A Saint and A Sinner Ch. 06-07

Chapter Six

He was being called on the carpet. Again. He heaved a huge sigh of disgust. The cost of doing this job and doing it the way it was supposed to be done meant pushing limits, pissing people off at times and at others, bending the rules just a bit.

He tried to smile at Michelle, to offer a little comfort. There wasn't any reason that she should be there. He was the one that had decided to not call in the crime scene guys right away. He didn't follow procedure. He was primary, his decision so he should take the fall, not her.

The envelope had hit him hard. He should have expected it. Someone who was sick enough to leave something as grisly as the bodies, smart enough to cover himself with the lack of evidence, he should have known that he was going to need the extra stimulation and bring Nick into the game. He was going to be used as a pawn, a game piece that was expendable though useful. The killer wanted to make the police force look like fools, wanted to make him look like an incompetent idiot, and he was doing a good job of it.

He shifted uncomfortably in the stiff chair in the waiting room outside the Sheriff's office drawing a look of sympathy from Louise. He didn't want sympathy; he wanted the hell out of there and the license to do his job the way he saw fit. He wasn't used to having his methods and motives questioned. He'd always done things the way he'd seen fit and gotten the job done. It was the way he worked.

Michelle put her small hand on his forearm and squeezed slightly, drawing his attention back to her.

"What can he do? I mean, it isn't like your name isn't out on the air, the news people know who is running the investigation. He had the victim's property; her driver's license, door keys. Why wouldn't he do something like this?" She was running thoughts, just talking because it helped her calm down. She knew she was on her way back to a uniform and disgrace.

Nick took her hand in his, and caught her eye, making sure she understood what he said. "No matter what is said in there, you were just following my orders, okay? That's all. Don't try to stand up for me or take any blame. You did what I told you to do."

She nodded unhappily. She didn't like it at all. She didn't want to feel like this. She had done what he ordered doing, mostly because what he wanted done was done the way she would have done it herself. He asked, he didn't order. He suggested. And she was learning from him, learning a lot.

She could understand his wanting to go through an apartment himself instead of seeing second hand through crime scene photos. Why would getting personal property after it had been covered in print powder, lasered, and pawed through by God knows how many other people be better than seeing it firsthand? Her father always said that a good cop knew his people, his area, and knew what was right and wrong. How was it wrong to want to know the victim of a homicide as personally as they could so that they could understand why a killer would take her?

She was still thinking things through when Louise got up and opened the Sheriff's outer office door, waving them in. She gave Nick's arm a small pat as he walked by, not caring if her boss saw her do it. Nicky was a good cop and a good boy in her book. Not many people cared enough anymore to do the things that he did. Not many people cared enough to want to help an old woman when she needed help. He did. And she would tell the Sheriff so as soon as he had a second for her, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

Louise closed the door behind them with a bang. Nick looked around the room. He was as uncomfortable in this room as he had been in the waiting area.

The Sheriff's inner sanctum had changed a lot over the past year. Old football and bowling trophies had been taken down and stored away, pictures taken with 'regular' people replaced by those taken with the Governor and the Mayor. Special citations reframed from cheap black to polished wood and rehung against newly painted walls. The old comfortable chairs were gone, replaced by three that were new smelling, stiff leather. They were a trifle too low, leaving the person sitting in them feeling disadvantaged in their campaign with the Sheriff. The colors had even changed, the tan, brown and gray metal replaced with burgundy and green, trimmed in dark old wood.

It displayed nothing of the cop and everything of the politician, from the new American and Michigan flags in the corner to the expensive leather blotter that was the only thing on the Sheriff's desk beside his nameplate and a phone that had more buttons than Nick's stereo.

Sheriff Williams was standing behind his desk, hands clasped at his back. He looked as rugged and unmoving as the vehicle he was nicknamed after. He didn't offer them seats, didn't offer his usual bluff and toothy smile. His demeanor was grave, his attitude that of the disapproving elected official. He eyed them both, trying to put Nick in his place once more.

Nick stared right back, refusing to be cowed by a politician. He stood erect, but not at attention, hands sliding casually into the pockets of his dress pants.

Beside him, Michelle was tense, her body almost brittle in its posture. He wished that he could reach out and touch her, to tell her not to worry. She had a long and illustrious career waiting for her. She would make detective one way or another no matter what happened today. She was just too good a cop not to.

Michelle felt the Sheriff's mean little eyes roam over her like invading ants and resented it. She tried desperately to keep her feelings hidden; she disliked this man and had since she had started working here. He never said or did anything that was disrespectful to her, but she felt the disrespect anyway. She knew he resented her, resented having to open up his station to women, even though there was another woman officer who had been hired before her. She represented change, and not in any way that he would consider good.

Williams cleared his throat, the sound gruff and loud in the stillness of the office. Before he could say anything, Nick jumped in; feeling first shot was best shot.

"Sheriff, I'm not sure why you've called us in here."

The sheriff laughed, the sound sharp and staccato and disbelieving. "Well, for one, you went to a victim's apartment and didn't inform anyone of that fact, endangering both yourself and Miss Parsons."

"It's Deputy Parsons, Sheriff," Michelle could have shoved her fist in her mouth the instant she heard what she said.

"Yes, well, for now it is."

Score one for the sheriff.

"You could have contaminated the scene. Deputy Parsons is not trained to collect evidence, or to distance herself from that same evidence to prevent inadvertent contamination." He held up his fingers as if counting out the points. "Finally, you went over my head and didn't keep me informed on a serial murder investigation."

Nick couldn't help himself, he rolled his eyes and scoffed earning a hard look from the Sheriff.

"So which pissed you off more, Sheriff? The fact that we didn't tell you that we had an ID or that you missed out on a photo op." His career was gone; he would be washing rear bumpers at the carwash on Main Street before the afternoon was over.

Williams face turned beet red, a very scary shade for a human being. Michelle stood there silently, amazed beyond shock that steam wasn't streaming out of his ears. Even more amazed that Nick had been brazen enough to say what had been firmly entrenched in her own mind. She smacked him on the hip with the back of her hand and gave him a disgusted look, told him with her eyes to stop being confrontational. He gave her an innocent look that wouldn't have fooled a blind man.

"Are you saying that you think I care more about publicity than this case and what is best for my COUNTY?" The sheriff's voice rose slowly as he spoke until he was almost shouting.

"No, Sheriff, I would never say that." He might think it though and often did. "I'm saying that this is the very first break we have had in a case where the only thing we have had to go on are two nameless bodies and one trace fiber that could possibly have come from a high end piece of wool fabric. We don't even know if that fabric was a pair of pants or somebody's couch. We got the ID and I decided to run with it."

He wasn't apologizing for doing his job. He refused to do that. He'd give up his badge and his gun first. He'd soap bumpers before he did that.

"Sheriff, our subject has decided to pit himself against Detective Saint," Michelle butted in, sensing the beginning of another outburst. "He sent Detective Saint a letter to the house of victim two, Sheri Meridian." She purposefully ignored Nick's outraged look, instead speaking only to the Sheriff.

"What?" Williams voice was barely above a squeak.

"The letter is running through the lab right now. We felt it prudent to have it at least x-rayed, and the envelope fingerprinted before anyone decided to open it." She could feel the tension coming off of Nick now and barely managed not to jump when she felt him pinch the back of her forearm. "That's where we were when you paged us to come in here, sir."

"Have the lab guys found anything else at the apartment?" He spoke to her now and completely ignore Nick's presence in the room.

"They are still going through the apartment."

Nick's voice was low and dangerously calm. Michelle knew he was mentally counting to ten. And then continuing on, if the waves of anger she could feel radiating off of him were anything to go by.

Shit. Either way she had a feeling she was back in uniform. Nick had told her to keep quiet. She had disobeyed him; he was a superior officer, her superior officer. If he was taken off the case, she was back in uniform too, none of the other detectives would want to work with her. Her heart sank. All she wanted was to keep him from going for the Sheriff's throat. She knew he hated the politics of the place. He knew as well as she did that the Sheriff would back him as long as he was getting somewhere, but the instant the public was in an up roar, Nick would take the fall. Not the Sheriff. Either way the case went, the Sheriff came out smelling like roses.

And she was now in it all the way to her neck. "Someone had trashed the victim's apartment pretty thoroughly, sir, before we got there. Probably the subject. It could take a while to find anything pertinent."

The Sheriff calmed down and sat behind his desk, wiping off his forehead with a snowy white handkerchief that he pulled out of one of his desk drawers. He didn't speak, but stared down at his desk in thought. The tension in the room was dark with undercurrent, rank with the things being left unsaid between the two men.

Williams would like to see Nick fail. Well, as long as it didn't do anything to disturb his own rosy future. He had hired Nick as a way to let the county know he wasn't afraid to call in the big dogs to protect his own. He thought that he could control the man and use his name and reputation to further his own. But Nick wasn't usable. He didn't want to be a pawn in someone else's chess game. He refused to be in front of the press, allowing others to do that for him.

Williams had thought that having him assigned to these murder cases would round things up quickly. Put a big name on a case that smelled like shit and watch the flowers grow. He'd been on it for months, nothing to show for it. Even he knew that if a murder wasn't solved in the first forty eight hours, the odds went lower every day until it turned into a cold case and was stored away. It happened all the time all over the good old US of A.

So as he saw it, he had two choices. He could take Nick off the case and put one of the other two detectives on it, neither one had any kind of experience working homicide. He could work it himself, but that would be political suicide if the case turned cold, and once again, he had never worked a homicide before either.

Or he could leave Nick on the case and let the boy run with it. If he did manage to get the bad guy, Williams could sneak in and suck up the political glory of having been the man to put Nick on the case. If he didn't, he could feed Nicholas Saint to the hounds of hell that were the press, and he still wouldn't look too bad in the deal.

"Okay, Nicky. I'm going to let you stay on the case, but," and he held up on short, stubby finger to make a point. "I want you to make sure that I am fully informed of all developments." He smiled at a sudden thought of genius. "I think that Deputy Parsons here would make an excellent go between for us." He ignored Michelle's gasp of protest and picked up the phone, making sure the impression that they were dismissed and that was all he had to say was loud and clear.

Nick grabbed Michelle's arm, dragging her out of the office while she was trying to think of some way to get out of the job. She felt like a snitch, a tattle tale that ran to the boss whenever anyone stepped a toe out of line.

Nick didn't stop moving until they were back in his office with the door closed. He stood there for a minute, not saying anything, just looking out the window at the trees. Then he turned and slammed his hand into the wall, leaving a beautiful fist size impression.

"God DAMMIT, that hurt," he yelped, clutching his throbbing fist to his stomach.

Michelle watched in amazement as he shook his hand, swore a blue streak and kicked over his trashcan. She made herself small, not wanting him to remember she was there until he finished with his tantrum.

He knew she was there. He always knew when she was around. It was like a sixth sense, a feeling, or maybe he was just thinking with his dick. He didn't know. But he was mad, he was mad at her, he was furious with the sheriff. But he was even more pissed off at himself. Today had started bad and had gone sliding downhill into the shit heap pretty damn fast. And he really had no one else to blame but himself. He knew better than to not follow departmental procedure about securing a potential crime scene. He knew better than to let Lisha and her quirks bug him. And he really knew better than to piss off the brass.

He refused to apologize for telling the truth. He just wished he had stated it in a more tactful manner. He turned around, still flexing his sore knuckles and saw Michelle still standing by the door. She had the flight or fight look in her eyes; he had seen it plenty in his own eyes to recognize it.

"Sorry."

The word surprised her, then pissed her off. Sorry? He was telling her he was sorry? "For what?" The tone of her voice left no doubt that she had decided to fight. "For scaring the bloody hell out of me? For acting like an ass and battering the damned wall?" She stalked him around the tiny office, one finger poking into his chest. "For acting like a God damn idiot and trying to get yourself fired? What exactly are you sorry about, Nick?"

Nick pushed her finger from his chest. He was backed into a corner, literally and figuratively, and he didn't like it one bit. He tried to take a step forward, to walk around her, but she stopped him, hitting him with the heel of her hand flat and hard into his chest and knocking him backwards.

"Tell me, Nick." She was so mad that she couldn't scream at him. "Are you sorry that now I have to run to the Sheriff every time you get a lead? Are you sorry that I have to deal with that slimy toad of a man just because you couldn't hold your temper?"

He grabbed her hand and quickly reversed their positions by means of pure brute strength. She was now backed into the corner and he was standing over her, staring down into her flushed angry face. Her eyes were shooting green sparks at him, her hair mussed and coming loose from their march back to his office. She was, as the quote goes, beautiful when she was angry. He did the one thing he knew would get her to shut her luscious mouth. He covered it with his own.

"Dammit, Michelle," he muttered and kissed her.

His lips nibbled on hers, teased, coaxed. He slowly deepened the kiss as he felt her respond, felt her hands come up his chest to rest at his neck, one sliding into the thickness of his hair to pull him closer. He needed no further invitation and opened her mouth with his own, licking the inside of her bottom lip, loosing himself in the taste of her. His hands slid around her waist, pulling her closer to him, molding her slender body to his length.

God, she tasted like peppermint with a hint of coffee and a sweetness that was all her own. He couldn't get enough. All hint of play vanished in an instant and he was all demand, his mouth hot and hard on hers, his tongue thrusting deep, finding hers and mating with it.

He tore his mouth from hers, finding her ear, running his tongue around the soft rim before nipping at her earlobe. His voice was husky and deep, whispering to her of what she made him feel, of what he wanted to do to her, with her.

She was in the midst of erotic torture, backed against the wall, his hands stroking her body into a frenzy, his words stroking her nerve endings with fire. She wanted him now, had wanted him for a long time but had denied it with a finality that made giving in all that much sweeter. She felt his fingers in her hair, pulling out the clip, stroking through the long tangled tresses then pulling them back in his fist to give his lips access to her throat.

His hand slid down her back and over her hip, pulling at her leg, bringing it over his hip. His thigh slid between hers and he used it to lift her slightly so that he was supporting every gorgeous inch of her. He pulled at the tucked in end of her shirt, pulling it free so that his hand could slide under. Her skin was hot satin beneath his fingers, soft over firm muscles that seductively urged him to explore. She arched into his hand, desperately wanting him to touch more of her.

Her voice broke through the haze of need surrounding his brain. "Nick, stop." She pulled at his hair, forcing his head up. He looked like he was waking up, his eyes half closed and blinking in an effort to erase the fog he was in. She pushed him back, trembling hands tucking her shirt back in. "We can't do this, Nick."

He sank back until he was sitting on the edge of his desk and tried to catch his breath. His heart thudded in his ears, his breathing labored as if he had run five miles up hill. He couldn't believe she could be so cool, picking up the clip from the floor where he had dropped it and gathering her hair into a rope to twist up in the back.

She was right, they shouldn't do this. But he wanted to. No, it was past want with him. He needed to. They had worked together for most of seven days, separating only to make phone calls, or do some of the less interesting parts of police work, paperwork. She came to his house, ate with him. Hell, she had even crashed on his couch one night when they had worked too late and she was asleep on her feet.

And it wasn't just work. She was fun. She kidded with him, picked on him, scolded him. She had been willing to take care of him when he had been sick. She had stood in his face and yelled at him, one thing not too many men, much less women had the guts to do. And she had stood up for him despite what it might do to her own career. She was brave and caring and way too good for him.

Damn.

He closed his eyes against the truth that he wouldn't allow himself to believe. He'd been married once, thought that he had felt that all encompassing love that the poets rambled on about. She had been beautiful and fun. And spoiled and bitchy he found out later. She didn't like his long hours or sour moods. She wanted him home to take her out, to party with her, to show off. He was her very own police escort to take her to all the clubs and get her in with just one flash of his police badge. She couldn't understand that he couldn't and wouldn't do that, not for her or anyone.