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Well, she was, wasn’t she? She was pursuing leads. She was interrogating suspects. She was leveraging the local resources available to her to try to find new evidence and new leads that she could use to come to a conclusion. She could do both at once.
She tried to convince herself of this, but too much had happened for her to convince herself it was true.
Well, it wasn’t her fault that she was here. She had told the Boss to put her on West, and he refused. Once more, she wasn’t allowed to work the case she wanted, so what was she supposed to do, shrug her shoulders and skip gaily to the case the Boss wanted for her? Was she supposed to shut off her own emotions as though they didn’t exist?
Advice from Dr. West came unbidden to her mind.Shutting yourself off from your emotions is precisely why you’re enslaved to them. Only by admitting to and accepting them can you overcome their hold on your decision-making.
“Screw you,” she said aloud.
“Screw you too,” Michael retorted.
She looked up from her laptop and realized he had returned. She quickly shut the screen and said, “Sorry. I didn’t notice you were here.”
“Yeah, I figured. So the Boss won’t talk to you, huh?”
She stiffened a little, but what was the point of lying to him anymore. “No,” she admitted. “He won’t.”
“Well, he’s got a point,” Michael reminded her. “Doesn’t he?”
She glared at him, but bit back her angry retort. “Yes,” she said reluctantly. Then, even more reluctantly, “and so do you.”
His eyes widened appreciatively. “Wow. Coffee works wonders on you. Let’s see how food helps.”
He set a foil-wrapped burrito in front of her with four small cups—three red and one green—to the side. She ate ravenously, only just realizing how hungry she was. Incredibly, when she finished, she found that she actually did feel better. She was still angry and still hurt, but she could put those feelings aside and focus on her job much more easily now.
“I have to hand it to you,” she said, crumpling up her trash and tossing it into the wastebasket. “Food was a good idea.”
“I know you well,” he said with a smile and not a clue how much those words hurt her now.
“Yes, you do,” she said softly. “So. The case.”
He nodded patiently. “The case.”
“We missed something big.”
He lifted an eyebrow.
“We need to talk to the victims’ families.”
He blinked, and she could sense irritation. “Yes. You’re right. We should have done that day one.”
“The past is the past,” she said, “the future is now. Let’s get Dr. Heath on the line and see if she’s made any progress on that end.”
“Loud and clear, sir,” Michael replied.
He dialed her number and put her on speaker. "Go ahead," Dr. Heath replied crisply.
“Doctor, have you interviewed the victims’ families yet,” Faith began.
Dr. Heath paused, then said reluctantly, “No, not yet.”
Faith quelled her irritation and kept her voice respectful. “May I ask why not?”
“We don’t have a lot of personnel available for that.”
“You don’t have detectives?”
"We do, but they're few and far between, and their job is to assist law enforcement, not take over. Since you guys are here, Major Crimes doesn't see the need to send a field agent. I'm basically just the head CSI. I look for physical evidence at a crime scene, but I don't do much detective work."
