The Reason
by Jayne Leitch

Muchas gracias to Ms MaryKate for soliciting this story for the 'zine last...wow, that was about a year ago.  Huh.  Also for listening to me whine about finishing it, and for betaing it when I *did* finish it.  She is truly peachy keen.

Disclaimers: none of them are mine, etc etc, but if you wanna do anything with this story, ask me first, please.  You know the drill.

Originally published in the "What the Cat Dragged In" fanzine.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Reason
by Jayne Leitch
c. 2002

The warehouse was on the corner of Chestnut and Dakey. Brigatti stopped the car a block away, parking on the side of the road at the edge of a dark, empty, industrial park.  "Don't forget the Paper," she instructed as she undid her seatbelt and climbed out of the car, letting in a gust of freezing wind.

Gary shivered, only partly because of the sudden cold.  He wasn't about to forget the Paper; the ragged roll of wrinkled newsprint had been clutched tightly in his hands since he'd settled into the passenger seat of Toni's car back at McGinty's.  It stayed with him as he hurriedly freed himself of his own
belt, hopped out of the vehicle, and jogged to keep up with  Brigatti's quick, determined stride.  "Toni--"

"It hasn't changed, has it?"  Toni's attention was focused with laser intensity on the large, squat building across the barren intersection ahead of them; she'd left her gloves in the car,  and her hands, Gary could see, were balled up into  white-knuckled fists that poked out from the cuffs of her thick
winter coat.  "The article's still the same?"

A quick check of the front page headline, and Gary answered, "Yeah.  We've got maybe twenty minutes."  He could feel sweat starting to bead on his forehead despite the chilly air;  his heart thudded nervously in his chest, and Gary tried to relax.  Beside him, Toni shook her head slightly.  Narrowing her eyes, she reached one hand across her torso to pat once against her side before dropping it back and clenching her fist closed again.  Gary realized that she had been checking the placement of her gun in its holster; concerned, he reached out, touched her elbow and said, "We have time to call Winslow, you know, or Armstrong, or somebody.  You don't have to--to prove anything--"

This earned him a startled, wide-eyed--hurt?--look that almost immediately hardened into a glare as she increased her speed, just a little bit.  "What, you think I can't handle myself?"

"No, of course I don't."  Gary clenched his fist around the Paper, tried not to lose his footing as he matched her pace on the icy sidewalk, and met her eyes, recognizing the beginning of their old argument.  He could probably have the whole damn fight by himself, since they'd been through it so many times by now he knew both sides by memory; unfortunately, Toni wasn't one to let things go after only the opening volley.   Despite being absolutely sure that this was *not* the time, Gary couldn't help hoping that this would *finally* be the go-round that would make her believe what he *said*, and not what she thought she heard.  "I know you can handle yourself, with or without the Paper, but--"

"Good.  I'm glad we've got that cleared up."  Cold, hard, arched brow and she was turning back to put that thousand-megawatt attention laser on the rapidly-approaching warehouse again, and Gary couldn't help but huff out a breath of annoyance that fogged gently around her head and made her turn sharply back to face him.  "Hobson, I don't want to hear it right now!" she hissed.

"Well, I don't really want to be *saying* anything right now, either!" he snapped back.  "But look--"  Pausing, he took a beat to draw in a long, steadying breath; then, schooling his expression and tone to something resembling calm, he quickly continued, "Toni.  You *know* I don't think you can't take care of this.  That is not the problem here.  The problem is that I  get the Paper for a reason, and right now that reason seems to  be to keep a bunch of people's deaths from being headlined on  the front page and detailed on page eight of tomorrow's newspaper--"

"Good.  Then we're both on the same page."  Toni's gaze flickered down to the tattered papers in his hand, then back up to his face.  "So to speak.  Now let me concentrate, will ya?"

"No, I--"  His mouth snapped shut as she turned away, and Gary rolled his eyes before he stopped, reached out, snagged her elbow and pulled her back around, ignoring her sputter of indignation.  "Look, all I'm saying is that--this is a big operation, here, and even with the Paper things can get tricky.  
You *know* that," he hurried on as she opened her mouth to object, "you know that just as well as I do by now, and all I'm *saying* is that *I'm* the one who'd have to know that I could've prevented anything that might happen to you, so I don't want to watch you go into something like this without
covering as many bases as I can first.  It has nothing to do  with how well I think you do your job, and everything to do with how much--how much I like you."  Gary felt his ears start to burn at the way Toni was looking at him; releasing her elbow, he let his hand drop stiffly to his side as he took a small step back.  "Okay?"

She kept looking at him, and for a long moment he couldn't decide whether her expression was closer to the one she wore when she came home after work to find him waiting with a hot dinner and fresh flowers, or the one she wore when she stayed at his place and realized how long it had been since
kitty-litter changes.  Then her eyes softened and she gave a  quick, genuine--mildly teasing--smile.  "You like me, huh?"

"Ahhh..."  Gary rolled his eyes again, and got a friendly elbow to the gut.  "Can we just focus on not dying when we do this, please?"

"That's the plan."  Toni nodded down at the Paper before resuming her march toward the building.  "Check it one more time, would you Gary?  It should be almost time, but I don't see any trucks at the loading dock."

Obligingly, Gary began to unfold the Paper--but a sudden rumble from the building ahead made him freeze.  He looked up to see, maybe half a block away, the huge loading doors on the warehouse's delivery bay rolling open; they revealed a brightly-lit dock and the shadowed outlines of two large men.  Gary swallowed and turned back to the Paper again--but Toni's hand on his stopped him.

"No time," she said, whip-tense and frozen in the middle of the sidewalk.  Her eyes fixed on the men, scrutinizing their movements as they secured the doors and wandered back towards the centre of the dock; as she watched, she said quietly, "Okay.  Looks like there are only two men in there
right now.  The way I see it, if we can take them out of the picture before the shipment shows up with reinforcements, we'll have a better chance of getting control of the goods *and* whoever shows up playing delivery boys."  She arched an eyebrow at Gary, who nodded slowly at her logic.

"We don't exactly have a lot of time--"

"Which is why we're splitting up."  Her mouth tightened, briefly, into a thin line; then she continued flatly, "You circle around to the warehouse's east door, I'll go through the main offices--that'll put us on opposite sides of the dock.  We try to wait until they're separated, then each take out one
guy."

Gary shook his head.  "I don't think--"
 
"Remind me which one of us has a decade of special ops experience under her belt."

She stared at him, mouth pursed and brows raised; after a long moment, Gary sighed and nodded.  "All right.  But I'm gonna keep checking the Paper, and if I see anything change, I'm coming to find you."

For a second, Toni looked as if she were about to argue--then she nodded once, briskly.  "Fine.  See you in the dock."  With that, she turned and headed into the industrial park, cutting diagonally towards the far end of the warehouse.

Gary watched her until her dark coat had faded completely into the night; then, shaking his head a little, he resumed his walk in the other direction, unwrapping the Paper as he went.  He scanned the front page--"Still the same," he muttered under his breath--then rerolled it and reached behind him to jam it into his back pocket.

"Hobson."

The unexpected voice made him fumble, and the Paper *whumped* onto the sidewalk behind him.  Gary spun around, and spared half a second to stare at the newcomer before bending to pick up the Paper.  "Armstrong, what are you doing here?  You nearly scared me to death!"

The detective watched him scramble on the sidewalk, his brow furrowed.  "I could ask you the same question, Hobson.  Except--Chestnut and Dakey.  Didn't I hear you say you had business here earlier?"

Gary paused, the last errant sheet of the Paper crumpling slowly as he closed his fist around it.  He straightened up, and was very careful to meet Armstrong's eyes as steadily as he could while he said, "You, uh--heard me talking to the desk sergeant at the police station?"

"I did."  Armstrong folded his arms.  Despite his brightly-coloured woolen scarf, he looked like nothing so much as a lean yet very inconveniently solid wall.  "The thing is, I didn't hear you say anything particularly helpful or convincing to Sergeant Grenville--nothing that would persuade him to
notify anyone else at the department that you had important information to share, anyway."

Gary absorbed this, then made a show of shuffling the ragged Paper into some kind of order.  "He told you, though, didn't he?"

"I had to ask.  And even then, Grenville seemed to think it wasn't worth my time to get the details."  Armstrong's mouth twisted into a wry approximation of a smile.  "Still, here you are, right where you said you'd be, at about the right  time...and somehow, you've got yourself police backup."

"Police--"  Pretending that Toni's car wasn't sitting right in  his eyeline if he glanced over Armstrong's shoulder--and there, parked on the road maybe a block behind it, that had to be Armstrong's car, didn't it?--Gary forced a chuckle that didn't quite survive the detective's answering glare.  "Oh, you mean
Brigatti?  No, she's just--"

"Wandering through a badly lit industrial area on a Tuesday night for fun?  Come on, Hobson."  Armstrong uncrossed his arms, then let his hands land on his hips, pushing his long coat open just enough that Gary could see the butt of his gun sticking out of its holster.  "You want to tell me what you said to get her to come down here with you?"

"Why?  It's nothing I didn't say to Sergeant Grenville."

The detective set his jaw.  "Sergeant Grenville isn't here.  Detective Brigatti is."

"Yeah, and pardon me for saying so, but so are you."  Shuffling his feet a little on the sidewalk, anxious to get to the warehouse, Gary said, "Look, Armstrong.  I don't really have the time to go through this with you, but I can assure you that both Brigatti and I are here because we *know* some people are gonna get killed at that warehouse up there.  Now, either you believe us or you don't, but you're here, so you might as well come and help us out.  Okay?"

Armstrong didn't move.  His eyes narrowed, and the look they nailed Gary with froze him to the sidewalk.  "'*We* know.'  'Believe *us*.'  Do you really mean both you and Brigatti, plural, Hobson?  Because in my experience, it's always been *you*, singular, who knows everything and needs to be
believed."

Gary chuckled again, this time a little more desperately.  He really wanted to check his watch.  And the Paper.  Shrugging off Armstrong's angry expression, he replied, "Come on, Armstrong--we've known each other almost three years now, and you still find it hard to believe that I could get anyone to take me seriously?"  He grinned, more out of nerves than mirth, and added flippantly, "It's *Toni*.  You don't think she has a good reason to be helping me?"  Armstrong stayed silent--then looked away, clearing his throat as if he'd tried to swallow a mouthful of gravel.  Gary felt a cold weight settle in his chest.  "You...you don't think she has a good reason to be  helping me," he repeated slowly.

Armstrong's harsh breath swirled into fog between them.  "Look, Toni's a good cop," he said, his voice rough, "she always has been.  But you--ever since you showed up on her scene--"  He broke off, staring down at the sidewalk for a long, quiet moment while his jaw worked under his skin.  When he looked up again, his eyes were tired.  "Look, it's been close to two years since you two started--whatever it is you have," he said bluntly, "and it's been almost a year since Toni started going off half-cocked every time you had one of your premonitions, or--whatever it is *you* have.  Times when
nobody else in the department would take you seriously, she's stopped whatever she was doing to go and follow you around Chicago on nothing stronger than--"

"Than my word?"  Gary found himself nodding.  "And she's been right to help me every time.  You have noticed that, haven't you?"

"Well to be honest with you, Hobson, no I *haven't* noticed that."  His hands left his hips, and Armstrong folded his arms across his chest, looking cold and uncomfortable and still very much like that wall Gary didn't need to be up against.  "I'll admit that you have a tendency to provide more reliable
information than a lot of other informants.  And in the three years since you've been bothering me about things that are going to happen, I can probably count the times you've been wrong on one hand, but--Hobson, it's the way you *get* your information--"  Armstrong broke off, then sighed, suddenly looking very tired.  "The thing is, Hobson, that around the precinct, you're what's known as a crackpot.  Sure, you're relatively harmless, and a lot of the time you have good tips, but..."

"But I'm still just a crackpot."  Gary ducked his head for a moment.  He understood what Armstrong was--and wasn't--saying, a little better than he wanted to; he'd been living with it ever since he started getting the Paper, after  all, for almost six years now.  The worst part was, he *hadn't* understood how much it had to have been affecting Toni until right now.  "And Brigatti..."

Armstrong shrugged.  "Brigatti used to be dead set against believing in the kind of coincidences you're famous for, but now..."  His face twisted uncomfortably for a second; then, straightening up, Armstrong glared over at Gary with determination etched into every feature.  "Listen, what's going
on between the two of you is nobody's business but your own," he declared, "and I don't want to pry.  All I want is to know Toni's reason for being so sure that you're a special case."

The implication of what Armstrong was saying hammered through Gary's brain, and he felt his hands tighten around the Paper as he stared down the detective's gunbarrel gaze.  "And--and what is it you think this reason might be?"

Armstrong took a slow, deep breath.  "I think she knows where you get your information," he said simply.

Gary let out a breath of his own, a shiver trembling its way up his spine as he tried to figure out what to say.  He couldn't  just brush Armstrong off by crying coincidence or right-place-right-time; it was obvious that the detective wasn't going to let him get away without getting some kind of answer
in return.  And it wasn't as if Gary only had himself to think about protecting--he could've kicked himself for not realizing what Toni must have had to put up with since he had told her about the Paper, how the other cops must've come to see her since she started helping the precinct "crackpot" for seemingly no good reason...suddenly, their earlier fight took on a whole new dimension, and Gary felt like a complete heel.

None of which actually helped him figure out what to say to Armstrong, who was starting to look incredibly impatient as Gary just stood there without speaking.  Finally, after another disquieting moment of icy silence and the banking heat of Armstrong's stare, he closed his eyes, opened his mouth--

--And jumped, heartbeat tripping, as a single gunshot rang through the air.

Gary's eyes snapped open, and his gaze met Armstrong's for a panicked second before he spun on his heel--skidding slightly on some ice--and pelted down the sidewalk toward the warehouse.  He barely heard the detective's call--"Hobson, wait!"--as he ran; he was too caught up in the gasp of his
breath and the throb of his pulse and the voice in his brain,  yelling that he had taken too long, too *long*...

He didn't have far to go--just slightly more than half a block--but it seemed to take him forever.  He kept his eyes fixed on the brightly yawning door of the loading dock as he approached, straining to see the silhouetted shapes of whoever might be inside, but it wasn't until he was swinging himself up
onto the platform that he could see--

"Brigatti!"

Gary jolted, only half-upright and banging his knee on the edge of the landing as Armstrong's voice at his back let him know that the detective had followed.  Ignoring him, Gary staggered to his feet and rushed across the bay to where Toni was lying facedown, one arm stretched above her head, hand still clutching her gun.  "Toni," he said, dropping to his knees at  her side, reaching out to skim his hands over her body in a  frantic search for bloodstains, bullet holes, a *pulse*...   "Toni!  Please, please don't--Toni, c'mon--"

"She's not shot, Hobson."  Armstrong's voice floated down from above him, authoritative and strangely confident.  "Look."

"What--?"  Startled by the other man's calm, Gary spared a glance up from his search--and froze as he saw a man, half-sitting against a pallet of boxes, right in line with the angle of Toni's gun.  He was dressed in denim overalls and an orange jacket; a dark red stain was spreading through the fabric
he'd bunched around his right thigh, and his face was ghostly pale--but he was alive, and his eyes glimmered with shock as Armstrong stepped toward him, gun drawn.

Wild-eyed, Gary gestured at Toni's sprawled body.  "What happened to her?" he demanded, ignoring Armstrong's hissed warning.  "Tell me!  Why is she unconscious?"

The man's mouth twisted into a grimace, and his hands scrabbled for better purchase on his makeshift tourniquet.  "Sh...she surprised me," he said, haltingly but oddly flat.   "Told me t-to stop, that she was the police.  I f-froze, but Roger--"

Armstrong stiffened in alarm.  "Who's Roger?"

"The other guy!"  Gary shifted impatiently.  "There were two guys, Roger must be the other one.  Keep talking!" he ordered, glaring at the injured man.

He swallowed twice, convulsively.  "She said I was--was under arrest, and she was gonna lock me in the office 'til she had  time to deal with me.  I was gonna go, I swear I was!  But Roger, he sn-snuck up behind her with a crowbar and--"  He broke off, his body shuddering so hard against the pallet that an empty box fell from the top.  "Th-the impact must've m-m-made her pull the trigger," he finished, with obvious effort, "but by the time I realized I was shot, Roger'd run off."

Armstrong knelt beside the man and made a cursory examination of his leg.  "We need to call an ambulance," he muttered, shoving his gun into its holster with one hand while the other reached into a pocket for his cell phone.

Gary wasn't paying attention; his hand had found the place close to the base of Toni's skull where Roger's crowbar had landed, and he mechanically combed his fingers through her blood-matted hair.  "Hurry, Armstrong, would you please?" he croaked.  He heard the detective bark a number of orders over the phone, but he couldn't understand what was being said; a soft buzzing noise had filled his ears, and his mind felt like it was wrapped in a black blanket.  He had no problems seeing, however; he looked at Toni's slack hands, her mussed hair, her collar turning dark and wet with blood, until he couldn't bear to keep his eyes open one second longer...and then he kept looking.

It was Armstrong's hand on his shoulder, shaking him firmly, that finally made him look away.  "Yeah?"

The detective knelt beside him, face ashen, mouth twisted into a fierce frown.  He leaned in close, keeping eye contact, and whispered harshly, "Hobson, I don't know what you thought was supposed to go down here tonight, but I'm pretty damn sure this wasn't it.  That said, I suggest you think of
something awfully believable to tell all the people who'll want a reason why you and Brigatti were here in the first place,  because I can tell you right now--"

Gary, who had been listening on a bit of a delay, jerked away from Armstrong's hand, his eyes widening.  "What was supposed to happen," he muttered, staring at nothing.  "What was--supposed to--"  Turning away from both Toni's body and Armstrong's angry expression, he began sweeping his hands
over the floor around him in a quick, frenzied search.  "Where is it, where *is* it, the Paper, where is--"

"Your newsp--?!"  A shocked sound escaped Armstrong's throat, and he pushed himself up with enough force to propel him back a few steps.  "Toni's *life* is at stake, and you're looking for your *newspaper*?  Dammit, Hobson--"

"I have to *find*--"  Gary broke off as his eyes caught the flutter of pages across the dock, near the spot where he'd climbed up onto the platform.  Scrambling to his feet, he hurried over to the Paper and grabbed it up, stomach twisting at the smear of blood he left on the pages as he rummaged
through them, scanning for a word, a headline, something, anything--

There.

*There.*

"--Hobson!"  A gloved hand tore the newsprint from his grip, and Gary sent Armstrong a desperate look before realizing what he'd just read and starting to laugh.  The answering expression on the detective's face just made him laugh harder.  "For God's sake, Hobson, what the hell--"

"Just--just *read it*, Armstrong, will ya?"  Shaking his head, his laughter dying into chuckles and then subsiding altogether, Gary stumbled back across the empty bay, then lurched to his knees beside Toni.  On impulse, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head; when he looked up, the injured man was staring at him as if he'd grown another head.  Gary simply looked away and waited.

Armstrong's footsteps were uneven as he followed across the bay, then came to rest just behind Gary's back.  The sound of rustling papers echoed in the huge space.  "Hobson..."

Wearily, Gary gave a nod of acknowledgment.  "Yeah, Armstrong."

It was a long moment before the detective spoke again.  When he did, his voice was husky and faint with disbelief.  "What *is* this?"

Gary turned, just enough to be able to see Armstrong's face, and didn't quite manage a smile.

"The reason," he said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

End.
 

Email the author:  Jayne Leitch
 
 
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