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[haole_cop]

 "Now it's my crime scene."

Those could have been, should have been, the last words he heard from McGarrett, and in a kinder world, they might have been, but the world hates Danny Williams, and he's not exactly feeling all that generous towards it, himself, so he's honestly not even a little surprised when the authoritative rap on his door comes attached to a too-tall, too-broad, too-aggressive Navy SEAL with revenge on the mind and Daddy issues from here back to the boardwalks of Wildwood.

He hates him. 

Because of this joker, he's home in the middle of the day, instead of at work, work, he might point out, where he's attempting to catch the guy who did this to McGarrett, Sr., which is normally what the child of a murder victim wants, right? They want the cops to do their damn job and haul the dirtbag in for justice.

They don't storm in and take over like it's their goddamn platoon out in fucking Afghanistan.

Except McGarrett, okay, he doesn't seem to have gotten the memo. There's a reason officers don't get involved if the deceased was a family member, and this is exactly why: it makes people angry, irrational.

(He hopes to hell this is McGarrett being irrational.)

It's too close, too personal -- and it's also not his case anymore, so he's got no idea why McGarrett, shirt sticking to his skin from the soaking rain that just hit, because it rains every goddamn day here, what a fucking miracle, Hallelujah, is standing on his doorstep, because it isn't that.

(And it's not that either, he refuses, it's not happening, and there's no possible way this whackjob noticed. It could be he doesn't even have a timer, or got his blown off while single-handedly stopping an insurrection with a couple of grenades and a can-do attidtude.)

So he just stands and waits, with one hand still on the doorknob, ready to slam it shut just as soon as possible.

 

Comments

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's almost to smiling, or rolling his eyes. He's not even sure which one, or that it really matters, it's both basically all at once, in the wash, so he turns his gaze away form Danny and toward the front windshield. Because, hell. That's better than a flat out rejection, right? Danny, looking over at him suspiciously leery of the fact his mouth can form those words or like he's digging for Steve to not mean them. And, yah, fine, he'd laugh if a SEAL threw this fit. But Danny isn't. A SEAL.

Maybe a single bullet matters to him. Because he hasn't walked straight into six and kept going.

So he nods. Steve nods. To no one more than the front windshield, while Danny sounds confused and defensively winded. Lets that ride, with a last comment, while his head is bobbing, like there's any chance he'll ever be bringing this conversation up, and that several apologies has some review board to go before first. "You let me know now."

Whenever that is. That Danny gets over feeling sensitive and upended. Which Steve totally isn't feeling a little proud of.

It goes well with the hairline ache in his jaw. Like scraping a point back up off the ground no matter what.

[haole_cop]

"Yeah, I'll let you know."

Quick, and a little surly, and still suspicious that he's being made the butt of some joke he just can't see yet, that Steve is laughing at him behind that perfectly blasé expression of his, when Steve's not even looking at him anymore, like the topic has been closed to his satisfaction.

Danny's pretty sure he just got hustled, somewhere in those few words, but he's not totally sure how, and he did, actually get the apology he'd been looking for, so he just shuts up and goes back to what he should've been using before: silence.

Even if this one has a very different feel to it. More confused, less frigid.

[thebesteverseen]

Good. So if that's done. Maybe Steve can get back to what he wanted before that punch, right? Maybe?

It's easier to just keep bulldozing in. It's worked better in the last minute than anything in the hour beforehand.

Just stop making it entirely direct, and keep it somewhere near conversational, but pushy. Because it's maybe a little easy, when Danny's a touch off kilter and tossing out words that sound like they're coming out because he should be, even if he's not certain entirely what they should be. Besides, it's damn near perfect timing. Which is great. "Make the next left up here."

[haole_cop]

"Why."

Still flat and annoyed as hell, even if he can't actually go off on it, because Steve is being reasonable, and as much as that grates on Danny, he has to admit he asked for it, and got it.

Which is a start.

It's not an auspicious start, granted, and he still hasn't forgiven Steve for all the myriad other sins of the day, and he's pretty damn sure they're going to get into it at least once more before the day is out, but he can keep this wavering, fragile truce for now.

He doesn't have to like it, but he can keep it.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve doesn't really pay that much attention to the annoyance this time.

But he isn't ignoring it, this time. It's just there. This worried snap of sound that still sounds like a shell of the earlier ranting tone, that actually was annoyed, and ages away from the scathing rage that was You're right. I don't like you. This one is more along the lines of I don't know what is going on, but once I figure out what you're doing wrong, you're going to pay for it. A growl, all fuss and fire, with no meat behind it.

"I think I know someone who can help us." Steve said it even and easy, like it was all part of this. The case, and the day, and the whatever the last twenty minutes were or still are. Because that's still bigger than this tiny pause, with it's biting confusion over there. The case. And Hesse. And his Dad. And the containers smuggling people out of Asia. That might have held both a little girl, and an international terrorist.

One left, and then they'll be headed right back into his morning. Back to the Arizona, and the place where Jameson made him the offer he denied and then had to reverse tracks on. Like the one that happened in the garage and just now in the car. This day feels covered in doubling back on where he was to where he had been before, things he should have picked up or used earlier, but didn't know how they'd fit into the picture, or be needed, until hours after he'd already left them.

[haole_cop]

He doesn't have to add that last word, and Danny wishes he hadn't, because I think I know someone who can help would allow him to keep being pissed at being used as essentially a chauffeur, not part of the plan, not a partner, the way Steve said they were.

But the guy goes ahead and says us, and that makes Danny part of it.

More than that. It makes them them, two people in a loop, and his lips tighten, annoyed that he can't be annoyed by it, while he flicks on the blinker, makes the left. "Who?"

It might still be short, but maybe it's a little less aggressive, this time. Testing the waters, maybe, to see if Steve's newfound ability to share information will continue, or if he'll be cut out again, if this is all going to be dispensed on a need-to-know basis, or if they actually have a shot at managing something like normal communication.

[thebesteverseen]

"Someone who used to work with my Dad."

It's not like his has the whole low down on Chin. Not like he knows how he ended up at the Arizona this morning.
But it's been two decades. People change, what they want from life and what they want to be doing with their lives changes.

Steve's changed more in one day than he ever thought it could when was that young. One car bomb, and the knock of one hand on the door, and a colliding row of dominoes changed near everything he was ever certain about except The Navy. He can't even quantify an emotion for the blank wonder of if this one will. The gun shot. Still ringing, thin and tinny in his ear, over the phone. His father's blood on the house. He's not sixteen anymore. He didn't want this, but he isn't.

It's a though process that sends him staring out the window, seeing nothing, even while he's watching the Arizona Memorial buildings get closer as they turn toward it, and its parking lot, and the area that will be covered even more with tourists and a handful of veterans, given that it isn't early morning. Trying to shake the thought of three different McGarrett dying on this island under anything but natural circumstances. Like it was some monster stalking them all.

[haole_cop]

So, no.

Making Danny's mouth twist at that non-answer, head shaking, even as he accelerates out of the turn. "Sorry, buddy, that's not good enough."

If this is going to work -- this being this partnership, however long or short it might be, not the numbers on his wrist that he's sure must be some kind of blip or malfunction -- he needs to know what's happening, both on the ground and in Steve's head. That's how partnerships work. "If we're gonna be partners, then you need to start telling me your plans, okay? I am not on your team, I'm not just gonna take orders without knowing why."

The explanation gets waved towards the steering wheel with one hand, the other taking care of following the road. He's not a soldier. He's a cop, and Steve said partners, so he can grit his teeth and get through it, but if that's going to happen, then this balance of power is going to shift, and it's gonna shift right now.

"You and me, we're in this together now, and you need to start trusting me so I can do my damn job. We have got to be on the same page, or there's no point to this."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve is not sure which thing really makes him glance to the left more. The use of the word buddy, when it's probably the least insulting choice Danny's picked so far, or the fact that Danny continues to take five hundred words, with four examples of why, to ask what could easily be asked in one sentence. But he didn't miss the part where Danny, seemingly, is not done with this partnership entirely, and he can call that a win.

Someone got their face in the dirt, someone else got hit, and they might make it through this without someone dying.

But he's being, if way too wordy, reasonable, Steve supposes. He always liked to get on the ground with as much information as possible. It might have only been a few questions on Doran but he already had the file. Danny had nothing on Chin, and admittedly less on understanding this island than most haole's had at six months. But it wasn't the worst request. It was probably actually the first really worthy one.

It wasn't even annoying or insulting or overreaching by anyway, and if Chin Ho Kelly got anything anywhere in his Dad's file it was probably only as a footnote. One of dozens of rookies his dad had trained through the years. His Dad, the good cop, with a soft, but firm touch where it came to training and welcoming people in. The kind of cop people never even remembered was haole-skinned because he did his job so well. Not that his family had seen anything of that man in decades.

"Chin Ho Kelly." Steve pushed out the name, to push away that last thought. "He was trained by my Dad, but he's off the force now." That much he knew was true. Given the uniform. Unless it was a secondary job. But it was an odd choice if it was one. "He's local, and he's unattached, which means he might have his ear to the ground still, and know where we can find intel on the smugglers."

The less official the better. The less chance that somehow Hesse might catch wind of Steve coming for him.

[haole_cop]

"Kelly?"

He was going to say something else, something along the lines of was that so hard? and he probably still will, but he's caught offguard for a second by a faint push of familiarity. "I know that name."

He's heard it once or twice. Even a haole who can't catch a break is a few circles above a dirty cop, and Chin Ho Kelly is HPD's favorite worst-case scenario, a cautionary tale to cops who step out of line or feel tempted to start fleecing a little of the take in cash or drug busts. Meka mentioned it one night, but didn't offer any details or opinions, and Danny didn't ask.

Personally, he doesn't know if the guy was rotten or not. He'd rather believe the best of the cops he works with, even if they're assholes to him, but then again, he didn't want to believe it of Peterson, either, and look where that landed them.

Which leaves him with the question of whether he tells Steve that his dad's protege left the force because there was dirt all over his name and career, even if it was never proven.

Then again, maybe someone like that is exactly what they need. "So where's he now?"

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's surprised and not surprised all at once. It's a small island, chain of islands, and a small police force compared to the juggernaut arms of the military he's used to working with. But all the same, it doesn't hurts to have people in the know. Makes him wonder, a brief, short, sharp second about all those retracings he's been doing. If he's in for a third with Danny, or can finally snap the hell out of that and get to moving forward finally.

But Danny doesn't say any more about that. Doesn't add that he knows the man, himself. Just that name. Which really wouldn't surprise Steve. The Kelly's were all over the force even when he was a kid. Chin's dad, and one of his cousins, maybe, or maybe he was a brother, and Steve's sure there was more, but it was ages ago. Even remembering the face when his name had been called out was remembering through sludge, to a time and place Steve didn't spend much time looking at.

"He was working security at the Arizona this morning." Where Steve'd been waiting for Jameson. When he'd turned her down for everything. Every ounce of the bullshit and desperation that he could smell on each of word. Except he'd gone back on that, too. For his dad, and Hesse. Which wasn't what Danny asked. Facts. Black and white. With no middle ground seeping in everywhere, mucking it up.

[haole_cop]

He thinks is over, checking to see if there's anything else he needs to know right this second, and gives a short nod. "Okay."

A glance over his shoulder, and there's just the faintest crinkling around the corners of his eyes, that's probably just from driving towards the sun-struck waterfront and the glittering monuments there. "See? Was that easy, or what?"

He'll reserve judgment on the whole Chin Ho Kelly decision until they actually meet the guy. Danny knows all too well what it's like to be shoved systematically out of a group that's supposed to have your back, no matter what, and if the guy turns out to have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, he's got Danny's sympathy, for sure.

Still, working security. Which sounds bad, until he figures he should try to make a good impression, because if this thing goes south, he's pretty positive he'll be the next unfortunate cop to be drummed unceremoniously out of HPD, deserved or not.

[thebesteverseen]

There's a warily, dubious, almost ironically blank question of an expression that slides Danny's direction at that.

All barely catching in the tucked edges of Steve's mouth, and the slant of how his eyes shift over to Danny even when his face doesn't turn that way. Like he's not quite sure he believed Danny said that. That anyone on the planet said things like that, at least not like that, when they weren't speaking to children and talking about tying their shoelaces.

Steve might be regrouping his opinions on Williams, but at this second, emotional instability might be in the list, too. Not that pretty much every person he'd ever worked with in the field didn't fall into that box. But the fact Williams is almost smiling now, is a lifting flip. But, hell, it's better than getting into another fight on the grounds of the Arizona, which even Steve would point out was too much, too far, and too in the wrong place.

Really all Danny gets is that look, and Steve looking back out the windshield, pointing toward the lot, "Park over there."

[haole_cop]

It shouldn't amuse him, but it kind of does. That look. It's actually kind of a good sign, because it means they can get under each others' skin, and if that doesn't wind up with them trying to kill each other, it'll make for a decent partnership.

None of that stops him from quipping "what, over there?" with a sardonic nod to the parking signs and the clear lot, but at least it's not actually sharp or exasperated.

Huh. Who knew. Maybe that apology is accepted, after all.

The wind is whipping when he pulls in and parks, and it lashes his tie against his chest until he puts a hand over it to keep it down, heads around the trunk of the car to meet Steve. "So your guy. See him around, still?"

[thebesteverseen]

It's windy and still empty. There's something sad about that. He'd thought it was more how early it was this morning, but it looks to have the about the same number of people, again. Maybe different ones, but not many people milling about really at all. At least it means that they probably won't have to wait to talk to him.

Steve looked over the people present, at Danny's question, without looking back at the man. A vague narrow of his eyes, skimming height and build and color. But none of them pinged right. None of them was the person he was looking for. (And none of them, though he wouldn't be there at all, by any means, was Victor Hesse.)

Steve started walking across the lot, assuming Danny would follow him, the way he'd come around the car.

"There should be a Security Office." He hadn't looked earlier, but it was a historical site.

[haole_cop]

"Yeah."

He's looking around, steps quick to keep up with Steve, arms swinging at his sides, but taking it in. "Looks like over there, in the visitors center." Lifting a hand, to point, where a few tourists are trickling out of a breezy building. "I think I remember seeing it before. Me and Grace, we came here one time, pretty early on. She likes historical stuff."

It's an aside. Barely anything at all, certainly nothing like everything he could say about Grace, if he wanted to. Just a few casually dropped words, because he can't help it, because they did come here, and he can't help but remember it.

Yellow-shirted security guards are dotted around the premises, but he's not sure which one's Chin Ho Kelly. "Think he's still on shift?"

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's as good with that as a starting place as anything else, nodding even as he's walking. Even if Danny does unexpectedly veer into suddenly talking about his daughter, again, and Steve can note the way it makes his voice change again. It wraps itself in this almost unknowing, and unrecognized, warmth. Just for a second, while he's gesturing to the place in front of them.

There's almost a second where he tries to see it. How anyone else must. Without a relative down in the deep. Without a childhood full of events out here, paying homage to that memory, respect to a legacy, planning to grow up and do it justice. Someone who was just young, just seeing it as some historical place. He can't really. He can't without losing the meaning, and he can't do that any more than he can really like at all that its empty. Half like it's forgotten, half like maybe its only remembered by children who like historical things.

He's walking quickly, even though he's not trying to outpace Danny this time. Direct, but it's actually comparable.

"If not, we can ask for his personnel file. Find where he is now." Skipped step up the sidewalk and continuing straight on.

[haole_cop]

Part of him is shouting that he shouldn't just be rolling along with all of this, that Steve is still quite possibly unhinged and definitely dangerous and that he should just head back to HPD and swallow his pride for a job, but it's surprisingly easy to quell, because he's not sure he wants to do any of that.

Instead, he's running through child-trafficking cases in the six months since he's been here, wondering if any of them might be the guy they're looking for. It's not that HPD has caught any, recently, but they know it's happening. Hawaii is in too good a spot to pass up, between mainland USA and Japan, China, countries where visas take too long and might never come through anyway. Nothing's coming to mind, but who knows? Maybe Chin Ho Kelly will know something he doesn't.

The visitor center is of the kind recognizable the world over: men checking purses and bags, asking tourists to turn out their pockets. It's all fairly low-key, and Danny grimaces.

Nothing wrong with being a security guard, but he's pretty sure he'd be dead of boredom in less than a day.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's glancing over all these people, too. But they aren't Chin.

Some of them have the right coloring, but it's still the wrong person. Wrong colored shirts. It's really only about those two seconds before Steve done with the looking, while arriving and having arrived. Danny's at his side, in his peripheral, waiting and Steve just goes for forward. Straight shot, straight line, heads for the guy closest. Checking bags. Waits only long enough to get through the two people in line.

Before he can be tipping his head in a nod, and his hand with coming straight out the gate.

"We're looking for Chin Ho Kelly. He was here this morning. He still around?"

The kid, because the one in here, has to be a kid, he can't be even half past twenty, gives them both a look, up and down like he's got some ability to tell anything just by their clothes and them standing there. But Steve can pinpoint the second his eyes pass over Danny's badge, stop, retrack on it, and then he's looking back at Steve. "Yeah, brah. He took a kid to office not five back. You want me to go get him?"

Steve doesn't want more people, so there's a fast, easy shake of his head. "We've got it. If you'll just point the way."

[haole_cop]

The badge is still good for something, seems like, even if HPD isn't all that thrilled to call him one of their own. The security guy just nods to Steve's request, points back over his shoulder.

He wonders, as they head past, what exactly would necessitate getting hauled into the security office, here. Did some kid try to smuggle a water bottle past the security line? Maybe a can of paint?

Sure, the Arizona memorial is an important spot, but like the Liberty Bell, or the Washington Monument, not like it's a library full of state secrets. "You think maybe there's a bunch of criminal lowlifes hanging around a national monument?"

All he's saying is, it can't be the world's most stimulating job.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's giving that question a crazy look that actually involves looking over his shoulder, wondering where the words Danny throws out actually come from and whether the man ever actually vet's them before they just come rolling out of his mouth. It's hardly the place. Not that he has any idea, aside from the earlier spot, where lowlife's clung to in Hawaii anymore, but still.

The Arizona wasn't it. The Arizona was a dust bowl.

But at least its office stood out. With that helpful small sign next to the door telling you exactly what it was, like there was some other barrage of doors everyone was missing back here, that might be mistaken for it. Which there wasn't. He pressed forward for it with direct, quick steps, reaching up to knock with one hand, while his other was already going for the doorknob and pushing the whole thing open.

Standing in the doorway, taking Danny's tiny criminal in the shape of a small kid at the table and Chin standing off to one side of the table. Whatever this was, their thing was still far more important on any scale anywhere. Besides, the kid already looked like he was ready to piss himself as it was. Steve tipped a nod toward behind them, somewhere away from this place and that kid. "You got a minute?"

"Sure," Chin nodded, looking surprised at the interruption. But maybe even relieved for it. Since he turned back to the kid, making a gesture toward the toward door. "Go on back to your parents. Just don't do it again, 'eh?"

[haole_cop]

Chin Ho Kelly doesn't look like a dirty cop.

Not that they've got a look, exactly, but there's nothing shifty, suspicious, or unnerving about the guy. He's clear-eyed and clean-shaven, and even in his horrible rent-a-cop uniform, he looks relaxed and authoritative.

Danny wonders if maybe HPD is just crap at picking out the good ones from the bad.

Still, he was interrogating a small child, who nods, looking terrified, and breaks for the door, barely giving Danny time to step aside, lift his hands out of the way. "Hey, he looks like a real criminal mastermind," he jokes, but Chin Ho Kelly gives him a flat look, and he holds his hands up in surrender, gestures for Steve to go on, seeing as he's the one who brought them here.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve didn't try to explain or excuse the words that came out of Danny's mouth. He was just barely at any understanding of them himself. It wasn't an insult, and Chin was scooting them out the same as the kid, and Steve was fast to step back, making sure it wasn't straight into Danny.

Heading back toward the place they'd come from, with little more than passing a hand through the air between them saying, "Chin Ho Kelly, Detective Danny Williams." And vice-versa, at least because it got that out of the way, before they started. Cards and introductions. "Can we grab a table? This shouldn't take too long."

Barely the space of a minute or two if the answer was no. A little longer if the answer was yes and they could get a lead on the smugglers. If Chin could point them toward anyone, even a shallow hint of a lead of the guys who did this.

"The canteen should have a few of those open. Over here," Chin said as he lead them toward a different area than where they'd just come from. A small, what looked far more touristy than Hawaiian little coffee bistro attached. The kind of place that looked like it didn't even remember what the dream of a lunch rush was anymore.

[haole_cop]

Fine, so no one wants to lighten the mood, it's okay by him. He'll follow along after Steve and Chin, one hand in his pocket, the other swinging at his side, glancing around the little tourist area. It's kitschy and cheerful, but nearly empty, and he's not surprised Chin's trying to fill his day.

The canteen has more than a few open tables: it's more like every table, and Danny slides onto the bench of the one Chin leads them to, flexing his left arm idly, feeling the pull of torn muscle and the strange sensation of tape tugging at his skin. It's not too bad, but it still aches; so does his right shoulder, but he won't give in and stretch that where Steve can see it.

He does, however, notice with some satisfaction that a pretty solid shiner is starting to bloom on Steve's cheek.

[thebesteverseen]

"Alright, what can I do for you?" Chin asked, as they dropped into chairs.

Steve dug his phone out, flipping to the picture of the girl, shattered and shaken looking, even in the pressed stillness of the single picture, and holding it out toward Chin. "Her name is Chen Chi."

"Where'd you find her?"

Steve pulled his phone back, looking at it even as he was tuning it off. "Locked in a house." That wasn't even a house. It was a cupboard. A detail that mattered even if he didn't say it, setting the phone down on the table under her hands. "She came here to start a new life. They drugged her and turned her into a prostitute."

Chin leaned back, a huff of sudden awareness of what Steve was getting at, but it only made him pushed harder. More facts and as much as he could before there could be anything like an excuse or a no. He had to have the whole thing out there before there was any chance of it getting off the table. "The guy we're looking for is high profile. Victor Hesse. CIA. FBI. Interpol. He's on everyone's radar. Which means he didn't land here and get his passport stamped. He back-channeled in."

"Right," Chin was nodding, but he wasn't maintaining eye contact anymore. His shoulders drawing in and his gaze sliding to the sides and back. "So you think the same network that brought this girl to the island, smuggled Hesse in."

"Well, he made a fortune trafficking kids out of Malaysia." It's blank, bland and true. The numbers are horrorfic, and it wouldn't surprise Steve to find him up to anything he'd done before, here in Hawaii. Especially just the convenience of proving a point, trying to blackmail him into freeing Anton, killing Steve's dad as payback.

"You're looking for a snakehead, then," Chin supplied, not looking all that optimistic, even as Steve suddenly felt it. Finally getting toward looking in the direction of Danny, again. Like it was something Steve probably could have gotten even without asking him, given his friend there. "Local Chinese gangs the specialize in human smuggling."