#nypd memorial run review

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

Echoes of Memory by Sara Driscoll

This one took me back to patients I cared for when once a nurse working in neurosurgical intensive care and later in a skilled nursing facility for mentally alert neurologically impaired patients…loved reading about someone with the strength to pursue a better life than some in my care managed to have.

What I liked:

* Quinn Flemming: survivor, dealing with TBI and residual amnesia, witness to a murder, brilliant coping skills, mad art skills, florist, driven, intriguing character that I really liked

* Detective Nura Reyes: dedicated, capable, intelligent, protective, methodical, team player, believed in and was there for Quinn, someone I would like on my side

* Will Dawsey: medical professional, certified brain injury specialist, runs support groups for TBI survivors, supportive, kind, intelligent, sharing, possible love interest for Quinn

* Some of the supporting characters: Detective Felip Cerveló, Jacinta, and Vivian

* The police procedural aspects of the story

* Quinn’s artistic abilities and how they played into providing clues

* That I was drawn in, felt part of the story, and cared about the outcome

* The plot, pacing, setting, and writing

* The new information I learned about traumatic brain injuries and thinking about what goes into living with them

* That all the threads were tied up by the end of the story

* Wondering what will happen in the future

What I didn’t like:

* Who and what I was meant not to like

* The evil some are willing to do and the impact it has on others

Did I like this book? Yes

Would I read more by this author? Definitely

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars

BLURB

A thrilling standalone mystery featuring a San Diego florist grappling with post-traumatic amnesia. The only witness to a murder she can’t remember, her handwritten notes and razor-sharp wits are all she has to solve the crime – and save her life. After surviving a terrible attack, Quinn Fleming has recovered in every way but one—her ability to retain new memories. Now, months later, it appears to the outside world as if the San Diego florist’s life is back to normal. But Quinn is barely holding on, relying on a notebook she carries with her at all times, a record of her entire existence since the assault. So when she witnesses a murder in the shadowy alley behind the florist shop, Quinn immediately writes down every terrifying detail of the incident before her amnesia wipes it away. By the time the police arrive, there’s no body, no crime scene, and no clues. The killing seems as erased from reality as it is from Quinn’s mind . . . until the flashbacks begin. Suddenly, fragments of memories are surfacing—mere glimpses of that horrible night, but enough to convince Quinn that somewhere, locked in her subconscious, is the key to solving the case . . . and she’s not the only one who knows. Somebody else has realized Quinn is a threat that needs to be eliminated. Now, with her life on the line and only her notes to guide her, Quinn sets out to find a killer she doesn’t remember, but can’t forget . . . Sara Driscoll is the pen name of Jen J. Danna, coauthor of the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries and author of the NYPD Negotiators. After over thirty years in infectious diseases research, Jen hung up her lab coat to concentrate on her real love—writing “exceptional” thrillers (Publishers Weekly). She is a member of the Crime Writers of Canada and lives with her husband and four rescued cats outside of Toronto, Ontario. You can follow the latest news on her books, including the FBI K-9s, at Saradriscollauthor.com.

[narvaldetierra]

Hide and seek

This is the Kidnapped prompt for the #BarsonBingoAugust2021 created by @simpforbarba

Warnings: Blood, psychological torture, some descriptions can be graphics. Let me know if I forgot anything. Words: 4181. Disclaimer: English is not my first language.

“What do you say if we go for some Chinese food and go to your apartment? We may find Noah still awake if we go now.” Said Rafael standing at Olivia's office door.

The lieutenant looked up and put down the papers she was reading, surprised because she hadn't heard him arrive. She gave him an exhausted smile and took off his glasses.

“That would be great but…”

“You have a case.”

“I have a case.”

“A case for which they are pressuring you a lot, according to what I heard” He approached the desk. He already knew these kinds of cases, they resonated that much in the newspapers, that became a political issue, so the high levels pushed the police to the limit.

“That's right, but every clue we have just led us to a dead-end road.— Olivia sighed and dropped the paper in her hand. All that she wanted was to leave the station, take a walk with Rafael and be there when Noah went to bed, so she could read his bedtime story, for the first time that week.

“Hey… I know you are in a difficult position, but it's no use that you stay here all night, without sleeping” Rafael sat in the chair across the desk “You need to take a step back and stop looking at all that evidence for a while. When you come back tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, you may see this and find something you didn’t see.”

“You may be right” she granted, still a little upset that she couldn't move further in the case.

A series of corpses had been found. Two each time, couples, according to what their family said. They had rope marks on their wrists, traces of sedatives, shoots in their chest and heads. All the women were raped. The Killer Match the press had called it. All the beginning, it seemed to follow a path with just heterosexual couples, but they suddenly found a sapphic couple and another one gay. They had found five couples, the last two had appeared after the investigation of the third, unlike the first two that were found thanks to the ongoing investigation. They were three weeks apart each time, and they were running out of time before they had a new couple on the coroner's table.

Olivia stood and took her stuff, purse, and coat. Rafael smiled back at her and stood as well, held out his hand towards her. As they left her office, he crossed an arm over her shoulders, and kissed her cheek, trying to improve her mood.

“When we arrive at the apartment, I will take care to spoil you.”

“With you being by my side is enough. Besides, I’m so tired that I’m not sure I’ll be able to eat dinner.”

---

They were sitting at a table, waiting for the takeaway food. A glass of wine in front of Olivia, and scotch in Rafael’s hand. It should have been 15 minutes and it had been already 20. After a long day, Olivia was a little impatient, her mind thought in that case, again and again, reviewing in her mind the evidence they had. After another five minutes, Rafael went to claim their food and she was left alone. Then she almost had an epiphany. She took the file from her purse, checked some papers, and then she made a search on her phone. She gasped as she realized.

“What happened?” Rafael asked when he came back, as he knew that look in her eyes “What did it happen when I wasn’t here”

“I… I found it” she replied still surprised by her own words “I know who he is, I know where he is. It was in front of us all this time, and we didn’t even notice!”

Rafael knew right away that they wouldn’t go home, after the last week, she wouldn’t let it be not even a minute more. They got into her car and Rafael put the food on the back seat. He would follow her till where ever she wanna go. He didn’t need to ask her anything.

She parked in front of a flower shop, behind the shop was the owner's house. Due to the time, all the shops in the area were already closed and the street looked almost deserted. Without her police radio, she took her phone and called for reinforcements. Olivia walked determinedly to the door of the flower shop, she took out his gun and his badge willing to be herself the one to arrest him. Upon closer inspection of the flower shop, she could see that the door was open, which gave her the green light to enter.

“Rafa, stay here”

“But Liv…”

“No, no but. The reinforcements are on the way, it is just a guy and you are not authorized to be the ADA in my case. You just wait here, and when the patrol arrives you send them inside.”

She didn’t let him make any reply and entered the flower shop. Identified herself as NYPD, just in case there was someone near enough to hear her, she couldn't let this case get lost on any kind of legal technicality. The shop lights were off, some street lights hardly leaked through the window. She advanced slowly with her gun in hand and alert. The first room cleared. It was when she went to the backroom when she felt a prick in her neck. It was too fast, just a little pressure and when she turned back, she fell to the ground just like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The gun, still in Olivia’s hand, shot up when it hit the ground. Rafael heard and he immediately went inside.

“Liv!” He exclaimed entering the back room.

She still had her eyes open and used all her will to try to move and warn him, but it was useless, she couldn’t even feel her arms or legs. Rafael ran to her across the door and before he could reach her, the perpetrator hit his head with a flower vase, knocking him out instantly. Barba fell beside Olivia, who looked at him terrified and then at the guy who was looking at them with a wide satisfied, and creepy smile on his face.

---

She woke up and everything was dark around her. She felt dizzy and sleepy. Her eyelids were heavy and she had a hard time staying focused. She could tell she was in a car. No. She was in the trunk of a car. She could feel the movement and the only thing she wanted was to hear the police siren following them near. She focused on what she could hear, but there was nothing outside but the normal sound of traffic. Little was the space she had to move and even less was allowed by the ropes that restricted her movements. Her mind threatened to bring back horrible memories of her tied up and gagged, in the trunk of Lewis' car moving with complete impunity. She tried her best not to think about it and tried to break free. It was then that she realized that she was not alone in the trunk.

Her heart stopped for a moment. Because her hands were tied up behind her, she had to lie on her side to be able to touch him. She looked for his pulse or any other vital sign, she begged for him to stay alive, and he was. Without being able to see him, she was guided by touch and when she felt the suspenders across his chest, she knew it was Rafael. It had to be him, she didn’t want to think of the alternative if it wasn’t him. She settled next to him, she wanted to feel his warmth and breath, somehow it made her feel better knowing that she wasn’t alone. She immediately felt guilty about it, since her relief was due to Rafael being kidnapped. There wasn’t anything she could do about it, and feeling Rafael by her side gave her the peace of mind that helped her repress the memories of those four days.

With the sedatives still in her system and prived of any external stimulus, she fell asleep again.

---

When Olivia opened her eyes again, she was alone. She was still tied up but in the middle of a forest. The sun was shining high, dazzling her eyes. She tried to stand, a difficult task with her hands tied behind her back, but after a few tries, she did it. There was no sign of Rafael nor even the guy that took them there. In front of her, leaning against a tree, there was a bag. She was sure that The Killer Match would be back soon, so she hurried to find something to release herself, so she could have a chance to do something.

She had a hard time trying to get something from the bag without looking, just feeling with her hands. Something pricked her left hand and as she could feel, she knew it was a Swiss knife. The blade didn’t seem very sharp but should be enough to cut the ropes.

While she was trying to free herself, a sound caught her attention. There was no one around, and it wasn’t a sound from the forest. She realized that it came from the bag, it seemed like a radio and when she looked inside the bag, she could see the antenna peeking out from under a compass and a canteen.

She finally released her hands and before anything else, she hurried to get to the canteen. She hoped it had some water, she felt thirsty and needed to drink anything. She wasn’t lucky at all, and the canteen was empty. She sighed with frustration and checked the bag. To the bottom of the backpack, she found a first aid kit pretty much empty as well. What she thought was a radio turned out to be the receiver of a baby monitor, just like she had used it when Noah was a baby. This one seemed to have been manipulated by hand.

“Hello… hi… testing… 1, 2, 3… Can you hear me?” A male voice came from the radio.

Olivia stood and took the bag, knowing that would be useful eventually. She looked around, looked for some path, looked for footsteps, and looked for something that helped her find a way to Rafael and understand what happened to him.

“If I'm not wrong, you both should be awake by now. I bet you already found the bag, but if you haven’t, now you do. No, it wasn’t left behind by a random hiker, is there for you to use it. We’re gonna play a game.”

“Both”, he said “both”, which meant that Rafael was somewhere in that forest too, probably confused and worried as she was.

“These are the rules: you both are on the opposite side of the forest, you both can hear me, but neither of you can communicate with each other. You can try to run away alone, or you can try to find each other. Either way, if I found you first, it’s game over. My dog has a good sense of smell, so I hope you can run fast.”

Word after word, Olivia began to understand all the victims went through and the kind of psycho this guy was. He was not just an amateur or a simple serial killer. He was calculating and careful, he had planned this very well.

“Lieutenant Benson… How is your head? It hurts, right? I’m sure you are thirsty too. Don’t worry, it’s just a side effect of the sedative I gave you. It will only get worse if you don't get some water.” She heard derisive laughter “If you follow the right path you will find a river that crosses the entire forest, you can load the canteen there. But… You will realize that this will reveal your location. It’s your choice. The game begins… Now!”

---

Rafael was on the opposite side of the forest. He had dried blood on one side of his head and his shirt collar. His wrists were red where the ropes had been. He also had his backpack and he was looking for a way to know where to go and find Olivia. It had always been easy for him to orient himself with the cardinal points, but he didn’t know in which part of the forest he was, so he didn’t know where to go. He thought he could climb a tree, but he dismissed the idea immediately, he hadn't done that since he was a kid. He wandered his gaze through the woods around him and chose a random direction, he had to trust that he was going in the right direction.

The forest was peaceful. Sunlight trickled through the leaves of trees, which were shaken by the slight autumn breeze. He heard birds singing from the treetops, so high that he was not able to see them. However, his vitals were racing, with the same adrenaline that he had only felt with the most important court cases, or even more. He walked in a hurry and wondered where the hell they were. He thought that the trees and birds around him should have been a way to know that, but little was all he knew about it.

“I can see you” heard from the radio after a few minutes with silence. Rafael's heart stopped for a moment. He couldn’t be sure who of the two was he talking to. From what he came to see, it wasn't him. “I can sense your horror.” He heard the dog barking in the background, coming from the radio, then he knew it wasn’t talking to him. “It’s already too late for you to try and run away”

Rafael felt despair grow inside him, he lost the composure he had tried to preserve and ran through the forest. He prayed he was heading in the right direction, he prayed he could reach in time and he prayed that Olivia could run faster from that guy or his dog. His lungs burned and his vision became somewhat blurry, but he kept running until he heard the gunshot. The sound echoed both over the radio and in the forest. He stood in shock without knowing what to do. His full attention was on the radio and the sounds that came from it.

“Run while you still can, your time is running out” heard the guy said, only then he could breathe again. Olivia was still alive. And because of the gunshot, he knew where he had to go. That way he ran again, willing to get to Olivia before the psychopath did.

---

Meanwhile, Olivia was running desperate, tears in her eyes. Her head was killing her, but she didn’t care anymore. She had heard everything on the radio and needed to make sure Rafael was okay. From what she had heard, he had managed to escape from the Killer Match, she just hoped he'd dodged the shot. She already knew where she had to go. She knew she was more likely to meet The Killer, but she didn't care, she just wanted to reach Rafael in time.

“Do you think your partner is still here? I think we are already alone” said the guy. “Don’t be sad, you are not the only one. It was the same with the first two couples. You think you found the love of your life, but when the time comes, they just look for themselves.”

“Don't listen to him Rafa” Olivia thought. She was doing her best to keep running. Self-defense classes kept her fit, but being inside the gym in a controlled environment was not the same as being in the middle of a forest. “I’m still here. I won't leave you. Don’t give up now, I’m coming for you.”

“This started as an experiment, you know? It turned out to be a lot more entertaining than I thought. I saw the cops go and come with the bodies I left behind. They never thought I was suspect, until now. Did you know you didn’t find them all? There are still two more couples out there. I don't think you ever will. Neither of you will return alive.”

“Not on my watch,” she thought.

She didn't notice it until she heard the click. It was that fast that she couldn’t do anything about it. Ropes moved through the trees and raised an extensive net, hidden on the ground. Before she could tell, she was hanging ten feet off the ground, trapped in the net.

“No, no, no…” Overcome by panic, her heart stopped for a moment, she clung to the net and struggled with it.

“Oh, oh… Someone fell into a trap” heard the voice from the radio and with a chilling whisper he added, “I know where you are…”

Olivia's breathing was racing, her mind was fuzzy, she was desperate to get rid of as soon as possible so she could run away. She just wanted to find Rafael and get the hell away from the forest. She wanted to see her son again, hug him, and never think about The Killer Match again. It took a lot of effort on her part to be able to focus, when she did, she recalled the Swiss knife. She took it from her pocket, her hands shaking so much that she feared it fell. She squeezed her hand tight to avoid accidents. She sought to cut a hole large enough in the side of the net, to be able to pass through. Her plan was to hang from the net before jumping, to reduce the distance to the ground.

“You can’t hide from me. Just wait for it, I’m almost there.”

With great speed, the razor's edge passed over the rope of the net. She could felt how she was running out of time. She was sweating cold and her heart was beating as fast as a mouse.

“I prefer young couples for this game, but I had to admit that you are being entertained enough. I’ll enjoy killing you two.”

With two ropes off, Olivia was able to sneak out. She hung for a moment from the net and then she fell to the ground. Although she tried to calculate her fall, her hands did not hold out for long. A scream escaped her mouth due to the impact against the ground, she could felt her right ankle hurt. However, she had no time to lose, she needed to run as fast as she could go.

She stood up, laying his weight on the tree next to her, and then she ran.

---

Rafael fell on his knees. His lungs did not allow him to continue running. He was short of breath and already felt dizzy. He could feel like his heart wanted to jump out of his chest, his throat was dry and burning. He puts his hands on the ground trying to calm himself. He could feel the throbbing in his legs. He cleared his throat and used all his willpower to get back on his feet. Olivia needed him and that psycho was near to her. He stood for a minute and then ran again.

“I’m getting closer. I can hear your footsteps thumping loudly through the forest.”

“No! Liv, run… please, just run,” Rafael thought. He didn't care if she ran away and left him there, he didn’t care to die in the forest, as long as she was safe. The sound of a breaking branch interrupted his thoughts. He hid behind a tree and took the Swiss knife, with the blade ready for anything. It wasn’t much, but it was better than fight just with his fists. He heard footsteps advancing trying not to make noise. He wondered if it could be Olivia, but then he heard the dog and he knew it was The Killer Match.

“You are not very good at hiding, I can see you…”

He heard the gun charge behind him. He closed his eyes and let the air out of his lungs. He stood and turned around slowly. Just like he already knew, the killer was in front of him, just a few steps away. He raised his hands in the air and their gazes met. The killer smiled sadistically and licked his lips, just like a beast ready to devour its prey. He took the radio and brought it to his mouth.

“You can say goodbye to your man Lieutenant. It’s game over for him.”

Then he just shot. The Killer liked to play with his victims, so he wouldn't let the fun be over so soon. He made sure to hurt him, without killing him immediately. The bullet got to the low abdomen, on his right side. Rafael fell to the ground moaning in pain and dropped the knife. Blood gushed from the wound in great quantity and his first reflex was to pressure the wound. The Killer approached and pointed his gun at Rafael's head.

“I hope you know Lieutenant, that you just confirmed my theories. In the end, you just chose to save yourself.” He hooked the radio back on his belt, crouched next to Rafael, and put the gun to his temple. He took a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and handcuffed Rafael. Although he had the gun pointing to his head, offered some resistance, something the Killer enjoyed. He picked up the knife with a wide, terrifying smile on his face. “Perhaps I can still have some fun” He rested the knife on Rafael's cheek “Stay still, do not try anything” made a quick cut, moved the knife against his chest, and made a new cut, this time even deeper, which needed more pressure and strength. Rafael bit back a cry. “What else can I cut? A finger? A toe? Which would make you scream more? I want to hear you” He positioned the knife against the pinky, knowing that it would take a while to cut the skin, muscle, and tendons to separate the bone.

Out of nowhere, Olivia appeared. She pounced on the killer, took him away from Rafael, and knocked him to the ground. In the process she got him to drop the gun. “I was waiting for you to show up,” he yelled in amusement and fought against her. With his free hand, he wanted to strike a blow against her head, which she blocked with a hand. Automatically he thrust the knife into her other hand. Olivia screamed. Adrenaline ran through her body just like when she beat the hell out of William Lewis after four days of torture, so she dealt repeated blows against the face of the Killer, who only laughed.

He kicked her to get her off him, then he stood up and spit out some blood. Then he pounced over her. Due to her bad ankle, she lost stability and fell to the ground. Aided by gravity, he imprisoned her under his body. His hands moved up and down all over her body and Olivia struggled to take him off. He opened her shirt, ripping out the buttons before a new gunshot was heard.

Rafael had done his best to get to the gun he held in his bloody hands. There were just a few times that he had shot in his life, he didn’t feel comfortable holding a gun and it took him a long time to decide to shoot because he did not trust his aim. But the shot was clean. The Killer fell over Olivia, gushing blood from the shot on his head. Both Olivia and Rafael froze for a moment, their breaths were heavy and after a moment they could react. Rafael dropped the gun, Olivia pushed the corpse and ran to Rafael.

“Rafa!” she exclaimed, becoming aware of her aching body again. She knelt on the ground and put a hand on his wound. “Rafa… you’re gonna be fine, don't worry.”

“Liv, are you ok?” he asked, worried about her and the first gunshot he had heard from the radio. He hadn’t realized yet that it had been a mind game the Killer made for them, like a bait, to guide them towards him.

“Yes, yes… I am” she wasn’t aware of the tears that were falling down her face. “I… I’ll get some help.” Then she looked for a phone in the corpse pockets. She dialed 911 returning to Rafael's side and pressed on his wound. “I am Lieutenant Benson, from svu, I need a bus.” She gave the details to the operator and explained that she didn’t know where they were. They tracked her phone and soon enough the help was on its way. A few minutes later Olivia leaned over Rafael and kissed him, relieved to hear the sirens approaching. They were going to be fine.

[96thdayofrage]

Even among the hundreds of videos capturing the violent police response to Black Lives Matter protests last year, this one stood out.

A muscular male officer, in a navy blue shirt with “NYPD” across the back, lunged at a young demonstrator, shoving her several feet and sending her crashing to the ground on a street in Brooklyn.

In a video shot by a reporter and shared widely on social media, the woman, Dounya Zayer, can be seen clutching her head and writhing in pain after she tumbles to the asphalt.

The mayor called the officer’s actions “absolutely unacceptable,” the police commissioner said internal affairs was investigating and, 11 days after the incident, the district attorney announced criminal charges against the officer, Vincent D’Andraia.

Zayer, 21, went on to file a lawsuit alleging that D’Andraia had violated her right to free speech, and last month, the city’s Law Department, which almost always represents officers sued for on-the-job actions, told D’Andraia it wouldn’t defend him in court.

It looked like the city was cutting the cop loose, a step rarely taken in the hundreds of lawsuits filed every year against NYPD officers. But while a city lawyer won’t be representing D’Andraia in court, it turns out New Yorkers are still paying the law firm that is representing him in the case.

That’s because every year, the city treasury effectively bankrolls a union-controlled legal defense fund for officers. The little-known fund is financed in part by a direct city contribution of nearly $2 million a year that is expressly intended to pay for lawyers in civil cases like D’Andraia’s, where the Law Department has decided an officer’s conduct is essentially indefensible. Or, as the police union’s legal plan puts it, “when the City of New York fails or otherwise refuses to provide a legal defense.”

The money isn’t supposed to be used by the union, the Police Benevolent Association, “in any action directly or indirectly adverse to the interests of the City,” according to a 1985 letter memorializing the deal that established the annual taxpayer contribution. But the agreement doesn’t define those “interests,” and the city is typically a co-defendant in such cases, as it is in the lawsuit by Zayer. So even as the city might distance itself from an officer, it could still argue that the government’s legal interests are best served by its employee having robust legal representation.

“It’s not bad public policy to invest and make sure that all sides have adequate representation,” said Zachary Carter, who ran the Law Department from 2014 to 2019.

But critics say that subsidizing such defenses could undercut police accountability by sending a message to officers that the city will back them no matter what.

“The bottom line is this is scandalous,” said Joel Berger, a lawyer who specializes in police abuse cases and who, in the 1990s, served as a senior official in the Law Department who decided when the city should withdraw representation of officers. “It was a sweetheart deal with the union and it should never have been agreed to.”

Neither the mayor’s office nor the Law Department would address detailed questions from ProPublica about the fund, including how the city squares paying for the defense of officers it won’t represent with the provision stipulating that the money not be used for any purpose “adverse to the interests of the City.”

The Legal Services Fund of the Police Benevolent Association has in recent years paid for the representation of an NYPD officer accused in a lawsuit of slamming a 75-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease against the hood of a car after the man talked back to the cop, and has paid to defend another officer who court papers charge tackled an unarmed, chronically ill, 4-foot-8-inch, 85-pound man and shocked him with a stun gun.

The message to officers, said Zayer’s lawyer, Tahanie Aboushi, is that the city will help shield them from some of the consequences of even their most egregious conduct.

“Maybe you’re going to be disciplined,” said Aboushi, who is a candidate in the race to be the next Manhattan district attorney, “but getting a lawyer, paying for a lawyer, understanding the accountability that comes from a lawsuit — they’re completely insulated from that.”

It is the sort of protection that, in the last few decades, has proliferated in police labor agreements across the country, often negotiated behind closed doors, with little attention paid to the public policy implications.

But in the reckoning that has followed George Floyd’s killing, many Americans are rethinking how the country is policed and unions are facing particularly pointed questions, not just in Minnesota or in New York, but also in city halls, in state legislatures and at negotiating tables across the country.

“There is a whole set of what I’ve labeled ‘special privileges’ that employees in other contexts don’t enjoy,” said Samuel Walker, an emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a national expert on police accountability. “It’s been a very secretive development, and the lack of any organized opposition until just recently has kept it secret.”

The violent police response to many Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the country in the weeks after Floyd’s death only intensified calls for sweeping changes in American policing.

In New York, the furor after Floyd’s death pushed through the long-sought repeal of a state law that made police disciplinary records secret. And last month, the city beat back a legal challenge by the PBA and other unions that had sought to block the release of those records.

But Mayor Bill de Blasio, who campaigned as a champion of police reform, has been criticized for his embrace of the NYPD, particularly during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. As he prepares to leave office at the end of the year, many of the leading candidates to succeed him have promised a new approach to policing.

Still, it’s a long way from the campaign stump to the negotiating table, and even after the events of the last year, the police unions — and the power and protections entrenched in their contracts — will pose a formidable test for the next mayor. The PBA’s contract expired in 2017 and will remain in force until a new one is approved, so it will almost certainly fall to the new administration to negotiate the next labor deal and to decide whether to take on sacred cows like the legal defense fund.

ProPublica pieced together the origins of the defense fund by reviewing tax records, studying labor agreements and examining other city documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Law.

Like anyone charged with a serious crime, an officer facing criminal prosecution has a right to a defense lawyer. But the deal establishing the city’s contribution to the fund was specifically designed to pay for defending officers in civil litigation, where an officer could face a substantial monetary judgment.

The deal, struck by the then-police union head and the city’s top labor negotiator, created what has become an annual taxpayer contribution that amounts to $75 per officer. The legal services fund takes in another $3.7 million every year from the union’s health and welfare fund, a city-funded entity that provides health insurance and other employee benefits. That portion of the defense fund can be used for legal representation, too, though not in those lawsuits where the city has said it will not represent the officers.

All told, the defense fund takes in about $5.5 million a year, which the PBA pays to the Manhattan law firm of Worth, Longworth & London to represent officers, tax filings show.

A spokesman for the PBA, which represents about 25,000 rank-and-file officers, didn’t respond to detailed questions about the fund.

While the PBA was the first to secure the city contribution, the annual $75-per-member taxpayer funding for civil defense has been replicated in the contracts that cover thousands of NYPD sergeants, lieutenants and captains.

The union representing the 9,000 jail guards who run the violence-plagued Rikers Island complex and other city jails secured a $75-per-member city contribution to their defense fund as well. Correction officers are frequently sued over allegations of prisoner abuse and neglect in New York City, suits that have led to multimillion-dollar settlements and, in recent years, a federal investigation and monitoring agreement. And the union representing jail wardens, deputy wardens and assistant deputy wardens gets a $189-per-member contribution for civil defense, according to their contract.

New York City’s mayoral primaries are on June 22, and de Blasio’s staunch support for the NYPD has made police accountability a key issue in the race to succeed him, especially among candidates with their own ties to oversight and reform of the department.

Candidate Maya Wiley, once a close adviser to de Blasio and later the chair of the city’s police oversight board, said she would renegotiate the police union contract to ensure better accountability. A Wiley spokesperson said the taxpayer money going to officers’ civil defense should go to gun violence prevention or “a dozen other, better ways to ensure public safety.”

Another mayoral candidate, Comptroller Scott Stringer, plays a key role in police accountability, reviewing and approving every settlement reached in civil cases brought against police officers. But a campaign spokesman said Stringer wasn’t familiar with the defense fund provision of the PBA’s contract and that his policy staff was now looking into it. Mayoral hopeful Eric Adams was for many years a prominent reform voice within the NYPD, rising to the rank of captain and co-founding the group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. But Adams, now the Brooklyn borough president, didn’t respond to questions.

In New York, the rare rollback of police union protections has typically come only when a case of police brutality seized the public conscience and compelled political leaders to act. Even then it can take years.

For decades, NYPD officers involved in shootings or other incidents of potential wrongdoing had two full days to consult with lawyers before being questioned by internal affairs investigators. But after officers sodomized a Haitain immigrant with a stick in the bathroom of a Brooklyn police station in 1997, the so-called 48-hour rule emerged as a key obstacle in the investigation.

In negotiations to settle his lawsuit against the city and the police union, the man, Abner Louima, and his lawyers called for the rule to be scrapped. It wasn’t until 2002, during labor negotiations with the police union, that city officials moved to extract the provision from the agreement, asserting that the police commissioner had broad authority to oversee disciplinary matters. That prompted a yearslong legal battle, which the union ultimately lost in 2006.

Removing a union benefit that has been renewed for decades is possible, but it’s hard to do, said Victor Kovner, who served as the city’s chief lawyer under Mayor David Dinkins in the early 1990s. “And hard doesn’t begin to suggest how challenging it would be,” he said.

[lovemesomerafael]

El Amor Todo Lo Puede            Chapter 51:  Adrift In The Wasteland

Source:  Barbaoutfits

Chapters 1-50

************* Important Note **************** Just a reminder:  The happy ending for Rafael and Laura was in the last chapter.  If you can’t live with a different ending, please accept my most sincere thanks for reading and take my advice: don’t read further. 

*********************************

Rafael took a long, satisfying drink of coffee that was probably a little hotter than was good for him, but he didn’t want to wait.  He felt good.  He’d just won a trial that was the beginning of the end for a hate group that had intended to bomb the Mayor’s office.  The three defendants he’d tried were all going to prison for years, which did not bode well for the other five people indicted in connection with the plot.  It wasn’t the whole group, but it was a start.

He had to smile to himself, now that this first trial was successfully over.  He would never have admitted it, but he’d been concerned about what Laura would say if he botched a trial based on evidence it had taken her and Carisi a month undercover to gather.  Of course, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force had been working on the case for much, much longer.  But he wasn’t concerned about answering to the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Rafael had never liked Laura going undercover.  It was dangerous, unpredictable work without a net.  He trusted her ability to think on her feet and defend herself if she had to – which she had, on more than one occasion. But he didn’t trust the situations the detectives put themselves into, and he damn sure didn’t trust the suspects.

But this assignment – working with the Joint Terrorism Task Force – had been by far the worst.  He had hated the danger to her, he had hated their inability to communicate and, if he was being honest, he had hated having their home life disrupted.  He didn’t mind long, irregular hours.  He did mind sleeping alone for weeks at a time.  

That actually caused him to smile into his coffee cup even more than he already had been.  There had been a time when sleeping alone had been a point of pride with him.  Now, after celebrating three anniversaries with Laura, he barely recognized his life or his priorities, and he wondered how he had survived the long, lonely years before she came into his life.  That thought reminded him of the time, over a year ago now, when he had thought he would lose her to a bullet aimed at him.  Once her hair had grown back, she hadn’t thought much about it.  But he had. The anguish he’d felt then was a big part of why he had such a hard time when she went undercover now.

At least this assignment was over.  He remembered the night she had come home.  He had been laying on their bed, still in his dress shirt and slacks, reviewing reports on the case while Laura took a shower.  He had just begun to feel the weight of responsibility for getting indictments and convictions after all the investigative work.  But as Laura came out of the bathroom, her hair freshly dried and a short, silky robe loosely tied around her waist, he decided that responsibility could definitely wait at least another night.  From her mischievous grin, and the way she crawled onto the bed and began kissing him, she’d missed him as much as he’d missed her.

“Let’s never do that again,” he said against her lips as he pulled the robe from her body.

“Amen,” she agreed.

“You have no idea how much I missed you.”  

“Then why aren’t you helping me get these clothes off of you?  I can’t get you naked fast enough...”

“We’ve been over this.”

“I swear, Harvard, if you say the word ‘structure’, I will…”

“Yes?”  The smirk on his face was as enticing, and had the same effect on her, as the very first day they’d met.

“Probably do whatever you ask me to,” she sighed, smiling up at him.  “Like always.”

Carmen came into Rafael’s office with a package, interrupting a very nice memory of what had happened afterward.  

“This was just hand-delivered,” she said, holding the box out to him.  “It’s heavy.”

Curious, Rafael took the package from her and began to open it.  Carmen stayed by his desk, just to see what was inside.

They never felt a thing when it exploded.

***********

When Fin was very small, his Gran had lived in a building in the projects.  He’d loved that building.  He’d been too young to even see that the building was a ruin; to him, the building was a place where his Moms knew everyone and they all loved him, and where his Gran waited to spoil him with baking and overflowing love. And then, in the first tragedy of his young life, his Gran had died and, shortly thereafter, the building had been condemned.  He’d watched in horrified fascination as the building had been gutted, first emptied of his Gran and all the people who had always smiled at him and made him feel welcome, then stripped of everything of any value.  It had become an empty, sad, unbearably lonely shell echoing with the sounds of the lives that had once been lived there.

That building was the only thing Fin could think of that remotely came close to the way Laura looked.  Her expression had been one of stunned horror since that very first, cursed moment in Liv’s office, and that hadn’t changed.  But now there was absolutely nothing behind her eyes.  He felt sure that if he could look inside of her, she’d be entirely hollow. Maybe with a freezing cold wind blowing a few scattered ashes around.  Laura Parker was gone.  She’d just… flickered out.  He had watched it happen the moment she had finally accepted that Olivia was telling her the truth about the bombing.  

And Rafael’s death.

Fin hated hysterics.  He was the first to run the other way when someone got emotional.  Especially when he, himself, was also feeling the full weight of that emotion.  But now, today, he would have given everything he had to see his partner shed even one tear or, better yet, fly into a howling, sobbing, keening lamentation with an all-engulfing tsunami of tears.  He wanted her to scream and rage and destroy things, hurl vile words and swear vengeance.  Or even just weep a little.  He just wanted her to do anything to let him know that she was still in there somewhere.  

As it was, it looked like the squad had lost both of them.  Rafael was dead, and Laura was… gone.  

Fin was the only one who could get near her.  With anyone else, everyone else, she was grim and silent, just gazing through them with that lost, broken stare, as though they were ghosts.  Or she was.  Only Fin could get a response from her, whispered and vague though it might be. She would say ‘yes’, or ‘no’, or ‘OK’. ‘I don’t know’ was beyond her; even saying that many words was too much effort.  If he asked her something she couldn’t answer, she just remained silent, looking confused and indescribably lonely.  

He had absolutely no fucking idea what he was supposed to do.  Fin had thought that, once they’d become desperate enough to fly him out for a day, Dr. Charles would take over.  He was the trauma expert.  He was her psychiatrist.  He was the one who had helped her reclaim herself after she’d endured an attack so vicious and devastating she still had night terrors as a result.  Nothing.  She hadn’t seen or heard Dr. Charles any more than she could see or hear her parents, or her brothers, or her friends.  The best that Dr. Charles had been able to tell them was that there was a name for her condition – catatonia – and that she would probably find her way back.  Probably.  

In the meantime, the people who loved her kept her alive.  They put food into her hand and told her to eat it.  They held articles of clothing up to her and told her to put them on.  Her mother led her into the shower and bathed her.  They led her to her bed and told her to lie down.  She would stare blindly at the ceiling until, at some point, her body’s basic needs would take over and she would sleep.  

The only time she was remotely responsive was when she was asleep, and her family could only imagine what kind of hellscape she was responding to then. She moaned and thrashed, called out in terror, and would eventually wake herself up with her screams.  

For whatever reason, that was the part that her older brother Steve found absolutely intolerable.  He refused to leave her alone at night, and had moved into her apartment with her rather than stay in a hotel, as originally planned.  Once he did, the rest of the family followed suit.  It was the first time in many years that all five of them had lived together.  Steve slept in a chair next to his little sister’s bed, ready to spring up whenever she screamed, which happened several times a night.  When it did, he talked to her until she was calm enough to lay back down. Even as she shouted and screamed through the nightmares, she never said a word.  And even then, she didn’t cry.

***************  

The bomb had damaged two floors of the D.A.’s office building at One Hogan Place. It was a miracle there had been only two deaths, although quite a few people had been injured, some of them severely. All of them were expected to survive. Only Rafael and Carmen had not.  

The FBI combed the wreckage and gathered evidence, although everyone knew who was responsible for the explosion.  The remaining members of the group had decided to go through with the bombing, they’d just chosen a different target.

Randolph had pushed the plan to bomb Barba’s office, and he got wood every time he thought about it.  Not only did they get rid of him, but they had also struck back at Kevin and Susie White – apparently really some fucking NYPD detectives named Carisi and Parker.  Randolph very much enjoyed thinking about their pain at losing their husband and friend.  

So far, Randolph had been able to keep entirely under the radar.  No one in law enforcement had any idea he was the group’s leader.  Most people in the group didn’t even know that.  

********

“It’s fucked up, Pete.  She just sits there.  Doesn’t do anything, doesn’t talk.  Except when she’s screaming at night, of course, which is the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever seen.”

Carol Parker looked up from what she was doing in the kitchen.  “Steven, I don’t disagree with you, but can we please have a little variation in descriptions?”

“Sorry, Mom, but damn!”

Carol gave Steve a sympathetic look.  This was a nightmare for all of them and, truth be told, she wouldn’t mind using a few choice descriptions herself.  But she knew Peter Stone was having a rough time not being here in New York with Laura, and she didn’t think it would help having Steve’s feverish narration in his head.

“No, still only her partner,” Steve answered whatever Peter had asked.  “The doc said they sometimes do that, latch onto one person they trust.  But we’re talkin’ about ‘yes’ and ‘no’.  It’s not like even he’s gettin’ conversation out of her.  Today she, like, touched his arm, and you’d’a thought it was the fuckin’ Second Coming.  It was the first spontaneous thing we’ve seen her do.  Except, of course, the screaming…”

Steve listened some more.  

“I don’t think so, dude.  But don’t feel bad.  They tried takin’ her to church, see if that would do something, but apparently she’s not even talkin’ to Jesus right now.”  It was a weak joke, but he needed it. 

“So, anyway, I called to tell you the funeral’s Friday.  The Moms talked about it, and they have to go ahead, even though my sister’s a fuckin’ zombie.  I mean, how long are they supposed to wait?”

At the other end of the phone, Peter asked another question. 

“Who the fuck knows?”  Steve answered.  “Her partner told her the funeral’s Friday and she said ‘OK’.  No way to know whether she even knew what he was talkin’ about.”

Carol could hear a very faint, tinny sound as Peter’s voice came through Steve’s phone as he held it to his ear. 

“I know, right?  It’s not like I got to know the guy very well, but he was really cool, and he for sure had her number.  I’m still tryin’ to wrap my head around the whole thing.  And my sister bein’ a fuckin’ vegetable is not helping.”

There was another pause while Peter said something. 

“Yeah, bro, text me your flight.  We’ll pick you up.  Just… be ready.  It’s hard lookin’ at her like this.” 

*************

Some of her friends had made the oblique suggestion that Lucia Barba should be angry with her daughter-in-law for making her do all the work.  Lucia didn’t see it that way.  Rafi was hers.  Always had been.  Although it hurt worse than Lucia had known anything could, she was constantly remembering him as a baby, and a chubby little toddler extraordinarily pleased with himself when he learned to walk, and all through his life where he had been a constant source of comfort and happiness and overwhelming pride.  Rafi was hers.  They had a huge family, on both her side and Rafi’s father’s, but there had always been an element of the two of them together against the world, even when Mateo had been alive.  Of course, Lucia had recognized the sizzling connection between her son and Laura, and the deep love that had even then already begun to grow, and she’d made sure it did.  But she hadn’t done it for Laura, much as she liked her.  She’d done it for Rafi.  Because he was hers and, despite his stubborn insistence that he didn’t, he had wanted a wife.  And Lucia had wanted him to have someone to take care of him.  Her Rafi.  Hers.

So making his funeral arrangements was something that Lucia, and no one else, should be doing.  In the three years Rafi and Laura had been married, Lucia had become very close to Laura’s mother, and she appreciated that friendship more than ever right now. Carol understood.  She had her own child to worry about, and all she had done was offer – once – to assist with the arrangements on Laura’s behalf.  When Lucia had explained that this last opportunity to care for Rafi belonged to her alone, Carol had burst into tears born of her complete understanding.  It was how she would feel if one of her own children had died.  

Lucia was, of course, concerned about Laura.  But that was a very distant second to the jagged, burning agony of losing Rafi. So she let Carol take care of Laura. One day, when Laura began to be able to tolerate feeling her own loss, she and Lucia would spend all the time in the world grieving together.  Their losses had a lot in common; they’d both loved Rafi above all else.  But Lucia selfishly appreciated that Laura was staying out of it for a while.  Everyone wanted to comfort the widow; she’d be the center of attention.  But Lucia knew that her loss was by far the greater.

*************

Rafael’s funeral was held at the church where he was baptized.  The church where he had encountered God throughout most of his life, had received all of the sacraments, and had been an altar boy.  Lucia had thought about St. Augustine’s, where Rafi had married his Laura and had occasionally attended Mass.  But this was Rafi’s spiritual home, and this is where he would have chosen to be committed to his God had anyone known to ask him.

So many people had made the trip to the Bronx for Rafael’s funeral that there was a bit of a panic about there being enough space.  But people had crowded together and made it work. Everyone watched Laura, wondering how she would appear.  Naturally, one of the main questions people asked one another was how she was holding up. Those who didn’t already know learned from the general hubbub in the church that she wasn’t.

She sat between her mother and Rafael’s, blinking blankly and wearing that same shocked, devastated expression behind the filmy black veil Carol had decided she should wear.  Carol wasn’t going to bother with makeup, and she understood the curiosity that would cause everyone to want to get a look at Laura’s face.  Because her daughter wasn’t able to protect her own privacy right now, Carol had decided to do it for her by simply reverting to the old-fashioned tactic of having her wear a veil.  

There didn’t seem to be a face in the church that didn’t wear some variation of Laura’s expression, anyway.  The SVU squad, Olivia Benson in particular, looked blasted.  Captain Tucker kept an arm around Olivia and had armed himself with all the tissues he could fit into the pockets of his suit.  Fin didn’t do much to try to hide his tears, and Carisi and Rollins wept openly.  Rafael’s friends and colleagues from the D.A.’s office were more discreet about their feelings, but then they had only know Rafael Barba’s prickly, snarky public persona. They had liked and respected him, but he wasn’t family to them as he was to the SVU squad.  Rafael’s immense family, men and women alike, wore their grief plainly.

Peter Stone had declined the invitation to sit in the front pew with the family, but had staked out a place two rows behind them, where he could see Laura’s face.  He watched her the entire time, a hideous snarl of emotions making him feel sick as it slithered around inside him.  What he really wanted to do was go to her, pick her up and carry her away from this disaster, somewhere he could protect and care for her forever.  The idea that she was in pain so overwhelming it had shut her down completely broke Peter’s heart.  One of the emotions in the snarl was guilt.  Guilt that his sorrow for Rafael Barba’s murder could only be that of a near-total stranger being saddened by a tragedy, whereas he felt a towering sorrow for Laura’s loss.  He hadn’t been able to hold back tears any more than anyone else at the funeral, but all his tears were for Laura.  

Maggie Lockwood was glad that she had called Peter and arranged for them to fly out together.  She was a mess.  She hadn’t known Rafael, having met him only once, but she and Laura had been extremely close since they met in Nursing school.  Which meant that Maggie had been there when Peter and Laura met, and throughout their whole relationship.  She knew Peter very well, and she knew what he must be feeling.  It had been a very good idea to be on the same flight, so that they could share their mutual grief for what had happened to Laura.  Not that Peter was particularly forthcoming about his feelings, of course, but Maggie didn’t need him to be.  She could plainly see that he was as much a mess on the inside as she was on the outside.

Hank Voight had come from Chicago with Trudy Platt and her husband Randall McHolland, along with Kim Burgess and Kevin Atwater.  Voight was going to be there for Parker no matter what.  While Trudy didn’t love Laura as a daughter the way Voight did, she still felt she had to be there, and Randall – Mouch to his squad – had volunteered to go to represent the firefighters of Station 51.  The Intelligence team had all wanted to be there for her, and had settled for pulling together enough money to send Kim and Kevin, who had been closest to Parker.  Their grief was evident on all of their faces.  

*****************

It had been an impulse born of cruelty for Randolph to stake out the funeral. He couldn’t help it.  He wanted more of the glorious high he got thinking about how much pain he had caused.  He wanted more confirmation of his immense power, and the fact that it was his to wield without consequence.  He was invisible.  Untouchable. And he loved seeing all the tears as people shuffled out of the church.  He had especially been eager to see the widow’s grief.  He was pissed that the little bitch had worn a veil so he couldn’t see her face, but he got a great deal of satisfaction seeing her being led around like a blind person.

She wasn’t blind.  She was bewildered, and terrified, and in agony beyond endurance, but she wasn’t blind. She saw him.  Something changed behind her veil.

*******************

The gathering in the hall next to the church was attended by just about everyone who came to the funeral.  Lucia had stood alone at the door, a one-woman receiving line, and to her it felt right.  Laura was nearby, at a table with her family and a few other people, but in no condition to do anything as complex as receive condolences.  When people asked, Lucia tactfully told them that she was having a hard time, and just wasn’t up to talking to anyone.  

The few people who tried to speak to Laura didn’t stay long.  They would touch her on the shoulder or the hand and murmur their sympathy but, receiving no acknowledgement, would awkwardly step away.  Laura’s family gracefully acknowledged their kindness while she simply sat, looking apparently into oblivion.  The family had decided that she should be at the gathering for a little while, so that they could tell her she had been there.  After that, Steve and Peter would take her home.  

Until Hank Voight stepped up to her, and she saw him.

At first, she moved so slowly that those at the table didn’t even notice it happening. But as Hank introduced himself to her family, Laura looked up at him.  When he leaned down to speak to her, he found that she looked him in the eye. It was perhaps less disconcerting to him than it would have been to anyone who had been with her over the past days, because he was used to her acknowledging him when he spoke to her. But he was aware of her condition and so recognized that something was happening.  

He knelt down on the floor so that he was eye-to-eye with her and waited as she slowly, fumblingly, pulled the veil up from her face.  She looked like a wraith, if wraiths themselves could be haunted.  

“Hank,” she rasped.  

“I’m here.  I had to be here for you.”

“You could do it.  You would help me.”

He had no idea what she meant, but he would do anything for her, so he just looked into her eyes and waited.  

“Randolph.  His name is Randolph.”

Hank looked up, scanning the table for a clue.  He instantly saw the recognition in Carisi’s face.  

“You know what she’s talking about?”

“Yeah, I do,” Carisi answered, looking around.  “Maybe we should… go somewhere.”

Trying to swim back to the surface was painful and frightening for Laura, and it was a difficult, arduous task made more difficult by the fact that she didn’t want to get there.  She would much have preferred staying where she’d been, where there was no sound, and no feelings, and she could watch the world from a million miles away.  She knew what was waiting for her in that world. But she had to go back, now that she knew who had killed Rafael.

[amyscascadingtabs]

still i will love your shadow

She’s used to being there for him when he’s disappointed over a case lost to Major Crimes or a negative review on his self-insert Die Hard fanfiction; she’s done that since the early days of their partnership. This is different. This anxiety runs deep, unveils ugly scars of abandonment issues and separation anxiety she can’t make disappear, and it scares her.

When Jake returns home after his time in the safe house with a resurfaced fear, Amy helps him handle it.

Set after 5x12.

(thank you to @dmigod for suggesting post-safe house fic!)

He changes clothes the minute after he’s stepped inside the door and Amy is grateful. Her fiancé may be able to rock a lot of styles, but weird pervert did not quite make her top ten list of them.

Sweatpants and jean jacket are quickly switched for a checkered pair of pajama pants she gifted him for Christmas last year and a NYPD t-shirt, paired with one of his signature blue hoodies, and then he’s safe and home and looks like her Jake again.

Her Jake who almost died today, risking his life for their dads - ahem, their boss and his husband - and then showed up at the precinct in a peculiar outfit and with an action-filled story, one he happily recounted to all present squad members.

It's been a long day.

She busies herself with making coffee while he changes to a more reasonable outfit, enjoying the simple sensation of making it for more than one person and pouring the steaming liquid into not one but two mugs. Milk in one, an absurd amount of sugar in the other. She carries both cups to the couch table, places them on the geode coasters she purchased post the disastrous party at Holt’s over four years ago, and sits down at her chosen favorite end of the couch.

“Jake?”

“Mm-hmm?” He’s walking laps, back and forth through their apartment, eyes darting around as if he’s trying to take in every single detail.

“Coffee.”

“Oh, sure.”

He keeps on walking. She takes a sip from her own mug, hears him turn around at the end of the hallway only to wander back the same way. He turns, then does it again.

“Jake?”

“Huh?”

“Why are you doing that?” She tries not to put any judgement in her voice.

“Restless”, he shrugs, changing direction once more. “Needed to be reminded of what this place is like. I missed it.”

“That's nice”, she smiles, “but can you sit down and have some coffee with me? I missed you, too.”

“Did you change the curtains?”

“What?”

“The curtains. Are they new?”

“The others were Christmas curtains. These are regular winter ones.”

“Huh”, he mumbles, watching them with some wistfulness. “And the bathroom - did you change something in there, too?”

“I reorganized the cabinets so we can get a better overlook - Jake, please just sit down.”

He stands still, fidgeting with his hands. “Is there orange soda at home?”

“Duh”, she says, watching him go to grab one from the fridge and hold up another with a questioning look to her. She shakes her head. There's the familiar click and fizz of the metal can, and then he finally, though it is with reluctance, moves to sit down at the end of the couch.

She starts going through the wedding planning binder nearly on reflex. While he was at the safe house with Kevin, she's spent hours hunched over it at the dinner table, planning the few miniscule things she felt okay deciding without him and asking him about everything else in the letters Holt let them exchange. Still, he’s not seen it all in person, and she's bursting to tell him all about her new idea to name the tables at the reception after characters in Die Hard.

“Obviously our table would be the John McClane one”, she assures him, binder in lap and struggling to keep her excitement at socially acceptable level. He should love this. “And then if there's people we didn't really want to invite, we could put them at the Hans Gruber table.” She looks to him to see his reaction.

“It sounds great”, he tries, drinking the orange soda and mustering a smile she knows to be nowhere near the grin usually apparent on his face upon any mention of Die Hard. “It'll be perfect, babe.”

“I know, I'm actually really proud of it.”

“You should be.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

She knows these answers, she realizes. They’re the same type of short, emotionless responses she’d sometimes get out of him back when he returned from South Carolina, traumatised despite his attempts to laugh about it. Even the way he avoids eye contact, keeps a slight yet notable distance between them on the couch, reminds her of the days when she felt powerless, unfit and handcuffed trying to wrestle his demons for him when neither of them knew how to defeat them. She’s learned her methods now, learned to differ between when he needs her to hug him tight and tell him she’s there versus when he needs to go through all the anxiety-ridden thoughts in detail, but seeing this blank visage on the man whose laugh and grin she’s missed so much brings her back to the feeling of helplessness.

For someone who’s lived with anxiety as her henchman since she started school, spotting it so visibly in him still makes her nervous. She’s used to being there for him when he’s disappointed over a case lost to Major Crimes or a negative review on his self-insert Die Hard fanfiction; she’s done that since the early days of their partnership. This is different. This anxiety runs deep, unveils ugly scars of abandonment issues and separation anxiety she can’t make disappear, and it scares her.

She places a hand on his shoulder, trying to keep her own expression composed. “Is something wrong, Jake?”

He still doesn’t meet her eye. “No, not at all.”

“Then what’s up?”

He opens his mouth, preparing to talk, and then he closes it again. She sits unmoving while he does, legs folded and lips pursed, waiting patiently.

“I left you again”, comes an eventual whisper. This voice is quiet, wavering in contrast to the artificial stability of the earlier one, and it’s a punch to the guts to hear it. “I said I wouldn’t. I promised I wouldn’t leave you again, and then I did anyway.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was, though. I did it willingly. I offered.”

“You didn’t want to feel indebted to Captain Holt. It was the moral thing to do.”

“I almost died.”

“You were doing your job.”

“I guess.” He shakes his head. “But I still left you, and it just - it keeps on happening and I can’t shake the feeling maybe it won’t stop. What if this is how it’ll always be, Ames? What if I’ll keep having to leave you and you can’t do anything about it? What if - what if I’ll always leave you?”

His voice is unnaturally fast-paced. Only thanks to years of substantial training can she register every word, each sentence stinging more than the last.

“You won’t”, she promises. “I know you won’t.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Are you questioning what I can and can’t know?”

“I’m not - but face it, it’s becoming a pattern and I…” He grimaces. “It's not what good fiancés are supposed to do, you know? You deserve better than that.”

She raises an eyebrow. “What are you saying?”

“I'm saying maybe you shouldn't marry me.”

Everything goes black. Not in a literal way, because she sees the pain in his expression and how he turns away from her in perfect clarity, but figuratively she feels like someone pulled down the blinds and now she's fumbling in darkness facing a conflict she's never had with her fiancé before. She twirls the engagement ring on her finger, drinks another sip of the coffee. Her hands must shake a little, because a few drops make their way over the edge of the white cup and drip onto the geode coasters.

“It’s not that I don’t want you to”, comes the continuation. His words are slower now, allowing her instead to hear how quavery they are. “I want to marry you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my damn life. But you deserve better than someone who leaves you and I keep doing it.”

There’s silence, heavier than silence should feel, tangible in the air between them. He looks numb, staring down at the wedding binder with empty eyes, and for the first time in a long time in the history of their relationship, Amy is scared for it.

It’s nowhere a long-lasting fear, luckily, because after many departmentally mandated therapy sessions and private ones on the side, after working next to him for long enough to learn how he handles relationships, she understands what he is doing. He’s giving her an option to leave before the imagined abandonment takes place. He’s saving his own skin in case he has to.

It stings and bites at her to know how even after almost three years, certain doubts refuse to leave. Part of her wants to take it personally. She wants to ask what she’s done wrong, why the belief that she won’t abandon him is not as deeply instilled in him as it is in her, but there’s another, rational part of her which knows this is all about his fear of abandonment and not about her. It’s making her rather tempted to walk up to Roger Peralta and aim a few precise punches to the man’s face.

She can't do that, though, so instead she says the one sentence her mind forms together on instinct.

“That’s literally the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard.”

He blinks. “It is?”

“Yeah. Including the time Hitchcock asked me if Kevin and Holt were brothers.” She shakes her head at the memory. “Not one of word of what you said there is true. It doesn’t work like that.”

“How does it work, then?”

“Like this”. She wraps her arms around him for the first time in weeks and lets him lean his head to her chest, her head resting on his and the fabric of her t-shirt made damp with a few tears. She feels her own take shape, slowly making their way down her cheeks. She makes no effort to blink them away in this moment. “It’s not about what I deserve, Jake. Believe it or not, but I make my own decisions about who I want. And I chose you”, she whispers, noticing her own voice has begun to shake. “I’m still choosing you.”

Neither of them speaks for a fleeting moment, breaths catching, evening out in tandem.

“There are no guarantees in this job.” By now, Amy is talking both to herself and to him. “You might have to leave again. But you might not. I don't know about you, but…” She combs her fingers through his hair, pressing a careful kiss to the top of his forehead. “I’m willing to take that chance.”

The warm air of his exhales makes its way through her shirt, heating up her chest.

“Okay. I am, too”, he mumbles right before she starts worrying he won’t, and even with the weight of his body against hers, breathing is easy again.

“You know”, she says once the anxious tension is not quite as expansive, once her shoulders drop marginally and Jake's breathing becomes less ragged. “I wouldn't want anyone else but you anyway.”

He laughs. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“Oh no. Believe me, that is pure egoism. You think I’d want to go back to anyone else after you?” She snorts. “I couldn’t.”

“You’d miss the Die Hard jokes”, he teases.

“I would miss the Die Hard jokes.”

“And the Taylor Swift covers in the car.”

“Where would I be without them?”

“You’d miss always having orange soda in your fridge.”

“Well, I guess technically I could buy my own.”

“Nah, Ames.” He’s grinning again as he sits up straight, pulling her close into his side. “You can pretend all you want, but I know you’d miss the orange soda.”

“Maybe”, she admits, putting weight on the e, and then she’s kissing him. Her thumb traces his jaw, feeling a little bit of stubble, and he tastes sweet of orange soda and familiar and home. They’ve gone weeks without this, the stolen moment in the safe house bathroom seeming oceans away, and she wants to make up for it all at the same time but knows now may not be the perfect moment. Instead she lets her free hand link with his, his hand covering the stones of the engagement ring safely on her finger, making him smile against her moving lips. It's not a heated or a fervent kiss. Desperate is not the word for it, because although they are, this kiss is one of assurance and comfort. It’s a silent promise that they’re okay, reunited and together and forever.

They pull apart with reluctance, a silent promise of later continuation lingering in the air while he tucks a few strands of hair behind her ear.

“I love you”, he tells her, a faint trace of worry left in his voice but a stronger conviction overpowering it. “So much.”

“I love you so much too.” She wrote it in the letters, but it hits her saying it out loud how much she missed telling him in person.

“I’ll try my best not to leave again.”

“I know.”

“You know”, he muses, “if we broke up, I actually think you’d miss my sneakers.”

“Now you're stretching it”, she mutters, but she can't stifle the laughter that ensues.

Charles comes by with dinner for them, making any excuse to see his best friend again after weeks apart. His suggestive wink when he tells them to have a good night is just as uncomfortable as it's always been, but at the same time, it's enough for them both to feel normal again.

The next time Jake spends the night at the precinct, trying to get a confession out of a suspect, she gets a text right before she goes to bed.

Not leaving.

She texts back a single,

I know. 

[sian22redux]

Entanglements

by sian22redux

For @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan  ‘s Angsty writing challenge: Star’s Marvel Mayhem

Prompt:  ‘He was acting like our kiss had broken him, and his reaction was breaking me.’

Bucky x reader

Rating: M

Summary:  The fight for love is sometimes harder than the mission.  

How Bucky and Y/N of Private Party came to be together.

Timeline:  After Wakanda of Black Panther end scenes, but assumes IW is over and he’s safe.

Tags:  oral sex-mentioned, het, canon-compliant mayhem, hurt/comfort, angst, angst, angst

Thank you so so much to the heroic @wheelrider for expert beta’ing, even in a fandom that is not hers!!  And to awesome @theycallmebecca for checking it worked!  

—————————————-

The first time it happens, it is just a drunken hookup.

The party at Avengers Tower is star-spangled, loud, and pulsing fun; rare vodka fueled and graced by the hottest DJ in New York.  You’ve left your uniform and new medal of valour in the hospitality suite Miss Potts has thoughtfully laid on.  Donned a slinky black cocktail dress and four-inch heels and walked into the space on Mr Stark’s arm,  blushing at his gushing praise.  

Thank heaven this evening event is more relaxed than the White House’s lavish ballroom. Your knees had knocked so loud you were sure that the President had heard. Visibility is not your thing.  Or speeches.  But your few heartfelt words had tumbled out, applauded by brass and dough-faced senators and Bucky had stood, smiling, looking oh so perfectly edible in a charcoal suit.  He’d winked at you, a shining in his eyes that was almost as bright as in the moment your marksmanship had saved his life.  

 Perhaps you hadn’t imagined his yearning after all.

Tony plies you with whiskey sours, and sometime after the fourth (or fifth?)  Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson coax you out onto the dance floor.  Time for some fun.   Bucky stands and stares and takes it in: Steve’s hilariously sloppy groove, Sam’s easy sway. He’s frowning adorably, critiquing every move until he’s had enough of watching amateurs.  He sets down his beer, absolutely murder struts out onto the dance floor, and with a ‘my turn punk’ rips you from their arms.  The music settles into something smooth and slow (has Steve’s had a hand it that?) but then suddenly Bucky leans in.  Cheek to cheek and hip to hip.  There’s a fire blazing up inside that takes the pair of you by surprise, and when Bucky whispers, voice molasses dark and slow, “Doll, let’s escape,” you go.  

Oh god.  

You wake up so hung over it feels like you need to shave your tongue.  Your dress is nowhere in sight and Bucky is sprawled out on his stomach.  The bedclothes are mostly on the floor, his evening tux makes a trail of black and white against cream carpet and your (only) lacy underthings dangle off the lamp.  

Fuck, what were you thinking?  

Weren’t, obviously.  You’d let the heady abandon of the evening, the crackling electricity between you both mess with your hard-earned self control, but it just can’t be.  This man is your assignment, the one you are set to guard from the tentacles of a wounded, dying global empire that is trying to grab hold.  

Best not to stick around.  You lever upright, stagger to the washroom, run a wet hand through your tangled hair and try not to notice the lurid hickey on your collarbone.  

Your dress is underneath the dresser (?), you slip it on without a sound, but ugh, the shoes are a pain: your feet are swollen from dancing for so long and so you fumble, trying to do up the flimsy straps.  Finally, the prong slots through the tiny hole.  All set.   

Just as you find your purse and reach across the bedside table for your thong, a silver hand shoots out and clasps your wrist.  

Gently.   

But not planning on letting go. 

“Doll, where ya going?”  Bucky cracks one eye open and the corner of his mouth quirks up.  “No one’s on this morning.  Tony promised.”  

“Got a briefing,” you lie, wincing internally, hating yourself for doing it, but this is a one-time thing and you do not plan on speaking of it.   

Again.  

Or ever.  

The disappointment that clouds the lazy sparkle in his eyes is something to avoid.  You hastily turn away, but at the door you pause guiltily for far too long.  At last, you speak to the quiet resignation from the bed.   

“Thank… thank you.”   

Safe. Or almost.  Steve Rogers wakes up early.  He’s showered after an early run, set up in the kitchen; got french toast frying and washed wineglasses in the drain tray.  He’s grinning.  Wide and hopeful just like an excited Labrador.  

“Breakfast will be ready in a jif.”  

You blink in the too=bright space and think, Fuck my life.  

“Captain… uhh.”  

What the ever lovin’ hell should you say??  

Sorry, can’t stay after banging your best friend. Can’t eat cuz I might just puke.  Or better yet…yes I have read DAOD 5019-1 but this does not constitute inappropriate fraternization across the ranks. 

“Not hungry, Corporal?”  Steve shrugs those massive shoulders and flips a tea towel across his arm, peeking at the toast’s browning underside.  “Suit yourself.”   

You do.

But no regrets.  

It had been too wonderful for that.

—————-

The second time it happens, you tell yourself it is just the frantic release of relief.  

It’s been another too-close-for-comfort call.  Six months past cryo in Wakanda and the insanity that was the Infinity War, and you’d think in the aftermath the remnants of Hydra would no longer care.  But they do, and can’t help but see he’s back, and if they can’t control the Asset, they want him gone.  

There is a careful balance between keeping Bucky safely whole and actually giving him a life.

You’re walking up out of the subway into Battery Park’s wintery sun, a hologram cover hiding your M24 because you just can’t saunter past New York’s Sunday shoppers and happy families pushing strollers openly armed to the teeth.  

Bucky’s a block in front, sunglasses on and hood of his dark puffy jacket pulled right up because camouflage is necessary and the stiff southwesterly off the Hudson is cutting through the naked trees.  He’s heading for the SeaGlass carousel where he will stand and smile, hands sunk deep in pockets, remembering the original aquarium he and Steve delighted in another lifetime ago. 

After two months of tracking him on every outing, you know him well. 

James Barnes loves plums and granola bars.  Extra whip at Starbucks and hunting for old comic books.  The Hayden planetarium and giant, hairy, slobbery dogs.  A fresh trim means things are good because Nat can get close to him with shears.  A fringe of days-old stubble means he’s having harder nights.  The triggers are gone, but not the memory of what he’s done.  When he stops, stock-still in the middle of the sidewalk, lips moving and new hand clenched into a fist, you know he’s centering.  Running through a routine in whatever language comes to his head.  

At least he is a better subject than most.  Always watching.  Baseball cap or hood pulled down, changing his route each day, not making it easy on the goons who might dog his steps.   Or you.

It’s part of what makes this detail fun. This day he’s slid into an empty booth at Gigino, near enough the front for light but not so near he hasn’t a good view of the door.  The notebook’s out, bristling with sticky tabs like a multicolour hedgehog.  You are sitting diametrically across, scanning everything around but him, cuz hit men don’t all look like Brock Rumlow after all and folks carrying things in bags make a prickle at your nape.  Your unobstructed view down the gravel walks is good, but somehow, a figure by the Liberty dock sets the hairs rising on your arm.  Hunched. Looking back too often to the restaurant.  Arm akimbo and hiding something.  

You whisper urgently into the comms, hustle out of the doors and fire on the run.  It’s a challenge but not long range, nothing like the shot before, but precision is the thing.   You have no intention of damaging any of the good folk around.  

The subject drops.  Bystanders freak, scattering in all directions, and even as two agents materialize to cluster around Bucky as a precaution, he looks unerringly across at you, recognition and open longing on his face.  

Yeah. Well.  Me too, pal.

You melt away into the shadows, and after the NYPD have it all locked down, you find yourselves thrown together back at the Tower for a hastily convened debrief.

Coulson’s reviewing footage and Fury’s frowning, tapping impatient fingers on the tabletop, talking about the need for better eyes, but you’re having trouble focusing.  

There’s a thirst in Bucky’s eyes that matches the one making your nether regions throb.  God, how good would it be to strip off the Stark body armour underneath his vest.  Press your skin along the length of him and feel every hot, hard inch.  Too good. To be avoided, but beside you the metal hand flexes back and forth.  As if he’s read your mind.

“Soldier?”  Fury’s question drops like a bomb into your awareness.  Neither of you are listening, too aware of each other to focus on mundane things like strategy.    

“Umm, yeah…”  Buck licks his lips and starts again.  “I mean, no, I don’t know any more about that sleeper cell. 

Fury turns to rake you both with his good eye.  After one eternal minute, he shakes his head, looking more bemused than mad.  

“Get outta here.  Both of you.”

You don’t need to be told a second time.  

Buck stalks out into the hall and you follow, thinking how it was too close a call and you are pissed Hydra’s not backing down and goddammit why are the other agents letting these shitballs get so very close and it’s almost like you are vibrating 

Fuck.  Wrong choice of word.  

Your skin is positively alive with how aware of him you are, nerves jangled, sparking white hot arcs of lust, and then he has to make it worse.   He turns and devours you with those ocean eyes as he slams the button for the elevator.

Hard.  

With his prosthetic hand.

The thought of it on you again makes your bones almost liquefy.

“Steve’s off doing PR.”

The few spare words are said with a crooked grin, eyes challenging, and like lightening you are both struck on.  Somehow, your legs are wound about his waist, lips locked, your back up against the cool mirror of the elevator wall, so engrossed you don’t notice when the motion stops.  His metal arm bangs through the apartment and bedroom doors, makes the hinges scream in protest, and then without warning the axis of your world flips over.  You are both horizontal.  On the bed, frantically shedding clothes until his cock sinks into your molten core.  You arch your back with the utter bliss of it, strokes hard and fast and frenzied, rising higher and then, inexplicably, he stills; drags his lips off your nipple to stare intently at your face.  

“Y/N I ain’t gonna last.  I…”  

You open your eyes and catch his gaze.  His eyes are dark and wide and filled with wonder.  As caught off guard as you by the pure fury of the need– but oh you are not going there.  Not thinking about how right this feels, how close and perfectly in tune you are.  Nope. Nuh unh.  This is sex, not making love.  Scratching an itch.  Purely mechanical.    

“Bucky, move!”  

You flip up your hips just so, knowing instinctively what it will do to him, and pull his hip bones closer, tighter, until you’re both grinning and he’s moaning, long and low, shuddering as he spills and you come apart, shining in the afterglow.

This time you deliberately stay the night.  

You curl up into the crook of his flesh arm because you’re weak.  Just can’t pull yourself away.  It’s warm.  And easy. And some part of you wants the peace—for him and you.

When you eventually awaken, stiff and achy, smelling of sweat and musk and the haute perfume of the disguise you never bothered to wash off, the sun hasn’t risen yet. Bucky’s dead to the world, face soft and slack in sleep, so beautiful and vulnerable it almost hurts.

For a moment, breakfasting together flits across your brain, but no.  Way too risky.  Too much like normal couple life.

You slide out from under a heavy bicep and set your feet soundlessly on the chill of the floor, ignoring a lazy snuffle, but, by the time your shrug back on your (ridiculous) Dolce coat, the worry line has settled on his brow again.  

Damn. For a few precious hours, the perennial mark of his mistreatment had erased.  You want to run a finger down it, smooth away the shadowed ridge with a soft caress, but you do not dare.  That is exactly how another bonfire could ignite.

Instead, you gather up your rifle, activate the hologram and tip-toe away.  Like a thief in the night or a spy who’s set a honey trap.  

You text him ‘sweet dreams’ because this is not the bitch you want to be…  

————————-

The third time it happens—well, it’s just pure weakness…

You are, of necessity, an expert at disguise.  Part of a scout-sniper’s training is advanced stalking skills, keeping yourself hidden from a target just five feet away in rough open bush;  you’ve done that and mastered alternate camouflage for  downtown New York.  Four changes of outfit a day if Bucky’s going far.  Rocker grunge in ripped jeans and blue streaked hair.  Finance exec in Burberry trench and heels.  Thank heaven platform sneakers with lace and skirts are a thing; easier to run in those.  

Bucky may not pick you out, doesn’t know exactly where you are, but he knows you’re there.  Today, your hair is brown, next week redhead, after that could be pink: anything but your natural, and naturally noticeable, pale blonde.  It’s like a game—you hiding and him guessing where you might be.  He shows it (and how he’s memorized every conversation that you’ve had) in little actions meant just for you.

One morning, he ‘just happens’ to be forgetful and leaves a cup of mocha/hold-the-whip on the bench where he just sat.  Another scorching afternoon, he buys your favourite Oddfellows miso cherry cup and leaves it safely in the shade of a blue postbox.  Once, he spends two hours stalking every exhibit at the Met’s armory museum because you’d admitted you’ve never been.  (You like old rifles.  What can you say?)  

How can you not fall for this man?  He’s sweet and kind and deadly.  Wants the best thing for everybody if not for himself, and will soon become impossible to resist.  

Scratch that.  Is.  Is impossible to resist.  

Damn his super hearing.  One lunch strolling past Agent Provocateur, he catches your quiet sigh at something flirty but way, waaay out of your snack bracket and, the next thing you know, he’s marching into Victoria’s Secret.  Cruising the racks in exactly your right size.  Leaving the pink bag wedged behind a subway seat.  

Collecting it is just not wasting money, right?  

It goes on like this for weeks, until the day the teasing shit walks into Narcisse, buys chocolate body paint and leads you straight back in the direction of the Tower.

Oh god.  

This necessitates yet another reconnoiter with wardrobe at the safe house.  No one thinks twice about a well-groomed Chanel-suited woman visiting Tony Stark. 

When the morning comes and you crouch, hand poised above the new skimpy scrap of lace, silently agonizing whether to bring or leave, Bucky sits up in bed.  Confused. Dark hair temptingly messy and fingers reaching out.

“Y/N? Where’s the fire.  It’s early yet.”  

Fuck, he makes this so very hard.  Bucky wants something for himself and you want to give it, but this is, if not exactly wrong, so far from right.  

“Ah…” You don’t know what to say.  The sheets are rumpled low about his hips and the comforter sprawls across the floor.  He’d shoved it off.  Kneeling between your legs to plunder you mercilessly with his tongue.

Oh, Christ, Y/N, don’t think of that.

“I want to get in a run.”  The lie comes easily.  You hate running, but he doesn’t know that yet.

“Gonna hafta change those heels,” he chuckles, stretching languidly.  “You’ll need your coffee first.   Steve said he’d put some on first thing.”  

You pretend to relent, smile and plant the softest of kisses on the knotted scars of his shoulder.  

“See you later,” you murmur, intending to go straight on home, but Steve Rogers has other plans.  Ever the gentleman and always up with the birds, he’s made pancakes. And sausage.  And fruit salad with blueberries.

The table is already set for three.

In the awkward silence, he misunderstands why your mouth is open.  

“Syrup or sugar and lemon juice?  Buck’s mom was British.”  

The assumption you don’t understand the condiments is just too much.  Turning him down again would be far too rude.  

You sit, wrinkled disguise and all, and take a bite of bacon, realizing you have slept with the subject eight times over three different nights and you had no clue what his mother’s background was.  

The fact you want to know is somewhat startling.

From down the hall, you hear the whoosh of water beating down and an adorably off-tune whistle.  Your faithless libido says if you’d played your cards just right you’d be in there too. Soaping up his six pack and the dimples in his butt cheeks.  Going yet another round.  

Desperately, you hide your flaming cheeks in a perfectly foamy cappuccino, but Steve isn’t fooled.  

“You know,” he remarks, casually forking up the detritus of an entire fluffy stack.  “Buck never has nightmares when you are here.”

It’s a hard lesson, but one you obviously have to learn.   

Again.  

Never, never underestimate Captain America’s mastery of tactics.  

———————————–

A week, a month, and you fall into a routine. Bucky’s shadow in the day and his teddy bear at night.  A watcher on his six.  Fire when he needs it and softness when he does not. That he’s let down his guard and become intimate with someone shows just how far he’s come. A growing part of you wants to do this, cheer on every little bit of taking back himself; but another part says stop.

You pride yourself on your skill and professional approach.  Dispassionate execution.  It is part of the reason you are so very good.  You do not get distracted.  At all. You’ve got no baggage. No serious exes clutter up your past. You have not spoken to your folks in years (their commune frowns on ‘making war’).

It comes as something of a shock to need your daily dose of Buck.  Sarcastic jokes.  Lips like silk.  Muscles rippling underneath your touch.  

It shouldn’t matter but it does.  The mission is to protect him.  

Even if it means from yourself.  

———————————-

It is the shot, just a few centimeters stray, that settles things in your mind.  

Sure, everyone has rougher days. Aim a little off.  Skin jumpy and so tight it messes with your zen. But not you.  Never you.  Your concentration is absolute.  You just can’t miss and that is exactly why Coulson first brought you in.  Ms. Hill, in charge of Stark’s security, wants the best of the very best and you are it.  

Next to the man you are sworn to protect.

Barton’s grinning and looking at the minor spread on the target sheet, leaning casually on his bow. “What are you thinking of, Y/N?“ he laughs, blue eyes sliding up to your face.  “Sure ain’t your work.”  

Your cheeks flame up.  He doesn’t mean it.  This is Clint never passing up a chance to take the piss but still it gets your brain cells firing.  What were you thinking of?   Slim hips in black tac pants.  A stubbled, chiseled jaw.  Silver fingers cradling the barrel of a gun.

Shit.

Bucky’s standing not ten feet away in the next corral and, fuck, you can’t help yourself.  It’s the first time you’ve seen him all that day and the need flares up; wild and feral and messing with your head.  You want to know how he’s doing.  Ask about his bout with Steve, see if he wants to grab some lunch, make sure he’s eating right because he’s looking a little hollow in the cheeks and…  

Stop.  

You’re shocked and frankly terrified.  Is this love?  Infatuation? A school-girl crush?  Your heart is raw but what is this for him?  A diversion?  Something steady?  You have no idea, you don’t get much time to talk but you know what it shouldn’t be: too serious.  He is still recovering. You’re his rebound and it isn’t healthy.  Buck needs to date casually, get a better sense of himself and Jesus fucking Christ he is your job.

If Coulson or Fury find out, they’re entitled to put you on report.  A black mark on your copybook.   Though that isn’t what’s got you truly rattled.

You have to be a perfect shot.

For him.

His life depends upon it.

When you finally find the courage to rip the bandage off, you learn first hand that bullshit in Russian has an awfully familiar tone.

Bucky’s a solid wall of disagreement, arms crossed over his chest.  “Babe, it doesn’t have to be this way.”

“It does.”  You raise your chin.  “I am here to protect you.  I can’t do that when my focus is…distracted.”  

“It’s not that way for Nat and Clint.”

Really?  You file that new tidbit of gossip away for more analysis, but still have to regretfully shake your head.  “Not the same. They’re a team, trained to work in tandem.  This is different.”

“It’s not.”  

“It is.”

“Not true.”  

His certainty that you’ll relent begins to melt away. “Y/N, don’t do this.  I thought we had something. Were working on it.  Can be something more.”  

“Please.”

He falls silent in the face of your hard bitten stare.  Lost eyes dark and pleading.  More like a kicked puppy than a famous murderbot, but still you hold.    

You can’t.  You wish you could, but no.  

“It has to be this way for me.”  

To blunt the hurt, you stretch up on tip-toe to press a delicate apology to his lips.  

Bucky flinches, acting like your kiss has broken him and his reaction is breaking you.

‘I thought we had something?’

The accusation rings in your ears all the days to come, but even tears don’t put the heart fires out.

——————————-

You do your job.  Break down and reassemble your gun for the soothing repetition.  Keep well away.  Do exactly what you need to do and not one iota more, but watching him all day is torture.  

Both of you are miserable.

You hide it.  Bucky not so much.  His blue eyes lose their spark;  become haggard and bloodshot.  You know you’ve put the dark bags there, but at least they’re there, you tell yourself when another hit gets foiled.

Everybody notices.  On those rare times you have to be in the Tower, Steve remains so professionally polite and clipped it’s just like being shot.  Next to him, no one knows.  You sit, mute and hurting, inconveniently placed beside Pepper and Maria at a SHIELD event, taking in Natasha’s blistering attack on ‘the gold dipped bitch’ who’s hurt her friend.  They know Bucky, too.  How much the silent, morose Soldier is a capitulation; how working through hurt makes it harder for him to keep the last dregs of Hydra programming at bay.  You hate yourself for it. But there really is no other way and now you realize, it’s getting harder.  Your concentration’s worse if anything and it would be kinder to stop torturing you both.    

The sick reality falls like lead into your stomach. 

You can’t be there at all.  

————————-

You never planned to work for SHIELD.  

You’d enlisted at age eighteen because with no formal schooling and no degree, Uncle Sam was the only outfit that would promise you a job. Your long-honed hunting skills were evident in basic; refined in sniper school until you were something of a legend. You’d set your heart on Special Ops, did every extra ribbon and rotation but still were not sent to the front. Women were not then given combat roles. It sucked.  And if your superiors were sympathetic, they still attached you to endless close protection details. Sent you to the AMU competitions.  Ignored your increasingly strident, respectful pleas for reassignment until you’d thrown your resignation papers down and marched straight off the base.

Seemed like just minutes passed before a bland, grey-suited man tapped you on the shoulder.

“Miss Y/N?” said Philip Coulson with a smile. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

Nick Fury is the best boss you’ve never officially had, because sometimes your Army cover is somewhat helpful and Phil swiftly arranged for your resignation papers disappear.  

The rest is history.

——————————

“You want to be reassigned.”

“Yes, Sir.”

You will not squirm, but the Director, away from prying ears in his secure coordination room, is fixing you with his patented thousand-metre stare.  “You really want to go back to Fort Bragg and do paperwork?  Get trotted out when they need an affirmative action photo shoot?”

You groan. Ugh. They will and you know it, but anywhere than SHIELD is the objective.  Better a clean break, you think, but Fury’s not done with you yet.  

“I hear the First Daughter had some death threats.  FBI’s asked us if we can spare a gun. We could reassign you to Sparrow’s detail.”  

Oh fuck no.  The President’s petulant and self-absorbed teenager burns through agents faster than she raids Bloomingdales.  

It takes everything in you to do that nod.

Fury’s one visible eyebrow nearly hits the roof.  “You are serious.”

“Sir. I am.”  You’ve called his bluff.  You stand to attention and wait for it.  The serious suggestion you know is coming.  

“Thing is, Y/N, we were going to recommend you for a new assignment,” Fury paces, hands behind his back and shoulders to the view.  “It involves training.  As hard as anything you’ve done.”

Really?  You’re skeptical. You’ve done the Rangers even if they didn’t let you in the field. Toughed it out with the toughest the Army had.  

What he says next, nearly has your jaw upon the floor.

“We want you permanently cross-posted to the Advanced Threat Containment Unit.  Watch Sergeant Barnes full time.  Close in as he transitions to his next new role.”  

Surprise makes you blurt out the first thing in your head.  “You can’t mean on combat missions?!”

“Mhmm.”  

But that means…  “You’re sending Bucky back into the field!”

“Got a problem with that, Corporal?”  

Your mouth is hanging open.  “But you can’t…”

‘I don’t do that anymore’ rings in your ears.

“You’re going to let him…”

Fury looks, not mad, but entirely amused. “Not do assassinations, no. But let him train and participate.” 

“You can’t,” you stubbornly repeat.  He’s stupidly reckless.  Prone to throwing himself headlong into everything. Not completely healed.  “Not ready,” you finish lamely. 

“You disagree with the psych eval?” 

You shuffle your feet.  This is thin ground. SHIELD does not employ folks with fake degrees.   “No, Sir.” 

The Director smiles, as warmly as you’ll get.  Which is to say, about as a warm as a melting icecube.  “Good. Sergeant Barnes needs someone who has his back and Captain Rogers can’t do that leading from the front.”  

So true.   But also why Bucky shouldn’t be out at all.  “Sir, he forgets…”  To care about himself enough.  

“Precisely why I’ve suggested you be assigned.  You are the best markswoman we have got.  Look, I’m not entirely happy with this either, but he can’t sit and knit forever.  Stark says he’s ready.  The -ologists say he’s ready.  And he’s spending his days moping around the compound too much.”  You wince inside, knowing the cause of that.   “Getting some of his own back might even help.”  

It might.  

And someone will try to take Bucky out again.

And he will be focused on everything but himself.

Shit.  

There is no choice.  

You know you can keep him safe.

Fury, the bastard, just stands and cracks his deaths-head grin.

 ———————————

Training with the Avengers is more brutal than anything you’ve done.

Steve’s in charge, and Nat.  Both merciless.  Both focused on honing you into something more than a gun.  It’s brutal and physical but that isn’t the hardest part.

Bucky is there training, too.  

It feels like being a cat on a hot tin roof.  Circling each other.  Carefully.  Two negative terminals on a magnet—repelling as far away as they can get.  

“Corporal.”

“Sergeant.”  

You’ve said no and Bucky is bending over backwards to be polite and perfectly correct.  No physical contact outside sparring.  No first names unless you can help it.  No interaction at all, outside missions, to be honest.  Tony, oblivious (at least you think he is), organizes movie nights and BBQs that you mostly miss.  You follow Buck’s lead, keep yourself more closed than usual.  Socialize with your old SHIELD squad when you can, haunt your room when there is no time.  

It takes a toll.  

You are not, by nature, a recluse but this is how it has to be. You can’t stand the brief flashes of disappointment in Bucky’s eyes, the wariness with which he interacts.  They cut at your resolve. Shred it, until you’re forced to shut out everything but mission goals. 

They come and go.  Days. Weeks.  The strain coils higher, but you tell yourself you are doing it for him: the man whose eyes haunt your waking moments. You become a shell, sapped of life and desiccated, but each shot is crisp and clean.  This makes it right, but not natural. Eventually, you switch roles like understudies in a play.  He is the pro, silent and efficient as he does his job, while you are the damaged one, snapping at every little thing, recklessly taking risks, heedless of your own safety.  

It all seems worthwhile until the day you walk silently up the empty ramp for the Quinjet and find Steve and Sam huddled by the cockpit.

They don’t hear you slide like a shadow into your berth.

“His nightmares are getting worse.”  

Sam whistles low. “Worse? Man, they were bad before.”

Steve slowly shakes his head. “It’s like Wakanda before he went in cryo.  I honestly don’t know how he is even functioning.”    

“Yeah.  But the shit truth is there nothing you or I can do about it.”  Sam sounds resigned.  “Unless he comes clean on what it is that’s eating at him, and you know he won’t do that easily. Dude’s too stubborn.”

“He’s not the only one.”  

Steve, you realize later, says this for you.  His eyes bore like a laser into your forehead when he comes over to sit down, shrugging his five-point harness on.  

“Corporal.” 

“Captain.”  

“You good?”

“Yes, Sir.”

You fiddle unnecessarily with the heat shield on your stock.  Out of the corner of one eye, you can see him frown, loop his fingers into his belt and sigh, but you know he won’t call you out, won’t give away your private business to anyone.  Still, the optimist in him can’t help but hope.  Steve Rogers is really like a giant collie dog that shepherds a whole flock of misfits—he isn’t happy unless everyone’s set right; and you and Buck are waay out on the fringe.  It feels as if the solid, brooding bulk of his suit is willing you to change your mind. But you are stubborn.

(A trait that you and Bucky share, along with snark and an obsession with perfect lattes.) 

While you wait for everyone to load, you keep your head down and bite your lip, worrying about what you’ve heard.  Fuck, if Buck’s not sleeping that makes both of you, and to do this job you need to be on. You’re good.  You’re fine, you can tolerate a little sleep deprivation, but Bucky—that’s not right. Years of cryo and mind-wipes have messed with the circuitry.  He needs sleep to heal, more than most, and you shake your head, knee vibrating like Clint’s bowstring, dreading but anxiously awaiting for him to load.  

You don’t have long to wait.  Nat and Clint clatter past and take the pilot seats, Tony swans through and starts briefing Steve with last-minute intel and then Bucky’s there. Stowing his gun and hiding behind a fall of dark, lank hair.  You’re shocked.  It’s been a week since you saw him last, in the common room, but oh god he is worse. Clearly.  He barely responds when Clint does a system check. Grunts at Steve’s chirpy welcome. Falls into his seat across from you and that’s when it starts.  The sense of failure.  The hurt that the brutal truth is you are making this all worse; doing exactly what you had wanted to avoid.

Bucky’s not safer with you there.  He’s more in danger and the knowledge of it sucks out all the oxygen.

You spend the three-hour trip and first half hour of the ensuing firefight under water, surfacing for precious gulps of air between the mounting pressure in your chest; like your harness is strapped down way too tight.  

You thought that you’d be helping him, but oh, Y/N, you are really not.  

You need to leave.

Entirely.

Goddamn it hurts, but you have no time.  The heinous bastards who have grabbed a SHIELD tracking station have their dander up, are resisting with all they’ve got and you need to be on your game following as Bucky’s cover.  You leap and sight, neutralize another target still feeling like you can’t get air, watching his lithe form duck and roll, mercilessly slamming a terrorist to the ground.  

His face is all dark angles and unhappy shadows.  Lined and smudged, a ghost of the man who’d smiled, run his fingers through your hair, gently nuzzling at your neck  

“Babe, I could stay this way forever.”

The flash of memory is like a sucker punch to the gut.  

You’ve screwed this whole thing up.  

Can’t do your fucking job cuz you gave in and slept with the man who is your mission and now you’re… what?  

Miserable in his company.  Miserable without.

In love.

Fuck.

This is not how things should be.…  

You’re drowning in the unhappiness, but even with a red haze of doomed understanding filtering across your gaze, you can’t not see it.

The motherfucker three hundred yards away taking aim at Bucky’s head 

You need to pot the asshat now–but your view is obstructed by the base’s cell tower and, so, you leap out, aim and squeeze, heedless of your own back.  The concrete behind the man’s dead eyes neatly disintegrates in a spray of elegant debris and your world dissolves in a rain of stabbing hurt, like a whole river of gravel is fired from the sky.  

You fall.  

There’s a roaring in your ears and the breathlessness is getting worse.  Iron and smoke tinge the soup of dust and rock and gas that your lungs don’t want to breathe. Concussion grenade, must be: and, at first, you struggle, but the twisted beam that roofs your little world won’t even shift.  It’s close, pressing on your chest and you will yourself to fight the panic down.  Don’t disturb it.  Don’t make the situation worse.  You want to laugh at that—fuck no—all you do is make situations worse— but the breath in hurts like full-on hell.  

That has to be good, doesn’t it?  It’s when you don’t feel anything you’re going down…

Ok.. just…lie.  Breathe… take inventory. There’s a trickle of blood running from your hair down through your eyes: you can taste it upon your tongue.  Your left hand stings, but your right is just lying here. Numb. Not moving. Broken probably, but that is the least of your concerns.

The pressure of the beam bears down steadily.

And with it your space to get some air.  

“Y/N!”

From somewhere to your left there comes a voice.  Faint and muffled.  As if someone is shouting way way far away and you realize—this is it.  You are going to die.  No ones gonna arrive in time but weirdly you are ok.  Bucky is allright.  You saw him flip and roll away.  That’s good…that’s everything.  You cough on the settling dust and steel and try to take shallower breaths.  Your heart’s too fast and the air’s too thin and you close your eyes.  Float, indistinct at the edges.  Nothing hurts too much right now.  It’s good. You can close your eyes and drift away.  

“Y/N!”

This time the call is muffled but louder: anguished, as if everything in the world is wrong.

A chunk of steel is wrenched away and for the first time a patch of light shines through the dim.  

“Y/N, are you hurt?!”

You blink through the blood that gums your lashes.  Bucky’s there.  Shoulders wedged into the impossibly tiny space, eyes wide with something you are sure you have never seen.

Fear.

You want to ease his mind, but words are a little hard.  “I’m ok,” comes out more wheeze than whisper.

“Hang on, we’re gonna get you out.”  Bucky barks into the comms for Sam, and help, and oxygen.  He turns and gingerly shoves aside the loose jagged chunks of steel to make a little space.  When there’s a hand’span of pavement clear, he dips down on his left, grimacing and flexing up against the beam.  

There’s a slow metallic groan, an endless pause, but eventually it lifts just barely. 

But sadly not enough.  

The fuzzy world is whiting out, dissolving in a ring of sparks.

“Y/N!”  He frees a hand, shakes you roughly and sends a lance of agony through your chest.  “Stay with me, babe, stay with me.  Cavalry is coming.”  

But we don’t have any horses…  

The wry smile on his face is blurry.  You must have whispered this out loud.  He closes his eyes, resets his metal hand down against the pavement.  Flexes up again.  “Aiighhh!”

The monumental effort gains another precious millimeter and the sparkly whiteness starts to fade to the indigo of his vest.

“What? Can’t you hear the hoofbeats?”  Bucky is shaking, sweat beading on his brow but above there is a whoosh and the carbon ion smell of repulsor jets.

“Got it, Barnes!”

“Took you long enough!”  Bucky sags just slightly, protecting you in case something shifts, but mercifully the metal does not move.  

Sam is crouched behind.  You dimly hear his coolly calm instructions. “Barnes, don’t let her move. Pretty sure those ribs are broken.  Can’t risk a pneumothorax.”  Bucky squeezes out, disappears through the gap but is quickly back again, metal fingers softly pressing a cannula to your nose.  The dizziness fades some more.

“Better?”  His Brooklyn accent aches with hopefulness.  

You nod, warily taking a deeper breath, feeling clean, cool air rush in. Fuck its good but lord it hurts.  At least the world does not swim.  Bucky reaches to brush some damp strands from off your brow and Sam passes a pad into the gap.  You hiss as he presses the treated gauze over the worst of the cut.  “Sorry.  Sorry.”

He glances around the narrow space.  You’re basically in a coffin.  Just wide enough for your hips and long enough for your feet.  When you flex your foot, your toes touch something that feels smooth.  A dish? A beam?  The girders of the tower have toppled like a marionette’s arms and legs when the control strings have been cut.  “Gonna take a bit to cut this mess.  Properly, so it doesn’t shift.”

Bucky’s right, but you’re worrying about the waste of time.  “Is it safe? The cell?”

You mean the rogue Hydra group, the reason why you’re here, because if it’s not, Jesus, you are going to thump him hard.  You’re useless pinned.  But if there’s shooting still going on…

“Relax, babe, we got ‘em.  That grenade was their hail mary pass and it’s failed.  Steve and Clint and Nat are mopping up.”

Thank God.  Some of the tension bleeds away, like steam from a radiator.  You shiver, shock starting to set in, and, tenderly, he drapes you with a silver thermal blanket.  It’s better, but now it’s time to wait.  Bright arcs of light shine through the cracks and you know Tony is working as fast as he can, but still it’s hard.  You’ve been strong forever, but the fear you’ve held a bay is now too much with Bucky near.  

A whimper escapes your lips.

“Shushhh, baby,” he croons, leaning near to cup your cheek with a warm hand. “I’m not going anywhere.   It’s all gonna be ok.”  But it really isn’t.  His other one, metal reflecting Tony’s blazing work, keeps stroking your tangled hair.  This close you can see a forest of tiny scrapes and nicks and cuts upon his dusty skin.

And the ever present smudges of tired grey below his eyes.

“I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”  You’re stammering.  You’ve been selfish, you see that now. Doing what you thought right and best for him. Totally certain you had to be the one to help and all the time the ache of want has never stopped.  

It doesn’t matter.  You need to be strong for him.  Move on and let someone else have the watch.  

“I can’t do this anymore.”    

You’re not sure what you are speaking of: holding yourself together while he kneels and strokes your face, or staying at his side.  Both make sense.  The sounds of working are getting louder.  “Barnes, I’m almost through,” crackles through the link.  

A cool metal finger strokes your brow.  “Hey, not much longer now.”

You turn your head, catch the light in his worried eyes. “No..us, side by side.”  

There, you’ve said it.  SHIELD med will patch you up. Ship you out to base where you can crumble into dust somewhere on your own.

It’s brutal but better than being an irritant.  Scratching endlessly at the scab of him.  

“Goddammit, Y/N. You don’t have to go.”  

His growl is not hurt but sheer frustration.  There’s a storm in his eyes and in the flat set of his frown.  Bucky wriggles a little closer in, cradles you like the most precious thing in all the world.   “Fuck, it takes this battered brain a while, but, babe, you gotta hear me out.  I get it now.  You’re terrified that serving alongside someone who means too much makes you vulnerable.  Messes with your skills–but it doesn’t have to be that way.  There’s a shakedown sure, for a little while, but Clint and Nat–they manage.  Wanda manages with Viz.  Steve works alongside me and we may not be lovers but our bond is just as strong.” His lips pull into the saddest smile. “I fucking need you. You. Y/N. Not the Corporal with the medals.  I need you everywhere.  At night, when the monsters in my head crowd close and, in the day, when I need a snarky smile.  You are best thing I have had in my life and I can’t let that go.”  

Bucky’s face is almost pressed against your cheek.  It’s that smile, soft and warm, and just for you.  

Fire in the night and a watcher on your six.  

“I’ve tried, Doll, I really have, but it just doesn’t work. I need you, complicated as it is. And I won’t let you give up on us. Not without trying, anyway.”  

His whisper is rough with meaning.  He huffs out a little sigh and presses an achingly gentle kiss across your bloodied lips.

This time his kiss breaks you….

——————–

tags:  @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan  @theycallmebecca @mewsiex @emilyevanston @mycapt-ohcapt  @pegasusdragontiger  @winters-beauty

@badassbaker @heather-lynn @saffreelove @loricameback @nomadicpixel @missfirstavenger @prplprincez @marvel-lucy

[doomonfilm]

Review : You Were Never Really Here (2018)

As the 2018 film season comes to a close, I am realizing that I have a little bit of catch-up to do.  As much as I’ve been on top of new releases this year, I have managed to let a few slip by me that deserve a viewing before I start locking in my year end lists.  One of the top films on that list, if not the top one, is You Were Never Really Here. 

Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) is a former soldier and FBI agent haunted by experiences in his past, but attempting to find redemption by rescuing trafficked girls from their captors, often using brutal force.  He takes care of his aging mother (Judith Roberts), with whom he shared a past full of abuse at the hands of her husband and his father.  Due to this lifestyle, Joe often flirts with the idea of suicide.  While meeting Angel (Frank Pando), the messenger between Joe and Joe’s handler, John McCleary (John Doman), Joe is seen by Moises (Vinicius Damasceno), Angel’s son.  Joe is given a new job rescuing Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), the daughter of New York State Senator Albert Votto (Alex Manette), from McCleary.  Joe lets McCleary know that his address may have been compromised, but McCleary urges him to push forward with the job.  Upon completion of the job, Joe is accosted by NYPD, at which point he realizes that he and everyone he loves may be in grave danger, and that he must do whatever it takes to set things right.

I’ve heard many comparisons to Taxi Driver for this film, but I think that people are not looking past one or two obvious points of comparison (New York, human trafficking, vigilantism).  As much as I love the character of Travis Bickle, Joe is a much more complex specimen, at least in terms of direct information we are given about both his past and his state of mind.  Where Travis was a man pushed to the limits of acceptance by his view of society who was given a chance at redemption via rescuing Iris, Joe is truly a tender killing machine.  The way he cares for his mother, even when she is partially responsible for the abusive situation they both found themselves in, lets you know that he is patient, accepting, and not naturally malicious.  The way that he attempts to shield the girls he rescues from the violence he dishes out further drives those qualities home, not to mention his actions and choices in the now famous kitchen scene.  In Joe, we get a young man with an unfortunate fascination with death due to his bad situation become a savior for those who cannot save themselves as he constantly cheats the death that he is anchored by, yet still embracing.

For a film as violent as You Were Never Really There is at its core, it is far from a glorification of this violence.  The violence portrayed in the film is certainly a means to an end, and for the most part, we are either given only brief flashes of the violence or shown the immediate aftermath of it.  Our antihero is driven by both a sense of regret for past actions and the way he is haunted by his distant past, but despite the immediate validation he receives for his acts, there is not true ceiling for redemption.  He is heroic in a sense, but between the volume of damage he inflicts, and the fact that he will never truly be rewarded for his heroic actions, the toll taken on his soul far outweighs the good it does.  The brief looks into Joe’s thoughts, fears and memories are unnerving, and only further the fact that redemption is not his motivating drive for doing what he does.  In a sense, Joe is a broken man who, with a hammer, is attempting to ‘fix’ something else broken.

The camerawork is astonishing in this film, giving a wonderful sense of claustrophobia that makes the viewer feel both the pain of Joe and the sense of getting your hands dirty by proxy.  The intense, driving, erratic score that often erupts from long periods of being restrained perfectly evokes Joe’s rushes of adrenaline and the subsequent comedowns, all courtesy of Radiohead’s sonic genius Jonny Greenwood.  The film was adapted from a book, and in a weird way, it is easy to tell.  In my opinion, the pacing, characterization, and overall tone of the movie makes it oddly book-like, one of the most book-like film adaptations I can remember, and it definitely has me interested in reading the original source material.

In a career full of standout performances, Joaquin Phoenix has managed another notch on the belt, doing so much with so little (and in such a reserved manner) that you physically feel the struggle within him... I can almost guarantee a Best Actor string of nominations, if not wins, for this performance.  Ekaterina Samsonov is mysterious and intriguing, giving you the impression that she is ‘letting herself’ be saved in order to unleash a much greater vengeance on a much bigger target.  John Doman plays his role with the coolness and assurance it takes to be the man in charge, making the downfall of all around him that much more heartbreaking.  Judith Roberts is charming in her codependency that the role required, both immediately endearing her to audiences, and breaking their heart eventually.  Alex Manette, Alessandro Nivola, Frank Pando and Vinicius Damasceno also stand out.

Due to a limited run, I did not get to see this one on the big screen, and now that I have seen it, I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t bum me out a bit.  While most compare this film to Taxi Driver, I’d say a more apt comparison would be Good Time, by the Safdie brothers, and I will probably pair the two films together for a viewing at some point.  Definitely a high contender for Film of the Year, and one that will make my list that much more difficult to determine. 

[dovebuffy92]

https://fandomopolis.com/2020/07/21/the-alienist-angel-of-darkness-season-2-episode-1-2-review/

The Alienist: Angel of Darkness Season 2 Episode 1 & 2 Review

Friends Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning), Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Bruhl), and John Schuyler Moore (Luke Evans) take on two new cases. The disappearance of baby Ana Linares the daughter of the Spanish Consular, and the kidnapping of Martha Napp’s baby girl. These cases happened in 1897 when hostilities between Spain and the United States were high.

Spoilers:

The Alienist: Angel of Darkness Season Two Episode One “Ex Ore Infantium” and Episode Two “Something Wicked” directed by David Caffrey are a couple of years after the team’s first ” sequence killer” case. Sara Howard quit her job as a secretary at the NYPD and now runs her all-female detective agency, where she mostly works for dowagers who worry their servants are stealing from them. The New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore now writes for the crime beat and is engaged to Miss. Violet Hayward, who’s the illegitimate daughter of William Randolph Hearst. Dr. Laszlo Kreizler still runs rehabilitation school for mentally troubled boys. He is trying to help Martha Napp. She was executed for the death of her baby even though a body was never found. Napp’s sick daughter was taken from her crib at a hospital. Before the execution in the electorate chair, Dr. Kreizler promises Martha that he will discover what happened to her baby girl.

” Ex Ore Infantium” and ” Something Wicked” inhabits the 19th century fully. Fantastic period dramas don’t just have realistic costumes, but the dialogue and the cadence of the performer’s voice take you back in time. All the characters from private detective Sara Howard to psychologist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler don’t merely use old fashioned vocabulary but also have a way of speaking that captures the late 1800’s. Many sub-par historical television shows stop their audiences from buying in because they don’t take the time to create a realistic, immersive world. The Alienist cast and crew do that from their acting style to the detailed costumes of the lower and upper-level class characters, and the dark world of these three serial killer hunters. Everything on screen is cast in shadow since the team led by private detective Sara Howard goes into the dark recesses of the human brain to hunt the baby killer.

Sara Howard is the feminist hero that we all need right now. As a professional woman who owns her own business, during a time when husbands still essentially owned their wives, and most men discount women’s emotions or thoughts, Sara is the perfect person to take on Isabella Linares’ case. She is brought into the case by the famous Suffragette leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Even though Elizabeth Cady Stanton believes that women are equal to men, she still only sees Sara as a way to get to a brilliant man Dr. Kreizler who can help her friend Isabella Linares. Sara has to point out that what they broadly need is a detective who understands how to investigate crime, not just a master of criminal psychology. Unlike a man, Sara won’t just brush off Isabella because she’s emotional after her daughter was kidnapped. Isabella hires Sara for the case.

In the first two episodes of The Alienist: Angel of Darkness, Dr. Laszlo Kreizler fights against Dr. Markoe and uses all of his unusual talents to help prove that Martha Napp is innocent. Dr. Markoe locks women up against their will who become pregnant after adultery or behave outside the social norms. He is the one testified that Martha Napp had a psychotic break, then killed her baby. Kreizler blames Markoe for Martha’s execution and thinks he is a quack.

The end of “Ex Ore Infantium” shows the NYPD detectives brother team Marcus Isaacson (Douglas Smith) and Lucius Isaacson (Matthew Shear) finding a dead baby girl in a toy shop dressed like a baby doll. The brothers are like modern-day pathologists. John and Sara come to investigate to see if the death is connected to the kidnapping of the Linares baby, especially since the kidnapper left a bloody baby doll in her crib.

The dead baby has eyes drawn on her closed eyelids like the bloody doll. Sara doesn’t think the baby is Ana Linares but knows the cases are connected. The Isaacsons tell John and Sara that the cause of death was poisoning. Dr. Kreizler identifies the baby girl as Martha Knapp’s daughter. The three investigators realize that the markings remind them of Posthumous Portraiture, where parents draw eyes on their dead children’s eyelids, so they look awake in photographs. Demonstrating that the killer has some faux care for the victims. He or she objectifies the babies before harming by making them into dolls in their mind.

In “Something Wicked”, the police and the establishment want to dirty the name of the Spanish, which means that Isabella’s behavior has to be above reproach. Sara and Laszlo fight over asking Isabella if they can hypnotize her to discover more about the kidnapping since she has blocked all memories of the event. Sara doesn’t think asking a foreign dignities wife to try such an untested method is a good idea, especially since having a woman investigator is already pushing things. Laszlo goes against her wishes offending Isabella. Their disagreements are forgotten when they get a call informing them that the police are arresting Isabella. Thankfully Sara persuades them to let her go because Isabella has immunity as a foreign dignitary. Isabella’s name will not be all over the press.

John Schuyler Moore convinces his editor to let him write a story about the two cases if he can find proof that they are connected. The editor feels that since the babies are from different social circles, their connection is dubious. He warns John that his future father-in-law Hearst will not like him looking into the case. Hearst gathers data like the Linares’ not reporting the kidnapping to the police planning to write articles that feed into the American public’s xenophobia toward the Spanish creating “fake news”.

Next week we will continue to follow the three forward-thinking investigators fighting against sexism, xenophobia, and the underrepresented like children.

[fixomnia-scribble]

Blue Bloods 8.4 Ramble

“Out of the Blue”

A/N 1: I call these rambles and not recaps or reviews because they are just that: my thoughts scribbled down as I am watching. I reserve the right to realize I missed or entirely misread something.

A/N 2: Also, spoilers.

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.

Opening Scene: Whoa, they didn’t stint on the red mist blowback there. My antennae are buzzing with Det. Hines’ last word being “Coffee.” Referring to the case against Coffee, or the coffee that his wife handed him as he left, ensuring his back would be turned to the street for a couple of extra moments? To be revisited.

Garrett and Cynthia getting swatted sent my rage-o-meter going for a variety of reasons. It’s a ridiculous social-media-age anonymous prank/tactic that drives me nuts. PLUSWHICH, I can’t help but wonder what the outcome would have been if Garrett wasn’t an older white dude with a nice house and a badge. Such cases have not typically ended well.

And what was with Frank “Family First” Reagan doing calling Garrett out for taking time off to be with his traumatized wife, after Frank himself told him to do just that? Having been a civilian police staffer myself for ten years, I can certainly relate to being expected to have cop-level desensitization and be able to set personal reactions aside instantly. For civilians, our on-the-job crisis reaction formation takes place by osmosis and observation over time, and does not involve body memory training. So it was nice to see Frank actually take a step back and realize that just because Garrett “works alongside the best cops in the world”, and speaks the lingo, he is not a cop. He’s a public servant with a more human scale of priorities.

No Jamie or Eddie in evidence this week. Are we looking at another thirty-second dinnertime cameo? At least Will and Vanessa are both in the credits, thus getting paid, so I hope their characters are out having a nice sparring session and post-workout brunch or something. Wait. (Scribbles fic note.)

Danny’s slip up with the present tense got me. I’ve watched that happen and done it myself. The sense of nearness and force of habit so strong that your brain literally forgets that someone is gone, and that from now on, every reference to them is part of the past. Ouch. I’m glad Baez is keeping an eye on her podner. He needs it. Though it seems Baez’ most common expression these days is, “Oh, shit, Danny…”

The slimy, silver-tongued lawyers are really out in force this episode. Is it time for the annual overturning of the rotted log under which they all apparently live? At least the actors are having a fine old time chewing the scenery!

Can we get Cute Redheaded Spectacled TARU Video Tech with the piercings (and probable tattoos of her own) back soon? I like her. And is it just me or are there more Black and Asian NYPD in uniform and staffers wandering around the 37th Precinct, where Hines worked, than in others? Cool.

Aw, Tony. He’s got Erin on such a pedestal for all he tries to act like he’s just a regular guy looking out for his boss. I can’t blame Erin for taking a chance on what looks like good confidential intel, but she might trust Tony’s instincts on this one. He actually knows the informant. The conclusion was pretty funny. As much as I twitch at workplace epithets like “dollface” and “my dear”…from Tony, they really do come across as affectionate, if not exactly professional. She may be the boss, but she hired him to advise her, and he’s got her number, all right.

Ha! I knew there was something up with Hines’ wife and the coffee. And the ShakyCam gave it away as soon as Danny and Baez turned up at her door. Didja notice that Wifey was holding two mugs and had a full plate of snacks to go with afternoon tea? Wonder who she was waiting for.

Okay, whoa, the punch line with the swatter being an embittered blind kid was…yeah, no. That felt like tokenism run amok. Garrett was happy to have a blind kid “take the honor” of being Commissioner for a Day, but then his subconscious fingers him because obviously, he must have been that angry after the event was cancelled? (Oh, and the wooden lines they gave the kid: ugh.)

Hello, Dinner Table Scene from this season’s credit sequence. Hey, other Reagans. At least they get a decent meal, if not a storyline. Pork roast tonight? Nice. I think Nicky deserves a glass of wine with dinner, now. It strikes me that Jamie has his sleeves rolled up in nearly all of his off-duty/casual scenes. I wonder if that’s a Will-initiated quirk: signaling Jamie’s role as the one on the shop floor ready to get to work at a moment’s notice. Or maybe he picked it up from Tom Selleck’s younger self.

Ooh. No, no tension between brothers there at all. Jamie’s right: Danny’s pissed at himself for overlooking the wife as the culprit, because she was a caring, capable, blonde Detective’s wife, just like Linda. If Linda was alive and sassy as ever, instead of being halfway to beatification, now, then Danny might well have seen through Hines’ wife. Nice little brotherly byplay there, with Jamie feeling entirely justified and knowing he *could have* called Danny’s bluff and told him straight-up, but quite visibly deciding to stand down and be gracious, seeing Danny’s relative fragility, and with the kids there. Which Danny also caught and tossed back at his kid brother with a stinkeye, thus missing (or ignoring) the Looks of Concern from everyone else.

Pass the potatoes, indeed.

[bluewatsons]

Eric Manheimer, TV Writers and Producers and Ethics: How Can I Help?, 19 Am J Bioethics 12 (2019)

Sense of Urgency

The year 2016, with the election of Donald Trump, intensified a sense of urgency in many arenas, including health care. It was clear his administration would usher in assaults on the standards, rules, and ethics that were the glue binding truth and storytelling in every area of society.

Several TV medical shows were sunsetting, and two showrunners were interested in acquiring my book 12 Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital (Manheimer 2012); both mentioned a sense of urgency in producing a show that highlighted the commitment to caring for other human beings. 12 Patients, bought by NBC-Universal, drew from my 15 years as the medical director at Bellevue Hospital, both the teaching hospital of the New York University Medical School and the crown jewel of the largest public hospital system in the country. I had kept meticulous notebooks about the political, economic, and social issues that impact health. These issues were refracted through the details and stories of hundreds of patients and their families seeking care and solace from a globe under toxic stress. I would be both a writer and a producer for the TV series New Amsterdam based on 12 Patients that aired in the fall of 2018 and is now beginning its second season.

The sense of urgency increased logarithmically post election and tracked closely to the topics I had addressed and others I had held in hand for another day.

While most TV shows hew to medical conundrums and the drama between a key doctor (or a Nurse Jackie) and other physicians and key staff, New Amsterdam chose to focus on the underlying social structural issues that are the primary drivers (the cause of causes) of the nation’s medical “problems.” These “social determinants of health” (Hansen and Metzl 2019)—poverty, lack of health care, immigration status—have largely been ignored both by the current nearly $4 trillion delivery system and television. The system, which is a key protagonist without a name in virtually all of the TV medical shows, is increasingly being called out for not delivering what it has promised (i.e., health and well-being for Americans) at the same time it saps vital resources, exacerbating the very health it purports to be fostering.

New Amsterdam was interested in the underlying core issues as drivers of the dramatic tension in a medical TV series. The delivery system itself, doctors, hospitals, insurers, device makers, Big Pharma, lawyers, advocacy groups, and lobbyists became part of the drama (Starr 2017). Since health care is not considered a right by the U.S. government, tens of millions of Americans go without insurance and proper health care, causing well-documented premature disease, death, and financial catastrophe. The waste, fraud, and abuse (i.e., overtreatment, overtesting, overprescribing), come together with the lack of effective feedback loops to remove unproven therapies and those proven to be of no value (medical reversals). If unicorn therapies (billion-dollar drugs) are part of the equation of care, then foundational ethical questions become pressing: Who will get that care and who will not? Ethical issues pertaining to inequality and human rights clearly impact health and mortality.

A medical series lives in the moment and reflects that moment. We bring “pitches” to the table that cover the broadest range of underlying themes that animate our patients’ medical stories, our own lives, and the broadest social webs of our society. In New Amsterdam we mine the deep experiences of real patients. End-of-life care, euthanasia, “deaths of despair” (Case and Deaton 2015) loneliness (Putnam 2000), depression, and gun violence (suicide by white males) are on the white board in the writer’s room. The deep and painful issues of racism, the toxic exposure to violence plaguing women, children, and men, sexism, ageism, and the neglect of children all have varied permutations and presentations in clinics and emergency rooms. Here the syndromes are translated from the social, economic, and political into a medical diagnosis and treatment plans. The erasure of the context in TV depictions usually casts the crisis as a failure of personal responsibility. In New Amsterdam, we aimed to connect the dots, linking illness to social malpractice.

The medical staff is not immune to pain and tragedy and the main protagonists all succumb to their human imperfections at some point. In New Amsterdam the main character is diagnosed with throat cancer early in season one. The disease has effects far beyond Max Goodwin, effects that ricochet and touch everyone around him.

In one episode, Floyd Reynolds, the Chief of Cardiovascular Surgery, is running a morbidity and mortality (M & M) conference to present a case in which a New York Police Department (NYPD) cop was shot and died. The case was carefully reviewed and presented to an internal medical audience. The internal review mechanism is a learning experience, seeking to understand what happened and whether improvements might be made going forward. Max cross-examines Reynolds with undisguised hostility and publicly shames him. This was the “old” shame method of an M & M when I was in training and is always in tension with the updated version that focuses on learning from mistakes. Reynolds was facing the existential crisis in medicine: I did everything right and it did not matter. The patient died. Max crossed the line. There is no role for public shaming since it breeds coverups and hides errors. An ethically messy area tainted by hierarchy and the thin “white line.” This scenario is happening with infinite variations in every hospital every day. Was Max’s tumor or treatment talking? Was this an individual failure? A systems issue? An act of God?

In the same episode, Iggy Frome, the head of psychiatry, had been treating a complex adolescent with outbreaks of violence. He is seen hugging the teenager, by a visiting social worker who writes him up for unprofessional behavior and violating professional norms. Iggy’s entire approach to treatment is based on demonstrating emotional warmth and honesty. Is a hug a line crossed? The broader context was California’s false memory scandal in day care, where many providers were wrongly accused and sentenced to prison. The country recoiled, embracing a no-touch approach. Iggy is vindicated but undermined. He feels he has done wrong. Now he has a long road to regain his therapeutic self. What are the stakes here? What social panic and contagion is at play? Touch and emotions are reentering psychiatry and medicine more generally after a long hiatus. Are we ever free of history? How much fear do we live in our daily lives that is magnified by media? What are the consequences?

The writer’s challenge is contextualizing and adding nuance to core issues in episodic time slots while preserving the public’s interest in the characters and dramatic situation. We see a patient in diabetic ketoacidosis in the emergency room who has been titrating down their insulin dose to make it last. If insulin costs so much that a large number of patients cannot afford the medicine, is the problem the profit margin of Big Pharma or the takeover of the regulatory controls of government by corporate interests? What does insulin really cost? What does it cost in France? In Canada? And why? This is an everyday occurrence in U.S. hospitals and a canary indicator of a system hewing to a financial model that is ethically at odds with its core moral pillar. Primum no nocere. First, do no harm. It’s become easy to shift blame from failures in the system to the patient’s “inability” to comply. A core component of the deep division in American values is reflected in our political and economic life: individual responsibility versus community and government responsibility (Manheimer 2012).

The ethical dilemmas flow naturally from every contact point and every point of view. While all hospitals have an ethics committee to assist in adjudicating complex ethical situations, there is not a day where medical personnel are not confronted with compelling, nuanced challenges that test their training, their mentorship, and their values. From a writer and producer point of view they are all on the white board. Everything is discussible. But not everything has an answer. There is virtually no censorship. The series carefully plots out the dramatization of socially polarized issues.

What gives the writers and producers on the TV show their power is the most ancient of all power, the power of the story. Storytelling and the narrative arc become the tools of consolidation of maximum human complexity into drama. Through speech and action, the drama elicits the emotional reactions of vast audiences who are linked to the “hero” and the various characters. Audiences who have felt the bite of shame, who root for the underdog, who can smell rapacity covered with a suit and tie and white shiny teeth, who fear death.

The medical TV show has changed radically since the 1960s to the mid 1990s, when they were overseen by the American Medical Association. From the carefully groomed and presented white male doctor in his position of power and authority, ER (1994) moved toward as accurate a representation of reality from the medical point of view as technically possible. Physician writers, producers, and consultants contributed to and created this shift. At the same time, they rejected outright the “reality” medical show with cameras following real patients into emergency rooms and hospitals. One was an honest representation of reality. The other was an ethical breach with far-reaching implications.

The degradation of the current clinical encounter, into now shorter visits mandated by the massive shift to corporate owners and insurance brokers “the business of medicine is business,” and the intrusive electronic health record (EHR), has fostered a flourishing return to storytelling and narratives to understand more about patients and how to care for them. Not through artificial intelligence (AI), but through recapturing the practice of listening with attention and respect. These cases become dramatic material to show the inner workings of medicine through the eyes of a group of providers and patients in an attempt to bring care and caring back into health care, countering the side effects of the dominant corporate medical business model. “How can I help?” is the foundational trope for the series. It asks the key question for any and all patients; it provides no preemptive answer and it lays open the opportunity for an infinite level of patients’ responses from every cultural background, age, sex, gender, class, and prior experience.

References

Case, A. and A. Deaton. 2015. Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century. PNAS 112(49): 15078–15083. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1518393112. 

Hansen, H., and J. Metzl. 2019. Structural Competency in Mental Health and Medicine: A case based approach to treating the social determinants of health. Berlin: Springer. 

Manheimer, E. 2012. 12 Patients: Life and death at Bellevue Hospital. New York, NY: Grand Central Press. \

Putnam, R. 2000. Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Starr, P. 2017. The social transformation of American Medicine. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Basic Books. doi: 10.1086/ahr/89.2.532. 

[bloggerofworld]

Jeffrey Epstein Dodged Questions About Sex With His Dalton Prep-School Students

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos Police Handouts“I’m teaching a bunch of little brats next year.”—Jeffrey Epstein, 1974-75 Dalton School YearbookIt took a clandestine FBI-NYPD joint sting operation to arrest the elusive convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein on Saturday July 6th on the tarmac of Teterboro airport in New Jersey (a story first broken by The Daily Beast). Simultaneously, a sledgehammer was used to break the entry to his massive $77 million New York City townhouse on East 71st Street. Police recovered hundreds, possibly thousands, of nude images of young women and girls—an automatic legal problem for a man who is on multiple sex offender registries. Epstein’s case may be one of the most extreme cases of organized child abuse in modern history.Epstein is without doubt the wealthiest individual on any sex offender registry in the United States (and he is at Level 3—at greatest risk of abusing more children). On his registry entry, the following residences are listed: his $7.8 million 70-acre private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands (his primary residence owned by his Delaware-based LLC, L.S.J.), his Paris apartment on Avenue Foch (one of the most expensive addresses in the world), his $15.5 million Palm Beach estate, his $77 million New York City townhouse (a gift from Victoria’s Secret founder Leslie Wexner), and his $10 million castle/ranch in New Mexico. At the bottom of his residences is another island in the Virgin Islands, Great St. James. Epstein purchased it in 2016 for $18 million and was actively (and without permit) developing an even larger compound on its 165 acres—that is, until his arrest this past Saturday.As far as vehicles, his offender registry entries list two Gulfstream jets (though his lawyers say he sold one of them in June), two helicopters, nine Mercedes-Benzes, nine Chevy Suburbans, three Cadillac Escalades, three Harley-Davidsons, one $375k Bentley Mulsanne, a jet-ski, and other assorted items. He has wined and dined American presidents, princes, elite academics, socialites, corporate CEOs and other VIPs. His alleged victims were little girls, often economically destitute or runaways or orphans—from sixth graders to high-school sophomores. Because his alleged crimes span multiple decades, his victims likely number in the hundreds—or more.* * *“Unnoticed by almost everybody, travelling with her was a greying, plumpish, middle-aged American businessman who managed to avoid the photographers.” —Mail on Sunday, Nov. 15, 1992 (London edition)That businessman was Jeffrey Epstein. In the early 1990s, British newspapers that followed British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell (alleged to be Epstein’s chief procurer of victims) tried to figure out who Epstein was. The Mail on Sunday asked in 1992: “But what is he—property developer, concert pianist, math teacher, corporate treasure hunter, stockbroker, merchant banker or globe-trotting businessman?” No one seemed to know.Given Epstein’s apparent mystique, I checked New York City’s birth, census, and marriage records to be certain about the facts. Epstein was born Jan. 20 1953 in Brooklyn, NY. His parents were Paula (nee Stolofsky, 1918-2004) and Seymour G. Epstein (1916-1991) and they were married in Brooklyn in 1952—shortly before Jeffrey Epstein’s birth.Epstein grew up during the 1950s and 1960s in the Lafayette neighborhood around Coney Island, as documented by James Patterson, John Connolly, and Tim Malloy in their 2016 book on Epstein, Filthy Rich. Epstein attended the now-shuttered Lafayette High School, a working-class high school that produced a significant number of professional baseball players. Epstein’s mother, Paula, was a homemaker while his father, Seymour, worked for the New York City Parks Department as a groundskeeper and gardener. During their retirement years, Epstein’s parents (as well as several maternal aunts) resided in nearby properties he purchased in West Palm Beach. In 1991, Epstein’s father passed away at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio at the age of 75. His mother passed away in 2004 at age 85 in Palm Beach.Epstein has a younger brother, Mark (“Puggy”), who has joined him in real-estate deals throughout the years. Mark operates a real-estate business, OSSA Properties, which owns some of the properties—including the apartments in the 301 East 66th Street building—where Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex slaves and other employees were housed (real-estate ownership between the brothers may have commingled).Jeffrey Epstein graduated from Lafayette High School in 1969 at age 16, having skipped two grades. He was “chubby with curly hair and a high, ‘hee-hee’ kind of laugh,” according to Filthy Rich. In the fall of 1969, Epstein started at Cooper Union and studied there for two years until the spring semester of 1971. Many writers say he attended New York University (NYU) after Cooper Union, but they rarely give specific dates. I decided to verify through National Student Clearinghouse records exactly when Epstein went to college and where. Cooper Union does not participate in the National Clearinghouse, but NYU does. It turned out that Epstein was enrolled at NYU between September of 1971 and June of 1974. Thus, most of Epstein’s college study years were spent at NYU. I verified that he did not graduate from NYU with their registrar.In a 2002 profile in New York magazine, Thomas Landon reported that Epstein studied at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. It is not clear why Epstein attended two institutions of higher education but did not graduate from either. When Epstein joined the board of Rockefeller University, he misrepresented his educational and employment background; a press release stated that he had “studied physics at Cooper Union in New York and then joined Bear Stearns, becoming a Limited Partner until 1981.” Between Cooper Union and Bear Stearns, Epstein studied at NYU and was a teacher for two years (two unreported and significant events). When a convicted sex offender facing sex-trafficking charges was first employed as a teacher, it bears at least some scrutiny.* * *After the summer of 1974, Epstein began working as a teacher of mathematics and physics at the Dalton School in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It has been reported that he began there in 1973, but this is incorrect. I searched the 1973-74 Dalton yearbook and there is no mention of Jeffrey Epstein. I then searched Dalton’s school newspaper and found in the September 1974 issue that “... Mr. Epstein, who will also teach physics, [has] also joined the department this year.” Epstein also confirmed that he taught there between 1974 and 1976 in a deposition.In the United States, there are various schools that educate children from the social upper classes—Kent School, Horace Mann, Miss Porter’s. Dalton is among that set. These schools are often restricted to children from the “old money” stratum in society, with a small number of scholarship students or athletes from non-elite backgrounds.In 1974, Dalton was run by headmaster Donald Barr—father of Attorney General William Barr, whose Justice Department recently began a review of Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution agreement for the Palm Beach child sexual assault charges. Writers have noted the interesting coincidence. However, Donald Barr resigned in turmoil in February of 1974 (according to the March 14, 1974 issue of The Daltonian) which was seven months before Jeffrey Epstein began teaching there that fall. While it is possible that Donald Barr may have hired Epstein, if he made personnel decisions long in advance, the Dalton School lost four math teachers (according to The Daltonian) prior to the 1974-75 school year. Therefore the school may have hired Epstein, in part, out of an urgent need to fill vacant positions—even though Epstein did not have a college degree.Peter Branch was the acting headmaster after Barr’s departure and he may have hired Epstein. Full verification would require access to Dalton’s personnel records, if they still retain them. I put a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request into the State of New York Department of Education and they reported having no teaching license on file for Epstein—this may suggest that he was not planning on a career in teaching. Unlike public schools, it should be noted, a private school like Dalton does not require its teachers to possess a state teaching license or certificate.While at the Dalton School, Epstein was the coach of the math team. In competitions with several local schools, Epstein led the students to victory in one instance and to second place in another. At a February 1976 math meet, the Dalton team competed against Ramaz and the Manhattan Talmudic Academy with “Boss Epstein watching from the sidelines…” (The Daltonian March 5, 1976). At another match up in April 1976, Epstein told his team “a victory would be as easy as Pi.” The paper reported Epstein would be starting a “math-track team” the following year due to his “unique philosophy of integrating physical exercise with spiritual and mathematical stimulation.” The Dalton School students and families are comprised of some of the wealthiest families in the United States—unlike Epstein’s own. But this access may have created an opening for him.As a young man from a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn (equipped with a deep Brooklyn accent), Jeffrey Epstein at Dalton likely had to be a “quick study” to gracefully flow among the social upper class. Vicky Ward’s 2003 Vanity Fair profile of Epstein deemed him “The Talented Mr. Epstein”—drawing a parallel to Matt Damon’s character in the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley, where Tom Ripley cons his way into the upper class through fraud and misrepresentation (and plenty of piano playing). To wit, the April 1975 issue of The Daltonian covered a Parent-Teacher Association event, “the first parent-faculty musical in recent memory,” noting that “Mr. Epstein proved himself to be the ivory show man on the piano.” Was Epstein wooing and dazzling the parents as a means of gaining access to their rarefied world? It seems to have worked because a parent wondered what he was doing there and put him in touch with the chairman of Bear Stearns, Ace Greenberg (whose children also attended Dalton; Epstein may have tutored them). After the 1975-1976 school year was finished, Epstein informed the school he was not returning and began his career on Wall Street at Bear Stearns.After just four years, on August 1, 1980, Bear Stearns published an advert in The Wall Street Journal listing all the people who had made limited partner, including Jeffrey E. Epstein (along with people such as Larry Kudlow, former CNBC commentator and current director of the National Economic Council). Epstein, it seemed, was on the path, to accumulating the economic riches necessary for entry into the one percent. Obtaining the social graces required for acceptance by the social upper class would come much later with the help of several socialites, but mostly Ghislaine Maxwell.* * *Epstein was permitted to plead guilty to charges of soliciting prostitution in 2008 in the State of Florida. However, his victims were children, and it has been widely pointed out, cannot give consent, and therefore cannot be prostitutes. (Epstein’s lawyers tried to tarnish and humiliate the victims at the time by calling them “prostitutes,” and, as Vanity Fair revealed, Epstein reportedly smeared the underage girls in private as “prostitutes and strippers who’d already been indoctrinated into the sex world.”) Such lax charges in the Florida case, compared to what he is now facing, were hashed out in a deal with Florida State Attorney Barry Krischer, in conjunction with Alexander Acosta (who just stepped down as President Trump's labor secretary over his role in the Epstein saga). The deal was protested by the highly professional Palm Beach police led by Chief Michael Reiter and the late Detective Joseph Recarey. Epstein’s 2019 charges are for crimes committed in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005. However, there are allegations against Epstein from earlier time periods (such as Maria Farmer’s 2019 sworn affidavit that she and her 15-year old sibling were assaulted by Epstein and Maxwell in various locations in 1996—allegations that were reportedly nixed by an editor from Vicky Ward’s 2003 profile of Epstein). One thing to keep in mind is Epstein was a school teacher and would have had possible access to victims there as well. There are no reports that he did anything at Dalton school, but he was asked about his relations with students in a deposition in 2009 and here is what he said:Deposition His answer about the ages of his students is noteworthy. He replies “Mostly old—mostly 17 and 18.” This tells us that Epstein thinks that the ages of 17 and 18 are “old.” He is asked what subject he was teaching, and he answers truthfully, physics and mathematics. The attorney asks if any of the girls he was teaching were under age 17 at the time, and Epstein answers that he does not know—this sounds genuine. Things take a turn when the attorney asks Epstein if he had any sexual contact with any students at Dalton. Epstein answers the first time with a question, “Again?” He is asked a second time and again answers with a question, “While I was a teacher?” The attorney says yes, let’s start with that question and Epstein gives a solid “no.” The attorney presses “How about after?” and Epstein says “Not that I remember.”In summary, Epstein revealed that he feels high-school students aged 17 to 18 years are “old” and he that he does not remember if he had sexual contact with Dalton students after he was a teacher there. The final time he is asked, he reads from a statement in which he claims that the attorney’s law firm is engaged in fraud and then pleads his Fifth Amendment rights. Questions about sexual contact with Dalton students appear to be sensitive for him. Epstein depositions are extremely difficult to read because he pleads the Fifth to almost every question—as he eventually does here.* * *Julie Brown of the Miami Herald has done a significant amount of research on the Epstein case with her and her colleagues’ award-winning Perversion of Justice series. The extensive reporting in the Miami Herald, The Daily Beast, and by independent journalists like Ed Opperman, Pearse Redmond, William Ramsey and others has likely influenced law enforcement to consider the new evidence uncovered by the press—including possible new locations where recruitment or abuse might have occurred.Related to Epstein’s deposition above, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who accused Epstein of sexually abusing her as an underage girl and loaning her out to his famous friends, claimed that Epstein “lost interest” as she got older and sent her to Thailand to bring him another victim, at which point she says she escaped from Epstein.Another alarming detail about Epstein is reported in Vicky Ward’s 2003 Vanity Fair article. She noted that Epstein left a paperback copy of the Marquis de Sade’s The Misfortunes of Virtue lying on a table at his 71st Street townhouse. Why would Epstein have left this book out in plain view? This obscene novel (even Napoleon ordered its author jailed) is about a 12-year-old French girl, Justine, who travels alone across France and winds up in a monastery and is forced to become the sex slave of monks where she endures repeated sexual assaults and is ordered to participate in orgies. She escapes but suffers similar abuses and encounters as the story follows her life until the age of 26.Justine may have been a pedophile’s fantasy story in which the victim somehow learns “virtue” from what she endures. Justine almost parallels the life of some of Epstein’s alleged victims. What is even more tragic is that in the course of her reporting, Ward found two of Epstein’s victims and their mother. Ward says they detailed in 2003 how Epstein sexually assaulted them in the mid-1990s—including the time when one was allegedly held captive for 12 hours at mogul Leslie Wexner’s Ohio property after she says Epstein and Maxwell assaulted her. (Wexner has not responded to the allegations.) Perhaps their stories might have been able to deter or expose Epstein earlier, if they had been published when the girls first came forward.We can expect a trove of information about Epstein to continue to emerge now that he is in jail. Indeed, the Miami Herald reports that at least a dozen new victims have come forward since his arrest. Epstein and his accomplices may have seen his victims as little girls—but now they are strong, brave women fighting back today.Thomas Volscho is a sociology professor at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. He has been researching the case of Jeffrey Epstein for a book he is writing.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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[swipestream]

New Release Roundup, 2 February 2019: Fantasy and Adventure

The Devil is not in the details, but on the battlefield. In his shadow, infernal hitmen and detective saints; Nazi wizards and British mages; dragon slayers and divine champions clash in this week’s roundup of the newest releases in fantasy and adventure.

The Caster of Destruction (Overlord #9) – Kugane Maruyama

For twelve years, the virtual world of Yggdrasil has served as the playground and battlefield for the skeletal lord Momonga and his guild of fellow monsters, Ainz Ooal Gown. But the guild’s glory days are over, and the game is shutting down permanently. When Momonga logs in one last time just to be there when the servers go dark, something happens–and suddenly, fantasy is reality. A rogues’ gallery of fanatically devoted NPCs is ready to obey his every order, but the world Momonga now inhabits is not the one he remembers. The game may be over, but the epic tale of Ainz Ooal Gown is only beginning…

The annual war between the kingdom and the empire almost always ends in little more than a staring contest. This year, the Fresh Blood Emperor’s visit to Nazarick will change everything. Ainz himself has joined the fray, which is a dark omen of the coming storm. The arrival of the absolute ruler of Nazarick means only horror and death await those who stand on what will become the most hellish battlefield anyone has seen in living memory…!

Chuck Dixon’s Avalon #3: The Conscience of the King – Chuck Dixon and Frank Fosco

While King Ace is in training with Big Simba and the Specials of the UN-SPC, his former partner-in-fighting-crime Fazer languishes in a prison designed especially for people with superhuman powers. Fazer is desperate to escape, but how can he get out when his jailors possess the technology required to block his unique abilities?

But Fazer isn’t the only one feeling trapped, as King Ace quickly comes to learn that his new team isn’t tasked with fighting crime in the city of Avalon, but rather, tracking down other people like him and Fazer. And he also discovers that signing on with the official forces of law and order means accepting restrictions on your ability to do what you think is right.

Chuck Dixon is the most prolific comic book writer in history. Set in the world of Alt★Hero, CHUCK DIXON’S AVALON is the legend’s newest creation.

The Circle of St. George – John Auber Armstrong

Nothing in his life prepared Charlie Walker for meeting King Arthur and Merlin, King Oberon and Puck, or to find himself riding with the Wild Hunt and fighting a cohort of bloodthirsty Valkyries attacking GI’s on the beaches of France! Compared to that, a naked Winston Churchill barely rates mentioning …

Britain, 1940: a coalition of British magicians have united to oppose the Nazi’s use of black magic, and a young American soldier is sent to observe and report on the program code-named The Circle of St. George. Captain Charlie Walker doesn’t believe in gods, ghosts, or magic … until he has no choice in the matter!

Charlie’s education in magick is a hero’s journey like no other you’ve read. His instructors include Aleister Crowley and a who’s who of British occultists. Together, from the great plain of Glastonbury and the isle of Avalon to the Fae Kingdom and the death camps of the Third Reich, Charlie and The Circle of St. George stand alone against Hitler’s magicians.

The Devil’s Gunman (The Devil’s Gunman #1) – Philip S. Bolger

Working as a hitman for the devil of paperwork is a pretty good gig. Until you settle your obligation and don’t have the job anymore. Then what do you do?

For Nick Soren, it was the best of times and the worst of times. Having made more money working for the devil than he could ever spend, he lived it up in a haze of booze and drugs. Until the devil put a hit out on him.

On the run, Nick finds help from someone he never expected—another of the devil’s previous hitmen—who wants Nick to kill the devil. But there are vampires and Hellhounds on his tail, and that is going to make things…difficult. Can Nick get clear of the supernatural creatures hunting him long enough to take his shot and get revenge on the devil?

He’s not alone in his mission—a jiangshi mage and a chimera are along for the ride, and may help even the odds…or just get him killed all the faster.

Time is running out and the vampires are closing in…is this the end for the devil’s gunman?

Flying Sparks: Meta-Man Special – Jon del Arroz 

For the last fifty years, Meta-Man has been an enigma—a reclusive hero who does his duty but shies away from the public eye. What happened? Who is he?

Unlocked from the archives for the first time, you can dive into one of Meta-Man’s early adventures and get a glimpse into his heroic world as he works to stave off a plot from his nemesis Dr. Malicious and his communist commandos! Can Meta-Man prevail, or will the U.S.S.R. interfere with the American presidential election and spread the reach of the Iron Curtain across the globe? Read this action-packed superhero comic and find out!

“A touch of backstory for a side character, a dash of 60s comics-style fisticuffs, and a sprinkle of the classic tragedy of missing out on important personal moments for the sake of saving the day for someone else. “–Amazon Reader Review

Infernal Affairs (Saint Tommy, NYPD #3) – Declan Finn

My name is Officer Thomas Nolan, and I am a saint.

I can smell evil. I show mercy to the lesser criminals – the desperate. Even those I’ve put behind bars seem to like me.  But now there’s a serial killer bringing darkness beyond imagination to my city. I can smell his stench a mile away.

Detective Tommy Nolan is having a bad day.

First, the celebrant was murdered during mass. Then the SWAT team knocked down his door trying to kill him.

With the million dollar bounty on his head, every gunman and demonic monster is coming out of the pit to collect it.

Tommy has to discover who’s out to make him a martyr before he becomes a saint for real.

Sowing Dragon Teeth (The Iron Disciplines #1) – James Alderdice

Nobody said getting revenge on a dragon that killed your father would be easy, but nobody said it would be this hard either.

War looms on the horizon. Aisha is scouting the borderlands wary of a coming secret invasion when she is ambushed by a crazed old shaman who was sure that she was trying learn his secrets. She isn’t interested in the old legends about a dragon graveyard but after burning the secret map she is the only one who knows where it is supposed to exist and every gold hungry rogue crawls out of hiding to try and force her to take them there for riches untold.

The journey will take them across a cursed landscape brimming with foul sorceries and terrible monsters, but the promise of both treasure and revenge is irresistible. Sowing Dragon Teeth is an action-packed heroic fantasy in the vein of classic pulp fiction and thrilling treasure hunts. If you like gory battles, larger-than-life characters, and witty humor, then you’ll love James Alderice’s gritty tale.

A Thousand Drunken Monkeys (The Hero of Thera #2) – Eric Nylund

Continue Playing the Game? Yes / No

The Kingdom of Thera is a crossroads to many worlds and realities. Here a secret war between the gods plays out via their proxy mortal champions. These player-champions use all the augmented-reality interfaces and game mechanics that role-playing and video-gamers know and love.

Join Hektor Saint-Savage, Marine and martial artist extraordinaire; Morgana Nox, shapeshifting druid-thief and trickster; and the cantankerous dwarf, Elmac Arguson—as they punch, blast, stab, and slither their way through the second Hero of Thera novel.

Can they outwit, outfight, and outrun assassins? The Imperial Knight Champion of Chaos? Feisty gnomes with slide rules? A horde of a thousand inebriated simians?

There’s only one way to find out…

Viridian Gate Online: Doom Forge (The Viridian Gate Archives #6) – James Hunter

Jack and the crew of the Crimson Alliance have finally made it back from the Realm of Order, but the threat to Eldgard is deadlier than ever.

Vogthar incursions are increasing, dungeons falling in droves, towns and cities ravaged by Darklings—Players and NPCs who have willingly sided with the Dark Overmind Thanatos. But thanks to a priceless artifact Jack found after defeating the Lich Priest, there might be a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Jack and company have unearthed a Doom-Forged relic, one part of an ancient weapon capable of killing even a god. But to assemble the legendary god-killer, they’ll need to find the other relics and locate the fabled Doom Forge of the Dwarven godling Khalkeús, all while unraveling a mystery five hundred years in the making.

New Release Roundup, 2 February 2019: Fantasy and Adventure published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Art Movements

Nari Ward, “Breathing Flag” (photo by Guillaume Ziccarelli, courtesy Creative Time)

Art Movements is a weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world. Subscribe to receive these posts as a weekly newsletter.

A number of Confederate monuments were removed in the wake of last week’s deadly white supremacist and neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Protestors toppled a statue of a Confederate soldier in Durham, North Carolina, a 113-year-old statue nicknamed “Old Joe” was removed in Gainesville, Florida, and Baltimore’s City Council organized the removal of four statues during the early hours of Wednesday morning. Greg Fischer, the Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, announced plans to review city sculptures that “can be interpreted to be honoring bigotry, racism and/or slavery.” Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, announced a review of “all symbols of hate on city property” via Twitter on Wednesday afternoon.

Jeffrey Beebe debuted his Kickstarter-funded sculpture, “Trumpy the Rat,” during Monday’s protest outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.

A 17-year-old vandalized the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston — the second act of vandalism at the site in less than three months.

The NYPD are searching for three teenagers who vandalized headstones and spray-painted anti-Asian graffiti at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Queens.

Nari Ward’s “Breathing Flag” was hoisted at four museums across the US as part of Creative Time’s “Pledges of Allegiance” project. The work directly references the tri-color flag of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and includes a rendition of the Congolese Cosmogram. The symbol was drilled into the floor boards of the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia — one of the oldest African-American churches in the US — where it is thought to have doubled as air holes for runaway slaves passing below.

Philadelphia will unveil a statue of Octavius Catto next month — the first statue in the city to commemorate an African American.

The arts advocacy group Fractured Atlas launched “Artist Campaign School,” a nonpartisan initiative to encourage artists to run for political office.

The Dong-A transit company installed life-size statues of women in traditional hanbok dress on buses throughout Seoul. The statues refer to the abuse of “comfort women,” a colloquial term for the estimated 80,000-200,000 girls and women who were forced into sexual slavery during Japan’s 1910–1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula. Though Japan apologized for the women’s ordeal as part of a 2015 agreement, it has never accepted legal responsibility for the abuse.

Willem de Kooning, “Woman-Ochre” (1954–55) (courtesy University of Arizona Museum of Art)

Willem de Kooning’s “Woman-Ochre” (1954–55) was returned to the University of Arizona Museum of Art 32 years after it was stolen by an unidentified man and woman. The work was discovered by furniture and antiques dealer David Van Auke during a visit to an estate sale.

Vernon Rapley, the former head of Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Unit, told The Art Newspaper that he is “worried that the closure of the unit is now being considered.” The unit’s three detectives have been transferred to the Grenfell Tower investigation, with a Metropolitan Police spokesman refusing to say whether the detectives would return to the Art and Antiques Unit.

Chinese police forcefully evicted artists from the Iowa co-op in the Caochangdi art district in northeastern Beijing. According to ArtAsiaPacific, artists laid out a mock carpet for officials shortly before contractors began demolition work on the building.

London’s Garden Bridge project was officially scrapped after the Garden Bridge Trust announced that it had failed to raise private funding. London’s current mayor, Sadiq Khan, withdrew his support of the project — which was spearheaded by former mayor Boris Johnson — in April. A total of £46.4 million (~$59.7 million) in public money was spent on the abandoned project.

Big Ben will fall silent next week through 2021 as part of an essential restoration of Elizabeth Tower.

The memoirs of RB Kitaj (1932–2007) will be published in September, ten years after they were discovered among the artist’s possessions. The book includes a preface by David Hockney, a friend and fellow student of Kitaj’s, in which he condemns the “vicious [and] appalling” attacks leveled at the artist by critics.

The Norton Museum of Art announced the first exhibition of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney‘s sculptures since her death in 1942.

Transactions

Leon Polk Smith, “Untitled” (1954), collage, 25 3/4 x 19 3/4 in, Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, gift of the Leon Polk Smith Foundation, 2017

The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas acquired three paintings and four works on paper by the artist Leon Polk Smith. The works are a gift from collectors Jeanne and Michael Klein and the Leon Polk Smith Foundation.

The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University received a $1 million gift from Lisa and Steven Tananbaum in support of its modern and contemporary programming.

The Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester acquired Bill Viola’s “Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)” (2014) [via email announcement].

Transitions

Susan Dackerman was appointed director of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.

Charles A. Riley II was appointed director of the Nassau County Museum of Art.

Jacqueline Silverman was appointed executive director of the San Diego Art Institute.

Daly Flanagan was appointed executive director of the Rockland Center for the Arts.

Salvatore Scibona was appointed director of the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

Julie Reilly was appointed director of ICA Art Conservation.

The National Gallery of Art, Washington, appointed Roger Lawson, Emiko Usui, and Kathleen Williams, as executive librarian, editor-in-chief, and chief archivist respectively.

Ilona van Tuinen was appointed senior curator of drawings at the Rijksmuseum.

Sarah Cartwright was appointed curator of collections at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.

The Brooklyn Museum appointed Aysin Yoltar-Yildirim and Ashley James as associate curator of Islamic art and assistant curator of contemporary art, respectively [via email announcement].

Dianne S. Harris was appointed senior program officer at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Arlene Watson was appointed director of public programs and engagement at the 2018 FRONT International Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art unified and rebranded its 152-acre campus as “Newfields.”

The David Roberts Art Foundation in London will close in early October. According to The Art Newspaper, David Roberts, the gallery’s owner, plans to open a 20-acre sculpture park in Somerset, West England.

Sandycombe Lodge, the country home of JMW Turner, was opened to the public following a £2.4 million (~$3.1 million) restoration.

Fotografiska plans to open a photography venue in Whitechapel, London.

The Yayoi Kusama Museum will open in Tokyo on October 1. The five-story structure was built in 2014, but its true purpose was only just announced last week.

Accolades

Bo Bartlett, “The American” (2016), oil on linen, 88 x 100 in (via 1858prize.org)

Bo Bartlett was awarded the Gibbes Museum of Art’s 2017 Society 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art.

Martha Rosler was awarded the 2017 Hamburg Lichtwark Prize.

Duane Michals received the German Society for Photography’s Culture Prize.

The National Park Service awarded $517,471 in Tribal Heritage grants to 14 American Indian and Native Alaskan organizations.

The Design Museum announced the nominees of the 2018 Beazley Designs of the Year.

Obituaries

The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas (1970-72), designed by architect Gunnar Birkerts (via Flickr/Unfolding Pavilion)

Gunnar Birkerts (1925–2017), architect.

Joseph Bologna (1934–2017), actor, writer, and director.

Eduardo del Río (1934–2017), cartoonist.

Richard Gordon (aka Gordon Ostlere) (1921–2017), doctor and writer. Best known for his Doctor in the House series.

Tshiamo Naledi Letlhogonolo Pinky Mayeng (1993–2017), artist. Member of iQhiya.

Basilio Martín Patino (1930–2017), filmmaker.

The post Art Movements appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[embklitzke]

UNSETIC Files: Truth Will Set You Free - Chapter 1 (original draft)

NYPD homicide detective Ryce Marshall doesn't remember what happened to her before she woke up in a dirt parking lot in Pennsylvania.  She doesn't know why her lover is so afraid she'll walk away.  She doesn't know that she's already neck-deep in things beyond imagining.

One of the UNSETIC Files, Truth Will Set You Free is the introduction of Ryce Marshall and Jesse Stole into the universe, two NYPD cops on a collision course with the supernatural in more than a few forms.  What follows is the original draft of the first chapter, cross-posted from my Patreon.

One

               “Look, I’m effed up right now and I know it, but that doesn’t mean that the best thing for me isn’t getting back to work.”

               “Missing for two weeks with about half your memory just gone now that you’re back? Sue me if I still think you should’ve taken the day.”  A wry smile twisted Alex Stole’s lips as he watched me slide into my seat behind my desk at the precinct.  I supposed that it must have looked the same as it did when I left it.  “The shrink actually cleared you?”                “There’s nothing wrong with me,” I said.  “According to him and the doctors, anyway.  Just…well.  Just the amnesia.  Either everything comes back or it doesn’t.  Captain said as long as it doesn’t impact my ability to get the job done, I stay on the active roster.”

               My gaze drifted toward another desk not far away from mine, but standing alone—not paired with another, like mine was paired up with Alex’s.  In a dim, darkened yesterday, I could feel my back hit the wood of that desk, hear the pens and papers scatter across the floor, skirt sliding up my thighs, feel warm lips against mine—

               “Ryce?”

               I sucked in a breath and looked at Alex. “What were you saying?”

               “Never mind what I was saying.  You were staring at his desk again.”

               Again. How long had he been gone?

               Hell.  Even that was fragmented.  I couldn’t even remember why that desk’s owner was so important—other than he feel of his hands against my thighs and his lips against mine.

               “He wants you to call him,” Alex said after a moment.  “He said it should be safe.  Agent Scarborough won’t freak out.  Shouldn’t, anyway.  Don’t think the Feds are ever going to give him back, though.”

               “When you’re good,” I murmured, leaving the words to hang, not finishing the thought.

               “Yeah,” Alex said.  “When you’re good.”  He dropped into his chair across from mine.  “I’ll never figure out what you see in my brother, Ryce.”

               “Something his baby brother can’t see, apparently,” I said quietly, staring at that empty desk but swallowing my questions.  Try to sort it all out yourself first, Marshall.  Then roll from there.  You don’t want to come at this from a position of weakness.  I leaned back, running my hands across the blotter before my gaze flicked back toward my partner.  “Are we catching today?”

               “God, I hope not,” he muttered, snagging a folder from the pile at the corner of his des.  “Been trying to catch up on paperwork.  Captain’s had you and I reviewing cold cases for the past few weeks—before your vanishing act, I mean.  Guessing that lead on the Castleton case was a bust.”

               “If it wasn’t, I don’t remember what I found out and my notes weren’t on me when I woke up.”  Abandoned dirt parking lot, ground wet beneath my back, head ringing, blood on the ground a few feet away and not a soul in sight…

               “Dammit, Ryce, will you cut that thousand yard stare?” Alex was staring at me as I blinked back to the present.  His eyes were wider than usual, his jaw slack but brows knitting.  “You sure you’re good? You don’t seem it.”

               “Fine,” I assured him.  “Absolutely fine.”

               “Uh-huh.”  He sighed as he slapped the folder in his hand down flat onto his desktop.  “I still think you should take the day. Call Jesse for a booty call or something and get your head screwed back on straight.”

               A little shiver shot down my spine.  I shook my head.  “Somehow I don’t think that’s the answer to all my problems, Alex.”  I reached for the first file in my own stack and slid my desk drawer open, searching for a notepad and pen.  In my blind groping for both, my fingers brushed against the smooth, flat touchscreen of a smartphone and I pulled back, blinking and staring at the silver-sheathed thing lying silent and forgotten in my drawer.

               “You left it,” Alex said helpfully.  “Took your work cell.  The prepaid.  Found your cell on my desk with a note saying you were chasing a lead and you’d call later.” He gnawed his lower lip.  “You never called, Ryce.”

               “I—I’m sorry, Alex.”  What else could I say?

               He sighed.  “No, I am.  I should’ve come after you as soon as I realized you were gone.  I’ve got no idea what’s been up with you lately—”

               “Alex, I got you shot.”

               “And now I’m fine.  All of my parts still work.  Don’t beat yourself up about shit that’s not worth beating yourself up over.” He stared at me across the desk, over cold case files.  “Give it a week.  We’ll be catching something other than cold files by then and life will get back to normal.”

               “Normal,” I echoed.  Do I have a normal anymore? My fingers curled around my phone and I coaxed it awake.  “Sure. You’re right.”

               “Usually,” he agreed.  “Now settle down.  You want a drink?”

               “Coffee’s fine,” I said absently, poking at my phone. Texts, emails, three voicemails…I squeezed my eyes shut as Alex got up and headed for the coffeemaker in the squad room.

               Four of the texts were from a number I had labeled as Jesse Stole—Alex’s brother, apparently, and the owner of the desk I kept staring at.

               And if my memory and Alex’s colorful commentary are to be believed, some kind of lover of mine.

               “Hell,” I muttered harshly, then started checking my messages.  The first one from Jesse was nothing but an address and the words “meet me.”

               The timestamp was eleven days ago.  Had I met him there as he’d asked?  Where was that place, anyway?

               The next message was sent a few minutes after the first, a date and time set for ten days before.  I bit my lip.

               Either I’d met up with him or I hadn’t.

               The third: Are you okay?

               I shook my head.  Of course I wasn’t.  He’d sent that message nine days ago.

               The last message was from a week ago.  Don’t do anything stupid.  Be careful.

               There was only one text that hadn’t come from Jesse, it instead came from a phone number with an area code I recognized from Long Island.  He’s safe.  Where the hell are you, Detective?

               My lips thinned and my stomach flopped over itself.  The message was from four days ago.

               What had happened during those two weeks when I’d disappeared off the map, off the face of the Earth?

               “Everything okay?”  Alex asked as he set a cup of coffee down near my elbow.

               “Yeah,” I lied.  “Just checking my messages.”

               “Jesse said you should call him,” Alex said again as he sank back into his chair.

               I nodded slightly as I dialed into my voicemail on autopilot.  “I will,” I said, lifting the phone to my ear.

               “Ryce, I don’t know why you’re not picking up, but call me.  I don’t want to just leave things like this.  Love you.”  Click.  The voice sent odd tendrils of emotion through me—my stomach twisted, throat tightened, heart beginning to beat a little faster as other parts of me gave an excited little twitch.  I swallowed hard against the tightness.  Alex was watching me, his expression knowing and a little sad.

               “Take the day,” he mouthed at me.

               My nose wrinkled.  The second message began to play.  The voice wasn’t the same as the first, didn’t cause the same visceral reaction.  This one was male, quiet, coolly professional with the barest edge of anger. “Detective Marshall, I’ve got no bloody clue what you and Stole got up to the other night, but I need you to tell me. He’s gone off the radar and off the reservation and I’m thinking you’re my best shot at reeling him back in again.” The voice rattled off a phone number and an address before the message ended.

               Alex’s hand was on my arm.  I wasn’t sure when he’d come around the desk, but he had. “Ryce.”

               “I’m fine,” I whispered.

               “You’re not.  The last time I saw you this color, your hands were full of blood and you were screaming at me that I’d better not die on you.”  He gently took my phone out of my hand and hung up for me.  “Come on.  I’ll drive you home.”

               “Alex—”

               “I’m not arguing with you about this,” he said. “Not today.”

               “I’m not arguing.”  I pressed my keys into his hand.  “But we’ll take my car.  I’ll pay your cab fare back here.”

               “I’ll take the subway.  C’mon.”  He slid a comforting arm around my shoulders as we moved away from our desks, signed out—me for the day, he for a couple hours—and then took the elevator down to the garage.  It wasn’t until we were safely ensconced in my little blue-gray sedan that he looked at me and asked, “So who left you the voice messages?”

               “The first one was from your brother, I think,” I said quietly, knuckling suddenly stinging eyes.  “Not sure who the other one was, but he was talking about your brother going ‘off radar and off the reservation.’”

               Alex winced.  “Probably Agent Scarborough.  Jesse said something about a knock-down drag-out with him last week.”

               “Who is he?”

               “A Fed,” Alex answered, tone implying that the statement should explain everything.  I just looked at him until he elaborated.  “He’s assigned to some kind of task force investigating the connections between local organized crime syndicates and the new drugs that have been hitting the streets.”

               “He tapped Jesse because of your connections.” I wasn’t sure where the words came from, but I knew they were true.

               “I guess,” Alex said.  “Not every day a capo’s daughter pops out a couple of cops.”

               No. It’s really, really not.  I smothered a frown and slumped low in my seat. “How long?”

               “Six months.  Since right before that Christmas party when you and Jesse had a private affair on his desk.”

               I blushed.  “You—”

               “Half the precinct knows.  If you two weren’t good, the fallout would’ve meant your jobs. Luckily—or maybe not—seems like the Feds are trying to recruit my brother, which would mean problem solved.” Alex sighed.  “Call him.”

               “Your brother?”

               “And Agent Scarborough,” Alex said.  “If he left you a voicemail, he’s expecting call back.”

               “It’s over a week old.”

               “Call anyway.”  Alex shook his head.  “Never know when you’ll need a friend like him, Ryce.  Score points while you can and just tell him that your personal cell was in your desk.  He’ll probably believe it.”

               “It’d be true,” I said.

               “See?  Even more reason for him to believe you.”

               We lapsed into silence for a few more blocks before I broke it.

               “Which do I call first?”  My voice sounded tiny, frightened.  I hated myself for the weakness it betrayed.

               Alex winced.  “I want to tell you to call my brother first,” he said after a moment. “But I think maybe you’d better call Scarborough.  Just in case something’s going sideways.”

               “I thought Jesse told you it’d be okay for me to call.”

               “He did, but I don’t think he knew his handler had left you a voicemail.”

               Handler. This is a little deeper than on loan, I’m thinking.  “Right,” I whispered.  There was something vaguely unsettling about calling anyone but Jesse first.

               So why did you ask for his opinion?  I withheld my sigh and squeezed my eyes shut.

               Alex reached over and touched my shoulder, fingers tightening briefly.  “Keep it together or fall apart if you need to, Ryce.”

               I snorted.  “Real gallant, Alex.  Going to offer me your shoulders to use as a hankie now, too?”

               He grinned as I looked at him.  “There she is.  Miss Snark rises again.”

               I shook my head.  “This is hard for you.”

               “You’ve got no idea.  We’ve been doing this for a long time now.”

               “We were patrolmen together.”

               He nodded.  “You were a couple years my senior, but yeah.  You were my first partner—and let me say it right now that you’re the only one I’d ever want.”

               “Oh, Alex.”  All I could do was smile and shake my head.  “Thanks.”  What else could you say to that, after all?

               “Yeah, well, it’s the truth.”  We hit another turn and he pulled into a parking garage and found my spot two levels up.  As he shut off the engine and tugged my keys out of the ignition, he asked, “You want me to walk you up?”

               I gave it a moment’s thought, then shook my head slightly.  “No, I think I’ll be good.  I’ll see you in the morning.”

               “Okay.”  He dropped my keys into my upturned palm and kissed my cheek.  “Call me if you need anything.”

               “I will.”

               Then he got out of the car and left me there in the parking garage of my apartment building, sitting in the passenger seat of my car.  I dug my phone out of my pocket, stared at it.

               Which one do I call first?

               My head said one thing even as my heart screamed another.  I silently promised myself that I’d come to a decision on the matter by the time I made it upstairs to my apartment.

               That was how I ended up in the corner of my green overstuffed couch with a mug of cocoa, hitting Jesse’s number on speed dial before logic could overrule emotion.

               He picked up halfway through the second ring, sounding vaguely breathless.

               “Ryce?  Is that you?”

               His voice did things to me—things I couldn’t fathom, understand.  I swallowed against sudden tightness in my throat.  “It’s me.  Alex said I should call.”

               “I—Ryce, where have you been?  I’ve been going crazy.”

               “Sorry,” I whispered.  Something about that made me hurt but also gave me a strange sense of satisfaction—a feeling that surprised me and sparked more than a little self-loathing.  “I didn’t—fuck.  Jesse, I don’t remember anything.  Did I meet you?  What happened?”

               Dead silence answered my question.

               “Jesse?”

               “Where are you?”

               “At home.  I took the day.”

               I heard him suck in a deep breath and then exhale it slowly.  “Stay there. I’m coming.”

               “Won’t that—”

               “Get me into trouble?  Probably.  There are some things that shouldn’t be done over the phone, though.”

               What the hell is he talking about?  “Like what?”

               “Like begging for your forgiveness.  Stay put.  I’m coming.”

               “I—okay.”  The knot in my throat wasn’t going away.  “Jesse?”

               “Yeah?”

               “I—I love you.”  The words came out and the tightness began to ease even as my eyes began to sting.  On the other end of the line, Jesse exhaled a heavy sigh of relief.

               “I love you, too, Ryce,” he murmured.  “Half hour, okay?  I’ll be there in a half hour.”

               “Be careful.”

               “It’s me.”

               “I know.  Be careful.”  I was holding the phone so tightly my fingers hurt.  “I’ll see you in half an hour.”

               “Count on it.”

               He hung up then and I just sat there frozen on my couch as the minutes ticked by and my cocoa grew cold, unable to fathom the maelstrom of emotions playing through me.

               What the hell was going on—and did I really want to find out?

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Erin M. Klitzke is the author of the UNSETIC Files, What Angels Fear, Epsilon: Broken Stars, and Awakenings.

[mysteryshelf]

BLOG TOUR - Bone White

Bone White

by Wendy Corsi Staub

on Tour April 1-30, 2017

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

Synopsis:

In Mundy’s Landing, bygone bloodshed has become a big business. During the rigorous winter of 1666, all but five colonists in the small Hudson Valley settlement died of starvation. Accused of unimaginable crimes, James and Elizabeth Mundy and their three children survived, but the couple were later accused of murder and executed. Left to fend for themselves in a hostile community, their offspring lived out exemplary lives in a town that would bear the family name. They never reveal the secret that died with their parents on the gallows… or did they?

“We Shall Never Tell.” Spurred by the cryptic phrase in a centuries-old letter, Emerson Mundy has flown cross-country to her ancestral hometown in hopes of tracing her ancestral past—and perhaps building a future. In Mundy’s Landing, she discovers long lost relatives, a welcoming ancestral home… and a closet full of skeletons.

A year has passed since former NYPD Detective Sullivan Leary solved the historic Sleeping Beauty Murders, apprehended a copycat killer, and made a fresh start in the Hudson Valley. Banking on an uneventful future in a village that’s seen more than its share of bloodshed, Sully is in for an unpleasant surprise when a historic skull reveals a notorious truth. Now she’s on the trail of a murky predator determined to destroy the Mundy family tree, branch by branch.

Book Details:

Genre: Thriller/Suspense Published by: William Morrow Mass Market Publication Date: March 28, 2017 Number of Pages: 384 ISBN: 0062349775 (ISBN13: 9780062349774) Series: Mundy’s Landing #3 (Stand Alone) Purchase Links: Amazon 🔗 | Barnes & Noble 🔗 | Goodreads 🔗

Read an excerpt:

Chapter 1

July 20, 2016 Los Angeles, CA

We shall never tell.

Strange, the thoughts that go through your head when you’re standing at an open grave.

Not that Emerson Mundy knew anything about open graves before today. Her father’s funeral is the first she’s ever attended, and she’s the sole mourner.

Ah, at last, a perk to living a life without many—any—loved ones; you don’t spend much time grieving, unless you count the pervasive ache for the things you never had.

The minister, who came with the cemetery package and never even met Jerry Mundy, is rambling on about souls and salvation. Emerson hears only We shall never tell—the closing line in an old letter she found yesterday in the crawl space of her childhood home. It had been written in 1676 by a young woman named Priscilla Mundy, addressed to her brother, Jeremiah.

The Mundys were among the seventeenth-century English colonists who settled on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, about a hundred miles north of New York City. Their first winter was so harsh the river froze, stranding their supply ship and additional colonists in the New York harbor. When the ship arrived after the thaw, all but five settlers had starved to death.

Jeremiah; Priscilla; their sister, Charity; and their parents had eaten human flesh to stay alive. James and Elizabeth Mundy swore they’d only cannibalized those who’d already died, but the God-fearing, well-fed newcomers couldn’t fathom such wretched butchery. A Puritan justice committee tortured the couple until they confessed to murder, then swiftly tried, convicted, and hanged them.

“Do you think we’re related?” Emerson asked her father after learning about the Mundys back in elementary school.

“Nope.” Curt answers were typical when she brought up anything Jerry Mundy didn’t want to discuss. The past was high on the list.

“That’s it? Just nope?”

“What else do you want me to say?”

“How about yes?”

“That wouldn’t be the truth,” he said with a shrug.

“Sometimes the truth isn’t very interesting.”

She had no one else to ask about her family history. Dad was an only child, and his parents, Donald and Inez Mundy, had passed away before she was born. Their headstone is adjacent to the gaping rectangle about to swallow her father’s casket. Staring that the inscription, she notices her grandfather’s unusual middle initial.

Donald X. Mundy, Born 1900, Died 1972. X marks the spot.

Thanks to her passion for history and Robert Louis Stevenson, Emerson’s bookworm childhood included a phase when she searched obsessively for buried treasure. Money was short in their household after two heart attacks left Jerry Mundy on permanent disability.

X marks the spot…

No gold doubloon treasure chest buried here. Just dusty old bones of people she never knew.

And now, her father.

The service concludes with a prayer as the coffin is lowered into the ground. The minister clasps her hand and tells her how sorry he is for her loss, then leaves her to sit on a bench and stare at the hillside as the undertakers finish the job.

The sun is beginning to burn through the thick marine layer that swaddles most June and July mornings. Having grown up in Southern California, she knows the sky will be bright blue by mid-afternoon. Tomorrow will be more of the same. By then, she’ll be on her way back up the coast, back to her life in Oakland, where the fog rolls in and stays for days, weeks at a time. Funny, but there she welcomes the gray, a soothing shield from real world glare and sharp edges.

Here the seasonal gloom has felt oppressive and depressing.

Emerson watches the undertakers finish the job and load their equipment into a van. After they drive off, she makes her way between neat rows of tombstones to inspect the raked dirt rectangle.

When something is over, you move on, her father told her when she left home nearly two decades ago. She attended Cal State Fullerton with scholarships and maximum financial aid, got her master’s at Berkeley, and landed a teaching job in the Bay Area.

But she didn’t necessarily move on.

Every holiday, many weekends, and for two whole months every summer, she makes the six-hour drive down to stay with her father. She cooks and cleans for him, and at night they sit together and watch Wheel of Fortune reruns.

It used to be because she craved a connection to the only family she had in the world. Lately, though, it was as much because Jerry Mundy needed her.

He pretended that he didn’t, that he was taking care of himself and the house, too proud to admit he was failing. He was a shadow of his former self when he died at seventy-six, leaving Emerson alone in the world.

Throughout her motherless childhood, Emerson was obsessed with novels about orphans. Treasure Island shared coveted space on her bookshelf with Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, The Witch of Blackbird Pond…

She always wondered what would happen to her if her father died. Would she wind up in an orphanage? Would a kindly stranger take her in? Would she live on the streets?

Now that it’s happened he’s down there, in the dirt … moving on?

She’ll never again hear his voice. She’ll never see the face so like her own that she can’t imagine she inherited any physical characteristics from her mother, Didi—though she can’t be certain.

Years ago, she asked her father for a picture—preferably one that showed her mother holding her as a baby, or of her parents together. Maybe she wanted evidence that she and her father had been loved; that the woman who’d abandoned them had once been normal—a proud new mother, a happy bride.

Or was it the opposite? Was she hoping to glimpse a hint that Didi Mundy was never normal? Did she expect to confirm that people—normal people—don’t just wake up one morning and choose to walk out on a husband and child? That there was always something off about her mother: a telltale gleam in the eye, or a faraway expression—some warning sign her father had overlooked. A sign Emerson herself would be able to recognize, should she ever be tempted to marry.

But there were no images of Didi that she could slip into a frame, or deface with angry black ink, or simply commit to memory.

Exhibit A: Untrustworthy.

Sure, there had been plenty of photos, her father admitted unapologetically. He’d gotten rid of everything.

There were plenty of pictures of her and Dad, though.

Exhibit B: Trustworthy.

Dad holding her hand on her first day of kindergarten, Dad leading her in an awkward waltz at a father-daughter middle school dance, Dad posing with her at high school graduation.

“Two peas in a pod,” he liked to say. “If I weren’t me, I’d think you were.”

She has his thick, wavy hair, the same dimple on her right cheek, same angular nose and bristly slashes of brow. Even her wide-set, prominent, upturned eyes are the same as his, with one notable exception.

Jerry Mundy’s eyes were a piercing blue.

Only one of Emerson’s is that shade; the other, a chalky gray.

***

Excerpt from Bone White by Wendy Corsi Staub. Copyright © 2017 by Wendy Corsi Staub. Reproduced with permission from William Morrow Mass Market. All rights reserved.

Author Bio:

New York Times bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub is the award-winning author of more than seventy novels. Wendy now lives in the New York City suburbs with her husband and their two children.

Catch Up With Wendy Corsi Staub On Her Website 🔗, Goodreads 🔗, Twitter 🔗, & Facebook 🔗!

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This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Wendy Corsi Staub and William Morrow. There will be 3 winners of one (1) Print copy of Bone White by Wendy Corsi Staub. The giveaway begins on March 30th and runs through May 2nd, 2017. This giveaway is for US residents only. Void where prohibited by law.

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BLOG TOUR – Bone White was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf