haole_cop | 00:00:00

"He's a suspected arms dealer."

He's unimpressed. It comes out unimpressed. There's nothing in McGarrett's snapped order that does anything more than make Danny level a look of absolute disinterest at him, before relating his theory, almost bored.

But not. He's paying attention to it all, too -- they can both play that game, and he's noting everything: McGarrett's focus, his disregard for the fact that by coming into that garage and taking over the scene, he's actually put this case behind.

Whatever they think down at HPD, or anywhere else on this godforsaken sandspit, Danny's good at his job. He sees the connections, puts them together. Whether McGarrett can do the same is about to be seen.

"Two years Maui Correctional, currently a person of interest in an unrelated homicide." Faint acquiescence. "The weapon was never found."

He heard every word. Ran through like tape.

Not one was dropping the hammer and hitting the bell yet.

Low life scum bag. Did time. Possibly killed one, or many, other people, depending.

None of which actually mattered to the matter that Steve had asked about. Why the wire, why now. He was missing the piece that made the guy clip the two different cases into being one. "So, what's he got to do with my father's case?"

Jesus, the guy's cold-blooded. Not a flinch, and no shadow of anything crossing his face at all. Danny thinks back to the file: estranged son, decorated Naval officer, most tours so full of redacted information it was like looking at a sheet of black paper.

And the person last called from John McGarrett's phone.

He'd have had to get a statement from McGarrett anyway, because there's no possible chance the old guy wasn't killed because of Hesse's beef with his son, but this? This is not what he was expecting, and McGarrett's utter lack of emotion is unnerving. He shifts, mentally shaking his head: maybe there was bad blood between John McGarrett and the hard-eyed Lieutenant Commander who is his son, but everyone deserves to be grieved.

The numbers flash at him from his wrist, make him frown and put his hand on his knee, turning them away again.

"When I ran a ballistics comparison of the bullet that killed your dad, I got a hit to the Doran investigation." At least he can do this, this is his job and he's good at it, even if it is messed up in the extreme. "See, I think the first thing Hesse did when he got on the island? Was hook up with Doran and get a gun."

See. Sense. Finally. Steve didn't appreciate the run around on getting it, or the need to add the obvious notes of ingeniune care about helping, because he could see all over every bit of what Chin and Danny's Captain had been talking about -- but he appreciated that at least it made sense once Williams got done beating the bush to get to it. Bullet specs and correlations, but things not yet in the file. Too recent, he bet. No official paperwork in the handoff system yet.

He made a note to requisition that report from wherever it was so far. For Hesse's file more than his father's.

While The Box needed more attention before he knew what to make of that, HPD would rule easy and close his father file in days if it wasn't already for the most part. Murder. Adjunct to all the actions of known international terrorist Victor Hesse. Retaliation for the loss of his brother in McGarrett's sons possession, after capture, in transport, while trying to extricate him through the means of blackmail.

John McGarrett would be lost in a long list of names that died on this trail over five years. But if Steve moved fast enough -- took that hard rock that started gnawing in his gut from that gunshot and only got harder since he saw the house -- maybe he'd be the last. That was the most important part. Find Hesse. Put a stop to all of this. As fast as possible.

Everything else was behind the mission. "Well, maybe Doran still knows where he is, so let's go talk to him."

Steve nodded, and headed for the door. The next piece of the puzzle in place. The next step laid out. Nothing between.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa."

McGarrett's already at the door when Danny's gotten himself up out of the chair, hands in the air, fingers spread, the universal sign for stop. "Are you suffering from dementia? This is no longer my case."

Ergo, he's not coming on some ride-along like a rookie.

What, did that somehow get forgotten, in the last five minutes? Because he remembers pretty clearly not being on this case anymore. Because of this joker, right in front of him.

And he's not going anywhere.

Yeah. Steve wasn't taking no for an answer from him now anymore than he did earlier.

He already proved he could roll him once, and it didn't hurt that he already had done the same to HPD.

All it had taken in the end was one more call, for the Captain to check out that he wasn't bullshiting when he said he had the Governor's backing to do, and take, whatever was needed to get to Hesse. Including the case, and one mouthy renegade haole detective no one seemed to care about losing to begin with.

"Your captain said you transferred in from New Jersey six months ago, so your eye's still fresh." Plus, he'd had the lead on this whole case so far, and been there, so Steve hadn't taken his partner by any measure. Didn't hurt that in the last two minutes the man'd at least proven himself not entirely useless where it come to putting things together, too. At least it would be only marginally under the idea dragging around a can tied to the back of a car.

"You know, uh --"

Easy, hand lifting to pick what feels like sand off his tongue -- goddamn beaches with their goddamn sand getting everywhere -- and as he glances at his fingertips, the numbers glare at him, six sullen zeros calling him a liar and this whole situation maybe the worst he's ever been in, after that day.

He's got six zeros, and the guy they ran out on is standing in his crappy apartment, trying to get in his head, and Danny's just, you know? He's just done. With all of it. "I appreciate it? But my psych eval's not for another six weeks."

He's not busy. There is absolutely nothing else of consequences he could even try to drag out, and the fact he's trying to slow down Steve's next stop, and give him excuses annoys Steve. Who's shoving a pin in that, as flat and fast as necessary. Because there's nowhere else and nothing else for this guy. The room screams it. That outfits screams it. Everything does.

"Fold out bed." That you wouldn't bring anyone worth anything to. "No ring on your finger." And no sign of that ex-wife in the picture with his daughter. She's the whole focus of it. And the only picture in the whole room. "You obviously moved here to be close to your daughter." Which he wasn't knocking, but it made the glaring hole just that, glaring. "Which means between visits, all you got is your job, and you take pride in that."

Which he'd gotten from a few things, for the garage to his Captain's begrudged admittance he got the work done. People might not like how he did it -- and that surprised Steve none at all just with his being a haole, before you added the attitude -- but he got it done. All the time. He was problematic, but he wasn't a slacker. "That's what I'm looking for."

And now if they were done with lip service, they had a job to do already. Hesse could be slipping away by the second.

Okay, fine.

Okay, fine.

He's right. Danny can admit that. It's not like it's any secret that all he's got in the world is Grace, and that's why he's out here; he'll tell anyone that, if they stand in front of him long enough and he's not actively trying to arrest them. He hates this place and everything about it, he hates his crummy apartment and his lousy gig at HPD, but, yeah. He's good at his job. And Grace means everything.

But that doesn't mean he's going to head off with this lizard-brained headcase, just because he's got some basic deduction skills, really, come on. That wouldn't have taken Sherlock Holmes. "Yeah," he says, because McGarrett got it right, so a cookie for him, sure, fine, but.

"But you know what? It's guys like you who think you can do everything better, and that only makes my job harder."

He is damn good at his job. The job this asshole kicked him off of, when he could've been out chasing down Doran and Hesse already. Steve McGarrett? More like just another stick in Danny's wheel.

Steve turned back again, eyes narrowing this time as Danny threw words at him that were inarguable.

Steve was better. Better than this guy. Better than anyone he'd set foot near in HPD.

Red tape bound police, doing their jobs, in their little boxes, in whatever little red-roped area they called their own, and who had nothing on the type of job he did. Rarely had the scope to even understand what he did, how much of the world it covered, what he gave up to do it, and what it meant that he was best of one of the rarest groups formed ever doing it. Someone who didn't have time for petty, pussy footing, hurt feeling, bullshit like this from a subordinate.

He kept his voice low, and easy as it was every going to get as he dropped the last bomb. The, also, inarguable one.

"You got no choice, Detective. The Governor gave my jurisdiction. I'm making you my partner." Not waiting this time for his response, as his face started falling. Steve turning for the door, as he added, not intending to stop this time for anything, "We're gonna get along great."

Great, he says, we're gonna get along great.

And then leaves, taking the argument with him, and leaving Danny with nothing to do but try to rub the sour taste of hatred out of his mouth and ignore the flash of red at the edge of his vision as his hand drops; nothing to do but go back to the little table holding Grace's photo and his badge and gun, to pick up the latter two.

He doesn't doubt McGarrett got him reassigned, doesn't doubt that it's all been worked over by the Captain, because he's that kind of guy, apparently. The kind that heads into a taped-off crime scene and steals first evidence, and then the scene itself, phoning in an oath to pick up the title of "cop" for a day, and has now picked him up, too, like he's no harder a thing to get than that damn toolbox.

Just a piece of equipment.

Danny hadn't thought he could be treated any worse than what HPD was already giving him, with the cold shoulders and the glares and the desk that's practically an island, but once again, as always when he thinks things can't get worse, he's wrong.

His keys are on the table, too: he snatches them up and swings outside to follow, slamming the door shut a little harder than is strictly necessary. "My car's over there," he says, flat, heading to the stairs and pointing at the dull gray Mustang in the lot as he moves, smiling thin and angry. "Or did you already know that, too?"

He's not a mind reader, but everyone's got one who isn't a tourist. A car. Even in Hawaii, that's a no-brainer assumption.

Steve listened to the door slam, loud and heavy behind him, without a twitch. He'd heard air raids, dominio explosions and any number of military vehicles that were so much louder it was laughable. Let the guy throw his tantrum-pity party. Steve was fine with him having a problem with breathing the air, even. So long as he got them where they needed to be, and he did the job that needed doing.

He'd been through enough men to not take it personally, if those two requirements were being met.

"It was that, or cab." Steve said, even and easy, like it was obvious. He'd been using them since he arrived, after all. But it was much easier to have a set of wheels with a person on the ground, too. It hadn't entirely slipped his mind either. He was back in the file, digging for the address. "This way we don't have to around for someone else." Too.

"Oh, so you do know which one's mine? That really is incredible. No, not the fact that I have a car, genius. As you so deftly pointed out, I've been on this godforsaken rock six months, what, you think I've been running around chasing crooks on foot that whole time?"

With a tone that adds idiot, and none too quietly, as the rickety wooden stairs clatter under his shoes and he makes for the Mustang. "Maybe put a siren on a scooter, or rented a bike?"

He really doesn't want Steve to answer that. Given the disrepair of his, you couldn't even call that a house.

Rat trap tenement meant for the seedy under belly of the world crawling types everywhere. It was a miracle if the man wasn't arresting people in his own complex every week. But given that, and what the whole interior looked like, still, six months later, that didn't give a rousing vote of confidence toward anything the man owned. Over the monkey suit he was wearing, that made him stick out like a sore thumb and begged for anyone in Hawaii to note he wasn't one of them.

Steve made a gesture with his hand for Danny to get on with it already, since the lot was there. "So, which one?"

Steve was looking at all of them for something in the middle, about as mediocre as everything else he had.

"Which one? Which one?"

He hasn't stopped moving since getting out of the apartment, hit the pavement and was making a beeline for the Mustang, while McGarrett takes a second to exemplify just how much of an arrogant douchebag he really is. "Was I, just now, pointing at just a random car, for kicks? That one."

Pointing again at the Mustang, and walking towards it with quick steps, half-turning to wave a derisive hand in the air. "The one I've been heading towards since we got out here, Einstein, which you would have noticed if you could deign to pay attention to anyone other than yourself for more than five seconds."

Things he shouldn't be saying to his new partner, things he definitely shouldn't be saying to someone who has the Governor on speed-dial, but it's not like it'll be the first or last time his mouth has gotten him in trouble, and it's a little bit of a relief. A venting of building steam pressure, that's crushing up against his windpipe and setting his blood at a hard boil that can't be good for him, right, it's gotta be high blood pressure or something, but it comes out like this and always has: hard, poisonous words, and a complete disregard for everyone who thinks they're better than him, like this asshole, like the bigots at HPD, like Rachel, like everyone in this miserable sideshow of a world he's been cursed to live in.

You'd think he was announcing it to the whole neighborhood. Loud and obvious. Not Steve's choice in this kind of place, unless he's taking someone's face off, but then Steve doesn't live here. Hasn't lived here for six months. But that thought is quickly replaced with a look of rather blanketed confusion while he's getting eyes on the silver car they're walking toward, pretty straight at. The Mustang in the parking lot.

That he probably would have pegged belonging to a meat head, drug dealer.

Not the mouthy transplant Detective who didn't have one expensive object in his whole house.

Silver. GT. Not the kind of thing he would have pegged in the slightest. He would have been looking for something beaten up around the edges, dings and sputtering muffler. Something that looked like it'd seen better days and was being held together on a wish and prayer, or, you know, vitriol and spite, like it's owner. But it's a mustang. Silver, and maintained looking. Stopping him up entirely for a second while they're getting there.

"A Mustang?" Steve's looking over like maybe the guy got his shirt size wrong. Or Steve did. Looking for the connection between the two, the same way he'd looked for the correlation between the cases. Wondering for a moment if this was where all his money went. He wouldn't be the first guy to have a wallet eating muscle car fixation. "You bring it with you from the mainland?"

"Do I look like I could afford to ship anything bigger than a Matchbox from the mainland?"

He gestures to the Mustang, pissed off. "Just get in."

McGarrett's blatant surprise is doing nothing to mollify his aggravation; it only feeds the fire, stirs it into sullen, lashing flames. It's over a thousand bucks to ship a car from California to Hawaii, and it would've been almost that in gas to drive cross-country in his old sedan, so, yeah. Sure. He got here, and he got a fun car.

It's not new. It's not sleek or polished; it's got the same rough edges he feels, and the engine is a pissed-off growl that hums under his skin, ramps up with his blood pressure and echoes along his nerves. It's fast, and fun to drive, and he likes it, even if it's not perfect, even if he wishes there were just a little something extra to it.

But it'll be fine today, no matter how bewildered McGarrett is that he's got a decent ride, so he jerks open the driver's side door and slides inside, grumbling about the heat of the day and the black interior as he does.

Steve pretty sure nothing that just came out of Danny's mouth made any sense. Sure expensive to get anything from the mainland to Hawaii, or vice-versa. He'd know. It's not like much of anything from his childhood home was found anywhere else, unless you were willing to pay top dollar for it. But there were prices, and then there were prices. And even if shipping was insanely expensive.

It wasn't usually as expensive as, say, buying a whole new car.

Even a new used car was still up there. When you figured in payments and interest.

But Steve had seen the whole gamut of weird purchases made with too much money and too little time over the last decade. Soldiers and sailors were nowhere near as rational with their money, especially when money seemed like a thing that really only existed whenever you were off mission. Since everything else was handed to you during and figured out, syphon on or off that magical number hitting a bank account but not needed by you at the time.

So, Danny has car. Maybe it's his one inch above having absolutely nothing except his job. It's not like Steve was going to be around long enough to want to ask the question no less be around long enough to hear, or even puzzle out, the answer. He got in the car, not paying much attention to the muttering on the other side, other than to note that he still hadn't stopped. That he really didn't need any more audience than himself to keep going on and on.

No more talking is fine by Danny, who waits for McGarrett to get in before tossing his phone in the console and turning the key. The engine roars into life and settles into a constant growl, while he reaches back for his seatbelt, checks the mirrors, backs out.

"So, I guess you got an address for Doran?"

He can keep it professional. He can. He's a good partner, even if HPD doesn't think so, even if his reviews always come back as surly, argumentative, impatient. It's just for this one case, maybe even this one pick-up and interrogation, and he can work with the guy for that long, right?

Maybe he's not going to go out of his way to make friends (there's a flash of red on the inside of his wrist that catches his eye; he grimaces, and peels out of the parking lot with a sudden heavy foot on the gas and a screech of tires), but he does still need to know where they're headed.

Steve gives him the clipped edge of a look, even as the car peels out, again, not quite like Steve would have expected.

Because Danny would know. It was Danny's file, and Doran was Danny's lead, before the last few hours. His father bricked up, as well as in that hole in the ground at the Punchbowl, in the mortar of black print, crime scene photos, and two slight layers of manila. Like so many other folders in HPD, and throughout countless years worth of missions Steve had been handed them, or seen the growing weight of his own.

Steve rifled back through the few sheets collected on Doran, to find the right one. "Here."

Steve pushed the paper at him, maybe even to see if he'd take it and read or throw a fit about the newest clearly impossible thing he couldn't do. It's really halfway through the air to that side of the car before it even hits Steve to consider just reading it. Making anything any easier on the man, who did not go out of his way anywhere to make anyone want to help him specifically. But it isn't like he knows all the roads here. Some of them, maybe. But all of it is old memories.

But it wasn't that far, and the name pulled up memories enough for Steve. If Section 8 had a Section 8, that would be it.

Is how to be an obnoxious dick like, Navy SEAL 101? He tosses a glance at the passenger seat, reaches out to take the paper (flash of red light on his wrist, he doesn't look, won't, refuses) and look it over. Nothing new, then. Doran's probably holed up in the same bad little neighborhood well outside the contained sprawl of the city, the shack town they've traced him to before.

If he's not, there are a few other places to try, but Danny shoves the paper back over towards the file Steve's holding without checking to see if Steve's paying attention, takes a hard right towards the highway, out towards where traffic will fall away and the Mustang can eat up miles like inches. Engine opening up, his foot heavy on the gas, mind half on the road and half on the case, with a little niggling corner trying to get him to look at his wrist, to come to terms with the fact that those numbers aren't ever going to move again.

And it's all McGarrett's fault.

(Or Rachel's, for moving them here to begin with, but he already blames her for everything else, just for the sake of variety, he ought to give her a pass on this.)

Steve stared out the front windshield, again, bungling the stillness with how oddly familiar everything was.

Even in not being able to place it all, even in the idea he might not have seen it all even when he was young. There's an air of familiarity to all of it. The way people tie their bathing suit skirts. The cant of their heads when they talk. The loose hold of shoulders and that every present smiling. Even the way the wind blows through the trees as the car is flying past them. It's all eerily, frozen fingertips trailing up his spine, stepped on his grave, familiar.

Or his fathers'. The only thing that could get him out here in the last decade, more dedicated to his work than anything else. Not that either of them had made any bones about needing or wanting that to be anything other than what it had been since he was a kid. But that voice, and all its last words, stuck, like an ear worm dug in, Hey, Champ and Listen to me, Champ. Apologizing for lying to him, about what, Steve still didn't know. Saying that he loved him. When those words were more foreign than any foreign language.

Which was a fitting time for the car to suddenly explode in the small sounds of a horror movie, making Steve look toward that side again. Bypassing the silent radio and looking at Danny looking at his phone, facial features tightened as he hit a button and threw the phone back in the center console. Not that the man was looking for pointers, but Steve always found horror movies the perfect way, back when, to a girl into your lap, more than to be a warning against a person.

Which could be only one person. Given Danny Williams easily broke down on a logic wall. He had had less than a dozen connections here, even for his half a year, but his relationship with his captain, partner and work was effective, even if antagonistic, which only left one person for it to be.

Steve looked back toward the window as Danny did. "Take it your marriage didn't end so well."

His first reaction, unsurprisingly, is a wave of anger.

What is surprising is how hard, sudden, and vicious it is: leaves him feeling a sick twist in his stomach while his hands grip the steering wheel hard enough to whiten knuckles, because he suddenly just wants to haul off and punch Steve McGarrett and his fucking questions and his uncaring theft of Danny's life right in the face.

He wants to yell at Rachel for calling him now, during this, this worst day of his life, for forcing him to come here, for leaving him, for saying she loved him when they both knew it couldn't ever really be true. Not as true as it should have been. He wants to hate her, with a sudden hollowing out of his chest and gut, and he wants to hate McGarrett, too, and that disinterested question.

"No." It's tight, exhaled, relcutant. It didn't end well. It ripped him apart, limb from limb, snacked on his heart and soul and spent long months slowly tearing strips of flesh away from him until he was left this raw, bleeding mess. "She was, quite literally, not the one."

Made all the more obvious by his unbelievably offbase timer, the one that he can't help glancing at now, with a glare. It's responsible for all this, and he's got no one but himself to hold accountable.

So he glares at the timer, the road, Hawaii all spread out around them, while the Mustang accelerates angry down the clear road.

"Which would've been bad enough, but then my ex remarried and dragged my daughter to this pineapple-infested hellhole."

He's expecting all of the rote and repetition answer that most divorcees had, even among the armed forces, even among his own men, but he's not expecting the flippant anger at Hawaii. It was Hawaii. No one hated Hawaii. A good ninety percent of the world dreamed of going there -- while other people, who Steve was not pointing fingers at, or claiming he knew, especially as it existed at him in disturbingly technicolor familiarity, remembered it as a place they'd never get back to.

Especially when they were already there, surrounded with it and its technicolor familiarity.

"You don't like the beach?" The question was so much easier than the hazy thought. Like it was impossible.

Danny needing to be ornery about everything that might exist within a couple miles of him. Or an entire island now.

"I don't like the beach."

Doesn't even allow the thought of used to in his head. Just doesn't like it. Not the sand, not the sun, not the sticky sunscreen that gets sand all over him, not the salt water, not the erosion and storms and flocks of tourists it brings.

And he doesn't exactly feel like discussing it much, either.

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