Fic Post: Unraveling [Shelter/Without a Trace crossover]

[dragontatt]

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Title: Unraveling, Chapter 12
Author: dragontatt
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Neither Shelter nor Without a Trace belong to me. No profit is being made from this work of fiction, and no disrespect is intended.
Word Count: 2536



Martin paused just outside the front door of the North Precinct and pulled his sunglasses from his pocket before slipping them on. He reached for his iPhone, swiped it on and brought up his missed call screen: three messages, one from when he was having coffee with Mrs. Moore and two while he and Danny were talking with Portland’s finest. He selected the most recent one then held the phone to his ear to listen to his messages.

He turned around and looked for Danny. As usual, he’d gotten waylaid – this time by the blonde uniformed cop at the front desk. Her eyes had widened at the sight of Danny’s badge on their arrival and she’d led them personally to Detective Cooper’s desk instead of merely pointing the way. Martin wasn’t sure whether it was Danny she wanted or just information about joining the FBI…or both, but he was in a hurry, damn it.

He gave a frustrated, c’mon already wave at Danny, who was still leaning casually against the front desk, arms folded and head turned to the side as he smiled across at Officer Perky or whatever her name was. A clean shirt, and a casual grooming of his spiky hair in the bathroom mirror had improved his mood a thousand fold, but Martin had no doubt she would have been taken with him even if he’d still been covered in the indefinable sewage.

The first call was from Viv, relaying a message about the parking lot footage. The video tech had confirmed the PDX sticker but couldn’t clear the tape up enough to read the license. She paused, then said, “You boys be safe,” before hanging up. Martin smiled at the touch of obvious concern in her voice as her deleted the message.

A few taps on the screen played the second call, which was from Jack, ostensibly about the paperwork to re-schedule Martin’s long overdue vacation, but after a curt, “Lemme know what days you had in mind,” he started in on what was obviously the real reason for his call.

“Listen, I know this case is important to you, but I can’t have both you and Danny away forever. If you can’t wrap it up somehow in a couple days, you’re gonna have to come back. We’ve got cases piling up.”

Martin blinked in surprise as the call clicked off. He hadn’t even been on the case quite 48 hours, he wasn’t giving up now. Not yet. But he knew deep inside it wasn’t just Jack being practical, mentioning all the other cases they had. No, he didn’t want Martin to get too personally involved if it all went bad. Only trouble was, it was way too late for that, and it had been ever since Shaun had opened his apartment door two nights ago.

He deleted that call too, glancing absently down the street. He thumbed the icon to play his next message, the one from when he had been civilly drinking coffee and chatting with the charming Mrs. Moore – he’d turned the ringer off then, so as not to be rude.

He was lifting the phone back to his ear when the door behind him opened with a ‘whoosh’ and a hand fell, warm and heavy, on his shoulder.

“Okay, Fitz, let’s get outta here. I’m starving, and Felicia told me about a great little sandwich place just down the street.” Danny stepped up beside Martin with a grin and slid his sunglasses on.

Martin rolled his eyes, and fell in step beside Danny, sliding his phone back into his jacket pocket. “Felicia, huh? She seemed very…friendly.”

“Awww, c’mon Martin. Don’t be like that,” Danny shot back, smirk firmly in place. “It’s too nice a day for it.”


---


Fifteen minutes later, Danny was sitting across from Martin in a tiny sandwich shop, a hole in the wall really, between a dry cleaners and a beauty supply store. But what they lacked in ambiance – or tables for that matter – they more than made up for with the food, just like Felicia had said. He took another big bite of his veggie panini and wiped his mouth before carefully replacing his napkin on his lap.

He eyed Martin across the table - he was having a double-meat double-cheese all-the-peppers heartburn special, and was too busy chewing to talk right now. So Danny pulled out his notebook and flipped it open.

“Okay, so what did we learn from the Portland PD?”

Martin swallowed his bite of sandwich and took a hasty gulp of water before speaking up. “You mean besides the fact that blonde cops on both coasts are suckers for your overwhelming Cuban charm? You’ll have to tell Felicia she was right about this place, by the way.”

“Why Martin, is that your clumsy way of asking if I got her number?”

“Oh, I already know that answer.” Martin smiled briefly at Danny before looking down at his notes. “Alright then, we learned that apartment 4-A houses what the Portland PD thinks is a small-time pot dealer and his tiny entourage. And that said dealer probably couldn’t get a thing done without his ever-present right hand man slash enforcer. But of course with all the crack and heroin dealers they’re busy trying to put out of business, the police have never really gotten around to taking a good look at him, especially since he seems to be really good at staying just below their radar.”

“Well, the apartment manager is pretty damn certain drugs are being sold from that apartment. And you said Mrs. Moore told you Alan and Jeanne had gotten friendly with them, so it’s a pretty good bet that’s who the note is from.”

Anthony ‘Tony’ Williams was a rich kid moved up from LA who deciding selling pot, X and assorted prescription medication was a better way to make a living than working at any of his rich dad’s companies. His father had disowned him in disgust several years before when he managed to flunk out his senior year at Stanford. His girlfriend Dina was apparently a sweet, gullible girl who had had the bad luck to get involved with him.

The third member of the trio in Apartment 4-A was the muscle, a six-foot-four slab of a man named Wes Baker. He was well known to the police for bar-fights and the occasional fit of road rage, but luckily for the people around him, he tended to listen to Tony most of the time.

The information Portland PD had was sparse, but it was all they had to go on for the time being. And there was one little tidbit in the file that Martin had gleefully pointed out to Danny while Detective Cooper droned on about budget cuts and maximum allowable man-hours – Tony Williams was known to drive a black 2008 Ford F-150 pick-up truck, King Ranch Model.

Danny looked up from his notes and said thoughtfully, “I wonder if we’re thinking about this all wrong.”

“How so?” Martin asked before taking a sip of water.

“Well, we’re assuming Alan and Jeanne robbed Tony, and he’s the one who took Zach. Or at least he had his henchman do it.”

“Well, yeah, it all fits.”

“Are they really stupid enough to rob a friend of theirs, a friend who just happens to have a sociopath who likes to break fingers as a bodyguard?”

“Nothing we’ve heard about Alan or Jeanne makes ‘em sound too bright. What else could it be then? You think the whole bunch of them are in on it together for some reason? To do what, scam money out of Shaun’s family somehow?” He took another bite of his sloppy sandwich and a tear-shaped drop of mayo pooled at the corner of his mouth.

“I’m not sure, but it’s worth thinking about,” Danny said, staring at the corner of Martin’s mouth until finally he lifted his napkin from his lap and carefully wiped his own mouth.

Martin shrugged, lips curling momentarily downward and said, “Well, that’d definitely keep Jeanne out of the running for sister of the year. But either way, we need to find them all, and fast.” He smiled across the table before noticing Danny seemed preoccupied. “What is it?”

“It’s just – you’ve got a little something…” He gestured vaguely with his finger and watched as Martin wiped at his mouth with his napkin.

“Better?” he asked, dropping the crumpled napkin onto his empty sandwich wrapper.

“Uhm, no,” Danny replied and before he could think better of it, he half rose from his chair, leaning over with his own napkin to wipe at Martin’s lower lip.

Martin leaned helpfully forward, and their eyes met for a split second before Martin looked away. Huh. “Can’t take you anywhere, can I, Fitz?” Danny said without thinking, harkening back to the words of his own mother years ago, but he didn’t miss the subtle way Martin stiffened ever so slightly.

His voice was calm though, when he spoke, “Thanks, man.”

“No problem.” Danny flashed him a dazzling grin before balling up their trash and taking one last, long sip of lemonade.

Martin’s phone rang, loud in the small sandwich shop and he quickly pulled it out before it could ring a second time. “Fitzgerald,” he said, watching as Danny rose smoothly from the table to throw their trash away. “Yeah, okay. Great. Give us ten minutes.”

He stood, stretching his lower back out briefly before saying to Danny, “Detective Cooper’s got the warrant for Tony’s place already, how much you wanna bet we don’t find anybody there?”

“I’m not taking that bet,” Danny said with a smile, motioning Martin out the door.

---

Shaun thumbed off his phone and leaned back in the driver’s seat. He exhaled loudly and pressed his lips into a tight line before tossing the phone into the passenger’s seat in disgust.

He’d called Portland Information, even though he knew it was a long shot. The operator had told him crisply there were seventeen Jerry Crawfords in the Portland area code. He thought for a second and tried again and when she replied, “I find twelve Gerald Crawfords in Portland, sir. Did you have an address?” he just quietly said, “No, thank you,” and hung up.

Twenty-nine names. Not so many when you think about it, but he had no way to narrow them down. Portland was so far away, and he wasn’t even sure what he was doing anymore. He wanted to talk to Jeanne, but whether it was to tell her Zach was missing or to scream at her and ask her what the hell she’d done, he wasn’t sure.

If Jeanne and Alan were involved somehow, was it all some huge misunderstanding? Or was Jeanne so under Alan’s thumb that she’d agree to whatever he wanted, simply out of fear?

He stared blindly out the window toward the front of the Oceanette. A slight breeze rushed through his open window, and over the smell of the nearby dumpster he could practically taste the tang of the ocean not far away. The sun shone in through his window, and he squinted his eyes against the brightness of it, but he didn’t turn away. He sat there a long while, and as each second ticked pass, he felt a little more helpless, a little more defeated, a little more lonely.

He turned his head to the side, looking at his phone. Maybe he could call his mom, talk to Cody. Then he wouldn’t feel so lonely. Or he could call Martin again, see how he and Danny were doing in Portland. And as he looked at his phone, wondering what to do, something Ellen had said just a few minutes ago came to mind….she did say that new friend of hers was in town for the weekend, too, made a call from my new phone…

He was up out of the Volvo and heading toward the front door of the grocery before he even realized it, stuffing his phone in his jeans pocket as he walked. The door whooshed open and he headed straight for Ellen, who was having a rather heated conversation with her boss.

He rudely stepped in front of the store manager, interrupting him mid-sentence and asked, “When you said Jeanne made a call that weekend, did you mean on your cell or the landline?”

Ellen’s eyes went wide, and she took an involuntary step back, but after a second she said, “My cell. Why?”

“Would the number still be in there somehow?” he asked in a rush. Behind him, the manager overcame his surprise enough to start to say, “Now listen here - ” but his mouth closed with a snap when Shaun whirled around and said bluntly, “Shut up, this is important.”

He turned back to Ellen, noticing the tiny smile on her face at the way he’d treated her boss. He returned it stiffly, willing her to hurry as she stuck her hand into the pocket of her work smock to dig out her phone.

“Well, not in the recent calls list, it’s been too long. But Jeanne had to call information to get the number and I know she put it in somewhere,” and she started thumbing through the apps on her phone.

Behind him, Shaun could hear the manager muttering under his breath, but he ignored him. He just stood there impatiently, waiting for Ellen to find whatever it was she was looking for.

“Now where did we put that number?” she mumbled to herself as she scrolled through the screens. “Not in contacts, those are all mine. Hmmm.”

“Well?”

“Give me a minute…aha! Here it is, we wrote a note.” And she turned the phone around so Shaun could see. The screen was ruled yellow, like a legal pad, with a brown title bar at the top that said Gerrry. Three lines down, there was a phone number that had a Los Angeles area code and below that it said right on Sonset blv, left on Belare, 1725 Bollagero. big whitr hous

Shaun blinked at it a moment, and said, “Did you type this or did Jeanne?”

“She did.”

“She’s not a very good typist.” Shaun patted his pockets, looking for a pen or paper.

“Well, she was pretty drunk, not to mention my asshole brother turned the auto-correct ‘off’ and I can’t figure out how to turn it back on,” Ellen conceded.

Coming up blank on his search, Shaun turned and asked Ellen’s manager, who was still standing there glaring at him, very politely, “Do you have a pen and paper?”

The man’s jaw dropped for a moment but he finally said bluntly, “If I give you something to write with, will you leave?” And when Shaun nodded, he pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and handed it over before walking to the closest register and pulling off a lengthy strip of blank receipt paper. “Here,” he said gruffly before walking off.

“Can you figure out the address?” Ellen asked.

“Course I can,” Shaun said with a grin, the cheeriest he’d felt all day. “I’ve lived here all my life, I know my way around LA.”