Chapter 8

Craig knew that the second he'd passed that communication to Elizabeth that he was going to be sitting on a powder keg. He hoped that what was going to happen would just bring down Gaffney, but he wasn't naive. Theoretically, the whole department could come crashing down.

For two days, there was quiet. Eventually, Craig knew that it was the calm before the storm. Because three days after the mass suicide, Gaffney came storming down to find him in the halls of the department.

"Are you the one who did it?" the Captain demanded.

He was going to play dumb as long as he could. Given Gaffney natural lack of detective instincts, that might be long enough. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't fucking play games with me. Some bitch from the Sun has been calling me for the last day, asking me about whether I was responsible for giving up a witness in the Merchant investigation."

Craig's immediate reaction - to say Well, you did - took a lot of energy to clamp down on. "Well, Captain, considering what a balls-up that entire investigation turned out to be, I could see that a lot of people might want to throw you to wolves," he said slowly.

"What are you talking about? You knew."

"Really? Because I'm pretty sure that someone is going to hold the Commissioner's nuts to the fire. And considering that he basically created you, he might well feel that making you the department scapegoat could solve all his problems."

Gaffney hesitated for the first time, as if this genuinely had not occurred to him.

"And why do you think I'd give you up? You got me transferred to Homicide in the first place. I was barely involved in the investigation. Munch and Pembleton, they were the main investigators. Surely they have more reasons to hate your guts than I do." Craig paused. "Now that I think about, didn't you nearly get in a fist fight with Frank three years ago? Or did I hear that wrong?"

The Captain clearly was starting to reel a bit. It was typical of Gaffney. When he got an idea in his head, he would traditionally twist his version of it to fit the facts. Another reason why he'd barely lasted a year in Homicide.

"And I'm pretty sure Danvers was in the room for part of this. And you know the States Attorney's office doesn't like haven't its independence threatened either. Bottom line, Captain. You've managed to piss off a lot of people. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing, that's kind of part of being an effective leader. But I'd go looking in that direction before you go snapping at your friends."

Gaffney was clearly stymied. He really seemed like he had been misdirected. And he wasn't sure he believed it either. Finally, he looked at Craig. "Anyone from the press calls about any investigation going on, tell them 'no comment.' Understand? "

Considering that Worden had heard through one of the secretaries that Giardello had followed through an written a report about Harris' role in the investigation into Burundi Robinson, and that there was a very good chance that Harris was going to be retiring soon, he had a feeling that nobody was going to be giving the media the time of the day for the next few weeks.

"You can count on me, Roger." Craig said carefully. As the Captain walks away, Craig hid his face, and moved as quickly as he could. Apparently, Elizabeth was a better reporter than the entire investigation into James Haybert's murder had prove. And if she had figured out the role Roger Gaffney had played, even by implication, there was a very good chance that Gaffney wasn't going to be in the department much longer. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

So as Craig walked into Homicide, he actually had the nerve to think that, for the first time in awhile, things were going to be looking up for the unit.

That feeling lasted until Pembleton walked in about half an hour later, looking physically gutted.

"I thought it was a straight up suicide," Munch asked him.

"It was a suicide. It just wasn't straight up." Frank took a deep breath. "Beau Felton blew his head off."

All of the oxygen went out of the room. With the exception of Kellerman, everybody in the room looked like they'd all just been gut-shot. And for a brief moment, Worden felt the same way.

He hadn't known Felton personally - given the fact that he'd been a patrolman in the wrong part of Baltimore, he'd never run across him at a murder scene - but he'd heard about him. He was the only detective in all of Homicide Roger Gaffney hadn't considered an asshole. This didn't necessarily mean that Felton had been a good detective. In fact, when he'd been coming up on QRT, Jaspers had told him that Beau Felton should be a cautionary tale for anyone wanting to make a career as a murder police.

Even when he had been at his best, Felton had never been much of a police officer. He was a piss-poor investigator, he was sloppy with procedure, and he had a reputation for being, if not a racist, definitely a redneck. And that was before his marriage had started to fall apart, he'd developed a serious drinking problem, and gotten shot making an arrest. Just secondhand, it hadn't seemed like anybody had particularly missed Felton. But based on what Munch had told him, it had been odd that Beau had just vanished off the face of the earth.

Pembleton and Howard went into Giardello's office. Considering who Felton had been to her, Craig wasn't surprised. Once again, he had enough presence of mind to notice that Bayliss was missing from the squad again. For the first time since Tim had started to go on walkabout, Craig was beginning to get really pissed.

As for the rest of them, Meldrick in particular looked like he was getting agitated. Craig knew enough gossip as to why - Steve Crosetti's suicide was a stigma over the entire department - but Meldrick didn't look reflective or upset. He looked pissed.

"If anyone else is planning on checking out, could we have some advanced notification?" There was a tone in Lewis' voice that Worden didn't like. "How we are going do it? There's the Crosetti long walk off a short pier method. There's the all-popular slitting your wrists over a bathtub drain, hell, maybe we should all just get together, mix some drain cleaner with the morning coffee, same way your man Burundi Robinson left this world?" There was something bordering on hysteria in his voice now. "I just want to know so I can get my dress blues ready? Show of hands please?"

By now, Giardello and Pembleton were out of his office. Kellerman had walked up to Meldrick, and muttered something about getting him a cup of coffee. Lewis shrugged him off, and stormed out of the unit.

Craig hoped he wasn't going to tie one on at the Waterfront, but he had a nasty suspicion that business at the bar was going to increase dramatically among his fellow brothers in blue over the next couple of days.

"It may not be him," Howard told them. She didn't sound much better than Meldrick. And considering that Beau Felton had pretty much been her only partner since she had been in Homicide, Craig could hardly blame her. However, the fact that Kay was this ragged was, if anything, even more alarming that Meldrick being hysterical.

Kay was Homicide's Rock of Gibraltar, the one certainty in an ocean of chaos. This had something to do with her hundred percent clearance rate, but also that she never seemed to be disturbed by the mess that had infiltrated the unit in the several months he'd been here. That Kay seemed to be in the middle of a state of denial - Pembleton was carrying Felton's badge - was even more troubling than Meldrick's hysteria.

Kellerman looked pretty shaken as well - more likely he was concerned about the well being of his partner. But he didn't rush after Meldrick, either - maybe just for the fact that he had never even met Beau Felton, and wouldn't be able to come up with the right words. For that matter, Craig didn't think he could, either.

Feeling even more impotent than he did after any stone cold whodunit, he just went back to his desk. Hoping that the phone would warble and send him back on the street. But the gods, as was the traditional case in Baltimore, were not with them. The phone didn't ring for the rest of the shift.

With nowhere else to go, Worden found himself at the Waterfront that night. The news hadn't gotten much better. The autopsy had confirmed that the corpse had Felton's prints. Howard had gone back to her desk after learning this, and had basically sat in silence. Pembleton, who from what little stationhouse gossip he had heard, had never much cared for Beau, was even more quiet than usual. He had gotten royally pissed off when Bayliss had popped up a few hours later, again with no explanation as to where he'd been. Giardello had not emerged from his office, no doubt thinking of that for the second time in three years, another of his detectives had taken his life without any hint or foreknowledge. To say the mood was bleak in the squad was an understatement.

Munch was behind the bar. Lewis was at the pool table trying to clear it. Craig ordered a double bourbon - for him, a heavy drink. "I guess this is our wake." he said.

"You really haven't been here long enough." Munch said slowly. "First comes then the funeral, then the department burial -"

"Not like they'll give a dress parade for Beau." Meldrick said as he sank the seven.

"Then again, considering who the honoree is, my guess is Beau would be grateful for three days of binging," Munch pointed out.

"That's not funny."

"Was he really that much of a drinker?" Worden asked.

"The last six months he was at Homicide, half the time he'd show up hung over." Munch told him. "Granted, most of that time he spent chasing down his wife, so that excuses part of it."

"I never understood why he wanted to stay married so bad," Lewis told him. "Now I kinda get it. But what the hell was he thinking? Man had three kids. Much as Beth put him through hell, he would've walked through fire for his children. And he's just willing to leave them fatherless?"

"I will say, those kids now have zero chance of growing up normal," Munch admitted. "Whole reason that I never got around to having children in the first place."

Lewis gave up his futile effort to sink the eight ball, and walked over to the bar. Meldrick was an even lighter drinker than Craig, so it was somewhat disturbing to see him weaving a bit. "Crosetti had a daughter. Loved her more than life. And it didn't seem to bother him that he left her without a father. One thing about the whole mess that I still just can't forgive him for."

"Guys, this is nobody's fault. Last I heard, Felton resigned from the department a year ago, and made absolutely no effort to keep in touch with anybody." Worden didn't know why he was defending the man, seeing as he had never known him, but he felt somebody had to. "Howard said he completely fell off the map, and she was his partner for four years. There's only so much any of us can do."

"Yeah, well, if Mikey or Frank or Kay fell off the radar, we'd at least make an effort." Meldrick told him slowly. "We liked them. Truth of the matter is, nobody really gave a damn about Beau Felton."

Then Meldrick's eyes looked off into a corner. He was clearly thinking of something painful, but Worden didn't have the balls to ask him what. It probably had something to do with Crosetti.

"You don't mean that," he said.

"He has a point. I called Stan twenty times after he was suspended, even though he never called me back. I never called Felton once. I figured Kay was doing it." There was actually a look of something close to guilt on his partner's face. "You think anyone's called Russert yet?"

"My guess is Gee's going to handle that." Meldrick went behind the bar, and poured himself a shot.

Once again, Craig was at a loss. Megan Russert had been in Paris for the last year, supposedly pregnant with some diplomat's baby. She couldn't have known Beau that well - she'd been first shift commander, then captain, in the year their careers intersected. As far as he knew, Russert didn't know Felton any better than she would have known him.

"Well, considering there probably won't be much of a departmental funeral," Lewis said, "we might as well start giving Felton the sendoff right now." He lifted his shotglass to the ceiling. "To Beau Felton. Husband, father, detective. Not exactly a standout at any of them, but still one of our own."

Munch fixed him with a dark glance. "What? It's not like he's gonna get much better of a eulogy from the bosses."

Meldrick couldn't have been more wrong.

The next day was full of revelations. First, everybody learned how Beau had been spending the last few months. It was even less distinguished than any of them had thought. He had been in a business with a chop shop owner from Pigtown named Frank Cantwell. Or at least, so said a rugged detective from the auto squad named Paul Falsone. He believed Felton had been using his connection to get work to Cantwell about keeping his department one step away from the police.

Kay didn't want to believe this. Gee didn't either, but he had to admit that was as good a reason as any for Beau to have taken his own life.

Except a few hours later, Dr. Cox made another one of her appearances in the squadroom to tell them that Felton had been murdered. After nearly a day and a half of stapling Beau's skull back together, she had determined that Felton had been shot behind the ear, and than had his entire face blown off with a shotgun, staged to look like a suicide. Beau's name went up on the board under Pembleton, who for some reason wasn't in the squad when Cox gave the notes of the autopsy.

Howard asked Craig to come back to Felton's apartment, where Frank had found the body not twenty-four hours earlier. When Craig had pointed out that he had no connection to the case, Howard said she was the superior officer, and that they needed to get fresh eyes on a murder scene that was now at least one day cold.

"All due respect, Sergeant, you're more than capable of figuring out a murder by yourself." he pointed out.

"All due respect, I didn't even consider the possibility that Beau killed himself when the call came in." Kay told him. "I need fresh eyes to see if they can find something until Pembleton gets on the scene."

So they went to the apartment, which was pretty close to skid row in what wasn't the junkie section of town.

As they looked over the apartment, Craig decided to ask the question that nobody else was willing to. "You really think Felton could have been dirty?" he asked in as gingerly a tone as he could.

He half expected Howard to bite his head off. Instead, she was very quiet for a long few moments. "Honestly, I don't know." she admitted. "Beau was my partner and he was my friend, but I hadn't seen him in nearly a year, and I hadn't talked to him in even longer. You think you know a person, but unless you sit across from them every day it turns out, you might not know them at all." She sighed. "It looks like I'm probably going to find out."

They spent the next half-hour, searching the apartment. Pembleton joined them afterwards, not giving an explanation as to where he'd been. After a full hour, Frank was willing to consider the possibility that Felton hadn't been killed here.

"I don't think so." Howard said, looking grim. "Take a look in the bathroom."

They went it. Worden was puzzled. He'd already checked it and found it clean.

"That's it. It's pristine. How many men living alone manage to keep a clean bathroom?"

She then noted a small chip in one of the tiles in the shower. "Could that have come from a bullet?" she asked.

Frank and Craig concurred, and Craig left to call the crime scene people. Before he could leave, he saw Kat come as close to crying as he'd ever seen her in the time he'd known her. "The bastards killed him in his own bathroom," she muttered to herself.

As Craig figured, the minute the crime scene people showed up, Howard politely ordered him back to the squadroom, and told him that she and Pembleton would be handling the investigation from here. Worden didn't take offense. He knew that, technically, he could have said that he could have pointed out that the Sergeant had no business being near this investigation, but he figured that Kay was more entitled to find out what had happened to Felton than anybody else in the squadroom.

Falsone had been called back to the squad with one of his informants for Cantwell's squad, but a few minutes after that, Giardello left the office, looking even more pissed than usual.

And then, a woman in her late thirties with dark-red hair appeared in the squadroom. She was wearing a Chanel suit, and a scarf and a hat. She simultaneously looked lost, and utterly sure of her surroundings.

"Excuse me, can I help you?" Worden asked.

The woman looked at him a little oddly. "I should hope so. You're sitting at my desk."

It took Worden a few moments to make the connection. "So you're Megan Russert. Craig Worden." He shook her hand awkwardly.

"So I guess the bosses really can get a detective when the need comes."

Now was not the time to bring up Gaffney. "The squad had been operating a detective short for three years. Maybe if you've been gone another year, they'd have finally come up with another one."

Russert had a rueful smile on her lips. "I know what it's like to have to fight the bosses at every turn. Maybe that's I didn't miss the job that much."

Craig finally put two and two together. "You're back because of what happened to Felton."

A genuine look of pain crossed her eyes. "Gee called me two days ago. I figured I could mourn just as easily here as I could in Paris. Besides, maybe I can help."

Now Craig truly did feel awkward. "Well, Pembleton is the primary, and we're going through some background of what Felton might have doing since he resigned." He took a deep breath. "You hadn't had any occasion to speak with him after he resigned from the department?"

"Honestly, I hadn't talked with Beau since after his initial suspension." Russert looked nearly as mournful as Howard had earlier. "Things had always been awkward between us for the past few years, but he didn't make any effort to reach out in the past year."

"I'm sorry. From what I understand, Felton worked on the other shift when you were made Lieutenant. Why would you have more than a professional relationship with him at all?"

Russert now smiled painfully. "You really are the new guy. I'm guessing no one bothered to fill you in on the office gossip." She looked him dead in the face. "Beau and I had an affair just after I became Lieutenant."

For the first time ever since he'd joined Homicide, he desperately wanted to shrink small enough so that he could sink into his own desk drawer. This was what happened when you worked in a completely different district - he'd heard gossip that Russert might have gotten knocked up by a French diplomat, but he'd ignored that, and hadn't even cared who the last woman who had had his desk might be sleeping with.

He was grateful that Howard and Munch chose that moment to show up, and recognize their former detective. As they indulged in small talk, Craig decided to slink away.

He didn't get far before he ran into the Lieutenant, who didn't look much happier than he had before he want upstairs to talk with Barnfather. Craig took this mean they were still off the investigation into Felton's murder.

Giardello basically ignored his questions, and went looking for Pembleton, who apparently had gone back to the roof to talk with Bayliss.

And then, just to make the day complete, Falsone came down from the interrogation room, demanding to know what the hell was going on with the investigation.

"I don't know," Worden finally threw up his hands. "Nobody in this unit tells me jack shit. Felton commits suicide, no, he was murdered. The investigation is closed, its open again. And right now, the detective whose desk I currently sit at, just flew across the Atlantic to find out who murdered a man she used to sleep with. I thought this unit had problems before."

"Who?" Falsone was clearly having trouble following this.

"Right now, I'm getting myself back into the rotation. A stone cold whodunit would be preferable to the soap opera that this unit is rapidly becoming." He looked at Falsone. "I know you may not like the idea, but I suggest you go back to Auto and wait for someone to call you. Failing that, you might want to start trying to pull in Cantwell's crew on your own. Cause I'm telling you right now. You're not going to get much help from Homicide."

Once again, it became very clear just how out of the loop he was. Because less than ten minutes later, Giardello came back in, telling everybody Homicide was now back on the investigation.

Things, however, didn't get any simpler. First, another stranger entered the unit - a plainclothes cop in his late forties, pudgy with graying hair. He was introduced as Stu Gharty, and Gee told everybody he worked with IID.

The temperature in the squad dropped ten degrees. Things had been messy for Craig when people had just thought he was with Internal. To have someone who was actually part of the rat squad among them, made everybody's spine stiffen.

Then the other shoe dropped. At the time of his death, Felton apparently working for IID, undercover to find out whatever the leak in the department that was helping Frank Cantwell pull up shop. He'd apparently done excellent work, until he'd gotten shot.

This didn't make anybody more inclined to like him. In fact, Russert and Howard seemed to bare a very specific grudge towards him, which Worden just couldn't read.

Then they came out into the squadroom, and things got worse. Bayliss started working with Falsone. Russert started calling the auto squad. Howard started giving orders to Munch and Craig. Pembleton then reminded Howard that he was the primary. Kay then did something that she had never done all year. She pulled rank on a fellow detective. Then she erased Felton's name from Pembleton's side of the board and put in under her own. He had a feeling the squad was this close to a genuine fissure.

Then Gee's baritone called Howard and Russert into his office, in the tone that always brooked no argument. He made it clear that Pembleton was the primary on this case, and that was how it was going to work. Frankly, Worden was a little astonished this case hadn't been classified as a red ball, rather than just have Homicide and IID working together. Reluctantly, he decided that this was no longer any of his business, and went back to his desk.

A few minutes after that, both Howard and Russert left the office. A little after that, Gharty, Bayliss, Falsone and Pembleton all left as well. Munch came back a couple of minutes later. "Are we humble peons going to be let in on the details of this investigation, or should we just go back to looking into the deaths of junkies?" Craig asked his partner.

Lewis looked across as him. "'Humble peons?' Dang, Worden. You have been hanging around Munchkin too long."

"You make that sound like a bad thing." Munch looked at Craig. "They've got four detectives handling the back work of this investigation. You know what they say about too many cooks."

"What they say or what Pembleton says? Cause I'm pretty damn sure his is the only opinion that matters right now."

Munch actually looked a little sheepish at this. "I honestly think it might have helped to have Kay and Russert on this decision. Maybe Gee is worried about how this might end up playing out if and when the case ever goes to trial."

That didn't sound like the Al Giardello that Worden had come to know over the past year, but he decided to let that go for now. "And the rest of us are supposed to just go on investigated normal murders?"

"Now that you mention it, Frank did give me an assignment. He asked me to go down to talk to Dr. Cox, see if there was anything else on the autopsy." Munch hesitated. "Basically, he wanted to know if Beau picked up a drug habit while he was working undercover."

Considering that from what he had learned, Felton had basically been a barely functioning alcoholic the last year he had been at Homicide, this didn't seem outside the realm of possibility. Nevertheless, it did seem to be kicking a cop when he was down. "You really think a drug dealers would have enough patience to stage his murder to look like a suicide, particularly one where he blew the man's head off?"

"Still a rookie, I see. There are more than a few dealers who are either just that stupid or just that lucky. In either case, I think it needs to be played out just to eliminate it." Munch pointed out.

"You know, there are times I truly and utterly hate this job." Craig sighed.

"Good." Munch said. "That means you still give a damn. I went numb to this kind of thing years ago."

Another back-handed compliment. Pretty much the only kind Munch gave. "When are you headed down there?"

"Right now, before Frank calls me and lights my ass on fire." Munch got up, and started putting his coat on.

It seemed wrong to be sitting around idle, while a dead cop lay in the morgue. Visions of James Haybert were flashing in his head, and how the entire department had turned out force to investigate, even when they had learn that Haybert was dirty. Was this really how things worked when a former Homicide detective died? It just seemed wrong.

Abruptly, he walked into Gee's office. "Where did you send the Sarge and Russert?" he asked his boss.

"I don't think that's any of your business." the lieutenant said calmly.

"Felton was murdered, and for whatever reason, you ordered the two detectives who might be able to have the most perspective on how he died off this case. Now, I didn't know Beau Felton, and I certainly am the last person to pull rank, but before I go back to drug murders, I think I should at least know why."

There was no reason Gee should have told him anything other than to get the hell out of his office. So it came as a considerable shock when his boss took his reading glasses off, and looked at him. "Felton's marriage was always a mess. So much so, that even after he died, his wife doesn't want anything to do with him. I need someone to make a funeral for him. Someone who gives a damn about him. I asked Kay and Megan to do it, because if they didn't, no one else would." He looked at Worden. "Do you have any more questions?"

Craig didn't say anything else. He just went back to his desk.

Lewis and Kellerman went out on a call about an hour later. Not that much after, the group of detectives came back looking even more morose than they had when they went out to investigate originally.

The re-canvas had come up with no additional information on the night Felton had died. Bayliss and Falsone had had a bit more luck. They had gone through the ludds on Felton's phone the week before he had died, and they had found out that there had been a series of calls to a fifteen digit number, which led back to a pager belong on to a Joseph Jones. Fake name, fake address. The last time that pager had been used had been the night of Felton's murder, and the last number that had been dialed after the pager had been Beau's number.

Munch had gotten the toxicology report on Felton, and he was clearly as shocked as any of them to learn that Beau had departed this world clean and sober. At least he had been taking that part of his job seriously near the end of his life.

All the searching that they had done seemed to have amounted to naught, and when Howard and Russert returned to the squad and learned that five detectives had gotten practically nothing two full days into the investigation, Kay was even more pissed than she had been when Giardello had pulled her off the case. Russert was quiet, but she seemed only marginally less angry. She went into the coffee room, Kay went back into Gee's office, no doubt to make another plea to take over the investigation.

Craig walked back into the office, feeling even more lost than he had the last few days. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked Bayliss.

"Yeah, it's time that we started pulling in Cantwell's crew," Bayliss told him.

"If we do this, Cantwell will know that we are on to the leak in our organization," Gharty said. "Felton will have died for nothing."

Pembleton heard this. "Look, we have pursued this investigation from every other possible angle. The only chance we have of solving Felton's murder is pulling in Cantwell's people, and see what we can shake loose."

Gharty clearly didn't like this, but he saw that there was no point in arguing. "Look, if we're going to do this, I need to pull in the guy who I used to get Felton in with Cantwell. Otherwise, we will definitely have another body on the street."

"Who is it?" Frank asked.

"Low level spotter named Eddie Dugan." Both Pembleton and Falsone looked up at this. "You know who he is?'

Of course they did. He had been Falsone's snitch. Not two days, they had pulled him in, and he had told them he had known nothing special about Felton's relationship to Cantwell.

Suddenly, indiscriminately, Craig was pissed. "You know, next time, you guys at IID wonder why everybody hates your guts?" he said, walking up to Gharty. "This is People's Exhibit A."

He stormed off, infuriated.

The next few hours things actually managed to unfold rather well. Falsone brought Dugan back in the squad to ask a few more questions. Craig and Bayliss watched the interrogation, as Pembleton, for reasons that boggled the mind, had disappeared.

The second that Gharty showed up in the box, Dugan was cooked. He was in a jackpot beyond a mere two-year stretch for car theft. He tried to deny it a little longer, but then Gharty dialed the pager number had unearthed. Dugan's pager, which he had claimed wasn't his, went off.

Looking at thirty years in prison for party to the shooting of a Baltimore police, Dugan folded, Frank Cantwell himself had been the man who pulled the trigger.

Of course, this being Baltimore, nothing went according to plan. When they went to make the arrest, Frank was gentlemanly enough to call Howard and Russert and tell them that they should serve the warrant. Craig wasn't a hundred percent sure that this was legal, or even allowable. But when they stormed Cantwell's headquarters, it turned out to be a moot point. Frank Cantwell was gone.

Russert looked at them. "Well, with Beau, nothing was ever easy."

Now that Felton had died in the line of duty, there was a level of dignity to it. There was a memorial at the Homicide unit. Barnfather was there, but Gaffney wasn't. Mayor Schmoke had shown up, and so had the governor, but the Deputy Commissioner was nowhere to be found. Neither was anybody in the Felton family.

The Commissioner asked Giardello to accept an award on Felton's behalf. There was a certain irony in this, considering that Gee had never gotten along particularly well with Beau, but he made a good speech. Then, however, he had to leave because Harris had asked to see him.

As they toasted Beau Felton, Bayliss asked Russert what her plans for the future were. "I don't know," she admitted. "Half my life's in Paris, half of its here."

"Well, if you decide to stay Megan, let me know." Munch spoke up. "This gadfly couldn't carry your holster."

"She'll have to find her own desk." Worden pointed out. "I'm not going anywhere."

And at that moment, Giardello showed up again, looking ashen. "I've just had a meeting with the Commissioner. Effective immediately, detectives will be put on rotation from every department every three months."

Everybody started looking at each other. "What does that mean?" Howard asked.

"It means that in three months, none of us may be here." Gee said flatly.

Immediately, this struck Worden as one final 'fuck-you' from Harris. If he had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, from the department, he was going to make sure the entire police department was rat-fucked before he left. This could only end in the entire department being flattened.

Craig walked over to the refreshments stand, and refilled his coffee. "I'd like to propose a toast," he said. "I know I've been in this unit for less than a year, so feel free to tell me I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. This is a good unit. The best of the best. If we can survive losing one of our own, we can survive the nightmares of the bureaucracy. We have before. We can again. We may not be perfect. But we work Homicide. No matter what."

He'd managed to do something nearly impossible, especially considering how worried he was about his own ass. He'd managed to lift everybody spirit, if only for the moment. Homicide would go on.

It always did.

THE END...FOR NOW