Thank you, thank you, thank you to Martha and Kitty who had to beta this when it was a mess. And did it while whimpering in horror at my ruthlessness to the boys. And had to remind me of things like, "not all computers will show cyrillic fonts, dear." They're heroic.

Please send feedback to dasha_mte@yahoo.com

This story is a sequel to: I Still Believe

Iceberg

Part I

Kak I v sotni raz, vnov' zima preshla,
ya na tron lyubvi ledyanoi zashla.
I zamyorzla tak - netu bol'she sil. O
lyubvi menya ty zachem prosil?
---Nepagoda

Like hundreds of times before, winter has come again, and I must climb the icy throne of love. And I am so frozen! I have no more
strength! What are you asking me about love for? ---Bad weather, Alla Pugacheva

~Jim~

"So, in all of that, did you and Blair make a decision about college?"

Beside me, Stacey nods, her permed, short hair bouncing around her face. "If I go at all, it will be the Boumond Institute in San Francisco."

If she goes at all? "That's the cooking school, isn't it?"

"Culinary institute. You sound surprised." She squints a little, trying to make me out in the dark, but the grey and overcast day has turned to a dark and murky evening, and the headlights of passing cars might not be enough to show my face.

"Not, surprised, exactly. Just. With your parents, I always assumed you'd go for something, well, eggheadish." I say it cheerfully, so she knows there's no pressure.

"Well, maybe. If things had been different. If I'd been normal. But I think I've had enough of that kind of excitement. I want something challenging and fun, but nothing anybody would...kill over or anything."

"Yeah. I can see that."

"And the money's pretty good, if you know what you're doing...."

"But, somehow you don't sound convinced?"

"Well, sometimes I wonder, you know, what's the point? In trying to have a normal life, I mean. Because I'm not ever going to be normal. I don't even know what 'normal' means."

Why the hell didn't she have this conversation with Blair yesterday? Why wasn't it Blair's turn to take her to the airport? Why can't this be a normal Thanksgiving where we keep her until Sunday morning, so we have time to deal with this kind of freaky shit?

But she is not saying this to Blair. She is saying this to me. And we are only 10 minutes away from the airport, so I am going to have to hurry.

"What do you mean?" Oh, yeah. That's real insightful.

She's quiet for a while, and I'm not sure if she is still working out the answer or wondering if she should be telling me. At last she says, "I thought I could catch up, you know? And I am, sort of, with the school work. In another two years, I'll be finished with 'high school.' I tried really hard, I worked summers, I hung out with girls 'my age' and learned to act just like them and I thought....I could just jump into my life and be...normal. Have the feelings a young woman has, have the life a young woman has...but it isn't working out that way."

I speak very carefully. "It doesn't look like you're doing too bad from here. I mean, your grades are pretty good, right? You have friends? You learned the clarinet and joined the band - this is some kind of competition concert you're going back early for, right?"

"Yeah, and I really like all of that. But no matter what happens, I'm still going to have all those missing years that everybody else has. No matter what happens, I'm not going to be normal."

I change lanes, thinking. Thinking hard. I'm going to get Blair for this. "What does normal mean, exactly?"

"I don't know. To be like everybody else, I guess. Whatever that is."

"But, see, Stacey, that's just the point. Nobody actually is normal, if normal is just what everybody thinks everybody else is. It's just a myth that everybody believes."

She turns toward me in the dark. "Well, ok. I can see that there are less 'normal' people than people think. But somebody has to be normal."

"Hardly anybody. Or that's what Blair says."

She drops her head. She won't come out and say it, but I think she doesn't believe me.

It is not quite drizzling hard enough to keep the windshield wipers busy. They leave annoying streaks on the windshield. I turn them off.

I think of her spending her life - going to cooking school, not going to cooking school, getting married, not getting married - always beating herself up over not being 'normal.' She's a great kid. Who the hell cares if she's normal! Even if there is such a thing.

"Stacey, how normal do you think I am?"

"Oh. Well. That's easy. You and Blair are the sanest, most normal people I know."

"Ok. Listen. There are big holes in my life too, Stacey. Whole years I don't really remember. A kind of lost time, like you. It doesn't make me less 'normal.' Life is just like that sometimes. Things happen."

"I don't understand," she says in a small voice. Good going, Ellison. You've scared her.

"I've forgotten things that happened to me. Big things."

"Oh."

"And there's other stuff. About me."

And the smell in the car is suddenly an entirely new brand of anxiety. I swallow, guessing what's coming, hoping I'm wrong.

Stacey says, "Last year, Blair sent me a letter. He said, no matter how messy things got, I wasn't to worry. Everything would be fine. And that no matter what happened, to remember that you both loved me."

I swallow hard. "I'm glad. I should have thought of that myself."

"There wasn't anything in the news in Portland. So I went to the central library where they have the out-of-town newspapers."

She is quiet, waiting for me to say something. The smell of anxiety in the car may well be mine. "Would it matter to you if it were true?"

"Matter to me? You and Blair took care of me when I was a total basket case! You protected me no matter what! You forgave me for being an utter dork! You're like my family! How is anything like that going to matter to me?"

I don't know if what doesn't matter is Blair being a fraud or me being a freak. I hope she means it, but I don't let myself go there right now. This isn't about me. "Then stop worrying about having a life that's normal and have the life you want. Go to cooking school, if that's what you want. Don't worry about anything else."

We are close to the airport now, and as the traffic pattern gets weird I have to concentrate more on the road. Stacey is lost in thought anyway. She doesn't speak again until I have found a spot in short term parking.

I walk her through ticketing and sit with her at the gate until they call her flight. Every year one of us takes her to the airport and sits with her till the last minute. This year is just the same. She talks about her classmates and her teachers, tells stories about the dorm mascot, a gerbil named Mortimer who was apparently Houdini in his last life and regularly busts out of his habitrail and heads for parts south. Except she holds my hand. Hard, for the whole half hour until her flight is called. She hugs me before she picks up her backpack, and whispers, "I love you."

On the way home, I fantasize about killing Blair. I pray I haven't screwed things up with Stacey too badly. And I hope I am not being arrogant and stupid, thinking that I haven't. Not that I believe I've 'fixed' her. She's at that awkward age where young people feel like misfits and outsiders regardless of the fact that almost everyone they know feels the exact same way. But if she can just hold on until she finds her own place in the world, she'll be ok. She's a fantastic kid; how could she not be ok?

I am halfway up the stairs when I hear Blair on the phone. He sounds upset. Not very upset. Tense is the word I'm looking for. Hell. "Jim will be home any minute. As soon as he gets in, we'll come get you. Just stay where you are."

The answer on the other end is slurred, and I can't make it out. Blair's response is soft, the upset buried under low-key kindness. "Hey, no big deal. This is what friends are for. Just stay where you are."

He is hanging up the phone as I open the door. "What's up, Chief?"

"Joel needs a ride. He got drunk, he's at some dive on 17th and Montpelier."

"Why?"

"What other kind of bar is open on Thanksgiving?"

"No--Why is he drunk?"

"Yeah, right," Blair says, with that little snort that tells me once again I haven't been paying attention to something interpersonal and important and messy.

I don't ask him about it on the way. I really don't want to face another emotional crisis tonight, although apparently I am going to have to. And in the meantime, I will be a good boy, do whatever Blair tells me to. I will.

There is plenty of parking downtown. Everyone else is at home, digesting turkey and watching football. Blair hardly waits till the truck is parked to bounce out into the cold, misting rain. I follow more slowly, taking in the drab and somewhat rundown storefronts. "Charming," I say, as I catch up to Sandburg at the door of the dive in question. He motions me to shush and charges in, towing me behind him.

The music is blaring, and the smoke is a dense fog filling the place from floor to ceiling. I grit my teeth and follow Blair to the end of the bar. I don't hear what Blair says to Joel. Joel's eyes are glassy enough that I doubt he hears it either. But pretty soon we are headed back to the door, steering Joel between us.

The cold, damp air is a tremendous relief. For Joel, too, I think, because he stops and closes his eyes for a moment. "Give me your keys," Blair says. As Joel hands them over, Blair turns to me. "I'll take his car; you follow us?"

"Sure."

"Joel, can you remember where you parked?"

"It's over there," I point. Blair nods and nudges his charge to get him moving. I don't head for the truck until it's clear they are going to make it. Even then, I half-listen as Blair opens the doors and gets Taggart settled. Blair is being awfully subdued about all this--and awfully unsurprised. I wonder when he's going to start with the questions--Lord knows, if it were me smashed in a dive on a major holiday, we'd be half-way through the third-degree by now. But we are on South Lewis before Sandburg breaks the silence with an almost-casual, "Self-destructive just doesn't sound like you Joel."

There is a short silence in the car ahead of me, then: "Aw, hell, Blair. I really screwed up this time."

"What happened?"

"I was just an asshole...."

"Joel."

"It was at dinner. Everybody was there, you know. All the kids...."

"Ok."

"And everybody was going around saying what they were thankful for, why they were grateful to God." The next part is mumbled and slurred. I can't make it out.

"And then what happened?"

"I stood up and said...that they were fools. God doesn't give us anything. He just takes stuff away."

"Aw, no."

Taggart is crying now. It occurs to me that I shouldn't be listening, but, dammit, this is Joel! As much as I would rather not be involved, as much as I hate 'processing' things and 'confronting your issues'...this is Joel. What the hell is going on?

"With the kids right there! I said it with the kids right there, with everybody....and do you know the worst part, Blair? It was true!"

"Joel--"

"Oh, come on! Don't you try to tell me--what have you ever done but fight to keep what little the Dear Lord leaves us with?"

"Joel..." Don't push, Chief, I plea silently. There's no reasoning with him now. Don't push. "Ah, Joel...." He doesn't push. The silence stretches till we turn off Lewis.

"Simon's been shot twice in the last 3 years. And that doesn't get into the attempts on his life in the fucking hospital."

"And Simon is fine, now. I think that might count as a miracle right there."

"So has Jim. Been shot twice in the last couple years. Don't tell me you're fine with that."

"Joel--"

"Don't tell me that there's mercy in the world! Or that begging God to give us a break has ever made one bit of difference."

"You know that isn't what all this is about. This has nothing to do with God, Joel."

"How many times you been shot, Blair? Just the once? Oh, but let's not forget that little drowning incident."

"Joel. I'm here, and I'm fine."

"Don't pretend God had anything to do with that! God puts people like Kincaid and Barnes and Zeller in the world. He didn't have anything to do with you being alive - that was Ellison, and everybody knows it."

Sandburg curses. Taggart is crying, muttering that he's sorry now and then. Blair pulls into Joel's driveway and turns off the engine, but he doesn't move to get out of the car. I park along the street, and Blair and I wait for Joel to get himself under control. The passenger door opens with startling suddenness, and Joel stumbles out to puke on the damp grass.

Blair and I reach him at the same time, and Blair produces a clean tissue from somewhere. Blair leans Taggart against the damp car, not trying to talk to him, just giving him time. It's getting colder. The fine drops of rain do not so much fall as float and cling to my face, my hair. At last Blair nods for me to take Taggart's other arm and we guide him slowly up to the house. An older man is already opening the door. He nods as Sandburg passes our charge to him and whispers a short explanation. We don't say anything else as we turn and leave. Somehow 'happy Thanksgiving' just doesn't seem appropriate.

As we pull away, I look back. "What the hell was that about?"

"Ah. How much did you hear?"

"All of it. It just didn't make any sense."

"It makes perfect sense, when you think about it."

"Uh, huh."

"He just can't cope with watching his friends get killed any more. Gee, isn't that shocking." And I realize that I have missed not only Joel sliding into depression, but also Blair's being so bitter about it.

"It's part of the job. You have to learn to get past that."

"Uh, huh. Get past it. Do you want to talk about the suicide rate for our profession, Jim?"

"We're talking about Taggart, here. He's a good cop."

"Yeah, he is, Jim. And he's totally burned out. Where have you been for the last four years? Hell, where have you been for this last year?" He is impatient with me. Ouch. I suppose he has a right to be: I had absolutely no idea. I mean, Joel was in a bad way a couple of times, all twitchy over the explosives thing....But he's been in Major Crimes for two years now, more than two years. And he's been pretty steady, absolutely reliable, a solid detective.

I am still thinking about it when the phone rings. The call is nearly finished before I realize that it's Simon on the other end and we suddenly seem to be on duty. "Did you get that, Jim? There's a body out at the Freeman's Point development."

I sigh. "What's weird about it?"

"Nothing."

"Then why is it ours?"

"Homicide just got a break on the McCauley case and they're short staffed because of the holiday anyway."

"We're not on call for Major Crimes."

"Joel was on call." Damn. I wonder how much Simon knows about tonight and how much trouble Joel is going to be in.

Part II

Ledyanoi goroyu aisberg, iz tumana vyrastaet I necyot ego techen'e po beskrainim po moryam. Xhorosho tomu, kto znaet, kak opasen v okeane, Kak opasen v okeane aisberg vstrechnym korablyam. --Aisberg

A frozen mountain, an iceberg, emerges from the fog Carried on the current through the boundless seas. How good, for those who know, just how dangerous upon the ocean, How dangerous upon the ocean, it is for an iceberg to meet a boat. -- Iceberg, Alla Pugacheva

~Jim~

The Point is a...nice place to have your murder. The houses are large, with lots of space in between that's filled by tidy, manicured lawns and trimmed trees. The best of them look directly down onto the bay. Here are the kinds of houses - the kind of life - you can buy if you care more about making money than about anything else.

I don't need Sandburg to give me the address: I hear the tail end of a fading siren and see the reflections of flashing red and blue lights when we are still several turns away from the site. The coroner is parked in the driveway, along the side of the street are two patrol units and the forensics van.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Sandburg and I hurry through the mist to the patrolman waiting for us on the porch. He leads us quickly through the house. I have a vague impression of big-print flower wallpaper and handmade carpets. "Frankly, it looks like an accident to me. It seems a shame to bring you all the way out here. If you'll take a look at the body, the coroner can take it away."

Out the back door and onto a raised, cedar deck. Another patrolman, the coroner guys, and some forensics tech too junior to get out of working the holiday are hovering near the house, under the cover of the eaves.

In the center of the deck, done in matching wood, is a huge, five-person hot tub. I can just see the top of a head. The water is still steaming, but not very much. Beside me, Sandburg swallows hard. He doesn't look shocked, though. Just kind of sad. "What happened here?" he asks.

"According to the boyfriend, they had a quiet holiday dinner. Afterward, she wanted to go for a dip in the tub, but he said it looked like it might rain and stayed inside. About an hour later he realized she should have come in by then, and that it had started to drizzle; he came out here and found her face down in the water, so he called 911."

With my gloves on, I reach for the body, lifting the head and turning it into the light. The officer points to a matting of blood I already see. "She hit her head - I think here on the side of the tub, and must have fallen forward and drowned. Her boyfriend said they'd been drinking. Alcohol on top of the heat...." He trails off, shrugging.

The hair around the wound is short, curly, and here and there gray. The eyes are brown, and bloodshot from the chlorine or the trauma. And clouded, now. Even slack and plumped as the face is by the water, I can still see the tiny lines around her mouth. I can smell the blood, and the alcohol and the water - in dying she fouled it a little.

Sandburg nudges my arm and I pull back. In a picture window overlooking the deck I can see a man watching us. Despite the blaring floodlights outside, the room he is in is brighter, and I can see him clearly. He is younger than the victim. Beautifully built, with a strong chin and light hair that falls in a perfect wave. I nod in his direction. "That the boyfriend?"

The officer looks up, squinting. "Yup."

"Have forensics drain and filter the water. Post a guard -- we'll need to go over the site again in daylight; I don't want any evidence destroyed. Too bad we can't do anything about the rain. And get somebody to start canvassing the neighbors. Not that I expect much; they're too far apart."

I head for the door, Sandburg hurrying after me. "Where are we going?"

"To talk to our murderer."

"How do you know?"

I don't answer him, because I don't know. Right now, all I have is a hunch. A solid hunch, but nothing I can explain.

"Jim? Did you see something?"

But we are already in the house and headed for the cluster of heartbeats I can hear on the south side of the house. I can dodge the question I can't answer for a while at least. "Later," I say.

The young man I saw in the window is in the kitchen with two more patrolmen. I nod to them and let my eyes slide over my suspect. He is putting on a good show of shock and grief. He even smells of horror.

He murdered his girlfriend. He has every reason to be horrified.

I'm sure he'll get over it soon.

For a moment, I am too angry to trust myself - if I lose my temper, I'll damage our case. Instead I go over to the recycling in the corner. There are 2 wine bottles. I smell them both and set them down by the nearer uniform. "Have these tested." I sniff the garbage, tentatively. Nasty. But nothing suspicious, not that I would know what an exotic poison smells like, not that I actually think he poisoned her. But I won't miss anything. "Make sure this is all tested, too."

"Hi, I'm Detective Sandburg, this is my partner Detective Ellison."

"Brad. Bradley Wallace."

"Mr. Wallace, can you tell us what happened tonight?"

His heartbeat is already picking up and I can smell tears. He's going to put on a good show, I can already tell. "I found her in the hot tub. She was - her face was in the water."

"Maybe you could go back a bit." Blair sounds very calm, unhurried. I let him do the talking; he's had years of training in getting people to open up about things they would rather not mention.

"Rachel made dinner, you know? I mean normally she hates to cook. Hated to cook." He swallows, takes a breath. Like I thought, a good show. "But she wasn't bad at it. She wasn't a bad cook. She made the turkey and dressing, and peas, you know? With those little onions?"

"What did you talk about during dinner?"

"She wants to go to my folk's for Christmas. They live in Texas. They're not...it wouldn't be a lot of fun, but she - she wanted to meet my family! I said, no, if you want to go someplace warm, we could go to the Caribbean or something."

"Did you argue?"

"No, it wasn't like that."

"And then what happened?"

"She was so drunk, she was, you know, playful. I'd, um, I'd eaten too much, and there was a game on. So, she, she went out to the hot tub."

His heart rate's picking up again. He won't look at anyone. I can't tell if it's a lie or not.

"After a while, when she didn't come in...I poked my head out, you know, and called to her."

"How long was she out there?"

"I don't know. More than an hour. Maybe a lot more."

"And that didn't seem strange to you? I mean, I haven't been in a hot tub for a while, but I remember you can't really stay in that long. And the weather was bad."

"I know. I know. But, you see, oh God, I jus' wasn't paying attention. And then, when I noticed how late it was.... I called to her, and, and when she didn't answer, I went over, and her face was in the water." He stops, apparently overcome with his grief. Blair pats his arm, looking sympathetic. He's willing to give the man all the time he needs, but my patience is fraying.

"What did you do?" It earns me a dark look from Sandburg. I ignore it.

"I ran back into the house and called 911."

"Did you try to resuscitate her?"

"N-no."

"Why not?"

"I don't know how."

"Did you try to get her out of the tub? Did you - ?" Before I finish, he bolts past us and dives for a tiny bathroom beside the pantry. I move to intercept him, to push things, but Blair is suddenly in my way.

I ignore the sounds of panting and near-retching in the can and turn on my partner, whispering, "He's our murderer, Chief."

"Fine. I believe you. But right now we do not have one shred of evidence and I would rather not get written up for harassing a witness!"

~Blair~

On Friday morning we go out to the murder scene. It is a beautiful day, warm enough to seem more like September than November, and very bright. I make Jim stop at a Git'n'Go, so we show up with donuts and coffee for the uniforms who spent the night watching the scene. I chat with them while Jim checks out the front of the house. It's been quiet all night, until forensics went through for a second pass about an hour ago.

I follow Jim inside, and it's quiet there too. Last night, Bradley grabbed some clothes and the cat and went to spend the night with friends. I look around the house, trying to imagine Bradley and Rachel living there. The place is tidy, but not spotless. A thin spider web on the hall chandelier and a small pile of what is probably 2-day-old cat vomit behind a door suggest they don't look too closely at certain details. There are pictures in every room, abstracts and landscapes... all of them, I think, Bradley's. Bradley is a professional artist. Jim got that in his exhaustive interrogation last night, after Bradley came out of the bathroom. Jim got everything, I think: every place he had lived (five states, which would make tracking his history fun), how much money he made off his art last year (not much. My stipend from the university had been bigger), how he and Rachel had met (he was painting portraits in the park trying to make rent money), how long they'd been together (about three years), when they got the cat (a year ago October), and did Ms. Maitland have a will (he didn't know).

None of it seems to fit with him being a murderer.

But Jim is so sure. And God knows, I've been wrong about people before. I don't want to think they're lying to me. I don't want to think the broken-hearted, twenty-four year old kid I met last night killed his girlfriend.

That he got her drunk, and sent her out to the hot tub, and waited, and snuck out in the dark, creeping up behind her -

In the dry, bright morning, the deck seems to be a completely different place. Quiet and abandoned, after the crowd last night. And the tub is empty and dry now, only a couple of tablespoons pooled in the bottom.

Rachel Maitland was a corporate lawyer, smart enough and experienced enough to have bought a big house on the Point and be keeping a handsome, young artist as a pet. Could she really have been stupid enough to drink a bottle of wine and then go out to the hot tub alone?

The wooden sides of the tub are bright and new. I wonder whose idea it was to buy it?

I stay behind Jim, keeping out of his way, watching out for a zone. Trying to think like a cop.

Jim searches the floor of the deck, then, going down the stairs to the back yard, he searches under it, too. He climbs into the tub, sits where Rachel sat, stares at the dark spot in the wood that marks where the blood stain was. He goes back to the yard and stares up at the house. He goes to the fence, clambering up to peek into the neighbors' yards.

When he comes back to the tub, I lay a hand on his arm.

"There has to be something!" He holds up a sodden candy wrapper and a button, both of them looking like they've lain in the grass for days. Or more. "He did it, and there has to be some evidence!"

"Jim, if you can't find it, I don't know who could."

He finally admits that this is fruitless, and we head back to the car. We spend the rest of the morning doing paperwork on the case at the station. I had planned to spend the morning baking pies. Because this afternoon, we have to go see Jim's family.

I would rather go to a murder scene.

Stephen and his family spend Thanksgiving Day with his wife's mother. We spend it with Stacey. Heck, Sally took the day off and went to see her sister. Friday, though, we all get together at Jim's dad's place.

Hell.

On the other hand, it cannot possibly be worse than last year, when it hadn't even been six months since the press had been calling Stephen and Mr. Ellison and asking them what it was like to live with a freak.

And Jim - God knows why he thought this would be a good idea - had put his foot down, and said that I was his friend and his partner, and if I wasn't coming, he wasn't coming, effectively blackmailing both his family and me.

Maybe he was hoping someone would refuse and he wouldn't have to go.

Everyone went. Everyone was on their best behavior. Not unpleasant so much as weird and depressing. Actually, it reminded me of French film. Or Russian. Stephen's wife, Lauren, thought I was crazy. Or really self-destructive, I wasn't sure which. Sally thought I was uncommonly stupid, and while she pitied me my stupidity, it had hurt Jim, and she couldn't quite bring herself to forgive me. Mr. Ellison thought I was a slacker who was using his precious son. All of which was a strain, but didn't get really weird until it became clear that Stephen wasn't actively mad at me, but was furious with the rest of his family.

I found out why when he collared me into going out back with him to get wood for the fireplace. "Is it hereditary?"

I looked at him blankly, my arms already loaded with wood, my polite smile still welded in place. "Huh?"

"What's - what's wrong with Jim. Is it hereditary? Do I have to worry about Amanda?"

So I put down the wood and waded through his panic and his Ellison reticence until I worked out that he had interpreted the whole dissertation fiasco to mean that his big brother had some kind of debilitating hereditary condition that nobody in the world but me was able to bring under control. He believed I had disavowed everything not to protect Jim's privacy, but because upon consideration, my data showed that he wasn't viable.

Well, shit.

He remembered Jim having the senses when they were kids. He hadn't known they were unusual - he hadn't even given them much thought until they disappeared. He also remembered Jimmy being sick.

"Before mom left...we fought sometimes. We were brothers. I wanted to follow him around, and he thought I wasn't cool." Stephen grinned, inviting me to imagine just how uncool he'd been. "But - afterwards, he took care of me. He did everything he could. After mom left, he and Sally were the only - safe people in the world, but he would - sometimes -"

The story I got from Stephen was about as garbled as you would expect from a kid who was at most eight and had no context to interpret what was going on. I wrote down the details at the first opportunity, and afterwards thought of it as "pain management problems" so I wouldn't have to relive the horrifying story in my head all the time.

As nearly as I could put it together, Jim would get minor injuries playing, and spend the rest of the afternoon on his bed, white as a sheet and nearly immobile with pain. They couldn't tell Sally because Sally would feel it was necessary to tell Dad, and Dad would look at the tiny scratch or pale bruise or totally invisible minor sprain and yell at Jimmy for goldbricking or being a sissy or something. So Jimmy would pretend, and his baby brother would cover for him. And the next day Jim go and do whatever everybody was expecting him to do and it would all start over again.

And no, they'd never talked about it; when they were older, they weren't friends anymore.

"Blair, if he's....can't you stop it? Can't you do something? It went away before! Can't you make it go away now?"

So I had to talk to him, explain that it wasn't an illness, that Jim wasn't suffering. And that we'd been watching Amanda, and if there had ever been a sign that she had heightened senses, we would have come to him. And that if Amanda ever did exhibit any of Jim's talents, well, everything Jim could do, lots of other people could do, it was just really, really rare that one person could do all of them at the same time. It was in the ordinary range of human variation. It was normal, and healthy and completely controllable.

God, what a day.

I got through the rest of it somehow. I was too stunned and too horrified to hate William Ellison more than I already did. I played Chutes and Ladders with Amanda. Helped Sally do the dishes. Smiled reassuringly at Stephen. Got through it all, somehow. Everyone was trying so hard to keep the atmosphere from being hostile that it was just bleak instead.

In the car, on the way home, Jim said, "He remembered it wrong."

"Uh, what?"

"He was just a little kid. He remembers it being a lot worse than it was, and lasting a lot longer. It was only a couple of months, that first year I played football."

"Right." Never mind that Jim had been a little kid too. Let's not get started on the reliability of his memory. "Why did it stop? Was that when you lost, um -?"

Jim shook his head. "I don't know exactly. It made sense at the time."

"What did?"

"I was coming home from practice, and I was limping I guess....I ran into Bud at the edge of the park, and he asked me what was wrong....He carried me over to a bench and took off my shoe.... and I was afraid he was just going to say I was being a baby over nothing, even though he'd never...."

Jim stopped. I let him think. It was quiet for long minute, and I remember it started to snow a little. "You're gonna be pissed, Chief."

"Why?"

"I can't remember what he said. But afterwards, I could tell when I was really hurt and when I wasn't.... and if it wasn't bad...it just went away in a few minutes. It stopped hurting."

"Jim, this is kind of important." My brain was spinning with optimistic possibilities. My voice was level and relaxed.

"Yeah, I know."

"I mean, we aren't always on top of pain management now!"

"I know that. I'm not - I'm taking this seriously, here. I just don't remember what he said."

So I let it go. If he remembers, he'll tell me. Ah, damn it.

I did hound him till he sat down and talked to Stephen. Well, guilted him into it. Stephen has a right to know what to look for, if his kid starts zoning out or hearing the neighbors beat their children or finds her clothes unbearably itchy.

And life went on. We don't see Jim's family often, so it isn't hard to be polite. Usually.

I am not, frankly, expecting this year to be any better.

Part III

Lyubov' na zemle - Lish' Mirazh.
-- Belyi sneg

Love in this world is only a mirage.
--White snow, Alla Pugacheva

~Jim~

Although Sandburg has bought a tie and was all prepared to bake for this event, he is not looking forward to another holiday with my family. Gee, I wonder why. Just because last year my only relative who liked him freaked out in the back yard? Not that I blame Stephen, exactly. This sentinel business is pretty scary stuff. I've freaked out on Blair a couple of times myself. And what Stephen said to Blair is nothing compared to what he said to me when we finally sat down and talked about it. He ripped off my head and tried to stuff it up my ass. Not that I blame him for that, either. A man has a right to know if he's carrying this kind of genetic A-bomb in his back pocket. I should have told him sooner. For the sake of his beautiful little girl, if nothing else. In his position, I'm not sure I would forgive me.

But apparently Stephen has had a talk with Dad, too. A lot of the stuff he missed when he was a kid got spelled out for him: the old man's into confessing these days. So he understood why I wasn't very comfortable talking about it with anybody. Especially family.

On the front walk, I start to freeze. The sound of our footsteps on the bricks is like thunder. God, I hate this house. If it weren't for Sally, I would lobby to hold this somewhere else every year. But she wants to do the cooking, and she has the right to ask for that much. It's the least I owe her.

But, God, I hate this house.

Without saying anything, Sandburg rests his hand on the small of my back. I soak in the warmth of his hand, the soft sound of his breathing. Everything is not ok, but it will do.

The door swings open and Amanda flies out, catapulting herself off the stoop and into my arms. "Uncle Jim!"

"Hey, Pun'kin! Wow, you're getting heavy!" I pretend to stagger under her weight and then spin her around. She's nine, and she's tall for her age. Stephen says she wants to play basketball next year.

We take off our jackets and head to the living room where everybody else is already waiting. Lauren and Stephen are sitting on opposite ends of the room and I can tell by the smell of them that they are quarreling about something. They have their polite faces on though, and they both smile. Lauren makes it a point to kiss Blair on the cheek and make him feel welcome.

Very politically correct of her. Lauren thinks Sandburg and I are sleeping together. This is not conjecture on my part; I heard her say so to Stephen as we were getting the potato salad out of the car for their Fourth of July picnic. I haven't bothered to set her straight. So to speak. As long as Blair doesn't find out, I don't really care how she interprets our relationship. But Blair...would be mortified. Mostly because he would assume that I would be mortified. To be fair, I have given him every reason to think I obsess over what other people think of me. I doubt I could convince him otherwise now, but truthfully...it doesn't seem that important any more.

The worst has already happened. I've been recognized on the street, had my face all over the evening news. I've stood in the bullpen while my colleagues made fun of me. And through all of that - before, during, and after the reprieve came - I was exactly the same person: "normal" or not. The spotlight moved from me to Blair and then wandered off altogether....and I was still the same. The people around me were the same. The people I cared about were the same.

Which I discovered as Blair half-carried me off the roof of the station and back to Major Crime. Where else would we go? And I was going into shock, and losing my grip on what Blair refers to as "pain management." And the place was a zoo, crawling with cops and SWAT and only just a few EMTs...and suddenly there was Joel, gently pointing out to Blair that we needed to keep my head down and my leg up and was there anything special that needed to be done for me? And he put pressure on the wound with shaking hands and stayed with Blair while I was getting treated.

The people who know the truth about me are still with me - and were with me even before the reprieve came and I got my life back. Blair and Simon and Stacey and Joel and Naomi and Connor and even Dad. So I'm not going to wig out over what people think.

And if my sister-in-law assumes I'm sleeping with my roommate...well, at least she thinks I have good taste.

Dad ignores Blair. This is nothing personal; Dad gets tense when he's in the same room with both Stephen and me. He is a little desperate as he tries to draw us out: What's new? How's work? Did we see the game yesterday? I didn't see the game, and police work doesn't make for nice family conversation. Things are getting kind of bleak when Amanda reveals that she has brought her Monopoly set. Then things get downright painful.

Blair manages to go bankrupt in the first thirty minutes and then scampers off to the kitchen to help Sally. As he gets up and passes me, I whisper, "In the army we shot deserters." He laughs and punches my shoulder, like he thinks I'm being funny.

Dad and Amanda play as a team, even though she is old enough to play alone. He manages to suck whatever joy she might glean from the game by insisting on teaching her strategy.

Lauren is the banker, and every time she makes a payment or change for Stephen she uses it as an opportunity to snipe at him.

Stephen is winning. Anxiously not looking at me, as though our friendship is so fragile that his beating me at a board game is going to send us into some kind of competitive frenzy. He gets Park Place and Boardwalk very quickly, but refuses to develop them. An oversight for which Lauren teases him unkindly.

When Sally comes out to announce dinner I could kiss her. Even the fact that we are having turkey for the second day in a row doesn't diminish my joy. During dinner Blair talks, and gets Amanda and Sally to talk, so my brother and his wife can sulk at each other in peace and my father can pretend that things are going swimmingly.

We finish the Monopoly game after dinner. Stephen, desperate, takes a dive and lets Dad and Amanda win. Which insults and annoys our father; he says it sets a bad example for Amanda.

Happy Thanksgiving.

~Blair~

Thanksgiving with Jim's family wasn't so bad, actually. Everybody was on their best behavior. Stephen and Laura were a little tense, but that happens over the holidays. Sally is speaking to me again, which is good. And I beat back the urge (yet again) to grill her about Jim's childhood. When Jim is ready to go there, he will talk to her about it, and if I'm good, I might get invited too. Jim's dad mostly ignores me, which is fine, because I am not quite ready to be friends with him. Best of all, we have an excuse to leave early: we have to get ready for work.

Night shift, which I love: coming in when it's dark and everybody else is asleep. The bull pen is nearly empty, and very quiet; most of the time, on a good night shift, you can get a lot of your paper work done. When it is busy, well, let's just say the crimes that happen at 2:00 am (or maybe the best way to put that is 'the crimes that get discovered at 2:00 am') are way weirder than the ones you get in the light of day. Either way, it's great.

Thanksgiving weekend is one of the quiet ones. We work Friday and Saturday nights, and although the uniforms working traffic get lots of infractions and DWI's, the really creative sort of greedy, master criminals that attract attention from Major Crimes must all be too stuffed with turkey, too busy shopping, or too involved quarreling with their families to be pulling elaborate heists. So I fill out forms and Jim does creative background checks on Bradley Wallace. During the day we stay close to home - hiding, yes, I freely admit it - from the holiday shoppers and traffic jams and vegging out watching sports. On Saturday night, I do go out before our shift starts. The computer consultant installing the new dispatch system takes me bowling. She's...adorable:short , but all of it leg. And her eyes -! Anyway, she has a PhD in French Literature, but there was more money in computers. She'll just be around for a month and she doesn't know anyone in town... and it reassures Jim when I date. He worries less about me.

Anyway, Paulina and I have a great time.

On Monday, Jim and I get to the station almost an hour late. There is a non-injury accident on Spottswood that tied up traffic for 2 miles in both directions and dumped half a metric ton of sugar on a major thoroughfare. Jim is snarling and gnashing his teeth by the time we pull into the lot and I am (though I cover very nicely) nearly as tense.

It's nothing, I tell myself.

You get there when you get there.

It is the journey, not the destination.

Fuck it. I resign myself to a bad mood.

There is a fat file marked "Wallace" sitting on Jim's desk when we get in, the prospect of which improves his mood dramatically. Before I can get a look at it, Simon storms past, rapping once on the desk in front of me and pointing at his office.

I follow him in.

"What the hell is this?" greets me before I even shut the door. He is waving a sheet of paper at me, computer printed, folded in thirds....it is hard to tell, with it moving so fast, but it doesn't seem familiar.

"What is it?"

"Don't tell me you don't know anything about it; I'm in no mood to play games." He tosses the paper at me. "Now, are you going to explain that, or not."

I don't answer because I am still looking at the paper. It's Joel's resignation. "Simon, I didn't know about this."

"You didn't know about this?"

"I should have seen it coming, but it's a surprise to me, too. I didn't think he'd do something like this."

Simon sighs, reaching across his desk to snatch the letter back and thumping into his chair. "So, you'll talk to him."

"Of course I'll talk to him - wait. Do you mean change-his-mind talk to him?"

"Well, I don't mean plan-the-retirement-party talk to him!"

I look at the crumpled paper in Simon's hand and take a deep breath. "Simon, I can't do that."

"Sure you can! You can talk anybody into anything."

"No, I mean I can't - I'm not going to."

Simon looks at me hard for a moment. Then he carefully folds Joel's letter back up and slides it into its envelope. "Would you care to tell me why?" he asks, reaching for a cigar.

"I'm not going to talk a friend of mine into doing something that's the wrong thing."

"And working here," Simon is still speaking very softly, enunciating every word, and I wince, "is the wrong thing?"

"For Joel, maybe it is. He is certainly in a better position to make that decision than I am or you are."

Simon relents a little, or tries to pretend to. "Look. Sandburg. I know Joel has been going through a bit of a hard time lately -"

My mouth drops open, but I manage to stop myself before interjecting something like 'you don't know shit, Sir.' Simon stops anyway and lifts his hand. "You were about to say something, Detective?"

"Simon, you weren't here the second time Zeller shot up the bullpen."

"No. As I recall, I was a little busy at the time -"

"And you didn't see Joel afterwards." I try to evade the memory: that in the middle of that horrible noise, as Zeller peppered the walls and desks with machine-gun fire and glass rained down like a storm of knives, Joel had stood up, looking for people who were hurt, yelling for Jim. Even when I had shoved him down beside the wall, Joel had turned in my arms, seizing me by the shoulders, shouting, "Where's Ellison? Zeller'll kill him!"

"Blair?"

I swallow and look up at Simon, forcing myself not to think about it. "He went with us to the emergency room, Simon. He was covered with blood, Brian's and Jim's and Ed Jankowski's, I think. He couldn't stop shaking."

"Well, shock. Reaction." Simon is squirming, not wanting to seem cold, not wanting to talk about feelings. Not wanting to admit how bad things might be. "Yeah, Simon, shock. No big deal, right. Could happen to anybody. But maybe he doesn't think it's worth it any more. Maybe he doesn't want to watch his friends get shot at, get shot up, any more. Well, it's a hell of a thing, Simon, to watch the people you love be..... if Joel doesn't want to do it any more, I'm not going to tell him he's wrong."

He sighs, scrubbing his forehead with his palm. "He's a good cop."

I stand up. "I'm sorry, Simon. I'm not going to do this for you."

He shakes his head, waving toward the door. I go. Simon needs time to think about this. I hope, after he does, he will just leave it alone, let Joel go if he needs to.

Wandering back to Jim's desk, I see that his mood has improved dramatically. If he were a dog, his tail would be wagging. "Whatcha got?"

"We got a copy of the will." His smile is positively predatory.

"She leave him everything?"

"The house and some decent stocks."

"Well, Jim, it's a nice house, but -"

"And a three million dollar life insurance policy. Man like Wallace would off his own grandmother for that much."

My eyebrows go up at the hyperbole, but I take the file. "What's this? The stocks she left her sister?" The only other large block of money was the contents of a savings account that go to a well known children's charity. Not much of a suspect there.

"As of this morning, they were worth less than a million dollars. And the sister lives in California. She was at home on Thursday night, alibi confirmed."

"Ok. Let's go talk to him again."

Bradley Wallace was back at home, since Jim had cleared the house to re-open again on Friday. He met us at the door carrying a half-empty beer. He didn't look like he'd washed his hair since the death.

Jim walked in first, prowling slowly around a living room that wasn't nearly as tidy as it had been three days before: three pizza boxes (still mostly full) and dirty socks covered most of the flat surfaces in the room.

Jim doesn't speak, and Bradley hems about nervously for a moment before gulping, "They haven't released the body yet. I, um, the funeral?"

"They haven't finished the autopsy," Jim says almost casually. "The coroner's office has been short-staffed lately." He picks up a framed 8x10 pencil drawing. It's a caricature of Rachel Maitland - not a simple, mocking thing with a big head and hobby paraphernalia, but a drawing of her with really big hair addressing a jury of fairy tale and Mother Goose characters. According to the caption, she is prosecuting the spider from Little Miss Muffet for criminal trespass. Jim turns the picture over and holds it up. "Did you consider Ms. Maitland an attractive woman?"

Bradley blinks. "Oh. Yeah. I mean, that's just -" he points at the caricature and shakes his head. "You had to know her. Well, no, wait, come look at this."

Without looking to see if we follow him, he heads down a hallway leading past the kitchen. A back bedroom has been emptied of most of its furniture and turned into a small studio. Several works are on easels, covered. He uncovers one, revealing a half-finished nude of the murder victim.

She is sitting on a window seat, half turned away from the viewer. Dry, her hair is shorter than it was in the tub, and curlier. Her face is animated instead of slack, her eyes bright and piercing. It is undoubtedly the same woman, but not one I would have imagined from what I saw, slumped and sagging in her hot tub -

I force my mind away from memory. This image, the one Bradley Wallace painted, is beautiful, smiling - impish and dignified at the same time, caught turning away from the window, delicately illuminated by the dawn.

"I don't do many portraits," Bradley says timidly, "but I had to paint her."

"Did you know she left you the house?"

"What? No, I mean, what?"

"You haven't spoken to her lawyer?"

"No, I mean, he called on Friday, but I wasn't here. I haven't been answering the phone today. She left me the house? That doesn't sound right. How do you know?"

"There was also a substantial insurance policy. Did you know about it?" Bradley is still staring at his painting. Jim moves to stand in front of him, closing to just under polite conversational distance.

"It was through her company. A, a, what do you call them, a benefit. She...she laughed about it. Said I could have the money if I would," he tries to laugh, doesn't quite make it, "if I would take care of Norton."

"Norton?"

"Her cat. He's not a very nice cat. She said three million dollars probably wouldn't be enough." He looks close to crying again. I marvel again that Jim is sure this man is our murderer. He looks absolutely destroyed, to me. All right, the crying, yes, anybody can fake that. But how do you paint such a beautiful picture of someone you hate so much you're able to kill them? And this guy seems to be so...well, I know his type. If your life is fine now, why would you complicate things by planning a murder which will only complicate things even more. He had his art. He had a home. He had an unpleasant cat. He had a live-in girlfriend who adored him enough to see him well cared for for life. What would be the point of a messy murder, an investigation, the taxes on all that money?

"Unusual, isn't it, for a mature woman like Ms. Maitland to take up with a much younger man?"

"She said...when she was younger she was too involved with her career. Ambitious. She never took time for any fun...."

"That's what you were? Fun?"

"We took ballroom dancing classes."

"Why didn't you try to resuscitate her?"

"I didn't know how!"

"Why didn't you try to get her out of the water?"

"I - she wasn't a small woman. I called 911. That's what you're supposed to do! I - I did it!"

"Was it difficult for you, being supported by a woman?"

"I - I don't know what you mean. I noticed it, but we didn't fight over it or anything."

"You don't come from money, do you Mr. Wallace? In fact, you grew up on welfare, didn't you?"

"I don't see how - "

"Why didn't you want your girlfriend to meet your family this Christmas, Mr. Wallace?"

Part IV

Kruzhit tixho, Kruzhit tixho nepagoda,
Kruzhit tixho nash poslednii sneg.
Kak reshit'sya, mne v takuyu nepogodu,
Kak reshit'sya covershit' pobeg?
--Nepogoda

Swirling softly, swirling softly, a storm Swirling softly, our last snow
How to decide--what a storm for me!
How to decide which way to run?
-- Bad weather, Alla Pugacheva

~Jim~

Blair is unsubtly hustling me toward the door. Angry and alarmed at the same time. With him pushing, I narrowly miss stepping in the fragrant lump of cat shit in the center of the beige, hand-woven hall carpet. Bradley Wallace glances at the pile and gives a weak giggle. "He's not taking it well."

Blair continues to rush me out the door, thanking Wallace for his time, not giving me a chance to look back. To my surprise, though, he doesn't say anything until we are reaching the edge of the development:

"Jim, are you ok with this case?"

"What, you mean murder? I'm not sure 'ok' is the right word, Chief."

"I mean, you know, a drowning outdoors, in a small, man-made body of water. It's ok, if you have issues."

Unbelievably, it takes me a moment to see what he means. When I do, I feel like an idiot. "Maybe I should be asking you." The question comes out more softly than I intend.

"One, I'm fine. Two, we're not talking about me."

"Why are we talking about me?" This one comes out more suspicious than I intend.

"You just seem...a little...intense, Jim."

"Intense?"

"Jim, you were all over him. I've seen you less rough on mob enforcers."

"I know mob enforcers with more honor!"

"Jim -"

"He murdered her. She trusted him, and he lied to her and then he killed her, and I am not going to let him get away with that!" I am shouting so loudly the echo off the windshield makes my ears ring, but I don't care. Rachael Maitland deserved to be safe. She deserved to be loved. She deserved not to be used. Well, she can't have any of that, but by God I can give her justice and I am going to.

"Ok," Blair says quietly. "If you're sure, man, you're sure. We'll get him. But calm down, Buddy. You need to use your head here. Be careful."

Right. Yeah, be careful. "What say we split up: I'll drop you by the loft so you can get your car and go down to the gallery that has Wallace's paintings up, and I'll go talk to Maitland's partners at the law office."

"Sure, Jim. That's fine. Say, it's almost lunchtime. Wanna stop at the deli for sandwiches?"

*

Maitland's office is in Wilkinson Towers. Prestigious address. Large, carpeted suite. Her partners will see me, of course, but there will be a few minutes' wait. Her secretary...her former secretary...offers me coffee, shows me into Maitland's office.

Functional, but expensive. The file cabinets are wood-finish, the computer has a flat screen. On the wall, a painting: bright, geometric shapes and splashes of color. Wallace's work.

The secretary is very young. She stands in the corner with her hands knotted up. "I've never....known anybody who's died," she says. "Well, not since I was little. It hardly seems real."

There's nothing to say to that. I shrug. I point to the painting. "Ever meet the artist?"

"He came to the Christmas party last year. They made a cute couple."

"She was showing him off? The trophy boyfriend?"

She looks up at the painting, sighs sadly. "I don't know. She didn't seem to care what anybody thought, you know? Neither of them seemed to notice anybody else when they were together."

"But people talked about them?"

Another shrug. "He was so much younger. She was nearly forty. People will talk about everything. Now they're talking about who'll get her office." I smell tears just before she flees.

Can she really be that naive? Is anybody? I wonder if our charming young artist ever hit on her. I wonder, briefly, if they were in on the murder together.

The story is pretty much the same from everybody I talk to: Rachel had no real enemies; didn't owe anybody money, as far as anyone knew; wasn't involved in any big cases entailing huge amounts of money; wasn't sleeping with anybody's husband. Totally smitten with her very young boyfriend, but she had seniority and did good work and, as eccentricities went, well, she wasn't drinking on the job or making the staff cry.

They are stiff and polite, her senior partner, her junior partners, the office manager. Sad, but not scared. No doubt, after I leave, each one of them will sigh, and think of his own mortality, and get on with his life.

Outside it's overcast and dry, too warm for this time of year, in a way that makes me vaguely uncomfortable. Behind me Wilkinson Towers is a hulking monolith, blocking out what little light reaches the ground. Before I notic what I'm doing, I have dialed Blair's number.

"How'd it go at the gallery, Chief?"

"Hey, Jim. Is it me, or is art getting uglier and uglier?"

"What, you didn't know? As you get older, you automatically get less and less cool."

A short laugh. "That actually explains quite a bit about you, partner."

"Hey. I resemble that remark." I take a deep breath, and it feels almost too good, like I haven't had a decent breath in a while. "Find out anything?"

"Nope. The place just had 3 or 4 of Bradley's pieces up. Didn't know him or the victim very well. He said that Bradley does hang out at a coffee shop over on Waterson, I thought I'd go check it out. You?"

"Nada. Nobody here knows anything. I thought I'd head back and do some paperwork."

"Ok. Look, the co-op is out over that way. Why don't I stop and pick up some of that nice honey?"

"That'd be great. Any chance of some of that organic cheese?"

"The low-fat, maybe."

"Have a heart!"

"I'll look."

The autopsy still isn't finished when I get back to my desk. The preliminary report on the water in the tub, the wine bottles, the garbage, the trap in the kitchen sink, the dirty laundry.....don't show anything unusual. Or even usual things in unusual amounts. Not that I really expected anything. No doubt he just went up behind her and -- what? shoved her head against the side of the tub? Clubbed her with something and smeared blood on the tub? No traces of fresh human blood anywhere in the house, not that forensics could find, not that I could smell. No traces of foreign substances or illegal drugs. Nothing suspicious.

Nothing.

Nothing I can use to nail the bastard who killed this woman.

~Blair~

Jim's truck is already parked out front when I get home. I gather the string bags full of honey and cheese and 7 grain bread and fresh vegetables just as the first sprinkling of rain starts and rush inside.

Even before I get the door open I can hear that Jim has the stereo on. Which is unusual, because he isn't one to play it loud. More worrisome, however, is what is playing: one of the Alla Pugacheva tapes Mickie gave us.

Jim doesn't talk about Mickie. Ever. While I kept the compilation tapes, I don't play them when he's around. I get letters from her about twice a year. I don't hide them, but Jim doesn't ask.

I casually carry the groceries into the kitchen and set the string bags on the counter. "Interesting choice of music."

"I was looking for the Richard Shindell." Oh. Quite possibly the most depressing songs on the planet. An even more interesting choice than Russian rock music. "It might be in the other cabinet."

"I looked."

"I might have filed it under R instead of S."

Jim shrugs and comes over to check out the groceries. He pats my head when he sees the cheese. "What do I smell?"

"The vegetarian tamales you like so much." But he has already slipped the package away from me and has it half-open. God, he's such a kid sometimes! I turn away before I start getting sentimental.

"So what's this song about again? It sounds...cheerful for something Russian. It sounds kind of childish. "

"She's singing in a kid voice. It's sort of a 1980's Russian Harry Potter. He's a wizard trainee, and he's not very good at it. He tries to make an iron, and he makes an elephant instead. It has wings like a bee and flowers instead of ears. Or was that the goat?" My Slavic language skills, such as they are, come from two semesters of linguistic anthropology. That's not enough to make my Russian (or my Basque or Haida - don't ask. The professor was a little eccentric) good enough to follow singing.

"Here, what about this one?" Popping another bite of tamale into his mouth, Jim hurries over to the stereo and runs the tape back to a slower, more dramatic song. "There. That sounded like iceberg. What's that in Russian?"

"Iceberg."

"They don't have their own word for iceberg?"

"Apparently not. It was a mystery to me, too. You'd think they had enough ice not to have to go borrowing words for it. I asked Mickie, but she didn't know."

"How is she doing, anyway?" He doesn't, quite, sound casual.

I wonder if this is what this is all about. "Her probation is up in another year." Jim doesn't ask about Mickie. He didn't take her role in the international diamond smuggling ring very well. "She helps out the feds occasionally, I think. She's vague about that part. Jim -"

"'Iceberg' like in a love song about somebody cold?" Changing the subject. Just a little too loudly.

"Iceberg like a giant, really hard thing that looms up out of the fog and sinks your boat. Jim, whatever else we were to Mickie, you were a cop and I was in bed with the police. Where she grew up, police were the people who toss your place looking for a Bible and then send you to the camps if they find one. They aren't the people who stop violent crimes; they're the people who commit them!"

"The Soviet Union's been dead for almost 10 years, Chief, and she's not living there any more."

"No, Jim, she's not. But just because you do such a good job of living in the present most of the time, doesn't mean that everybody else can."

"She took us to meet him, her pony! She came to us and asked us to give the body to a priest! What the hell kind of people do that?"

"Angry people. Desperate people."

Jim puts down what's left of the tamale and stalks over to me. "They committed crimes!"

"I didn't say it was right, or even that it was sane."

"I don't want to have this conversation." He turns away, retreating toward the kitchen.

"You started this conversation!"

"She lied to us!" Shouting, turning back to me almost despite himself.

"What was she going to do, Jim? Whether we were her friends or not, we weren't going to help her smuggle diamonds out of Siberia!"

"She tried to use us!" He sits down suddenly, burying his face in his hands. "And you forgave her."

"Yeah. I did. I understood it."

"You can't trust her."

Pugacheva sings on about the worst parts of icebergs being hidden under the water. It is a distraction I don't need right now. I squat down in front of Jim. "I don't. But I can't hate her either. Not for being unable to be more than she was." Carefully, I lay a hand on his shoulder. "Jim?"

"He killed her."

"Huh?"

"Wallace killed her and I can't prove it. He's going to get away with it."

Not that I'm complaining, but Jim's moods are switching back and forth so fast I'm going to get whiplash. "We'll get him. Sooner or later, he'll make a mistake, and we'll get him. He won't get away with it."

Before he can say anything, the phone rings. Still watching Jim, I turn off the stereo and answer it.

"Hi, Blair." It's Stacey. "I just got back! Six hours on a school bus - and it's not like I got any sleep last night! But it was fantastic!"

"Yeah?" Jim is still hunched forward, but he is watching me carefully. As much as I love Stacey, now is really a bad time. "How'd you do?"

"We took second place - and we're division three, the biggest one! We've never done that well before. Miss Jacobs thinks we might be good enough to go to the regionals in January! And a bunch of us stayed up until four this morning playing - well, never mind. It was great! I had so much fun!"

"Hey! Congratulations! Second place!"

"So. Um. You and Jim ok?"

I glance at Jim. He hasn't moved. "Yeah. We're fine. Just got home from work."

"Ok. Cool. Just...You guys know I love you right?"

"Of course, sweetheart!" Jim has closed his eyes.

"Well...Ok. Ok."

"Jim says congratulations on the concert." He is saying no such thing, but he nods faintly.

"Ok. Say hi for me."

"Sure."

"'Bye, Blair."

"Bye, sweetheart."

As I put down the phone, Jim gets up and heads for the kitchen. "What were you planning for dinner?"

"Jim? Are you - "

"Did you get enough of the tamales? Or do you want to make stir-fry with these vegetables?"

Part V

Kto ty - gore ili radost'?
To zamerznesh', to rastaesh'.
Kto ty - laskovoe colntse? Ili mertvyi, belyi sneg?
--Aisberg

Who are you - Sorrow or joy?
First you will freeze, then you will melt. Who are you, the warm sun? Or a killing, white snow?

• Iceberg, Alla Pugacheva

~Blair~

The next day I catch sight of Joel headed for the break room as Jim and I come off the elevator. I pat Jim's arm, "I'll catch up to you," and follow Joel.

"Hi, Blair. Coffee?"

"Sure, thanks." He fills a paper cup for me, and I take it even though I always feel guilty for using something disposable.

Joel reaches into the microfridge and passes me the milk. "I suppose you've heard?"

"Yeah."

"You can't change my mind."

"I'm not going to."

Slowly, watching me, Joel pulls out a chair and sits down at the table. "I'm sorry about the other night."

"Don't worry about it."

"Thanks."

"So, what are you going to do?" I perch on the edge of the counter, trying to look casual.

"Private security, I think. I haven't decided yet."

~Jim~

My file on Rachel Maitland is half an inch thick.

There's nothing in it that I can use.

Simon is getting impatient. "So you have a suspect, but no evidence?"

I wish Blair were here to run interference, but I can hear him with Joel in the break room. "That's pretty much the size of it."

"Autopsy finished?"

"Not yet."

"Uh, huh." I expect more, but he just shoots me a dark look and digs through the files on his desk, finally pulling one out and passing it over. "Robbery sent this one up this morning. Daytime home invasions. Six in the last month, the same MO each time. And let me remind you, Christmas is coming. More tempting targets combined with increased public attention."

I take the file, collect my partner, and spend the rest of the morning looking at crime scenes. Most of them are old and days cold, but the most recent target was yesterday and I find a perfect footprint under one of the windows.

All right, it's not much. But we've only been on the case for 4 hours.

After lunch, we head back to the station. The Maitland autopsy is on my desk.

Cause of death was drowning.

The water in her lungs matches the water in the tub.

The head injury, all by itself, wouldn't have been life threatening.

Her blood alcohol was .10. There was nothing else in her system.

"Damn," Blair says, reading over my shoulder. "Where do we go from here?"

"We go talk to Dan."

But it's Blair who talks to Dan while I take another look at the body. It's dry now, and very cold. Her skin is pale, but she was pale in life. Other than that, she doesn't look much like her pictures.

"We're not saying you overlooked something. It's just...there may be something that wouldn't show up on the standard tests."

"Blair, I'm not feeling insulted. I'm feeling confused. If you could just give me a hint."

"I swear, if we knew, we'd tell you. We're sure it's a murder. There has to be something...somewhere."

Her hair is dry. The thin scalp wound is cleaner than it was, and smells of whatever Dan used to clean it.

"Well, there are a couple of tests I can run again, but without some kind of clue to what I'm looking for, there is only so much I can do."

"I know that, Dan. You're being a prince about this. We both appreciate it."

I check the back of her neck, her wrists, her back....looking for bruises, a sign that there was any kind of struggle, that she was held under the water. There's nothing. On the way out, I take out my cell phone and have dispatch send a pair of uniforms to pick up Wallace and bring him in. Just to answer some questions.

*

"Just tell me the story again. Who cleaned up after dinner?"

"Both of us."

"And then..."

"She went out to the hot tub."

"You keep it warm all the time?"

"Yes, under a cover."

I stand up, pacing slowly around the table. It's here somewhere, if I can only see it. Sandburg is standing in the corner, his arms folded, looking at the floor. Wallace shoots him nervous glances now and then; I can see the silent treatment from the 'nice' cop is freaking him out. I stand close behind Wallace, seeing if I can freak him out a little more. "And what were you doing."

"Watching football."

"Who was playing?"

"Dallas. And Denver, I think."

"You think?"

"I may have fallen asleep."

"You may have?" My voice is icy and hard - and still doesn't begin to convey the outrage, the hate I feel. This - this piece of shit murdered an innocent woman. He represents the worst, the very worst of what human beings are capable of. But he isn't going to get away with it.

"I had lot of wine...."

"Ah."

"Detective, I don't understand how - "

"Did she keep you on a budget?" I don't want to talk any more, I want to hit him. But knocking him around a little won't even approach justice, and it would screw up the confession I am going to get out of him.

I am, by God, going to get a confession.

"What?"

"Did she give you spending money?"

"There was always money in the cookie jar, the one shaped like a duck. If either of us needed it."

"How did that make you feel, being supported by a woman?"

"I don't...the money never seemed real, you know?"

"In three years, you never got used to it? All that money?"

"The money was nice - "

"I'm sure it was."

Behind me the door cracks open and Simon sticks his head inside. "Ellison. Sandburg. Can I see you for a moment?"

I am snarling almost before I hear the door click shut behind us, "Dammit, Simon, we were getting somewhere!"

"You're getting nowhere! I've been listening for the last half hour and you've got nothing!"

"He did it."

"Do you have even one shred of evidence?"

I don't. Still. Unless Wallace confesses, he's going to get away with what he's done. He'll collect his money, go on with his life, find some other innocent, lonely woman and do it all again.

"Jesus, Jim! What the hell am I supposed to do here? You've had that man in interrogation for two hours. A man who can't even qualify as a suspect, let alone warrant this kind of treatment."

Oh, God. He's going to take me off the case. He's going to give it to someone else. "Simon, don't -"

"Don't what? What am I supposed to do when he brings a harassment suit against you?"

"Simon - "

"Give me something, Jim, anything, to show that this wasn't just a very tragic accident."

But I've got nothing.

"Fine." Simon sighs. "Close the case. Send Wallace home."

"No!" I know, even as I shout at my boss, that I have gone too far.

Simon slowly folds his arms, looking unimpressed at my temper. "Send Wallace home and take the rest of the day off."

"Simon, you can't -" I am pleading now, but the words are wrong.

"I can and I just did. Take the rest of the day off and tomorrow too, while you're at it. Don't make me make that a formal suspension. You had no business bringing Wallace in. Your conduct during this investigation has been borderline unprofessional from the beginning. Frankly --"

"Uh, Simon?" Blair. Of course. As usual, stepping in just when I thought things couldn't get worse. "You can't blame Jim for this. I mean, I was right there with him the whole way. If there was any misconduct involved, it was mine as much as his."

"Oh, really, Detective? Is that so? You also have tomorrow off." Simon stalks off down the hall, adding over his shoulder, "It was a good try, but it's over."

Sandburg doesn't say anything on the way home. Which is fine. I just heard it all from Simon, I don't need Sandburg tearing into me too. But it doesn't last. We're not even through the door when he starts. "Ok, Jim, what are we going to do?"

"I don't know, Chief. How about a nice long argument, how's that?"

"What are you talking about? What are we going to do about the case?"

"What case? There is no case. The case has been closed and we have been reprimanded. Or did you sleep through that little scene outside interrogation?"

But he just turns around and stares, looking both innocent and shocked. "So? When has that ever stopped us?"

He is unbelievable.

He isn't finished. "You're still sure he did it, right? Right?"

"Yeah, but that doesn't help us without evidence."

"Right. And we'll go collect it as soon as you tell me what it is."

"I DON'T KNOW what it is." I grit my teeth and turn away from him.

He pursues me, his voice quiet and unconcerned. "But you do. You have it right up here." He pats my head.

"Oh, really? How do you figure that, Sherlock?"

"Because you're sure!" He blinks at me, grinning. When I don't get it, he repeats, "You're sure! Jim. Ok, look. The reason you're sure is that you saw or heard or smelled something at the scene. Something subliminal. It was enough to convince you, but not enough to register as something concrete."

"Oh, that helps a lot. We have evidence, we just don't know what it is."

"Well, we just have to get it, you know, out."

"Oh, let me guess: we play soft music and you mumble at me."

Blair rubs his hands together gleefully. "Ah, yes, the man can be taught! You just have to give him THREE OR FOUR YEARS!" and he laughs. He seems so, so, so certain, so absolutely sure that this is solvable. Simple. Under control.

I find myself smiling.

So we have a beer. We eat salad and leftover turkey pot pie.

We go into the living room. Blair pulls all the shades, puts Zen cello music on the stereo, sits me down on the couch. Thinking about what we're doing, I get a little nervous. This is it: if we don't figure it out now, we probably won't ever. Wallace gets away.

"Jim, I know you can breathe better than that. I'm pretty sure your diaphragm is down here." He prods my stomach. I manage a laugh for him. "Jim? It's gonna be ok. We'll get him. I promise."

Compliantly, I breathe for him.

"We're gonna start when we pull up at the scene, ok?"

I nod, picturing the dark street, the glitter of rain in the yellow streetlights, the crowd of official vehicles.

"What do you smell?"

"Water. Rain." I swallow. "The bay."

"What else?"

"The engines of the cars. You. You smell like turkey, and that bar where we found Joel."

"Think about that house, Jim. Do you hear anything, see anything unusual?"

I remember the yard, the grass gray and soggy. Dripping, leafless shrubs. Nothing criminal. Nothing to show that a horror had happened here. Nothing to show that here, overlooking the bay, is where bad things happen.

"Why don't you go on into the house?"

"The cat box needs changing."

"What else?" I don't answer at once, and Blair lays a hand on my arm. "It's ok, man. You're just remembering. It's ok."

"Turkey. Wine. Tears."

"Look around. What do you see?"

"I don't like it."

"Why?"

My mouth closes by itself, and for a moment, I can't breathe.

"It's ok. You're fine. Take a slow look around and tell me what's wrong."

"It's all a pretty lie!" It's a truth, and I mean to shout it. I squeak, instead.

"What is?" He waits. I don't want to go on, he doesn't push. "Ok. Ok. We'll come back to it. Go on through the house. Slowly."

Flowered wallpaper. Handmade carpet. The smell of cat, which makes my nose itch a bit. "No. Nothing."

"Let's go outside onto the deck."

"I smell the water in the tub. There's something in it. Baking soda? And the bay."

"What else....What do you see?"

"The woman in the tub. She's dead. She's been murdered."

"How do you know she's been murdered?"

"Because she's dead."

A short pause in the questions. I go over the body in my mind. The head leaning back. The damp hair, dripping down the side of the hot tub. "Jim, how do you know she's dead?"

"The way she sounds."

"Oh." He swallows. "Oh. Jim...how do you know she was murdered?"

"That's the way it happens. They lie to you, and they use you, and then they throw you away." Oh.

"Jim, look around again. What do you see? How did he kill her?"

"No."

"Jim, look at the body again - "

"No. There's nothing there." I pop my eyes open, run my hand along the couch to bring myself back. There isn't any point in going over the house again. "He didn't kill her." I take deep breaths, trying to wake the rest of the way up, trying to push away the sense-memory. I can still smell the bay at night. This was never about Wallace and Maitland.

"What do you mean? We hardly got started. Jim, you have to be more patient - "

I sit forward, reaching to push him away. He is still looking at me hopefully, reassuringly. He is absolutely sure.

He doesn't know how badly I've screwed it up.

I cannot breathe.

"Jim -"

"I need some space - please. Please, Chief."

"Ok, sure." He steps backward.

I cannot bear disappointing him. I cannot bear that he will forgive me. And he will. Oh, God.

I am standing by the door. Blair is apologizing....I've missed how he came to the conclusion that this little disaster is his fault. I shake my head. "I just...need to think, ok? I'm just - going out, ok? I'll be back later." I flee. Out the door and down the steps. I hear Blair behind me, cursing. Pacing. I feel guilty as hell, for running out on him as much as for screwing up the case.

I have my jacket, so I have my car keys. No gun. Well, I wasn't planning on needing it.

I head back out to Freeman Point, already calming down. What a mess I've made. How did I get to be this stupid? How did I get so thoroughly blind? When did I get so far gone?

I remember being appalled when Blair asked if Veronica was shooting at me or at Aldo. Like a woman who was willing to kill her husband and her accomplice, who had managed to pretend to love not one, but three men, would hesitate about putting a bullet in me and watching me die on her living room floor. I had thought Blair was just asking to try to comfort me or distract Simon or because he couldn't face it himself. But I think, now, that he was really wondering. He knows the facts of that kind of ugliness. But he doesn't believe in it. Didn't really believe in a woman who values her lovers so little, when he himself values everyone - everyone - so much.

Blair had liked Wallace, I could tell.

I pull up at the big house and knock on the door. Wallace stumbles and snags an escaping cat as he opens the door. "Are you here to arrest me?"

"No, I'm here - "

He steps back, the cat squirming and squealing. "If you arrest me, I don't know what'll happen to Norton. Nobody'll take him."

"I came to apologize."

The cat bites him, but Wallace is fast: he reaches past me and shuts the door before Norton hits the ground. With parting, disappointed hiss, the cat stomps off.

"I didn't kill her." He backs away from me, toward the living room.

"I know."

"I loved her. And she loved me! She did!"

"I understand that."

He sinks into one of the sofas and looks up at me hopelessly. "All I want is her!" He starts to cry. "God, do you even know? Do you even know what I'm talking about?"

I think of Blair, at home. I know.

"I just want her back!"

There is nothing I can say to him. I would be a shit to leave him like this. I go into the kitchen and make some coffee. I stay. I listen while he tells me about his Rachel for three hours.

It is the least I can do. But finally, when I leave, I can't wait to get home.

*

I open the door and look for my roommate. The place is dark, but he isn't in his room, he's sleeping on the couch. I take a step closer. He's holding onto the phone, in case it rings.

Because even though I've lost my mind and come within two inches of getting us suspended, he's still right here: "Uh, Simon? You can't blame Jim for this. I mean, I was right there with him the whole way. If there was any misconduct involved, it was mine as much as his."

Still here with me, even though I screwed it up.

Oh, dear God, he's always here.

He was here ...through...all of it.

He followed me into Starkville, where the guards were turning the inmates loose on each other and selling tickets. From what Simon said later, I think Blair was sleeping in his car, parked up on the hill. He doesn't know that I know that.

When Oliver tried to finish what he had started in Peru, it was Blair who tore the city apart trying to find me; escaping Joel, fighting Simon, getting shot at...My civilian, graduate student partner.

God...He was there the whole time Aldo was railroading me and making it clear that when I went down everyone still with me would go down, too. Blair didn't move, not one step away from me: "I know him. You said it yourself: we're friends. Now, if you're looking for an accomplice to this hoax of yours, you're going to have to look somewhere else." He doesn't know I heard him.

And later, when the publisher finally offered him the money...

That obscene amount of money...

As much money as Veronica had maneuvered me into shooting Allen for, as much money as she would have killed me and Aldo both for...

He told them no.

He gave up the Truth and all his hard work and his career and the money and made them go away. It wasn't even his fault, it was an accident, because he was careless, because he hadn't told his mother the truth, and he still didn't take the money. He still threw that and everything else away for me.

To protect me.

To stay with me.

Oh. God. My legs are shaking, and I sit down carefully.

Part VI

A ya pro vse na svete s toboyu zabyvayu, A ya v lyubof', kak v more, brocayus' c golovoi. --Aisberg

But with you I forget about everything in the world, And into love, as into the sea, I rush headfirst. --Iceberg, Alla Pugacheva

~Blair~

Well, that was...interesting. He left his gun, though, so he can't be going to do anything too stupid.

Please, Jim, don't do anything too stupid.

I put on the Russian music while I wait. I wonder what Jim was hearing in it. I've forgotten most of the translations Mickie gave me, but I can make out occasional words for ice and snow. Only Russians write love songs using late ice storms and car wrecks to symbolize a final chance at romance.

But I don't know what this music meant to Jim. Probably those three or four dates with Mickie. It is so selfish of me to be glad that short almost-affair didn't turn into anything else. But that was over even before he found out she was a felon, even before she took us to meet her friend the dissident poet and diamond smuggler.

I find the phone and settle down on the couch to wait.

Ah, Jim.

I wake up in the quiet and dim, clutching the still-silent phone. The music has gone off, but nothing else has changed, so Jim must not be home -

He is sitting on the floor, facing me, not moving.

I set the phone down and go to him. Slowly. "Jim?" I am scared, but I keep my voice down. His eyes shut at the sound of my voice, so I know he has heard me. "You ok, Buddy?"

He doesn't answer me.

On my knees, I lean toward him, touch him very carefully. He is shaking. "Jim? What happened?" He hasn't been drinking. He doesn't feel feverish. Ok. Ok. I'll get him undressed and showered. That first. Whatever he's gotten into, maybe it's topical. Maybe it's not bad. Maybe he can sleep it off.

I reach to pull off his jacket, but he doesn't cooperate with me. I'm trying to get his clothes off; he's trying to hold on to me. "Jim, it's all right. Let me help you."

"I'm sorry. Simon was right to be pissed. I really screwed this one up. If Simon hadn't pulled me when he did ..."

"The case? Forget about the case. It doesn't matter right now. Can you tell me what happened to you? Are you ok?"

"He loved her. He loved her. He was with her because he loved her."

"Who? Bradley Wallace?" Are we still talking about the case?

"He didn't kill her."

"Jim, we can worry about it tomorrow."

"He didn't want the money!" He is crying. Jim is crying. "When did I turn into such a shit, Blair? When did I start assuming that people did things like that?"

"You're a cop. It's your job."

"This had nothing to do with my job!" he shouts at me. "This is me. It's all me."

"Sh. Sh. It's ok." I hold him. I don't know what else to do.

"I'm so sorry, so sorry, Blair." He's quieter now. His head drops down onto my shoulder. I sigh, and pull him tighter. "I keep flaking out on you. Over and over."

I pat his shoulder. "Hey, well. Now that you mention it." I hold him, stroking his short hair. He's home. He's upset, but he doesn't seem to be sick. He's going to be ok. Please, be ok.

"I thought he'd...used her." He is bordering on lucid, now, resting in my arms.

"Why did you decide he didn't?"

"Wallace wasn't Veronica Archer. He was you."

Oh, Lord. I wish I didn't understand that. I feel sick to my stomach. Oh, Jim. I should have seen this coming. How could I not know that it was all still in there?

I try to stop the hot prickle of tears, but of course he knows. Of course. He turns in my arms, looking up at me. "Blair?"

I have to talk quickly. "Jim, listen. It's ok. It doesn't matter. We didn't hurt that man. It didn't go too far. And you figured it out. You beat it. Everything's ok." I have to stop because my voice is breaking, and I haven't said nearly enough.

"I went and... apologized...to him."

"That was nice." I squirm and wipe my nose on my shoulder.

"I'm sorry."

"I know. It's ok. Nobody really got hurt. It's all over."

But he's shaking his head: I don't understand. His mouth is open, working, but nothing comes out.

I shush him again, "It's ok. It's ok."

"No. You. I." But the words are choking him, sticking down inside and ripping him apart. "You."

So I say it, because he can't, even though it is almost as hard for me to say it as it is for him. "You thought I was Veronica, too."

"I'm sorry!" He dissolves in my arms. I want to shake him, tell him to stop, it isn't his fault, none of it was his fault, not what Alan and Veronica did, not what Aldo did, not what I did.

I want to tell him he never deserved to be betrayed.

I want to tell him that Mickie was wrong; that no revenge or principle or amount of money could be worth more than he is.

I want to tell him I love him.

I want to remind him that good cops make sure that accidental deaths aren't murders, even when it means they have to act like real bastards sometimes. I want to tell him how proud I am, that he's facing all this, even though it hurts, even though he's scared.

But I make myself keep my mouth shut. I cannot tell him what is true. I must not tell him how to feel. I let him cry it out in my arms and say nothing. I rock him and weep into his hair and wait.

Finally, finally, he runs out, panting but not sobbing. I draw him to his feet. It's clear at once that we won't make it up the stairs - Jim is unsteady and my feet are asleep from sitting on them - so I lead him to the couch and turn away to get him some water. No, his hands are cold: tea then. With lots of honey, he needs some sugar in his system.

He won't let go of me though.

"Jim? It's ok. I'll be right back." He lets go, but looks so desolate that I don't go after all. I sit down beside him, which is fine, because I am tired and my feet tingle painfully when I stand on them. Yes. Good. Ok. I put my head on his shoulder.

He rests his head on top of mine. "Shit," he whispers shakily.

"Yup."

"Sorry about that."

"Hey, no problem."

"Yeah, right," he whispers fliply, but he shudders. Afraid. Embarrassed. Uncertain.

I slide my arms around him as far as I can reach from this angle. "No problem." Oh, God. Even as strong as he is, this is a hell of a thing to live with. I wish I knew how to fix him. I wish I could be sure I can hold him together long enough for him to heal himself. I wish he would see someone professional, someone whose psych classes weren't mainly focused on how the brain processes sensory input. I know he won't.

I'm thinking too much. If I get distressed, he'll know. He needs calm from me. He needs safety.

He's come home. I think about that, instead about how afraid I am, how much I hurt for him. He's not pushing me away. My ear is pressed to him and I can hear his heart, at last, slowing down. See? Doing better already. I hold him tighter.

"I told Stacey."

My eyes pop open, and I realize that I had begun to fade off to sleep. "Huh? Told Stacey what? The case?"

"In the car...she said she wasn't...she didn't think she'd ever be normal. So I...."

"Ah."

"Ah, what?" I can't tell if he's anxious or merely exhausted.

"Well, I thought there was something." Jim doesn't answer so I crane my neck to look up at him. He won't meet my eyes. "So what happened?"

"I told her. You know. About me." So quietly I can barely hear him.

"Ah." I lay my head back down. "Good."

He swallows hard. "You don't think I messed things up?"

"'Course not. Did she sound messed up yesterday?" I pat his hip, since my hand happens to be there. "You did just fine. I'll call her and see if she needs to talk this week, how's that?"

"Thanks..."

I only mean to sit there for a little while longer, but I wake up with sunlight pouring through the skylight and Jim whispering tenderly, "Please, Chief. I gotta take a leak."

I pretend I'm still asleep and take my time about letting him go. Torturing him and he knows it. Sentinels, like Santa, know when you're sleeping and when you're awake. I chuckle as he finally unentangles himself and runs for the bathroom.

I stretch - carefully, because I am stiff as hell - and think. We still have today off. I'll get him out of the house. It's too late to go fishing, but it isn't too cold to go hiking. I'll take him somewhere quiet, and let him talk all he needs to. Or be quiet. Whatever.

EPILOGUE

Vot i konchilos', konchilos' leto,
veter list'ya sryvaet, i pust'!
Ya ne veryu segodnya premetam
Ya segodnya ne zhaluyu grust'.
Naplevat', chto na ulitse slyakot',
Ya na volyu sebya otpushy
Mne vpervyi ne xhochet'sya plakat'.
Ya v osennee nebo krichy:
Ostorozhno, Listopad! - Ya vlyubilas' nevpopad. -- Ostorozhno, Listopad

Here at the end, the end of summer,
the wind tears the leaves away, and so be it! I do not believe the signs today,
I do not give in to sorrow.
I don't give a damn that there is slush on the streets. I am freely letting go, For the first time, not wanting to weep. Into the autumn sky I shout:
Look out, the leaves are falling! I have fallen in love recklessly! --Look out, the leaves are falling.
Alla Pugacheva

~Jim~

We go to the funeral. I don't think it's exactly appropriate, but Blair starts in on things like "closure" and "catharsis" and I give in. He's the one with all the experience with "processing."

For the record, I don't want any more experience processing. Repression happens for a reason. I liked my life a whole lot better when I didn't spend every waking moment dwelling on all the times I've been sold out by people I trusted.

Blair acts like it's no big deal, falling apart in the living room. But he hasn't let me out of his sight in three days. I'm kind of glad, actually. He's quite a guy, my partner. Not everybody could handle the shit I laid on him Tuesday night. But he's still right here, listening when I need to talk, taking me for Wonderburger for lunch, driving me to the funeral.

Apparently, he was right. About going. At the funeral home Wallace greets me like an old friend. He hugs me. He says he's really touched I came. He introduces me to Maitland's sister. He seems to have forgotten that I am the guy who spent two hours accusing him of being a red-neck gigolo who murdered the woman he loved. Maybe he thinks it was nothing personal.

It isn't, now. I can hug him back, ask him how he is, earnestly wish him well. It pleases Blair, although I can't tell if it qualifies as closure. It'll do, I guess.

The funeral is over by 1:30, so we head back to work. As we come off the elevator, Taggart snags my arm. "Watch out. Your home invasion case had another hit yesterday. Simon just found out about it and he's on the warpath."

"The report just come in?"

"Nope, yesterday. But the paperwork went to the fifth floor by mistake. Which is part of why he's mad. The other part is the press has gotten hold of it."

"Lovely. Thanks." I start to turn away and pause. "Say, Joel? Want to come to dinner tomorrow? Blair has a new recipe for turkey - it involves olives and cinnamon and pickled lemons or something. I could use some moral support."

Blair snorts and punches me on the shoulder, but Joel smiles slowly. "Indian?"

"Martian, I think."

"Moroccan," Blair sighs.

"Sure, Jim, that would be great."

"Seven o'clock? See you then." I smile and nudge Blair toward the bullpen. "Let's go talk to Simon. He's not gonna get any happier if we wait."

End Iceberg by Dasha: soulcake@bellsouth.net

Author and story notes above.

Disclaimer: The Sentinel is owned etc. by Pet Fly, Inc. These pages and the stories on them are not meant to infringe on, nor are they endorsed by, Pet Fly, Inc. and Paramount.