leaptad
03-12-2005, 07:22 PM
Author: Alison
Title: Leet Speak
Pairing: Charlie/Original Character
Summary: Sometimes your worst enemy can be your best friend
Rating: PG
Spoilers: none
Don was decidedly not used to being on this side of the interrogation table. The plainclothes LAPD detective sat across from him, sprawled in his chair. "Can you tell us anything at all about the case you were working with her on?"
Don rubbed his eyes with his hand. It was late, approaching midnight. He should be home, in bed. He was tired and hungry. The feeling was not foreign to him. But this was different. Usually it was his investigation, he was calling the shots. But this... he was little more than a witness being questioned. And not one expected to turn up much information at that.
Stephanie Ridge was a doctor who worked at County General hospital. She had been kidnapped earlier that day. Not much was known about the abduction. She had gone outside for a minute and never came back in. People claimed to see a black SUV with no plates fleeing the scene, and a driver dressed in gang colors.
He had met her less than 3 weeks ago when he was working on a case involving unexplained deaths in the hospital. Charlie had identified numerical patterns in the patient files that suggested that they were fake. He had confronted her with evidence that it might be her superior, Dr. Joshua Franklin, who was doing the killing. Had the case not been so serious, Don probably would have been laughing. It was not often that someone dared to take Charlie on like that.
He remembered the two of them sitting across the table from each other, glaring. He had never seen Charlie quite so worked up. She casually leaned forward, brushed her curly red hair from her face and said, "And what, precisely, is your area of specialty, Dr. Eppes?" Her grey eyes were flashing with rage. Don just sat back and watched. Don couldn't help but notice how beautiful she was.
"I'm a Professor of Applied Mathematics," Charlie replied with an air of authority.
And then it happened. She laughed right in Charlie's face. Once, when they were kids, Don had chased Charlie around the block, held him down, stripped him to his underwear and made him run home like that. Even then, Charlie never looked nearly this mad. "Mathematics?" She said it as if it were underwater basket weaving. "I thought you were a real doctor! Not a doctor of philosophy! How dare you say anything about Dr. Franklin? I'm done here." She grabbed her bag and marched out the door.
Don returned from his thoughts of Stephanie's interrogation and went back to concentrating on his own. "Her boss was being brought up on murder charges," Don told the detective.
"And you were the arresting agent?"
"That's right."
"And what made you look at Dr. Franklin as a suspect?"
"My brother, Charlie, found inconsistencies in his charts. He's a mathematician and very good at identifying patterns...."
The detective cut him off and sat up. "Charlie? You're brother's name is Charlie?"
"That's right," said Don, his pulse quickening.
The detective unclipped a small piece of paper from his folder. "Do you think this would mean anything to him?"
Don took the paper. Scribbled on it was CHARLIE 293-6855, with the E written backwards. "What is this?"
"Dr. Ridge was seen at a convenience store earlier today by a colleague, after she had been taken. When he returned home he found this note in his jacket pocket. We believe that Dr. Ridge slipped it to him as a message, but we don't know what it means. It's not a valid phone number, at least not in the greater Los Angeles area. We've verified that it's not a cell phone number either. Could this have anything to do with your brother?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"We'll need to bring him in right away."
----
Charlie rode in silence in the back seat of the cruiser toward the police station. It was so odd that someone would kidnap Stephanie Ridge. What on Earth would they want with her?
He kept going back to their first meeting. She had stormed out of the interrogation room, walking swiftly past him, her high heels clicking on the tile, resigning him to chase after her like a puppy. "The data is all here!" he yelled, waving the medical charts he was gripping. "The number 3.725 keeps showing up over and over! This data is false!" Her eyes flicked to his for just a moment. But then her icy stare returned.
"You don't even know what that data means," she had hissed, snatching the files from his hands and deftly tucking them in her satchel. "Go find x, professor, and leave the real science to those of us who don't mind getting our hands dirty." And with that she had stepped on to the elevator and disappeared.
"Maybe she's in on it," Charlie had said to Terry, eager to take her down a couple of notches.
"I don't think so," said Terry who had been watching on a monitor. "But I do think she knows something. Did you see the look on her face when you said 3.725? Maybe she noticed the same thing you did, but won't let herself see the truth. Think about it, Charlie. Imagine if someone sat you down and said that Larry was falsifying data. That he was killing people. You wouldn't believe it. You'd laugh in the face of the person who said it. She just needs time."
Three days later she had been standing at his office door. Her face was drawn and pale. Her eyes were dim, as if someone had extinguished the flames that burned behind them. Despite himself, Charlie's heart had broken. He didn't want to see anyone this crushed. Ever. Even her.
"3.725," she said quietly.
"Yeah," Charlie said, unsure what to do.
"Yeah," she said definitely. Her eyes were full of tears. "He did it. I have the proof."
Charlie had brought her inside and gone over the data with her. They found all of the falsified medical records. She had told him about how Dr. Franklin had been her mentor and friend, and how difficult all of this was to accept. Charlie had secretly been impressed with her ability to overcome her own pride and come to him.
He had come to the trial, even though he didn't need to, just to be there when she testified. He watched while she recounted all of the things they had found in his phony charts. He had slipped out when her testimony was over. She didn't need to be reminded once again that he had seen what she had been blind to.
Charlie stared out the car window. He wished that he had talked to her at all since the trial. He just lost his voice around her. It's like they were on opposite sides of a canyon, staring at each other. And so he had done what he always did, retreated into his math and never saw her again.
They arrived at the station, and he was ushered into one of the interrogation rooms. Don was sitting there, holding a piece of paper. Don offered him a seat and told him the story from the beginning. She had been working at the hospital, had gone outside for a minute, and was gone. The only time she had been seen was in the convenience store. They showed him the note. CHARLIE 293-6855.
Charlie tried to clear his head. If this was a note to him, then he should be able to understand it. It might mean the difference between life and death for her.
"Okay," he started thinking out loud. "It can't be too complicated. She probably had a very small window of time between when the opportunity for her to get a note out presented itself and when she had to do it, so we can't over think this. What information would she be trying to communicate to us?"
"Her location, probably," said Don.
"Right. Her location. But it's not a phone number."
"No, we know that for sure," said the detective.
"So, what, then? What has numbers? A highway number? A zip code? Geographic coordinates? She probably wouldn't know those things about where they were taking her. An address?" He paused for a minute. "An address. Okay." He walked over to the white board and wrote the digits out without the dash. 2936855. "The E in Charlie is backwards. It's written like a 3. So the E is a 3." He trailed off and then started again. "So if the E is a 3.... does that mean the 3 is an E?"
Don was in awe of Charlie at that moment. Watching is mind work. Don felt like he was a step behind, trying to mentally catch up to his brother, who raced ahead . He also was holding Dr. Ridge in high esteem at that moment. She knew that this entire sequence was going to take place. She knew the note would get back to Charlie and he would work through it.
Charlie erased the 3 and replaced it with an E. 29E6855. "Okay. What about the 55? Why are there two numbers repeated like that? What does 55 mean?"
"In TV shows..." started one of the detectives, and then quickly trailed off, realizing that he shouldn't speak.
Charlie spun around. "What? What were you going to say?"
The detective nervously cleared his throat. "Nothing. I was going to say that in TV shows they use 55 as the exchange for phone numbers because it doesn't exist. I guess that doesn't really apply here." The poor guy looked like he wanted to fall into a hole and die.
The detective was mistaking the intensity of Charlie's gaze as annoyance. But Don knew better. Behind those eyes Charlie was figuring it out.
"That's it!" Charlie said. He grabbed the note. "She knew she had to get a note out. But if the people who had her caught her slipping a note that said, "Help, call the police", they would probably kill her. So she disguised it as a phone number. That way, if she was caught she could beg off like it was just a piece of paper that happened to be in her pocket. But it's not. It's the address of where she's being held. The 55 is a red herring. Extra digits just to fill it out. Like on TV, like you said. Something that doesn't mean anything just to make it appear to be a phone number." He erased the two 5's. "2 9 E 6 8. 29 E 68th St. That's where she is."
"That's right in the middle of the projects," said one of the detectives, consulting a large map on the wall. "It makes sense."
"Wait, are you sure that's right?" said another detective, eyeing Charlie.
Charlie put the cap back on his pen. "Yeah, that's right."
----
Charlie got out of the back of a cruiser. The place was a blood bath. He saw two young men being zipped into body bags. Both of them in full gang regalia. No serious injuries or casualties from the police. It was little comfort. Don had told him that they took Stephanie for no greater purpose than to force her to save one of their gang-banging friends without involving the police.
He saw Stephanie being led into a car about 30 yards away. Probably to be taken for questioning. She saw him and paused. He pulled the fake phone number out of his pocket and held it up for her to see. A slight smile just barely touched the corners of her lips. "Thank you" she mouthed and got into the car.
Title: Leet Speak
Pairing: Charlie/Original Character
Summary: Sometimes your worst enemy can be your best friend
Rating: PG
Spoilers: none
Don was decidedly not used to being on this side of the interrogation table. The plainclothes LAPD detective sat across from him, sprawled in his chair. "Can you tell us anything at all about the case you were working with her on?"
Don rubbed his eyes with his hand. It was late, approaching midnight. He should be home, in bed. He was tired and hungry. The feeling was not foreign to him. But this was different. Usually it was his investigation, he was calling the shots. But this... he was little more than a witness being questioned. And not one expected to turn up much information at that.
Stephanie Ridge was a doctor who worked at County General hospital. She had been kidnapped earlier that day. Not much was known about the abduction. She had gone outside for a minute and never came back in. People claimed to see a black SUV with no plates fleeing the scene, and a driver dressed in gang colors.
He had met her less than 3 weeks ago when he was working on a case involving unexplained deaths in the hospital. Charlie had identified numerical patterns in the patient files that suggested that they were fake. He had confronted her with evidence that it might be her superior, Dr. Joshua Franklin, who was doing the killing. Had the case not been so serious, Don probably would have been laughing. It was not often that someone dared to take Charlie on like that.
He remembered the two of them sitting across the table from each other, glaring. He had never seen Charlie quite so worked up. She casually leaned forward, brushed her curly red hair from her face and said, "And what, precisely, is your area of specialty, Dr. Eppes?" Her grey eyes were flashing with rage. Don just sat back and watched. Don couldn't help but notice how beautiful she was.
"I'm a Professor of Applied Mathematics," Charlie replied with an air of authority.
And then it happened. She laughed right in Charlie's face. Once, when they were kids, Don had chased Charlie around the block, held him down, stripped him to his underwear and made him run home like that. Even then, Charlie never looked nearly this mad. "Mathematics?" She said it as if it were underwater basket weaving. "I thought you were a real doctor! Not a doctor of philosophy! How dare you say anything about Dr. Franklin? I'm done here." She grabbed her bag and marched out the door.
Don returned from his thoughts of Stephanie's interrogation and went back to concentrating on his own. "Her boss was being brought up on murder charges," Don told the detective.
"And you were the arresting agent?"
"That's right."
"And what made you look at Dr. Franklin as a suspect?"
"My brother, Charlie, found inconsistencies in his charts. He's a mathematician and very good at identifying patterns...."
The detective cut him off and sat up. "Charlie? You're brother's name is Charlie?"
"That's right," said Don, his pulse quickening.
The detective unclipped a small piece of paper from his folder. "Do you think this would mean anything to him?"
Don took the paper. Scribbled on it was CHARLIE 293-6855, with the E written backwards. "What is this?"
"Dr. Ridge was seen at a convenience store earlier today by a colleague, after she had been taken. When he returned home he found this note in his jacket pocket. We believe that Dr. Ridge slipped it to him as a message, but we don't know what it means. It's not a valid phone number, at least not in the greater Los Angeles area. We've verified that it's not a cell phone number either. Could this have anything to do with your brother?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"We'll need to bring him in right away."
----
Charlie rode in silence in the back seat of the cruiser toward the police station. It was so odd that someone would kidnap Stephanie Ridge. What on Earth would they want with her?
He kept going back to their first meeting. She had stormed out of the interrogation room, walking swiftly past him, her high heels clicking on the tile, resigning him to chase after her like a puppy. "The data is all here!" he yelled, waving the medical charts he was gripping. "The number 3.725 keeps showing up over and over! This data is false!" Her eyes flicked to his for just a moment. But then her icy stare returned.
"You don't even know what that data means," she had hissed, snatching the files from his hands and deftly tucking them in her satchel. "Go find x, professor, and leave the real science to those of us who don't mind getting our hands dirty." And with that she had stepped on to the elevator and disappeared.
"Maybe she's in on it," Charlie had said to Terry, eager to take her down a couple of notches.
"I don't think so," said Terry who had been watching on a monitor. "But I do think she knows something. Did you see the look on her face when you said 3.725? Maybe she noticed the same thing you did, but won't let herself see the truth. Think about it, Charlie. Imagine if someone sat you down and said that Larry was falsifying data. That he was killing people. You wouldn't believe it. You'd laugh in the face of the person who said it. She just needs time."
Three days later she had been standing at his office door. Her face was drawn and pale. Her eyes were dim, as if someone had extinguished the flames that burned behind them. Despite himself, Charlie's heart had broken. He didn't want to see anyone this crushed. Ever. Even her.
"3.725," she said quietly.
"Yeah," Charlie said, unsure what to do.
"Yeah," she said definitely. Her eyes were full of tears. "He did it. I have the proof."
Charlie had brought her inside and gone over the data with her. They found all of the falsified medical records. She had told him about how Dr. Franklin had been her mentor and friend, and how difficult all of this was to accept. Charlie had secretly been impressed with her ability to overcome her own pride and come to him.
He had come to the trial, even though he didn't need to, just to be there when she testified. He watched while she recounted all of the things they had found in his phony charts. He had slipped out when her testimony was over. She didn't need to be reminded once again that he had seen what she had been blind to.
Charlie stared out the car window. He wished that he had talked to her at all since the trial. He just lost his voice around her. It's like they were on opposite sides of a canyon, staring at each other. And so he had done what he always did, retreated into his math and never saw her again.
They arrived at the station, and he was ushered into one of the interrogation rooms. Don was sitting there, holding a piece of paper. Don offered him a seat and told him the story from the beginning. She had been working at the hospital, had gone outside for a minute, and was gone. The only time she had been seen was in the convenience store. They showed him the note. CHARLIE 293-6855.
Charlie tried to clear his head. If this was a note to him, then he should be able to understand it. It might mean the difference between life and death for her.
"Okay," he started thinking out loud. "It can't be too complicated. She probably had a very small window of time between when the opportunity for her to get a note out presented itself and when she had to do it, so we can't over think this. What information would she be trying to communicate to us?"
"Her location, probably," said Don.
"Right. Her location. But it's not a phone number."
"No, we know that for sure," said the detective.
"So, what, then? What has numbers? A highway number? A zip code? Geographic coordinates? She probably wouldn't know those things about where they were taking her. An address?" He paused for a minute. "An address. Okay." He walked over to the white board and wrote the digits out without the dash. 2936855. "The E in Charlie is backwards. It's written like a 3. So the E is a 3." He trailed off and then started again. "So if the E is a 3.... does that mean the 3 is an E?"
Don was in awe of Charlie at that moment. Watching is mind work. Don felt like he was a step behind, trying to mentally catch up to his brother, who raced ahead . He also was holding Dr. Ridge in high esteem at that moment. She knew that this entire sequence was going to take place. She knew the note would get back to Charlie and he would work through it.
Charlie erased the 3 and replaced it with an E. 29E6855. "Okay. What about the 55? Why are there two numbers repeated like that? What does 55 mean?"
"In TV shows..." started one of the detectives, and then quickly trailed off, realizing that he shouldn't speak.
Charlie spun around. "What? What were you going to say?"
The detective nervously cleared his throat. "Nothing. I was going to say that in TV shows they use 55 as the exchange for phone numbers because it doesn't exist. I guess that doesn't really apply here." The poor guy looked like he wanted to fall into a hole and die.
The detective was mistaking the intensity of Charlie's gaze as annoyance. But Don knew better. Behind those eyes Charlie was figuring it out.
"That's it!" Charlie said. He grabbed the note. "She knew she had to get a note out. But if the people who had her caught her slipping a note that said, "Help, call the police", they would probably kill her. So she disguised it as a phone number. That way, if she was caught she could beg off like it was just a piece of paper that happened to be in her pocket. But it's not. It's the address of where she's being held. The 55 is a red herring. Extra digits just to fill it out. Like on TV, like you said. Something that doesn't mean anything just to make it appear to be a phone number." He erased the two 5's. "2 9 E 6 8. 29 E 68th St. That's where she is."
"That's right in the middle of the projects," said one of the detectives, consulting a large map on the wall. "It makes sense."
"Wait, are you sure that's right?" said another detective, eyeing Charlie.
Charlie put the cap back on his pen. "Yeah, that's right."
----
Charlie got out of the back of a cruiser. The place was a blood bath. He saw two young men being zipped into body bags. Both of them in full gang regalia. No serious injuries or casualties from the police. It was little comfort. Don had told him that they took Stephanie for no greater purpose than to force her to save one of their gang-banging friends without involving the police.
He saw Stephanie being led into a car about 30 yards away. Probably to be taken for questioning. She saw him and paused. He pulled the fake phone number out of his pocket and held it up for her to see. A slight smile just barely touched the corners of her lips. "Thank you" she mouthed and got into the car.