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janecarnall (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} janecarnall) wrote,@ 2009-01-26 02:10:00 |
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The Pieces: George
This is the final part of a 7-part sequence. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6).
Oh God. I just finished part 1 of "End Game". Okay. Tuesday for that. *insane giggles*
The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), and The Gambler (seven parts). The whole series will terminate with the next sequence, "End Game". Which, at the moment, I know what happens, have the first part written, have a clear idea of where it's going, and need to rough out the arc so I can tell you how many chapters. Yes I do. *more insane giggles*
The story may be regarded as fanfic set inpoisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.
Part 7: George
Two cars drove off: Cowley barely heard them through the window of the lounge, but he saw their headlights moving across the ceiling. Unless Vecchio and Fraser had suddenly divorced, he was the last man left, and Gerard was probably looking forward to having him go, too.
Gerard was in the kitchen with Richard. Gerard looked up as Cowley appeared in the doorway: Richard sat still, his head bowed, not reacting. “Good night,” Cowley said directly. “I’ll be out of here in five minutes.”
“You got a fire to go to?” Gerard asked.
“What?” Cowley raised his eyebrows.
“If you’ve got time, sit down: I want to talk to you.”
Cowley shrugged. He moved round the table and sat down. “Well?” He glanced at Richard. “Shouldn’t he go upstairs?”
“Not right now,” Gerard said. He leaned backward in his chair, his hands resting on his stomach. “This afternoon, Willow solved the problem of how someone could have got into the Waverley townhouse the night of Helen Waverley’s murder.”
Cowley laughed, briefly but genuinely amused. “I thought you gave her till Friday?”
“Sure,” Gerard said: he wasn’t amused himself, and that was clear. “She and Ray got Richard out of his room, without my permission, and Willow asked him a nice simple question that it seems no cop or lawyer thought to ask before: who’d had his personal house keys? And one of the names Richard gave her was our pal Charles Nichols.” His smile could be cold as stone. “Seems I got it just exactly wrong. Not rescue: annihilation.”
Richard stirred. He had been sitting in a familiar position, hunched, head down, hands together in his lap, but he lifted his head, and looked at Gerard. He spoke without permission, but his voice was faint and wavering. “Why Helen? Why would Chuck kill Helen?”
“Assuming Willow’s theory is right,” Gerard said, “Doctor Nichols wanted you removed. You were out of the way whether you were dead or condemned for the murder of your wife. Even if you escaped conviction, you would certainly have had something else to think about than a few liver samples. If he did it, he did it for Provasic.”
Richard went on looking at Gerard. His face, Cowley had always thought, was rather an uninteresting one: blank and inexpressive, almost slack. Adam’s word, haeftling, never seemed more appropriate used to describe Richard. But he didn’t look slack-faced now, or frightened, exactly: he looked back at Gerard as if he were thinking.
“I didn’t kill Helen,” Richard said. He spoke in a level, controlled voice. “I fought with a one-armed man – when I came home. He had an artificial arm. Point of attachment, mid-humerus. Right arm. A mechanical arm with a cosmetic hand. No gimmicks. Nothing expensive. The kind of arm Cook County Hospital makes.” His voice shook. “I told the police. Five years ago. They didn’t believe me. No one did.” Richard swallowed, convulsively. “Sam – I thought you – ” His voice, once steady, rose and fell. “ – don’t believe me?”
“I’m a US marshal, not a judge or a jury,” Gerard said, much more evenly than Richard. “I’m an officer of the law. Willow and another of my employees between them uncovered evidence of a crime – falsification of medical evidence to get a pharmaceutical product past testing and into production. I can have that crime investigated and prosecuted, and maybe in the course of the criminal investigation they’ll turn up other crimes.” Gerard stood up. Richard’s head tilted up, continuing to watch him. “Like murdering Lady Helen Waverley,” Gerard said, “and getting her husband condemned to the collar. Maybe. But you aren’t a witness in this scenario, Richard. You know what you are?”
Cowley assumed it was a rhetorical question. So perhaps had Gerard. But Richard seemed to gather himself, and said, not quite as a whisper; “Evidence.”
“Yeah, that’s right, Richard. Evidence. I can hand you over to be processed by Commerce for evidence against Doctor Charles Nichols, and they will take you, and they will process you, and at the end of that process you will be dead. Is that clear to you?” Each word was hard-edged as blow, and Cowley saw Richard flinch.
But though he flinched, Richard didn’t look away, and his voice was surprisingly clear. “I don’t care.”
To Cowley’s further surprise, Gerard was the one to look away. Only for a moment – the expression on his face was fleeting, bitter humour – but when he looked back, his voice was sober. “Okay, Richard, on your feet. I’m going to take you upstairs, give you a sedative, and put you to bed. You’re going to sleep.”
Richard stood up, promptly, but swayed, as if he were going to sleep on his feet. Gerard caught his wrist. “I am not handing you over to Commerce tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got other things to do. I’m fucking busy this week. When I hand you over, it’s going to be with a full report and all the other evidence. Got it?”
“Yes, Sam.” Richard sounded beyond exhausted.
Gerard glanced back at Cowley. He didn’t say anything. Cowley nodded. He would stay until Gerard came back. There was a summary report to work on: he pulled his notebook out of his briefcase, opened it up, and got to work.
It didn’t take long before Cowley heard Gerard coming swiftly down the stairs. He didn’t come into the kitchen: another door opened and closed. He was in the lounge, collecting files or picking up his laptop.
But when he came into the kitchen, he wasn’t carrying anything. “You want to eat something?” Gerard asked abruptly.
About to say no, Cowley saw how stark and strained Gerard’s face was; “Thank you – I could do with a bite.”
“Sure,” Gerard said. He was standing at the freezer, taking out some of his homemade stew, when he said, out loud, out of the blue, “I forgot.”
“What?” Cowley stood up. “I’ll get it.”
“I forgot to make sure Richard got something to eat,” Gerard said. “Too late – he’s asleep now.” He put the box down on the counter, and closed the freezer door with a thud. “Sit down, George. Dana and Adam already went off to talk to Melissa, but I had the rest of my kids in here about Richard.”
“Indeed,” Cowley said.
“When Dana and Adam get back here tomorrow, they don’t get to leave the house till we’re clear they’re not going to get arrested.”
“Did you discuss that with either of them?”
“Not in detail,” Gerard said. He shot Cowley a look. He’d told Cowley earlier, almost in passing, that Dana wanted Melissa to try and get the decimation out on the Internet. “I didn’t ask you if they should do it at all.”
“I think it’s a good thing – always providing Commerce don’t track it back to us.”
“Yeah, what are the odds.”
Cowley sat down, slowly, digesting that. “You think they will.”
“If they don’t, it’s going to be because they’re really fucking stupid,” Gerard said. He was putting the box in the microwave, setting the timer, pressing the button, as he spoke. “Dana’s convinced her sister can get away with it. Maybe she can. We’ve never had to step in to protect Melissa’s network. But this is a very short trail.”
“Handing over Richard could distract them,” Cowley said.
Gerard turned and looked at him. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d thought of that.” His voice was now absolutely without expression. “Dana wants me to give him to Senator McGarry.”
“You can’t do that,” Cowley said. He saw it at once, without explanation, but he followed it up. “It’s out of character – it isn’t something Deputy Marshal Gerard would do, sidestepping the usual channels – ”
“No,” Gerard agreed. He leaned on the edge of the table, looking at Cowley. “Commerce doesn’t doubt my loyalty. Richard’s a perfect test case for the Abolitionists, though. If he’s innocent, if he can be proved innocent, if he’s still alive at the end, there’s a clear legal case to set him free. Establish that it’s legal to free one slave, and all the abolitionists will shove their own cases through that gap. So if I give Richard up to Commerce, they’ll see to it that if he’s innocent, he’ll be dead before any legal case is made for freeing him.”
“Do you think he’s innocent?” Cowley asked.
Gerard shrugged. “Willow’s proved he could be. Which I didn’t think was possible. Remind me never to give her make-work again.” His mouth twitched in a smile that held no humour. “But whether or not he really is … he’s already served a life sentence. I meant to put him on a plane and get him out of here, in six months. I could still do that. We got maybe four to go, just add one more.” He looked down at his hands on the table, and straightened up, turning back to the counter, not looking at Cowley. “Talk to me, George. You’ve been running the numbers all day. What does it look like to you?”
“That we should be making four to eight arrests next week,” Cowley said. “But those are based on old data.”
“How do you mean?” Gerard didn’t turn, but he was interested,
“Commerce never killed two thousand slaves before. Not all at once, in public. If Melissa can get this onto the Internet, especially if the pictures are hosted by servers outside USNA, there will be a public debate about slavery. Everything could change.”
Gerard didn’t turn. “We can’t afford to think like that,” he said.
“Why else did you agree to let Dana leak the news?”
“Sure,” Gerard said.His voice was flat. “But we always have to plan as if nothing will change. What arrests will we tell them to make next week?”
Cowley had three groups of arrests in mind: from past experience, by tomorrow one group should become clear to him. They had always to provide Commerce with some people who were actually guilty, some who could give up minor networks under interrogation. Which people they chose, the guilty and the innocent and the informed, which networks would be sabotaged, had become a complex pattern – a pattern that they could not afford to look like a pattern.
While Cowley was in the middle of outlining the third group, Gerard put bowls of stew and a plate of bread down on the table. Given practice, Cowley could finish briefing Gerard while eating Gerard’s idea of beef stew, which had more chiles in it than Cowley felt a decent cow needed.
“I told Giles he should marry Willow,” Gerard said, apparently disconnected, once Cowley had finished.
“Oh, indeed?”
Gerard smiled, close-mouthed. “I told him I’d marry you for your passport, not romance. I think he took my point.”
Cowley lifted his eyebrows, managing – he felt – to look more amused than disconcerted. “You’ll forgive me if I can’t say I’m complimented.”
“I’m not leaving here, if it comes to that,” Gerard said, with a dry twist to his voice. “But that’s my orders for you and Giles: I want all three of you safe out. You’d none of you be much use, except for what you know, and what you know is as much use outside as it is here.” He paused. “You got that, George? I don’t want you telling me later you misunderstood me.”
“I understand you,” Cowley said, after a moment. “I’ll see the pair of them safe out of here, and go with them.”
Gerard nodded. “If Commerce figure out tomorrow, right away, Dana leaked to Melissa, they could come down on us hard. I told Giles to stay clear, him and Willow both. I didn’t tell them why. Anyway, they could both use a break.”
“That’s certainly true.”
“And I’ll need to get a new canary,” Gerard added. “One way or another, I won’t have Richard after next week.”
Cowley sat still. He shook his head, briefly. He wanted to ask Didn’t you cause enough trouble for yourself? There was still that brutal practicality to it: but the look on Gerard’s face wasn’t brutal, just withdrawn: not cruel but cold.
“Try honesty, next time,” he said, with sarcasm, but meaning it. “They could barely stand your having a slave when they thought it was just you wanted Richard. If you get rid of Richard and right away you buy someone else, I don’t think they’re going to forgive you at all.”
Gerard nodded. He had finished eating. He put his hands together, and rested his chin on top of them. “I figured they’d get over it once Richard gave up fighting me, but I can’t say he ever did.”
“Did you really expect him to?”
Gerard shrugged. “Why not? I meant him to have a decent enough kind of life here, as far as that’s possible. He just had to relax and get comfortable.”
“You’re a scary kind of bastard,” Cowley said finally, after wondering if he would get away with it: but Gerard only raised his head from his hands and looked at Cowley as if wondering. “You know that?”
“I saw Richard in the dorms at the arena,” Gerard said, without answering. “I was doing a tour with a bunch of the governor’s people. That was two years ago. I saw him sitting on one of the bunks, watching us pass through – I don’t think he saw us, all he saw was his jailers. He looked…” Gerard’s voice trailed off. After a moment, without seeming to realise there had been a gap, he said “Fearless.”
“Nobody’s that fearless,” Cowley said.
Gerard’s smile was a dry, cold grimace. “Richard is.” The expression on his face was naked: Cowley looked away.
“God save us,” he muttered.
“Too late,” Gerard said.
End
The final part of The Games, “End Game”, begins tomorrow...
This is the final part of a 7-part sequence. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6).
Oh God. I just finished part 1 of "End Game". Okay. Tuesday for that. *insane giggles*
The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), and The Gambler (seven parts). The whole series will terminate with the next sequence, "End Game". Which, at the moment, I know what happens, have the first part written, have a clear idea of where it's going, and need to rough out the arc so I can tell you how many chapters. Yes I do. *more insane giggles*
The story may be regarded as fanfic set in
poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.Part 7: George
Two cars drove off: Cowley barely heard them through the window of the lounge, but he saw their headlights moving across the ceiling. Unless Vecchio and Fraser had suddenly divorced, he was the last man left, and Gerard was probably looking forward to having him go, too.
Gerard was in the kitchen with Richard. Gerard looked up as Cowley appeared in the doorway: Richard sat still, his head bowed, not reacting. “Good night,” Cowley said directly. “I’ll be out of here in five minutes.”
“You got a fire to go to?” Gerard asked.
“What?” Cowley raised his eyebrows.
“If you’ve got time, sit down: I want to talk to you.”
Cowley shrugged. He moved round the table and sat down. “Well?” He glanced at Richard. “Shouldn’t he go upstairs?”
“Not right now,” Gerard said. He leaned backward in his chair, his hands resting on his stomach. “This afternoon, Willow solved the problem of how someone could have got into the Waverley townhouse the night of Helen Waverley’s murder.”
Cowley laughed, briefly but genuinely amused. “I thought you gave her till Friday?”
“Sure,” Gerard said: he wasn’t amused himself, and that was clear. “She and Ray got Richard out of his room, without my permission, and Willow asked him a nice simple question that it seems no cop or lawyer thought to ask before: who’d had his personal house keys? And one of the names Richard gave her was our pal Charles Nichols.” His smile could be cold as stone. “Seems I got it just exactly wrong. Not rescue: annihilation.”
Richard stirred. He had been sitting in a familiar position, hunched, head down, hands together in his lap, but he lifted his head, and looked at Gerard. He spoke without permission, but his voice was faint and wavering. “Why Helen? Why would Chuck kill Helen?”
“Assuming Willow’s theory is right,” Gerard said, “Doctor Nichols wanted you removed. You were out of the way whether you were dead or condemned for the murder of your wife. Even if you escaped conviction, you would certainly have had something else to think about than a few liver samples. If he did it, he did it for Provasic.”
Richard went on looking at Gerard. His face, Cowley had always thought, was rather an uninteresting one: blank and inexpressive, almost slack. Adam’s word, haeftling, never seemed more appropriate used to describe Richard. But he didn’t look slack-faced now, or frightened, exactly: he looked back at Gerard as if he were thinking.
“I didn’t kill Helen,” Richard said. He spoke in a level, controlled voice. “I fought with a one-armed man – when I came home. He had an artificial arm. Point of attachment, mid-humerus. Right arm. A mechanical arm with a cosmetic hand. No gimmicks. Nothing expensive. The kind of arm Cook County Hospital makes.” His voice shook. “I told the police. Five years ago. They didn’t believe me. No one did.” Richard swallowed, convulsively. “Sam – I thought you – ” His voice, once steady, rose and fell. “ – don’t believe me?”
“I’m a US marshal, not a judge or a jury,” Gerard said, much more evenly than Richard. “I’m an officer of the law. Willow and another of my employees between them uncovered evidence of a crime – falsification of medical evidence to get a pharmaceutical product past testing and into production. I can have that crime investigated and prosecuted, and maybe in the course of the criminal investigation they’ll turn up other crimes.” Gerard stood up. Richard’s head tilted up, continuing to watch him. “Like murdering Lady Helen Waverley,” Gerard said, “and getting her husband condemned to the collar. Maybe. But you aren’t a witness in this scenario, Richard. You know what you are?”
Cowley assumed it was a rhetorical question. So perhaps had Gerard. But Richard seemed to gather himself, and said, not quite as a whisper; “Evidence.”
“Yeah, that’s right, Richard. Evidence. I can hand you over to be processed by Commerce for evidence against Doctor Charles Nichols, and they will take you, and they will process you, and at the end of that process you will be dead. Is that clear to you?” Each word was hard-edged as blow, and Cowley saw Richard flinch.
But though he flinched, Richard didn’t look away, and his voice was surprisingly clear. “I don’t care.”
To Cowley’s further surprise, Gerard was the one to look away. Only for a moment – the expression on his face was fleeting, bitter humour – but when he looked back, his voice was sober. “Okay, Richard, on your feet. I’m going to take you upstairs, give you a sedative, and put you to bed. You’re going to sleep.”
Richard stood up, promptly, but swayed, as if he were going to sleep on his feet. Gerard caught his wrist. “I am not handing you over to Commerce tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got other things to do. I’m fucking busy this week. When I hand you over, it’s going to be with a full report and all the other evidence. Got it?”
“Yes, Sam.” Richard sounded beyond exhausted.
Gerard glanced back at Cowley. He didn’t say anything. Cowley nodded. He would stay until Gerard came back. There was a summary report to work on: he pulled his notebook out of his briefcase, opened it up, and got to work.
It didn’t take long before Cowley heard Gerard coming swiftly down the stairs. He didn’t come into the kitchen: another door opened and closed. He was in the lounge, collecting files or picking up his laptop.
But when he came into the kitchen, he wasn’t carrying anything. “You want to eat something?” Gerard asked abruptly.
About to say no, Cowley saw how stark and strained Gerard’s face was; “Thank you – I could do with a bite.”
“Sure,” Gerard said. He was standing at the freezer, taking out some of his homemade stew, when he said, out loud, out of the blue, “I forgot.”
“What?” Cowley stood up. “I’ll get it.”
“I forgot to make sure Richard got something to eat,” Gerard said. “Too late – he’s asleep now.” He put the box down on the counter, and closed the freezer door with a thud. “Sit down, George. Dana and Adam already went off to talk to Melissa, but I had the rest of my kids in here about Richard.”
“Indeed,” Cowley said.
“When Dana and Adam get back here tomorrow, they don’t get to leave the house till we’re clear they’re not going to get arrested.”
“Did you discuss that with either of them?”
“Not in detail,” Gerard said. He shot Cowley a look. He’d told Cowley earlier, almost in passing, that Dana wanted Melissa to try and get the decimation out on the Internet. “I didn’t ask you if they should do it at all.”
“I think it’s a good thing – always providing Commerce don’t track it back to us.”
“Yeah, what are the odds.”
Cowley sat down, slowly, digesting that. “You think they will.”
“If they don’t, it’s going to be because they’re really fucking stupid,” Gerard said. He was putting the box in the microwave, setting the timer, pressing the button, as he spoke. “Dana’s convinced her sister can get away with it. Maybe she can. We’ve never had to step in to protect Melissa’s network. But this is a very short trail.”
“Handing over Richard could distract them,” Cowley said.
Gerard turned and looked at him. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d thought of that.” His voice was now absolutely without expression. “Dana wants me to give him to Senator McGarry.”
“You can’t do that,” Cowley said. He saw it at once, without explanation, but he followed it up. “It’s out of character – it isn’t something Deputy Marshal Gerard would do, sidestepping the usual channels – ”
“No,” Gerard agreed. He leaned on the edge of the table, looking at Cowley. “Commerce doesn’t doubt my loyalty. Richard’s a perfect test case for the Abolitionists, though. If he’s innocent, if he can be proved innocent, if he’s still alive at the end, there’s a clear legal case to set him free. Establish that it’s legal to free one slave, and all the abolitionists will shove their own cases through that gap. So if I give Richard up to Commerce, they’ll see to it that if he’s innocent, he’ll be dead before any legal case is made for freeing him.”
“Do you think he’s innocent?” Cowley asked.
Gerard shrugged. “Willow’s proved he could be. Which I didn’t think was possible. Remind me never to give her make-work again.” His mouth twitched in a smile that held no humour. “But whether or not he really is … he’s already served a life sentence. I meant to put him on a plane and get him out of here, in six months. I could still do that. We got maybe four to go, just add one more.” He looked down at his hands on the table, and straightened up, turning back to the counter, not looking at Cowley. “Talk to me, George. You’ve been running the numbers all day. What does it look like to you?”
“That we should be making four to eight arrests next week,” Cowley said. “But those are based on old data.”
“How do you mean?” Gerard didn’t turn, but he was interested,
“Commerce never killed two thousand slaves before. Not all at once, in public. If Melissa can get this onto the Internet, especially if the pictures are hosted by servers outside USNA, there will be a public debate about slavery. Everything could change.”
Gerard didn’t turn. “We can’t afford to think like that,” he said.
“Why else did you agree to let Dana leak the news?”
“Sure,” Gerard said.His voice was flat. “But we always have to plan as if nothing will change. What arrests will we tell them to make next week?”
Cowley had three groups of arrests in mind: from past experience, by tomorrow one group should become clear to him. They had always to provide Commerce with some people who were actually guilty, some who could give up minor networks under interrogation. Which people they chose, the guilty and the innocent and the informed, which networks would be sabotaged, had become a complex pattern – a pattern that they could not afford to look like a pattern.
While Cowley was in the middle of outlining the third group, Gerard put bowls of stew and a plate of bread down on the table. Given practice, Cowley could finish briefing Gerard while eating Gerard’s idea of beef stew, which had more chiles in it than Cowley felt a decent cow needed.
“I told Giles he should marry Willow,” Gerard said, apparently disconnected, once Cowley had finished.
“Oh, indeed?”
Gerard smiled, close-mouthed. “I told him I’d marry you for your passport, not romance. I think he took my point.”
Cowley lifted his eyebrows, managing – he felt – to look more amused than disconcerted. “You’ll forgive me if I can’t say I’m complimented.”
“I’m not leaving here, if it comes to that,” Gerard said, with a dry twist to his voice. “But that’s my orders for you and Giles: I want all three of you safe out. You’d none of you be much use, except for what you know, and what you know is as much use outside as it is here.” He paused. “You got that, George? I don’t want you telling me later you misunderstood me.”
“I understand you,” Cowley said, after a moment. “I’ll see the pair of them safe out of here, and go with them.”
Gerard nodded. “If Commerce figure out tomorrow, right away, Dana leaked to Melissa, they could come down on us hard. I told Giles to stay clear, him and Willow both. I didn’t tell them why. Anyway, they could both use a break.”
“That’s certainly true.”
“And I’ll need to get a new canary,” Gerard added. “One way or another, I won’t have Richard after next week.”
Cowley sat still. He shook his head, briefly. He wanted to ask Didn’t you cause enough trouble for yourself? There was still that brutal practicality to it: but the look on Gerard’s face wasn’t brutal, just withdrawn: not cruel but cold.
“Try honesty, next time,” he said, with sarcasm, but meaning it. “They could barely stand your having a slave when they thought it was just you wanted Richard. If you get rid of Richard and right away you buy someone else, I don’t think they’re going to forgive you at all.”
Gerard nodded. He had finished eating. He put his hands together, and rested his chin on top of them. “I figured they’d get over it once Richard gave up fighting me, but I can’t say he ever did.”
“Did you really expect him to?”
Gerard shrugged. “Why not? I meant him to have a decent enough kind of life here, as far as that’s possible. He just had to relax and get comfortable.”
“You’re a scary kind of bastard,” Cowley said finally, after wondering if he would get away with it: but Gerard only raised his head from his hands and looked at Cowley as if wondering. “You know that?”
“I saw Richard in the dorms at the arena,” Gerard said, without answering. “I was doing a tour with a bunch of the governor’s people. That was two years ago. I saw him sitting on one of the bunks, watching us pass through – I don’t think he saw us, all he saw was his jailers. He looked…” Gerard’s voice trailed off. After a moment, without seeming to realise there had been a gap, he said “Fearless.”
“Nobody’s that fearless,” Cowley said.
Gerard’s smile was a dry, cold grimace. “Richard is.” The expression on his face was naked: Cowley looked away.
“God save us,” he muttered.
“Too late,” Gerard said.
End
The final part of The Games, “End Game”, begins tomorrow...
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