2010-08-17: Repercussions

Starring:

Laurie3_V5icon.pngMaggie_V5icon.png

With appearances by: Charlie Sales, Sergeant Gartland, and Jocelyn

Date: August 17th, 2010

Summary:

For most people, there are consequences to every action; and when Maggie doesn't quite let them slide…


"Repercussions"

Metropolitan Correctional Center

New York City

Reporters, much like cockroaches, can survive anything. Similarly, the moment you see one, it is inevitable that you will find several more before the end. In cases such as the arrest of a suspect so early on the Schaffer Copycat crime, the question is not if the press will show up but when and why haven't we seen them sooner. To answer all of those questions — and ask some of their own — a mass of media-minded individuals has gathered outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, needling those going in and out for anything that walks, talks, or smells like scoop. Doggedly, a couple have wheedled their way closer to the front doors — one exception perhaps having to do with that particular reporter's generously forgotten shirt buttons and train of red curls — and from these is given the signal as soon as Sergeant Gartland and his handcuffed prize come into sight on the other side of the lobby.

Proceedings, and insistent outdoor guards, keep the microphones at bay only so far. And it's not as though the Sergeant is exactly camera-shy. Making a good grip on Sales' shoulder, he squares his own importantly to walk into the haystack of questioners, his own hand raised with affected impatience as soon as he's bombarded. "You'll hear everything when it's time…" he recites, playing tough and coy to the first line of cameras. Even Sales has a few words and microphones pushed into his face.

On the tail of this little cat and mouse game for information, it's easy to float on by, and that's how Laurie plays it. Identification badge turned over to the staring Front Lobby Officer, he goes virtually unnoticed about the perimeter of the press and pressed. Only a red head turns minutely to watch the tall meandering form of the blond, orange-wearing man as he walks the sidewalk around the edge of the expansive prison opening before the public parking beyond.

Maggie isn't immune to the press-storm. The gold glint of her badge stands out like a homing beacon, after all, against her black clothes. When, eventually, she appears and skirts through the lobby trying to near the Sergeant and their detainee, a round of microphones and questions are directed at this new, blonde authority of lesser rank than the man they've tried to corner already — but if they were hoping for her to be chattier, they'll be disappointed. Unwilling to share anything at all just yet, her only words to the press are apologies for just that. She leans toward Gartland to murmur a few words, and reaches once again for Sales. If he can keep the hordes at bay, she can take him out of here.

So it is that Charlie Sales is marched out of the federal prison much the same way he was marched out of the room with Earl Schaffer: by Maggie, in a stoic trek with a tight and very careful grip. The dull parking lot is the first destination; the second, the closely dark blue unmarked car that is to be his ride to the police station. And until he gets there, Maggie's attention is singular.

It seems awfully backwards, escorting a confessed murderer out of prison, but some means to an end have strange beginnings.

Relieved of the dedication needed to march the newly arrested criminal out — but photographed with him plenty of times — the Sergeant does well in his part to occupy the press. Once Sales is away from the crowd, the decorated officer declares that he will satisfy a couple of questions. The mob of people wiggles off to the side for an impromptu set-up with the authority. Tailing just behind Maggie, herself, Jocelyn Danvers does not so much escape as burden herself with standing beside the officer to be righteously sure that case details are not dropped in a way to damage the proceedings.

This leaves the only free walking individuals — factoring out the less than free suspect — as the ones who entered into this endeavor originally. Passing beyond the tall prison wire fences and the occasional patrol to the parking lot, Laurie has already become neighbor to the car, his hand resting along its dark top. Facing opposite the vehicle's front, he can watch Maggie approach while also twisting in to pull the door handle and offer her the path of least resistance between man in custody and where he'll be sitting to travel to processing.

The car unlocks on the way thanks to the keys that find their way into the detective's hand, and the freed path is welcome. Maggie's glance to Laurie is appreciative for that, if hardened by the events of the immediate past.

The suspect is too quiet, really — like he's scared to say anything at all. His compliance bucks slightly when he's meant to get in the car and he freezes. "You're going to have to get in," the detective tells him and tries to push him down toward the seat; she's not violent about it, her hand serves as a firm guide, but he throws his shoulder back — he can do it himself — and gets in begrudgingly. "Don't I get my rights— "

"There's time for that later." Maggie buckles the handcuffed man in backseat door is slammed and locked. The second he's secure — and she's sure of it — she turns to the consultant, stern-faced, to ask, adamant for an answer: "What was that in there?" Immediately, she brings a hand up as if to pre-emptively slow his answer; covering her bases and just maybe saving time, there is nothing annoyed about the way she makes the addendum of, "Other than something."

Hands both resting now on the car, one remaining on the top and the other wrapped about the top edge of the car door as he keeps it open, Laurie lets the vehicle take some of his weight as he leans to exactly observe the proceedings. A soft chuckle, if anything, for the handling is still five shades of opposite from the situation's serious make-up. And that of his partner's insistence. When the safety rest of the door is whipped away from him, Laurie's hands raise defensively away from their vanished former perch and then fall more leisurely. He was going to give no answer that her hand has to stop, but he eyes it critically anyway.

About the only thing he does: he's more settled on glancing out over the questionably viewable landscape of the prison walls. When, finally, she gets a shrug, it's reflected in the tug of his mouth down, wrinkling under his nose. Ehh it all says. Though what he does is: "Private."

Before Maggie can be rightfully angry, she goes through a different stage. On Laurie's simple, ambiguous answer, her head cants to one side and a frown tightens her mouth, bright eyes widen, and he is given a somewhat piteous little regretful look, so very fleeting before it all flattens out.

"You can't just— " This rare heated statement is cut off, but only so that Maggie can step completely into Laurie's personal space — the reasoning of which makes itself known a moment later: the switch to intense low voice, kept to quieter tones more out of hearing range for their potential eavesdropper in the very nearby backseat. "You cannot— " she sets in slower, but no less resolute, " — take timeouts with an inmate in federal prison and raise alarms. If what business you wanted with Schaffer was private, it was personal, and that means you had no right. Not today. If it had gone on any longer in there— "

"What?" Light, yet challenging: low only to match her, there is no respect for the distance or the privacy she's attempted to create. "You would've what, Detective Powers?" And less for the tone she created, as his rises to become the wry side of cheeky, "Yelled some more~?" Rebellious to the confrontation she's initiated, he widens the space between them, rolling to the side of the car to all-out lounge against its support. In that well-practiced sign of aloofness, he lays one arm across his chest, the other bringing his hand under his nose, thumb and folded fingers rubbing against nostrils then dropping away. "Anyway, I had it under control."

A rationale considered to be enough as far as arguments go. But incase Powers needs some further indication of completeness, his hands just as soon spread, fingers splayed openly, to brace shoulder-width on either side. "So." There it is.

After staring at Laurie a moment, Maggie doesn't return fire with the same anger she started with; her adamancy is still distinctly present, but her words pull back on the scale. Not to be confused with retreat. They slow down. Iron out. "I'm sure you did," she replies slowly. No sarcasm — no cynicism. Only an honest statement of belief. That said … it's not quite the point, is it.

She moves in to rest an arm atop the warm roof of her car, though there is nothing especially restful about her pose. Her other hand, with its car keys, plants on her hip knuckles first. "…But it was over in there." In there cues a vague flicker, a passing thought that causes some fleeting unease across Maggie's face. "By doing your own thing behind closed doors…" Still, that slow voice, soft on the ear but firm on meaning. "… the same as using the wrong IDs. To make false pretenses. It can cause the kind of trouble that runs the risk of misrepresenting the people you came in with. The police department. The district attorney's office. And when that happens— …" Lips press her lips together, completely stopping herself; instead, taking a sudden turn into kinder-spoken territory, she says, "You just have to consider that certain things have repercussions for people other than yourself."

At Maggie's unease, Laurie presses in. With his hand returning to the car roof, they are truly standing opposite one another. That thought, said on and off her face, finds challenge in him. Not spoken; his mouth has been a controlled closed line throughout. But IDs has his head tilting in reaction towards her — did I hear that right? — and a single eyebrow creating a raised point. "Oh," in false revelation, "Oh, the IDs, right. That you were there to stop me from causing trouble with." His hand unoccupied by the car draws a line in the air near her feet, staying stabbed there in front of her when he continues, "It isn't fun, then, unless you're allowed in for the ride?" No room for answer as his weight shifts deliberately, "Do my methods bother you until such time as it's convenient for you to use them…?"

Though he complies not so well with her low volume for this private matter, his tone remains less firm than hers, less demanding. And in that, more sarcastic. For all her dip to kindness, she gets only a shake of his head: short and uncaring. "You say it like I don't know any better," the finger transforms into a hand, open, drifting off to the side with the same lack of commitment with which he speaks, "Rather than am just ignoring it."

Maggie shakes her head no, and stands her ground. Though her head turns slightly after one of those shakes, away from Laurie's various statements, she looks up the small increment at him with her steadfast stare all the while. More than anything, it's his carelessness that provokes a darker curve of her brows. Yet for all the conflict, hers isn't a voice of someone in argument. "No, Miles… I know you do," she says; again, slowly. "That's the point. You ignore consequences," she goes on without particular condemnation despite the matter at hand, "and in the moment — you make things easy…" Her stare breaks in order to glance down, partially masking a small struggle of sorts. "Sometimes you make it too easy… to make the rules."

The detective's hand presses atop the roof of the car containing the waiting suspect as if to push off of it any second. She doesn't; instead, there's a slow intake of breath, steadying to the fact that she's gone too far to turn back. So, the revelation: "But I'm not talking… about what I think."

Up goes the detective's gaze to Laurie's, meeting it with a new searching and slightly wary quality behind a demeanour that toughens past it. Toughened on the outside, but her voice quiets further, finds that kinder tone again. "When you do something like that — when you do that in front of people like the Sergeant… I mean we couldn't have gotten this far in the case so far or as effectively without you," she detours into appreciation before getting back on track, though it seems very much like pulling teeth — forcing out a truth. "Probably your reckless move today won't matter. Sometimes, though… sometimes with you… the department counts black marks more than gold stars…" All right; perhaps not the full extent of the truth.

Nothing rewarding for a search here; Laurie's brazen disconcern allows his face to remain impassive, until he means to exhale a soft laugh. Mirthless— it borders on disappointment. Bitterness curls his mouth when he wets his lips, then it too is gone. With a soft patter, his fingers play against the hard top of the car, idle, but a sort of alert to the handcuffed passenger inside to whom he spares a glance more than Maggie. "I," he pauses, only to toy with not saying anything at all. The single word hovers very personally alone, perhaps that goading him to continue. "Am well aware of the department's views. And the FBI. The general public," From atop the car, his one hand joins the other in wiggling all his fingers about — must be 'the public' — "Earl Schaffer's," His whole head joins the glance towards there, "Even his." That's the quiet man slowly roasting in the shut car.

Gearing up to his point, the consultant instead veers into another pause, this one home to a sigh as he works around words not allowed out towards those meant. Or, at least, those planned: "And maybe my point— " But only maybe, inviting interpretation, "Detective Powers, is that you should be. Talking about what you think." His tongue navigates the inside of his cheek; he's having no trouble speaking the words, calm and impersonal as ever — only in deciding to say anything at all.

"Complain to me." Firm, strange; "I deserve it." His weight comes off the car, and he balances amidst raising a hand, palm down yet all fingers pointing, to the crowd behind them, the festering mess of law enforcement and reporters. A red head looking their way while Laurie finally looks at Maggie, "But don't do it for them." Exasperation finally rises, cutting short his gaze on her; he moves off, away just by a few steps from the car. The hand that was there goes to indicate Sales and then to his belt, "You shouldn't keep your guest waiting." Dismissed.

Dismissed … but not quite willing to remain silent. No, Maggie steps aside, away from the car, her tensed hand on the roof only sliding off, and moves around to her door prepared to continue the trek to the station, but her figure only blocks the space once it's opened. From there, after a glance to the suspect in the car, checking in on him, and then to the circus of press and authorities — to which she is frankly uninterested — a steady gaze is leveled on Laurie again. It narrows, faintly, before returning to its wide open stare that manages, uncontrived, to seem knowing. Calmly — informative, without an ounce of hostility — she says, "I wasn't complaining… for them, Miles. I was concerned… for you."

The detective ducks to climb into the car, shutting the door as she goes.

He returns her gaze, unmoved, squinting a little as if the sun were posed behind her. She speaks — and the knowing passes between them. So blatantly unsurprised by this information, he might even be further exasperated, except for the way his face clears when she's gone, leaving only his eyes to narrow. Not against the light, but some thought of his own. Yeah the way his lower lips pulls up seems to say as his expectations are matched by reality, jaw tightening against a released mutter, "… that's even worse."

For the last time, he spreads his hand onto the car roof. Now, to give it a two pat send-off before he turns heels away.

(END)

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