to pull back from the overpowering comfort of that sound, that rhythm. I made myself look around the sterile, anonymous room, but I came back to stare at Blair Sandburg again. His eyelids were still, not a flutter of the thick auburn lashes. His wild hair was loose on the white pillow. Right before he passed out on me, back in the apartment building, he had muttered in Chopec: "We meet at last, Enqueri. I join you on the path."
I thought about that for a minute, then whispered, in the same language, "Who are you?" Sandburg stirred in his sleep, his hand closing around my wrist, and he smiled. I wanted to pull away, but his hand felt so good, a wide warm bracelet on my skin. I sat there and watched his face for a while longer, until it got so late that I started to drift off. When I jerked awake in the uncomfortable chair, he had let go and had turned over, still asleep. His back was to me. Why was I lingering? I knew the guy's name, his business; I could find him. I got up stiffly and went home. His heartbeat followed me down the hall.
~~~
"Come in," the voice said, brisk and professional after I knocked on the door, which was open a foot or so. I pushed in. The room was one big clutter, a riot of smells and colors and textures. The man sitting behind the desk straightened and jerked off his glasses and looked at me. He stood up and leaned on his knuckles, breathing hard all of a sudden. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. He didn't look particularly welcoming. He looked tired. He had on a loose shirt, clean and new, and blue jeans. A rough linen jacket, tropical blue, hung on the back of his chair.
"Jim Ellison, Cascade PD," I said, just like I always did, showing Sandburg the badge. "I need to ask you a few questions."
"It's you," Sandburg said, as if he hadn't heard me.
I was really grateful for the cop face, the one that didn't register much of anything. Maybe it translated as simply puzzled, because Sandburg sat down again and waved me into the guest chair.
"Sorry, sorry; I mean, I recognize you from the other night. You came to the hospital, too, didn't you?"
"Yeah. I was hoping to find you awake this time." I gave him a smile. It was time to be friendly. This was work; this was an actual investigation now. I knew just how to do that; in fact, I clung to it. But seeing the guy again, seeing him awake, was unbelievably disturbing. He knew my name. I didn't make that up; didn't hallucinate that. How in the hell did he know my Chopec name?
"Right, right," Sandburg said nervously, running a hand through his hair.
I had to know what he knew. So I commented in Chopec, "It's easier to talk to each other when we're both awake." Sandburg looked blank.
"Some kind of proverb, man? What is that -- South American, right? Or a Mayan dialect?"
The disappointment was sharp, and out of proportion to what we were doing here. What were we doing here? Why did it seem so important? It was a case. A drug case. I shook my head, dismissing his question. "It doesn't matter. Look. We need to know where you got the LSD."
Sandburg looked at the papers on his desk. "I figured. But..." He met my eyes squarely, a good sign. Straightforward. His eyes were pale blue, like the sky. It was hard not to enjoy them, but I managed to keep the professional stare nailed down. "I know you can bust me, that's just self evident, but I hate to bring infamy on my friends, you know?"
"The thing is, it's a particularly bad batch of acid. We don't have proof yet, but it looks like you got off easy. At least three fatal overdoses this week, mostly likely from the same distributor."
"Jesus," Blair said.
"What form was it in?" Professional. Yes.
"Nothing unusual -- windowpane in little perforated sheets, you know. Nothing on it, no markings, no pictures. Nothing."
"And you trusted your source."
"Well, yeah, actually..."
"Mr. Sandburg, I doubt very much the department wants to bust you. We don't want to hold that over your head. I don't want to hold that over your head." Time for the cold smile; the one that denied the threat even as I made it. "But anything you can remember about the drugs or their source -- it could help save some lives."
"Yeah, yeah, sure." He looked down at his desk. He was quiet.
I waited until the silence affirmed that he was going to take some time to think about it before he said any more. I had been prepared to accept that as a possible outcome. I had not planned to press him any more than I had; we had some time, and damned few leads, though he didn't need to know that. Entirely separate from the weird shit that I felt between us, he was a very, um, hot lead, and there was no reason to lean on him yet. He might choose to cooperate, for the greater good, and all that. So I got up to go, but he came around the desk and offered his hand. I took it, and it was a normal handshake, but the same warm scent I had sat next to in the hospital settled around me. It was like walking into a cloud of perfume or smoke, except that this was pleasant. Welcoming. I frowned, and I looked down into his eyes, for a little too long, I'm sure, but Sandburg seemed to be having the same trouble. He was frowning, too, looking up.
I backed up a step and pulled out my card. "Here's my number, and my cell number."
"Right," he said, taking the card but not looking at it. I was halfway out the door when he spoke again. "What language was that, anyway?"
"Chopec," I said, turning back.
"You're fluent in a Peruvian Indian language. That SOP for the Cascade police?" Sandburg was smiling and he looked somehow reckless. The smile was a nice thing to see for the first time. He had jammed his fists in his jeans pockets and he was leaning back on his heels a little, his feet apart. It was sexy as hell and it hit me hard. I tried my best not to let him see that.
"I was in the service," I said, as if that explained it.
"Chopec," Blair repeated, and I nodded and left.
Then began my little private research orgy on Blair Sandburg, white male, five feet eight inches, brown, blue, age twenty-six, American citizen. Yeah, it was pushing the boundaries of what the drug investigation required. Blair Sandburg, ABD, anthropologist, working on some kind of South American tribal warrior stuff, writing his dissertation, not even a third of the way done yet. Some kind of boy wonder at the university. He taught two classes. All his degrees were from Rainier. Born in Cascade, a suburban address with the DMV that didn't match his personnel records at the university. But that was not unusual, now that driver's licenses were good for seven years.
For two nights running I dreamed about panthers and wolves and being back in Peru. The dreams were all in Chopec. It was kind of pissing me off. I needed my sleep.
~~~
"Ellison."
"Hi, it's Blair Sandburg, from the other night?"
"Yes, hello."
"Listen, I was asking around about the source of that acid, and I found out something that might be useful to you."
"Uh huh?"
"There's supposed to be a party where a person could get some more of the same stuff. It's, ah, got a reputation already as being intensely great for hallucinating, though people also have an idea that it's riskier than usual, too."
"Do your friends know about the three fatals?"
"No. They had heard about one of them, but they haven't put it together yet."
"Where is this party?"
"In the back room of Club Doom, after midnight tonight -- you have to know who to ask for to get in, though."
"Uh huh. And the password is?"
"You're gonna go down there yourself, aren't you?"
"Probably. Why?"
"Well, I could meet you there. Point out my contact if he's there, too. Maybe see who else is involved."
"I'm afraid we usually like to handle this stuff ourselves, Mr. Sandburg."
"Well, I know, but I'm kind of in the middle of it now, aren't I?"
"It would be better if you just give me the Open Sesame."
"What if they only want to deal with people they already know?"
"Well, that is sometimes true."
"So, I'll meet you outside at eleven. Have you been in Club Doom before?"
"Why?"
"Just. Dress down, all right?"
~~~
I was early for the time I'd agreed on with the detective, but I waited patiently in the cold in the side parking lot of the club. The location I'd picked gave me a clear view of the two front doors and the back door of the place. It was coming up on eleven. I had made damn sure to be early because the last thing I wanted was to miss the guy in the crowd and have him go on in without me. Though he would be quite hard to miss.
The whole thing, from beginning to end, was freaking my shit in a major way. I'd told Jim Ellison that this version of the drug was extra special great for hallucinating, and I knew that for a fact. I couldn't remember much about the evening of my bad trip, with one spectacular exception: the black panther. It had a weight and a significance that was different -- stronger and much clearer than other things I had seen in my limited experience with acid. Maybe it was the poison in this batch; whatever, but the panther had been as real as the people in Wayne and Lisa's bedroom. The touch of its fur, its heat, its teeth. Its eyes, so wary and intelligent. After the first shock of seeing it there, I knew it was friendly. I knew it would not bite me or claw me or anything. All I wanted to do was get close to it, touch it. I blushed again at the memory of what I must have done -- grabbing hold of the cop like that, touching him. But he had come around afterward anyway; had been friendlier than he needed to be, and it was so fucking weird. Why wasn't I afraid -- of the panther, or of this cop?
And then there was the Peruvian language he had spoken in my office -- that was driving me crazy, too. I felt like I should know it, but I knew damn well I didn't. There was something going on here, something I couldn't understand at all, something that drew me like the proverbial magnet. It was making me nuts, like a significant dream that you can't quite remember, or a word that you're trying to say and it just won't come out of your mouth.
Now, in the freezing parking lot, here he was again, walking toward me -- and the whole cat thing was making a ton more sense because that's exactly what he resembled in real life, just like a bad cliche. Black bomber jacket, unzipped -- shit, was his blood that hot? Black tight shirt, black jeans, bareheaded, moving quietly and quickly through the night, exactly like a big hunting cat. He came right up to me and I took my hands out of my pockets, made the gloves into puffy fists. My heart was racing. Fuck. He looked at me, a little pumped, a little quizzical. He had no right to be that much of a turn-on. Really. Then I noticed he was wearing an earring. Maybe this was the crowning touch in his attempt to look undercover, look like something other than what he was? Supercop On A Mission? It made me want to giggle. Um. Bad idea. I succeeded in biting down on it.
"Shall we?" Jim said, and jerked his head toward the back door of the club.
~~~
I guess I should have left when the fun started. We had drifted around inside the main club for about forty-five minutes, then I had used the name I had been given and casually, I hoped, gone into and out of the back room. The place must have been crawling with cops, but they had done a great job of making themselves look part of the trashed crowd that is typical of Club Doom. But, even with the earring, Jim didn't blend in at all. Though I did find out why he left his jacket open like that -- so he could draw his big flat handgun with a minimum of fuss.
My friend Lisa wasn't there -- I had made sure of that -- but I had met her source before, and there were apparently some higher ups present as well, and a hell of a lot of drugs and a hell of a lot of cash. In black attache cases, just like in the movies. No shots were fired, everything ended smoothly, and I exited stage center at a nod from Jim. I should have gone on home then, I guess, and fed poor neglected Larry or something, but I hovered in the dark beyond the parking lot lights, listening for footsteps around me -- it wasn't the safest place in town to choose to hide in the dark, honestly. But I wanted to keep Jim in sight as he helped the undercover cops and some uniformed officers round up people and efficiently stuff them into police cars. Wanted to keep him in sight? Felt compelled to stare at him, is more like it. I stared until my eyes were dry and stinging because I was forgetting to blink. It was effing crazy; it was unheard of, me reacting this way to someone like him -- someone obviously older, a cop, for crying out loud, someone so off limits and so not my type as to be laughable. I mean, I had been with guys in my day, but they were musicians or fellow students or, like, really cute, wild, drunken baseball players. Not ex-military hardbodies who could flatten me against the side of a building, should they ever decide to. But. I watched him stand, and pace, and bend his neck to listen to one of his colleagues, and I couldn't take my eyes off him.
So there was the attraction, yeah, but there was also everything I had seen tonight. Now I was even more determined to talk to him some more, to try to get to know him. I simply had to learn how he could do the things I had seen. Supercop was an understatement. I sighed and stuffed my hands further into my coat pockets. The parking lot was emptying. The bad guys were all gone, carted off into the night. The Narcotics people had loaded up the rest of the acid and the money and they were gone, too. For some reason Jim wasn't leaving. He stood up straight and scanned the area, and then the motherfucker looked. Right. At. Me. I was thirty yards away, in the dark, lurking behind my car, and he looked right at me and he started walking -- that lazy long stride, like he had miles to go and all the time in the world to get there. I took a deep breath and started walking myself, and I met him halfway, under the cold blue lights. He had taken out the earring. That made me smile.
"Buy you a beer?" he said, and I nodded. We went in his truck. We hardly spoke at all during the drive, but the silence was full. He was feeling something, too. He had to be.
The place he took me was on the other side of downtown, a quiet, dark-paneled bar with just a few booths and a couple of pool tables, hardly smoky at all. I figured it was a place cops went. It was almost all men, and the few guys at the bar at this late hour were older and had short hair and carried themselves kind of the way Jim did, but with less feral grace. He slid into a booth and the waitress came over right away.
"What can I get you, detective?" she said. Yup. I had guessed right about the place.
"Rolling Rock for me, Ginny," he said. "Thank you." He glanced at me.
"Uh, Irish coffee, please." Standing out in that parking lot for so long had chilled me, to say nothing of the weird scary rush I had from watching this guy all night. When she had brought our drinks and gone, he slid a folded hundred across the table.
"What is this?"
"I logged you as an anonymous informant. None of that would have come down without what you told us." It was, in fact, two crisp new hundreds, folded neatly together.
"Jesus."
"It's what we usually do, really."
I just shook my head. But I put the money in my pocket. It felt very very weird to accept it, but it wasn't like I didn't need it. He was looking at his beer, which was in the bottle, no glass, and he took a swig without meeting my eyes. He seemed to be working himself up to say something and I was anticipating it, practically buzzing with the mystery of it. He had to feel it, too, what I had felt -- some kind of connection between us. Plus, there were my suspicions, even though I kept talking myself out of them from moment to moment. What could I say to him now? I didn't want to be like those people who, once they buy a Volkswagen, see nothing but Volkswagens everywhere. Thinking this guy fit my research... well, I just needed to be cautious. I knew his name; I knew where he worked. I could find him later. But what I had seen tonight. Jesus.
He drank some more beer and apparently made a decision. I could see him steel himself. He said, "What do you remember about the other night? The night you went to the hospital?"
A great place to start. Huh. Do Re Mi... "Not a lot, honestly, but it is most definitely true that that, uh, batch, was A-plus as far as hallucinogenic properties."
"Yeah?"
I looked in his eyes, and they were blue and wary and maybe a little bit defiant. And stunning. My mouth was dry, but that couldn't keep me from talking. "When you came after me, I didn't see you. I saw a black panther. Everyone else looked how they were supposed to, but not you."
He shook his head. "Definitely tripping." I chuckled and nodded. But he didn't relax. There was something else then, for him. "You don't remember anything about what you said to me," he asked, and there was a note of hopefulness in his voice that I couldn't understand.
"No. I'm sure I was babbling about the panther; it seemed so real. I really thought it was there and it was pretty scary. But somehow I didn't think it -- you -- it was going to attack me or anything."
"And you've never been to Peru. You've never studied Indian languages."
"I was pretty solid in Spanish at one time, but that's it. As far as the Native American languages, just terms you need to understand the archaeologists -- place names, mostly. But I'm not conversational in any of the modern dialects."
He sighed and leaned back, looking at me. He seemed disappointed and I suddenly, fiercely, didn't want to disappoint him. Maybe I didn't need to study any further before getting into this. Maybe we could start now, right where he had started. I took another deep breath. "Listen, after you gave me your card, I did a little bit of research on you. You were in Peru on a military mission, right?"
"Oh, so you dug up my fifteen minutes of fame, huh?"
I smiled, and, dear God, he smiled back -- a genuine smile, tinged with chagrin, but definitely a real one. It lit up his eyes, it burned up all that black-ice cold in a burst of warmth, and I couldn't help responding. I sat up straighter and leaned toward him. I tried to hold back a little of the enthusiasm, buying some time by sipping my coffee. Please, please, please. I don't want to fuck this up.
I put up a finger, and I could feel myself shifting into full lecture mode. "I'm not changing the subject, okay? Bear with me a minute." He didn't seem to mind -- he just kept grinning a little, listening. "I was quite taken aback, in there at the bust. You heard those guys behind the walls, in spite of the music being so loud. You could smell which case had the drugs in it. And just now. You saw me in the dark, clear across that parking lot. I think you knew I was waiting for you even before you started looking for me. So.... Heightened senses. I've seen three tonight. I'll bet you have all five."
As I spoke his grin faded and the Man-of-Steel Cop Glare came back, but he got more and more still. He was listening to me, listening hard, and he wasn't mad, and the longer I talked and watched those eyes, the more sure I became that he knew exactly what I was talking about. That I was up against one of those accidents, those tricks of fate, that sometimes hit you when you're lucky. Or blessed. Your research chooses you, they say, you don't choose it. I had always known that was true. Maybe now I had personal proof. Time to put it all out there, baby. Time to put your cards on the table.
"Jim, when you were down in Peru, did you ever hear of a kind of warrior called a Sentinel?"
End