by Aiden Bates
Jake followed after him. "Why would you be mad at yourself? He's the one who's being a dick."
"Sure. Maybe. But I'm still the one who made the choices. I mean, it was important to me, saving myself for my alpha. Not just any alpha, but for the alpha I'd spend the rest of my life with. When push came to shove, though, that's not what I did. I just kind of went ahead and gave it up just like that. I gave up on one of my most important principles, and my most cherished dream, for a couple of minutes of pleasure." He turned his face away from the pretty shrub in front of him. "Who does that? I never thought of myself as being that weak."
Jake sighed. "Don't be too hard on yourself, man. Wanting it like that, it's in you. You can't fight it. You're an omega. It's part of your nature. You need that kind of affection and attention; it's built into your genes. It's important to you." He put a hand on Oliver's back.
"I know." Oliver closed his eyes. "I know. The science can't be ignored. I just… I've been able to get by just fine until now. I can't believe that I threw it all out the window without thinking about it. And it's like… you know, all these years, I've known that Sam was the kind of guy who would want his omega to be a virgin. He's old-fashioned like that.
"But now I'm looking back, and he never asked. He never picked up on the fact that I had no clue what I was doing. He was never thinking about me past that night. He never thought of me as someone he could consider being with. He never thought of me as someone he could respect, just as someone he could use. And that's on me." Oliver fought down a wave of anger.
"Look, Oliver, I'm sure it's more complicated than that. I know alphas tend to be kind of simple, in terms of motivation and needs and all that, but my dad's got some baggage and stuff. It doesn't excuse the way he's treated you, but I don't think it's as simple as all that." Jake nudged him with his shoulder. "I'm not saying you should forgive him. I'm just saying that there's probably more to the story."
Oliver faked a grin and kept walking. "Maybe. That's usually the case in what we do, right? Why would life be any different? That's not the point though. Why he did what he did, or didn't, is kind of secondary. I'm upset with myself, not him. I had an identity for myself, and it's gone now."
Jake bit down on the inside of his cheek as he contemplated that for a moment. "Okay. Fair enough. I'm going to be here while you forge your new identity, though."
Oliver's smile was genuine now. "Thanks, man."
"Okay, good. Now come on, there's some kind of butterfly bush over here. Let's see if there are any butterflies to be seen." Jake waved the map at Oliver and led him further down the trail, and Oliver followed gladly.
Oliver went for a solo bike ride the next day. He appreciated what Jake had told him, and to some extent he agreed, but none of that changed the deep sense of loss in his soul. He needed movement to find peace, movement and sweat. If he pushed himself enough, maybe he could forget the last time he'd worked up this much of a lather.
When he got home, he found Jake behind the stove and Joe setting the table. He froze with the door half open. "Um, hi?"
The twins waved at him with identical gestures, right down to identical timing. "Hey, Oliver." Joe grinned, but didn't advance toward Oliver. "Jake told me Dad's being an ass again. We figured it would be nice to have a Welcome to the Family party."
"All the folks he's let down." Jake chuckled. "Go on, there's still some finishing touches to put on. You've got time to shower."
Oliver scurried off to wash up. He really had worked up quite a sweat; his scent was incompatible with food at the moment. By the time he'd cleaned up and gotten dressed again, dinner was served and on the table. Oliver wasn't quite sure how he felt about the whole idea of joining a party for people let down by Sam Nenci, but he sat down at the table anyway.
Dinner turned out to be exactly what he needed to fortify him for the week ahead. They didn't talk about Sam, unless the twins were telling a particularly funny story from their childhood. The conversation was entirely relaxed and perfectly enjoyable, and by the time Joe headed off to his own place Oliver felt lighter than he had in weeks.
Sam cc'ed Oliver on correspondence with a high volume of insurers, but none of them recognized the ring or the pocket watch. On Tuesday, they headed back out to Marblehead to see if Bill Coucher recognized the jewelry. The ride took over an hour, and at no point during the ride was the silence broken by either man.
Part of Oliver felt badly about that. He certainly found it miserable to sit in stiff, unbreakable silence all of the way up to Marblehead. He couldn't think of any reason why Sam would feel any differently, even if he had no regrets about how their night together had ended.
Of course, Sam certainly didn't seem to still want Oliver. That, as much as the memory of his own behavior, was the source of Oliver's pain and shame. How could he still be affected by Sam's banana nut bread scent? Why would it still affect him? He should be ready to wash his hands of Sam and never think of him again.
Once they got to Coucher's residence, Sam took the lead. Oliver let him. He'd step in and correct the alpha if he said anything factually inaccurate, but Sam was the cop. He dealt with witnesses all of the time. Oliver hadn't gone into forensic science to make a habit of interacting with people.
Coucher seemed happy enough to see them. "Detectives! It's lovely to see you again." He shook their hands and led them through the magnificently appointed home and out to a stone patio overlooking the harbor. "It's a beautiful day, and we should enjoy it while we can."
Oliver frowned. "The weather report says that the good weather should stick around for another few days."
Coucher chuckled. "Meteorologists, right? It's the only job in the world where you can get it wrong eighty percent of the time and not wind up on the unemployment line." He gestured toward a damp-looking stone sticking up out of the patio. "That stone's been here since the eighteen hundreds. If it turns damp, a storm's coming. It's never wrong. I'll believe it over some guy sitting there with a computer, Detective. Now, Detective Nenci, you told me you had something to ask me."
Sam smirked. "Couldn't have said it better myself, Mr. Coucher. My sons are always giving me grief like that." He reached into his briefcase and pulled out glossy prints, both color and black and white, of the finds from the Cooper Block Fire. "Mr. Wesson here was going through the materials from the crime scene and he came across these jewelry items. Do they look at all familiar to you?"
Coucher ran his tongue over his lip as he stared at the picture. "As a matter of fact, they do. Come with me, gentlemen." He rose and led them back into the house and into a bar room with a huge picture window overlooking the harbor. "Have a seat." He gestured to the barstools and went over to a tall bookshelf.
Oliver watched as he went over the spines with a hooked finger until he came to the one he wanted. This book had a leather cover and seemed fragile even at a distance. When Coucher placed it onto the bar counter and opened it, Oliver could see that it was a photo album. The pictures inside were ancient. Some of them were so old that they were printed on thin sheets of tin. Oliver watched, holding his breath, as their host turned the pages until he got what he wanted.
"Here we are. My great-grandfather, Walter Coucher. This portrait was taken in 1904, when Walter was seventeen. Of course omegas weren't open in those days, but records were kept within the family."
Oliver stared. "So the ring was a mark of his having been claimed."
Coucher beamed. "Precisely. He was born Walter Towne, but his name was quietly changed when he came into the family. You can see that the ring is very clearly on his hand there." His face darkened as he closed the book. "His family had initially promised him to the Marstens, but he wasn't willing to submit to Chester Marsten. He was only willing to submit to my great-grandfather, and made him a promise. They made several attacks on the family residence, looking to get him back and force a claim on him, but they were unsuccessful.
"The ring and the watch were stolen during one of the raids, thi
s time during the 1920s. When Great-Grandpa Walter wouldn't give up his ring, they cut off his finger." Coucher shuddered. "I always thought that was more of a metaphor myself, but here we are."
Oliver gasped. "That's terrible! Why wasn't that prosecuted? I get that it was basically illegal to exist as an omega, but you'd think that someone would have pressed charges about someone else busting in and chopping off parts."
Coucher gave him a sad smile. "No one saw anything, of course. Not even Walter. In those days, people weren't willing to admit to having seen anything. Remember, the people who pulled of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre were pretending to be police officers. Walter survived well into his fifties." He straightened up. "I'm not going to pretend that everyone in my family was always on the law's good side. Some were, some were not. I can't account for my ancestors' decisions.
"What I can promise is that my grandfather made it his business to divest from anything that smacked of illegality all the way back in 1960, and my father carried his work on. We've been audited over and over again. We are clean, gentlemen. We're a squeaky clean business and we intend to remain that way."
Sam smiled at him. The record showed something different, but that didn't mean that the Couchers had been behind the accidents. "Of course. No one would suggest otherwise." He tapped his finger against his jawline for a long moment. "So this whole business of leaving the items at the crime scene, do you think that the killer might have been trying to send a message that it was in revenge for your family 'stealing' Walter away from them?"
Coucher's jaw dropped. It was only when Oliver's jaw started to ache that he realized that the expression mirrored his own. "That's horrific," Coucher said in a flat tone.
Oliver tilted his head to the side. "I have to admit that it's plausible. It's horrific, but so's the deliberate murder of fifty people."
Coucher shuddered. "You're not wrong." He turned around and grabbed a bottle of gin from a shelf. "You boys want some?"
"Desperately," Oliver told him. "Unfortunately, we can't while we're on the job. Thank you, though."
Coucher poured himself a gin and tonic. "Your loss. Anyway, I hope that helps you get to the bottom of all of this."
"It certainly helps us to narrow our focus." Sam shook Coucher's hand and excused them, and then he led them back out to the unmarked car.
At least the ride back wasn't going to be silent. "Well, that was interesting," Sam said as he pulled the Ford back out onto the road. "Unexpected anyway."
Oliver snorted. "It's not like there are more omegas being born now than there were before. It was just taboo to talk about it. You know, ever." He looked out the window. "Apparently it didn't bother the Couchers, though, because they recorded it."
Sam paused before he replied, and Oliver wondered if he'd gone too far again. Then Sam spoke. "I guess I'm surprised at the violence involved, over something that most people wouldn't have spoken about in public even thirty years ago. I mean, yeah, it was shady of the Couchers to steal the omega, but what was done was done. It wasn't worth killing over. And definitely not worth killing over sixty-three years later, when both the alpha and the omega in question were dead."
Oliver wrinkled his nose. "I'm dying to know what Walter himself thought about the whole thing."
"What do you mean?" Sam glanced over at Oliver. "I'm pretty sure that he objected to having his finger cut off."
"Most people would." Oliver leaned his head against the glass and watched the clouds roll in. "I mean, was it entirely voluntary for him to go off with the Coucher guy? Did he prefer the Marsten guy? Was there someone else entirely? All we know is that his father promised him to Marsten, and he was sixteen or seventeen when he was claimed by Coucher."
Sam sighed. "Does it matter? One alpha's pretty much the same as another, right?"
Huge drops of rain began to drop onto the windshield. "Apparently," Oliver said.
They didn't speak for the rest of the ride.
***
Sam looked at the screen and let out a long, low whistle. "This is huge. This is bigger than huge, this is… this is stupid."
"What's that, Nenci? Your love life?" Tessaro's head popped up from behind his own monitor, like a prairie dog sticking its head up out of a hole.
Sam flipped him off. "You've got some nerve. If I look up messy in the dictionary, my picture's not the one under definition number four."
"Okay, that's fair enough. Of course, my messy love life isn't getting every single Cold Case request sent to the back of the line down at the lab, now, is it?" Tessaro smiled sweetly at him and leaned back in his chair.
"Robles is getting things through." Nenci crossed his arms over his chest and glared at his colleague's empty desk.
"Robles' omega is a sergeant. In another department." Tessaro put his feet up on the desk. "How about this. You call Oliver down here, since he's supposed to be your partner in this, and I'll play referee. Sound good?"
Sam bristled. He didn't want to call Oliver down here to talk. They still weren't good together, and Sam still had to fight down his own reactions every time he caught so much as a hint of a myrrh scent. "Fine," he gritted out, clenching his teeth. This might be the last thing he wanted, but it would get the case solved more quickly. Once that was done, both Sam and Oliver could move on with their lives.
Sam sent Oliver a message asking him to join them, and then they sat back and waited. Oliver showed up ten minutes later, his expression cold but neutral. "Detective Nenci." He nodded. "Detective Tessaro. How can I help you?"
The formality of it hit Sam like a knife to the heart, but he pushed through it. "Thanks for coming by, Oliver. I pulled up a list of crimes related to Coucher properties, and to members of the Marsten family, going back to 1904. It's starting to look like the Hatfields and the McCoys here. That's not something you usually think of when you think about Massachusetts, you know?" He looked up at Oliver.
He wasn't sure what he expected to see. Oliver had always been a curious guy, with an interest in every case that crossed his desk. Now he just stared impassively. "And this has what to do with the lab?"
Sam choked on his own breath. He looked at Tessaro to double check; had he heard what Sam had just heard?
He had. "Well it doesn't sound like it's got much to do with the lab, not on the surface," Tessaro said. He got up and crossed the room, hands stuffed into his pockets. "You're supposed to be Nenci's partner here in this, Oliver. He's supposed to be talking about the case with you."
Oliver huffed out a little laugh. "Yeah, sure, but that was only while we were working on cases that had a strong forensic component. The case has changed. This case—these cases, really—the whole nature of the project has changed. There's not much of a forensic component anymore, is there? I mean this stuff, the human motivations and the patterns to what they do, that's all your area of expertise. It's not something that I work on, and it's not something that I've studied. I'm not much good to you out here. When you come to me with something that I can analyze, run through a GC-MassSpec, or look at under a microscope, I'm a hundred percent on board with it. Until then, I've got a bunch of other cases that need attention, and honestly I'm more comfortable in my lab." He nodded once at Tessaro, turned on his heel, and walked back toward the door.
Tessaro raced to catch up with him. "Hey, Oliver, buddy, I get that folks are pissed at Nenci, everyone's always pissed at Nenci, but how come the rest of us are blackballed?"
Oliver snorted. "Detective Tessaro, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but a department full of alphas isn't anyone's idea of a dream team. Not when you're on the downhill side." He smiled, just a little, and kept walking.
Tessaro and Sam looked at one another. "At least I'm not the only one," Sam said finally.
"I think we're a garden of joy and chivalry, frankly." Tessaro glowered at the door. "So that was really weird, and not in a call-Mulder-and-Scully way. Can he really just take himself off the case like that?"
Sam snapped hi
s fingers. "I'll have to check with Devlin, but I don't think that he can."
Tessaro pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not sure that's the best way to win him back."
Sam turned on him. "I'm not trying to win him back, Tessaro. It's a matter of trying to solve the case. I don't expect him to come back. I don't want—I can't have him back."
Tessaro's lip curled. "Are you kidding me right now? Everyone knows how much the two of you want each other, we sit there and we watch you moon over each other for three years, we practically gift wrap the guy for you, and you're balking?"
"I'm doing what's right for him!" Sam snapped. "Sure it all seems like fun and games now. Oh, let's stick some sweet, innocent kid with the nasty old troll that lives under our bridge! But if he stays with me, forever, then what happens to him?" He turned away.
Tessaro cleared his throat. "Don't you kind of think that's his choice to make?"