Particles of Light, Chapter Seven: Mr. and Mrs. Bathrobe
Title: Chapter Seven - Mr. and Mrs. Bathrobe
Rating: PG/R
Disclaimer: I don't own, no offense intended
Notes: Just in case, DB refers to a dead body
The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.
-Zen Buddhist quote
When Charlie arrived at the station, Reese was already at her desk, rifling through some paperwork that she’d left at the end of her shift the previous night. She noticed her partner walking in, glancing at her and absentmindedly rubbing his sternum. When Crews realized Reese was looking at him, he broke eye contact quickly and quietly said, “Heartburn.”
‘Too much personal pineapple?” Reese said the words casually her focus returning to her paperwork.
Crews responded to Reese by loosening up a bit and then they started talking about the day ahead, which consisted of a homicide scene they were on their way to, just as soon as they got their briefing from the LT. And, also after Reese peed. She’d had to pee since 3 p.m. and now it was 8.
Thankfully, the LT’s brief was just that and Charlie felt relieved that the meeting was not filled with any acrimonious bullshit directed at him.
In the car, Reese drove. She always drove.
He likes that….me driving. Likes to let himself ease into each day, each situation without worrying about where he’s going, maybe? But, man….I couldn’t stand to be out of control for that long, Reese thought to herself.
Crews looked at his partner and wondered if she KNEW, instinctively in that way that all women seemed to know. He wondered, slightly embarrassed at the thought, if she KNEW that he liked her to drive so he could steal glances at her while her eyes were on the road.
He looked briefly at her hand, which rested on the steering wheel, warmed through the windshield by LA sunshine. He felt a spasm of the same guilt he’d felt earlier in the evening and willed himself to look away. But, the lingering thought of her hand on his shirt, on his chest made him squirm a bit. The more he thought about NOT thinking about his partner, the more his thoughts raced with images he desperately wanted out of his head. Her dark, shiny hair coming undone around his hands, her soft lips curling into a smile that was just for him, the two of them alone, her bare shoulders glimmering in moonlight. The rise and fall of her breasts under decidedly more silky material than those shirts she usually wore. All these images floated through Charlie’s brain like…like….
Forbidden fruit. God, that might be my favorite fruit of all…Oh shit. Oh, no. Shit. Go away.
Charlie’s string of intimate mental images of his partner ground to a halt when he floated back to reality only to find himself beginning to get hard. He shifted a bit in his seat, trying to figure out which thigh to raise a bit to conceal himself just in case it was noticeable. He hoped the fear of potential humiliation alone would make for the quick disappearance of his junior detective.
Reese looked over at Crews when she thought she saw him turn his head towards her. But, when she focused on his face, she saw a stony resolve that she wasn’t used to seeing as of late. So different than the night of the party, he seemed completely intent on something and she noticed a slight beading of sweat on his upper lip. She noticed the fine, delicate lines around his eyes which peeked through from underneath his sunglasses and wondered what on earth her partner was thinking, but she certainly did not want to ask. His eyes which were trained intently, fixed on the road ahead, seemed unwavering and icy, even beneath the sunglasses.
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Once they reached the apartment building that held their crime scene, both detectives were tense. Back in cop mode, each partner was steeling themselves for the inevitable moment when they saw the DB.
There was a black and white that had already responded and the scene had been cleared, which theoretically meant it was a safe scene for them to enter. The apartment was dull and sparse, but looked as if someone who liked mid-century modern had decorated it on a VERY limited budget. The body of a woman had been found by a neighbor, kneeling in an open but otherwise empty coat closet. She appeared to be in her late 50s. There was a great deal of blood on the avocado green carpet around her knees, but no apparent trauma to her back or legs. But, as Reese noted after a moment of latex-gloved inspection, she had been stabbed with a kitchen knife in the neck. Deeply stabbed.
Reese didn’t know how dead bodies effected her partner, since he rarely flinched when he was looking at the remains of a violent death or even a traumatic injury to a live person. He did what he needed to do, which was either act fast to help or coolly observe and function while coming to some sort of conclusion in the first moments in which they judged a crime scene or a body.
For her part, all Reese knew for sure was how she felt. How she processed it. How she controlled it. And, basically, all that remained, all that was in the pit of truth that lay somewhere within Reese was that she felt a part of her break off a little bit each time she saw a DB. All of her disappointments, all her failed potential and all of her fears emerged like vapors from that body. They wafted up to greet her, all over again, leaving the old familiar stench of death and failure all over her. The frailty, the urgency of life was never more apparent than when she was looking into the milky, lifeless eyes of someone she didn’t know, and this was obvious to her in a needless, helpless way. Of course, she would never admit this. Maybe, not even admit it to herself. But, there it was, ultimately undeniable. But, at least I can control it, Reese thought.
Charlie looked at the woman’s body. He hated seeing dead bodies, particularly women. Women got a raw deal in this world. Raped, murdered, dumped off a hiking trail, cut up or hidden away in a vat as if they never existed. What really got Charlie was when men killed women because they’d seen their faces during a lesser crime and they would get caught if they allowed the woman to live. The ultimate insult to injury, Charlie thought. The ultimate victimization. Men exist in a world without the reality of being a commodity, of being disposable and Charlie hated that.
There were a lot of murderers in jail with him. Most of them had killed a woman at some point. Not all, but most. To Charlie, there was something so tragically sad and warped about a world in which people like him, and people like Reese, had to work up what happened to a dead woman and bring the killer to justice. Women were supposed to be protected, cherished and loved. Not wrapped in plastic bags or left to decay or eaten, bit by bit, by wild animals.
This poor woman in front of him was clothed in the last bathrobe she would ever wear. It had a frayed belt and a tattered collar, worn through from years of use. He wondered if this woman had known she would die like this, if she’d have gone out and bought herself a much nicer robe to spend her last months lounging around in. On the other hand, he thought as he cocked his head to the right like a dog listening to a high pitched sound, maybe she was wearing this robe because it was her favorite. Maybe she loved that robe more than any other new, expensive robe she could ever buy. Maybe this woman, or what was left of this woman, couldn’t wait to get home from her shitty little job to get into that shitty little robe.
This case was, thankfully, an open and shut one. Mrs. Bathrobe’s husband was hiding in the empty apartment next door, clad in his very own crappy little robe, which was made even crappier by the large covering of fresh blood. He confessed at the top of his lungs immediately and continued confessing all the way back to the station, until he was so exhausted that the reality of what he’d done sunk in. The two detectives practically carried the inconsolable man inside to have him booked.
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Every DB Charlie Crews saw since being back on the job reminded him of what he had in common with them. Obviously, they were dead. None of this likely to be deader than not crap. They were dead, and that was a certainty. That was for sure. THAT he didn’t have in common with them, which he thought was pretty good. And, there was not any control to be found here, he thought. But, with each DB he saw and pondered over, there was the undeniable fact that SOMETHING horribly unexpected and permanent had happened to that person…had derailed their life. That was what Charlie had in common with these lost souls.
Something totally unexpected and permanent had happened to Charlie, too, but he lived longer afterwards than the dead people had. While these poor souls had only seconds, minutes or hours to contemplate and live with what violent, disruptive and unpleasant derailment life bought them, Charlie had been given 12 years. 12 fun filled years (and, on the days he allowed himself hopeful thought, the rest of a long, natural life) to adjust to his unexpected derailment.
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At lunch, Reese noticed Crews was unusually silent. By now, he’d have talked her ear off about the origins of tacos, where the world’s largest ball of dental floss was located and how to best determine a species of poisonous dart frog with the enthusiasm of an 8 year old in the last five miles to Disneyland.
Halfway through his fish burrito, Crews suddenly looked at Reese and said, “There was something really sad about that bathrobe.”
Reese thought for a moment, then realized he was talking about the dead woman’s bathrobe and said, “Yeah, kind of grubby, huh?”
“Grubby. Yeah.” Crews looked out over the street and wondered if Reese had a bathrobe and what color it might be.