SPN Fic: In the Line of Duty (Gen, PG, Super_Summer)
Yeah, this sounded a hell of a lot easier than it turned out to be. Sheesh.
Title: In the Line of Duty
Author: dodger_winslow
Challenge: super_summer Week 6: Playthings/Nightshifter Extra: law enforcement/guilt
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,700
Spoilers: Nightshifter
John Winchester Warning: There is no John Winchester in this story.
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while.
Summary: The older man was glaring at Dean like he was so full of shit his eyes were brown. Dean might have resented it more if ninety-eight percent of what he’d just told the man hadn’t been pure, one hundred percent bullshit.
In the Line of Duty
Sam accepted one of the cookies she offered, gave her a very fed-like nod in acknowledgement and appreciation. Dean shook the plate of lace-like doilies of death off with an equally fed-like refusal. Good cop/bad cop, even down to cookie protocols.
"I know this is a little hard to swallow, Mr. Reznick," Dean said, keeping his voice as coldly detached as possible. "But short of having the President call you himself, I’m not sure what else I can do to convince you I’m dead serious here."
The older man was glaring at Dean like he was so full of shit his eyes were brown. Dean might have resented it more if ninety-eight percent of what he’d just told the man hadn’t been pure, one hundred percent bullshit.
"There isn’t a damn thing that you can say that will convince me," Mike Reznick announced, his tone in full-on fuck you mode. "I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, you know. I was a Marine. Served twenty years before I retired."
Irma Reznick set the plate of sugar-dusted cookies on the coffee table and resumed her seat on the couch at her husband’s side.
"My father was in the Corps," Dean said, using the truth to his advantage for a change. "And I promise you, sir; I am not trying to make you out a fool. Nothing could be farther from the truth here." He looked at Irma, told her, "Ron was our colleague. He was our friend." He didn’t have to sell Ron’s mother on that idea. She’d believed every word he’d told her since they hit the door with fake IDs in hand. He turned his attention back to the old man. "All we’re trying to do here is make it right by him with his family."
That bought him a little ground. The man was still glaring at him like he’d suggested the world was flat, but he was trying to believe what Dean told him now. He wanted to believe it, and that was half the battle with any lie ever told. Just finding something the mark wanted to believe.
And Mike Reznick wanted to believe his son wasn’t what he’d been told Ron was. Crazy at best. Crazy and a thief at worst.
Dean leaned forward a little, fixing the other man with the most sincere, I-am-not-bullshitting-you look in his collection; and he had quite a collection of those. "Tell me what I can do to convince you," he ordered, figuring an order couldn’t be a bad tack to take with an old Marine.
Mike shifted his gaze to Sam. That was a good sign. Once they started to look at Sam, the deal was half closed. Sam had the best believe-me face in all fifty states. And Puerto Rico. Hell, sometimes even Dean believed him, and he knew when Sam was lying.
"What could we possibly have to gain by telling you this, Mister Reznick?" Sam asked the old man logically. Compassionately. Gently. "Why would we say these things to you if they weren’t true?"
"I don’t know," Mike admitted. His voice was frustrated. He still wasn’t completely sold, but he was trying so hard. "I’ve been sitting here trying to figure that out myself." He looked back to Dean. "What could you have to gain?" he demanded. "Other than making a fool out of an old man, what possible reason could you have to lie?"
"Maybe they aren’t lying," Irma suggested quietly. There were tears in her cornflower blue eyes. She looked the very picture of a mother who would have doted on her child every moment of every day while he was growing up. Tying his shoes for him. Knitting him mittens and making sure he always took them to school. Baking him lace-like doilies of death and calling them cookies.
Ron might not have had a long life, but if his mother was any indication, he had a pretty good one. Warm and full and rich with love, if nothing else.
Dean felt a twist of guilt in his gut, forced himself not to wonder for the hundredth time if Sam was right, if he’d just lied his ass off to Ron, if maybe the guy wouldn’t still be alive, sitting in his den making up conspiracy theories about Mandroids and the like.
"We aren’t lying," Dean lied. "We’re telling you the truth, Mr. Reznick. Ron was a field analyst for us. One of our best. He’s the one who found this thing, tracked it down, and locked it in for us to take out. The nation owes him a great debt off gratitude, even if they’ll never know it."
"Why not?" Mike demanded. It was the first question he’d asked that didn’t sound a lot like he wanted to slug Dean, just take him out for daring to show up at his house and tell him lies about a son he’d already given up on as worthless. Deluded. Crazy. "If he really was a federal agent, then why can’t you admit as much? Why can’t the nation be told he wasn’t a crazy man who took two dozen people hostage in a bank for no reason?"
"Because the whole operation is still classified," Dean told him. "Surely, as a Marine, you understand that, sir. Understand there are things we still can’t talk about as openly as we’d like, one of those things being the kind of work your son did for the government."
"Things like mandroids?" Mike Reznick sneered. The disdain in his tone was as much insult as one man was ever likely to muster for a child he most likely loved as much as his wife did.
Dean let the flush of anger that crawled up his spine work for him. He let it show, let it stain his expression with half-veiled outrage before he looked down, focused on the hands he held clasped together between his knees. "Sir," he started. "I …." He let the statement hang for a moment, then thrust to his feet like he’d been overcome by his own anger. Or maybe by something else. But rendered mute by an emotion at least. Emotion shutting the bad cop down was always the deal clincher in something like this. When the tough guy got verklempt, even old Marines had to give it up and believe.
Dean walked over to the Reznick’s fireplace, stared at one of the framed photos of Ron that sat on the mantle. It looked like he was at some kind of science fiction convention or something. He was standing next to a guy in a storm trooper’s uniform, grinning like he was having the time of his life.
"Mr. Reznick," Sam said, stepping easily into the void Dean left by his retreat. "I know how hard it is to believe something like this. But the simple truth of the matter is that mandr-"
"You can’t tell him that," Dean interrupted right on cue.
Sam stopped. Even with his back to him, Dean could almost see his little brother looking conflicted. Sammy had a good set of conflicted expressions, too. Almost as good as Dean’s collection of I-am-not-bullshitting-you expressions.
Sam stood, walked over to stand beside him before he said, speaking in a stage whisper the Reznick’s would have to be deaf not to hear, "Why not? What would it hurt to tell them the truth here? Ron deserves that. He deserves a lot more than that, but at least we can do that for him, can’t we?"
Dean squared his shoulders, gave the widely-smiling Ron photo one more moment of consideration before he turned, faced Ron’s father with as stern an expression as he could muster. "Your son was a field analyst for us," Dean said, keeping his voice utterly devoid of inflection and, by doing so, making it seem like he was just a couple seconds short of breaking down entirely. "He was one of the finest men I’ve ever had the privilege to know. One of the smartest, one of the most dedicated. I’m not going to sully that now by leaking classified information. Ron wouldn’t want that. It’s the last thing he’d want, and I’m not going to do it, even if it means you never believe we came here to do anything but make an old man look a fool."
Reznick bought it then. He swallowed the whole story: hook, line and sinker.
"I think we’ve taken up enough of the Reznick’s time, Agent Solo," Dean informed Sam, clipping his words like he was angry enough to stomp out and leave a father to grieve his son in ignorance.
Sam sighed, gave in the way good cops always give in: gracefully. He offered the Reznicks a compassionate, I’d-tell-you-if-I-could-but-he-won’t-let-me look and said, "We are so sorry for your loss. Ron was a good man. He was a good friend."
"Ron was a good boy," Ron’s mother said, tears tracking down her soft, worn cheeks.
"Smart boy," Mike Reznick said, standing up to face Dean man-to-man, squaring his shoulders up the way Dean had only a few moments earlier. "Always was the smart one in his class. Didn’t limit himself to traditional thinking. Was always looking to the future, trying to see past our limitations as a species." The old man smiled sadly. "That’s the way he always said it. He’d tell me, ‘Dad, we’ve got to learn to see past our limitations as a species.’"
"He was a patriot," Dean told Ron’s father.
"I’d hoped he’d be a Marine some day," Reznick replied. There were tears in his eyes now, just as there were in his wife’s. "But he wasn’t cut out for it. Never took to the physical end of what serving his country required."
"Ron’s strength was in his intellect," Sam said. "And in his vision."
"He saw things others missed," Dean added. "You should be proud of him for that, sir." He looked at Irma and added, "You both should be."
"He wasn’t robbing the bank then," Mike said, needing to hear Dean actually say it.
Dean hesitated a moment, then allowed like it was a major concession, "I can’t really tell you any details about how your son died, Mr. Reznick. I can’t even tell you he died in the line of duty. But I can tell you, he was right. If that wasn’t the truth, my partner and I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now." He met Mike Reznick’s eyes, told Ron Reznick’s father what Ron would have wanted him to hear: "I hope that’s enough for you, sir. Enough for you to understand the kind of man your son was. The kind of man my partner and I respected. The kind of man my partner and I were proud to work with, and to call a friend."
Mike Reznick shoved a hand out, saying, "I appreciate that, Special Agent Ryan."
Dean shook the man’s hand, took comfort in the strength of his grip, in how much that grip proved Mike Reznick might not understand the details of how his son died, but he understood the way he died now: trying to help people, not trying to rob them blind.
"Mrs. Reznick," Dean said to Ron’s mother, dipping his head a little, giving her the bad cop version of cool stand-offishness.
"I’ll walk you to the door," she said.
They left Mike Reznick standing in the living room, staring at the smiling picture of his son that sat on the mantle. Irma Reznick walked them to the front door, opened it so they could leave.
"Thank you," she said to them, her voice quiet, gentle, motherly.
"Just doing our job, ma’am," Dean returned in his best asshole fed voice.
She smiled at him, gave him a look that cut through every I-am-not-bullshitting-you expression he’d ever collected. "I’m not my husband," she told him not unkindly. "I’m just Ron’s mother. And it comforts me to know he had friends like the two of you."
"Ma’am?" Sam ventured hesitantly.
She looked from Dean, to Sam, and back again. "Friends willing to go through all this for him," she clarified after a moment. "Ron’s father’s opinion was always very important to him. That’s why he became a security guard instead of a writer. He wanted his father to be proud of him, and that’s as close to a Marine uniform as Ronny was ever going to get. So I appreciate you coming here, giving him something to hold on to. And I’m sure Ron would, too."
"Ma’am, I’m not sure what you-" Dean started, but she interrupted him by putting a hand on his arm.
"I never wanted my son to be a Marine," she told Dean quietly. "All I wanted him to be was happy. To have good friends. To live a good life." She smiled at Dean, looked straight into his eyes with a look that told him she knew every word he’d said over the last thirty minutes was pure, unadulterated bullshit. "I have every faith he got everything I wanted for him, even if he didn’t get it for as long as I would have wanted him to have it."
Dean looked down for a moment, a little shamed to have his façade stripped away as easily as this woman stripped it away. He’d always had trouble with mothers. He could lie to God himself and make the Big Guy at least consider the possibility that what Dean Winchester was telling Him was the God’s honest truth. But he couldn’t lie to mothers. Not to the ones who knew their sons. Not the ones who loved their sons.
When he looked back up again, Dean met Irma Reznick’s eyes and told her the truth. "Your son was right about the Mandroids," he said. "He didn’t have all the details in the proper slots, but he was right. He wasn’t crazy, and he wasn’t a fool. He was right. Sam and I not being feds doesn’t change that, Ma’am. The only thing it changes is how much of a risk it was for my brother and I to come here to tell you the truth. If not the strict truth about Ron’s profession, at least the truth about how he died: in the line of duty."
She looked at him, studied him like she was considering the idea he was telling her the God’s honest truth even though she was almost certain he had to still be lying.
"I’m telling you the truth, Mrs. Reznick," Dean said quietly. "I swear it on my father’s soul."
She blinked at him. Her eyes teared up again. "Thank you," she said after several seconds of silence.
"I’m sorry it turned out the way it did," Dean said. "I wish I could have …" he looked away for a moment, then looked back again. "I wish it could have turned out differently."
"I do, too," she agreed. Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, "We won’t mention to Agent Henderickson that you were here. I’m assuming that’s the way you’d prefer it?"
Dean winced a little, reached around to scratch at the back of his neck. "He was here?"
"Shortly after Ron died," Irma verified. Then she added, "He didn’t know Ron at all. I can tell now that he didn’t know either one of you, either."
"He thinks he does."
"He’s wrong," Irma said. "I could tell that the moment I saw your eyes."
"My eyes?" Dean repeated.
She nodded. "The eyes are the windows to the soul," she informed him. Then she smiled, reached out and patted the side of his face in a way he might have pulled away from if she’d been anyone other than Ron Reznick’s mother. "And I can see Ron in your eyes, child. If I couldn’t, I would have never let Han Solo and Jack Ryan in the front door."
They left her standing in the doorway, not sure why her son died, but knowing beyond any shadow of a shadow of a doubt that he’d died the same way she knew he’d always lived: a good man with a good heart who made good friends of everyone he met.
finis
Title: In the Line of Duty
Author: dodger_winslow
Challenge: super_summer Week 6: Playthings/Nightshifter Extra: law enforcement/guilt
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,700
Spoilers: Nightshifter
John Winchester Warning: There is no John Winchester in this story.
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while.
Summary: The older man was glaring at Dean like he was so full of shit his eyes were brown. Dean might have resented it more if ninety-eight percent of what he’d just told the man hadn’t been pure, one hundred percent bullshit.
In the Line of Duty
Sam accepted one of the cookies she offered, gave her a very fed-like nod in acknowledgement and appreciation. Dean shook the plate of lace-like doilies of death off with an equally fed-like refusal. Good cop/bad cop, even down to cookie protocols.
"I know this is a little hard to swallow, Mr. Reznick," Dean said, keeping his voice as coldly detached as possible. "But short of having the President call you himself, I’m not sure what else I can do to convince you I’m dead serious here."
The older man was glaring at Dean like he was so full of shit his eyes were brown. Dean might have resented it more if ninety-eight percent of what he’d just told the man hadn’t been pure, one hundred percent bullshit.
"There isn’t a damn thing that you can say that will convince me," Mike Reznick announced, his tone in full-on fuck you mode. "I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, you know. I was a Marine. Served twenty years before I retired."
Irma Reznick set the plate of sugar-dusted cookies on the coffee table and resumed her seat on the couch at her husband’s side.
"My father was in the Corps," Dean said, using the truth to his advantage for a change. "And I promise you, sir; I am not trying to make you out a fool. Nothing could be farther from the truth here." He looked at Irma, told her, "Ron was our colleague. He was our friend." He didn’t have to sell Ron’s mother on that idea. She’d believed every word he’d told her since they hit the door with fake IDs in hand. He turned his attention back to the old man. "All we’re trying to do here is make it right by him with his family."
That bought him a little ground. The man was still glaring at him like he’d suggested the world was flat, but he was trying to believe what Dean told him now. He wanted to believe it, and that was half the battle with any lie ever told. Just finding something the mark wanted to believe.
And Mike Reznick wanted to believe his son wasn’t what he’d been told Ron was. Crazy at best. Crazy and a thief at worst.
Dean leaned forward a little, fixing the other man with the most sincere, I-am-not-bullshitting-you look in his collection; and he had quite a collection of those. "Tell me what I can do to convince you," he ordered, figuring an order couldn’t be a bad tack to take with an old Marine.
Mike shifted his gaze to Sam. That was a good sign. Once they started to look at Sam, the deal was half closed. Sam had the best believe-me face in all fifty states. And Puerto Rico. Hell, sometimes even Dean believed him, and he knew when Sam was lying.
"What could we possibly have to gain by telling you this, Mister Reznick?" Sam asked the old man logically. Compassionately. Gently. "Why would we say these things to you if they weren’t true?"
"I don’t know," Mike admitted. His voice was frustrated. He still wasn’t completely sold, but he was trying so hard. "I’ve been sitting here trying to figure that out myself." He looked back to Dean. "What could you have to gain?" he demanded. "Other than making a fool out of an old man, what possible reason could you have to lie?"
"Maybe they aren’t lying," Irma suggested quietly. There were tears in her cornflower blue eyes. She looked the very picture of a mother who would have doted on her child every moment of every day while he was growing up. Tying his shoes for him. Knitting him mittens and making sure he always took them to school. Baking him lace-like doilies of death and calling them cookies.
Ron might not have had a long life, but if his mother was any indication, he had a pretty good one. Warm and full and rich with love, if nothing else.
Dean felt a twist of guilt in his gut, forced himself not to wonder for the hundredth time if Sam was right, if he’d just lied his ass off to Ron, if maybe the guy wouldn’t still be alive, sitting in his den making up conspiracy theories about Mandroids and the like.
"We aren’t lying," Dean lied. "We’re telling you the truth, Mr. Reznick. Ron was a field analyst for us. One of our best. He’s the one who found this thing, tracked it down, and locked it in for us to take out. The nation owes him a great debt off gratitude, even if they’ll never know it."
"Why not?" Mike demanded. It was the first question he’d asked that didn’t sound a lot like he wanted to slug Dean, just take him out for daring to show up at his house and tell him lies about a son he’d already given up on as worthless. Deluded. Crazy. "If he really was a federal agent, then why can’t you admit as much? Why can’t the nation be told he wasn’t a crazy man who took two dozen people hostage in a bank for no reason?"
"Because the whole operation is still classified," Dean told him. "Surely, as a Marine, you understand that, sir. Understand there are things we still can’t talk about as openly as we’d like, one of those things being the kind of work your son did for the government."
"Things like mandroids?" Mike Reznick sneered. The disdain in his tone was as much insult as one man was ever likely to muster for a child he most likely loved as much as his wife did.
Dean let the flush of anger that crawled up his spine work for him. He let it show, let it stain his expression with half-veiled outrage before he looked down, focused on the hands he held clasped together between his knees. "Sir," he started. "I …." He let the statement hang for a moment, then thrust to his feet like he’d been overcome by his own anger. Or maybe by something else. But rendered mute by an emotion at least. Emotion shutting the bad cop down was always the deal clincher in something like this. When the tough guy got verklempt, even old Marines had to give it up and believe.
Dean walked over to the Reznick’s fireplace, stared at one of the framed photos of Ron that sat on the mantle. It looked like he was at some kind of science fiction convention or something. He was standing next to a guy in a storm trooper’s uniform, grinning like he was having the time of his life.
"Mr. Reznick," Sam said, stepping easily into the void Dean left by his retreat. "I know how hard it is to believe something like this. But the simple truth of the matter is that mandr-"
"You can’t tell him that," Dean interrupted right on cue.
Sam stopped. Even with his back to him, Dean could almost see his little brother looking conflicted. Sammy had a good set of conflicted expressions, too. Almost as good as Dean’s collection of I-am-not-bullshitting-you expressions.
Sam stood, walked over to stand beside him before he said, speaking in a stage whisper the Reznick’s would have to be deaf not to hear, "Why not? What would it hurt to tell them the truth here? Ron deserves that. He deserves a lot more than that, but at least we can do that for him, can’t we?"
Dean squared his shoulders, gave the widely-smiling Ron photo one more moment of consideration before he turned, faced Ron’s father with as stern an expression as he could muster. "Your son was a field analyst for us," Dean said, keeping his voice utterly devoid of inflection and, by doing so, making it seem like he was just a couple seconds short of breaking down entirely. "He was one of the finest men I’ve ever had the privilege to know. One of the smartest, one of the most dedicated. I’m not going to sully that now by leaking classified information. Ron wouldn’t want that. It’s the last thing he’d want, and I’m not going to do it, even if it means you never believe we came here to do anything but make an old man look a fool."
Reznick bought it then. He swallowed the whole story: hook, line and sinker.
"I think we’ve taken up enough of the Reznick’s time, Agent Solo," Dean informed Sam, clipping his words like he was angry enough to stomp out and leave a father to grieve his son in ignorance.
Sam sighed, gave in the way good cops always give in: gracefully. He offered the Reznicks a compassionate, I’d-tell-you-if-I-could-but-he-won’t-let-me look and said, "We are so sorry for your loss. Ron was a good man. He was a good friend."
"Ron was a good boy," Ron’s mother said, tears tracking down her soft, worn cheeks.
"Smart boy," Mike Reznick said, standing up to face Dean man-to-man, squaring his shoulders up the way Dean had only a few moments earlier. "Always was the smart one in his class. Didn’t limit himself to traditional thinking. Was always looking to the future, trying to see past our limitations as a species." The old man smiled sadly. "That’s the way he always said it. He’d tell me, ‘Dad, we’ve got to learn to see past our limitations as a species.’"
"He was a patriot," Dean told Ron’s father.
"I’d hoped he’d be a Marine some day," Reznick replied. There were tears in his eyes now, just as there were in his wife’s. "But he wasn’t cut out for it. Never took to the physical end of what serving his country required."
"Ron’s strength was in his intellect," Sam said. "And in his vision."
"He saw things others missed," Dean added. "You should be proud of him for that, sir." He looked at Irma and added, "You both should be."
"He wasn’t robbing the bank then," Mike said, needing to hear Dean actually say it.
Dean hesitated a moment, then allowed like it was a major concession, "I can’t really tell you any details about how your son died, Mr. Reznick. I can’t even tell you he died in the line of duty. But I can tell you, he was right. If that wasn’t the truth, my partner and I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now." He met Mike Reznick’s eyes, told Ron Reznick’s father what Ron would have wanted him to hear: "I hope that’s enough for you, sir. Enough for you to understand the kind of man your son was. The kind of man my partner and I respected. The kind of man my partner and I were proud to work with, and to call a friend."
Mike Reznick shoved a hand out, saying, "I appreciate that, Special Agent Ryan."
Dean shook the man’s hand, took comfort in the strength of his grip, in how much that grip proved Mike Reznick might not understand the details of how his son died, but he understood the way he died now: trying to help people, not trying to rob them blind.
"Mrs. Reznick," Dean said to Ron’s mother, dipping his head a little, giving her the bad cop version of cool stand-offishness.
"I’ll walk you to the door," she said.
They left Mike Reznick standing in the living room, staring at the smiling picture of his son that sat on the mantle. Irma Reznick walked them to the front door, opened it so they could leave.
"Thank you," she said to them, her voice quiet, gentle, motherly.
"Just doing our job, ma’am," Dean returned in his best asshole fed voice.
She smiled at him, gave him a look that cut through every I-am-not-bullshitting-you expression he’d ever collected. "I’m not my husband," she told him not unkindly. "I’m just Ron’s mother. And it comforts me to know he had friends like the two of you."
"Ma’am?" Sam ventured hesitantly.
She looked from Dean, to Sam, and back again. "Friends willing to go through all this for him," she clarified after a moment. "Ron’s father’s opinion was always very important to him. That’s why he became a security guard instead of a writer. He wanted his father to be proud of him, and that’s as close to a Marine uniform as Ronny was ever going to get. So I appreciate you coming here, giving him something to hold on to. And I’m sure Ron would, too."
"Ma’am, I’m not sure what you-" Dean started, but she interrupted him by putting a hand on his arm.
"I never wanted my son to be a Marine," she told Dean quietly. "All I wanted him to be was happy. To have good friends. To live a good life." She smiled at Dean, looked straight into his eyes with a look that told him she knew every word he’d said over the last thirty minutes was pure, unadulterated bullshit. "I have every faith he got everything I wanted for him, even if he didn’t get it for as long as I would have wanted him to have it."
Dean looked down for a moment, a little shamed to have his façade stripped away as easily as this woman stripped it away. He’d always had trouble with mothers. He could lie to God himself and make the Big Guy at least consider the possibility that what Dean Winchester was telling Him was the God’s honest truth. But he couldn’t lie to mothers. Not to the ones who knew their sons. Not the ones who loved their sons.
When he looked back up again, Dean met Irma Reznick’s eyes and told her the truth. "Your son was right about the Mandroids," he said. "He didn’t have all the details in the proper slots, but he was right. He wasn’t crazy, and he wasn’t a fool. He was right. Sam and I not being feds doesn’t change that, Ma’am. The only thing it changes is how much of a risk it was for my brother and I to come here to tell you the truth. If not the strict truth about Ron’s profession, at least the truth about how he died: in the line of duty."
She looked at him, studied him like she was considering the idea he was telling her the God’s honest truth even though she was almost certain he had to still be lying.
"I’m telling you the truth, Mrs. Reznick," Dean said quietly. "I swear it on my father’s soul."
She blinked at him. Her eyes teared up again. "Thank you," she said after several seconds of silence.
"I’m sorry it turned out the way it did," Dean said. "I wish I could have …" he looked away for a moment, then looked back again. "I wish it could have turned out differently."
"I do, too," she agreed. Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, "We won’t mention to Agent Henderickson that you were here. I’m assuming that’s the way you’d prefer it?"
Dean winced a little, reached around to scratch at the back of his neck. "He was here?"
"Shortly after Ron died," Irma verified. Then she added, "He didn’t know Ron at all. I can tell now that he didn’t know either one of you, either."
"He thinks he does."
"He’s wrong," Irma said. "I could tell that the moment I saw your eyes."
"My eyes?" Dean repeated.
She nodded. "The eyes are the windows to the soul," she informed him. Then she smiled, reached out and patted the side of his face in a way he might have pulled away from if she’d been anyone other than Ron Reznick’s mother. "And I can see Ron in your eyes, child. If I couldn’t, I would have never let Han Solo and Jack Ryan in the front door."
They left her standing in the doorway, not sure why her son died, but knowing beyond any shadow of a shadow of a doubt that he’d died the same way she knew he’d always lived: a good man with a good heart who made good friends of everyone he met.
finis