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Sometimes I don't know if they're in love or can't stand the sight of each other. They'll start one of their bantering sessions and it'll look like they're fighting but just let me butt in and say 'Get to the point, Harry' and the lieutenant'll look at me like he'd like to demote me on the spot. Fine. I'm just the sergeant. None of my business. And then there was Eldon Bardach.
Bardach was one of Harry's arrests back in San Diego. Spent time in prison, was seriously injured in the prison workshop, lost his wife. He became fixated on Harry and tried to frame him for murder. I had never seen anything actually touch the lieutenant before. As he himself would say, he has 'inured' himself to the problems of the people we deal with within our profession - their problems, anger, and grief. But that time the pain got through, he looked stricken. He worked later and harder than ever. He was supposed to be on leave but forget it, and all this for the guy he's forever snapping sarcastically at and shooing out of his office, although come to think of it... he really doesn't tend to show irritation when he doesn't like someone - then he's politeness itself. Or tolerance I suppose.
He's an impeccable college officer, the type who fits in better with judges than other cops and he prides himself on his diplomacy skills. Harry, on the other hand, doesn't care to impress. I think underneath he's a poet and a connoisseur but he couldn't care less whether anyone knows it or not. He shambles around in his rumpled ill-matched suit (does he only have the one?) and the less said about that battered old MG the better.
And it's not just their attitude towards image that divides them it's their methods too. Trench is an organisation man. With himself at the top gathering the information, making the big decisions, deploying the troops. It exasperates the hell out of him that Harry doesn't share, acts alone, favors intuition before solid evidence, won't carry a gun. And he routinely plunges into the kind of danger no cop would face without back-up. But of course Harry's not a cop anymore so Trench can't force him to follow procedure. Once it's over the lieutenant will be so relieved that Harry's OK that he'll give him one hell of a dressing down. But Harry will always do what he thinks is right because he's kind and compassionate and people come first whereas with Trench 'people' has a broader definition - his duty as a lawman is to the population as a whole.
Still, somehow they fit together and share a special understanding. Personally I think it's love.
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~the end~