FIC: The carriage held but just Ourselves (Pt. 8/10)
Title: The Carriage held but just Ourselves (Pt. 8/10)
Author: blue_fjords
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Gwen, Andy, Tosh, Jack, Ianto, Owen, Suzie, Rhys, Gerald Carter, Rupesh
Word length: 3,070
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Warnings: Please highlight for warnings, as they give away plot points, but could be triggery for people. Nothing is in this story that you didn't see onscreen in season one TW. References made to child abuse and suicide.
Summary: Crime novel AU w/ alternating POVs from Gwen and Jack.
A/N: Yeah. Been awhile. Or a while. A long time. Thanks to amand_r for beta-ing these last three chapters, and paragraphs for encouraging me to finish. Would not have been written w/out you ladies, and I really wanted to finish it, so thanks. Title from Emily Dickinson.
Gwen
"I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down!"
"Rhys!" Gwen hissed, hurriedly accepting the call on her mobile. "That song?"
"Not professional enough for you, eh, love?"
"No, it bloody well isn't." She ducked back out into the hall, face flaming. She could feel Harper smirking at her backside, damn him. Dr. Patanjali was probably relieved the other doctor had his angry eyes directed somewhere else for a minute. She shut the office door firmly behind her.
"I was hoping it'd play the bit about pissing the night away -"
"Rhys," she interrupted him. "Is there a reason why you're calling?"
"Just wondering how your day was. You were up late last night."
She sighed and rubbed her palm against her forehead. "Don't remind me."
"And I had to tell you the One Stop was all out of Dairy Milks! Completely. Who runs out of Dairy Milks, eh? They had the nerve to try to sell me a Flake instead. A Flake! I showed them; I bought a Twix."
"A Twix is nothing like a Dairy Milk."
"That wasn't the point."
She smiled despite herself. "Rhys," she started to say when, with an audible whoosh, the power went out. "Shit," she whispered.
"What?" Rhys asked, his voice loud in the sudden silence.
"I'm going to need you to call my station, Rhys, and tell them we've lost power at Spire." She stopped talking abruptly. Her phone was dead, too. Whoever had cut the power had also blocked the signal for her mobile. She took a deep breath.
She could make out the door handle to the office in the green glow of the emergency exit signs at the ends of the hall. It was pushed open from the other side just as her hand closed around it, though, causing her to stumble back.
"Oi! Copper!" Harper poked his head around the door. "Copper Cooper," he continued, stepping completely out into the hall. "Does that get old?"
"You're the first one to ever say it," Gwen deadpanned. "The two of you okay? And what are you doing with a 'Spire's Spire of Excellence' Award?" She nodded at the garish thick plastic wand-like award clutched in the doctor's hands.
"Weapon," Harper said succinctly. "I locked Rupesh into his closet with his files," he said, jabbing his thumb in the direction of the shadowy depths of the office. "Don't want him to get away and he's just dead weight. Besides, can't read the damn things in this light, anyhow."
"You can't lock a civilian in a closet!"
"Why not? I'm a civilian. Forget I mentioned it. In fact, I was telling a joke. Ha, ha, he's locked in the closet."
Gwen had a feeling her withering stare was lacking in intensity in the green-tinged gloom. "Let him out! I need to ask -"
"Why the emergency generators haven't kicked in? Already did. Switch is in the basement, either it fizzled out in a strange coincidence, or Suzie messed with it. We can manually override it. Come on." He started to march down the hall.
"PC Cooper?" Dr. Patanjali's voice called faintly from the back of the office. "I really would prefer to stay in my closet. If you don't mind. I'd rather not run into Ms. Costello."
Gwen's eyebrows climbed up into her fringe. She stood on the threshold, hesitating, but Harper called for her from down the hall, and her shoulder radio fizzled to life.
"Gwen?"
"Andy! Are you lot okay up there?" She hurried after Harper. "Listen, we're going to try to fix the emergency generator; it's in the basement. Will you be all right?"
"Quiet as the grave here now," Andy replied. "Good thing the hospital's so unused, and Costello can breathe on his own."
"Yeah. Lucky," Gwen agreed.
"Keep your eyes peeled for nefarious bandits, PC Blondie!" Harper yelled into her shoulder as Gwen caught up to him.
"You be on the lookout for grumkins."
"What on earth's a grumkin?" Gwen asked, fumbling her torch out of her belt loop as they approached the stairwell.
"They're from…you know, the books? Never mind; just be careful."
"You, too. Suzie Costello is very determined. Going radio silent on my end now, Andy."
The radio blipped and went quiet as the door to the stairs fell shut behind them. It was darker in the stairwell despite the emergency lights. Gwen made a mental note to include windows in the stairwells the next time she was designing a building, and bit back a giggle. It was possible she was feeling just slightly hysterical. After all, they were probably trapped in this hospital with a serial killer, and no amount of calling her a nefarious bandit or grumkin would make the situation light and airy were they to come face to face.
Her torch revealed an empty landing. She almost gripped Harper's hand in relief, but stopped herself. She was a grown woman, and a PC besides! She felt a little better when Harper took a hold of her arm beneath her shoulder and hung on as her torch lit their way. His shoes scuffed loudly on the stairs, competing with his harsh breathing as they passed the painted number one. Almost there.
It was even darker in the basement.
Gwen looked around, eyes opened as wide as they could go, what little good it did her.
"Swing the light to the left," Harper whispered, and Gwen panned the light slowly across the left wall as Harper kept talking. "He said the generator was in a room to the left - holy fuck!"
Gwen's heart leaped into her throat as Suzie Costello sprang from the shadows. She shrieked, raising her arms in front of her face in an instinctual attempt to protect her throat and eyes from Suzie's attack. She used her hips to unceremoniously shove Harper out of harm's way right before Suzie barreled into her. She lost her grip on the torch in the force of the impact, and it went skittering across the floor, sending flashing light up in a riotous kaleidoscope.
But Suzie wasn't there for Gwen Cooper, and after knocking her aside she ran full tilt for the stairs.
"Harper, grab that torch and fix the power!" Gwen yelled, already taking off after Suzie and the bobbing light of her own torch, one of those fashion disasters that was imminently practical, affixed to a strap around her forehead. Gwen fumbled her baton out of its holster as she ran, trusting Harper to do as he was told for once.
"Andy!" she hissed into her radio. "She's here, she's coming, be careful, Andy!"
Her radio fizzled in reply as she made it up to the landing between the first and second floor. The door to the stairwell opened below them and Gwen's heartbeat sped up. Surely they were friendly, surely Suzie didn't have accomplices, but could she really risk yelling out to them? Before she could decide, Suzie's light suddenly went dead and Gwen lurched to a stop, too late as she walked right into Suzie's trap, an empty trash bin on its side across the stairs. Gwen stumbled and Suzie jumped forward, using the force of her momentum to flip her over the railing.
Gwen screamed as she fell, her hands reaching up to grasp at empty air for the length of one floor before-
Jack
Jack snagged her hand as she went flying past and Gwen slammed into the railing with a loud, "Oof."
"Was that Suzie?" he demanded. "Did Suzie just go by?"
"Yeah, she's cut the power, but we're fixing it," Gwen huffed as he and Ianto pulled her back over the railing.
He knew it, he knew it was Suzie the second they pulled into the drive and the sign wasn't lit up. Ianto had parked up on the curb and kicked a side door open, as the automatic doors were automatically closed. Normally Jack would have said something licentious at the display of force, but he was too busy running inside and pulling out his gun. Poor Gwen just had her baton to deal with a dangerous serial killer.
"She's heading for her father," Jack stated, not that the other two needed him to tell them that. "You keep going up this stairwell. I bet you anything she's circled around and will come at him from the stairs in the north tower. I'll go that way."
"Don't do anything foolish," Ianto warned him as Jack took the stairs two at a time and rammed the door open with his shoulder.
"Trust me!" he called back. The door slammed shut with finality and his boots squeaked on the linoleum as he ran down the hall. He didn't see anyone; the hospital was mainly deserted, and those few patients who remained apparently were taking the cower-in-the-room approach. It was a good choice. A nurse poked her head above the staffing desk in the middle of the floor as he ran by, gasped loudly at the sight of his gun, and dove back down. It couldn't be helped.
It was darker again in the stairwell when he shoved the door open. He nearly lost an eye right then, barely throwing himself to the side as Suzie's scalpel clattered harmlessly against the thick glass in the window. He would feel his landing the next morning, no doubt, but his knee held and he rolled back up to his feet in time to dodge another sharp object. It put a tear in his coat.
He trained his gun on the shadows in the landing above him.
"Anything else you need to get off your chest, Suzie?" he called up.
He was answered with a low laugh.
"So witty, Harkness. Do you get your lines from that American cop show? CSI: Miami?"
"Nah, I don't wear my sunglasses at night." He could just start shooting. He was bound to hit her somewhere. Doubtless she had a gun and would fire back. Even if she got him, it would be worth it to get her.
"No, I don't think you will," Suzie said softly. Jack started. How could she have possibly known what he was thinking? "Because we think the same," Suzie answered his unasked question. "We're both killers, Jack. You're just hung up on the why. You can't fire first if you expect me to talk to you."
"Is that so?" Jack asked, stalling. "You're talking now. I bet you want to tell me all about it."
"About watching a man die? That final gasp of breath, the realization setting in that there'll be no others? It's exciting the first few times, I'll give you that, but it gets old quick. Alex was a boring death, if that's what you came to find out, I feel sorry for you."
"I'm going to fucking rip you apart, Suzie Costello." His vision was clouded with anger, or maybe just the murky light in the stairwell seeping in from the hall outside. He needed to end it, and fast, else he'd give in to his instincts and pump her so full of lead they'd need a crane to lift her heavy body.
"No, you won't. It's not my time. Death and I are old friends, Harkness. He'd tell me if he was coming for me. He's here, now. Waiting for my father. I just want to kill my father. I really could care less about talking to you."
"I can't let you do that."
"You should."
The lights came on with a buzz of florescent lighting and Suzie was suddenly illuminated. Jack aimed for her shoulder, his finger itching on the trigger, when the stairwell door on Suzie's landing flew open. She startled, her gun turning on the new arrival, but Ianto was ready for her and pistol-whipped her across the face with his own gun. Jack stared in shock as Suzie fell to her knees.
"Most people fire those things, you know," he said, running up the stairs and grabbing Suzie by the elbow to haul her up. She blinked dazedly at him, a trickle of blood at her forehead.
"If I fired at point-blank range, you would never get to interrogate her," Ianto said calmly, his steady voice at odds with his shaking hands. "It wouldn't be proper to kill her outright."
Jack grunted in response and tugged out a pair of cuffs from an inner pocket. "Suzie Costello, you have the right…you know, forget it, I don't know what the hell your rights are here. You have the right to not be killed by a serial killer, not to have your corpse experimented on, not to have the words of Emily Dickinson profaned by a murderer. Pretty damn decent rights."
Suzie kept her mouth firmly shut, her eyes hooded. Jack didn't know if he'd been hoping for tears from her, or that maybe she would be hysterical. Instead she was as responsive as a brick, keeping up her stony wall of silence as the Cardiff police and Toshiko arrived soon after. Toshiko took charge, reading Suzie her rights in a firm voice and assuming custody of her with a quick exchange of glances with Jack. His jaw clenched, but he still wasn't officially in Cardiff. Toshiko gave him a sympathetic look before instructing everyone to meet back at the station, the same one they'd been at just that morning. As Jack stared at Suzie being led away, he couldn't help but feel a colossal sense of let-down. So many years spent tracking this woman, and she wasn't even held under his authority. He needed to question her. It burned inside.
"Agent Harkness?" It was Cooper's partner, the tall blond copper. Alfred or something. "Gwen had said you were wanting to see Suzie Costello's father?"
Jack blinked. He had said that, a million years ago. "Yes…"
"Well, it's just, he's upstairs. Alive and breathing. Didn't know if you still might want to have a chat with him?"
It was a good idea. No wonder he had thought of it earlier. He straightened up, ignoring the twinge in his knee, and caught Ianto's eye as the other man was about to leave with Toshiko, a police escort and Suzie.
"We'll both go," Jack said.
***
The room stank of antiseptic and overflowing bed pans, and the curtains were drawn so just a little sunlight crept in. Ianto's nose wrinkled, Jack noted, but he smoothed it out almost immediately, nodding to Gwen's partner with a quiet "Thanks" as he closed the door behind them.
"Did you catch the abomination?" came a querulous voice from the bed. Jack took a step closer, while Ianto stayed by the door, leaning back and looking impassive. It was all a show, but he played it very well.
"Do you typically refer to your daughter as an abomination?" Jack asked, trying to keep his voice light for the moment. Costello was a very scared man, he reminded himself. He'd need to be subtle. Unfortunately, Jack and subtlety went together like oil and water.
"I have no daughter," Costello said, sniffling into a tissue. "My name is Jack Griffin. Max told me there was an abomination wandering the halls of this hospital."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "Griffin, is it? Cute."
Costello said nothing in reply. Jack took in the machines, the tubes, the man's disturbingly half-finished face. He had a weak chin that plastic surgery had done nothing to fix. Jack fought back the urge to take him by the shoulders and shake him. He reached into his inner coat pocket and pulled out a photo in a clear plastic sleeve.
"So this woman here? You don't recognize her at all? Anything ring a bell?"
Costello recoiled from the picture as if Jack was thrusting a poisonous snake in his face.
"Take it away! She looks like my own poor Suzie! Oh, I can't bear it!"
Jack secreted the picture once more and Costello took a dramatic shuddering breath.
"What can you tell me about Suzie? Your own poor Suzie Costello." Costello's eye started to close and Jack leaned forward, snapping his fingers in front of the old man's face. "Wakey-wakey. Suzie Costello. What do you know about her?"
"She was so beautiful," Costello whispered. "So terrible what happened to her."
"What? What happened to her?" Jack's stomach lurched. Whatever Costello was going to say, it was going to be bad. He almost took back his question. He had Suzie, did he really need to know what her father was going to say? But he did. He needed to know why.
"Evil," Costello nodded solemnly. "An evil man crept into her room at nights and did evil things. She was so dirty after that, who would touch her?"
Jack wanted to kill him, strangle him with the rope of his own confession, hidden behind the flimsy shield of a different name.
"My Suzie would read me poetry, before," Costello continued, fingers moving restlessly on his bed sheet. "Always pronounced everything just so. She was a very good reader, my Suzie. And beautiful, a beautiful child. She could have been a film star, but that wouldn't do."
"Why not, Mr. Griffin?" Jack managed to ask over his wave of disgust.
"Why, it's perverted, isn't it?"
Jack had seen a lot of hypocrisy in his career at the CIA, but the father of Suzie Costello was taking his breath away. Ianto looked like he was going to throw up all over the hospital bed. Jack almost wished he would, just to get the new Jack Griffin as dirty on the outside as he was on the inside.
"There's not much that I find perverted," Jack answered. "Sex, for example. I don't care how kinky it gets, sex is fun and beautiful." Ianto shifted his stance over by his place by the door. "A man forcing himself on his daughter, on the other hand, now that I think is perverted, and you'll pay for it, Costello."
"It's Griffin, and I never touched my Suzie but for when she asked me to!"
Jack's guts churned, but he made his voice hard and cold as ice as he stood to leave. "And that is the saddest thing I've ever heard on so many levels. Enjoy your stay at Spire, Jack Griffin. Your next accommodations won't be as warm. You have my word, from one Jack to another."
Part Nine
Author: blue_fjords
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Gwen, Andy, Tosh, Jack, Ianto, Owen, Suzie, Rhys, Gerald Carter, Rupesh
Word length: 3,070
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Warnings: Please highlight for warnings, as they give away plot points, but could be triggery for people. Nothing is in this story that you didn't see onscreen in season one TW. References made to child abuse and suicide.
Summary: Crime novel AU w/ alternating POVs from Gwen and Jack.
A/N: Yeah. Been awhile. Or a while. A long time. Thanks to amand_r for beta-ing these last three chapters, and paragraphs for encouraging me to finish. Would not have been written w/out you ladies, and I really wanted to finish it, so thanks. Title from Emily Dickinson.
Gwen
"I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down!"
"Rhys!" Gwen hissed, hurriedly accepting the call on her mobile. "That song?"
"Not professional enough for you, eh, love?"
"No, it bloody well isn't." She ducked back out into the hall, face flaming. She could feel Harper smirking at her backside, damn him. Dr. Patanjali was probably relieved the other doctor had his angry eyes directed somewhere else for a minute. She shut the office door firmly behind her.
"I was hoping it'd play the bit about pissing the night away -"
"Rhys," she interrupted him. "Is there a reason why you're calling?"
"Just wondering how your day was. You were up late last night."
She sighed and rubbed her palm against her forehead. "Don't remind me."
"And I had to tell you the One Stop was all out of Dairy Milks! Completely. Who runs out of Dairy Milks, eh? They had the nerve to try to sell me a Flake instead. A Flake! I showed them; I bought a Twix."
"A Twix is nothing like a Dairy Milk."
"That wasn't the point."
She smiled despite herself. "Rhys," she started to say when, with an audible whoosh, the power went out. "Shit," she whispered.
"What?" Rhys asked, his voice loud in the sudden silence.
"I'm going to need you to call my station, Rhys, and tell them we've lost power at Spire." She stopped talking abruptly. Her phone was dead, too. Whoever had cut the power had also blocked the signal for her mobile. She took a deep breath.
She could make out the door handle to the office in the green glow of the emergency exit signs at the ends of the hall. It was pushed open from the other side just as her hand closed around it, though, causing her to stumble back.
"Oi! Copper!" Harper poked his head around the door. "Copper Cooper," he continued, stepping completely out into the hall. "Does that get old?"
"You're the first one to ever say it," Gwen deadpanned. "The two of you okay? And what are you doing with a 'Spire's Spire of Excellence' Award?" She nodded at the garish thick plastic wand-like award clutched in the doctor's hands.
"Weapon," Harper said succinctly. "I locked Rupesh into his closet with his files," he said, jabbing his thumb in the direction of the shadowy depths of the office. "Don't want him to get away and he's just dead weight. Besides, can't read the damn things in this light, anyhow."
"You can't lock a civilian in a closet!"
"Why not? I'm a civilian. Forget I mentioned it. In fact, I was telling a joke. Ha, ha, he's locked in the closet."
Gwen had a feeling her withering stare was lacking in intensity in the green-tinged gloom. "Let him out! I need to ask -"
"Why the emergency generators haven't kicked in? Already did. Switch is in the basement, either it fizzled out in a strange coincidence, or Suzie messed with it. We can manually override it. Come on." He started to march down the hall.
"PC Cooper?" Dr. Patanjali's voice called faintly from the back of the office. "I really would prefer to stay in my closet. If you don't mind. I'd rather not run into Ms. Costello."
Gwen's eyebrows climbed up into her fringe. She stood on the threshold, hesitating, but Harper called for her from down the hall, and her shoulder radio fizzled to life.
"Gwen?"
"Andy! Are you lot okay up there?" She hurried after Harper. "Listen, we're going to try to fix the emergency generator; it's in the basement. Will you be all right?"
"Quiet as the grave here now," Andy replied. "Good thing the hospital's so unused, and Costello can breathe on his own."
"Yeah. Lucky," Gwen agreed.
"Keep your eyes peeled for nefarious bandits, PC Blondie!" Harper yelled into her shoulder as Gwen caught up to him.
"You be on the lookout for grumkins."
"What on earth's a grumkin?" Gwen asked, fumbling her torch out of her belt loop as they approached the stairwell.
"They're from…you know, the books? Never mind; just be careful."
"You, too. Suzie Costello is very determined. Going radio silent on my end now, Andy."
The radio blipped and went quiet as the door to the stairs fell shut behind them. It was darker in the stairwell despite the emergency lights. Gwen made a mental note to include windows in the stairwells the next time she was designing a building, and bit back a giggle. It was possible she was feeling just slightly hysterical. After all, they were probably trapped in this hospital with a serial killer, and no amount of calling her a nefarious bandit or grumkin would make the situation light and airy were they to come face to face.
Her torch revealed an empty landing. She almost gripped Harper's hand in relief, but stopped herself. She was a grown woman, and a PC besides! She felt a little better when Harper took a hold of her arm beneath her shoulder and hung on as her torch lit their way. His shoes scuffed loudly on the stairs, competing with his harsh breathing as they passed the painted number one. Almost there.
It was even darker in the basement.
Gwen looked around, eyes opened as wide as they could go, what little good it did her.
"Swing the light to the left," Harper whispered, and Gwen panned the light slowly across the left wall as Harper kept talking. "He said the generator was in a room to the left - holy fuck!"
Gwen's heart leaped into her throat as Suzie Costello sprang from the shadows. She shrieked, raising her arms in front of her face in an instinctual attempt to protect her throat and eyes from Suzie's attack. She used her hips to unceremoniously shove Harper out of harm's way right before Suzie barreled into her. She lost her grip on the torch in the force of the impact, and it went skittering across the floor, sending flashing light up in a riotous kaleidoscope.
But Suzie wasn't there for Gwen Cooper, and after knocking her aside she ran full tilt for the stairs.
"Harper, grab that torch and fix the power!" Gwen yelled, already taking off after Suzie and the bobbing light of her own torch, one of those fashion disasters that was imminently practical, affixed to a strap around her forehead. Gwen fumbled her baton out of its holster as she ran, trusting Harper to do as he was told for once.
"Andy!" she hissed into her radio. "She's here, she's coming, be careful, Andy!"
Her radio fizzled in reply as she made it up to the landing between the first and second floor. The door to the stairwell opened below them and Gwen's heartbeat sped up. Surely they were friendly, surely Suzie didn't have accomplices, but could she really risk yelling out to them? Before she could decide, Suzie's light suddenly went dead and Gwen lurched to a stop, too late as she walked right into Suzie's trap, an empty trash bin on its side across the stairs. Gwen stumbled and Suzie jumped forward, using the force of her momentum to flip her over the railing.
Gwen screamed as she fell, her hands reaching up to grasp at empty air for the length of one floor before-
Jack
Jack snagged her hand as she went flying past and Gwen slammed into the railing with a loud, "Oof."
"Was that Suzie?" he demanded. "Did Suzie just go by?"
"Yeah, she's cut the power, but we're fixing it," Gwen huffed as he and Ianto pulled her back over the railing.
He knew it, he knew it was Suzie the second they pulled into the drive and the sign wasn't lit up. Ianto had parked up on the curb and kicked a side door open, as the automatic doors were automatically closed. Normally Jack would have said something licentious at the display of force, but he was too busy running inside and pulling out his gun. Poor Gwen just had her baton to deal with a dangerous serial killer.
"She's heading for her father," Jack stated, not that the other two needed him to tell them that. "You keep going up this stairwell. I bet you anything she's circled around and will come at him from the stairs in the north tower. I'll go that way."
"Don't do anything foolish," Ianto warned him as Jack took the stairs two at a time and rammed the door open with his shoulder.
"Trust me!" he called back. The door slammed shut with finality and his boots squeaked on the linoleum as he ran down the hall. He didn't see anyone; the hospital was mainly deserted, and those few patients who remained apparently were taking the cower-in-the-room approach. It was a good choice. A nurse poked her head above the staffing desk in the middle of the floor as he ran by, gasped loudly at the sight of his gun, and dove back down. It couldn't be helped.
It was darker again in the stairwell when he shoved the door open. He nearly lost an eye right then, barely throwing himself to the side as Suzie's scalpel clattered harmlessly against the thick glass in the window. He would feel his landing the next morning, no doubt, but his knee held and he rolled back up to his feet in time to dodge another sharp object. It put a tear in his coat.
He trained his gun on the shadows in the landing above him.
"Anything else you need to get off your chest, Suzie?" he called up.
He was answered with a low laugh.
"So witty, Harkness. Do you get your lines from that American cop show? CSI: Miami?"
"Nah, I don't wear my sunglasses at night." He could just start shooting. He was bound to hit her somewhere. Doubtless she had a gun and would fire back. Even if she got him, it would be worth it to get her.
"No, I don't think you will," Suzie said softly. Jack started. How could she have possibly known what he was thinking? "Because we think the same," Suzie answered his unasked question. "We're both killers, Jack. You're just hung up on the why. You can't fire first if you expect me to talk to you."
"Is that so?" Jack asked, stalling. "You're talking now. I bet you want to tell me all about it."
"About watching a man die? That final gasp of breath, the realization setting in that there'll be no others? It's exciting the first few times, I'll give you that, but it gets old quick. Alex was a boring death, if that's what you came to find out, I feel sorry for you."
"I'm going to fucking rip you apart, Suzie Costello." His vision was clouded with anger, or maybe just the murky light in the stairwell seeping in from the hall outside. He needed to end it, and fast, else he'd give in to his instincts and pump her so full of lead they'd need a crane to lift her heavy body.
"No, you won't. It's not my time. Death and I are old friends, Harkness. He'd tell me if he was coming for me. He's here, now. Waiting for my father. I just want to kill my father. I really could care less about talking to you."
"I can't let you do that."
"You should."
The lights came on with a buzz of florescent lighting and Suzie was suddenly illuminated. Jack aimed for her shoulder, his finger itching on the trigger, when the stairwell door on Suzie's landing flew open. She startled, her gun turning on the new arrival, but Ianto was ready for her and pistol-whipped her across the face with his own gun. Jack stared in shock as Suzie fell to her knees.
"Most people fire those things, you know," he said, running up the stairs and grabbing Suzie by the elbow to haul her up. She blinked dazedly at him, a trickle of blood at her forehead.
"If I fired at point-blank range, you would never get to interrogate her," Ianto said calmly, his steady voice at odds with his shaking hands. "It wouldn't be proper to kill her outright."
Jack grunted in response and tugged out a pair of cuffs from an inner pocket. "Suzie Costello, you have the right…you know, forget it, I don't know what the hell your rights are here. You have the right to not be killed by a serial killer, not to have your corpse experimented on, not to have the words of Emily Dickinson profaned by a murderer. Pretty damn decent rights."
Suzie kept her mouth firmly shut, her eyes hooded. Jack didn't know if he'd been hoping for tears from her, or that maybe she would be hysterical. Instead she was as responsive as a brick, keeping up her stony wall of silence as the Cardiff police and Toshiko arrived soon after. Toshiko took charge, reading Suzie her rights in a firm voice and assuming custody of her with a quick exchange of glances with Jack. His jaw clenched, but he still wasn't officially in Cardiff. Toshiko gave him a sympathetic look before instructing everyone to meet back at the station, the same one they'd been at just that morning. As Jack stared at Suzie being led away, he couldn't help but feel a colossal sense of let-down. So many years spent tracking this woman, and she wasn't even held under his authority. He needed to question her. It burned inside.
"Agent Harkness?" It was Cooper's partner, the tall blond copper. Alfred or something. "Gwen had said you were wanting to see Suzie Costello's father?"
Jack blinked. He had said that, a million years ago. "Yes…"
"Well, it's just, he's upstairs. Alive and breathing. Didn't know if you still might want to have a chat with him?"
It was a good idea. No wonder he had thought of it earlier. He straightened up, ignoring the twinge in his knee, and caught Ianto's eye as the other man was about to leave with Toshiko, a police escort and Suzie.
"We'll both go," Jack said.
***
The room stank of antiseptic and overflowing bed pans, and the curtains were drawn so just a little sunlight crept in. Ianto's nose wrinkled, Jack noted, but he smoothed it out almost immediately, nodding to Gwen's partner with a quiet "Thanks" as he closed the door behind them.
"Did you catch the abomination?" came a querulous voice from the bed. Jack took a step closer, while Ianto stayed by the door, leaning back and looking impassive. It was all a show, but he played it very well.
"Do you typically refer to your daughter as an abomination?" Jack asked, trying to keep his voice light for the moment. Costello was a very scared man, he reminded himself. He'd need to be subtle. Unfortunately, Jack and subtlety went together like oil and water.
"I have no daughter," Costello said, sniffling into a tissue. "My name is Jack Griffin. Max told me there was an abomination wandering the halls of this hospital."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "Griffin, is it? Cute."
Costello said nothing in reply. Jack took in the machines, the tubes, the man's disturbingly half-finished face. He had a weak chin that plastic surgery had done nothing to fix. Jack fought back the urge to take him by the shoulders and shake him. He reached into his inner coat pocket and pulled out a photo in a clear plastic sleeve.
"So this woman here? You don't recognize her at all? Anything ring a bell?"
Costello recoiled from the picture as if Jack was thrusting a poisonous snake in his face.
"Take it away! She looks like my own poor Suzie! Oh, I can't bear it!"
Jack secreted the picture once more and Costello took a dramatic shuddering breath.
"What can you tell me about Suzie? Your own poor Suzie Costello." Costello's eye started to close and Jack leaned forward, snapping his fingers in front of the old man's face. "Wakey-wakey. Suzie Costello. What do you know about her?"
"She was so beautiful," Costello whispered. "So terrible what happened to her."
"What? What happened to her?" Jack's stomach lurched. Whatever Costello was going to say, it was going to be bad. He almost took back his question. He had Suzie, did he really need to know what her father was going to say? But he did. He needed to know why.
"Evil," Costello nodded solemnly. "An evil man crept into her room at nights and did evil things. She was so dirty after that, who would touch her?"
Jack wanted to kill him, strangle him with the rope of his own confession, hidden behind the flimsy shield of a different name.
"My Suzie would read me poetry, before," Costello continued, fingers moving restlessly on his bed sheet. "Always pronounced everything just so. She was a very good reader, my Suzie. And beautiful, a beautiful child. She could have been a film star, but that wouldn't do."
"Why not, Mr. Griffin?" Jack managed to ask over his wave of disgust.
"Why, it's perverted, isn't it?"
Jack had seen a lot of hypocrisy in his career at the CIA, but the father of Suzie Costello was taking his breath away. Ianto looked like he was going to throw up all over the hospital bed. Jack almost wished he would, just to get the new Jack Griffin as dirty on the outside as he was on the inside.
"There's not much that I find perverted," Jack answered. "Sex, for example. I don't care how kinky it gets, sex is fun and beautiful." Ianto shifted his stance over by his place by the door. "A man forcing himself on his daughter, on the other hand, now that I think is perverted, and you'll pay for it, Costello."
"It's Griffin, and I never touched my Suzie but for when she asked me to!"
Jack's guts churned, but he made his voice hard and cold as ice as he stood to leave. "And that is the saddest thing I've ever heard on so many levels. Enjoy your stay at Spire, Jack Griffin. Your next accommodations won't be as warm. You have my word, from one Jack to another."
Part Nine