brash

pg-13 | no warnings apply

What he remembers most -

(empty chamber, click click click)

- people cracking jokes. They see, now, why he usually lets his partner shoot the bad guys. There's a budget for bullets, Bobby; maybe the alliteration is supposed to make it funny.

The paperwork is easy.

She's been in Deakins's office for almost half an hour now, which has him mildly worried. How long does it really take to tell him that she found the evidence, that it would have been an open and shut case? There are hand gestures and the occasional raised voice and it's all quite perplexing.

He's busy dotting some i's and crossing some t's, so he misses her leaving the office. He looks up and Carver has taken her place.

Signing on fifty different lines and she plops down at her desk. She pulls hand lotion out of her drawer, so she must have gone to the restroom. She doesn't meet his eyes, so something must be wrong.

"He wasn't the guy."

(coughing up blood, body twitching)

"That's impossible."

"No, it's actually very possible, Bobby." She pinches the bridge of her nose and leans back in her chair. "DNA results just got back. He's not the guy."

He slides the cap off his pen, rolls it between his fingers. "That just proves that he didn't rape the girls. It's - "

"Oh, God, Bobby, come off it."

Dark circles under her eyes, cheeks reddened from emotion or exertion, but what strikes him the most is the force of her stare. There's anger behind it, and not the usual irritation that results when he's done something to piss her off. No, this is full-blown rage.

"Deakins thought you were wrong," she continues. "The FBI thought you were wrong. I thought you were wrong, but no, you didn't listen to any of us."

"The evidence - "

"Don't." She holds up her hand, sighs heavily. "This isn't even the first time. It's not the first time that your . . . theories have killed a man."

"I was just following the evidence."

(beer bottle in his hand, shattered when he fell)

He sounds like a broken record, even to himself. She rests her head against her fist, like a smaller, more upset version of the Rodin statue.

"A . . . a, a, an accomplice. He could have had an accomplice."

As usual, she's blunt: "I don't think we're going to be able to save your career this time."

(fin.)