Page 63 of Justice for Francesca

Nodding, she qualified her answer. “I’m not really sure what that means in the long term, Ethan. After today… I need to pull myself from the case. I wanted to see this through to the end, but it’s just too muddled now. Seeing Tilly today was the final straw for me. I’ve shoved so many things into drawers labeled ‘Never Open’ that I’ve actually run out of drawers to shove shit into. I need to empty some of those drawers and deal with the contents. It’s going to be ugly and messy and painful, and I have no idea which drawer to even start with. All I do know is that it will be impossible to be objective and clearheaded to investigate and do that at the same time.”

He dropped a kiss to the top of her head. “Pain is like debt. There are methods to reduce it, so you need to be ready to take a long, hard look at what you owe and make a plan. You’re finally at the time when you’re ready to do this, and yes, it can seem overwhelming, but as long as the plan is manageable and you don’t bankrupt yourself in the process, you’ll make progress and feel better. Freer.

“So, like money issues, the first thing to do is to look at everything you’ve got that’s hurting you and categorize it. You talk about putting problems in drawers, so it sounds like you’ve already done this. You’ve isolated each issue so that you can deal with it one item at a time. However, you also need to look at the scale of what you’re dealing with and determine what order to deal with things. Do you want to prioritize most to least important? Greatest to least impact? Quickest or most time-consuming? Easy to most difficult? Greatest to lowest pain? Oldest to most recent? You can also go in reverse of any of those patterns.”

“You mentioned that you have drawers that are basically overflowing. That if you don’t deal with them, they’re going to block being able to prioritize or even deal with everyday shit. It sounds like you already know what method you need to do, at least for what you’re ready for right now, so what are the drawers youmustopen and deal with?”

She was silent for a long time. Opening up to people was something she had never done before. It made you vulnerable, and once that door was open, you could never really shut it again. However, it was time now to open that door to him.

He prodded at her. “There’s no judgment here, baby. Just open ears. Let my white knight help by at least knowing what the problems are. I can’t promise I won’t try to solve some things for you. We’ve discussed this—that’s just part of who I am, and it isn’t going to change anytime soon. If I can help the people Ilove, I will. If I can make their lives easier, I want to do that. That means things like pushing you to take breaks, eat, get enough sleep. I promise to try and restrain myself as much as possible from bulldozing and taking over on the more personal issues, including your job, because I know you’re an independent woman who doesn’t need me to save her.”

She leaned up on her elbow. “You love me?”

He blushed slightly at her question. “Caught that, did you?” His expression was wistful. “Not really the way I wanted to tell you, but now it’s out there in the universe. Yes, Francesca, I love you.” The hand that had been brushing back and forth across her shoulder was now brushing her hair back behind her ears. “I think I have for a long time. I’ve debated nonstop these past two years if letting you go was the right decision. My intentions at the time were noble, but I constantly worried you wouldn’t come back to me. Still, based on what you said just a short while ago about being ready now, it sounds like I made the right choice after all.”

Fingers drawing random patterns on his chest, she was silent again.

He prompted her, “What drawers feel like they’re about to burst open?”

“The case.”

“Understandable. Now. Let’s assess why it’s about to burst open.”

“Obviously, I need to take care of withdrawing first thing in the morning.” She paused. “Then there’s Michael. It still doesn’t make sense to me why I was allowed to stay on the case. Even more so now that he’s been bumped to a prime suspect, what with being missing. My family history complicates things, and I haven’t talked to him other than the night at Mila’s house, so…” Her voice trailed off.

“You need to talk to him for sure now.”

Nodding, she lay back down in the shelter of his arm. “I guess because the whole situation is so out of character, given the boy I grew up with. Being Irish twins at eleven months apart, we were closer to each other than we were to the triplets, who are five years older than me. He condemned our family’s reputation as much as I did, which is why it was so surprising that he did what he did in the academy.”

“Is it possible he didn’t do it?”

“It’s always possible.”

“If that’s true, then why did you jump to the conclusion that he did? Did you ever ask him about it?”

And there it was. Guilt. She hadn’t asked. She, like everyone else, had jumped to believe that he’d done it. “No. It’s weird. I was invited in to speak to the new cadets as a rookie officer about what to expect that no one can prepare you for and to answer questions they had about the first year on the job, so I was there when the whole thing broke. The instructors made it incredibly public. At the time, I assumed it was in an attempt to make an impression on the other cadets as to what would happen if they shamed the Blue Line. But now… Now that you’re asking me, I wonder at the timing. It seems so convenient that it happened on that particular day. Not just because of the topic but because it was me speaking, and he was my brother. It was like… like it was to shame me as well.”

“Why do you think that?”

Francesca pushed to go back to that day in her mind. A day she tried so hard to forget. “I remember feelings more than anything. Anger at him for adding to the family’s reputation. Shame at being a McCabe. It felt like everyone was looking at me… like they were expecting me to suddenly step out and confess how I was also part of the family legacy. In reality, the cadets were focused on Michael. There were looks of shockas if they couldn’t believe it. There were even protests of his innocence.”

“You mentioned the cadets specifically were focused on Michael. Seems odd that you only mention their focus. Who else was there?”

“The police chief. The everyday instructors. The cops who were there to arrest him.”

“Where was their focus?”

She closed her eyes, focusing on what she remembered actually seeing. “The instructors appeared appalled. Like they couldn’t believe it.” Her face scrunched up. “The officers looked nervous? Like they didn’t want to be there. They were definitely uncomfortable.”

“Arresting one of their own probably is. How did the chief react?”

Pondering the memory some more, she realized something that hadn’t registered with her that day, at least consciously. “The chief was sweating and very red in the face. The room was ice-cold though. I remember because I never took my coat off that day, and it was my winter coat. The one I wore to crime scenes where I knew I was going to be outdoors for a while.

“And he was loud. Our chief was never a screamer. In fact, the quieter he got, the worse off people knew they were.” She opened her eyes to look at Tripoli. “Do you think it’s possible he was set up? If that’s true, based on how people were acting, especially the chief, then he must have been in on it.”

“Given what you’re telling me? It definitely sounds like a possibility. Who would want to do that though? Are officers judgmental about connections a person might have? Not very reassuring,” he murmured.

“Officers are people too. They hold the same prejudices that any other person might hold. You’d think they’d be less prone to do so, given who they’ve sworn to protect and what they’vesworn to do, but people are irrational and inconsistent. There are the normal petty jealousies and grudges, just like any other job. By all accounts, Michael was top of his class and held all kinds of class records in shooting and test scores, and he was likely fast-tracking to a department of his choice the minute he graduated. I’m sure there were people who were resentful, but that’s hardly a reason to set someone up on a drug bust.”

---