memento vivere - supernatural & criminal minds

chapter 27

Chapter 27
The Line of Duty

Three gunshot wounds worth of blood stained the pavement beneath their feet, and Elle still looked them in the eyes and claimed it was in self-defense. The body of serial rapist William Lee was being loaded into an ambulance to be taken to the morgue. Crimson stained the gloved hands of the people who carried him.

Jude stood to the side of the scene. She studied the side of Hotch’s face she could see in the light of a lamppost. He was scrutinizing Elle with a look he usually reserved for suspects, although Jude supposed that’s what Elle was now. Something had shifted on the night she was shot by Randall Garner. Her prior work in the sex crimes division had introduced her to a certain kind of evil, and somehow dancing with death had unleashed an untapped rage.

They should have known when they saw the look in Elle’s eyes as Lee left the interrogation room. There hadn’t been enough evidence to convict, and it was over as soon as his lawyer arrived. Elle had been furious that they were letting him walk. They all begrudged the bureaucratic red tape they had to stand behind, but this seemed to be Elle’s final straw.

***

Elle was gone a week later. She’d inexplicably vanished after a missed psych evaluation, turning off her phone so Penelope could not track her. Hotch volunteered to look for her; he took responsibility for her shift as he’d been the one to send her home on the night she was shot. But as long as the world kept spinning there would still be spilled blood, so the team shipped off to Texas without two of their members.

Two sad little fans on either end of the police station were the only thing around to keep the building cool. The heat only exacerbated the team’s frustration, pitting them against each other like castaways stranded on an island. Jude took refuge in the bathroom and let the sink run until the water was freezing cold. She dabbed it on the pulse points in her wrists and neck, then patted it over her entire face.

When her phone rang, she resisted the overwhelming urge to chuck it in the toilet. “What?”

“Charming as ever,” Dean’s voice chided. There was some shuffling and bickering on  his end. “Sam, stop- I’ll put her on speaker, calm down.” Jude leaned against the wall to wait, thankful for the cool tile on the back of her neck.

“You alright, Jude?” Sam asked.

“I’m sweating my ass off in Texas on a case with three-quarters of my team.”

“Jeez. Okay, we won’t keep you,” Sam at least had the decency to sound apologetic. His older brother was wheezing quietly in the background. “We just wanted to ask you about something. We ran into an old…I wouldn’t say friend, but acquaintance of our dad’s. Ellen Harvelle? She said she knew you.”

Jude forced herself to focus. “You’re at the Roadhouse?”

There was more scuffling on the other end. “You knew about this place?” Dean asked.

“Ellen used to give my dad work if we ever needed cash. I haven’t been there in a while, though. We had a case in that area a couple months back and the team went there for drinks after. Some old hunter my dad worked with once almost ratted me out and Ellen’s daughter threatened him with a set of tongs.”

Dean scoffed, “Yeah, she seems to have a knack for that.”

“Oh, Jo said she’d rip out your tongue too?” Jude smirked.

“More like put a shotgun to his back,” Sam corrected. Jude laughed and started to answer when someone knocked on the door. Through the wood, she heard Spencer calling her name.

“Listen, I gotta go. Say hi to Ellen and Jo for me.”

“Got it,” Sam promised, his voice already getting further away. “Bye, Scully.” On the other side of the bathroom door stood Spencer, his phone outstretched. Over his shoulder, Jude saw their team sitting in silence and varying states of resignation. Jude took the phone to see a message from Hotch. Elle had handed in her badge and gun. She was gone.

***

They closed their case by midday and Jude was back in her apartment that evening. She kept her phone close while she settled in for the night, intermittently calling Elle between tasks. There was never an answer. The device sat silent while she ate dinner, took a shower, and double-checked her protective charms before bed. This was a habit she had maintained even through her decade of no hunting.

Jude was in bed with the lights off when the phone finally rang. She scrambled for it, for once feeling grateful that she was forced to be on-call all night. A sliver of moonlight through her curtains illuminated Elle’s name. “Hey, sorry I kept missing you.”

“Where are you? Are you okay?” Jude blurted, only regretting her belligerence once the words were out. But the radio silence had her presuming the worst.

“I’m in New York. I just got off the train.” Elle had been born and raised there. “And I’m fine, really. I just…couldn’t do it anymore. This job.” Jude leaned back against the headboard, letting her eyes slip shut. The voice in her ear held the tone of someone who’d been holding onto a feeling for far too long and needed to release it to someone, anyone. Jude knew the feeling. She was happy to be that person for Elle. “I mean, we wade through all these horrible cases every day and there’s never an end. Even with the cases we do solve, dicks like William Lee still get away.”

“It wasn’t self defense, was it?” Quiet. Jude could barely even hear Elle’s breathing. “I’m not gonna turn you in. I know what it feels like to have to step away.”

“I had to do it, that’s all I can say. Does that make sense? I couldn’t let him walk, not knowing that more women would suffer for it.”

“It makes sense,” Jude assured her, and she meant it. There was no doubt that the world was better off without William Lee in it. “I hope you can find some peace now, Elle. You deserve that.”

“So do you. Don’t let this job get to you like it got to me.” Jude smiled. It was a tall order, but she promised she would try. That was the best she could do.