+18 eps. 17-21 - After a hard case that takes the team to DC in order to catch a blackhat and prevent a bombing, all hell breaks loose on their return to Boston , when the ghost of the Libra killer comes back to torture Brock seven years after the m...
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Brock left the tea to settle and turned to Gillian, who was done with the dishes. "Cassidy sent me some files. Mind if I take a look at them?"
"By all means. I'll fix the tea."
He went to his room and back to the kitchen in under a minute, and opened his computer on the table.
"It's a case?" Gillian asked casually, bringing their cups.
"I don't know," he replied from the cupboard, and handed her the sugar. "It's something Cooper sent him about an event in Maine, that's all I know." He saw the spark of interest in her eyes. "Want to take a look at it?"
She was dying to accept, but held her horses. "You should do it first. Just in case it's something too classified for my rookie eyes."
Brock frowned, his lips pursed in a smile at the same time, which made Gillian look away. She couldn't help to think that gesture looked plain lovely on him. They sat at the table with their teas and Brock put on his readers, any hint of a smile replaced by a serious, focused scowl. Gillian fetched her phone and checked her inbox, not to bother him. She soon noticed Brock scowled deeper. Before she could ask, he looked up at her and turned around his computer for her to see.
"Check this. I'll be right back," he said.
While he left the room, Gillian grabbed her own glasses. Then she sat to Brock's computer. Cassidy's email was a file from the Portland resident agency. It gave account on two similar events that made it to the state news media during the past three weeks, one in Augusta and one in Bangor. In both cases, white police officers had allegedly attacked local African American men. In Augusta, the victim had died due to the lesions and wounds from the attack. The victim from Bangor had survived the assault, but he was still in intensive care and his prognosis wasn't optimistic.
Brock came back with his small printer when Gillian was about to open the pictures attached to the file. Without a word, she helped him to plug it and sent the main report to print. Brock circled the table and rested a hand on it by the computer to lean in. Gillian forbade herself to pay attention to his proximity and opened the pictures, both of them captions from traffic cameras.
"Print them too, please," he said, going back to the printer.
Gillian opened the last report, wondering why would the Portland agency look into these cases. They were grave, yes, but they usually fell under local jurisdiction, or never further than state jurisdiction.
"Have you found any clue as to why they're investigating this?" Brock asked, reading the printed main report.
She shook her head and kept reading. And there it was. She printed the file and looked up at Brock. "It's there. Looks like the attackers didn't belong to either of the local PDs."
"How can they know?"
"At both cities, all the officers were accountable for at the time of the attacks. They have the feeds from the cameras on their cruisers to prove it."
Brock picked up the page, his eyes moving quickly along the lines. "So the attackers were impersonating police officers."
"Looks like."
Brock fetched the printed pictures and exposed them to the light of the lamp hanging over the table.
"What is it?" Gillian asked, noticing how his face darkened.
"Look at the bumpers," he said.
Gillian's eyes widened. There was a very distinctive scratch along the cruiser bumper in both pictures. "It's the same car!"
"They're too blurry to see anything else of use," he growled.
"If you'd allow me, sir, I can forward them to T, and she can enhance them."
"Sure."
While Gillian emailed Tanya, Brock read over both reports. "The same fake cruiser at both events means the same subjects, or the same group, behind the attacks," he muttered.
"This is plain political," Gillian said.
He nodded, going to the kitchen. "Politics and racism," he said. "These are hate crimes, and framing the police can cause a riot. There's been plenty of it this year. More tea?"
"Yes, please. You think they're trying to have another Baltimore?"
"Maybe. This could be some militia trying to have their private war."
"So they attack black citizens, frame the police, people riot against the authorities... What's their share of the mess? Adrenaline? An opportunity to vent out their racism?"
"Maybe. If they're acting like a pack, they would feed each other's hunger for violence until they become obsessed. Then they'd do anything to fulfill their fantasies."
"Pack...?" she repeated, lowering her voice, suddenly oblivious to the case.
Brock knew that spark in her bright blue eyes and it got to him every time, but he managed to frown. "Thought Coleman had given you a copy of all his manuals."
"They renewed them...?"
"I see," he muttered, fighting a smile at how she looked like a child asking for candy. He refilled their cups and handed her one.
"Are packs anything like teams?"
He answered as he crossed the living room to one of the bookcases. "They have more members, so the dynamics are more complex. However, no matter the number, you'll always find certain categories among them."
Gillian sat up in her chair when he came back with what looked a lot like a manual, the FBI emblem on the cover.
He kept talking while he flicked through the pages. "First you have the leader, or alpha, and then the middle man..." He reached the table and handed the manual over to her.
She took it with both hands and rested it on the table as if it were made of glass, something fragile and precious. Because that was exactly what it was for her. Because he'd written it.
Brock forced himself to go on, not to give in to the odd warmth spreading over his chest. "The rest are grunts, foot soldiers. The middle man does most of the recruiting, but the soldiers always try to win the alpha's trust and climb in the group ranks. To achieve that, they take on different roles in the pack's structure, to prove themselves useful."
* * *
Since their parents didn't seem to pay attention to the clock, Andrea and Connor finished Season Two and started Season Three. About ten-thirty, they decided to take a look at the kitchen, to see if they still had parents, and if they were still around.
They found Brock talking in his low, calm voice. Gillian listened to him, completely absorbed, her face resting on her hand, nodding slowly. He spotted them and trailed off, startling Gillian. She looked up at the clock.
"Oh, my! It's so late!" she said, standing up. "I'm so sorry! Connor, son, grab your things, we're leaving."
A few minutes later, Brock opened the building door for them. Andrea hugged Connor and Gillian goodbye and stood by her father, watching them leave.
"It was a great evening, wasn't it, Dad?" she said, wrapping her arm around Brock's.
"Yeah, it was," he muttered. He could have stayed up all night, just talking with Gillian about packs and the case Cassidy had sent. Gillian's honk as she drove away silenced his sigh.
