Chapter Text
Everyone has a mystery about them. Sometimes there are little secrets, like secretly enjoying dancing in your underwear to the latest pop hits and sometimes there are big secrets, like changing your last name so no one could connect you to your serial killer father. Detective Dani Powell had her secrets, some that she kept herself and some that people kept from her.
On this slightly windy autumn morning in New York City, she drove into the space in front of Malcolm Bright’s loft apartment, her black Toyota Camry quietly hummed as she waited for Malcolm to emerge. She offered to give the newest member of her squad team a ride to work so that he wouldn’t get teased anymore but the officers at the station about his fancy town car escort every morning. Over the last three weeks, she welcomed Malcolm’s cheery disposition during these morning rides. Being that she wasn’t truly a morning person, he helped her wake up and get into ‘Dani’ mode as she liked to call it—not much different than Detective Dani Powell, but somewhere in the middle from the Grumble Monster that she woke up as.
The Grumble Monster, was a nickname that her deceased father had given her as a child whenever he came into her room to tickle her awake as a child and she rewarded him with an annoyed, ‘Dadddddd!’ The first morning that she awoke as a teen and there was no ‘Grumble Monster’ wake up call, she sobbed. She sobbed in bed for hours and thought that the tears would never stop. However, that was years ago and it was only occasionally that the disappearance of the Grumble Monster shook her to the core.
Lowering her the driver’s side visor, Dani started touching up her blush pink lip-gloss as she caught a glimpse of Malcolm walking out of his front door with a jovial smile on his face. He peered in the car for a few moments, before opening the passenger side door and sliding in next to her. The smile that spread across her face reaching her eyes was almost automatic. She was forever amazed at how someone who had a childhood like Malcolm could still find a way to be so happy at the crack of dawn. She concluded awhile ago that it had to be the drugs that he consumed daily to help with his depression among other things.
“Goooood morning!” he chirped turning to give her one of his trademark grins.
Dani squinted in return, “How is it, someone who only gets about 3 hours of sleep a night can get up in the morning and be so cheerful?” she looked over at him with a smirk. Malcolm’s greenish blue eyes twinkled at her, “I would have you know, I got 4.5 hours of sleep last night and daily affirmations can really start your day off right. It helps, maybe you should try it Dani,” Malcolm added leaning back in his seat as she pulled away from the curb.
“Yeah well, I was up late last night, I had a date after work,” she replied as they drove down the street away from Malcolm’s loft.
Shifting in his his seat, Malcolm bobbed his head, “Oh did you?”
“Yeah, some guy I met at the corner bodega. Apparently, we like the same sandwiches…either way, it was kind of a dud.”
Malcolm’s delight at her last statement appeared quickly and disappeared just as quickly as she continued, “So that won’t happen again, but it was nice to actually go out and spend time with someone who doesn’t have a badge and doesn’t want to discuss a case,” she replied.
“Yeah, I guess,” Malcolm mumbled as he looked out of the window noticing that they were heading away from the on ramp that would take them to the precinct, “are we going to a scene?”
She bit her lip tentatively closing her eyes, “So let me apologize in advance, I forgot that I have to stop at my mom’s before heading to the station.”
Malcolm sat up straighter, “I get to meet your mother?”
Shaking her head causing her curls to bounce, Dani turned to him at the red light, “My mother…she doesn’t take well to strangers.”
Malcolm sat back dejected, “But I’m your partner, not necessarily a stranger.”
“She also doesn’t like cops.”
“But you’re a cop?” Malcolm stated confused.
“Yes and we never discuss it. I’m sorry, I won’t be long. I just have to pick something up and it will only take a few moments, I promise.”
“So I have to stay in the car?” he asked.
Dani nodded, “And don’t talk to anyone, you have FED written all over you and people in the neighborhood may not appreciate the special Malcolm Bright charm.”
“You think I have charm?” he wiggled his eyebrow at her.
Dani rolled her eyes, “In your own Bright way,” she shrugged as they continued down the street.
PSPSPSPSPSPSPSPSPS
Malcolm gazed out of the window as they drove through different neighborhoods while entering the Bronx neighborhood where Dani grew up. He watched as her fingers nervously tapped on the steering wheel at every red light. She was anxious. He wasn’t sure if it was due to visiting her mother or the fact that she was bringing him anywhere close to her childhood neighborhood or letting him see a part of her that he hadn’t seen before. His relationship with Dani had grown over the last couple of months. Keeping Gil company during his physical therapy following his stabbing, being a steady support for him during Ainsley’s ordeal after the Endicott incident (as his mother called it), listening to his shoulda, coulda, wouldas about his ill-fated relationship with Eve and just listening to him and his crazy theories. She had become his favorite partner and he started to crave hearing her laugh when he told her one of his dead serious adventures in boarding school and in college.
Suddenly Dani slowed down a treelined street containing twin homes stopping at one that was painted sunflower yellow and white. He noticed the curtains move slightly as Dani parked and unbuckled her seatbelt, “I swear only a few moments and please just stay in the car,” she almost pleaded.
“I will stay in the car, I can follow simple directions Dani,” Malcolm pouted.
She narrowed her eyes.
“Well most times, I will stay in the car and speak to no one,” he threw up his hands.
“Good,” she answered sliding out of the driver’s seat and waving at an older black man raking his leaves outside on the curb, “Hello Mr. Tom!”
“Good Morning Danielle!” he called back.
“Danielle?” Malcolm whispered in the car and then caught a glance of Dani leaning down staring at him from outside of the window on the sidewalk, ‘Don’t you even think about it’ she mouthed before heading up the stairs to the front door of the yellow and white house.
Dani slowly turned her key allowing herself entrance to the house and stepped into the foyer. A house that used to bring her so much comfort and joy, now brought her apprehension and uneasiness, “Mom!” she called out hearing her voice somewhat echo throughout the long foyer.
“You’re early,” Lena Powell entered from the dining room wiping her hands on her jeans.
Dani shrugged, “Well I have to be at the station earlier than normal and I wanted to make sure that I stopped by and got the package that you wanted me to mail,” Dani explained, with her hands in her jacket pocket, “what is it anyway?” she asked lifting a wrapped square box off of the glass console table.
“Just a gift for a friend, nothing for you to worry about Danielle,” Lena stated staring past her and out of the window by the door, “who is that man standing outside talking to Tom?”
Dani’s head whipped around to see Malcolm outside of the car having an animated conversation with Tom, the neighbor who was laughing and slapping his knee. Immediately Dani pursed her lips, “Excuse me,” she mumbled before marching over to the door flinging it open, “Bright!” she hissed from the top of the steps.
Malcolm froze in the middle of his story, “Sorry, Mr. Tom…Dani is calling me,” he turned around on his heels and skipped up the stairs, “I know, I know…I’m horrible with following directions,” he slid past her and entered the house coming face to face with a statuesque woman with dark olive skin, jet black hair and the same big russet colored eyes that Dani possessed. The woman was striking, so striking that the slight wrinkles and shadowy circles under her eyes hardly made any impression on her beauty. Her eyes shifted from Dani to Malcolm and back to Dani. He glanced down and noticed a slight tremor in her hand as she slowly reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear, “Umm…I’m Malcolm Bright, Dani’s partner at work,” he waved slowly.
“Malcolm, this is my mother Lena Powell,” Dani stepped up next to him. The way she clipped every word, he could sense her anger. He was curious, he would ask for forgiveness later.
“Nice to meet you,” Lena glanced over at Dani and then back at Malcolm, “Danielle, may I speak to you for a moment?”
Dani sighed, “Yes, Mom. Malcolm, I’ll be back and don’t touch a thing,” she hissed before following her mother towards the kitchen.
Malcolm nodded watching the two women disappear. They had the exact same gait. He then turned his attention to the cozily decorated living room. The living room furniture looked comfortable, lived in unlike the antique furniture that his mother obsessed over that people were rarely allowed to sit on. A slightly worn couch rested against a way along with two accent chairs on both sides of it. The coffee table in the middle of the room contained various magazines with women on the front. His attention was then quickly drawn to pictures on the shelf over the fireplace. The first picture that captured his eyes was a small, chubby baby with tawny like skin and large sensitive eyes. There were other pictures of the child a little older sitting on the lap of a man with deep mahogany skin. Their smiles matched. Then other pictures followed, where he saw his partner with her curly hair and trademark smirk in graduation pictures and prom pictures.
“You done?” Dani asked from the doorway causing his gaze to sever from the family pictures decorating the shelf.
Malcolm whirled around, “You were a cute baby,” he added, “your pictures don’t resemble some 19th century painting like mine does.”
Dani’s mouth twisted a little as if she wanted to smile, but she was still pissed at him, “Uh, huh, you ready to go or should I show you my childhood bedroom?” Dani asked gesturing towards the stairs.
Malcolm’s eyes lit up, “Would you?” he asked excitedly imagining just what a teenage Dani used to decorate her bedroom.
He was disappointed to see a roll of the eyes, indicating that a tour would not be possible, “Danielle, it was nice meeting your partner,” Lena appeared beside her with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, “but I have to make some phone calls.”
Nodding and kissing her mother on the cheek, Dani turning to Malcolm “Come on Bright and Mom, I will mail your package today, ok.”
“Good, thank you and its important,” Lena stated with a hint of urgency that peaked Malcolm’s interest. He was accustomed to strange mothers, but there was definitely something…off…about Dani’s mother.
Minutes later, the two partners were pulling away from the curb and Dani had a death grip on the steering wheel. She licked her lips repeatedly as they turned onto the freeway towards the station and Malcolm could feel her irritation pulsating through the car. He bobbled his head to the side and then spoke, “Ok, I’m sorry. I overstepped. I was curious. When I was younger—I had very few friends, especially those that I actually got to go visit. I know you told me to wait in the car and I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
Dani stared over at him, “You knew what you were doing and playing the son of Martin Whitly card won’t make me less mad at you.”
Malcolm sunk down in his seat, for Dani to bring up his father, she had to be incensed, “I’m sorry,” he repeated, quieter.
Sighing Dani continued, “I shouldn’t have brought you. I know that telling you to stay put is like telling you to stroll in and take a look at everything in the house. My mother reacted rather calmly to your presence though, so I guess that says something.”
“Your mother…is nice,” Malcolm managed to squeak out causing Dani to chuckle, “Nice way of putting it,” she responded, “my mother is paranoid, she’s been that way since my dad died.”
Malcolm nodded, “I noticed the slight hand tremor and the playing with her hair, nervous ticks?”
Dani glanced over at him, “Don’t profile my mother, Bright.”
Holding up his hands in protest, Malcolm defended himself, “Not profiling, just observing.”
Running her hand through her hair, Dani groaned, “She didn’t used to be this way…well not to this extreme. She was always cautious, but my father had this way of loosening her up. We laughed a lot,” she replied wistfully, “and then, the car accident happened and my mother changed. I will never forget the way she screamed waking me up that night. She just kept screaming over and over again, ‘They killed him, they killed him!’”
“Who?” Malcolm asked.
Shrugging she answered him, “My dad fell asleep at the wheel, he had come off of working three double shifts as a bus driver. There were no other people involved. When I became a cop, that was the first thing I did was look up the accident report. Single vehicle accident.”
“Why would she think someone killed him?”
“She never explained and when the police pressed her for answers, she said that she was wrong—there were no other people involved.”
“Do you believe what she said?” Malcolm asked quietly as he noticed Dani’s hand move slightly on the steering wheel as she turned to meet his stare and he pressed further, “do you believe that someone may have murdered your father?”
She turned to him and smiled sadly, “If there was another reason for my dad’s death other than him choosing to drive tired and deprived of sleep, maybe it would have been easier to accept way back when—but now? I realize it was just a horrible accident.”
Malcolm nodded as he sat back in his seat as Dani continued to drive towards the precinct with only the sounds of the radio filling the car.
PSPSPSPSPSPSPSPSPS
After 12 hours of working on their latest case, which involved a husband electrocuting his wife because she found out about his affair and was determined to divorce him and leave him destitute, Dani headed to her mother’s house to drop off the receipt for the package she mailed earlier. Her mother had insisted on it. Malcolm decided to tie up some loose ends with Gil.
The knots in her stomach that formed from that morning’s visit had not untied themselves. The conversation with Bright afterwards stirred up emotions that she hadn’t revisited in years. Her father’s death was always in the back of her mind. The trauma of losing him so unexpectedly and so swiftly was one that she thought there would be no healing from. Then the change in her mother came and it was another factor that made her want to block out that part of her life. Her father’s death was an accident and her mother’s rantings on the night he died was always written off as shock or a delusion.
Parking her car behind a black SUV in front of the yellow and white house, Dani jumped out and jogged up the stairs taking out her keys with the package receipt in her hand. Reaching the door, she heard loud voices inside, “You have to leave!” her mother cried out.
Dani’s hand immediately went to her service weapon on her hip as she quickly turned the key unlocking the door while tucking the receipt in her jeans. She slowly opened the door and rushed to the living room foyer. Her mother’s face was tinged with red, tears streaming down her face. Standing in front of her was a muscular man with jet black hair in a tailored suit, “Antonia, I’m not leaving and you know that.”
“You are leaving, either by your own accord or in a body bag,” Dani stated as she cocked her gun aiming at the stranger’s head.
Looking over the man’s shoulder, Lena held up her hands, “Danielle, it’s nothing…”
Standing completely still the middle of the living room’s hardwood floor, the man made no moves nor did he turn around to get a glimpse of the woman who was currently holding a 9mm glock at the back of his head, “Antonia, I am giving you one more chance,” he told her mother.
“I don’t know who you are, but she’s not this Antonia woman that you think she is. You have 3 seconds to move away from my mother,” Dani warned before starting her countdown with her heart beating rapidly in her chest, “1…”
She watched as the man turned to face her for the first time and she focused on his eyes, she knew those eyes and then her eyes met her mother’s which widened as she began to move towards Dani, “Mikey no!” Lena screamed as an onslaught of pain attacked the right side of her head and everything in the room went black.
PSPSPSPSPSPSPSPSPS
The darkness outside caused the lighting in Gil’s office to become more fluorescent as Malcolm finished loading case files into the leather cache amongst empty coffee cups strewn across the metal table, “Good work Kid, I think this may be a record for you,” Gil patted Malcolm on the back.
“Yeahhh it was rather simple, once the husband decided not to hide the receipt for the Maserati,” Malcolm demurred at the now clear white board with his hand resting on his chin. The events of that morning with Dani’s mother had consumed his thoughts during the day and he couldn’t shake them. Speaking to Gil may be the only way to quell his suspicious, “I have a question for you?”
Gil looked over with a raised eyebrow, “About the case?”
“No, about Dani.”
Gil inhaled settling down in one of the conference room chairs, “Oook, what do you want to know about Dani that you are afraid to ask her yourself?”
“Well I met her mother this morning…” Malcolm began noticing Gil’s eyebrows raise and for a brief moment, he felt a slight twist in his heart, “not like that,” rushing into to explain, he continued, “she gave me a ride to work and she had to stop past her mother’s house. Her mother is…different, well probably normal compared to mine, but different.”
“Oook,” Gil invited him to continue.
“And me and Dani got to talking about her dad’s accident, the one that killed him. She told me that her mother didn’t believe that it was just an accident. Do you know anything about the car accident and the investigation?”
Gil shrugged, “I read the report, Dani asked me to look through it again to make sure she didn’t miss anything. It was a horrible accident. But it happened because a man worked too hard providing for his family. There was nothing else that I noticed.”
Malcolm rubbed his chin in thought. That answer did nothing to satisfy his curiosity.
Standing up from his chair, Gil leaned forward, “Bright, I see the wheels turning—leave it alone.”
“Gil.”
Taking a deep breath, Gil reached out to touch his surrogate son’s shoulder. He wanted to be as tactful about this as possible, considering that he’d seen the connection between his detective and the profiler and maybe he was even to blame for fostering the connection—but he needed to level set with the young man in front of him, “Look, I know that you like Dani…”
Malcolm chortled, “We are friends,” he answered a little too affirmatively.
Gil smiled sarcastically, “Right, you are friends and since you are friends—you want to protect your friend and the only way to protect your friend is not to bring up terrible occurrences from their past that they have put to bed.”
Malcolm’s head bobbed as he walked away from Gil’s fixed gaze, “Dani wrote her mother’s concerns off as paranoia, what if its more than that, Gil? Don’t you think it would be better for them to know the truth?”
Gil shook his head setting his mouth in a straight line, “Leave it alone, kid. Promise me, you will leave it alone. Be a friend to Dani in another way.”
Malcolm resigned himself, “Fine, I will drop it.”
“Thank you,” Gil replied, “need a ride home?”
“No, I’m going to call my mother’s driver to pick me up,” Malcolm mumbled as Gil slid his jacket on.
“Ok, see you tomorrow,” Gil headed out of the room.
Malcolm took a deep breath and removed his cell phone from his pocket, glancing down and dialing Dani.
PSPSPSPSPSPSPSPSPS
The sound of parakeets chirping broke through the darkness that she’d been encased in as her eyes fluttered open. The pain in Dani’s head threatened to paralyze her as tears sprang to her eyes and the metallic taste of copper in her mouth almost choked her. Her hand shakily went to her mouth and touched the wetness pooling below her lip, blood stained her fingers. Lying on the floor, she slowly lifted her head, with a painful ache in every movement to survey her surroundings. She was in the foyer of her mother’s home, an table was overturned in the living room along with the chairs. “Mom,” she whispered. The stabbing pain made her feel as though she shouted it and she immediately grabbed the side of her head. She slowly raised her body up by resting on her elbows and knees and quickly the room begun to spin, “Mommy,” she cried out looking around in fear as her phone chirped one last time. Glancing over she noticed a missed call from Bright and now a voice message. Her bloodied hand reached for her phone as she looked around unable to fully stand, dragging herself to sit up against the wall surrounded by broken glass from vases that used to be on the overturned console table in the foyer. Seeing Bright’s name, she pressed it and listened to the phone ring which threatened to split her brain into two as she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, “Dani! I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time…” Bright’s jovial voice came through the other side.
With her eyes squeezed shut, she managed to breathe out, “Bright.”
He continued after hearing her say his name, “I know this morning was awkward, but I want to apologize if…”
“Bright,” Dani stated again mustering up as much energy as she could, “I need you…I need you to come to my mom’s house.”
He stopped immediately from putting on his coat, realizing that something was wrong, “Dani what happened?”
“I…I don’t know, I need you to come, please,” her voice hitched laced with pain.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he ended the call quickly rushing out of the station.
Dani dropped her phone on the floor as her eyelids got heavy and she closed them unable to handle the pain any longer.