Original fic: SCU: Boston
Aug. 30th, 2005 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardFor you, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mentalhygiene. We meet the last pair of partners in the Special Crimes Unit of the Boston Police Department, and hey, get an idea of the plot.
Halden uses the backs of her fingers to push the thick strands of cream blond hair out of her eyes, and Matt can tell you the exact number of times she’s done it in the past five minutes, because he uses that as a register to tell when something’s completely fucked. Her foot taps click-click-click against the floor, and she nods at Lieutenant Dummann like she agrees to whatever it is he’s saying.
“Of course,” she says, flashing a sudden gleam of white teeth from behind rosy lips – carnation, Matt thinks, or maybe merlot; Halden regularly commentates the contents of her purse whenever she digs for her keys, which always seem to gravitate to the bottom of that overstuffed landfill. “It was an isolated incident, Lieutenant Dummann. It won’t happen again.”
“Make sure it doesn’t, Detective,” Dummann says sternly, and then his expression softens. “Your judgment’s usually good, Halden. I trust you won’t end up in here again.”
Halden’s hands halt halfway up her face and she slides them back down to her lap as inconspicuously as she can. “Not for this, Lieutenant,” she says, and flashes another dazzling smile.
“As for you, Detective Sergeant Carmichael –”
Halden kicks him hard in the ankle; Matt tries not to flinch and fumbles for the memory of why exactly they’re here. “Yes, Lieutenant?”
Dummann gives him a look like he knows what Matt’s thinking and lowers his glasses down to the bridge of his nose with his fingers on the stem. “I trust,” he says dryly, “that you’ll keep a better hold on your detectives from now on, Detective Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt says, and sits up a little straighter, trying to erase the familiar bite of Beacon Hill from his voice. From the sudden sharp look Dummann gives him, he doesn’t think he’s succeeding. “All due respect, sir, trying to, ah, rein in my detectives often does more harm than good. The people we deal with aren’t your average perps.” He definitively doesn’t add not that you’d know that. Dummann dislikes him enough already; he doesn’t need any more ammunition. “As you – er, Halden –” She sits back with a faintly satisfied smile, crossing her arms over her chest. “– said, it was an isolated incident. At the time, the evidence seemed to point –” Halden kicks him again. “Ah, my detectives’ judgment is usually good, it won’t happen again, sir.”
Dummann sighs and gives him a long-suffering look. “Make sure it doesn’t, Carmichael,” he says. “Try and remember Detective Saint just got off probation. Any more suspensions or complaints and your department will start setting records.”
Matt winces. Restraint isn’t in Jimmy’s vocabulary. He’s just starting to wonder if good judgment isn’t, either, now that Jimmy’s settled down to the ebb and flow of things in the Special Crimes Unit. “Yes, sir,” he says carefully. “I’ll remember that.”
“Good,” Dummann nods. “You’re dismissed, both of you. I hope it’ll be at least a week before I see either of you in here again. Or any of your people, Carmichael.” He doesn’t offer to shake hands, and instead glowers at them until the door clicks shut and leaves them standing out in the hall.
Halden swats him in the arm. “Would it be too hard for you to even pretend you have an idea of what’s going on?” she demands. “I know you don’t’ like authority, and I’m the last one to argue about that, in spades, but for Christ’s sweet sake, Matt!”
“It was a trumped up charge and Dummann knew it,” Matt says, nudging her down the hall. This isn’t their territory and he knows it in an antsy niggling sensation at the back of his neck that makes him turn his head at the press of footsteps on wood. A passing patrolman gives them a bewildered look; they’re unfamiliar here, as well they should be. “Gilibiowski was guilty; if we’d had the evidence to take him to trial this whole mess never would have happened.”
Halden crosses her arms and matches him stride for stride. “Yeah, well, we didn’t have the evidence and he did file a complaint against the department. Ifs and buts get us nowhere, buddy-boy.” She stops at the quiet purr of her cell phone and digs it out of her pocket, flipping it open and up to her ear. “Erikssen,” she says, firing a glare at Matt.
He sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets, raising his head when Halden barks a sharp burst of laughter that draws the attention of a pair of unfamiliar detectives standing against the wall with cups of hot coffee in their hands. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says. “Same old, same old. What did you think was going to happen? Something different?”
“Who is it?” Matt asks.
She turns toward him. “Chris. He wants to know if we’re off Dummann’s shit list.”
“It’ll be a cold day in hell,” Matt says.
“Yeah, that’ll be the day,” Halden translates into the phone. She holds it out toward him. “Your cell’s off. Chris wants to talk to you.”
Matt takes the phone. “Yeah?”
“So we got ourselves a case,” Chris says, accent slurring through the words. “Downtown like, ya know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Over at Charter House. Ya know the place, right? Well, the resident am-bass-a-dor –” He pronounces the word carefully “– went and got herself shot. One Miss Annabeth Swann, of the Swann Family of the –” He stops. “Ya know, the Brit freaks with the weird names.”
“Likimarr,” Matt says. “The Swanns are a Likimarr Family sworn to the Tamlin Family, I think, which is one of the Ti’varn, if my memory’s right.”
Chris sounds dubious. “Right,” he says. “Anyway, our vic’s one’a them, which goes straight to us, o’course.”
“Shouldn’t PARIAH be handling anything that has to do with the Ti’varn?” Matt asks. It’s not like SCU can’t handle it; they’re perfectly well-equipped to do so and they have the highest clearance rate in the BPD. It’s just that since Annabeth Swann is the closest thing to a foreign dignitary Boston’s likely to get, chances are the Feds will muscle in. They’ve done it before, on cases where the line between federal and common blurs frighteningly thin, and Matt wouldn’t put it past them to do it again. There’s even a chance the Ti’varn would prefer PARIAH to take the case; he thinks they have people who work hand in hand with PARIAH.
There’s a careless shrug in Chris’s voice. “Dunno. They haven’t shown yet, anyways, and BPD’s first on the scene, so we got point till we get told different. You an’ Halden gonna come down, or what?”
“We’re on our way,” Matt assures him. “Until we’re there, you take point.”
“Really?” He sounds excited. Matt thinks maybe he should rethink that whole decision, but he trusts Chris. Really.
“Yeah,” he says. “If they’re not already there, get everyone out there, start interviewing witnesses, gathering evidence –”
“Uh,” Chris says.
“What?”
“Well, the first responding officers were Malcolm and Hardy, ya know?”
Matt frowns. SCU’s clashed with them before. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Chris says heavily. “An’ they won’t release the scene till you show up. I mean, they probably wouldn’t do it even then, but you outrank ‘em, so they kinda haveta listen to you –”
“Do what you can,” he says. “Halden and I are on our way.”
“Goody,” Chris says, without much glee, and hangs up.
In other news, guess what happened yesterday in the Wonderful World of Marching Band? My harness broke. Well, not technically my harness, the clasp on my harness, but it's the same thing when thirty or so pounds of brass saxophone goes crashing towards pavement. I grabbed it, fell out of line, and tried to figure out what was wrong, then got picked up by the truck following us with the water and EMTs (just kidding. My BD has the hospital on speed-dial. We don't need no stinkin' EMTs!), which took my bari and let me out when we caught back up with the band. The harness I had - which is still usable, sort of, my dad performed emergency surgery with a carabiner - is a BG Saxophone Harness for Women, which I totally recommend, by the way, except for the fact it has no padding whatsoever. And, obviously, the clasp broke. We ordered a new harness, a different brand, a Neotech Super Harness by express mail, so hopefully it'll come before the parade on Friday, otherwise I'll march the sutured BG.
My mother blames this on Hurricane Katrina. I know better than to ask.
mentalhygiene. We meet the last pair of partners in the Special Crimes Unit of the Boston Police Department, and hey, get an idea of the plot.Halden uses the backs of her fingers to push the thick strands of cream blond hair out of her eyes, and Matt can tell you the exact number of times she’s done it in the past five minutes, because he uses that as a register to tell when something’s completely fucked. Her foot taps click-click-click against the floor, and she nods at Lieutenant Dummann like she agrees to whatever it is he’s saying.
“Of course,” she says, flashing a sudden gleam of white teeth from behind rosy lips – carnation, Matt thinks, or maybe merlot; Halden regularly commentates the contents of her purse whenever she digs for her keys, which always seem to gravitate to the bottom of that overstuffed landfill. “It was an isolated incident, Lieutenant Dummann. It won’t happen again.”
“Make sure it doesn’t, Detective,” Dummann says sternly, and then his expression softens. “Your judgment’s usually good, Halden. I trust you won’t end up in here again.”
Halden’s hands halt halfway up her face and she slides them back down to her lap as inconspicuously as she can. “Not for this, Lieutenant,” she says, and flashes another dazzling smile.
“As for you, Detective Sergeant Carmichael –”
Halden kicks him hard in the ankle; Matt tries not to flinch and fumbles for the memory of why exactly they’re here. “Yes, Lieutenant?”
Dummann gives him a look like he knows what Matt’s thinking and lowers his glasses down to the bridge of his nose with his fingers on the stem. “I trust,” he says dryly, “that you’ll keep a better hold on your detectives from now on, Detective Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt says, and sits up a little straighter, trying to erase the familiar bite of Beacon Hill from his voice. From the sudden sharp look Dummann gives him, he doesn’t think he’s succeeding. “All due respect, sir, trying to, ah, rein in my detectives often does more harm than good. The people we deal with aren’t your average perps.” He definitively doesn’t add not that you’d know that. Dummann dislikes him enough already; he doesn’t need any more ammunition. “As you – er, Halden –” She sits back with a faintly satisfied smile, crossing her arms over her chest. “– said, it was an isolated incident. At the time, the evidence seemed to point –” Halden kicks him again. “Ah, my detectives’ judgment is usually good, it won’t happen again, sir.”
Dummann sighs and gives him a long-suffering look. “Make sure it doesn’t, Carmichael,” he says. “Try and remember Detective Saint just got off probation. Any more suspensions or complaints and your department will start setting records.”
Matt winces. Restraint isn’t in Jimmy’s vocabulary. He’s just starting to wonder if good judgment isn’t, either, now that Jimmy’s settled down to the ebb and flow of things in the Special Crimes Unit. “Yes, sir,” he says carefully. “I’ll remember that.”
“Good,” Dummann nods. “You’re dismissed, both of you. I hope it’ll be at least a week before I see either of you in here again. Or any of your people, Carmichael.” He doesn’t offer to shake hands, and instead glowers at them until the door clicks shut and leaves them standing out in the hall.
Halden swats him in the arm. “Would it be too hard for you to even pretend you have an idea of what’s going on?” she demands. “I know you don’t’ like authority, and I’m the last one to argue about that, in spades, but for Christ’s sweet sake, Matt!”
“It was a trumped up charge and Dummann knew it,” Matt says, nudging her down the hall. This isn’t their territory and he knows it in an antsy niggling sensation at the back of his neck that makes him turn his head at the press of footsteps on wood. A passing patrolman gives them a bewildered look; they’re unfamiliar here, as well they should be. “Gilibiowski was guilty; if we’d had the evidence to take him to trial this whole mess never would have happened.”
Halden crosses her arms and matches him stride for stride. “Yeah, well, we didn’t have the evidence and he did file a complaint against the department. Ifs and buts get us nowhere, buddy-boy.” She stops at the quiet purr of her cell phone and digs it out of her pocket, flipping it open and up to her ear. “Erikssen,” she says, firing a glare at Matt.
He sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets, raising his head when Halden barks a sharp burst of laughter that draws the attention of a pair of unfamiliar detectives standing against the wall with cups of hot coffee in their hands. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says. “Same old, same old. What did you think was going to happen? Something different?”
“Who is it?” Matt asks.
She turns toward him. “Chris. He wants to know if we’re off Dummann’s shit list.”
“It’ll be a cold day in hell,” Matt says.
“Yeah, that’ll be the day,” Halden translates into the phone. She holds it out toward him. “Your cell’s off. Chris wants to talk to you.”
Matt takes the phone. “Yeah?”
“So we got ourselves a case,” Chris says, accent slurring through the words. “Downtown like, ya know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Over at Charter House. Ya know the place, right? Well, the resident am-bass-a-dor –” He pronounces the word carefully “– went and got herself shot. One Miss Annabeth Swann, of the Swann Family of the –” He stops. “Ya know, the Brit freaks with the weird names.”
“Likimarr,” Matt says. “The Swanns are a Likimarr Family sworn to the Tamlin Family, I think, which is one of the Ti’varn, if my memory’s right.”
Chris sounds dubious. “Right,” he says. “Anyway, our vic’s one’a them, which goes straight to us, o’course.”
“Shouldn’t PARIAH be handling anything that has to do with the Ti’varn?” Matt asks. It’s not like SCU can’t handle it; they’re perfectly well-equipped to do so and they have the highest clearance rate in the BPD. It’s just that since Annabeth Swann is the closest thing to a foreign dignitary Boston’s likely to get, chances are the Feds will muscle in. They’ve done it before, on cases where the line between federal and common blurs frighteningly thin, and Matt wouldn’t put it past them to do it again. There’s even a chance the Ti’varn would prefer PARIAH to take the case; he thinks they have people who work hand in hand with PARIAH.
There’s a careless shrug in Chris’s voice. “Dunno. They haven’t shown yet, anyways, and BPD’s first on the scene, so we got point till we get told different. You an’ Halden gonna come down, or what?”
“We’re on our way,” Matt assures him. “Until we’re there, you take point.”
“Really?” He sounds excited. Matt thinks maybe he should rethink that whole decision, but he trusts Chris. Really.
“Yeah,” he says. “If they’re not already there, get everyone out there, start interviewing witnesses, gathering evidence –”
“Uh,” Chris says.
“What?”
“Well, the first responding officers were Malcolm and Hardy, ya know?”
Matt frowns. SCU’s clashed with them before. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Chris says heavily. “An’ they won’t release the scene till you show up. I mean, they probably wouldn’t do it even then, but you outrank ‘em, so they kinda haveta listen to you –”
“Do what you can,” he says. “Halden and I are on our way.”
“Goody,” Chris says, without much glee, and hangs up.
In other news, guess what happened yesterday in the Wonderful World of Marching Band? My harness broke. Well, not technically my harness, the clasp on my harness, but it's the same thing when thirty or so pounds of brass saxophone goes crashing towards pavement. I grabbed it, fell out of line, and tried to figure out what was wrong, then got picked up by the truck following us with the water and EMTs (just kidding. My BD has the hospital on speed-dial. We don't need no stinkin' EMTs!), which took my bari and let me out when we caught back up with the band. The harness I had - which is still usable, sort of, my dad performed emergency surgery with a carabiner - is a BG Saxophone Harness for Women, which I totally recommend, by the way, except for the fact it has no padding whatsoever. And, obviously, the clasp broke. We ordered a new harness, a different brand, a Neotech Super Harness by express mail, so hopefully it'll come before the parade on Friday, otherwise I'll march the sutured BG.
My mother blames this on Hurricane Katrina. I know better than to ask.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-31 02:34 am (UTC)Amused by "dummann". Assuming it's a pun/play on words?
...dude, the harness breaking sucks. :( But getting a new one is cool. And hopefully you won't have to use the ghetto harness.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-31 10:52 pm (UTC)Halden rocks. She's - well, obviously she's the Stella character in this partnering, and in SCU too, although Matt's more well-adjusted than Mac. (Notice: He still lives in the same city that he grew up in, although he doesn't keep in touch with his parents. At one point, his parents hire a private detective to find him). Matt has the rich boy entitlement thing going, and his head is up in - not exactly the clouds, but not exactly down on earth either, so Halden brings him down. They balance each other. At the same time, that rich boy stuff comes through into his work, so a lot of the brass don't like him, because consciously or unconsciously he's projecting an air of "I'm better than you, you should listen to me, what you say or think doesn't matter." There's a point where Halden wonders how the hell he got promoted.
Amused by "dummann". Assuming it's a pun/play on words?
Not really, or at least I didn't think of it that way when I was writing. One of the senior flutists that just graduated had that name. First thing that came to mind.
...dude, the harness breaking sucks. :( But getting a new one is cool. And hopefully you won't have to use the ghetto harness.
There's nothing wrong with the other harness; it operates just fine with the carabiner instead of the swivel hook, but God, scariest moment of my life. Marching with a neckstrap in my pocket now, just in case it breaks again.