Fire in my eyes & boys on my mind

[lapacifidora]

Title: Fire in my eyes and boys on my mind

Author: lapacifidora

Spoilers: 1.01, “Pilot”

Rating/ Warnings: PG-14 this part

Word Count: 2,503

Disclaimers: Not mine. I’ve only been to Portland twice, and it never resembled anything like this one. The title is from The Sounds’ Like a Lady.

Author’s note: This is in response to a genderswap prompt over at the Grimm Kink meme. Specifically, this one.

***

Monroe’s eyes flicked from one side to the other, gaze roving over the open space ahead, unconsciously assessing every potential threat. It was the natural reaction of any predator, even one long caged. Even one reformed.

Even one pushing a shopping cart through the brightly lit aisles of Whole Foods.

Pushing the shopping cart forward, Monroe approached the bulk foods section and came to a halt in front of the grains, tapping a finger against the handle thoughtfully while weighing the merits of quinoa versus a wild rice blend.

(Clearly, the quinoa was a better source of protein, but the wild rice had an inherent nuttiness that was enhanced by baking it slowly and finishing it with a pat of butter.)

Monroe leaned forward to examine the labels on the bins and huffed when an unruly clump of curls swung forward. With an impatient gesture, Monroe tucked the hair behind one ear even as the inner wolf tried to tune out the synth-y pop music piped through the store’s speakers. (Even turned down to a reasonable level for humans, autotune still managed to reach pitches that made Monroe’s head ache.)

The unmistakable feeling of someone’s gaze raised Monroe’s proverbial hackles, and a glance to one side showed a tall-ish military type with neatly trimmed facial hair, piercing blue eyes and a phenomenally ugly knit hat. Monroe’s attention returned abruptly to the grain bins. (Decision: Quinoa for every day, and the wild rice blend for a special treat.) Another glance showed the man in the ugly hat had closed the distance between them by a few yards, and Monroe swallowed thickly, looking toward the opposite end of the aisle and taking a deep breath when it presented an easy escape route from the impending confrontation.

Squaring her shoulders, Monroe wiped her hands on the hem of her heavy gray sweater, dropped a hand to check the keys clipped to her belt loop and turned on her heel with a squeak of her Teva Mary Janes. With a final glance over her shoulder, she noted the half-step the man took toward her before shrugging and turning back to his scrutiny of a protein powder canister.

She high tailed it down the aisle and didn’t slow till she came to the frozen food section, where she rested her forehead against the cool glass for a moment before sighing heavily.

Threat averted.

***

It might be a cliché, but Nick Burkhardt was beginning to believe the saying ‘When it rains, it pours.’

A gruesome murder of a college student, followed by Aunt Marie’s arrival and subsequent attack, had left Nick feeling as though he were running through a fog, not trusting his own reactions or instincts. All day, small things – Juliette coming up behind him to wrap her arms around his waist while he waited for the coffee to finish brewing; the beeping of the crossing signal at the corner outside the precinct; his partner Hank clapping him on the shoulder in greeting – had caused him to jump like a startled animal.

Even now, the ding of the elevator as it opened on different floors of the hospital still made him start, as much as he was watching the display change as he rode up to the Intensive Care Unit.

When he reached the correct floor, he asked at the nurses’ station for the doctor treating Marie and drummed his fingers against the counter as he waited.

“Mr. Burkhardt?” A smiling woman in scrubs and a white coat walked down the hallway, her hand outstretched. “Hello again.”

“Hello, uh-”

“Dr. Rose.” The doctor smiled wryly and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. In my line of work, we’re not always expected to be good with names.” She gestured around the ICU with one hand as she took the chart a nurse handed her with another. “No need to point out the irony of that, believe me.”

“Sorry.” Nick shrugged and ducked his head for a moment. “In my line of work, I am expected to be good with names.” He smiled thinly at Dr. Rose. “I won’t forget again.”

“Really.” Dr. Rose flipped open the chart and glanced down at it. “You’re a detective.” She glanced up at Nick. “Alright then. Well, let me tell you about your aunt’s condition.”

Nick followed her down the hall to Marie’s room, his gaze swept from side to side even as he darted a glance over his shoulder, his hands hovering at the holster and cell phone clipped to his belt. He had no way of knowing if the…monster that came after his aunt the night before was a one-off or a preview of things to come. He had no way of knowing where the next threat would come from – or if he’d notice it before it got within killing distance of his aunt. He had no way of knowing when the other shoe would drop.

He only knew that he had to tread the line between vigilance and paranoia carefully: If Marie’s warning was true, on one side lay survival and, on the other, a one-way ticket to Oregon State Hospital.

A glance at Dr. Rose indicated she expected some sort of response from him.

“She’s in a deep coma. There was a sudden spike in the EKG this morning, but I don’t have anything definitive to tell you yet.”

“Will she come out of this?”

“Well, all we can do is wait. Did you know about the scars?”

“What scars?”

“A lot of them look like knife wounds.” Dr. Rose looked away and fiddled with the chart. “They’re all over her body. What line of work was she in?”

“She was a librarian.”

The ringing of his phone interrupted his train of thought as his gaze dropped to the screen and he saw Hank’s name on the display.

“Yeah.” He listened for a moment before turning away from his aunt’s bedside and exiting the room. “I’m on my way.”

***

Nick jogged through the park toward the street, his mind whirling to the same rhythm as the pounding of his feet over turf. As he approached a break in the trees and caught sight of the residential street beyond, he tried to sort his observations into manageable categories.

Observation one: Robin Howell’s abduction was related to Sylvie Oster’s assault and murder, whatever the Captain might think.

Observation two: Both Robin and Sylvie were attacked in a forested area.

Observation three: Aunt Marie arrival and her attack happened the same day as Sylvie Oster’s murder, which was nearly unexplainable, and that was one hell of a coincidence.

Observation four: In police work, there is no such thing as a coincidence.

Nick paused for a moment as he reached the break in the trees and put a hand on a trunk, catching his breath.

Observation five: Whatever other weird shit might be going on, Robin’s disappearance was like any other missing child case. If they wanted to find her, the first 24 hours were critical.

Nick stepped through the trees and glanced both ways along the street: At least the cop shows got that much right.

The street was quiet and empty, but a movement at the corner of his eye drew his gaze to a woman, with dark, shoulder length curly hair trotted down the front steps of a quaint blue Arts & Crafts style home. She wore a baggy gray sweater, work boots and jeans that, even from across the street, showed drying splatters of mud. She walked down the short path to her mail box and opened the door to retrieve her mail, her back to Nick. Nick glanced back at her boots, mentally calculating if she could be heavy enough to have left the prints he’d spotted back where he’d left Hank.

As he thought, two girls rode past on bikes, laughing and indistinctly egging each other to go faster. One of them rang the bell on her bike.

It was imperceptible. It was the kind of thing that, were he not already watching his every step after Aunt Marie’s attack, Nick might have missed it.

But as it was, Nick saw the shoulders tense under the gray bulk of the woman’s sweater. He saw the way her head cocked, even though he could not see her expression.

Most importantly, he saw her hands – pale and long-fingered where one curled around the sweater’s hem and the other clutched a sheaf of mail – flicker, just for an instant, into dark claws, tipped with vicious-looking nails. In another instant, the change was gone and the woman headed back toward her house.

Nick was moving before he had any idea, any plan, any logical reason for doing so.

But another monster in such close proximity to his crime scene was a glaring coincidence. Observation four flashed through his brain again, and he was called out to his partner.

“Hank! I got something.” He saw the woman pause, and called out again. “HEY!” He stepped off the sidewalk without looking, trusting he’d know if there was a car headed for him. He watched the woman turn halfway and glance back at him, her eyes widening as she saw him running toward her. Her lips parted as her face paled and she sprinted for her front door. Nick drew on whatever reserves he had left and lengthened his stride, crossing her front yard and taking her front steps in a single bound. “Stop!”

The door was closing behind her, but it opened again under Nick’s weight, the handle ripped from the woman’s hands and the door itself bouncing off the wall as the hinges creaked crazily. A glance ahead showed the woman was headed for the stairs, and Nick threw himself after her with a low tackle, catching her around the knees and bringing her down with a thud. He grasped two handfuls of the sweater and held her still, even as she drew her head back as far as she could.

“Where is she?” Nick shook her once and pulled her a little closer. “WHERE IS SHE?!”

***

This was…humiliating. Humbling. Horrifying.

And, considering some of the things Monroe had done in the flush of youthful arrogance and bloodlust, that wasn’t exactly a word she used lightly.

Monroe grimaced and shifted her hips forward, hoping it would keep the cuffs from cutting into her wrists – and cutting off her circulation – as much as they had been for the last hour. She inhaled deeply, blinking rapidly as she turned her face away from the small crowd that had gathered opposite her house. She stared down at her denim-covered knees for several minutes before venturing a glance up at her house, biting back the urge to shout at the officers who were trampling her carefully fertilized and edged lawn: Their methodic back-and-forth as they poked and prodded with shovels and other tools was sure to leave muddy spots that would be difficult to fix this close to winter.

A growl rose in her throat unbidden, and she slammed her eyes shut and focused on her breathing, reining in her embarrassment-fueled anger to a more manageable level of frustration.

When she felt slightly more in control, she looked back up at her house and fought the reflex to bare her teeth as she caught glimpses of the officers inside her house walking back and forth and pulling up what looked like the cushions on her antique sofa.

Monroe counted through her deep breathing exercises as she watched a shorter cop carelessly toss down her couch cushions – the bastard – and turn to talk to someone standing just to one living room window.

***

“I know she’s in here somewhere.” Nick insisted, stepping away from Hank and toward Sgt. Wu, who gestured broadly.

“If you’ve got another place to look, we’ll look.” Wu replied, exchanging a put-upon look with Nick’s partner. “But we’ve torn this place apart.” He turned away to look for some item of furniture that had not yet been searched. Nick took another step toward the sergeant, but Hank put a hand on the younger detective’s shoulder and pushed him toward the front door.

Out on the front porch, Hank pulled Nick aside and stared his partner down.

“What are we doing here?”

“If Robin’s not in there, she’s got her someplace else.”

“What do you see in her we don’t?” Hank gestured toward the patrol car in which the homeowner sat, cuffed, while the uniforms searched her property and home. “Her record’s clean. She had a parking ticket seven years ago, but was able to prove to the judge she hadn’t run out the meter, so she didn’t have to pay it.” He sighed and crossed his arms, looking for all the world like a scolding teacher. “She has no priors, no history of violence. No complaints from her neighbors. She’s quiet and keeps to herself, so some of the other people who live on this street say, but she keeps up her house and yard. And, c’mon, Nick, you know the stats about female sex offenders as well as I do.”

“I know.” Nick sighed and wiped a hand over his face.

“Of course you do, man, because we’ve read the same reports.” Hank dropped his arms and put one hand in his pocket. “If she was a predator, we’d have caught wind of it before now.”

“OK. Fine.” Nick rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe she isn’t the one we’re looking for. Maybe she is just the accomplice.”

“Nick.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time a male sex offender used a woman to help him surveil and secure a victim.” Nick held up a hand and began ticking off cases. “Jaycee Dugard. Elizabeth Smart. Those are the two most recent, but then there’s also-”

“OK, OK.” Hank held up his hands to stop Nick before the younger man put his encyclopedic memory to use. “I get it. But there is nothing to tie this poor woman to these cases or any others, other than proximity to the park.”

“But she fits the profile for-”

“That’s not going to get her in a court or before a judge unless she sues the department.” Hank turned away and re-entered the house, where Nick could hear him going from room to room and telling the uniforms to wrap it up and head out. Nick shook his head and turned back to the yard, his gaze eventually landing on the patrol car in which the homeowner sat. Even from this distance, Nick could see that her face was pale and that she was chewing on her lower lip as she watched the officers in the yard gathering up their equipment. She stiffened, as though she felt Nick’s gaze on her, and turned her head to meet his eyes with her own. Her expression was blank, but one look in her eyes told Nick she was not going to be forgetting this.

He stared back, his own expression grim: Good. Because he wouldn’t be forgetting this, either.

***

Comments

[monkeyonthelam.livejournal.com]

Look! Shiny new icon!

It's about time we saw some girl!Eddie. Interesting retelling of the pilot, I am intrigued to find out what these deviations mean for the rest of the story. Can't wait.