Fic: The Business of Second Chances (1/3)
Aug. 21st, 2011 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thelibraniniquity posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tli_productionsTitle: The Business of Second Chances
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Summary: Five-0 is in pieces. The team regroups.
Characters: Steve, Chin, Danny, Jenna, Kono; appearances by and references to others, including OCs
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~24,000
Betas:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
explodedpen and wihluta
Spoilers: Through 1.24.
Warnings: Bad language, violence and minor character death. Implications of other Not Good Things.
Author's Notes: So this is my take on what happens after the s1 finale, and is sort of my wishlist for season 2. It is completely speculative - I'm completely spoiler free for season 2 and want to stay that way until 2.01 airs, so please no spoilers for s2 in comments.
Extra special sparkly thanks go towihluta who encouraged me to finish this, and to explodedpen for letting me use her as a sounding board at random times of day and night.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Two weeks and four days after he is arrested for Jameson's murder, Steve stands at the front gate of Oahu Community Correctional Center, wearing civilian clothes and masking a limp. He squints in the harsh sunlight and doesn't make eye contact with the guards as he walks out into a changed world.
o o o o o
The precinct is awash with activity, uniforms and detectives alike swarming everywhere, filling the spaces recently vacated by Kono Kalakaua, soon to be charged with conspiracy to commit theft among other related crimes, and Steve McGarrett, the man Chin has just arrested for Governor Jameson's murder.
He feels sick to his stomach just thinking about the sequence of events that led up to his arrival in Jameson's office, and what happened after. The dazed look of shock on McGarrett's face is not something he's going to forget any time soon.
From an interview room, a detective Chin doesn't recognise leads Kono by the elbow towards the holding cells. It's clear from the detective's posture that he believes the Kelly Curse has finally caught up to his young cousin, or that perhaps the dark side of the Governor's mandate for her task force has finally caught up with all of them. Its leader is a murderer, the rookie a thief, the haole has no reason to stay in a place he hates now with his daughter back on the other side of the country, and the stray has a place at HPD that is believed to be neither warranted nor deserved. Jenna is the only one to escape unscathed, but she has her own demons, and the night is still young.
Chin closes his eyes briefly, and heads for the Captain's office. The door is ajar, and the man who had given Chin his Lieutenant's badge only a few hours before looks surprised to see him again, so soon.
“Good work bringing McGarrett in,” is his opening parry.
Chin stands in front of the Captain's desk and folds his hands behind his back. “Who's taking the lead on the investigation?”
The Captain shakes his head. “Too soon to tell. HPD can claim jurisdiction having made the arrest, but the island's federal field offices are going to want in as well.”
Chin nods. “Give me the case.”
“That breaches every impartiality code there is, and a few besides,” the Captain says. He narrows his eyes and stares up at Chin. “Give me one good reason I should allow a former member of the Five-0 task force to investigate his former boss for murder.”
“This is your ticket back into the game. Call it payback, call it whatever you want, I don't care. But I need you.”
“How do you know you can trust me?”
“Because my old man did.”
“Lieutenant Kelly?” the Captain prompts.
Chin brings himself back into the moment. “He gave me the second chance that no one else did,” he says. “Not even HPD. If he's guilty, then I get absolution from associating with him.”
The Captain raises an eyebrow. “If he's guilty?”
“Innocent until proven guilty. That's another impartiality code around here, right?” Chin's taking pot shots now, but he doesn't care.
“Your loyalty,” the Captain begins, clearly choosing his words as carefully as Chin had, “is commendable. But I can't officially allow you anywhere near this case. Not unless you want to be the shortest serving detective in the precinct.”
Chin's jaw stiffens of its own accord.
“Even if I wanted to – which I don't,” the Captain continues, “I can't give you this case. Can't let you within a ten block radius.”
Chin gets it; of course he gets it. He was always a cop, even when he wasn't allowed to be. “Of course,” he says, and walks out of the office, through the precinct and straight out of the front door.
Danny is waiting for him on the sidewalk. There is a rant forming in his stance and expression and the way he draws up and out from himself when he sees Chin.
“Don't,” Chin tells him. When Danny's mouth opens, he places a hand on Danny's shoulder and pushes him in the direction of the Camaro, parked a little way behind them. “Not here.”
He pushes Danny into the passenger seat and takes the keys off him without thinking. Danny is obviously used to the routine, and takes the passenger side, tension and anger and a dozen other, nameless, things rolling off him in waves.
Then, without warning, he slumps forward. “This cannot be happening,” he mutters.
But it is.
Chin drives. A few minutes later he pulls up outside the Five-0 headquarters. “Without Steve, there is no Five-0.” Police and federal agents are still streaming in and out of the building, some carrying boxes and parts of tech, and from the relative safety of the car Chin and Danny watch them.
After a few minutes Chin sees someone push through the wall of law enforcement and step outside. It's Jenna; she's clutching a backpack and looks terrified, but she marches towards the Camaro and climbs into the back. No one seems to notice her, or if they do they've already written her off as irrelevant.
“Drive,” she tells Chin.
He does, and it takes less than a second to decide on a destination.
o o o o o
Steve spends the first night in a holding cell at HPD. There are two heavily armed guards outside his door, and likely another half dozen between them and the next one. The lights are harsh, and he can hear the distant hum of voices; cops and lawyers alike doubtless debating who gets first crack at the supposed murderer of the Governor.
The revelation of her betrayal is like an ongoing punch to the gut. He'd trusted her, taken her at face value even after he'd learned of her ties to Hiro Noshimuri. And she'd played him all along, like a marionette. He hadn't seen it because he hadn't wanted to, hadn't given himself the capacity to even consider her complicit in Wo Fat's plans. Whatever the hell they were.
Steve knows he didn't pull the trigger, or blow up Laura Hills, but a part of him knows he's guilty.
o o o o o
“First things first,” Chin says. “We need to make sure we're here for the right reasons.”
'Here' is his house, living room furniture pushed to one side and a makeshift conference area set up in the middle. Danny and Jenna stand around the coffee table, facing him.
“Steve McGarrett is a great many things.” Danny is the first to speak. “But a cold blooded murderer of a civilian, he is not.” Those last three words are directed at Chin, who knows he deserves them. He continues, soberly: “And besides, he told me once I wasn't as alone in this place as I thought. I owe it to him to return the favour.”
Chin looks at Jenna. The newcomer has none of the ties to Steve or Five-0 that the rest of them have; her only link to any of them is through Wo Fat and her fiancé's murder.
But she's nodding. “Danny's right. I mean, why would he kill the Governor? It doesn't make sense.”
“That's what we have to find out,” Chin says. He looks between his two remaining team mates in turn. “This is off the books, way off the reservation. Anyone outside this room finds out what we're up to, we'll probably end up in the same place as Steve.”
“What about Kono?” Jenna asks.
Chin closes his eyes briefly. “I don't know. Best case scenario, she loses her badge.”
Jenna's eyebrows climb. “And worst case scenario?”
“She loses her badge and her freedom,” Danny replies. “Presumably she's the only one HPD can tie to the ten million dollars otherwise we'd be down there as well.”
“We can't help her right now,” Chin tells Jenna. Much as it pains him to even think about it, it's the truth. “We have to focus on proving Steve's innocence.”
“Then we'd better get to work,” Jenna says. She reaches for her backpack and pulls out a laptop and a brown envelope, which she upends, and maybe a dozen flash drives spill out across the coffee table. It's far from the conference table and networked computers at Five-0, but it's better than nothing.
o o o o o
Kono leans against the wall of her holding cell, and wonders what would have happened if she'd turned down McGarrett's 'extra credit' assignment all those months ago. What would have happened if she'd taken up the offer of the coaching position at Coral Prince after she'd completed physical therapy on her knee.
What if, what if, what if. She made her decisions, all of them, on her own, and she can't bring herself to regret any of them.
Especially not the ten million dollars, and the memory of Chin collared to a bomb.
Kono closes her eyes, and thinks about the ocean.
o o o o o
While Jenna single-handedly turns the first floor of Chin's house into a war room, Rachel calls Danny. Chin hadn't been aware of all the details before, but overhearing half a conversation he manages to piece it together. He listens as Danny begs and pleads with Rachel to stay in Newark and let him still speak to Grace, tries to explain without devolving into an argument that he owes Steve more than anyone could ever know.
Chin fights back the sudden weight on his chest. He'd argued the same thing with Malia once, pushed her away as HPD bore down on him, and look where that had left him. He can't offer Danny the wisdom of experience, not only because their experiences were vastly different, but because Chin understands he still hasn't truly learned from his own actions. The details of Danny's situation complicate things even more. Chin isn't sure whether he's supposed to give Danny and Rachel's affair his blessing or disapproval, but more than that he knows he's better leaving it alone unless it becomes an issue.
He leaves Danny in the kitchen and joins Jenna in the living room. She's got the laptop set up, has connected it somehow to the Five-0 servers and is writing labels on the flash drives in minuscule handwriting. She looks up as Chin sits beside her on the couch.
“Your move next,” she says. “If we're going to investigate the Governor's murder on our own, we need physical evidence, right? Some kind of evidence, and I don't think they're exactly going to let us into the mansion, or into Steve's place, or -”
Chin agrees. “What can you access from here?”
Jenna frowns. “Everything I wiped from the main Five-0 servers when you and Danny told me to. I created back ups -” she indicates the flash drives, “- of everything I thought was important enough and deleted as I went. The evidence from Steve's dad's toolbox, proof that Laura Hills...” she breaks off again. “Laura Hills,” she says.
“There's our link to the Governor,” Chin realises. “She's who Steve's dad was investigating. Her, and her links to the Yakuza.”
“And Wo Fat.” Jenna's voice is low.
Chin tries to piece the evening back together. From standing in front of the Captain and accepting the Lieutenant's badge, to walking Steve out of the Governor's mansion it's all disjointed in his mind, like he'd been on autopilot. The outlines are blurred and all he remembers clearly is seeing Jameson's body, and Steve on the floor on the other side of her desk, dazed and disoriented, and -
“Steve's phone.” Chin looks at Jenna. “Steve's phone was on the desk in front of the Governor's body. No reason for it to be there -”
“Unless he was in a call with someone?” Jenna wonders.
“Or he was recording something,” Chin finishes the thought. “Like the Governor. What if he was trying to get her to confess?”
“Then the file would still be on there.”
“HPD bagged the phone.” Chin shakes his head. It's physical evidence and he couldn't access it even if the Captain was sympathetic to his situation. Which he already knows he's not.
But Jenna's already grinning. “Trick I learned from a friend at Langley,” she says. Her fingers start to fly over the keyboard. “Steve's cell is on a contract, right?”
“Of course.” Chin can't see where this is going.
“And he's...” She cocks her head to one side for a moment. “Paranoid?”
“What are you thinking?” Chin sits beside her on the couch so he can see the laptop's screen as well.
Jenna turns to grin at him. “Electronic backup, either on Five-0's servers -”
“Or somewhere else Steve has access to,” Chin finishes the thought. “Can you find it?”
“One way to find out.”
Chin relaxes all of a half-inch while Jenna works and hacks and breaks probably half a dozen cyber-security laws. While she's tracing Steve's electronic footprints, Danny comes through from the kitchen and perches on the arm of the couch on the other side of Jenna from Chin. His face is pinched and he looks tired.
“How is she?” Chin asks, not bothering to hide that he knows who Danny was talking to.
Danny shrugs and runs a hand through his hair. “Jet lagged. Staying at a motel.”
Chin chooses his next words carefully. “Is she coming back?”
“Not yet.” Danny makes a point of watching Jenna work for a few seconds. “What are you looking for?”
“Whatever Steve was using his cell phone for in the Governor's office,” Chin explains when it's clear that Jenna either hasn't heard a word being said, or is simply ignoring everything.
“So we're working on the basis she was dirty.” Danny huffs. “Well, crap.”
Something like that, but Chin keeps the thought to himself.
“Guys.” Jenna gestures at the laptop with clawed fingers and a frustrated expression. She looks from Chin to Danny and back again. “This could take a while.”
Chin reaches out and touches her shoulder lightly. “We'll get there,” he tells her. “Together.”
She doesn't look convinced, but she nods, and behind her Chin can see Danny do the same.
o o o o o
The following morning Steve is transferred to the correctional facility where the pre-trial inmates are housed. He knows this because he's sent a few dozen criminals there over the last eight months. He's informed that a JAG lawyer will meet him at the Center, and that the Navy has officially waived their right to detain him in a military facility, and the investigation will be conducted by HPD and not NCIS. It's all politics, and he can't bring himself to care.
HPD aren't gentle with him during the transfer, and Steve supposes he can't blame them. There's nothing worse than a soldier – or cop – going rogue, and for all her criminal ties, Jameson had been hugely popular with the public before Wo Fat had shot her.
He gets a brief glimpse of daylight between HPD and the prison truck and wonders what his team are doing, and whether they're safe – either from the Yakuza or the public's backlash.
o o o o o
Jameson's death blankets the news. The breakfast coverage alone is enough to make Chin nauseous. Anchors who only a week ago had been fawning over Lt. Commander McGarrett's latest take-down of a high ranking criminal were now gleefully discussing the details of his moral breakdown and utter betrayal – the amount of speculation really shouldn't be surprising given how very little had been released to the media in the first place. Laura Hills' death has been all but subsumed by Jameson's demise; Chin only hears her name mentioned once, already relegated to a footnote in this macabre saga.
“My mom called this morning,” Jenna tells him over coffee – from the wide-eyed looks she's been giving the mug in her hands, Chin suspects it isn't her first of the day. “She wants to know why the hell I'm still here.”
“What did you tell her?”
Jenna shrugs. “That I had something I needed to do. Something stronger than duty, or holding my not-mother-in-law's hand while she cries.”
Ohana. Chin blinks back the sudden swell of emotion.
“Oh, don't worry,” Jenna tells him, misinterpreting his expression. “I'm still officially on a leave of absence from the CIA. They won't come kicking in any doors for a while yet.”
Chin huffs, and Jenna winces. “Bad choice of words,” she decides. “Have you heard anything about Kono yet?”
“No, and I doubt I will. I don't have that many allies inside HPD.” Chin's not sure he even has that.
“You've got us.” Jenna offers him a wan smile.
To his surprise, Chin smiles back. “Yes, I do.”
Then his cell phone rings and breaks the moment. “Kelly.”
“Time to start working that new badge of yours, Lieutenant,” the Captain tells him. “Got a case.”
Chin blinks. “Okay...”
“Dead body at a private marina. Come by the precinct, I'll give you the details. You're going to need a partner.”
“Detective Danny Williams,” Chin says without hesitation.
“Yeah, that's what I thought.” Apparently the Captain's on the same page as him – although why there's a page in the first place Chin hasn't figured out yet.
“We'll be right in,” Chin says.
“See that you are.” The line goes dead.
“What was that about?” Jenna asks, frowning.
“I'm not sure.” Chin gulps down the rest of his coffee. “But I have to go. Are you going to be all right here on your own?”
“Sure.”
Chin's already thinking about public backlash and revenge attacks and everything he went through when IA took his badge off him before. “I mean it,” he says.
Jenna meets his gaze and holds it. “So do I,” she tells him. “I'll call Danny, let him know you're on your way.”
Chin doesn't bother with the questions, just nods and leaves to get his gun and badge.
Half an hour later Danny's waiting outside his apartment complex when Chin pulls up on his bike. His clothes are clean, but dishevelled, and though he's wearing aviator sunglasses Chin can see the exhaustion written all over him.
“This doesn't feel right,” he comments, leading Chin over to the Camaro.
Chin knows what Danny means. Logically he knows the roads and highways of Honolulu haven't changed in the last twenty-four hours, but it hasn't stopped him feeling like he's been traversing an alien landscape this morning. What had started with the news broadcasts had spilled over to the absence of morning traffic and the way everything seemed just slightly off-kilter.
The whole of Oahu is a crime scene, and Chin and Danny are guilty by association, regardless of action or context or whether Steve is actually guilty or innocent in the first place.
Chin knows better than to let it get to him. He still remembers the immediate aftermath of IA and the way he'd been afraid of leaving his house the first day without his badge. He also remembers the way he'd boxed all the fear and uncertainty into a small box marked 'Shit Happens' and left it somewhere in the recesses of his mind, only to be reopened in times of inebriation and total self-pity. He'd been innocent of the charges then, and he knows instinctively that Steve is innocent of the charges now.
Danny silently drives them to HPD, and Chin leads him through the swell of uniforms and detectives, all of them unsure what to do with the strangers in their midst. Most of them clear a path, like they're unwilling to come into direct contact with McGarrett's former pets, and there's an undercurrent of murmurs, but it's nothing that Chin hasn't learned to ignore already. He hopes Danny is capable of the same.
o o o o o
The first shank appears while Steve is still cuffed to the transfer officer. He twists and ducks as much as his restraints allow and snaps the sharpened toothbrush in half with his right ring and little fingers. The officer he is attached to whacks him in the side for his trouble, and the prisoner who had tried to stab him is tackled to the ground by a correctional officer, albeit inefficiently, cuffed and dragged away.
“I give it a week,” the HPD officer mutters, uncuffing himself from Steve and backing away.
“Ten days, tops,” another correctional officer replies. He shoves prison scrubs into Steve's arms, and Steve realises they are discussing his life expectancy.
He bites back the response that he's faced worse odds, and takes the instinctive reply – as well as his awareness of and reaction to the shank – as proof that he's physically recovered from the night before.
As long as he can keep himself mentally on his game, he thinks there's a chance he'll outlive the fledgling betting pool.
The prison scrubs chafe, and the full body inspection is deliberately degrading, but Steve once broke into, and then out of, a prison in Yugoslavia. He allows himself to be cuffed again and then led down a stark grey hallway to an interview room where he's told his lawyer will meet him.
Lieutenant Tamsin Aldershot looks barely old enough to enlist, let alone have a law degree and an officer's commission, but Steve is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Not that he has a choice in the matter. He's been arrested for the murder of a high-ranking civilian official – Steve thinks he should feel lucky the Navy didn't bypass JAG and have some really wet behind the ears public defender sent down here instead.
To her credit, Aldershot doesn't brim with optimism. “This doesn't look good for you, Commander,” are her opening words.
Steve stares at her.
“You've got motive, means and you were found holding the still-smoking gun,” the kid continues. “HPD forensics from both your house and person, and the Governor's mansion, are pending.” She folds her hands on the table between her and Steve, and leans forward. “Did you kill Governor Jameson?” she asks.
Steve blinks. His memories of last night are disjointed with blank spots where he's not used to having them. Every flash of the Go – Jameson's office is accompanied by disbelief and anger and the cold feeling that had appeared in his gut when he realised he'd been played from the start. “No,” he eventually says. It's the first time he's done more than confirm his name since Chin arrested him.
Aldershot studies his face for a moment. Then, apparently satisfied, she leans back in her chair. “Exoneration will go a long way towards salvaging your military career,” she says. “I'll see what I can do with HPD.”
She gathers up her things and leaves. As reassurances go, Steve's heard more convincing ones before, but just like Aldershot had apparently seen something in Steve's face, Steve thinks he saw something in the kid's face. The young lieutenant is on his side, at least for now.
A few minutes later Steve is escorted away from the interview room and toward the sounds of general population, all of whom take almost military stock of Steve as the room falls silent around him. His position – former position – at Five-0 will make him a highly appealing target to most, if not all, of the men in here and he unconsciously straightens his back and tightens his posture before moving through the crowd to find somewhere to sit.
He gets a lot of dirty looks, but more that are carefully guarded and even deliberately blank. On the far side of the room are the payphones and the inmates using them continue their conversations after giving Steve a cursory once-over. He has to concentrate to hear what they're saying, and thinks he recognises code words and phrases for monetary transactions.
He occupies himself for the rest of the afternoon classifying the inmates by gang affiliation and severity of crime based on what he remembers from Five-0 and HPD case files and the slivers of tattoos and other markings on exposed skin.
Steve knows that once he can figure out the correctional centre's internal hierarchy and social system then he stands a better chance of surviving.
He just doesn't know what he's surviving for.
o o o o o
The crime scene at the marina is being operated by a skeleton crew, none of whom look happy to see Chin and Danny.
The feeling is mostly mutual.
Chin doesn't recognise the woman in HPD forensics scrubs crouching over the dead body. She's not one of Max's team, nor one of the lab rats he's been introduced to through Kono's friend Charlie. That means she's either been flown in from one of the other islands or she's from the university, maybe putting her degree to practical use in the current emergency.
“What have you got?” he asks her.
She glances up at him. “Chinese male, mid to late-thirties with what looks to be two gunshot wounds to the chest; small calibre, nothing fancy. He's been dead maybe six hours, but he wasn't killed here.”
“Do we know who he is?” Danny asks. He kneels down beside the victim's head and peers downwards to the entry wounds.
The tech shakes her head. “No ID.”
“Any chance we can get fingerprints to run, maybe even dental?” Danny chances.
She shakes her head again. “Priority's Jameson's case. Everything else gets short shrift.”
Chin frowns slightly. She doesn't sound accusatory – she doesn't sound particularly anything, which is... given the last twenty-four hours it's unexpected to say the least. He's not sure what to do with this information, but Danny beats him to the punch.
“You look kind of familiar,” he says to the tech. “Have we worked a case together before?”
“No.” The tech offers Danny her hand. “Claire Sanden. I transferred to the university about a month ago. I teach, mostly.”
Danny cocks his head at Sanden. “Well, we're grateful for whatever you can give us,” he says, surprisingly diplomatic.
To her credit, Sanden simply nods. “I'm not sure whether to be grateful you're out here doing your job or offer you something to shield yourself with,” she says, jerking her head at the two uniformed HPD officers glaring daggers at the back of Chin's head.
Chin wants to ask why it doesn't bother her that she's been pulled from a lecture theatre to work a crime scene with two cops associated with the presumed murderer of Governor Jameson. On the other hand, he's never tried to tempt fate before, and doesn't see why he should start doing so now.
Like Danny said, Chin's willing to take what he can get right now.
But Danny's frowning at the body again. “What is it?” Chin asks.
“I don't know.” Danny shakes his head. He leans right in over the man's face and peers intently at the facial features.
Chin waits.
“I think I recognise him.” Danny looks up at Chin, his eyes wide and his expression a cross between shocked and uncertain. Behind him Sanden looks curious.
“Who do you think he is?” Chin asks.
“He's Yakuza.”
o o o o o
Kono charts her course within ten minutes of being left in the all women's jail. She doesn't bother with the holding her head high shit – she's a cop in jail. More than that, she's a cop in jail for something she did do and would do again a hundred thousand times over. Next time she'd even do it better.
She catches the pros looking her up and down like fresh meat and doesn't break eye contact until they do.
Physical attacks are a whole other matter. She stays on high alert, and maps the inmates around her like crests of a wave.
o o o o o
“Are you sure?” Chin asks. The gang affiliation would change everything – if that's who the dead man was involved with.
Danny nods, and looks back down at the man's face. “From the bike club. I can't be sure, but I think he was there.”
He must have been doing something memorable for Danny to be able to pick his face out months after the fact, but Chin trusts Danny's instincts. That trust is, in itself, an instinct.
“It can't be retaliation,” Danny says. “Or a punishment.” He pulls a face and runs his hands through his hair several times, breathing deeply and loudly. “I can't think straight. I'm not even close to thinking straight.”
“We'll figure out the motive,” Chin tells him. “As well as get a definitive ID on him.” He looks at Sanden. “Where are you going to do the autopsy?”
“I've got a couple of labs at the university,” she says. “Enough space to handle him and keep students away.”
Chin nods. “Let me know when you get the bullets out,” he tells her, because he's supposed to say that and he's in danger of becoming like Danny, liable to trip over his thoughts and tongue and he can't afford to slip like that.
Sanden nods, and starts packing her gear. One of the uniformed officers reluctantly steps over to help her bag the body and get it into the back of her truck.
“Do you think this is connected to what happened last night?” Danny asks after the truck disappears around a corner.
Was that all it was? Chin had arrested Steve barely half a day ago and it already felt much longer than that. “If it is, it's happening very fast.”
Danny cocks his head. “Too fast?” he wonders. “Okay, let's at least try and approach this with something even remotely resembling rational thought.”
Chin makes sure that the two HPD uniforms are far enough away, but drops his voice anyway. “Steve claims Wo Fat shot the Governor and framed him.” Conjecture until proven otherwise, no matter how much he hates that notion.
“But how that connects to a possible Yakuza hit?” Danny's expression resembles the ones he's accused Steve of having in the past when he came up against something he didn't like. “The timing is too close to be coincidental, Yakuza or no.”
“We need that ID.” Chin starts walking back to the Camaro, where the Captain's file is still sitting on the front passenger seat.
“Back to HPD?” Danny wonders. “Captain didn't say anything about where we worked this case, so long as we did.” He sounds hopeful now.
Chin can't imagine either of them being flavour of the month at the precinct even with a legitimate case to work on.
Danny sinks onto the driver's seat and stares morosely at the wheel. “No chance of forensics, no witnesses and no chance of co-operative police or other law enforcement officials to share the burden. How are we supposed to solve this one?”
“By the book.” Chin doesn't know what else to say. “Well within procedure, not a foot wrong -”
Danny lets out a loud sigh. “Ma did always tell me to be careful what I wished for.”
At that, Chin laughs. “Back to my place,” he directs Danny.
They might as well be comfortable while they're trying to pull off the impossible, and they're almost home when Chin's cell rings. It's not a number he recognises. “Kelly?”
“Detective Lieutenant Chin Ho Kelly?” a female voice asks.
Chin frowns. Beside him Danny tenses up but keeps his eyes on the road. “Yes. Who is this?”
“Lieutenant Tamsin Aldershot, JAG – Judge Advocate General. Lawyer – that is, I -”
“You're Steve's lawyer,” Chin guesses.
“Yes,” Aldershot replies, audibly relieved.
“What's going on?” Chin asks instantly. “Can you tell us anything?”
“We need to talk, Detective.” Aldershot's voice is steadier now, more assertive. “You and the rest of Commander McGarrett's former team.”
Chin bites back the immediate response – there's nothing former about any of them, yes, Steve and Kono are in jail, but he's trying to do what little he can and there's a CIA agent camped out on his sofa and Danny who could have flown home with the family he always wanted but chose to stay instead and – he stops himself.
“When and where?” he asks, and is surprised at how steady his voice sounds.
“As soon as possible – you name the place.”
Chin gives her his address, and Aldershot promises to be there within the hour, and then hangs up.
“Steve's got a lawyer,” Danny comments after a few seconds' silence. “Speaking of things that are fast.”
“She's military. Navy, I'm guessing.”
Danny glances over at him quickly. “Think she's on our side?”
“I don't know.” Chin hopes so. He really, really hopes so.
He gets his first chance to find out less than thirty minutes later, when a knock on his front door makes Jenna jump and Chin barely has time to wonder what her day alone has been like before he opens the door with half an idea to have a gun ready and half a mind telling him to quit being so damned paranoid.
Standing on his front doorstep is a young, female Navy lieutenant – late twenties at a guess – with flame red hair pulled tightly behind her head and wearing impeccably pressed dress blues, her hat tucked under her left arm.
She sticks her hand out. “Lieutenant Aldershot, JAG – we spoke on the phone.”
“Yes, we did.” Chin shakes her hand and steps aside to let her in. “This is Detective Danny Williams and -” he hesitates, unsure whether to bring Jenna's CIA affiliation into play.
Fortunately Jenna saves him the decision. “Jenna Kaye,” she says, stepping forward. “I sort of... freelance for the team.”
“I see,” Aldershot nods, then adds, addressing both Jenna and Danny: “I'm Lieutenant Tamsin Aldershot – I've been assigned to represent Commander McGarrett in any criminal proceedings he'll face in the investigation into Governor Jameson's murder.”
“He didn't do it, you know,” Danny tells her.
“I know,” Aldershot says, which gets everyone's attention.
“And how you know that?” Chin asks carefully.
She looks him straight in the eye. “He told me.”
“You have deception detection training?” Jenna asks, visibly interested.
“No,” Aldershot says – but she doesn't elaborate.
She might not have to – just the fact that she apparently believes in Steve's innocence is enough for Chin to want to trust her, at least for the moment. There are other, somewhat more pressing matters, though “You said you needed to speak to us immediately,” he prompts.
“Why the rush?” Danny asks. “No, really – I mean, this case is less than twenty-four hours old and already Steve and Kono are in jail, you're here and the media witch hunt is well and truly under way.”
“Expediting circumstances,” Aldershot tells him. And yeah, that much is obvious, but it still doesn't explain the breakneck speed of everything, or why Chin's not been able to get so much as an answered call out of HPD forensics or even why there's a dead man with possible Yakuza ties making his post-mortem début less than a day after Steve and the Governor – both with Yakuza ties of their own – had had their confrontation over Laura Hills' death.
Danny rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah,” is all he says. “So have at it, Lieutenant. What do you need from us?”
And what do we get in return? Chin ignores the thought with some difficulty and focuses on what's right in front of him.
“Anything you can give me on what happened last night,” Aldershot replies immediately. “HPD is stonewalling me, and -”
“Welcome to the club,” Danny interrupts. Chin looks sharply at him, but Danny just shrugs and adds: “It's true, brah. We are the very definition of persona non grata, even you with your shiny reclaimed badge, and can you really blame them?”
“Maybe you should save that rant for a later date.” Jenna interrupts him – and is probably the most surprised that she's the one who did.
It is entirely to his credit that Danny simply nods and holds his hands up by way of surrender.
“We're still trying to piece together what happened in the Governor's office together,” Jenna tells Aldershot. “It's not easy, though – you're not the only one the department is stonewalling.”
“Can you show me what you have so far?” Aldershot asks – and Chin finally identifies the look on her face. It's the same expression he saw on Kono's in those first few months of Five-0 being formed. The rookie in over her head, but determined to see herself through regardless.
For the first time, Chin wonders what the Navy's game is, sending a kid in a military uniform into the growing hotbed this investigation is rapidly becoming.
Jenna glances at him to gauge an answer to the lieutenant's question, and Chin nods.
All they can do right now is take her at face value – treat her like an ally.
Before Jenna can say or do anything else, having seemingly commandeered the remnants of Five-0 as well as Chin's living room, his cell phone rings again. “Kelly.”
“It's Professor Sanden, Detective – you and your partner need to come to my lab ASAP.”
o o o o o
Steve's first night in jail goes something like this. He's been subject to no further attacks since the lone shank at his initial entry into the jail facility, and in the hours since has monitored multiple covert, non-verbal communications between groups of inmates and groups of correctional officers. He doesn't know the meanings of all the expressions and gestures, but it's not unreasonable to assume that a proportion of them relate to him in some way.
His cell is small and standard – downright luxurious compared to some he's seen and been kept in in the past, and there are no signs of long term residents on either of the bunks.
He takes the top.
Two minutes after he is escorted (pushed) into the cell, Steve is joined by a second inmate. His first instinct is that wires have been crossed somewhere in the judicial system, because the inmate looks barely old enough to be in high school. He could be a teenager being charged and tried as an adult for his crimes, which in itself suggests something more dangerous than the crimes he supposes the majority of the other inmates in the jail are suspected of.
This theory is instantly discarded when the kid notices Steve and immediately begins to panic, eyes widened, hands trembling and backing as far away from Steve as he possibly can in the confined space.
Steve's first instinct is to spare him the trouble of graduating to hyperventilation. “I'm not going to hurt you.”
The kid actually squeaks.
Steve tries not to sigh, or run a hand over his head. He succeeds on the latter count. “I'm not going to hurt you,” he repeats, slowly and in a low register. He's considerably bulkier than the kid, with an easy half-foot on him – he's not going to bother pretending he doesn't intimidate him.
“Fine, suit yourself.” He pulls his legs onto the narrow bunk and lies down, only briefly glancing down.
He watches out of the corner of his eye as the kid takes minutes to slowly approach the bunk, still twitching and trembling – and never once taking his eyes off Steve. He stops directly next to the bunk frames and stares up at Steve with wide, dark eyes and a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead before darting out of sight with a single burst of concentrated movement. In the darkness and relative silence – it sounds like the party is just getting started for some of the inmates in Steve's section – the kid's breathing is loud, but jagged, like he's having a panic attack and can't control himself.
Steve lies there, trying to make the pieces fit against each other, and a moment later hits an epiphany – where he's seen those symptoms and physical tics before.
The kid's a drug addict – and he's in withdrawal.
o o o o o
Chin stares at the handwritten report in his hands. Sanden's TA had met him and Danny in the campus parking lot and whisked them through a maze of buildings almost before anyone could recognise them, leading them to her offices before strolling off with a petulant expression on his face. A small part of Chin can't blame the kid for that – it's not every day your boss-slash-teacher gets a fresh corpse to work on for the local PD and you don't get invited to watch.
The victim's ID is still inconclusive, neither proving nor disproving Danny's Yakuza theory -
“- but the ID's not important,” Sanden says from the other side of the cadaver. “What is important is how he died.”
There's a twitch at the corner of Danny's mouth – but he controls the instinct to make a smart remark, and instead asks: “How do you mean?”
“The bullet trajectories.” Sanden indicates the entry wounds with a pen. “Close range and from an upward angle.”
“He was killed by a giant?” Danny opines.
Chin frowns, and suddenly he gets it. “He was sitting down when he was shot.”
“Yes,” Sanden replies.
“From fairly close range, and -” The Governor slumped in her chair, entry wounds bleeding, and Steve – Steve disoriented on the ground but climbing to his feet, holding a recently fired gun and -
“What?” Danny asks. “What is it?”
“He was murdered in the exact same way as the Governor.” Chin stares down at the body. “Shooter was standing up, victim was in a chair – we can use this,” he says breathlessly. “We can use this to prove -”
“- that Steve didn't kill the Governor?” Danny's expression is carefully neutral. “How?”
“Professor.” Chin tries desperately to organise his thoughts, and thinks he can get this out right. “How closely can you narrow down the time of death?”
She shakes her head. “Between four and six this morning?” she replies. “It's Hawaii – decomp doesn't work the same way here as in the textbooks.”
Four and six. “Steve was in custody then,” Chin says – carefully, because the words matter. “He was in an HPD holding cell waiting to be transferred to the jail. Murder weapon.”
Sanden runs down a list of likely sidearms used to kill their John Doe. “Steve's gun,” Danny says. “The one he was found with, anyway.”
“Evidence lockup.” Chin shakes his head – then he looks at Danny. “We need to talk to the Captain.”
Danny's already got his cellphone out, and stares at the display for a second before waving his hand at Chin. “This might be better coming from you, oh newly reinstated Lieutenant,” he says, without a hint of irony.
He's probably right, though. Chin fumbles in his pocket for his own cell, and dials the Captain, who picks up on the second ring. “This had better be good, Kelly, I've got a press conference in ten.”
“The dead body you sent us to this morning,” Chin begins, “there may be a connection to Co – the Governor's case.”
“I'm listening.”
Chin describes the bullet entry wounds as accurately as he can, taking his cue's from Sanden's expressions. “There are too many similarities for it to be a coincidence, sir,” he adds, and then bites the proverbial bullet. “I'm going to need access to the crime scene evidence from last night.”
“Not possible.”
“But Captain -”
“I said, it's not possible, Kelly,” the Captain interrupts. He sighs loudly, maybe even deliberately. “That's why there's a press conference in eight minutes.”
Chin frowns. Danny leans forward, and even Sanden looks interested. “What do you mean?”
“The evidence from last night never made it back to HPD,” the Captain admits, and his reluctance is palpable. “The murder weapon, shell casings, all of it.”
“Why did no one tell me?” Chin asks immediately. He was the arresting officer – if there's another breach in the department he'll be first back in the firing line, all over again.
“Chain of custody was tampered with – hell, it was bludgeoned with a two-by-four somewhere along the line.” The Captain's voice is hard now.
“I saw Ste – Commander McGarrett's cellphone being tagged by an HPD uniformed officer,” Chin says. “The forensics team was legit.”
“The forensics team was hijacked.”
Chin swears.
“My thoughts exactly, Lieutenant,” the Captain says.
Chin rubs the side of his face with his free hand. The only possible conclusion was that the Yakuza's ties in Oahu ran far deeper than any of them could have imagined. He remembers Steve's indignation at the Governor having tea with Hiro Noshimuri and how he'd had to convince himself – and then Chin, Kono and Danny – that her ignorance of his Yakuza links hadn't been feigned. And Steve's growing fixation on Wo Fat. Was it possible that Wo Fat had killed the Governor, and framed Steve, using his own single-minded determination against him?
They needed to talk to Steve.
“Captain,” Chin begins. “Can you hold off the press conference until morning?”
“If I delay, the press will start literally foaming at their mouths.”
“Not indefinitely, and not until tomorrow – Captain, you gave me this badge back for a reason.” Chin catches Danny's gaze and holds it. “Let me use it.”
The silence coming down the line is deafening. Then: “Tell me what you need.”
o o o o o
Go to: Part 2
o o o o o
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Summary: Five-0 is in pieces. The team regroups.
Characters: Steve, Chin, Danny, Jenna, Kono; appearances by and references to others, including OCs
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~24,000
Betas:
explodedpen and wihlutaSpoilers: Through 1.24.
Warnings: Bad language, violence and minor character death. Implications of other Not Good Things.
Author's Notes: So this is my take on what happens after the s1 finale, and is sort of my wishlist for season 2. It is completely speculative - I'm completely spoiler free for season 2 and want to stay that way until 2.01 airs, so please no spoilers for s2 in comments.
Extra special sparkly thanks go to
wihluta who encouraged me to finish this, and to explodedpen for letting me use her as a sounding board at random times of day and night.Two weeks and four days after he is arrested for Jameson's murder, Steve stands at the front gate of Oahu Community Correctional Center, wearing civilian clothes and masking a limp. He squints in the harsh sunlight and doesn't make eye contact with the guards as he walks out into a changed world.
The precinct is awash with activity, uniforms and detectives alike swarming everywhere, filling the spaces recently vacated by Kono Kalakaua, soon to be charged with conspiracy to commit theft among other related crimes, and Steve McGarrett, the man Chin has just arrested for Governor Jameson's murder.
He feels sick to his stomach just thinking about the sequence of events that led up to his arrival in Jameson's office, and what happened after. The dazed look of shock on McGarrett's face is not something he's going to forget any time soon.
From an interview room, a detective Chin doesn't recognise leads Kono by the elbow towards the holding cells. It's clear from the detective's posture that he believes the Kelly Curse has finally caught up to his young cousin, or that perhaps the dark side of the Governor's mandate for her task force has finally caught up with all of them. Its leader is a murderer, the rookie a thief, the haole has no reason to stay in a place he hates now with his daughter back on the other side of the country, and the stray has a place at HPD that is believed to be neither warranted nor deserved. Jenna is the only one to escape unscathed, but she has her own demons, and the night is still young.
Chin closes his eyes briefly, and heads for the Captain's office. The door is ajar, and the man who had given Chin his Lieutenant's badge only a few hours before looks surprised to see him again, so soon.
“Good work bringing McGarrett in,” is his opening parry.
Chin stands in front of the Captain's desk and folds his hands behind his back. “Who's taking the lead on the investigation?”
The Captain shakes his head. “Too soon to tell. HPD can claim jurisdiction having made the arrest, but the island's federal field offices are going to want in as well.”
Chin nods. “Give me the case.”
“That breaches every impartiality code there is, and a few besides,” the Captain says. He narrows his eyes and stares up at Chin. “Give me one good reason I should allow a former member of the Five-0 task force to investigate his former boss for murder.”
“This is your ticket back into the game. Call it payback, call it whatever you want, I don't care. But I need you.”
“How do you know you can trust me?”
“Because my old man did.”
“Lieutenant Kelly?” the Captain prompts.
Chin brings himself back into the moment. “He gave me the second chance that no one else did,” he says. “Not even HPD. If he's guilty, then I get absolution from associating with him.”
The Captain raises an eyebrow. “If he's guilty?”
“Innocent until proven guilty. That's another impartiality code around here, right?” Chin's taking pot shots now, but he doesn't care.
“Your loyalty,” the Captain begins, clearly choosing his words as carefully as Chin had, “is commendable. But I can't officially allow you anywhere near this case. Not unless you want to be the shortest serving detective in the precinct.”
Chin's jaw stiffens of its own accord.
“Even if I wanted to – which I don't,” the Captain continues, “I can't give you this case. Can't let you within a ten block radius.”
Chin gets it; of course he gets it. He was always a cop, even when he wasn't allowed to be. “Of course,” he says, and walks out of the office, through the precinct and straight out of the front door.
Danny is waiting for him on the sidewalk. There is a rant forming in his stance and expression and the way he draws up and out from himself when he sees Chin.
“Don't,” Chin tells him. When Danny's mouth opens, he places a hand on Danny's shoulder and pushes him in the direction of the Camaro, parked a little way behind them. “Not here.”
He pushes Danny into the passenger seat and takes the keys off him without thinking. Danny is obviously used to the routine, and takes the passenger side, tension and anger and a dozen other, nameless, things rolling off him in waves.
Then, without warning, he slumps forward. “This cannot be happening,” he mutters.
But it is.
Chin drives. A few minutes later he pulls up outside the Five-0 headquarters. “Without Steve, there is no Five-0.” Police and federal agents are still streaming in and out of the building, some carrying boxes and parts of tech, and from the relative safety of the car Chin and Danny watch them.
After a few minutes Chin sees someone push through the wall of law enforcement and step outside. It's Jenna; she's clutching a backpack and looks terrified, but she marches towards the Camaro and climbs into the back. No one seems to notice her, or if they do they've already written her off as irrelevant.
“Drive,” she tells Chin.
He does, and it takes less than a second to decide on a destination.
Steve spends the first night in a holding cell at HPD. There are two heavily armed guards outside his door, and likely another half dozen between them and the next one. The lights are harsh, and he can hear the distant hum of voices; cops and lawyers alike doubtless debating who gets first crack at the supposed murderer of the Governor.
The revelation of her betrayal is like an ongoing punch to the gut. He'd trusted her, taken her at face value even after he'd learned of her ties to Hiro Noshimuri. And she'd played him all along, like a marionette. He hadn't seen it because he hadn't wanted to, hadn't given himself the capacity to even consider her complicit in Wo Fat's plans. Whatever the hell they were.
Steve knows he didn't pull the trigger, or blow up Laura Hills, but a part of him knows he's guilty.
“First things first,” Chin says. “We need to make sure we're here for the right reasons.”
'Here' is his house, living room furniture pushed to one side and a makeshift conference area set up in the middle. Danny and Jenna stand around the coffee table, facing him.
“Steve McGarrett is a great many things.” Danny is the first to speak. “But a cold blooded murderer of a civilian, he is not.” Those last three words are directed at Chin, who knows he deserves them. He continues, soberly: “And besides, he told me once I wasn't as alone in this place as I thought. I owe it to him to return the favour.”
Chin looks at Jenna. The newcomer has none of the ties to Steve or Five-0 that the rest of them have; her only link to any of them is through Wo Fat and her fiancé's murder.
But she's nodding. “Danny's right. I mean, why would he kill the Governor? It doesn't make sense.”
“That's what we have to find out,” Chin says. He looks between his two remaining team mates in turn. “This is off the books, way off the reservation. Anyone outside this room finds out what we're up to, we'll probably end up in the same place as Steve.”
“What about Kono?” Jenna asks.
Chin closes his eyes briefly. “I don't know. Best case scenario, she loses her badge.”
Jenna's eyebrows climb. “And worst case scenario?”
“She loses her badge and her freedom,” Danny replies. “Presumably she's the only one HPD can tie to the ten million dollars otherwise we'd be down there as well.”
“We can't help her right now,” Chin tells Jenna. Much as it pains him to even think about it, it's the truth. “We have to focus on proving Steve's innocence.”
“Then we'd better get to work,” Jenna says. She reaches for her backpack and pulls out a laptop and a brown envelope, which she upends, and maybe a dozen flash drives spill out across the coffee table. It's far from the conference table and networked computers at Five-0, but it's better than nothing.
Kono leans against the wall of her holding cell, and wonders what would have happened if she'd turned down McGarrett's 'extra credit' assignment all those months ago. What would have happened if she'd taken up the offer of the coaching position at Coral Prince after she'd completed physical therapy on her knee.
What if, what if, what if. She made her decisions, all of them, on her own, and she can't bring herself to regret any of them.
Especially not the ten million dollars, and the memory of Chin collared to a bomb.
Kono closes her eyes, and thinks about the ocean.
While Jenna single-handedly turns the first floor of Chin's house into a war room, Rachel calls Danny. Chin hadn't been aware of all the details before, but overhearing half a conversation he manages to piece it together. He listens as Danny begs and pleads with Rachel to stay in Newark and let him still speak to Grace, tries to explain without devolving into an argument that he owes Steve more than anyone could ever know.
Chin fights back the sudden weight on his chest. He'd argued the same thing with Malia once, pushed her away as HPD bore down on him, and look where that had left him. He can't offer Danny the wisdom of experience, not only because their experiences were vastly different, but because Chin understands he still hasn't truly learned from his own actions. The details of Danny's situation complicate things even more. Chin isn't sure whether he's supposed to give Danny and Rachel's affair his blessing or disapproval, but more than that he knows he's better leaving it alone unless it becomes an issue.
He leaves Danny in the kitchen and joins Jenna in the living room. She's got the laptop set up, has connected it somehow to the Five-0 servers and is writing labels on the flash drives in minuscule handwriting. She looks up as Chin sits beside her on the couch.
“Your move next,” she says. “If we're going to investigate the Governor's murder on our own, we need physical evidence, right? Some kind of evidence, and I don't think they're exactly going to let us into the mansion, or into Steve's place, or -”
Chin agrees. “What can you access from here?”
Jenna frowns. “Everything I wiped from the main Five-0 servers when you and Danny told me to. I created back ups -” she indicates the flash drives, “- of everything I thought was important enough and deleted as I went. The evidence from Steve's dad's toolbox, proof that Laura Hills...” she breaks off again. “Laura Hills,” she says.
“There's our link to the Governor,” Chin realises. “She's who Steve's dad was investigating. Her, and her links to the Yakuza.”
“And Wo Fat.” Jenna's voice is low.
Chin tries to piece the evening back together. From standing in front of the Captain and accepting the Lieutenant's badge, to walking Steve out of the Governor's mansion it's all disjointed in his mind, like he'd been on autopilot. The outlines are blurred and all he remembers clearly is seeing Jameson's body, and Steve on the floor on the other side of her desk, dazed and disoriented, and -
“Steve's phone.” Chin looks at Jenna. “Steve's phone was on the desk in front of the Governor's body. No reason for it to be there -”
“Unless he was in a call with someone?” Jenna wonders.
“Or he was recording something,” Chin finishes the thought. “Like the Governor. What if he was trying to get her to confess?”
“Then the file would still be on there.”
“HPD bagged the phone.” Chin shakes his head. It's physical evidence and he couldn't access it even if the Captain was sympathetic to his situation. Which he already knows he's not.
But Jenna's already grinning. “Trick I learned from a friend at Langley,” she says. Her fingers start to fly over the keyboard. “Steve's cell is on a contract, right?”
“Of course.” Chin can't see where this is going.
“And he's...” She cocks her head to one side for a moment. “Paranoid?”
“What are you thinking?” Chin sits beside her on the couch so he can see the laptop's screen as well.
Jenna turns to grin at him. “Electronic backup, either on Five-0's servers -”
“Or somewhere else Steve has access to,” Chin finishes the thought. “Can you find it?”
“One way to find out.”
Chin relaxes all of a half-inch while Jenna works and hacks and breaks probably half a dozen cyber-security laws. While she's tracing Steve's electronic footprints, Danny comes through from the kitchen and perches on the arm of the couch on the other side of Jenna from Chin. His face is pinched and he looks tired.
“How is she?” Chin asks, not bothering to hide that he knows who Danny was talking to.
Danny shrugs and runs a hand through his hair. “Jet lagged. Staying at a motel.”
Chin chooses his next words carefully. “Is she coming back?”
“Not yet.” Danny makes a point of watching Jenna work for a few seconds. “What are you looking for?”
“Whatever Steve was using his cell phone for in the Governor's office,” Chin explains when it's clear that Jenna either hasn't heard a word being said, or is simply ignoring everything.
“So we're working on the basis she was dirty.” Danny huffs. “Well, crap.”
Something like that, but Chin keeps the thought to himself.
“Guys.” Jenna gestures at the laptop with clawed fingers and a frustrated expression. She looks from Chin to Danny and back again. “This could take a while.”
Chin reaches out and touches her shoulder lightly. “We'll get there,” he tells her. “Together.”
She doesn't look convinced, but she nods, and behind her Chin can see Danny do the same.
The following morning Steve is transferred to the correctional facility where the pre-trial inmates are housed. He knows this because he's sent a few dozen criminals there over the last eight months. He's informed that a JAG lawyer will meet him at the Center, and that the Navy has officially waived their right to detain him in a military facility, and the investigation will be conducted by HPD and not NCIS. It's all politics, and he can't bring himself to care.
HPD aren't gentle with him during the transfer, and Steve supposes he can't blame them. There's nothing worse than a soldier – or cop – going rogue, and for all her criminal ties, Jameson had been hugely popular with the public before Wo Fat had shot her.
He gets a brief glimpse of daylight between HPD and the prison truck and wonders what his team are doing, and whether they're safe – either from the Yakuza or the public's backlash.
Jameson's death blankets the news. The breakfast coverage alone is enough to make Chin nauseous. Anchors who only a week ago had been fawning over Lt. Commander McGarrett's latest take-down of a high ranking criminal were now gleefully discussing the details of his moral breakdown and utter betrayal – the amount of speculation really shouldn't be surprising given how very little had been released to the media in the first place. Laura Hills' death has been all but subsumed by Jameson's demise; Chin only hears her name mentioned once, already relegated to a footnote in this macabre saga.
“My mom called this morning,” Jenna tells him over coffee – from the wide-eyed looks she's been giving the mug in her hands, Chin suspects it isn't her first of the day. “She wants to know why the hell I'm still here.”
“What did you tell her?”
Jenna shrugs. “That I had something I needed to do. Something stronger than duty, or holding my not-mother-in-law's hand while she cries.”
Ohana. Chin blinks back the sudden swell of emotion.
“Oh, don't worry,” Jenna tells him, misinterpreting his expression. “I'm still officially on a leave of absence from the CIA. They won't come kicking in any doors for a while yet.”
Chin huffs, and Jenna winces. “Bad choice of words,” she decides. “Have you heard anything about Kono yet?”
“No, and I doubt I will. I don't have that many allies inside HPD.” Chin's not sure he even has that.
“You've got us.” Jenna offers him a wan smile.
To his surprise, Chin smiles back. “Yes, I do.”
Then his cell phone rings and breaks the moment. “Kelly.”
“Time to start working that new badge of yours, Lieutenant,” the Captain tells him. “Got a case.”
Chin blinks. “Okay...”
“Dead body at a private marina. Come by the precinct, I'll give you the details. You're going to need a partner.”
“Detective Danny Williams,” Chin says without hesitation.
“Yeah, that's what I thought.” Apparently the Captain's on the same page as him – although why there's a page in the first place Chin hasn't figured out yet.
“We'll be right in,” Chin says.
“See that you are.” The line goes dead.
“What was that about?” Jenna asks, frowning.
“I'm not sure.” Chin gulps down the rest of his coffee. “But I have to go. Are you going to be all right here on your own?”
“Sure.”
Chin's already thinking about public backlash and revenge attacks and everything he went through when IA took his badge off him before. “I mean it,” he says.
Jenna meets his gaze and holds it. “So do I,” she tells him. “I'll call Danny, let him know you're on your way.”
Chin doesn't bother with the questions, just nods and leaves to get his gun and badge.
Half an hour later Danny's waiting outside his apartment complex when Chin pulls up on his bike. His clothes are clean, but dishevelled, and though he's wearing aviator sunglasses Chin can see the exhaustion written all over him.
“This doesn't feel right,” he comments, leading Chin over to the Camaro.
Chin knows what Danny means. Logically he knows the roads and highways of Honolulu haven't changed in the last twenty-four hours, but it hasn't stopped him feeling like he's been traversing an alien landscape this morning. What had started with the news broadcasts had spilled over to the absence of morning traffic and the way everything seemed just slightly off-kilter.
The whole of Oahu is a crime scene, and Chin and Danny are guilty by association, regardless of action or context or whether Steve is actually guilty or innocent in the first place.
Chin knows better than to let it get to him. He still remembers the immediate aftermath of IA and the way he'd been afraid of leaving his house the first day without his badge. He also remembers the way he'd boxed all the fear and uncertainty into a small box marked 'Shit Happens' and left it somewhere in the recesses of his mind, only to be reopened in times of inebriation and total self-pity. He'd been innocent of the charges then, and he knows instinctively that Steve is innocent of the charges now.
Danny silently drives them to HPD, and Chin leads him through the swell of uniforms and detectives, all of them unsure what to do with the strangers in their midst. Most of them clear a path, like they're unwilling to come into direct contact with McGarrett's former pets, and there's an undercurrent of murmurs, but it's nothing that Chin hasn't learned to ignore already. He hopes Danny is capable of the same.
The first shank appears while Steve is still cuffed to the transfer officer. He twists and ducks as much as his restraints allow and snaps the sharpened toothbrush in half with his right ring and little fingers. The officer he is attached to whacks him in the side for his trouble, and the prisoner who had tried to stab him is tackled to the ground by a correctional officer, albeit inefficiently, cuffed and dragged away.
“I give it a week,” the HPD officer mutters, uncuffing himself from Steve and backing away.
“Ten days, tops,” another correctional officer replies. He shoves prison scrubs into Steve's arms, and Steve realises they are discussing his life expectancy.
He bites back the response that he's faced worse odds, and takes the instinctive reply – as well as his awareness of and reaction to the shank – as proof that he's physically recovered from the night before.
As long as he can keep himself mentally on his game, he thinks there's a chance he'll outlive the fledgling betting pool.
The prison scrubs chafe, and the full body inspection is deliberately degrading, but Steve once broke into, and then out of, a prison in Yugoslavia. He allows himself to be cuffed again and then led down a stark grey hallway to an interview room where he's told his lawyer will meet him.
Lieutenant Tamsin Aldershot looks barely old enough to enlist, let alone have a law degree and an officer's commission, but Steve is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Not that he has a choice in the matter. He's been arrested for the murder of a high-ranking civilian official – Steve thinks he should feel lucky the Navy didn't bypass JAG and have some really wet behind the ears public defender sent down here instead.
To her credit, Aldershot doesn't brim with optimism. “This doesn't look good for you, Commander,” are her opening words.
Steve stares at her.
“You've got motive, means and you were found holding the still-smoking gun,” the kid continues. “HPD forensics from both your house and person, and the Governor's mansion, are pending.” She folds her hands on the table between her and Steve, and leans forward. “Did you kill Governor Jameson?” she asks.
Steve blinks. His memories of last night are disjointed with blank spots where he's not used to having them. Every flash of the Go – Jameson's office is accompanied by disbelief and anger and the cold feeling that had appeared in his gut when he realised he'd been played from the start. “No,” he eventually says. It's the first time he's done more than confirm his name since Chin arrested him.
Aldershot studies his face for a moment. Then, apparently satisfied, she leans back in her chair. “Exoneration will go a long way towards salvaging your military career,” she says. “I'll see what I can do with HPD.”
She gathers up her things and leaves. As reassurances go, Steve's heard more convincing ones before, but just like Aldershot had apparently seen something in Steve's face, Steve thinks he saw something in the kid's face. The young lieutenant is on his side, at least for now.
A few minutes later Steve is escorted away from the interview room and toward the sounds of general population, all of whom take almost military stock of Steve as the room falls silent around him. His position – former position – at Five-0 will make him a highly appealing target to most, if not all, of the men in here and he unconsciously straightens his back and tightens his posture before moving through the crowd to find somewhere to sit.
He gets a lot of dirty looks, but more that are carefully guarded and even deliberately blank. On the far side of the room are the payphones and the inmates using them continue their conversations after giving Steve a cursory once-over. He has to concentrate to hear what they're saying, and thinks he recognises code words and phrases for monetary transactions.
He occupies himself for the rest of the afternoon classifying the inmates by gang affiliation and severity of crime based on what he remembers from Five-0 and HPD case files and the slivers of tattoos and other markings on exposed skin.
Steve knows that once he can figure out the correctional centre's internal hierarchy and social system then he stands a better chance of surviving.
He just doesn't know what he's surviving for.
The crime scene at the marina is being operated by a skeleton crew, none of whom look happy to see Chin and Danny.
The feeling is mostly mutual.
Chin doesn't recognise the woman in HPD forensics scrubs crouching over the dead body. She's not one of Max's team, nor one of the lab rats he's been introduced to through Kono's friend Charlie. That means she's either been flown in from one of the other islands or she's from the university, maybe putting her degree to practical use in the current emergency.
“What have you got?” he asks her.
She glances up at him. “Chinese male, mid to late-thirties with what looks to be two gunshot wounds to the chest; small calibre, nothing fancy. He's been dead maybe six hours, but he wasn't killed here.”
“Do we know who he is?” Danny asks. He kneels down beside the victim's head and peers downwards to the entry wounds.
The tech shakes her head. “No ID.”
“Any chance we can get fingerprints to run, maybe even dental?” Danny chances.
She shakes her head again. “Priority's Jameson's case. Everything else gets short shrift.”
Chin frowns slightly. She doesn't sound accusatory – she doesn't sound particularly anything, which is... given the last twenty-four hours it's unexpected to say the least. He's not sure what to do with this information, but Danny beats him to the punch.
“You look kind of familiar,” he says to the tech. “Have we worked a case together before?”
“No.” The tech offers Danny her hand. “Claire Sanden. I transferred to the university about a month ago. I teach, mostly.”
Danny cocks his head at Sanden. “Well, we're grateful for whatever you can give us,” he says, surprisingly diplomatic.
To her credit, Sanden simply nods. “I'm not sure whether to be grateful you're out here doing your job or offer you something to shield yourself with,” she says, jerking her head at the two uniformed HPD officers glaring daggers at the back of Chin's head.
Chin wants to ask why it doesn't bother her that she's been pulled from a lecture theatre to work a crime scene with two cops associated with the presumed murderer of Governor Jameson. On the other hand, he's never tried to tempt fate before, and doesn't see why he should start doing so now.
Like Danny said, Chin's willing to take what he can get right now.
But Danny's frowning at the body again. “What is it?” Chin asks.
“I don't know.” Danny shakes his head. He leans right in over the man's face and peers intently at the facial features.
Chin waits.
“I think I recognise him.” Danny looks up at Chin, his eyes wide and his expression a cross between shocked and uncertain. Behind him Sanden looks curious.
“Who do you think he is?” Chin asks.
“He's Yakuza.”
Kono charts her course within ten minutes of being left in the all women's jail. She doesn't bother with the holding her head high shit – she's a cop in jail. More than that, she's a cop in jail for something she did do and would do again a hundred thousand times over. Next time she'd even do it better.
She catches the pros looking her up and down like fresh meat and doesn't break eye contact until they do.
Physical attacks are a whole other matter. She stays on high alert, and maps the inmates around her like crests of a wave.
“Are you sure?” Chin asks. The gang affiliation would change everything – if that's who the dead man was involved with.
Danny nods, and looks back down at the man's face. “From the bike club. I can't be sure, but I think he was there.”
He must have been doing something memorable for Danny to be able to pick his face out months after the fact, but Chin trusts Danny's instincts. That trust is, in itself, an instinct.
“It can't be retaliation,” Danny says. “Or a punishment.” He pulls a face and runs his hands through his hair several times, breathing deeply and loudly. “I can't think straight. I'm not even close to thinking straight.”
“We'll figure out the motive,” Chin tells him. “As well as get a definitive ID on him.” He looks at Sanden. “Where are you going to do the autopsy?”
“I've got a couple of labs at the university,” she says. “Enough space to handle him and keep students away.”
Chin nods. “Let me know when you get the bullets out,” he tells her, because he's supposed to say that and he's in danger of becoming like Danny, liable to trip over his thoughts and tongue and he can't afford to slip like that.
Sanden nods, and starts packing her gear. One of the uniformed officers reluctantly steps over to help her bag the body and get it into the back of her truck.
“Do you think this is connected to what happened last night?” Danny asks after the truck disappears around a corner.
Was that all it was? Chin had arrested Steve barely half a day ago and it already felt much longer than that. “If it is, it's happening very fast.”
Danny cocks his head. “Too fast?” he wonders. “Okay, let's at least try and approach this with something even remotely resembling rational thought.”
Chin makes sure that the two HPD uniforms are far enough away, but drops his voice anyway. “Steve claims Wo Fat shot the Governor and framed him.” Conjecture until proven otherwise, no matter how much he hates that notion.
“But how that connects to a possible Yakuza hit?” Danny's expression resembles the ones he's accused Steve of having in the past when he came up against something he didn't like. “The timing is too close to be coincidental, Yakuza or no.”
“We need that ID.” Chin starts walking back to the Camaro, where the Captain's file is still sitting on the front passenger seat.
“Back to HPD?” Danny wonders. “Captain didn't say anything about where we worked this case, so long as we did.” He sounds hopeful now.
Chin can't imagine either of them being flavour of the month at the precinct even with a legitimate case to work on.
Danny sinks onto the driver's seat and stares morosely at the wheel. “No chance of forensics, no witnesses and no chance of co-operative police or other law enforcement officials to share the burden. How are we supposed to solve this one?”
“By the book.” Chin doesn't know what else to say. “Well within procedure, not a foot wrong -”
Danny lets out a loud sigh. “Ma did always tell me to be careful what I wished for.”
At that, Chin laughs. “Back to my place,” he directs Danny.
They might as well be comfortable while they're trying to pull off the impossible, and they're almost home when Chin's cell rings. It's not a number he recognises. “Kelly?”
“Detective Lieutenant Chin Ho Kelly?” a female voice asks.
Chin frowns. Beside him Danny tenses up but keeps his eyes on the road. “Yes. Who is this?”
“Lieutenant Tamsin Aldershot, JAG – Judge Advocate General. Lawyer – that is, I -”
“You're Steve's lawyer,” Chin guesses.
“Yes,” Aldershot replies, audibly relieved.
“What's going on?” Chin asks instantly. “Can you tell us anything?”
“We need to talk, Detective.” Aldershot's voice is steadier now, more assertive. “You and the rest of Commander McGarrett's former team.”
Chin bites back the immediate response – there's nothing former about any of them, yes, Steve and Kono are in jail, but he's trying to do what little he can and there's a CIA agent camped out on his sofa and Danny who could have flown home with the family he always wanted but chose to stay instead and – he stops himself.
“When and where?” he asks, and is surprised at how steady his voice sounds.
“As soon as possible – you name the place.”
Chin gives her his address, and Aldershot promises to be there within the hour, and then hangs up.
“Steve's got a lawyer,” Danny comments after a few seconds' silence. “Speaking of things that are fast.”
“She's military. Navy, I'm guessing.”
Danny glances over at him quickly. “Think she's on our side?”
“I don't know.” Chin hopes so. He really, really hopes so.
He gets his first chance to find out less than thirty minutes later, when a knock on his front door makes Jenna jump and Chin barely has time to wonder what her day alone has been like before he opens the door with half an idea to have a gun ready and half a mind telling him to quit being so damned paranoid.
Standing on his front doorstep is a young, female Navy lieutenant – late twenties at a guess – with flame red hair pulled tightly behind her head and wearing impeccably pressed dress blues, her hat tucked under her left arm.
She sticks her hand out. “Lieutenant Aldershot, JAG – we spoke on the phone.”
“Yes, we did.” Chin shakes her hand and steps aside to let her in. “This is Detective Danny Williams and -” he hesitates, unsure whether to bring Jenna's CIA affiliation into play.
Fortunately Jenna saves him the decision. “Jenna Kaye,” she says, stepping forward. “I sort of... freelance for the team.”
“I see,” Aldershot nods, then adds, addressing both Jenna and Danny: “I'm Lieutenant Tamsin Aldershot – I've been assigned to represent Commander McGarrett in any criminal proceedings he'll face in the investigation into Governor Jameson's murder.”
“He didn't do it, you know,” Danny tells her.
“I know,” Aldershot says, which gets everyone's attention.
“And how you know that?” Chin asks carefully.
She looks him straight in the eye. “He told me.”
“You have deception detection training?” Jenna asks, visibly interested.
“No,” Aldershot says – but she doesn't elaborate.
She might not have to – just the fact that she apparently believes in Steve's innocence is enough for Chin to want to trust her, at least for the moment. There are other, somewhat more pressing matters, though “You said you needed to speak to us immediately,” he prompts.
“Why the rush?” Danny asks. “No, really – I mean, this case is less than twenty-four hours old and already Steve and Kono are in jail, you're here and the media witch hunt is well and truly under way.”
“Expediting circumstances,” Aldershot tells him. And yeah, that much is obvious, but it still doesn't explain the breakneck speed of everything, or why Chin's not been able to get so much as an answered call out of HPD forensics or even why there's a dead man with possible Yakuza ties making his post-mortem début less than a day after Steve and the Governor – both with Yakuza ties of their own – had had their confrontation over Laura Hills' death.
Danny rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah,” is all he says. “So have at it, Lieutenant. What do you need from us?”
And what do we get in return? Chin ignores the thought with some difficulty and focuses on what's right in front of him.
“Anything you can give me on what happened last night,” Aldershot replies immediately. “HPD is stonewalling me, and -”
“Welcome to the club,” Danny interrupts. Chin looks sharply at him, but Danny just shrugs and adds: “It's true, brah. We are the very definition of persona non grata, even you with your shiny reclaimed badge, and can you really blame them?”
“Maybe you should save that rant for a later date.” Jenna interrupts him – and is probably the most surprised that she's the one who did.
It is entirely to his credit that Danny simply nods and holds his hands up by way of surrender.
“We're still trying to piece together what happened in the Governor's office together,” Jenna tells Aldershot. “It's not easy, though – you're not the only one the department is stonewalling.”
“Can you show me what you have so far?” Aldershot asks – and Chin finally identifies the look on her face. It's the same expression he saw on Kono's in those first few months of Five-0 being formed. The rookie in over her head, but determined to see herself through regardless.
For the first time, Chin wonders what the Navy's game is, sending a kid in a military uniform into the growing hotbed this investigation is rapidly becoming.
Jenna glances at him to gauge an answer to the lieutenant's question, and Chin nods.
All they can do right now is take her at face value – treat her like an ally.
Before Jenna can say or do anything else, having seemingly commandeered the remnants of Five-0 as well as Chin's living room, his cell phone rings again. “Kelly.”
“It's Professor Sanden, Detective – you and your partner need to come to my lab ASAP.”
Steve's first night in jail goes something like this. He's been subject to no further attacks since the lone shank at his initial entry into the jail facility, and in the hours since has monitored multiple covert, non-verbal communications between groups of inmates and groups of correctional officers. He doesn't know the meanings of all the expressions and gestures, but it's not unreasonable to assume that a proportion of them relate to him in some way.
His cell is small and standard – downright luxurious compared to some he's seen and been kept in in the past, and there are no signs of long term residents on either of the bunks.
He takes the top.
Two minutes after he is escorted (pushed) into the cell, Steve is joined by a second inmate. His first instinct is that wires have been crossed somewhere in the judicial system, because the inmate looks barely old enough to be in high school. He could be a teenager being charged and tried as an adult for his crimes, which in itself suggests something more dangerous than the crimes he supposes the majority of the other inmates in the jail are suspected of.
This theory is instantly discarded when the kid notices Steve and immediately begins to panic, eyes widened, hands trembling and backing as far away from Steve as he possibly can in the confined space.
Steve's first instinct is to spare him the trouble of graduating to hyperventilation. “I'm not going to hurt you.”
The kid actually squeaks.
Steve tries not to sigh, or run a hand over his head. He succeeds on the latter count. “I'm not going to hurt you,” he repeats, slowly and in a low register. He's considerably bulkier than the kid, with an easy half-foot on him – he's not going to bother pretending he doesn't intimidate him.
“Fine, suit yourself.” He pulls his legs onto the narrow bunk and lies down, only briefly glancing down.
He watches out of the corner of his eye as the kid takes minutes to slowly approach the bunk, still twitching and trembling – and never once taking his eyes off Steve. He stops directly next to the bunk frames and stares up at Steve with wide, dark eyes and a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead before darting out of sight with a single burst of concentrated movement. In the darkness and relative silence – it sounds like the party is just getting started for some of the inmates in Steve's section – the kid's breathing is loud, but jagged, like he's having a panic attack and can't control himself.
Steve lies there, trying to make the pieces fit against each other, and a moment later hits an epiphany – where he's seen those symptoms and physical tics before.
The kid's a drug addict – and he's in withdrawal.
Chin stares at the handwritten report in his hands. Sanden's TA had met him and Danny in the campus parking lot and whisked them through a maze of buildings almost before anyone could recognise them, leading them to her offices before strolling off with a petulant expression on his face. A small part of Chin can't blame the kid for that – it's not every day your boss-slash-teacher gets a fresh corpse to work on for the local PD and you don't get invited to watch.
The victim's ID is still inconclusive, neither proving nor disproving Danny's Yakuza theory -
“- but the ID's not important,” Sanden says from the other side of the cadaver. “What is important is how he died.”
There's a twitch at the corner of Danny's mouth – but he controls the instinct to make a smart remark, and instead asks: “How do you mean?”
“The bullet trajectories.” Sanden indicates the entry wounds with a pen. “Close range and from an upward angle.”
“He was killed by a giant?” Danny opines.
Chin frowns, and suddenly he gets it. “He was sitting down when he was shot.”
“Yes,” Sanden replies.
“From fairly close range, and -” The Governor slumped in her chair, entry wounds bleeding, and Steve – Steve disoriented on the ground but climbing to his feet, holding a recently fired gun and -
“What?” Danny asks. “What is it?”
“He was murdered in the exact same way as the Governor.” Chin stares down at the body. “Shooter was standing up, victim was in a chair – we can use this,” he says breathlessly. “We can use this to prove -”
“- that Steve didn't kill the Governor?” Danny's expression is carefully neutral. “How?”
“Professor.” Chin tries desperately to organise his thoughts, and thinks he can get this out right. “How closely can you narrow down the time of death?”
She shakes her head. “Between four and six this morning?” she replies. “It's Hawaii – decomp doesn't work the same way here as in the textbooks.”
Four and six. “Steve was in custody then,” Chin says – carefully, because the words matter. “He was in an HPD holding cell waiting to be transferred to the jail. Murder weapon.”
Sanden runs down a list of likely sidearms used to kill their John Doe. “Steve's gun,” Danny says. “The one he was found with, anyway.”
“Evidence lockup.” Chin shakes his head – then he looks at Danny. “We need to talk to the Captain.”
Danny's already got his cellphone out, and stares at the display for a second before waving his hand at Chin. “This might be better coming from you, oh newly reinstated Lieutenant,” he says, without a hint of irony.
He's probably right, though. Chin fumbles in his pocket for his own cell, and dials the Captain, who picks up on the second ring. “This had better be good, Kelly, I've got a press conference in ten.”
“The dead body you sent us to this morning,” Chin begins, “there may be a connection to Co – the Governor's case.”
“I'm listening.”
Chin describes the bullet entry wounds as accurately as he can, taking his cue's from Sanden's expressions. “There are too many similarities for it to be a coincidence, sir,” he adds, and then bites the proverbial bullet. “I'm going to need access to the crime scene evidence from last night.”
“Not possible.”
“But Captain -”
“I said, it's not possible, Kelly,” the Captain interrupts. He sighs loudly, maybe even deliberately. “That's why there's a press conference in eight minutes.”
Chin frowns. Danny leans forward, and even Sanden looks interested. “What do you mean?”
“The evidence from last night never made it back to HPD,” the Captain admits, and his reluctance is palpable. “The murder weapon, shell casings, all of it.”
“Why did no one tell me?” Chin asks immediately. He was the arresting officer – if there's another breach in the department he'll be first back in the firing line, all over again.
“Chain of custody was tampered with – hell, it was bludgeoned with a two-by-four somewhere along the line.” The Captain's voice is hard now.
“I saw Ste – Commander McGarrett's cellphone being tagged by an HPD uniformed officer,” Chin says. “The forensics team was legit.”
“The forensics team was hijacked.”
Chin swears.
“My thoughts exactly, Lieutenant,” the Captain says.
Chin rubs the side of his face with his free hand. The only possible conclusion was that the Yakuza's ties in Oahu ran far deeper than any of them could have imagined. He remembers Steve's indignation at the Governor having tea with Hiro Noshimuri and how he'd had to convince himself – and then Chin, Kono and Danny – that her ignorance of his Yakuza links hadn't been feigned. And Steve's growing fixation on Wo Fat. Was it possible that Wo Fat had killed the Governor, and framed Steve, using his own single-minded determination against him?
They needed to talk to Steve.
“Captain,” Chin begins. “Can you hold off the press conference until morning?”
“If I delay, the press will start literally foaming at their mouths.”
“Not indefinitely, and not until tomorrow – Captain, you gave me this badge back for a reason.” Chin catches Danny's gaze and holds it. “Let me use it.”
The silence coming down the line is deafening. Then: “Tell me what you need.”
Go to: Part 2
o o o o o
