Chapter 4 #2
Harding glanced up at Carlyle, who had been watching the crime scene processing with avid, interested eyes, but who hadn’t left Gideon’s side since he’d taken the pictures of the murder room to show Gideon.
For his part, Gideon had allowed himself to be sat on one of the barstools, over the marble-tiled foyer, so he could bleed as sterilely as possible.
“Good,” Harding said shortly. “I’m glad Carlyle can take you home and make sure you have an early night. Why wasn’t he with you when the guy came at you with a stiletto again?”
“He was upstairs finding the murder room,” Gideon said. “I swear to God, Harding, we were textbook—”
“Except for the lockpicks,” Harding said dryly.
“The suspect was acting suspiciously,” Carlyle said, virtue writ large across his puckish features.
Harding eyed the corpse, which was getting zipped into a black plastic bag. “I think you lucked out in that way,” he said. “Given how this fell out, nobody’s going to question the access to the murder room. But next time, keep the lockpicks to yourself unless it’s an emergency, okay?”
Carlyle tilted his head. “Define emergency?”
Harding grimaced. “You’ll know it when you see it,” he said. “But this wasn’t it. Don’t worry. Schumer took care of a lot of our problems by ending up dead.”
“I took care of a lot of your problems by not ending up dead,” Gideon told him, and at that moment the EMTs finally arrived to take him to get stitched, so he could only watch Harding roll his eyes.
CARLYLE FOLLOWED in the department issue, and sat by his bedside during the stitching, bitching at him like an inconvenienced spouse the entire time.
“I don’t understand how you saw it,” he said finally. “How did you see that this guy was off, and you hadn’t even met him.”
“Did you see that he was off when you met him?” Gideon asked, and this was a real question because your partner’s instincts were part of your own arsenal.
“Definitely. I almost threw up when he smiled.”
“Same. Let’s just say that with practice and study, you can see those same things—those same things that made him ‘off,’ in his pattern of behavior, in his color choices—”
“No color,” Carlyle said. “The upstairs was everything from pale beige to anemic ecru, and downstairs….”
They both shuddered.
“Exactly,” Gideon told him. “It doesn’t work this way for everybody, but colors tend to evoke emotions. If somebody is that obsessive about monochrome, it can be that they have a problem responding emotionally to their environment, and, hey, hello, socio- or psychopath.”
Carlyle nodded. “But not always.” His eyes went sideways then, and Gideon would place bets that he hadn’t added anything to the sterility of his apartment since Gideon and Harding had walked Carlyle into his own bedroom to fall asleep.
“Not always,” Gideon said. “This guy had obviously spent a lot of time and money on his house making it that sterile. There’s a difference between a concerted effort and spending all your time at work.”
Carlyle’s lips twitched. “I have some very colorful dress shirts,” he said.
“I am reassured. Maybe we should swing by your place to grab one before we go to my place to find something less….” He gazed woefully at the plastic bag containing his tweed sport coat with the hand-sewn patches at the elbows. It had been a gift from his father and sort of a favorite.
“Shredded and bloodstained?” Carlyle asked, but not without sympathy.
“It would be best,” Gideon told him. “But reading a file gets to be a skill—one I practiced for a couple of years before Harding called me up to the SCTF.” He shrugged. “That’s how we landed the case. Kathy wanted a second opinion, and, well….”
“Your opinion was we should check out this guy before he killed somebody else,” Carlyle said, nodding. “I get it. I mean, I get it. But if you’ve got any beginning profiling training programs or books, I’d love to bone up. I can’t promise I’ll ever get, like, Gideon Chadwick certified, but….”
Gideon gave him a slightly goofy smile. He’d been given some oral painkillers, because the number of scratches in his arms and the sides of his hands and his shoulders were truly too big a job for lidocaine. When that table had disintegrated, it had gone with a vengeance.
“It matters,” he said, “that you study, that you try. You said something today about not wanting to get fired because the guy rushed me. What mattered today was you saw he was a threat and came to back your partner. Don’t worry, Carlyle. So far, your job is safe.”
“What’s it take to get fired?” Joey asked.
“Gross incompetence,” Gideon fired back.
And then, remembering one guy they’d considered for about a week who had wanted to shoot a suspect through a hostage, because he’d seen that in a movie once.
“Or gross human indifference,” he added soberly.
“Harding wanted to form an agency based on not traumatizing a victim or an informant or even an unsub—provided they can be talked down—any more than possible. It’s weird how wanting to found law enforcement based on human kindness can inspire a lot of interagency bloodshed and hatred. ”
Carlyle’s face went carefully blank, and Gideon wondered if he was thinking about how he and three hundred villagers had hidden in the jungle, literally climbing trees and crossing swamps, to keep from coming up against Carlyle’s own unit.
“There’s got to be a better word than weird,” he said flatly.
“I’d settle for ‘awful,’” Gideon told him. It would be good if the kid learned that partnership went both ways.
WATCHING CARLYLE absolutely entranced by the theater was one of Gideon’s best things all year.
He was tired, his painkiller wore off by the beginning of the second act, and neither of them had remembered to eat, but Gideon felt like he was made whole by listening to Carlyle’s quick, delighted catches of breath during the show.
They talked about it fast and furiously as they walked the twenty blocks to Gideon’s apartment, and Gideon was relieved to see the fresh fruit on the counter where he’d left it the night before, because he was now officially starving.
They made do with apples and grapes while Gideon fixed them both bagel sandwiches, talking about the political and emotional implications of doing what was expected of you for appearance’s sake or resisting conformity to live an honorable life the entire time.
Finally, Carlyle literally took Gideon’s shoulders and walked him to bed, much as they’d walked Carlyle to bed when he’d arrived in the city midweek.
“I’ll crash on your couch if you don’t mind,” he said, and Gideon yawned and told him there were extra blankets and pillows in the cupboard.
When he woke up the next morning, the blankets were folded neatly and the pillows stacked on top. There was no note, but there was a steaming cup of mocha-flavored coffee on the counter.
Gideon sipped it, pleased that it was still a little hot, and thought that maybe, in spite of the intention he and Harding had stated that they’d try different people out as partners, Gideon had found his partner without that.
He and Carlyle seemed a really good match.
Carlyle laughed at his jokes and seemed to appreciate musical theater.
Gideon was willing to learn about monkeys.
There were so many worse ways to enter into a work marriage. Gideon was much encouraged.