“Uh, something to do with,… you know, their rights,” she said in a sarcastic tone.
“Their rights, until they kill someone,” he noted. “And then we’re all screwed.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” she muttered. But there was no point in arguing about their lack of tools.
“At least we have the kid’s DNA,” Rodney muttered. “It’s the first positive thing we’ve gotten, and yet there’s none in this case from last week on Cherry.”
“I know,” she admitted. “It also doesn’t make sense that the kid has been back here five years though.”
“Right. I agree.”
“More questions, no answers,” she grumbled. “It’s always this way.”
“Then one day it breaks, and we get to the bottom of it, and the pieces fall together, and it all makes sense,” Rodney noted.
“It’s the getting to the bottom of it that’s driving me nuts,” she replied.
He laughed. “What? You? You’re the persistent ferret that gets in here and digs into all this information until you find out what’s going on,” he noted. “We’re all learning from that, you know?”
She stared at him in shock. “Seriously?”
“Hell yeah,” he replied. “You’re the one who found those kids lost in a pedophile ring. You’re the one who hooked the suicides as assisted murders or whatever the final criminal charge will be. We didn’t see this.”
“Not at first, but you did soon enough.”
“Soon enoughisn’t the same as being the one who saw it. You look at things differently,” Rodney stated. “Don’t ever change that. I get that you’re frustrated, and it’s hard at this stage, and it sometimes seems completely fruitless, but you have a knack for seeing things that we don’t. We need that on the team.” Then he fell silent and returned to his computer.
“You’ll make some phone calls?” she asked him.
He rolled his eyes. “And you’re very focused.”
“Have to be. A woman’s life is in danger.”
He looked over at her. “Do you think Simon is telling the truth?”
“I believe Simon is telling the truth as much as he understands the truth to be.”
At that, he started to laugh. “Isn’t that like hedging your bets?”
She gave him a half smile. “Definitely. But I also think it’s the truth. If he’s not telling the truth, then he doesn’t know what the truth is. This is the closest thing to the truth that he does know, which still doesn’t help.”
“No,” Rodney agreed, “it doesn’t.”
“But it’s all we have.”
“A lot of man-hours.”
“Don’t even go there,” she snapped. “I’m the one who spent all day yesterday running around, looking at bullshit windows.”
“I know,” he stated. “I thought that was actually a good thing for you to understand.”
“What? That all of this is bullshit?” she asked, with half a laugh.
“No, but, when you’re pushing for things—like Simon’s story to be believed—you also need to understand what the cost of the man-hours is in terms of wild goose chases.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, “if that was part of the lesson, I got it, but it still sucks.”
“I know.” Rodney nodded. “We got it too. And you’re right. It sucks. But, at the same time, maybe something will come out of it.”