Haven, Maine, Wednesday
Jul. 8th, 2020 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
betterthanaplanJonas fucking Lester had stolen one of Duke's guns. One of his legally registered guns, all because Duke had refused to ferry an escaped felon to Canada. And then the dick had had the gall to die mysteriously, probably with Duke's damn gun on him, which meant that Duke was stuck in town until he was sure no one had used his goddamn gun to murder the fucker.
He called the theft into HPD first thing, managing to luck out and get an officer who miraculously didn't hate him while he was at it. That meant a nice little paper trail of deniability once the cops who did hate him figured out the gun Lester had was registered to Duke. Then he set out into town, figuring he might as well use the extra time to look more into his trouble, and what his dad had or hadn't done with it before he died.
Oddly enough, no one really wanted to talk to Duke about whether or not his dad was a trouble vigilante.
"Don't know what to tell you, kid," old Gus, one of his dad's old fishing buddies, said. "You saw it yourself, your pop fell overboard. Happens to the best of us."
"Your father was a bastard card shark was what he was," said Dale at the Rusty Scupper. "Fucking owed me five grand."
"Your father was a great man," said the Rev. "Are you ready to follow in his holy footsteps?"
"Fuck no," said Duke, and got the hell out of there before the man could go any more creepy cult leader on him.
He ran into Dwight, the giant Gloria had called in to 'clean' little Timmy's toy trouble, on his way to the diner. "Sasquatch."
"Crocker." Dwight folded his arms over his chest and stared Duke down. "Hear you've been asking after your old man."
"I may have," Duke agreed. "Why, did you know him?" He didn't think Dwight was any older than him, but thanks to Fandom he knew as well as anyone that looks could be deceiving.
"No," Dwight said. "But I know going down this road won't lead you anywhere good. Leave it alone."
"Or — what. Will I get into an 'accident' like he did?"
"Wouldn't be surprised," Dwight said with a sharp smile. "Accidents happen all the time."
Which, naturally, was when a thick fog started rolling in, blanketing the whole of downtown.
Duke watched it with a frown, pressing himself back against the wall and listening to the sounds of shouting nearby as people tried not to run into each other in the street. There was what sounded like a truck horn blaring, and more shouting.
"Whelp," Dwight said. Duke could barely see him through the fog, but he didn't look even a little bit phased by the weird, wet smokescreen. "Back to work."
Duke watched vanish into the fog and found himself missing Fandom and its whole "weird is normal but it's still weird" vibe. At least the people there didn't pretend everything should seem normal to those who weren't in the middle of it every day.
He swung by the Haven Herald after the fog cleared up, and stumbled in on Vince and Dave looking absolutely over the moon about something. They clammed right up when he came in, giving him nearly matching wide-eyed looks, though Vince's was far less enthusiastic than Dave's.
"Duke!" Dave said. "What brings you back to town?"
"Did you bring that little lady of yours with you?" Vince asked.
Duke pointed at him. "No. And her name is Octavia, thank you. And she could dismantle you without breaking a sweat."
Vince and Dave exchanged a look at that, and Vince even looked amused.
"Is there something we can do for you?"
Duke sighed. He wished the Teagues were as easy to bribe as Fandom's squirrels. "Maybe. I'm looking for information about my family."
Vince and Dave exchanged another look, this one far less easy to read. Vince's expression seemed to go dark for a moment before he looked back up at Duke, affecting bewilderment. "I . . . don't think we have anything on Crockers, Duke," he said. "Other than the occasional birth announcement and obituary, of course."
"Wrote your dad's myself," Dave said, getting up to go get it. "Don't suppose you would have read it at the time. You had other things on your mind."
"Yeah, nearly getting declared an orphan does that to a kid," Duke said dryly.
"I suppose we could check the archives for you," Vince offered. "Anything in particular you're looking for?"
There was, though Duke didn't much like the idea of asking Haven's two biggest gossips if his father had been a serial killer. Or his grandfather. Or entire generations of his family, going back who knew how long. "Anything, really. I don't remember Dad ever talking much about our history. But the Crocker reputation had to come from somewhere, right?"
"You know, I think there is something," Dave said, getting up and moving towards the filing cabinets."
"Dave," Vince said, a hint of warning in his tone.
"The boy wants to know where he comes from, Vince."
"We are not a genealogical archive, Dave."
Duke tuned them out as their argument turned to esoteric sniping. He wondered if that was what it would have been like to actually grow up with any of his brothers. Though, really, they sounded a lot more like him and Nathan, before Nathan had decided it was his life's mission to see Duke in a jail cell. They didn't even look like brothers. More like an old married couple.
He noticed something sticking out of the side of a folder on Vince's desk, and tilted his head to try and get a surreptitious look at it.
It was the Colorado Kid photo. He flicked his eyes back up to Vince, who was saying something about someone named Gerald? Or — nope. He was yelling at Dave for his use of gerunds. Right. Duke eased a little closer, reaching for the tissue box on the corner of Vince’s desk as a pretence to nudge the paperwork out of the way of the folder.
It was unlabeled. Or not currently labeled, at least. It was hard to tell under thick scribbles of ink, but it looked like the previous labels had been "Lucy" — for Lucy Ripley? — and before that "Sarah".
Vince's hand came down sharply on the folder, making Duke jump. "Can I get you some coffee, Duke?" he asked, staring Duke down with that cold look again. Duke backed up.
"I'm good, thanks."
"Here we go!" Dave returned with another folder, this one labeled "R. 'J.' Crocker". "It's about your grandfather, I think. From back in 1955. We'd only just started on the paper back then, of course, but I remember this case. A shooting at the old VA hospital."
Duke took the folder with a nod of thanks and flipped it open. A single column of a faded, yellowed newspaper article was inside. A Roy "Junior" Crocker had been shot and killed in the basement of the hospital during some altercation with an army nurse and an unidentified, long-haired man. He flipped the paper over, but the other side was about some bar fight, clearly unrelated. He looked up at Dave. "That's it?"
Dave shrugged and nodded apologetically. "Our archives from back then aren't as robust as they could be."
"Seriously?" Duke tossed the folder down and ran his hand through his hair. "You don't even have the rest of the article? Did anyone investigate? What was the 'altercation' about?"
"Drugs, I assume," Vince said. "Your family has always had trouble with . . . addiction."
"I'll keep looking," Dave said. "But I don't think I'll find much else."
Duke looked between them. Dave, he was willing to believe. Vince, though, he was definitely hiding something. Duke could come back tonight maybe, after they'd gone home. Break in and search the archives himself.
The thought of it made him tired. Some fight between his granddad and a nurse 65 years ago wasn't going to tell him how to keep from hurting Octavia again. And apparently Haven's obsession with secrets went back a long, long time.
"Yeah, thanks," he said finally, flashing Dave a tired smile. "It was a long shot, anyway. See you boys around."
"Yes," Vince said, that odd cold tone running under his otherwise affable exterior. "Yes, I believe you will."
Duke was sitting on his couch that night — where he'd spent the last several nights, unable to face the bed and all of Octavia's things strewn around it — twirling Lucy's necklace when the hail started. He looked up at the skylight with a frown. The weather could be unpredictable in Maine, and this wasn't, like, hard candy or whatever passed for hail in Fandom, but it still seemed to come out of nowhere. He was just heading above decks to make sure everything was battened down when he heard an explosion not far down the docks, followed by a loud splash.
A very familiar sort of splash. The kind made by a person falling into the water.
He broke into a run, spotting the dark outline of a soaked coat bobbing just below the surface of the water across from the Rouge. He dove in without pausing even to take off his shoes, reaching the person in a few strokes. They were unconscious, probably from the explosion, and had landed facedown, so probably had already taken in a lot of water. He towed them back to the docks and pulled them up onto the cold, wet boards.
And froze.
It was Lucy.
Her hair was all wrong, but her face was just how he remembered it, even unconscious. He could suddenly picture her, sitting across from him at the McShaws' place. Ordering waffles for him and coffee for herself. Then reading him the riot act for sticking tacks into Nathan.
Just because Nathan was troubled, she'd said, that didn't make him less than Duke was. The fact that Nathan couldn't feel the pain didn't make it okay to hurt him. Duke had to always remember that, no matter what else happened. Hurting other people was never okay.
The woman on the docks started coughing and Duke shook himself out of his reverie. She looked like Lucy, but that didn't really mean much. Maybe she was Lucy, magically unaged over the last 27 years. Or maybe she was someone else entirely. All that mattered right now was that she was hurting and needed his help.
He rolled her onto her side so she could cough up the rest of the water she'd swallowed, rubbing her back and muttering soothing words all the while. She never seemed entirely aware, and they were both starting to shiver, so Duke scooped her up and brought her into the Rouge to warm up. He stripped her out of her wet clothes and set them aside to wash, noting as he did the firearm on her belt and badge in her pocket.
Audrey Parker. FBI. Oh great.
He tucked her into his bed, leaving one of his clean shirts on the nightstand for her when she woke, and went to go take care of her clothes. He'd deal with having an FBI agent as a houseguest later. When she was awake. In the meantime, he'd get her things all rinsed off before they were ruined, and try to ignore the smug smirk of a Jersey-by-way-of-Hawaii detective calling him out for being a softie out of his head.
[NFB,NFI, OOC is welcome! open to one, OOC is still welcome! Events based on Haven ep 1x01. ENTER AUDREY!]
He called the theft into HPD first thing, managing to luck out and get an officer who miraculously didn't hate him while he was at it. That meant a nice little paper trail of deniability once the cops who did hate him figured out the gun Lester had was registered to Duke. Then he set out into town, figuring he might as well use the extra time to look more into his trouble, and what his dad had or hadn't done with it before he died.
Oddly enough, no one really wanted to talk to Duke about whether or not his dad was a trouble vigilante.
"Don't know what to tell you, kid," old Gus, one of his dad's old fishing buddies, said. "You saw it yourself, your pop fell overboard. Happens to the best of us."
"Your father was a bastard card shark was what he was," said Dale at the Rusty Scupper. "Fucking owed me five grand."
"Your father was a great man," said the Rev. "Are you ready to follow in his holy footsteps?"
"Fuck no," said Duke, and got the hell out of there before the man could go any more creepy cult leader on him.
He ran into Dwight, the giant Gloria had called in to 'clean' little Timmy's toy trouble, on his way to the diner. "Sasquatch."
"Crocker." Dwight folded his arms over his chest and stared Duke down. "Hear you've been asking after your old man."
"I may have," Duke agreed. "Why, did you know him?" He didn't think Dwight was any older than him, but thanks to Fandom he knew as well as anyone that looks could be deceiving.
"No," Dwight said. "But I know going down this road won't lead you anywhere good. Leave it alone."
"Or — what. Will I get into an 'accident' like he did?"
"Wouldn't be surprised," Dwight said with a sharp smile. "Accidents happen all the time."
Which, naturally, was when a thick fog started rolling in, blanketing the whole of downtown.
Duke watched it with a frown, pressing himself back against the wall and listening to the sounds of shouting nearby as people tried not to run into each other in the street. There was what sounded like a truck horn blaring, and more shouting.
"Whelp," Dwight said. Duke could barely see him through the fog, but he didn't look even a little bit phased by the weird, wet smokescreen. "Back to work."
Duke watched vanish into the fog and found himself missing Fandom and its whole "weird is normal but it's still weird" vibe. At least the people there didn't pretend everything should seem normal to those who weren't in the middle of it every day.
He swung by the Haven Herald after the fog cleared up, and stumbled in on Vince and Dave looking absolutely over the moon about something. They clammed right up when he came in, giving him nearly matching wide-eyed looks, though Vince's was far less enthusiastic than Dave's.
"Duke!" Dave said. "What brings you back to town?"
"Did you bring that little lady of yours with you?" Vince asked.
Duke pointed at him. "No. And her name is Octavia, thank you. And she could dismantle you without breaking a sweat."
Vince and Dave exchanged a look at that, and Vince even looked amused.
"Is there something we can do for you?"
Duke sighed. He wished the Teagues were as easy to bribe as Fandom's squirrels. "Maybe. I'm looking for information about my family."
Vince and Dave exchanged another look, this one far less easy to read. Vince's expression seemed to go dark for a moment before he looked back up at Duke, affecting bewilderment. "I . . . don't think we have anything on Crockers, Duke," he said. "Other than the occasional birth announcement and obituary, of course."
"Wrote your dad's myself," Dave said, getting up to go get it. "Don't suppose you would have read it at the time. You had other things on your mind."
"Yeah, nearly getting declared an orphan does that to a kid," Duke said dryly.
"I suppose we could check the archives for you," Vince offered. "Anything in particular you're looking for?"
There was, though Duke didn't much like the idea of asking Haven's two biggest gossips if his father had been a serial killer. Or his grandfather. Or entire generations of his family, going back who knew how long. "Anything, really. I don't remember Dad ever talking much about our history. But the Crocker reputation had to come from somewhere, right?"
"You know, I think there is something," Dave said, getting up and moving towards the filing cabinets."
"Dave," Vince said, a hint of warning in his tone.
"The boy wants to know where he comes from, Vince."
"We are not a genealogical archive, Dave."
Duke tuned them out as their argument turned to esoteric sniping. He wondered if that was what it would have been like to actually grow up with any of his brothers. Though, really, they sounded a lot more like him and Nathan, before Nathan had decided it was his life's mission to see Duke in a jail cell. They didn't even look like brothers. More like an old married couple.
He noticed something sticking out of the side of a folder on Vince's desk, and tilted his head to try and get a surreptitious look at it.
It was the Colorado Kid photo. He flicked his eyes back up to Vince, who was saying something about someone named Gerald? Or — nope. He was yelling at Dave for his use of gerunds. Right. Duke eased a little closer, reaching for the tissue box on the corner of Vince’s desk as a pretence to nudge the paperwork out of the way of the folder.
It was unlabeled. Or not currently labeled, at least. It was hard to tell under thick scribbles of ink, but it looked like the previous labels had been "Lucy" — for Lucy Ripley? — and before that "Sarah".
Vince's hand came down sharply on the folder, making Duke jump. "Can I get you some coffee, Duke?" he asked, staring Duke down with that cold look again. Duke backed up.
"I'm good, thanks."
"Here we go!" Dave returned with another folder, this one labeled "R. 'J.' Crocker". "It's about your grandfather, I think. From back in 1955. We'd only just started on the paper back then, of course, but I remember this case. A shooting at the old VA hospital."
Duke took the folder with a nod of thanks and flipped it open. A single column of a faded, yellowed newspaper article was inside. A Roy "Junior" Crocker had been shot and killed in the basement of the hospital during some altercation with an army nurse and an unidentified, long-haired man. He flipped the paper over, but the other side was about some bar fight, clearly unrelated. He looked up at Dave. "That's it?"
Dave shrugged and nodded apologetically. "Our archives from back then aren't as robust as they could be."
"Seriously?" Duke tossed the folder down and ran his hand through his hair. "You don't even have the rest of the article? Did anyone investigate? What was the 'altercation' about?"
"Drugs, I assume," Vince said. "Your family has always had trouble with . . . addiction."
"I'll keep looking," Dave said. "But I don't think I'll find much else."
Duke looked between them. Dave, he was willing to believe. Vince, though, he was definitely hiding something. Duke could come back tonight maybe, after they'd gone home. Break in and search the archives himself.
The thought of it made him tired. Some fight between his granddad and a nurse 65 years ago wasn't going to tell him how to keep from hurting Octavia again. And apparently Haven's obsession with secrets went back a long, long time.
"Yeah, thanks," he said finally, flashing Dave a tired smile. "It was a long shot, anyway. See you boys around."
"Yes," Vince said, that odd cold tone running under his otherwise affable exterior. "Yes, I believe you will."
Duke was sitting on his couch that night — where he'd spent the last several nights, unable to face the bed and all of Octavia's things strewn around it — twirling Lucy's necklace when the hail started. He looked up at the skylight with a frown. The weather could be unpredictable in Maine, and this wasn't, like, hard candy or whatever passed for hail in Fandom, but it still seemed to come out of nowhere. He was just heading above decks to make sure everything was battened down when he heard an explosion not far down the docks, followed by a loud splash.
A very familiar sort of splash. The kind made by a person falling into the water.
He broke into a run, spotting the dark outline of a soaked coat bobbing just below the surface of the water across from the Rouge. He dove in without pausing even to take off his shoes, reaching the person in a few strokes. They were unconscious, probably from the explosion, and had landed facedown, so probably had already taken in a lot of water. He towed them back to the docks and pulled them up onto the cold, wet boards.
And froze.
It was Lucy.
Her hair was all wrong, but her face was just how he remembered it, even unconscious. He could suddenly picture her, sitting across from him at the McShaws' place. Ordering waffles for him and coffee for herself. Then reading him the riot act for sticking tacks into Nathan.
Just because Nathan was troubled, she'd said, that didn't make him less than Duke was. The fact that Nathan couldn't feel the pain didn't make it okay to hurt him. Duke had to always remember that, no matter what else happened. Hurting other people was never okay.
The woman on the docks started coughing and Duke shook himself out of his reverie. She looked like Lucy, but that didn't really mean much. Maybe she was Lucy, magically unaged over the last 27 years. Or maybe she was someone else entirely. All that mattered right now was that she was hurting and needed his help.
He rolled her onto her side so she could cough up the rest of the water she'd swallowed, rubbing her back and muttering soothing words all the while. She never seemed entirely aware, and they were both starting to shiver, so Duke scooped her up and brought her into the Rouge to warm up. He stripped her out of her wet clothes and set them aside to wash, noting as he did the firearm on her belt and badge in her pocket.
Audrey Parker. FBI. Oh great.
He tucked her into his bed, leaving one of his clean shirts on the nightstand for her when she woke, and went to go take care of her clothes. He'd deal with having an FBI agent as a houseguest later. When she was awake. In the meantime, he'd get her things all rinsed off before they were ruined, and try to ignore the smug smirk of a Jersey-by-way-of-Hawaii detective calling him out for being a softie out of his head.
[NFB,
Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 04:05 pm (UTC)Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 04:15 pm (UTC)"'Is there a problem,' he asks," the Chief grumbled, busting out yet another piece of nicotine gum. Hell of a time he'd picked for quitting, right when she came back to town. "Ain't a problem for me, I'm not the one trusting a goddamn Crocker as my CI. Yeah, Duke's in town. Ain't aware as he's caused any trouble so f --" He broke off as Stan leaned into the office. He waved the man over, took the folder he was holding out, then waved him off again. "Right. Looks here like he reported a gun stolen this morning. You know anything about that, Detective Williams?"
Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 04:20 pm (UTC)Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 04:24 pm (UTC)"What, you rather he didn't report it?" If it were an illegal one, he wouldn't have! The Chief flipped the pages, then rolled his eyes at his officer's choice of information prioritization. "Good thing he did, looks like it just turned up at the scene of a suspicious death. One Jonas Lester, escaped from Shawshank a few days ago. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you, Detective?"
Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 04:38 pm (UTC)Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 04:58 pm (UTC)Yeah, the Chief let out a hearty snort at that phrasing.
God help them all if Duke ever actually figured out how true that was. . . .
"How about you try not to step on my people's toes? Bad enough I got the FBI up here sniffing around the Lester case. I don't need some yahoo from wherethefuck who doesn't know my town trying to order us around too."
Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 05:10 pm (UTC)Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 05:16 pm (UTC)"Uh huh." Garland didn't sound convinced of that at all. "And where did you say you worked, Detective?"
Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 05:19 pm (UTC)Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 05:21 pm (UTC)"Well la-di-da." How the hell did Crocker get wrapped up in a federal task force? He should have listened to Lucy and kept a shorter leash on the boy. "And where's Duke fit into all that?"
Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 05:23 pm (UTC)"I'm afraid that's classified," Danny said with all due sympathy.
Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 05:29 pm (UTC)"Classified my left nut," the Chief grumbled. "I'm tempted to bring him in just for that." But it'd only end up encouraging Nathan's little obsession. And his son would have his hands full enough with this Audrey Parker woman.
He wondered what Howard would have to say about Duke's new out-of-town detective friend.
"Classified," he scoffed again. "If there's any damn thing to tell you, I'll have one of my guys on it. Don't think Crocker being anyone's CI will protect him from being prosecuted under the full force of the law if he slips up here, though."
Or, you know, keep them from killing him, if it came to that. Like Garland had had to do to the boy's father.
Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 05:33 pm (UTC)"Wouldn't expect anything else."
Unfortunately for him, Five-0 tended to go all out in protecting CIs. You know, when they were actually innocent of the crime.
Still a fucking human trafficker, Sang Min.
Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 05:36 pm (UTC)And Duke was totally innocent!
Of this particular crime.
"Good. Anything else I can do for you today, Detective Williams?" The Chief's tone said in no uncertain terms the answer to that best be 'no'.
Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 05:40 pm (UTC)Re: Meanwhile, at HPD....
Date: 2020-07-08 05:48 pm (UTC)"Yeah, yeah. When Crocker gets back to Hawaii or Maryland or whatever, tell him to keep his ass out of my town, would you?"