Flight of the Robyn

I bet you're wondering why I'm the one who's telling you this story. You're used to having John tell you them, but this one required a special touch, and given the people involved, I'm the only one who can tell it honestly. To fully understand the key moments in our relationship, we have to wade into the thick of it. Thankfully, you're in luck. I'm something of an expert on the long and roundabout love story that is Sheridan Hull and Caroline Brooke Duerre.

It starts about how you'd expect, but after that... let's just say roughly half of the norms you're familiar with actually happen, and the other half are directly contradicted.

Still with me?

Good.

Let's take things back about a decade, all the way to the day Jason Leroy, lead guitarist for Red Hood Rush, was abducted by a very enthusiastic fan. August 15th, 2006.

*

"If I remember correctly, their first meeting went something along the lines of their eyes meeting and his knees giving way."

*

He walked tactfully along the edges of the faint shadow as it carved a straight path across the neatly-cut grass, matted down from the constant flow of foot traffic moving to and from the mighty structure to his back. As he stepped, the shadow waned and deepened in tandem with the ebb of the clouds that stretched to every horizon. It was a lovely time of day and year, or so he assumed. Genial moments of weather offered little comfort, incomparable to the natural state of repose he found when on a case.

From behind, some several meters away at the divide where the grass ended and the cement began, Jacob Wollcott stood with his thumbs hitched into his belt. He watched the man dubiously, considering him more a child than an adult, his errant path leading him out into the lawn that made up the southeastern perimeter of the Space Needle's grounds. Wollcott had often been careful to avoid allowing civilian involvement in police work, but this one had been adamant.

"I'm better at this than you," the boy had said. "What would take you a week will take me a day."

He'd be admonished for entertaining grand notions belonging to a teenager clearly confident in something, regardless of how true and potent it was. Maybe it was for that reason alone that Wollcott waited and observed as the boy started pacing backwards, not bothering to glance in the direction he now moved in the event of unexpected obstacles. Peculiar was probably the most apt description for him in just about every way.

"Find anything?" Wollcott asked as the boy came within proximity.

"It's not about finding anything, Officer," the boy sneered back, still not turning. "It's about creating the environment. Constructing the crime."

Wollcott blamed shows like "CSI" for the influx of people thinking criminal investigation was a glorified adrenaline rush consisting of catching bad guys and being clever while doing it. This kid, with his unkempt hair that covered his ears and his ill-fitted suit jacket, his black scarf swept across the edge of his shoulder, was just the latest in a generation of people who had no business solving crime.

"What did you say your name was again?" Wollcott questioned, his head tilted.

The boy turned and met the officer's gaze with an equally diminishing stare. "Sheridan Hull."

"And what business do you have in this investigation?"

"I'm the one who's going to solve it."

"On whose authority?"