“Somebody always knows something,” he said, nodding his head. “But getting those people to talk, that’s a different story.”
“It’s about asking the right questions too. I mean, you think about everything that you could ask, and then you realize that maybe you need to frame the question in quite the right way. Maybe they didn’t realize what you were asking, and maybe they didn’t think of something else because of it,” she said. “It’s incredibly frustrating.”
He laughed. “It is, indeed,” he said, “and you’re not the first or the last person to find that out.”
“I know,” she said, with a groan. She looked at him. “I guess you didn’t come up with anything new.”
“Nope, I would have shared if I had,” he said cheerfully. “Go home. Take your mind off it. Maybe something will come to you then.”
She nodded, but her lips were in a grim line.
“I’m heading out now. Come on. I’ll walk with you to our cars.”
She thought about what he had said all the way home.
The atmosphere these days in the bullpen was completely different than when she had first started here as a detective, and that was good. The team had pulled together, compiling an incredible amount of work already and had solved all kinds of cases. It’s just that the crimes never let up, so there never seemed to be any end to it all, and that was frustrating too. She wanted to go home at the end of the day, satisfied with what she’d accomplished, but always had that uncertainty, wondering if she may have missed something else, something that she could have done more of, and that hurt.
The stress was real. As she rolled her neck and shoulders, while unlocking the door to her apartment, that thought immediately reminded her that she’d let her judo practices slide. She’d picked up an interest in it as a teen for that extra exercise and for the chance to kick ass somewhere. With that in mind, she quickly got dressed in her exercise gear and went back out again, walking to her favorite club.
When she walked in, her sensei looked at her, smiled, and said, “There you are. I haven’t seen you in a while.”
She nodded. “I know,” she said. “I’m so sorry. But I need to be here tonight.”
“If nothing else,” he said quietly, instantly understanding the tension in her system, “it’s really good for stress relief.”
She smiled. “And that’s good because I could use some of that right now.”
He said, “Great. Let’s give it a hard run then.”
And a hard run it was.
By the time she was done, she was groaning, prone on the floor, and he was smiling, offering his hand to help her up.
“Hey,” he said, “you’ve got to get back in here a little more often if you want to knock me down.”
“I know,” she said, waving away his hand. “That was evident tonight.”
He burst out laughing. “No,” he said, “you still had some moves. It’s just you’re a little out of practice.”
“Too much so,” she said, still on the floor on her back, staring up at the ceiling. “I need to get here more than just weekly again.”
He nodded. “Yes, you do. In order to keep it flowing the way you want it to flow,” he said, “it’s pretty necessary to be here consistently.”
“Yeah, if only my workload would allow for it.”
“I get it,” he said. “Believe me. I do. You’re doing a very important job, and it comes with an awful lot of challenges, and one of them is time.”
“Time, energy, and mental health,” she said. “I’m slacking on the mental health side as well.”
“You’ve got to watch that,” he said, “and find a way to figure it out. I understand your misgivings about seeing the department’s mental health doctor, but find some other way. That is way too important to let slide.”
She smiled. “It’s an occupational hazard, but the job doesn’t exactly come with any manual on how to deal with it.”
As he thought about it, he frowned and said, “No, and it’s a real problem, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “It is, actually. You do your best, but sometimes you come away thinking that you’re not getting anything done.”
“Well, we know you are,” he said. “It’s just a matter of staying positive.”