Fic: Master Post: Remain Faithful [White Collar] Complete
Title: Remain Faithful
Characters/Pairings: Neal Caffrey/Peter Burke, Elizabeth Burke, Kate Moreau, Mozzie, Vincent Adler, Diana Barrigan, Clinton Jones, Reese Hughes, June Ellington
Rating: Mature
Word Count: 60,860
Spoilers: Spoilers for Season One, possible mentions of canon from Seasons Two or Three (minor).
Warnings: AU, references to the death of a canonically dead major character, death of a supporting character, TV level violence
Summary: Three years after Peter Burke caught her, Kate Moreau is dead and he's divorced and falling for her artist boyfriend, the prime suspect in her murder.
Author's Note: I do not own White Collar or its characters.
Some dialogue re-purposed from the pilot in one scene. Thanks to my betas eretria, lexstar29, and murron, and to ongiara for the marvelous art.
Art: ongiara's Art
Links: Complete in one part at AO3 and my site [with integrated art!]
At DW [eventually] and LJ Part 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8
The violence we do to ourselves in order to remain faithful to the one we love is hardly better than an act of infidelity.
François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665
Things Are Different Now
Peter doesn't catch Kate Moreau a second time. Someone else does. Thirteen hours after she escapes from FCI Danbury, he finds her in Caffrey's empty apartment, a bullet hole between her pretty blue eyes.
All he can think or say is, "Damn it, Kate."
When the SWAT officers rush in, he's still crouched beside her body, shaking his head, his hands dangling empty in front of his knees. He thinks, I was wearing this same suit when I arrested her. Now she's dead. The case won't be his, it'll be NYPD's. He wishes... He doesn't know what he wishes. That she was alive, that he'd never caught her file, that he wasn't here. He wishes things were different.
"Aw, goddamn," the first cop exclaims when he catches a glimpse.
Peter looks down at all that remains of the cleverest criminal he ever chased, a beautiful woman who taunted and teased him for three years, and all he can feel is regret. Her black hair is fanned over the wooden floor, her mouth just parted, and one hand is stretched out, imploring. The hole in her head is obscene.
His knees creak as he stands up again.
Beside him, the cop still looks down at her. "What a fucking waste."
Peter, though, looks around at the hollow space of the apartment. It's cleaned out, nothing left but Kate and one of Caffrey's paintings left propped where the light falls on it. It's a gray street in Paris, with just the shape of a dark-haired woman glimpsed through a rain wet café's window, and it glows with the sunlight that comes after a downpour. The woman's Kate, of course.
Peter turns in a circle slowly, frowning, trying to understand what happened here. He guesses Kate broke out to find Caffrey, but who killed her, and where the hell is her painter boyfriend? The kid stuck with her no matter what Kate did, attended every day of her trial, visited her in Connecticut every week, stayed in this apartment for years waiting for the day she'd get out.
Where is he?
~*~
A thrift store, especially one just down the block from the Empire (of Cockroaches) Hotel is not Neal's first choice for clothes, but without a job and afraid to touch his bank account, he only has the cash on him to replace his clothes, so it's make do or do without. Being right back where he'd been as a twenty-year old art student before Vincent Adler plucked him out of obscurity all these years later is disheartening. He's got crap for prospects when it comes to getting another job and another place any time soon, not with Fowler dogging his every move.
This is all Kate's fault. Again. He tries to be angry with her, but never quite manages it. This time is no different. Kate is Kate and Neal loves her, no matter how much trouble trails her even now. He'll figure something out.
Mozzie's standing offer to take him on as a partner looks more and more like the best of a slate of bad options. Neal scrubs at the tender skin under his eye where Fowler's thug blacked it. All he wants is to paint; he saw enough of Kate's lifestyle while he was with her in Europe to know it isn't one he wants. Maybe just a few forgeries though...
Losing everything he owns doesn't hurt half so much as losing his paintings and the showing Neal finally lined up after years of recovering some kind of reputation. The job he hates anyway. He only stuck with it so he could live close enough to Kate to visit regularly. Now there's Agent Fowler, dogging him to get to her, and Neal's afraid to go back to Danbury, afraid Fowler will find him again. He'll have to write her, hide a message in a code, so she'll know why he can't see her until he figures out what to do about Fowler.
He grimaces as he flips through the racks. Adler left him with a taste for the finer things and Kate fed it. This blows. Everything here blows too.
He's moving to the next rack when the very well-dressed, older woman in ageless white wool Chanel comes in and begins speaking to the clerk. Listening in isn't nice, but Kate taught him to keep track of his surroundings, so Neal does it anyway. Besides, she's carrying several men's suits along with a great hat, all of it of better quality than anything else in the thrift store.
He keeps thinking he knows who she is and abandons his search through the racks to look at her. She's still a stunner in a dignified way, beautiful dark skin and refined make-up, but just a little weary and sad. Her caramel hair has been cut, colored, and styled in a vaguely retro-sixties look.
The clerk is apparently an idiot and says disdainfully, "Old suits."
The lady hums her agreement. Since one ring from her fingers costs more than the clerk will make in forty years, she isn't impressed or bothered by his attitude. Neal drifts over and takes a closer look at the suits themselves. Excitement lights his mood and he says to her, "Those are fantastic."
Her smile is just as pleased as his. "Oh. They belong to my late husband - "
Recognition finally clicks into place; not the suits, but her face, years younger, painted by her husband. "Byron Ellington," Neal breathes. She's June Ellington. He feels a little starstruck. Of course he recognizes her, he's studied at least some of the portraits done of her over the years, trying to understand how Byron Ellington created emotion from technique so he could paint Kate not just the way she looked, or the way he saw her, but the way she is. Ellington's portraits of his wife were never just of how beautiful she is, but of who she is. They showed so much, Neal feels like he knows her. He remembers fantasizing a life time ago - before Adler, before Kate - that she would walk into the little gallery where he worked and discover his work.
June's smile gets even brighter. " - Byron. He really had great taste in clothes."
In clothes, art, investments, and wives, as well, Neal thinks, not to mention being one of the most talented artists of his generation, though few people outside the world of collectors know his name. God, Neal wishes he could have met the man. While the Rat Pack were earning their fortunes with their voices, Byron Ellington was painting all over the world, including portraits of some of his more famous contemporaries, while his wife, once a torch singer, built his commissions into a fortune while acquiring an art collection to rival most great museums. One of the first paintings Neal urged Adler to buy was an Ellington; Adler agreed, hoping it would lead to June Ellington investing with him. On Byron's death, the already valuable cityscape no doubt became far more valuable. Neal really wishes he knew where it ended up. Probably in an evidence room somewhere, along with everything else Adler left behind when he fled the US. He feels a rush of relief that she didn't fall for Adler's schemes like so many others did.
He blinks and pushes that memory down. Adler destroyed more lives than Neal's and the part that hurt the worst was always that Kate chose to go to Argentina with the crooked billionaire.
Fingering the fine fabric of a jacket, he asks, "May I?"
The clerk hands him the jacket and Neal examines it appreciatively. "This is a Devore." The style and tailoring are just as ageless as June's Chanel suit. He covets it. That want, that hunger, that's why he understands Kate. Kate's always so hungry... He pushes those thoughts away and concentrates on the present.
"He was a terrible poker player."
"Your husband played poker with Sy Devore?" he prompts June.
"He certainly did. And so did I."
Neal glances up and listens entranced as June explains her husband won the suit from Sy Devore playing back-door draw poker. Her eyes shine with remembered happiness and mischief. This is who Kate could be someday, he thinks, not just smart but wise. Somehow, he and Kate are going to find a way to win themselves what Byron Ellington and his wife had and, if Neal dies, he hopes Kate will remember him the same way Byron is remembered.
"No," Neal teases. She just blows him away and he knows he's smiling like a fool.
June's magnificent, especially the wicked light in her eyes when she laughs and confirms it, "Yes, the guys would even let me sit in once in a while on a hand." There are so many memories behind her eyes. He wants to paint her. "And I was good."
Of course she was. Neal laughs and reaches for the hat, flipping it onto his head. She catches his hand as he brings it down and studies it. Neal looks and realizes he never got all the paint out of his cuticles.
"I'm so glad to see you appreciate these," June says easily, "I was hoping someone would. I've got a whole closet full of them."
Neal can't help brightening. "A whole closet?"
"Mmhm. Well, actually, it's a guestroom attached to Byron's studio, but I haven't used it for anything but storage for years."
Neal shrugs his way into the jacket, hoping it'll fit, as if he could put on Byron Ellington's talent and success along with his clothes. It does, exquisitely, satin lining sliding over his plain t-shirt like a caress. He settles it into place, straightens the sleeves, and glances up to find June looking at him approvingly.
"Byron used to wear that one whenever we went dancing," she murmurs. "The neighborhood was... let's say it was much nicer then."
"You live nearby?" Neal blurts.
"Not far."
He smiles at her the way Kate taught him.
"You're a painter, aren't you?" June asks.
"Not famous."
June pats his arm. "Not yet."
Neal gives her a look through his lashes, another of Kate's tricks, and says, "I might be really bad."
"Not you, dear," June says. "I have an instinct. Besides, Vincent Adler didn't settle for anything but the best before he went on the run, did he?"
Neal blinks, opens his mouth, and closes it.
"I keep track of Bryon's paintings and who owns them. And who picks them out."
"Wow."
Her hand is still on his arm, but he knows the little squeeze she gives it is more about remembering how this jacket felt on Byron than any kind of move on him. "Come have coffee with me," she says. "That studio has been empty too long."
"Why? You know I worked for Adler - "
June laughs. "As I understand it, hundreds of people worked for Vincent Adler, and none of them had a clue what that man was up to. So, are you coming with me?" She gives him an impish smile, with a nod to the clerk, who is pretending not to eavesdrop on the two of them. "I do believe he thinks I'm playing Mrs. Robinson. I'd offer to show you my etchings, but you'll have to make do with Byron's art collection."
The clerk drops one of the suits.
June and Neal both burst out laughing.
~*~
Peter searches Kate's cell, noting pictures, sketches and pastels and watercolors, all by the inimitable hand of Neal Caffrey, the tiny, almost hidden by the bunk, tally of her days imprisoned marked on the wall, and a bundle of letters. They're all from Caffrey too. The man has beautiful penmanship, Peter reflects, wishing his agents' notes were half so legible. Paging through the envelopes shows Caffrey has written Kate twice a week beginning with her first week in Danbury as well as visiting.
The pictures are all of places Peter is relatively sure Caffrey and Kate visited during her whirlwind three year crime spree.
The only other things he finds in her cell are a book from the prison library on growing roses and a fading, worn at the edges photograph of Kate with Caffrey. She's wearing diamonds - stolen or scammed for the evening - and smiling at the camera. Caffrey's smiling at her.
Peter refuses to believe a man who could look at a woman like that could have killed her. It's self-delusion, of course. He's never worked homicide, but he knows love and murder go hand in hand as often as love and happiness, and that's without money and crime added to the mix. He simply doesn't want to believe it, for personal reasons he's not ready to examine, and because to his eyes the evidence doesn't support Caffrey as a killer, no matter what NYPD think.
He takes the picture and the letters and begins interviewing the corrections officers and staff who interacted with Kate the most.
Teresa Buenavista is the only one to add anything substantive to the reports in the BoP file Peter's already read a dozen times since being called in on the case. Kate stayed out of trouble, whether with the other inmates or the staff. No drugs, no fighting, no problems with anyone thanks to her honey tongue. She spent three days in the infirmary with influenza her second year and had a filling replaced her third. With just ten months left of her four year jolt, no one expected her to fly the coop.
"We should've realized something was up," Buenavista says when Peter sits down with her. She has an apple with her. She isn't eating it, just turning it in her hands for something to do. The apple is green as spring and the likely the only fresh fruit in the entire Danbury complex.
"Why?"
"The boyfriend."
"Neal Caffrey," Peter says, just to be sure, though he has the visitor's log right in front of him. Caffrey was Kate's only visitor. No one from her family, whoever they are, no other friends or confederates, ever made it up to Danbury. Not even her lawyer showed; apparently she managed everything to do with Kate's incarceration through the mail.
"Her blue-eyed boy."
Buenavista's broad at the hip, tougher than old leather, and too shrewd to buy anyone's sob story. Minimal make-up but thick lipstick, and no jewelry, not even in her pierced ears, because it's all something for an inmate to grab. Instead, she wears an expensive perfume, one Peter only recognizes because El likes it too. She's a forty-eight year old mother of four, a Marine Corps veteran and former cop, and a ten year veteran of working corrections. So the fond smile that lights her face as she mentions Caffrey surprises Peter. With that effect, Caffrey should have been the con, not Kate. Maybe it's his face or his eyes.
"He was a regular visitor."
Or maybe it was the way Caffrey showed up like clockwork, every week, same day, same time, according to the record. Buenavista oversaw visitations; she saw Caffrey with Kate. It's why Peter wants to hear anything she has to say.
"First day I saw him, I said he wouldn't be back more than once or twice. A boy as pretty as that, I figured he'd have a new girl as soon as it sunk in Moreau was stuck for the duration. It was almost funny, how freaked out he was," Buenavista says. She shakes her head. Her short cut, iron-gray hair doesn't shift. "Polite as could be, though. Hell, I wish my kids had his manners."
Peter ducks his head. He remembers Caffrey at Kate's trial and, before that, as the subject of months of surveillance, and knows what she means. Even Kate, for all her cons, never blamed or framed anyone.
"He proved me wrong." She smiles. "Some people just can't stand the waiting, even though they're on the outside. Some of them can't stand coming here. Can't take leaving their sweetie locked up each time. The guilt gets to them, the visits get shorter, then they stop. Caffrey, though, he just kept coming back every week."
Buenavista obviously admires that sort of steadfastness. Peter does too, but it doesn't surprise him. The disappearance does, though.
"Did he ever try to bring in any kind of contraband?" Peter asks. He's just fishing. Drugs were never Kate's racket and Caffrey's record is clean as a whistle. He can't see Kate pushing or Caffrey supplying or either of them using. Of course there are other varieties of contraband. Every prison has a blackmarket.
Buenavista shakes her head again. "Not him. He wanted to bring Moreau something, he'd check with us if it was alright before bringing it the next week. Never wanted to disappoint her, you know? He knew everyone's name, asked about your kids, made a joke, kept it easy and friendly."
"How did he and Moreau seem during the visits?"
She taps her finger along the notch under her nose. "In love. Talked a lot about places they'd been, places they were going to go. What kind of dog they'd get, what kind of house they'd buy, how many kids they were going have, what they'd name them. Always had a smile for her until the last time."
Peter perks up. "The last time." He checked the record sheet. "Two weeks ago."
"Two weeks, two days."
The wooden straight chair under Buenavista creaks as she shifts her weight. She resettles her equipment belt more comfortably, while frowning. Peter guesses she's weighing how much to tell. Not with any intention of lying, only picking and choosing between fact and speculation. He appreciates what insights she can offer that no one else at Danbury can. He knows Neal Caffrey is the key to why Kate broke out.
Kate must have had the escape planned out and set up, even if she decided to go the last time Caffrey visited and not when he didn't show up. Danbury is medium security, but even for Kate Moreau, even if she had outside help, two weeks isn't long enough to plan a jail break.
"Did he break up with her?"
"No, but he wasn't happy. No wonder either." Her mouth, lush with plum-colored lipstick, pulls down. "Someone beat him down. Just in time for it to look its worst when he visited."
Peter raises his eyebrows and waits as patiently as he can.
"Split lip, black eye, broken finger," Buenavista answers at last, listing each item with her hands. Dark, cynical eyes meet Peter's own, while her mouth turns down again. "Skittish as hell. Shocky." She pauses again and explains herself: "You get that traumatized vibe off people that've never seen real violence up close. I saw it on enough vics back when I was with the PD."
Peter sets his hands flat over the record book. The timing must have been deliberate. If Caffrey doesn't show, Kate knows something is wrong; if he does, she sees him marked up and in pain. He tries to imagine Caffrey the way he must have looked to Kate. He doesn't like it.
"You say he looked like a victim. Was he... ?"
"No way for me to know."
"Did you ask?"
"He said it was a car accident," Buenavista says dryly. "Probably told Moreau the same thing. She got pretty quiet after he left, though."
"She didn't buy it."
"Hell, no." Buenavista shrugs and looks away, mouth still pursed, hands still playing with the apple. There's something she wants to say or something she thinks she should have seen or done.
Peter waits for whatever she isn't saying until Buenavista gives in.
"I should have pushed. He was scared, Agent Burke."
"And Kate?"
Buenavista pauses.
"She was too."
She leaves the apple, shiny and green, when she walks out. Peter shines it against his coat sleeve briefly then takes a bite out of it and wonders what knowledge he's damned himself to learning by pursuing this case, Caffrey, and Kate again. The flavor is intense, the flesh rich with juice and crisp between his teeth. He's never been able to let something go once he gets his teeth in it. Hughes will back him as long as he can sell the story that Peter's looking for Kate's caches and not her murderer. His gut is telling him there is more to this story than a prison break and a lover's quarrel gone sour and even if he's wrong, he needs to see it to the end.
El's not going to be happy.
Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards
Her bags are packed. The rental car is parked in Peter's usual spot down the street. All of Satchmo's gear is already in it too. All she has to do is tell Peter, snap on Satchmo's leash, pick up her purse, and walk out of the house, her life, and her marriage.
She's waiting for Peter to come home so she can tell him she's leaving him. There's something pathetic and hilarious about that. It's horrible. She's sitting in the dark, with just a light in the kitchen on, because it's impossible to sit in the living room like everything is normal. It's impossible to do anything while she waits except go over and over what brought her to this point. She won't just walk out or leave a note. She's not sure he'd even find a note. She'd need to leave a phone message or send something to his official FBI email if she wanted to be sure Peter sees it.
Satchmo's sitting next to her at the dining room table. He knows something's wrong, the way dogs do, and whines before resting his head on her knee. Elizabeth plays with his soft ears; it's comforting, just not comforting enough, but she's not going to cry. If Peter doesn't come home in the next hour, she's going to have to assume he's working all night again and go to his office to tell him. She doesn't want to do that to either of them.
She will though, because she's not putting this off another night.
The sound of Peter's key in the door lock is a relief. She can tell by the soft shuffle of his shoes that he's exhausted and he's trying to be quiet because he thinks she's asleep upstairs.
"I'm in here, Peter," she calls softly to him.
He switches the overhead light on as he comes in and her heart turns over. Peter looks so tired, so worn, but at the same time there is a fire burning in him. It's been months, but he's still sure that he's going to catch Kate Moreau by watching her boyfriend.
Elizabeth understands that Peter believes that will be the end of it, but of course it won't. There will a trial and sentencing and, once it's done, Peter will find a new case to obsess over. Knowing she'd come in second to the job when she married him was one thing. Realizing she comes in third, after the criminals, is too much.
"Sorry," Peter says, "Berelli's kid's appendix popped. I had to hang around until we could wrangle someone else to take his shift in the van."
Elizabeth nods. "I hope everything's all right."
"I got Oswicizc from OC to take over. He wants the over time."
"I meant with Berelli's child."
Peter looks taken back and then embarrassed. He pulls out a chair opposite Elizabeth and sits. His smile is sheepish. "I don't know."
She nods to herself, not surprised, because Peter's focus is narrowed down to Kate and her boyfriend and the rest of the world is just in the way of that. She's just in the way, except for everything she takes care of so Peter can concentrate on his job: the dog, the bills, the house, food, laundry, taxes, maintenance. All while she's trying to build her own business. Peter hasn't noticed in months.
"I think she'll show soon," Peter says. He slouches down in his chair. "Once this is over - "
Elizabeth holds her hand up to stop him. "I don't want to hear it." Kate, Kate, Kate, she's so sick of Kate Moreau. "I've heard enough about the case and that woman."
They've sung this song before. She's sick of it. She doesn't think Peter's been unfaithful to her, not in fact, not in fantasy. That's not the problem. The problem is being an afterthought to what's important to him. An affair might have been easier to overlook; she knows plenty of married men cheat without it meaning anything emotionally.
Not that she would have stood still for it if Peter had been unfaithful that way. Just that she could walk away hating him, instead of hurting so much for herself and him.
Satchmo whines and she strokes her palm over his head compulsively.
"I am going to put her away," Peter says and sounds just a little smug. "I'm going to catch her this time."
Elizabeth hopes he does catch Kate Moreau. She's come to hate the woman without ever meeting her. It won't change the problems in her marriage, though, and that's why she's not waiting any longer.
"That's good. I'm sure you will," she says now.
"El - "
"I could take the long hours. Bringing home your work. Even knowing you could get hurt or killed, no matter how careful you are," she goes on. "I didn't worry when Kate started sending you cards on your birthday or when she hid her negligée in your baggage for me to find, even though she's young and beautiful and smart." Everything Peter likes, Elizabeth doesn't add, because she doesn't need to.
Peter's scowl is epic. That trick truly did enrage him, Elizabeth knew, because he believed - still believes - that it hurt her. He doesn't see that he's hurt her more than any of Kate's taunts ever could. Even then, even when Elizabeth allowed herself to ask him to pass Kate's case to another agent, Peter couldn't let it go. He thinks another agent might take Kate down with a bullet rather than see her get away.
He still doesn't see why Elizabeth is so angry over Kate, but Peter knows more about Kate's likes and wants than he does Elizabeth's. She could ask him what Kate's favorite scent is or her shoe size and Peter would know. He doesn't know what perfume El wears by preference.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm leaving." She plucks up the dog leash lying on the table and snaps it to Satchmo's collar. "I'm not taking Satch to be mean. I'm angry, but this isn't about punishment. You're too busy and your schedule is too erratic to take care of him."
"I'm not in love with Kate Moreau," Peter protests. He's been protesting the same thing since the first time Elizabeth caught a glimpse of a picture of her in the case file he read in their bed. "She's a criminal."
"I know you're not in love with her." She pauses for a breath before going on. "You're in love with chasing her, pitting your brains against hers, with finding a way to beat her at her game while playing by your rules."
Peter opens his mouth only to close it wordlessly. Elizabeth nods, relieved he isn't protesting the truth.
"I'm going to stay with Yvonne until I find an apartment. Her building allows pets."
She pushes the dining chair back and stands. Peter stands too. His big hands are open and oddly helpless looking as he watches her pick up her purse.
"You're going. Just like that?" he asks.
"I sat here all evening, waiting for you to come back, so I could tell you. I couldn't be sure you'd realize I was gone otherwise."
"I don't understand. Are you saying you don't love me?"
She's crying now, hot tears sliding down, and her eyes are going to be a swollen mess tomorrow, but she can't stop. "Of course I love you. I can't just turn it off."
He looks so lost, she wants to wrap her arms around him and hold on until everything is better. Everything is never going to be better unless Peter changes and that's the one thing Elizabeth can't ask of him. She loves the man he is. She just can't live on his leftovers any longer.
"But you're divorcing me."
She hasn't said it out loud, but Peter's smart. He's already figuring out how this must end given how Elizabeth feels now.
"I think so."
"We could try counseling."
"When?" she asks gently. "After this case? The next case? The one after that?" Purse in one hand, Satch's leash in the other, she starts for the door. "I paid this month's bills and left the checkbook for the household account in the bedroom dresser. I cleaned out anything that will go bad if it isn't cooked soon from the refrigerator. There's a casserole in the oven too, if you haven't eaten." Her voice is getting thick. She has to get out before she breaks down into a complete snotty mess.
Satch's toenails click on the floorboards in counterpoint to her high heels.
"That's it?" Peter sounds incredulous.
"I'm sorry," she chokes out as she fumbles the door open.
"El, we can fix this."
"I know you think so, but I don't." She's hurrying now, before she wavers, because she knows Peter and that he'll try to change her mind. "Good night, Peter. Take care of yourself."
She'll make an appointment with a lawyer tomorrow.
No Kindness Can Cure
Mozzie lets himself into the safehouse as quietly as possible. He's hoping Neal is still sleeping. In case he's not, Mozzie's folded the newspaper to hide the headline and photograph. He wants to brace Neal before the news blindsides him.
Himself, he isn't sure how he feels about the news. Not good. He knew Kate before Neal ever came into his life. He taught her a lot, maybe too much, and there are days he thinks he's responsible for who she became. Some of those days he's proud; he taught the Queen of Cons. Some days, especially the ones when Neal is so down he won't even sketch or when Mozzie remembers being cleaned out, he's angry and ashamed.
Neal's still on Mozzie's lumpy couch, an afghan of questionable origins pulled up to his shoulders. The morning sun teases a hint of golden-brown from his ruffled, seal-dark hair. It picks out the fading remnants of the black eye and the healing split in his lip. The same light turns the old floorboards almost blond where the stain has worn away.
It's going to be a crap day. There's no reason to force Neal to face it any sooner than he must. Mozzie leaves him to sleep as long as he can. Mozzie doesn't have many friends and none of them as trustworthy as Neal. He wants to do what he can to take care of him.
The newspaper goes on the counter of the tiny kitchenette. The pastries Mozzie picked up stay in their bag, while he thoroughly cleans the fruit he bought and slices it. That done, he puts the percolator on the two-burner stove top and starts it. The smell will likely wake Neal.
He has two mugs out and plates of pastry and fruit ready when Neal shifts and wakes. "Hey."
"Ah, you've decided to grace me with your consciousness," Mozzie greets him.
Neal's smiles are works of art. Every time he's graced with one Mozzie wishes several things. One, that some great artist could capture it in paint and canvas. Two, that he'd found Neal and taught him, rather than Kate. Three, that Neal hadn't fallen in love with Kate. Sometimes, four, that he wasn't so boringly straight, because if Mozzie weren't, he would have seduced Neal years ago.
"Breakfast?" Neal pads over and helps himself to the second plate. Despite the splint on his pinky, he's as deft as Mozzie. It's such a waste he's never been interested in learning to pickpocket. "You're being too nice."
He snags a piece of melon and chews it while Mozzie pours them both coffee.
"Seriously, what's wrong?" Neal asks.
"Let's eat first," Mozzie tells him.
Of course, that stops Neal, who looks up from his plate to study Mozzie's face. Apprehension flits over his features. So much has gone wrong in the last three weeks, he's expecting another blow, but no one could be ready for the form it's taken.
"Do I need to sit down?"
"Maybe you'd better."
Neal takes his plate and his coffee back to the couch and sinks down on it. Mozzie abandons his - he has no appetite anyway - and carries the newspaper over instead. He sits next to Neal, close enough to feel the tension locking Neal's body up.
"Neal."
"Just tell me."
Mozzie opens the newspaper to the headline. Escaped Felon Murder Victim. They even put Kate's picture above the fold. Even dead, beautiful women sell newspapers.
Neal takes the paper and reads it silently, his head bowed. The newsprint darkens and runs, blotting the tear drops falling onto it into smears. "Kate... " Neal chokes, raw and disbelieving.
There's no help for it, no stopping the agonized sobs, but Mozzie pats at Neal's bent back, trying to offer some comfort anyway.
~*~
Peter spreads the files over the conference room table. Hughes isn't pleased over time wasted on a jail breaking convict and a murder investigation that technically belongs to the NYPD, but the Harvard crew are following leads on the unit's case load and Peter's got enough career collateral to receive some slack. Reese Hughes is a good boss and one who knows that even before his divorce Peter gave the Bureau more of his time and mind than is technically part of the job. He won't say anything about using Bureau resources.
Diana and Jones come in and look at the reports Peter has picked out as relevant. Diana wasn't around when Peter was chasing Kate, but Clinton Jones had just joined the unit as a probationary agent. He picks up a sheaf of surveillance photographs taken with a long lens and says, "I think I took some of these."
"So you remember Caffrey."
"Sure."
Peter nods to himself. "You think he could have killed Kate?"
The answer doesn't come immediately. Jones likes to take enough time to think his answers through and base them on facts and not instinct. He's steady.
"I wouldn't think so."
"Yeah, me neither," Peter agrees.
Jones hesitates then takes the plunge. "Why are we on this? It isn't a federal case anymore."
Jones is right, of course. Diana knows it too. Peter looks back at them both and says, "NYPD are looking at Caffrey. No one else." He pauses. "You don't have to work on this if you don't want to." He won't hold it against either of them.
After a long beat, Jones rolls his shoulders. "Beats going over another mortgage fraud case."
Diana looks up from reading the file on Kate's death again. "It doesn't gel. Location is the only real tie to Caffrey and even that's iffy. According to this, all his stuff was gone."
"Except one painting," Jones corrects.
Nothing has been declared but it's understood between them.
"I talked to the super." Peter picks out a report he wrote up himself and printed. A surge of warmth and pride in his two agents fills him. They're ready to follow him on his say-so and nothing more. He'll have to be careful of them and not take advantage, not take this into obsession territory and hurt their careers. "Caffrey's apartment was burgled twice in the last month. Last time, day before his regular trip north to Danbury." He frowns. "I want to talk to him again. There was something off."
"We could handle that, boss," Diana volunteers.
"Do that, would you?"
"Gets me out of the office." Her smile teases.
He tries not to let her know, but Diana's the best probationary agent Peter's ever worked with except Jones. He's going to fight to keep her with the unit. It's going to be a fight too: Counter-terrorism down in DC is already sniffing around. He has to tussle with the higher ups to keep Jones around too, but Jones wants to stay in New York so that helps. So does Hughes, who has a career's worth of pull to call on when Peter's isn't enough.
"Meantime, let's walk through it," he says. "Caffrey's apartment is burgled twice."
Jones picked up another report. "Guy loses his job. Ouch."
"And then it gets better," Peter finishes. "Two weeks ago, he heads up to Danbury to see Moreau looking like someone worked him over professionally. According to a guard there, one of his fingers was broken."
"Double ouch," Diana comments. "Does he gamble?"
Jones chuckles. "Well, he dated Moreau."
"You're thinking debt collectors?" Peter asks Diana.
It might fit the scenario. The burglaries could have been faked for insurance purposes. Except Caffrey didn't even have renter's insurance. If he needed money though, he might have gone to Kate hoping she'd give him the location of one of her caches. Canny Kate wouldn't have, though; Peter's sure of that. He can't dismiss the theory, but he doesn't buy it either.
Diana lifts her shoulders, silently saying it had to be posited, but she's not enamored of the idea either.
Peter pulls out another report he wrote. "He had a gallery showing coming up. It was canceled."
"Something stinks," Jones says. "Too much, too fast."
"I agree."
"If you stop looking at it being about Moreau," Diana speculates, "then her murder fits into a different pattern."
"Caffrey's life going to hell. Burgled, fired, beat up, no showing, girlfriend killed," Jones recites. "Bet there was more too. Caffrey's the target."
"So, whose Wheaties did he piss in?"
Peter looks at the two agents with badly hidden pride. They're both so smart. "That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn't it?" The question he wants to answer, because someone outsmarted Kate. Someone got ahead of her. That's all kinds of impressive and maybe Peter feels a little spike of something - envy, jealousy, possessiveness, protectiveness - because for a while he was the only one who managed to outwit Kate. The only one who figured her out, who saw through her glamour, who liked the real woman inside, who was rooting for her and Caffrey to make it once she got out. He spent years living vicariously through Kate and Caffrey, played a bigger part in their lives than he did in Elizabeth's, and though he's put the case behind him, it's harder to let go of the feeling of ownership than he wants to admit. It's his case, damn it. He feels responsible for Kate and for Caffrey too.
He badly wants to find who had to the gall to interfere in their lives.
A Bureau shrink would have a field day with that.
"Re-interview the super, the boss, and any friends we can find?" Jones says.
Peter smiles at him. "To start with."
Jones trades a look with Diana, but shrugs his assent. "You know, if Caffrey's the target, he may just be laying low," he says, "but if it really was Moreau - "
"He's probably dead," Diana finishes. "Once they got her out where she was vulnerable, he stopped being useful."
Peter shakes his head. They're right, but he's not ready to believe it. Seeing Kate Moreau dead was bad enough, he can't accept that Caffrey's body is out there somewhere, his smile and style and all that talent snuffed out. No. He's only spoken to Caffrey twice, but twice is enough. Peter spent too long surveilling him, waiting like a lion at the waterhole to catch Kate, not to feel like he knows Caffrey and, what he knows, he's always liked. It took an effort not to keep an eye on Caffrey after Kate's sentencing. Now Peter wishes he had. He shuffles out a copy of the picture Kate left in her cell. Christ, that sweet smile must have helped Kate through all the long, lonely nights in Danbury.
If Caffrey's dead, Peter's going to find out why and who did it and put them away forever.
"Yeah. Either way, we nail the bastard behind this, okay?" If he sounds more forceful about this than is strictly professional, Peter doesn't care. Kate was his and, by association, so is Caffrey.
"Okay, boss," Diana and Jones chorus with another shared glance.
Part 2
Characters/Pairings: Neal Caffrey/Peter Burke, Elizabeth Burke, Kate Moreau, Mozzie, Vincent Adler, Diana Barrigan, Clinton Jones, Reese Hughes, June Ellington
Rating: Mature
Word Count: 60,860
Spoilers: Spoilers for Season One, possible mentions of canon from Seasons Two or Three (minor).
Warnings: AU, references to the death of a canonically dead major character, death of a supporting character, TV level violence
Summary: Three years after Peter Burke caught her, Kate Moreau is dead and he's divorced and falling for her artist boyfriend, the prime suspect in her murder.
Author's Note: I do not own White Collar or its characters.
Some dialogue re-purposed from the pilot in one scene. Thanks to my betas eretria, lexstar29, and murron, and to ongiara for the marvelous art.
Art: ongiara's Art
Links: Complete in one part at AO3 and my site [with integrated art!]
At DW [eventually] and LJ Part 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8
The violence we do to ourselves in order to remain faithful to the one we love is hardly better than an act of infidelity.
François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665
Things Are Different Now
Peter doesn't catch Kate Moreau a second time. Someone else does. Thirteen hours after she escapes from FCI Danbury, he finds her in Caffrey's empty apartment, a bullet hole between her pretty blue eyes.
All he can think or say is, "Damn it, Kate."
When the SWAT officers rush in, he's still crouched beside her body, shaking his head, his hands dangling empty in front of his knees. He thinks, I was wearing this same suit when I arrested her. Now she's dead. The case won't be his, it'll be NYPD's. He wishes... He doesn't know what he wishes. That she was alive, that he'd never caught her file, that he wasn't here. He wishes things were different.
"Aw, goddamn," the first cop exclaims when he catches a glimpse.
Peter looks down at all that remains of the cleverest criminal he ever chased, a beautiful woman who taunted and teased him for three years, and all he can feel is regret. Her black hair is fanned over the wooden floor, her mouth just parted, and one hand is stretched out, imploring. The hole in her head is obscene.
His knees creak as he stands up again.
Beside him, the cop still looks down at her. "What a fucking waste."
Peter, though, looks around at the hollow space of the apartment. It's cleaned out, nothing left but Kate and one of Caffrey's paintings left propped where the light falls on it. It's a gray street in Paris, with just the shape of a dark-haired woman glimpsed through a rain wet café's window, and it glows with the sunlight that comes after a downpour. The woman's Kate, of course.
Peter turns in a circle slowly, frowning, trying to understand what happened here. He guesses Kate broke out to find Caffrey, but who killed her, and where the hell is her painter boyfriend? The kid stuck with her no matter what Kate did, attended every day of her trial, visited her in Connecticut every week, stayed in this apartment for years waiting for the day she'd get out.
Where is he?
~*~
A thrift store, especially one just down the block from the Empire (of Cockroaches) Hotel is not Neal's first choice for clothes, but without a job and afraid to touch his bank account, he only has the cash on him to replace his clothes, so it's make do or do without. Being right back where he'd been as a twenty-year old art student before Vincent Adler plucked him out of obscurity all these years later is disheartening. He's got crap for prospects when it comes to getting another job and another place any time soon, not with Fowler dogging his every move.
This is all Kate's fault. Again. He tries to be angry with her, but never quite manages it. This time is no different. Kate is Kate and Neal loves her, no matter how much trouble trails her even now. He'll figure something out.
Mozzie's standing offer to take him on as a partner looks more and more like the best of a slate of bad options. Neal scrubs at the tender skin under his eye where Fowler's thug blacked it. All he wants is to paint; he saw enough of Kate's lifestyle while he was with her in Europe to know it isn't one he wants. Maybe just a few forgeries though...
Losing everything he owns doesn't hurt half so much as losing his paintings and the showing Neal finally lined up after years of recovering some kind of reputation. The job he hates anyway. He only stuck with it so he could live close enough to Kate to visit regularly. Now there's Agent Fowler, dogging him to get to her, and Neal's afraid to go back to Danbury, afraid Fowler will find him again. He'll have to write her, hide a message in a code, so she'll know why he can't see her until he figures out what to do about Fowler.
He grimaces as he flips through the racks. Adler left him with a taste for the finer things and Kate fed it. This blows. Everything here blows too.
He's moving to the next rack when the very well-dressed, older woman in ageless white wool Chanel comes in and begins speaking to the clerk. Listening in isn't nice, but Kate taught him to keep track of his surroundings, so Neal does it anyway. Besides, she's carrying several men's suits along with a great hat, all of it of better quality than anything else in the thrift store.
He keeps thinking he knows who she is and abandons his search through the racks to look at her. She's still a stunner in a dignified way, beautiful dark skin and refined make-up, but just a little weary and sad. Her caramel hair has been cut, colored, and styled in a vaguely retro-sixties look.
The clerk is apparently an idiot and says disdainfully, "Old suits."
The lady hums her agreement. Since one ring from her fingers costs more than the clerk will make in forty years, she isn't impressed or bothered by his attitude. Neal drifts over and takes a closer look at the suits themselves. Excitement lights his mood and he says to her, "Those are fantastic."
Her smile is just as pleased as his. "Oh. They belong to my late husband - "
Recognition finally clicks into place; not the suits, but her face, years younger, painted by her husband. "Byron Ellington," Neal breathes. She's June Ellington. He feels a little starstruck. Of course he recognizes her, he's studied at least some of the portraits done of her over the years, trying to understand how Byron Ellington created emotion from technique so he could paint Kate not just the way she looked, or the way he saw her, but the way she is. Ellington's portraits of his wife were never just of how beautiful she is, but of who she is. They showed so much, Neal feels like he knows her. He remembers fantasizing a life time ago - before Adler, before Kate - that she would walk into the little gallery where he worked and discover his work.
June's smile gets even brighter. " - Byron. He really had great taste in clothes."
In clothes, art, investments, and wives, as well, Neal thinks, not to mention being one of the most talented artists of his generation, though few people outside the world of collectors know his name. God, Neal wishes he could have met the man. While the Rat Pack were earning their fortunes with their voices, Byron Ellington was painting all over the world, including portraits of some of his more famous contemporaries, while his wife, once a torch singer, built his commissions into a fortune while acquiring an art collection to rival most great museums. One of the first paintings Neal urged Adler to buy was an Ellington; Adler agreed, hoping it would lead to June Ellington investing with him. On Byron's death, the already valuable cityscape no doubt became far more valuable. Neal really wishes he knew where it ended up. Probably in an evidence room somewhere, along with everything else Adler left behind when he fled the US. He feels a rush of relief that she didn't fall for Adler's schemes like so many others did.
He blinks and pushes that memory down. Adler destroyed more lives than Neal's and the part that hurt the worst was always that Kate chose to go to Argentina with the crooked billionaire.
Fingering the fine fabric of a jacket, he asks, "May I?"
The clerk hands him the jacket and Neal examines it appreciatively. "This is a Devore." The style and tailoring are just as ageless as June's Chanel suit. He covets it. That want, that hunger, that's why he understands Kate. Kate's always so hungry... He pushes those thoughts away and concentrates on the present.
"He was a terrible poker player."
"Your husband played poker with Sy Devore?" he prompts June.
"He certainly did. And so did I."
Neal glances up and listens entranced as June explains her husband won the suit from Sy Devore playing back-door draw poker. Her eyes shine with remembered happiness and mischief. This is who Kate could be someday, he thinks, not just smart but wise. Somehow, he and Kate are going to find a way to win themselves what Byron Ellington and his wife had and, if Neal dies, he hopes Kate will remember him the same way Byron is remembered.
"No," Neal teases. She just blows him away and he knows he's smiling like a fool.
June's magnificent, especially the wicked light in her eyes when she laughs and confirms it, "Yes, the guys would even let me sit in once in a while on a hand." There are so many memories behind her eyes. He wants to paint her. "And I was good."
Of course she was. Neal laughs and reaches for the hat, flipping it onto his head. She catches his hand as he brings it down and studies it. Neal looks and realizes he never got all the paint out of his cuticles.
"I'm so glad to see you appreciate these," June says easily, "I was hoping someone would. I've got a whole closet full of them."
Neal can't help brightening. "A whole closet?"
"Mmhm. Well, actually, it's a guestroom attached to Byron's studio, but I haven't used it for anything but storage for years."
Neal shrugs his way into the jacket, hoping it'll fit, as if he could put on Byron Ellington's talent and success along with his clothes. It does, exquisitely, satin lining sliding over his plain t-shirt like a caress. He settles it into place, straightens the sleeves, and glances up to find June looking at him approvingly.
"Byron used to wear that one whenever we went dancing," she murmurs. "The neighborhood was... let's say it was much nicer then."
"You live nearby?" Neal blurts.
"Not far."
He smiles at her the way Kate taught him.
"You're a painter, aren't you?" June asks.
"Not famous."
June pats his arm. "Not yet."
Neal gives her a look through his lashes, another of Kate's tricks, and says, "I might be really bad."
"Not you, dear," June says. "I have an instinct. Besides, Vincent Adler didn't settle for anything but the best before he went on the run, did he?"
Neal blinks, opens his mouth, and closes it.
"I keep track of Bryon's paintings and who owns them. And who picks them out."
"Wow."
Her hand is still on his arm, but he knows the little squeeze she gives it is more about remembering how this jacket felt on Byron than any kind of move on him. "Come have coffee with me," she says. "That studio has been empty too long."
"Why? You know I worked for Adler - "
June laughs. "As I understand it, hundreds of people worked for Vincent Adler, and none of them had a clue what that man was up to. So, are you coming with me?" She gives him an impish smile, with a nod to the clerk, who is pretending not to eavesdrop on the two of them. "I do believe he thinks I'm playing Mrs. Robinson. I'd offer to show you my etchings, but you'll have to make do with Byron's art collection."
The clerk drops one of the suits.
June and Neal both burst out laughing.
~*~
Peter searches Kate's cell, noting pictures, sketches and pastels and watercolors, all by the inimitable hand of Neal Caffrey, the tiny, almost hidden by the bunk, tally of her days imprisoned marked on the wall, and a bundle of letters. They're all from Caffrey too. The man has beautiful penmanship, Peter reflects, wishing his agents' notes were half so legible. Paging through the envelopes shows Caffrey has written Kate twice a week beginning with her first week in Danbury as well as visiting.
The pictures are all of places Peter is relatively sure Caffrey and Kate visited during her whirlwind three year crime spree.
The only other things he finds in her cell are a book from the prison library on growing roses and a fading, worn at the edges photograph of Kate with Caffrey. She's wearing diamonds - stolen or scammed for the evening - and smiling at the camera. Caffrey's smiling at her.
Peter refuses to believe a man who could look at a woman like that could have killed her. It's self-delusion, of course. He's never worked homicide, but he knows love and murder go hand in hand as often as love and happiness, and that's without money and crime added to the mix. He simply doesn't want to believe it, for personal reasons he's not ready to examine, and because to his eyes the evidence doesn't support Caffrey as a killer, no matter what NYPD think.
He takes the picture and the letters and begins interviewing the corrections officers and staff who interacted with Kate the most.
Teresa Buenavista is the only one to add anything substantive to the reports in the BoP file Peter's already read a dozen times since being called in on the case. Kate stayed out of trouble, whether with the other inmates or the staff. No drugs, no fighting, no problems with anyone thanks to her honey tongue. She spent three days in the infirmary with influenza her second year and had a filling replaced her third. With just ten months left of her four year jolt, no one expected her to fly the coop.
"We should've realized something was up," Buenavista says when Peter sits down with her. She has an apple with her. She isn't eating it, just turning it in her hands for something to do. The apple is green as spring and the likely the only fresh fruit in the entire Danbury complex.
"Why?"
"The boyfriend."
"Neal Caffrey," Peter says, just to be sure, though he has the visitor's log right in front of him. Caffrey was Kate's only visitor. No one from her family, whoever they are, no other friends or confederates, ever made it up to Danbury. Not even her lawyer showed; apparently she managed everything to do with Kate's incarceration through the mail.
"Her blue-eyed boy."
Buenavista's broad at the hip, tougher than old leather, and too shrewd to buy anyone's sob story. Minimal make-up but thick lipstick, and no jewelry, not even in her pierced ears, because it's all something for an inmate to grab. Instead, she wears an expensive perfume, one Peter only recognizes because El likes it too. She's a forty-eight year old mother of four, a Marine Corps veteran and former cop, and a ten year veteran of working corrections. So the fond smile that lights her face as she mentions Caffrey surprises Peter. With that effect, Caffrey should have been the con, not Kate. Maybe it's his face or his eyes.
"He was a regular visitor."
Or maybe it was the way Caffrey showed up like clockwork, every week, same day, same time, according to the record. Buenavista oversaw visitations; she saw Caffrey with Kate. It's why Peter wants to hear anything she has to say.
"First day I saw him, I said he wouldn't be back more than once or twice. A boy as pretty as that, I figured he'd have a new girl as soon as it sunk in Moreau was stuck for the duration. It was almost funny, how freaked out he was," Buenavista says. She shakes her head. Her short cut, iron-gray hair doesn't shift. "Polite as could be, though. Hell, I wish my kids had his manners."
Peter ducks his head. He remembers Caffrey at Kate's trial and, before that, as the subject of months of surveillance, and knows what she means. Even Kate, for all her cons, never blamed or framed anyone.
"He proved me wrong." She smiles. "Some people just can't stand the waiting, even though they're on the outside. Some of them can't stand coming here. Can't take leaving their sweetie locked up each time. The guilt gets to them, the visits get shorter, then they stop. Caffrey, though, he just kept coming back every week."
Buenavista obviously admires that sort of steadfastness. Peter does too, but it doesn't surprise him. The disappearance does, though.
"Did he ever try to bring in any kind of contraband?" Peter asks. He's just fishing. Drugs were never Kate's racket and Caffrey's record is clean as a whistle. He can't see Kate pushing or Caffrey supplying or either of them using. Of course there are other varieties of contraband. Every prison has a blackmarket.
Buenavista shakes her head again. "Not him. He wanted to bring Moreau something, he'd check with us if it was alright before bringing it the next week. Never wanted to disappoint her, you know? He knew everyone's name, asked about your kids, made a joke, kept it easy and friendly."
"How did he and Moreau seem during the visits?"
She taps her finger along the notch under her nose. "In love. Talked a lot about places they'd been, places they were going to go. What kind of dog they'd get, what kind of house they'd buy, how many kids they were going have, what they'd name them. Always had a smile for her until the last time."
Peter perks up. "The last time." He checked the record sheet. "Two weeks ago."
"Two weeks, two days."
The wooden straight chair under Buenavista creaks as she shifts her weight. She resettles her equipment belt more comfortably, while frowning. Peter guesses she's weighing how much to tell. Not with any intention of lying, only picking and choosing between fact and speculation. He appreciates what insights she can offer that no one else at Danbury can. He knows Neal Caffrey is the key to why Kate broke out.
Kate must have had the escape planned out and set up, even if she decided to go the last time Caffrey visited and not when he didn't show up. Danbury is medium security, but even for Kate Moreau, even if she had outside help, two weeks isn't long enough to plan a jail break.
"Did he break up with her?"
"No, but he wasn't happy. No wonder either." Her mouth, lush with plum-colored lipstick, pulls down. "Someone beat him down. Just in time for it to look its worst when he visited."
Peter raises his eyebrows and waits as patiently as he can.
"Split lip, black eye, broken finger," Buenavista answers at last, listing each item with her hands. Dark, cynical eyes meet Peter's own, while her mouth turns down again. "Skittish as hell. Shocky." She pauses again and explains herself: "You get that traumatized vibe off people that've never seen real violence up close. I saw it on enough vics back when I was with the PD."
Peter sets his hands flat over the record book. The timing must have been deliberate. If Caffrey doesn't show, Kate knows something is wrong; if he does, she sees him marked up and in pain. He tries to imagine Caffrey the way he must have looked to Kate. He doesn't like it.
"You say he looked like a victim. Was he... ?"
"No way for me to know."
"Did you ask?"
"He said it was a car accident," Buenavista says dryly. "Probably told Moreau the same thing. She got pretty quiet after he left, though."
"She didn't buy it."
"Hell, no." Buenavista shrugs and looks away, mouth still pursed, hands still playing with the apple. There's something she wants to say or something she thinks she should have seen or done.
Peter waits for whatever she isn't saying until Buenavista gives in.
"I should have pushed. He was scared, Agent Burke."
"And Kate?"
Buenavista pauses.
"She was too."
She leaves the apple, shiny and green, when she walks out. Peter shines it against his coat sleeve briefly then takes a bite out of it and wonders what knowledge he's damned himself to learning by pursuing this case, Caffrey, and Kate again. The flavor is intense, the flesh rich with juice and crisp between his teeth. He's never been able to let something go once he gets his teeth in it. Hughes will back him as long as he can sell the story that Peter's looking for Kate's caches and not her murderer. His gut is telling him there is more to this story than a prison break and a lover's quarrel gone sour and even if he's wrong, he needs to see it to the end.
El's not going to be happy.
Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards
Her bags are packed. The rental car is parked in Peter's usual spot down the street. All of Satchmo's gear is already in it too. All she has to do is tell Peter, snap on Satchmo's leash, pick up her purse, and walk out of the house, her life, and her marriage.
She's waiting for Peter to come home so she can tell him she's leaving him. There's something pathetic and hilarious about that. It's horrible. She's sitting in the dark, with just a light in the kitchen on, because it's impossible to sit in the living room like everything is normal. It's impossible to do anything while she waits except go over and over what brought her to this point. She won't just walk out or leave a note. She's not sure he'd even find a note. She'd need to leave a phone message or send something to his official FBI email if she wanted to be sure Peter sees it.
Satchmo's sitting next to her at the dining room table. He knows something's wrong, the way dogs do, and whines before resting his head on her knee. Elizabeth plays with his soft ears; it's comforting, just not comforting enough, but she's not going to cry. If Peter doesn't come home in the next hour, she's going to have to assume he's working all night again and go to his office to tell him. She doesn't want to do that to either of them.
She will though, because she's not putting this off another night.
The sound of Peter's key in the door lock is a relief. She can tell by the soft shuffle of his shoes that he's exhausted and he's trying to be quiet because he thinks she's asleep upstairs.
"I'm in here, Peter," she calls softly to him.
He switches the overhead light on as he comes in and her heart turns over. Peter looks so tired, so worn, but at the same time there is a fire burning in him. It's been months, but he's still sure that he's going to catch Kate Moreau by watching her boyfriend.
Elizabeth understands that Peter believes that will be the end of it, but of course it won't. There will a trial and sentencing and, once it's done, Peter will find a new case to obsess over. Knowing she'd come in second to the job when she married him was one thing. Realizing she comes in third, after the criminals, is too much.
"Sorry," Peter says, "Berelli's kid's appendix popped. I had to hang around until we could wrangle someone else to take his shift in the van."
Elizabeth nods. "I hope everything's all right."
"I got Oswicizc from OC to take over. He wants the over time."
"I meant with Berelli's child."
Peter looks taken back and then embarrassed. He pulls out a chair opposite Elizabeth and sits. His smile is sheepish. "I don't know."
She nods to herself, not surprised, because Peter's focus is narrowed down to Kate and her boyfriend and the rest of the world is just in the way of that. She's just in the way, except for everything she takes care of so Peter can concentrate on his job: the dog, the bills, the house, food, laundry, taxes, maintenance. All while she's trying to build her own business. Peter hasn't noticed in months.
"I think she'll show soon," Peter says. He slouches down in his chair. "Once this is over - "
Elizabeth holds her hand up to stop him. "I don't want to hear it." Kate, Kate, Kate, she's so sick of Kate Moreau. "I've heard enough about the case and that woman."
They've sung this song before. She's sick of it. She doesn't think Peter's been unfaithful to her, not in fact, not in fantasy. That's not the problem. The problem is being an afterthought to what's important to him. An affair might have been easier to overlook; she knows plenty of married men cheat without it meaning anything emotionally.
Not that she would have stood still for it if Peter had been unfaithful that way. Just that she could walk away hating him, instead of hurting so much for herself and him.
Satchmo whines and she strokes her palm over his head compulsively.
"I am going to put her away," Peter says and sounds just a little smug. "I'm going to catch her this time."
Elizabeth hopes he does catch Kate Moreau. She's come to hate the woman without ever meeting her. It won't change the problems in her marriage, though, and that's why she's not waiting any longer.
"That's good. I'm sure you will," she says now.
"El - "
"I could take the long hours. Bringing home your work. Even knowing you could get hurt or killed, no matter how careful you are," she goes on. "I didn't worry when Kate started sending you cards on your birthday or when she hid her negligée in your baggage for me to find, even though she's young and beautiful and smart." Everything Peter likes, Elizabeth doesn't add, because she doesn't need to.
Peter's scowl is epic. That trick truly did enrage him, Elizabeth knew, because he believed - still believes - that it hurt her. He doesn't see that he's hurt her more than any of Kate's taunts ever could. Even then, even when Elizabeth allowed herself to ask him to pass Kate's case to another agent, Peter couldn't let it go. He thinks another agent might take Kate down with a bullet rather than see her get away.
He still doesn't see why Elizabeth is so angry over Kate, but Peter knows more about Kate's likes and wants than he does Elizabeth's. She could ask him what Kate's favorite scent is or her shoe size and Peter would know. He doesn't know what perfume El wears by preference.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm leaving." She plucks up the dog leash lying on the table and snaps it to Satchmo's collar. "I'm not taking Satch to be mean. I'm angry, but this isn't about punishment. You're too busy and your schedule is too erratic to take care of him."
"I'm not in love with Kate Moreau," Peter protests. He's been protesting the same thing since the first time Elizabeth caught a glimpse of a picture of her in the case file he read in their bed. "She's a criminal."
"I know you're not in love with her." She pauses for a breath before going on. "You're in love with chasing her, pitting your brains against hers, with finding a way to beat her at her game while playing by your rules."
Peter opens his mouth only to close it wordlessly. Elizabeth nods, relieved he isn't protesting the truth.
"I'm going to stay with Yvonne until I find an apartment. Her building allows pets."
She pushes the dining chair back and stands. Peter stands too. His big hands are open and oddly helpless looking as he watches her pick up her purse.
"You're going. Just like that?" he asks.
"I sat here all evening, waiting for you to come back, so I could tell you. I couldn't be sure you'd realize I was gone otherwise."
"I don't understand. Are you saying you don't love me?"
She's crying now, hot tears sliding down, and her eyes are going to be a swollen mess tomorrow, but she can't stop. "Of course I love you. I can't just turn it off."
He looks so lost, she wants to wrap her arms around him and hold on until everything is better. Everything is never going to be better unless Peter changes and that's the one thing Elizabeth can't ask of him. She loves the man he is. She just can't live on his leftovers any longer.
"But you're divorcing me."
She hasn't said it out loud, but Peter's smart. He's already figuring out how this must end given how Elizabeth feels now.
"I think so."
"We could try counseling."
"When?" she asks gently. "After this case? The next case? The one after that?" Purse in one hand, Satch's leash in the other, she starts for the door. "I paid this month's bills and left the checkbook for the household account in the bedroom dresser. I cleaned out anything that will go bad if it isn't cooked soon from the refrigerator. There's a casserole in the oven too, if you haven't eaten." Her voice is getting thick. She has to get out before she breaks down into a complete snotty mess.
Satch's toenails click on the floorboards in counterpoint to her high heels.
"That's it?" Peter sounds incredulous.
"I'm sorry," she chokes out as she fumbles the door open.
"El, we can fix this."
"I know you think so, but I don't." She's hurrying now, before she wavers, because she knows Peter and that he'll try to change her mind. "Good night, Peter. Take care of yourself."
She'll make an appointment with a lawyer tomorrow.
No Kindness Can Cure
Mozzie lets himself into the safehouse as quietly as possible. He's hoping Neal is still sleeping. In case he's not, Mozzie's folded the newspaper to hide the headline and photograph. He wants to brace Neal before the news blindsides him.
Himself, he isn't sure how he feels about the news. Not good. He knew Kate before Neal ever came into his life. He taught her a lot, maybe too much, and there are days he thinks he's responsible for who she became. Some of those days he's proud; he taught the Queen of Cons. Some days, especially the ones when Neal is so down he won't even sketch or when Mozzie remembers being cleaned out, he's angry and ashamed.
Neal's still on Mozzie's lumpy couch, an afghan of questionable origins pulled up to his shoulders. The morning sun teases a hint of golden-brown from his ruffled, seal-dark hair. It picks out the fading remnants of the black eye and the healing split in his lip. The same light turns the old floorboards almost blond where the stain has worn away.
It's going to be a crap day. There's no reason to force Neal to face it any sooner than he must. Mozzie leaves him to sleep as long as he can. Mozzie doesn't have many friends and none of them as trustworthy as Neal. He wants to do what he can to take care of him.
The newspaper goes on the counter of the tiny kitchenette. The pastries Mozzie picked up stay in their bag, while he thoroughly cleans the fruit he bought and slices it. That done, he puts the percolator on the two-burner stove top and starts it. The smell will likely wake Neal.
He has two mugs out and plates of pastry and fruit ready when Neal shifts and wakes. "Hey."
"Ah, you've decided to grace me with your consciousness," Mozzie greets him.
Neal's smiles are works of art. Every time he's graced with one Mozzie wishes several things. One, that some great artist could capture it in paint and canvas. Two, that he'd found Neal and taught him, rather than Kate. Three, that Neal hadn't fallen in love with Kate. Sometimes, four, that he wasn't so boringly straight, because if Mozzie weren't, he would have seduced Neal years ago.
"Breakfast?" Neal pads over and helps himself to the second plate. Despite the splint on his pinky, he's as deft as Mozzie. It's such a waste he's never been interested in learning to pickpocket. "You're being too nice."
He snags a piece of melon and chews it while Mozzie pours them both coffee.
"Seriously, what's wrong?" Neal asks.
"Let's eat first," Mozzie tells him.
Of course, that stops Neal, who looks up from his plate to study Mozzie's face. Apprehension flits over his features. So much has gone wrong in the last three weeks, he's expecting another blow, but no one could be ready for the form it's taken.
"Do I need to sit down?"
"Maybe you'd better."
Neal takes his plate and his coffee back to the couch and sinks down on it. Mozzie abandons his - he has no appetite anyway - and carries the newspaper over instead. He sits next to Neal, close enough to feel the tension locking Neal's body up.
"Neal."
"Just tell me."
Mozzie opens the newspaper to the headline. Escaped Felon Murder Victim. They even put Kate's picture above the fold. Even dead, beautiful women sell newspapers.
Neal takes the paper and reads it silently, his head bowed. The newsprint darkens and runs, blotting the tear drops falling onto it into smears. "Kate... " Neal chokes, raw and disbelieving.
There's no help for it, no stopping the agonized sobs, but Mozzie pats at Neal's bent back, trying to offer some comfort anyway.
~*~
Peter spreads the files over the conference room table. Hughes isn't pleased over time wasted on a jail breaking convict and a murder investigation that technically belongs to the NYPD, but the Harvard crew are following leads on the unit's case load and Peter's got enough career collateral to receive some slack. Reese Hughes is a good boss and one who knows that even before his divorce Peter gave the Bureau more of his time and mind than is technically part of the job. He won't say anything about using Bureau resources.
Diana and Jones come in and look at the reports Peter has picked out as relevant. Diana wasn't around when Peter was chasing Kate, but Clinton Jones had just joined the unit as a probationary agent. He picks up a sheaf of surveillance photographs taken with a long lens and says, "I think I took some of these."
"So you remember Caffrey."
"Sure."
Peter nods to himself. "You think he could have killed Kate?"
The answer doesn't come immediately. Jones likes to take enough time to think his answers through and base them on facts and not instinct. He's steady.
"I wouldn't think so."
"Yeah, me neither," Peter agrees.
Jones hesitates then takes the plunge. "Why are we on this? It isn't a federal case anymore."
Jones is right, of course. Diana knows it too. Peter looks back at them both and says, "NYPD are looking at Caffrey. No one else." He pauses. "You don't have to work on this if you don't want to." He won't hold it against either of them.
After a long beat, Jones rolls his shoulders. "Beats going over another mortgage fraud case."
Diana looks up from reading the file on Kate's death again. "It doesn't gel. Location is the only real tie to Caffrey and even that's iffy. According to this, all his stuff was gone."
"Except one painting," Jones corrects.
Nothing has been declared but it's understood between them.
"I talked to the super." Peter picks out a report he wrote up himself and printed. A surge of warmth and pride in his two agents fills him. They're ready to follow him on his say-so and nothing more. He'll have to be careful of them and not take advantage, not take this into obsession territory and hurt their careers. "Caffrey's apartment was burgled twice in the last month. Last time, day before his regular trip north to Danbury." He frowns. "I want to talk to him again. There was something off."
"We could handle that, boss," Diana volunteers.
"Do that, would you?"
"Gets me out of the office." Her smile teases.
He tries not to let her know, but Diana's the best probationary agent Peter's ever worked with except Jones. He's going to fight to keep her with the unit. It's going to be a fight too: Counter-terrorism down in DC is already sniffing around. He has to tussle with the higher ups to keep Jones around too, but Jones wants to stay in New York so that helps. So does Hughes, who has a career's worth of pull to call on when Peter's isn't enough.
"Meantime, let's walk through it," he says. "Caffrey's apartment is burgled twice."
Jones picked up another report. "Guy loses his job. Ouch."
"And then it gets better," Peter finishes. "Two weeks ago, he heads up to Danbury to see Moreau looking like someone worked him over professionally. According to a guard there, one of his fingers was broken."
"Double ouch," Diana comments. "Does he gamble?"
Jones chuckles. "Well, he dated Moreau."
"You're thinking debt collectors?" Peter asks Diana.
It might fit the scenario. The burglaries could have been faked for insurance purposes. Except Caffrey didn't even have renter's insurance. If he needed money though, he might have gone to Kate hoping she'd give him the location of one of her caches. Canny Kate wouldn't have, though; Peter's sure of that. He can't dismiss the theory, but he doesn't buy it either.
Diana lifts her shoulders, silently saying it had to be posited, but she's not enamored of the idea either.
Peter pulls out another report he wrote. "He had a gallery showing coming up. It was canceled."
"Something stinks," Jones says. "Too much, too fast."
"I agree."
"If you stop looking at it being about Moreau," Diana speculates, "then her murder fits into a different pattern."
"Caffrey's life going to hell. Burgled, fired, beat up, no showing, girlfriend killed," Jones recites. "Bet there was more too. Caffrey's the target."
"So, whose Wheaties did he piss in?"
Peter looks at the two agents with badly hidden pride. They're both so smart. "That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn't it?" The question he wants to answer, because someone outsmarted Kate. Someone got ahead of her. That's all kinds of impressive and maybe Peter feels a little spike of something - envy, jealousy, possessiveness, protectiveness - because for a while he was the only one who managed to outwit Kate. The only one who figured her out, who saw through her glamour, who liked the real woman inside, who was rooting for her and Caffrey to make it once she got out. He spent years living vicariously through Kate and Caffrey, played a bigger part in their lives than he did in Elizabeth's, and though he's put the case behind him, it's harder to let go of the feeling of ownership than he wants to admit. It's his case, damn it. He feels responsible for Kate and for Caffrey too.
He badly wants to find who had to the gall to interfere in their lives.
A Bureau shrink would have a field day with that.
"Re-interview the super, the boss, and any friends we can find?" Jones says.
Peter smiles at him. "To start with."
Jones trades a look with Diana, but shrugs his assent. "You know, if Caffrey's the target, he may just be laying low," he says, "but if it really was Moreau - "
"He's probably dead," Diana finishes. "Once they got her out where she was vulnerable, he stopped being useful."
Peter shakes his head. They're right, but he's not ready to believe it. Seeing Kate Moreau dead was bad enough, he can't accept that Caffrey's body is out there somewhere, his smile and style and all that talent snuffed out. No. He's only spoken to Caffrey twice, but twice is enough. Peter spent too long surveilling him, waiting like a lion at the waterhole to catch Kate, not to feel like he knows Caffrey and, what he knows, he's always liked. It took an effort not to keep an eye on Caffrey after Kate's sentencing. Now Peter wishes he had. He shuffles out a copy of the picture Kate left in her cell. Christ, that sweet smile must have helped Kate through all the long, lonely nights in Danbury.
If Caffrey's dead, Peter's going to find out why and who did it and put them away forever.
"Yeah. Either way, we nail the bastard behind this, okay?" If he sounds more forceful about this than is strictly professional, Peter doesn't care. Kate was his and, by association, so is Caffrey.
"Okay, boss," Diana and Jones chorus with another shared glance.
Part 2