Young Writers Society

Viggo, a disgraced cop, spent a little under a decade in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Now, he's out for revenge. Once upon a time, Nyssa was his friend. Now, she has to decide whether she will help him. She can't help remembering.

To know more, read Chapter 2.1.

“What are you doing hanging out in a bar, Malik?”

Nyssa looked up from her coffee, a smart, dry come-back on the tip of her tongue. But Detective Peter “Viggo” Carlsen looked like he had gone through a meat-grinder. Even though his incredible blue eyes sparkled as usual, her sense of humor immediately dried up. The left side of his face was black and blue, he had a big cut across one eyebrow and a huge bandage on his neck.

“What the hell happened to you?!”

He winced. She winced too, because she hadn't meant to shout. Then, he smiled his sheepish smile, the one she always found surprisingly sweet and innocent. He looked like a freezer-door but, then, he smiled that smile. The dichotomy was charming as hell.

“Angry met-cooker. And his even angrier dog.”

“You're kidding, right? Did you get a shot for rabies? Sit, sit.” At her prompting, he sat, moving like he was sore. She waved to the waitress, mimicking pouring coffee. “Sheesh, what are you doing here? You should be back home, getting pampered by Angela. Do you need me to drive you home?”

She paused, both to catch her breath and to give him a chance to answer. He took his time, grinning, “Where do I start? Well…Let's see. No, yes, okay, coffee, bridge, got my car.”

She blinked, made a motion with her hand, as if rewinding something. “Run that by me again, please.”

He nodded. “I'm not kidding – I wouldn't kid you, Malik.” She didn’t think he was capable of kidding anyone, but she kept that tidbit to herself. “I went to the ER and got all stitched up and shot for everything I might catch. That's why I'm here, as a matter of fact, getting my morning coffee before heading back home. As for Angela, she’s back East for the weekend. Her mother had a rowdy game of bridge planned last night, so she’s probably sleeping it off. And I don't need you to drive me anywhere. I've got my car, it's working and so am I.”

She made a whistling sound and leaned back, squinting. She could only just make out the shape of his Crown Vic in the dimly lit parking lot.

“And where is your better half?” she asked, kicking herself when her heartbeat picked up speed at the thought of handsome detective Pierce.

He frowned. “Better, I don't know. I’ve already dropped him. He had something planned, I gathered.” He hesitated, his frown graduating to a scowl. “I wouldn't sail there, Malik. Dangerous water.”

She smiled at the metaphor, although she hated it when people butted in her business. Viggo was an exception, and only because he hated being on the giving end of advice as much as she hated being on its receiving end.

“Is that good form?” she asked with faint disapproval. “Badmouthing your partner behind his back?”

He sighed. “I'm not badmouthing him. I love the guy, but he’s a dog, everybody knows that. You’re too sweet for him.”

True, all of it. Pierce wasn't big on monogamy, and she was. Still…

“I'm not sweet!” she protested.

He was thanking the waitress but, when he looked back her way, he had to raise his cup of coffee to his mouth to hide the laughter pulling at his lips. “Sure, you aren’t. You aren't pouting either, hm, I suppose?”

“Damn right.”

But on the off chance that she was, she took her stony I-mean-business face. He chuckled. He always said that she looked about twelve when she frowned. There was nothing she could do, short of surgery, so she shrugged it off.

Carlsen seemed perfectly content with their prolonged silence. He sipped his coffee, gazing out into the street, a tiny smile on his lips. Nyssa had never known an easier man to please, a more relaxed company. She ate half her slice of apple-pie, nibbling, then she pushed the plate toward him. He took it with a wider smile.

She shook her head and mumbled, “Unsanitary,” when he used her spoon.

He snickered.

It was their routine. She like that – her routine with Viggo, the solid bound between them. She wasn’t good at long-term relationships, her friendships were usually skin-deep, but Peter Carlsen was different, he was incapable of anything less than deep. He placed total, blind trust in his partner, Russ. He looked at Angela as if he wanted to crawl under her skin and to dissolve in her. And when he looked at Nyssa…

Well, she wasn't quite sure. Concern, amusement and tenderness each held big parts there. She knew he liked her, in a clear-cut, platonic way. He never undressed her with his eyes. They never even zeroed in on anything beside her face, except for that one time she had burnt herself on an engine and he had treated her hand. She liked that. It was part of what made him so sweet and comfortable.

She liked to imagine that, if she had paraded naked in front of him, he would just have remarked on the temperature.

“Why 'Viggo'?” she asked.

He didn't ask her to elaborate. Carlsen never needed repeating or elaborating. He just took everything in stride and worked through it. It took a few breaths, then he lowered her spoon to the plate, even though he wasn't finished with her pie.

“It's all Russ's fault. We were doing undercover work, and he couldn't keep up with the aliases, so he decided to go with Viggo.” He muttered something that sounded like, “Fucking Lord of the Rings movies,” under his breath.

It made her laugh. True, he did look a little like Aragorn. Those blue eyes, that quiet attention. But Carlsen had a gentle mildness to him. He was a little dull – not even remotely the stuff of fantasies

“Your turn,” he said, waving her spoon threateningly. She just raised an eyebrow. “Come on. Nyssa Malik. You don't look Arab.”

“I'm American.”

She felt wrinkles creasing her nose. She was a bit touchy on the subject. She had lived through 911 and its immediate aftermath as a teenager. She hadn’t been feeling particularly apologetic about her father's heritage – a position she’d had to defend often in high-school. A debate in twelfth grade, especially, had almost turned into a mob.

“Sure, you are.” He pointed to his own large self. “I'm American too. Of Dutch-ascent.”

“My father's parents were Egyptian, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Dad wasn't a talker,” she acknowledged with a shrug. “All I know is that I found their immigration papers by accident and they said ‘Egypt’.”

“Ah…” His cold blue eyes narrowed on her, peering in hers, weighing her expression, her attitude, measuring, seeing right through her. “He was the drunk, wasn't he?” He shrugged at her look of utter shock. “You never drink. The one time I saw you with a beer, you looked at it as if it was going to turn on you and bite your hand.”

“Who the hell notices that stuff?” she grumbled.

He grinned. “Hate to break it to you, Malik, but I'm a detective. Noticing things is sort of my job.”

She swatted at his shoulder. Playfully. “Right on the money. I'm a chip off the old block.” She had meant it as a joke, but it came out rather more sad than funny. Carlsen seemed at a loss, all of a sudden. She decided to put the man out of his misery, “It wasn't that bad. He wasn't a violent or a mean drunk. He was a sad drunk. He would drink, then cry himself to sleep every night.”

“What about you?” he asked quietly.

His eyes were so soft, right that minute, that she truly believed she could have confessed to any kind of sordid flaw and he wouldn't have batted an eye.

“I don't know.” She shook her head helplessly. “I’m not stupid enough to try. I wish I had, in a way. I don’t belong anywhere. I can’t drink, and I can’t exactly go to a meeting. Imagine that – me getting up and saying, 'Hi, my name is Nyssa and I'm an alcoholic.' With the tales they tell in those meetings…”

He opened his mouth, closed it, opened his mouth, closed it again. “Maybe you should go anyway.”

“Maybe.”

“What about your mom?”

“Dad was the drunk, and Mom was the loser. Drunks aren't losers,” she informed him. “Neither are addicts. Real losers know they're in deep shit, and just stare at it. They don’t do anything, don’t blur their minds.”

“Your mother stared.”

“Yes. Quietly so. Don’t get me wrong, she was a great mom. She baked cakes, she attended school-plays. Then, Dad disappeared when I was seven.”

“Disappeared?” he repeated, eyebrows high up his forehead.

“He probably went off somewhere and killed himself. We never knew for sure. Mom filed for divorce and took a live-in lover a few years later. They got married, eventually.”

“So, you had a step-dad?”

“Yes,” she replied, grinning too. “Paul. He was great – always treated me like his own flesh and blood.” She rolled her eyes heavenward. “That man only ever felt at ease in a lab. He was a science teacher in high-school. So, we did lots of bounding over a microscope.”

“That's how you fell in love with science?”

“Hell, yeah. I went to college to become a teacher too, except that I've got a short attention-span. I'm not a big fan of kids either. Criminal forensics is the only course I never got bored of. So, I became a crime scene tech.”

“What did your step-dad think of that?”

“I'll never know, he died before I graduated college. His liver was shot. Isn't that ironic? My dad drunk himself into a stupor every damn night and died in perfect health. Paul never even drank socially, and it was enough to wreck his liver.” He made a face and she laughed. Poor man, running from landmine to landmine. “I think he'd have gotten one hell of a kick out of my career, though. He always was a bit of an armchair detective, himself.”

“So, you're walking in the old man's footsteps.”

“I guess I am. What about you? Your father was in the force?”

He cracked up at the idea. She didn't understand what was so funny about it until he said, “My dad was a fisherman. Born and raised on a boat. Never left Alaska his whole life.”

“Alaska? That’s a long way from San Francisco…”

“My mother left Christian when I was twelve – I mean, my dad. She took off with the dentist. Apparently, he seduced her between treating her gums and my cavities. We moved down to San Francisco.”

His jaw was hard, his teeth clenched together. She wondered why. “Did you see your dad again?”

“Every Summer. My mother would just put me in a plane headed North. She always said that she couldn't bear the thought of facing Christian again.”

“You're still pissed about that?”

He pondered that, then admitted, “No. Not about that. Ah…I guess I understand. My little brother Simon died when he was seven and I was ten. He went overboard in my dad’s fishing boat.” He smiled a sad little smile. “She doesn't really talk about it, but she always wear a locket with a picture of Simon and a strand of his hair.” He shrugged. “Mom and Christian couldn’t make it work anymore, I get it, I do, but…” His voice trailed off. “He didn’t talk much. He sailed, and he fished, and he'd go on long treks with him. He never spoke an ill word of Mom. He died at forty. Heart-failure. I was nineteen and Mom didn't even bother telling me until it was too late to go to his funeral. That, I still have trouble with.”

“I take it you aren't close?” she probed gently.

“We get along fine, for the most part.” He frowned. “I go to dinner every once in a while. I make nice noises at my half-sisters but no, we aren't close.”

“So why did you join the SFPD?”

He shrugged. “College. I was in law school. My stepfather the dentist wanted me to go into business law so, of course, I went into criminal law.” She laughed. He had a rueful look in his eyes, one completely devoid of real regrets. “Of course, it was my decision to make, I was on a scholarship, it didn't cost him a dime. Mom wanted me to pass the Bar, but I decided not to.”

“Another typical teenager kind of decision?”

“No. That one, I don't have to own up to. I didn't want to become a lawyer because I did one too many internships in law firms. Lawyers aren't my favorite kind of human beings. Come to think of it, I didn't much like anyone I came across in law school.”

“I'm so repeating that to Angela,” she mumbled, eliciting a very nice blush from him.

“Home-wrecker,” he called her. “But Angela knows that I do like her.” His eyes twinkled with mischief and a man's quiet confidence in his own sexuality. “And I did like the law. The force simply seemed like the best place for me.”

“Well, you're a great cop.”

“Thanks for that.”

She smiled back at him. It was hard not to.

***

Seven years later

Nyssa had slept a fretful, restless sleep. A shower resuscitated her some. The bruises Russ had left on her were fading. Her trained eye told her they would be gone within a week or two. Soon, her body would be free of him. With that realization, heat bloomed in her stomach and chest. It was a gift and, for the first time in ages, she felt like praying.

She forced herself to eat breakfast, even though she was champing at the bit. She had worked out a good, sturdy plan with Viggo but, without dedication, it would fail all the same.

Hold on, she told herself. Go through every hoop. No panic, no precipitation, no rushing for the finish-line. Same as in her lab.

She packed again, stuffed toiletries, etc. in a trash-bag to take with her. She used wipes to get her finger-prints and DNA off the cabin. Then, she drove off sedately. Normally, she was the very devil on wheels, but she couldn’t afford the attention. She would drive like an old lady if it killed her!

She stopped only a couple of miles away and used one of her burners to call Russ. He didn't answer, and she didn't leave him a message. She would have to try again later, or he might start wondering too soon for her purposes. She hooked one finger in her collar and tugged. She was uncomfortable, both with the prospect of calling him and with her clingy clothes.

You’re courting trouble.

She hissed in frustration. Same old ghost, haunting her…But that was an escape for another day.

To know whether Nyssa and Viggo are going to make it, read Chapter 3.1.