More of the Same

So, Carolyn collected herself...and then the husband lit into her.
I stepped in, of course, and he backed down - those guys never want trouble with people who can handle it. He was a little guy, maybe 5'5, thick glasses, the whole jacket with tweed armpatches, and he huffed and he puffed, and then he folded.
Meanwhile, I watched Professor G. And what I saw in her eyes looked familiar. It was that bad, mad, dangerous look, not a whipped dog, but a lion in a cage.
"If there's any trouble in the future, sir," I said, still looking at her, "Expect us. It's our job."
Carolyn was trembling, but we left. I said that on Monday, we should go see his sister, get a little background. Maybe Caro could catch Professor G. at work.
That was the plan...

The Case

Ron Carver asked us to do a favor for a friend of his from law school. It turns out that the lady's brother is an adjunct professor at a large university...and she wanted us to talk to his wife, who's a tenured member of the faculty.

We played phone tag for a week, and finally we just stopped by. The wife - we'll call her Professor G - opens the door. Mid-forties, tall, hair swept up in a bun...she looks like a 1950's Hollywood version of a lady professor, except for the black eye.

She wouldn't even let us in the house, and as she came out on the stoop, her arms crossed, Carolyn remembered she'd left something in the car...and left me there with Prof.G.
She didn't even bother to deny that her husband had done it. She claimed it was a normal disagreement that got out of hand. She said that she'd started the argument, that she'd fought back, that she was fine,could handle herself, and that I should get the hell off her porch.

That didn't leave me much of a choice. I got back in the car, and asked Carolyn if she was all right. She shook her head yes, but we sat there for a few minutes, staring at the door before we left.

And Here We Are

So, I've been out for a week.

That's because we caught a case. A relatively minor one, in the grand scheme of things. But I'm shaken up, Carolyn's barely holding it together...and neither of us feel like talking about it.

I can tell you what's up...but you'll need to wait for tomorrow.
It sounded so simple, and here we are. Emil's out on vacation...I think I need to talk to Liz.

Lunch and Afterwards

Sorry about this. It's been a really weird week at work, let me tell you. But where did I leave off? Valentine's day...that's right.
-----------------
"It's freezing out here..." I said, after the coffee run. I looked over at the lighted signs, and then back at Alex, who was all bundled up in the car.

"Tell me something I don't know, Mike," she said, as she grabbed the cup from me. "Look, if you'd rather be somewhere else..."

I laughed. "Well, actually, I would. You said after last night you'd be willing to branch out into other superheroines. Not that I don't like Wonder Woman, and you are good with a lasso..."

Instead of laughing, her head whipped around at the sight of another blond. I just sighed and started in on mine.

The night before had been really nice, I thought. A quiet dinner at a very nice sushi place, a small acoustic concert, and then onto the fun with copyright violations.
That's pretty much ideal, and I don't buy into how February 14th has to be special, and yet here we are in a freezing car, watching other people dance.

I hate how tense this makes her...she can snark all she likes, but the lines of her shoulders give it away. I knew how this got to her, intellectually, but I think tonight's the first time I can see how it really wears at her.

I broke my hand over Wallace, in a fit of rage at what she implied about me. But now, watching what she does to someone I care about, and realizing what this must do to Alex when Nicole's effect on Bobby is so much worse - I couldn't even imagine before.

And there's something else, too.

I thought this stakeout was kind of a silly idea, and I almost said so. But I went along with it for a really good reason.

"Alex," I said, "This is going to sound really odd, but you know what?"
"Hmmm?" she said, pulling her eyes from the steet for a second.
"I'm really glad I'm out here with you."

We stayed in the car for the rest of the evening. We followed Bobby and Bella back out, and watched as they went up to the apartment. That meant it was fairly safe to go home.
As we pulled away, Alex said "Wait - there..."
I saw a figure hurry down the sidewalk, and make a quick left. As she turned, I got the quickest of looks at her profile in the distance.

I turned to Alex, and said the magic words in any relationship. "You were right."

Thinking it Over

I couldn't really make a lot of sense on the case...mainly because of the pounding headache the whole thing inspired. It was still there when Goren woke me up at one am fiddling with Alex's door.
That was awkward all round, but as I made it perfectly clear, once the pants are off for the night, they stay off.
She and he talked for a long time, and I wanted to give them space, but I had to go in and get my pills from the kitchen. While I was fooling around there, Alex picked up on the fact that I was still pretty much in serious pain, so she made me lie down on the couch while they talked. I tried to listen, but I kept drifting in and out. There's something I can't quite put my finger on, but it's there, just out of reach. It'll come to me - hopefully soon.

Alex and I are going out tonight instead of tomorrow. We have other plans for then...but we'll tell you about that later. The only romantic thing on the schedule for the actual day is at noon-ish. I will be having a Valentine's day lunch at Wang's, and Alex is stuck coming with me. Love is love, but Te the chef gets mean when you snub him.

Plots and Twists

Sorry to be gone most of the day. Things are up around here.
Alex got an urge to revisit the Wallace case, which I was intially quite against. The cast comes off tomorrow, and I was really hoping to not hear from that sicko again. Like a fungus, though, you can't seem to get rid of her. If it bothers Bobby, it bothers Alex, and if it bothers Alex, I'm in, I suppose.

Yesterday, Alex decided to snatch the file out from under Bobby, in order to make me look at it, to give it a "fresh perspective." This also meant I had to help her distract him so she could grab it. I tried a bunch of things, including getting him to go to Wang's with me, blaring Panic! At the Disco, and other minor stuff, but in the end I had to use my secret weapon, which was to have a long drink of Diet Coke. Twenty minutes later, when I turned white, started shaking and fell out of my chair, that did the trick. Nothing like having a severe, sudden allergic reaction to draw someone's attention.

I don't think Alex was quite expecting it either, even though I warned her. However, she did manage to swipe the file out of that ratty thing he keeps it in, copy it, and get away clean. Since we've gotten home, I've spent the rest of the time reviewing it and I'm not done yet. I'm still plodding, and this damn headache doesn't help. I don't know how much is residual reaction to the aspartame and how much is Nicole.

Showing One's Age

So, Alex started reminiscing about her favorite old TV shows, and of course, she asked pretty much everyone what theirs were. Man, great way to make someone feel ancient, when you have to preface it with "Well, nobody had a color set then." Sheesh.

When I was a kid, I didn't watch a lot of tv. What with circumstances at home, and the fact that I played outside a LOT because of that meant that I wasn't really exposed to the set. Not comparitively, anyway. A LOT of guys my age really glued to the tube. I guess I watched my fair share, though.
For some reason, I was addicted to Car 54, Where Are You? a comedy about cops in the Bronx Go figure, huh?
That might have been the reason I ended up liking The Munsters so much, since Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis were starring in that one, too. Plus, as we all know, vampires are pretty cool to a kid. I could never figure out what kind of monsters The Addams Family were supposed to be, so I really never got into that one.

As I got older, I watched The Monkees, much to my shame, but only if my parents wouldn't catch me, since they were a little too hippie for them. There were a bunch of good things on, like Batman, and Get Smart, and The Wild Wild West - I'm not much for cowboys, but James West and Artemis Clyde were just that cool. The really formative show, I have to say, was Hogan's Heroes. I wanted to be just like Hogan when I grew up, except, you know, not in a POW camp.

And you know, the less said about my fond memories of my college time spent on the couch with some, uh, refreshments, and Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, the better. I swear, the guys in the house used to tease the hell out of me for saying "Duuuude. Oscar. Whoa. What's up with him? He needs to chill." Also, there was the Snuffleupagus hunt. That ended pretty badly....


Man, now I want to watch TV! I really don't have time anymore, although I like to catch Monk and tease Alex about Goren's weird cousin in San Francisco. Unfortunately, that makes her rib me about my second cousin in Reno who's on that dumb reality show, which I catch from time to time and cringe every time I see it. I also watch Cold Case, because...well, um, I like the stories? That's it. Yes. There's also a weird buncha shows based on cops in New York that I see from time to time, but it's not like my life revolves around that one. It's been on forever, or something, and it's on, what, 24 hours a day? Alex watches it more often than not, but I can take it or leave it. Maybe I'll try to see it tonight or something, though.

A Note From Home

Dear Captain Deakins -

Please excuse Mike Logan from any meetings in the future. He has a rare and complicated disorder which you won't have heard of and is so rare it's not in any books. This terrible disease makes meetings physically painful for Mike. The excruciating pain is what makes him fidget and roll his eyes and sigh loudly, and makes him need to keep leaving the room every few minutes.
Please understand that there is no cure for this problem, and it only becomes worse and worse. It may even actually cause him to die if he has to sit through another one. You don't want him to die, right?

Thank you for your attention -

Mike's Shrink Dr. Emil Skoda

P.S. I hurt my arm, so that is what's wrong with my signature.

P.P.S. Please do not try to call me about this. I am busy, and on vacation. You can give any messages to Mike, and he will give them to me.

In Which We Learn Our Friends Are Not Always Our Friends

"Are you sure about this?" I asked him again.

"Of course I am, you total wuss. Now go." Munch sure can be pushy sometimes.

I looked down the steep hill of the bike path, and thought about it for a moment. "Munch, I'm not sure that this is the best of ideas." This was really kind of obvious, despite the 5 or 6 snakebites I'd downed.

See, Munch had these shoes with these bouncing things on the bottom, and...you know, explaining just doesn't work that well with 'em. Let's just say they looked like a device made by Acme Co., marketed to coyotes for the purpose of road-runner catching. They were crazy fun, too, and that's not just the snakebites talking.

"Logan, leave the ideas to me," he said. Jeez, it's creepy when he wears his sunglasses in the dark. He could be thinking anything. "Are you chicken? Will your girlfriend be mad at you?"

Those shoes were a lot of fun. I bounced up and down a few times, just to get a good feel for them. "This is pretty cool," I admitted. "But howcome you won't go first?"

He turned the glasses towards me again, and said "Because you're younger than me, and less brittle. I'm much more likely to break a hip."

He had a point there. I bounced some more, and then realized something. "Well, what about Finn? He's younger than both of us."

"True," he said, "But Finn's waiting at the bottom to prevent any passerby from going through at the wrong moment. Besides, he's not drunk. Drunk people are more likely to be safe from accidental injury."

This was also an excellent point - and those shoes were super-fun. "Ok," I said, "Here goes."

And there I went. It was great - for about five seconds. And then the law of gravity kicked right in. At the top of the springing arc, I realized that my balance was just a wee bit off, and that's when everything slowed down. My last thought before impact was That gravel's really going to hurt, isn't it? And it did. I continued bouncing, but not on the shoes. Rather, on my shoulder, my back, my knees, then my head, repeat that a few times, until I slid to the bottom of the hill and looked up at the uncaring sky.

Finn was laughing his ass off when some teenagers passed by. "Dude, that looks like it hurt. Wanna smoke?" I actually thought about it, but I could only manage a groan, and Finn flicked his badge and chased them away.

I still hadn't recovered enough to speak when I heard a familiar evil chuckle behind me. "Next time, Logan, don't give your evil ex my phone number, or it'll go even worse with you." He turned to Finn, "Go ahead and call Eames. See if she's got a wheelbarrow to collect her parcel here. On second thought, better call her partner instead. Don't want to tick her off. She's actually dangerous."

So, that's where I've been. Hope you guys are well.

Back Among the Living

Whoo. Finally, I'm catching up - I've been bad about updating since I got one hell of a cold from somewhere. I was being all grim and stoic at work, going "I'm fine" - and the I-Feel-Awful face worked well on the perps and people who tried to hand me paperwork.
Then I got to go home and take to my bed, and suffer in peace. At my age, colds are serious, and I resent being told I am exaggerating when I casually mention that I might die. Apparently, according to some, I brought it up more than few times, but I was merely concerned. It does not make me a big baby. However, getting fussed over was kind of enjoyable, I have to admit.

But now I feel fine. In fact, I feel good enough to handle going out. Munch has been bugging me, and he says I'm getting all domesticated, so we go forth tonight. What's the worst that can happen?