Pulling away, Kermit looked at his Captain. "What are you doing here?"
Karen's lips turned down in a mock frown. "Well, I guess that I could leave." She turned slowly, hoping in her heart that he'd ask her to stay.
"No, I'm sorry. It's been a long week." Kermit reached out to her, but didn't quite touch her.
She turned back, her eyes quickly darting from his receding reach to his face. "How's Peter?"
"The party is just now starting," Kermit said. "He's having hallucinations and his gut is killing him. I don't know who screams out more, him or me. God, if he could just suffer a little less."
Karen watched as Kermit dipped out a bowl of ice cream, reading the motion as a signal to change the conversation. "That lunch?"
"I have to get him to eat. If chocolate ice cream or candy is what it takes, I give it to him."
The two walked back to the bedroom. Karen gasped when she saw the ghost-like pallor of Peter's skin. Combined with perspiration, it gave him the appearance of wax.
Hearing her sharp intake of breath, Peter tried to turn his head. "Ker-mit?"
Kermit stepped into Peter's line of sight and sat on the side of the bed next to him. "Got you some ice cream."
"I'm t-tired."
"I know, but you just have to take a few bites." Kermit brought the spoon of ice cream to Peter's lips and watched as the young man tried to turn his head.
"P-Paul won't c-come inside." Peter's voice was weak, his eyes shedding tears.
Not wanting to argue, Kermit played along, hoping the hallucinations would be over soon. "He wants to stay outside and guard us."
Fear made Peter's eyes open wide. "G-George is coming?"
"No, and Paul wants to make sure he doesn't."
Karen listened to the conversation, noticing the picture of Paul Blaisdell and his son, which sat on the nightstand.
Setting down the bowl and spoon, Kermit unlocked the cuffs and helped Peter sit up. The sound of plastic being twisted was heard with Peter's every move.
Kermit couldn't help but smile as he again moved the spoon up toward Peter's mouth. He watched as the detective took a tentative bite.
Neither Karen nor Kermit expected a fight. Both thought Peter too weak, but they were wrong.
Peter slammed Kermit's right arm and executed a knife-hand strike to Kermit's neck, then kicked Karen off the bed. Springing clumsily from the mattress, Peter ran from the room as Kermit regained his senses and helped Karen from the floor.
"Aren't you going after him?" she asked, brushing tiny particles of dirt from her clothing.
Letting out a deep sigh, Kermit shook his head. "That's why he's got gloves on. He can't open the door to go out," he said, rubbing his neck. "Also, it doesn't hurt so bad when he hits you."
A crash and the sound of breaking glass caused both of them to run to the common room and stare as Peter held up his gloved hands. A lamp lay broken on the floor.
"HE'S OUT THERE AND YOU WON'T LET ME SEE HIM!" Peter screamed. "He'd help…" Peter's words were cut off as he doubled over with pain. His breath caught as wave upon wave assaulted his intestines, sending tendrils of fire across his abdomen. His knees buckled as the spurt of adrenaline left his body, adrenaline fueled by the stored-up drugs circulating relentlessly through his body.
Kermit reached him first, but not before Peter fell forward, striking his head on the arm of a dining room chair. Blood spurted from Peter's temple where a two-inch gash zig-zagged from his temple toward his forehead. The action stunned Peter, leaving him motionless on the floor.
Karen handed Kermit a cloth and again watched as Kermit sat on the floor, cradling Peter's head in his lap, brushing away stray hairs with one hand as he held pressure to the cut with the other. "There's a first aid kit in the drawer next to the sink."
Finding the small kit, Karen took it to Kermit. The paint on its lid had been rubbed off from use over the years. Looking in it, she found gauze pads, alcohol, and steri-strips, along with a roll of gauze.
Kermit and Peter were in the same position as when she left. Briefly looking up as Karen's footsteps announced her approach, Kermit grimaced. "I don't know if I can do this, Karen. It's bringing back too many painful memories. I've already succeeded in letting him get hurt."
She kneeled beside them, absently running her hand through Peter's hair as Kermit vented his doubts and self-recrimination. For him to tell her of his trials and feelings of guilt was something she hadn't thought would ever happen. Their slowly budding relationship was fragile. She carefully thought out her words, knowing that Kermit had been right earlier. They couldn't take Peter to the hospital, not without reprisals being put into Peter's personnel file. It didn't matter that Peter had been injected with the drugs, only that he had become addicted to them.
"You didn't let him fall. You didn't make him fall. It was an accident," she soothed Kermit, as both worked to clean the cut and apply the dressing to the wound. "I think what you need is some sleep. Let's get Peter back to bed. I'll sit with him while you rest. Looks like he may be out for a bit, anyway."
Together, they transferred Peter back to the bedroom. Only soft moans came from their patient. Kermit couldn't bring himself to look at Peter, nor at himself in the mirror. He had failed his brother when David needed him and now he had failed Paul by preventing Peter from being harmed. The final straw was the accusing pain on the young man's face.
"Go lie down in the other room. I do believe Captain Blaisdell has at least two bedrooms; otherwise he and his wife would have slept in the same room as the kids. Somehow, I don't believe he or Annie would agree to that." A slight smile played at her lips, as she hoped that some light humor would bring her mercenary out of his self-recrimination guilt.
Kermit shuffled out of the room, giving no argument. The cabin had three bedrooms that lined one end of the building with the master bedroom occupying one corner. Kermit looked at the bed, reminded of Paul and the promise Kermit had made not long ago.
Lying down on the bed, Kermit lost all the shields he had erected over the years -- shields that had held back the nightmares of his life. The death of his parents when he was only eighteen, leaving him with a sister and brother to raise. The faces of nameless people he'd tried to save from barbaric leaders, and those that he had killed outright, for nothing more than the job he was paid to do. David getting addicted to drugs. His screams of agony and pleas for one more fix to ease his pain. David's coffin being lowered into the earth. Kermit had been spared from witnessing his brother's death, but the pain and guilt were still there in his heart.
Each memory surrounded the exhausted man, taunting him with his inadequacies as tears slowly wound their way down his face. Leaded eyelids closed, leaving him in the darkness that had stolen his soul.
***
"Skalany. Kincaid. Got a body at Fourth and Lynx," Chief Strenlich announced as he wound his way through the squad room.
Skalaney hesitated. They had been working on the "missing person" case Simms had assigned them to, but hearing the growl in the chief's voice made her rethink her rebuttal. "Yes, sir."
Glancing at the clock on the wall, TJ grunted, "It's only 5 p.m. Why should we get off like normal people?"
Rolling her eyes, Mary Margaret dug the keys out of her purse and answered the junior detective. "Because we aren't normal people. We're cops."
"Oh, I was wondering about that." A wry smile parted TJ's lips.
As the two walked toward the stairwell, Mary Margaret looked briefly at the captain's dark, empty office, then at Kermit's. 'Please keep Peter well,' Mary Margaret prayed as she and TJ proceeded down the steps.
Police cars blocked the alley where the body had been found. Nickie Elder, the coroner, was motioning for the black body bag to be zipped up. Hearing a voice he had become attuned to on possible homicide scenes, Nickie looked up to see Skalany approaching.
Nodding to both detectives, he said, "Right now, I'd say cause of death was strangulation." He unzipped the bag, folding it back to expose the upper torso of the deceased. The fading sunlight cast an orange glow on the city and the alley they were in, highlighting the purple bruising that stood out against the waxy pallor of the victim.
"Looks like perfect hand prints. I don't suppose we could get any prints?" TJ asked as he squatted beside the body. "Any ID?"
"That's Maria," Donnie Double D said as a uniformed officer blocked him from coming closer to the detective.
Nickie, Mary Margaret, and TJ each looked toward the voice. "How do you know?" TJ responded, motioning for the officer to let Donnie through.
Donnie watched the bag being zipped up as TJ stood and turned toward him. "I had been made aware of a death. Word on the street is that a new dealer was not appreciative of Maria talking so much, so he killed her. He's now after a friend we have in common."
"Hold on a minute." Mary Margaret turned to give orders to the forensics team and coroner. "Nickie, can you get us a prelim by morning? Henry, take pictures of everything. TJ and I are working this one." Both men nodded and continued with their work. She turned back to Donnie and, ushering him out of the alley, she said, "We need to talk."
Delancy's had become the new hangout for police officers after Chandler's had closed down a year earlier. After talking with Donnie, Mary Margaret and TJ stopped by the club, hoping to forget, for just a few hours, the body and the conversation they had had with Peter's snitch.
Their hopes were dashed when they walked in and found Carolyn McCall sitting on a barstool.
"I thought you might come by here," Carolyn said to the new arrivals.
"Something wrong?" Mary Margaret asked, instantly chiding herself for the question that came out sounding uncaring.
Pain was in Carolyn's eyes, along with fear. "You know about Peter?" she whispered as Mary Margaret claimed the stool beside the distraught sister.
"Carolyn, you know I can't discuss this with you. At least not here."
"I know. Kermit said he thought whoever did this to him might come back. I just…needed to know what is going on. The phone is out at the cabin. I thought about going up there, but I don't think Peter would want me to see him going through this." Carolyn had stayed with her mother, reassuring her that everything would be all right, but inside, she had her doubts.
The restaurant and lounge was the only place she thought she could get answers to the questions that plagued her mind. The fact that it was packed with officers from the 101st was slightly comforting.
"You really do love him, don't you?" Mary Margaret asked, feeling the turmoil Carolyn was going through.
"When he came to live with us, he was shy. But, as we grew up together, we became close. He couldn't be more of a brother if Daddy had been his real father. He's my brother and my friend. I don't think we could be any closer." Tears rimmed her eyes; exhaustion and fear had beaten against the strong walls she had built many years ago. Being the daughter of a cop had taught her to be tough, but a person could only take so much.
"We'll catch the guy. Don't worry." As Skalany patted Carolyn's hand, both women sat in silence, not noticing the man on the other side of Carolyn, or his smile at the information he had gained.