Partners

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Hopper looked up from the papers and held up the murder book. “None of this makes any sense, what does this have to do with an unsolved case that my dad worked on?”

Chad met his gaze with a sigh. “Gee, and I wonder why I handed those over to you,” he said sarcastically. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t need you.”

“Why’d you even switch the prints if you knew you weren’t going to actually let me go to jail?” Hopper demanded.

Chad snorted. “Because I don’t like you.”

“Okay, you know what? I-”

“Save it, Hopper – you’re in this whether you like it or not.” He sighed as his phone began to ring, but after one glance at the display Chad turned it off. The last thing he needed right now was to field a call from Andrea. Leaning over the table, he tapped the picture of the murdered woman. “Don’t you have any of your dad’s old case files? He might have something on this girl.” His phone rang again, and he silenced the ringer without even looking.

Hopper frowned down at the picture thoughtfully. “Mom might still have some of his stuff.”

“Then why don’t we pay her a visit instead of just waiting around to be arrested?” Chad signaled the waitress for the check and paid, glancing out the windows of the diner at a patrol car slowing down to enter the parking lot. “Let’s go…. I have no particular urge to see how I’d look in an orange jumpsuit.”

After driving to see his ex-partner’s mother – and witnessing the rather entertaining spectacle of Hopper getting smacked around by a rolled up newspaper in her hand – Chad endured thirty minutes of torture as she interrogated him about Rita and lectured them both about getting past their differences. He felt he’d lost his capacity for surprise when the files they needed turned up missing, but was relieved beyond measure to drop Hopper’s old lady back in her driveway – on the ride back, she’d started threatening to hit him alongside the head with a newspaper when he and Hopper had gotten into yet another argument. “I think she likes you…God knows why,” Hopper sighed, getting into the front passenger seat after checking his voicemail. “Look, Chad - we’re gonna have to split up if this is going to work. I think my CI might know where I can find someone to ID this girl.”

They argued some more about their next step, but finally agreed that Chad would drop the other man off at his house with the extra set of keys Chad kept for the SUV he’d hardly ever driven once he was using one of the LAPDs unmarked cars. “Don’t get it blown up or anything, Hopper,” Chad warned as he passed the keys over reluctantly.

“Nothing’s going to happen to your precious car, don’t worry,” Hopper said, frowning back at him. “I need to go back to my apartment and get something – someone called me about a package, and I think it might have to do with whatever’s going on today.”

“Then you can pick up your own car and leave mine there if you’re going to be stupid enough to go back there – I already told you that you were being watched.”

“Why do I get the feeling that the only reason you don’t want me to get arrested is because I can still be of use to you?” Hopper asked.

Chad smirked as he put the car in drive. “You’re finally learning, Hopper.”


_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Andrea ground her teeth in frustration as her call went to voicemail - again – and tossed her phone into the passenger seat of her Jeep. Where was he? She drove into the parking deck by the 6th street SWAT office and grabbed up the packet of papers which had Steve Romero’s name printed on the outside. After talking to Annie a little longer, they’d decided that it would be best if Annie went to make a statement to Chris Choi while she took the documents to Steve. The news about Hopper’s arrest had already gone wide, and now both he as well as Chad were missing – Faith remembered him wanting to gloat over his ex-partner’s downfall while she went for coffee, and although the county deputies assigned to escort Hopper to a holding cell hadn’t seen them leave, a few patrol officers recalled seeing them leave through one of the lower exits.

No one suspected Chad of anything….yet… but the popular opinion was that he’d taken Hopper somewhere to gain a measure of revenge and might have bitten off more than he could chew. She snorted at the thought of Hopper overpowering Chad – anyone who knew the big lieutenant knew that he certainly would never come out anywhere but on top if it came to a fistfight.

Checking her watch, Andrea jogged past the weapons cage and ignored the startled looks of the team members gathered around to pick up their equipment. She found Steve yelling at a few members of First Team for something, and waited anxiously for him to finish the dressing-down. “Andy? I don’t think Chad-”

“I need to talk to you,” Andrea interrupted, shoving the packet out towards him. “Is Faith here, too?”

Steve shook his head and motioned towards his office, placing a hand on Andrea’s back to lead her in. “She’s out looking for Shelten. What’s this about? Somehow I doubt this is just a social call, though Shauna’s been asking about you lately…” He closed the door behind them at her request and opened the envelope as she explained everything she knew. Steve’s expression went from surprised to furious, and back again before he finally settled on looking pissed. “So he’s decided to play Vigilante?” he shouted, standing up and pacing around the office angrily. “When I get my hands on that boy…should send out an APB…damn it!”

Andrea lifted one of the papers to show it to him. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to alert everyone just yet – we don’t know who’s connected to this.”

The other man rubbed his forehead. “I can’t let this slide, Andrea. I’ve got to report it.”

“What if we can get you some concrete proof and find Garza’s killer? Please, Steve – they’re just trying to uncover the truth, and they’re in danger.” Andrea eased her left hand up on the desk where he couldn’t miss seeing the engagement ring.

“Oh, don’t tell me that moron proposed to you and that you accepted,” Steve thundered. “I’ve never seen a more perfectly matched pair of idiots! You really do deserve each other!” She watched him silently and waited for him to calm down. Finally he ran out of steam and threw himself into his desk chair. “You’d better not tell me that you’re pregnant with twins.”

Andrea shook her head with a laugh. “Not that I’m aware of….” She trailed off, suddenly thinking of the way Maria Santos had been watching her and how she’d felt sick lately. “No,” she said more firmly. “There’s no way.”

Steve sat back, eyeing her distrustfully. “As long as you’re sure. Listen, Andy – you know I’m friends with that idiotic fiancé of yours but in our line of work…” he sighed. “Look, here’s what I’ll do. Any files you want to access, people you want to talk to? Go ahead. For the life of me, you can even borrow Faith if she’s willing to help. I can give you a grace period of 24 hours, but that’s all. Don’t come up to me, don’t call me, don’t even think about me until this time tomorrow. I’ll look the other way until then, when I’ll be reading these files and calling you in for a statement before I go track Chad down and arrest his ass for obstruction of justice. I’m sure Internal Affairs will be quite interested in his role in the arrest report mess.”

“I know that’s more than he deserves, under the circumstances.” Andrea came around the desk to give her friend a grateful hug. “Thank you, Steve.”

He smiled and gripped her upper arms affectionately. “You’ll get it sorted out between the two of you… if Shelten and Hopper stop trying to kill each other for five seconds, that is. I can’t promise anything, but as long as that dumbass has all his bases covered I’m prepared to put in a good word for him.”

Leaving the SWAT building with a lighter heart, she got in touch with Faith and started her second round of explanations only to find that Annie had already beaten her to the punch. Chad’s partner was just as angry as Steve had been, but promised to help all that she could. Andrea toyed with the idea of stopping in at one of the drugstores on her way to Jen’s house – Hopper wasn’t picking up and he might just try to contact his sister – but decided against it. She had enough to deal with right now.

When she got to the Mathis house, Andrea found the place in a mess and both Jen and Randall huddled together in the kitchen. “Jen? What’s going on?” she asked warily, noting the splinters on the door frame that indicated someone had forced their way in.

Both of them looked up at her with startled expressions, as if they hadn’t even noticed that she’d just walked in. “Nothing, there was just… nothing,” Jen said quickly. Randall nodded in confirmation, putting an arm around his wife quickly. Not quickly enough to hide the markings on his wrist, though…only zip ties made that kind of mark, Andrea thought.

“Has Brett been by here?” Andrea asked. Both of them tensed just enough to give her the real answer before they started to lie. “I know about everything – I need to talk to him though,” she gently, wanting to yell. “What happened? Was he here?”

Jen and Randall exchanged glances, and finally the truth started to come out. “There were… there were men. I thought they’d hurt the children,” Randall blurted. “They tied me up and took us to some sort of quarry, I don’t know where we were – I just didn’t want them to hurt the kids.”

“I came home and found the house like this,” Jen said. “I saw the video they left, and called Brett.” She explained about a briefcase full of money, and how Hopper had found some sort of documents inside it. “He had a package with a little hourglass inside it, and said he knew who the girl in the picture was.”

Andrea leaned forward. “Was Chad with him? Or maybe Rita?”

“Chad? Why would Chad be…? And Rita, you said? I don’t know why they’d be together,” Jen said with a confused look.

“He’s been seeing Rita for a while now,” Andrea said, surprised. She knew that Hopper wasn’t that close with his sister or his mom, but this was ridiculous.

“Rita? Rita Shelten? But isn’t she married to Chad?”

Oh, boy. “No, they’re divorced. I’m actually engaged to…you know what? That doesn’t really matter right now. Did your brother say where he was headed, by any chance?”

Jen wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt, which rode up enough on her arm to display a thick ring of purpling bruises. “I don’t know, he said something about Uncle Nick.”

Uncle Nick? Oh, yeah. His dad’s partner. “Thanks. Listen, you two might want to head somewhere safe – have you been contacted by Detectives Spivak and Choi yet?”

Randall nodded. “They came by early this morning, wanted us to come down to answer some questions about Brett. I said we’d come by later, but then…”

“Here’s what I want you to do – take the kids and go down to Metro. There’s an officer, Faith Hawkins, that you should talk to.” Andrea dug in her pocket for a piece of paper and scrawled a quick note on it. “Give this to her, and make sure she takes you to either Spivak or Choi for a statement. Tell her everything you told me, and-”

Jen interrupted with a frown. “We can’t, Andrea. If they find out we talked, then the kids-”

“Nobody can touch you as long as you’re there, Jen. You’ve got to trust me, okay? Faith will look after you.”

When she’d seen them to their car and watched Randall drive off, Andrea got back in her Jeep and headed towards the home she’d once shared with Chad. There was a chance he might have left something there which might give her some sort of clue about where he was. After dealing with an overexcited pitbull as soon as she opened the door, Andrea looked around carefully as Meredith followed at her heels. “Chad? It’s me again – Billy just called me; he says they found the body. ” Andrea sighed at the messages she found from Rita on the answering machine and wrote down the information before deleting the messages in case someone tried to break in and do the same thing she was doing. She couldn’t believe that Chad’s love for Rita when they’d still been married had led all of them to this, but Chad never did anything by halves and she suspected that Rita didn’t, either. Well, she had a few choice words for Rita the next time she saw her – from the looks of things, that conversation would be happening sooner rather than later, as long as she found Chad first.

Clipping a leash onto Meredith’s collar, Andrea let him lead her out to her Jeep. “Let’s go find your Dad,” she said, scratching behind his ears. He barked up at her happily as he jumped up into the car, and Andrea smiled as she put the key in the ignition. Her comment to Merry put her in mind of Steve’s earlier comment, and she dropped a hand to rub at her stomach thoughtfully. Maybe she’d stop at a drugstore after all.


tbc…
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