Day 922: 5 Minute Freewrite: Wednesday CONTINUATION- Prompt: bully

Lt. Rowan collected herself after turning around and finding her worst nightmare in the records room of police headquarters behind her – Captain H.F. Lee, Big Loft's own “Angel of Death” who had taken down her lover Commissioner Thomas and scores of other bigwigs, was waiting to use the file cabinet she was in, and had been waiting for who knows how long.

“I'm working a big case, sir, and it has me a little jumpy – serial rapist possibly on the loose. The thoughts that go through your mind when a man gets near you and you don't know about it when working this kind of case … .”

It was a good lie, and if Captain Lee saw through it, he was kind enough not to let the lieutenant know.

“I can understand that, Lieutenant,” he said quietly. “Again, I apologize for startling you.”

“Apology accepted – it really wasn't your fault.”

Lt. Rowan couldn't believe she had said that, but there it was. She didn't know he knew how she had called him a demon and had blamed him for everything that had gone wrong for the department since he had exposed all the corruption from Commissioner Thomas on down. She figured her instincts were working to keep her cover pretty well, and so kept on in the same vein.

“I'll just be another few minutes, Captain,” she said as she turned back to the cabinet.

“Take your time, Lieutenant.”

Captain H.F. Lee looked on Lt. Rowan with a mingling of compassion and professional distaste. He knew her background and the entire story … how Commissioner Thomas in his “good” years as a captain in Special Victims had rescued her, but then years later had become the kind of sophisticated predator that she had no defense against, and then taken her and groomed her for his own purposes after noting that she was already acting out the pattern of abused people becoming abusive.

Lt. Rowan was a large and fit officer by any standard, and had compensated for the difference in strength between men and women by learning specialized techniques … she used all of it in spectacularly violent take-downs of men that no one would speak up for. People generally were glad to see abusers “get what was coming to them,” and the fact that a woman police officer was “giving it to them” as they fled or otherwise resisted arrest was even celebrated. Bonus points for no man wanting to call a charge of “excessive force” on a woman utterly beating down man after man after man – it was just too embarrassing, even though in 20 cases it would have been justified.

Leave it to Orton Thomas to want a woman like that, Orton Thomas who even during and before his “good” years had been involved in corruption … Orton Thomas who as commissioner turned his department into a well-paid terror organization for hire. He had protected and encouraged his entire department in expression of individual abuses … and thus had his pick of those he could sweep up into the advanced operations.

That said, Lt. Rowan must have meant something more than just a tool to Commissioner Thomas, because he had protected her exceptionally well, so well that Captain Lee knew a lot of what she had done, but couldn't get the evidence to prove it. The fall of the commissioner, the Soames case, and the Battler case had gotten progressively closer to and whittled down his surviving group – but still, Lt. Rowan had not been implicated in anything from an evidential perspective, although nothing made sense without her being involved.

Captain Lee despised corruption and the people who were dedicated to it. Lt. Rowan formed no exception, and she had also crossed the line of being verbally abusive to Maggie Thornton, his fiance. However, in this quiet moment in the record room, Captain Lee also felt compassion, because he realized the fear and hurt still inside the lieutenant, and the burden of guilt she was denying but still carrying.

Captain Lee also felt compassion because he remembered who he had been at 18 years old, and how he had nearly become the kind of person Lt. Rowan had, but on a higher and far more deadly level. He was more like Orton Thomas in capacity than she could have imagined. But, because God in Christ had saved him both temporally from the hour of his temptation at 18 and also spiritually, he had not become that kind of man.

Not that Lt. Rowan could sense any of the vast amount of thought going behind her about her – nor could she decipher the clue given her later on. It just startled her even more, although in a different way.

“All right, Captain, I'm out of your way,” she said, and gathered up her files before closing the cabinet.

“No need to be in a hurry, Lieutenant – please allow me to show you something. Leave the cabinet open.”

He shortened his steps a little and came in an arc to her instead of the two strides he could have taken – he was intent on not frightening her, and sub-consciously he knew she would sense that and relax just a little.

Captain Lee came to the open drawer of the file cabinet, and stood on the other side of it, closer to Lt. Rowan than she ever imagined him getting. Close enough to punch him out … but Lt. Rowan wasn't thinking about committing suicide that day. She knew enough about him to know that she had no advantage in specialized techniques over him, and he was an inch taller, thirty pounds heavier in pure muscle, and male.

Did Captain Lee even think for a second that I could be a threat to him? Lt. Rowan said as she studied his impassive face. Does he feel safe here, after all the mess he has created for so many – how dare he feel safe here!

Captain Lee had been in close combat many times, and knew the body language of the average combatant – he could see when Lt. Rowan in her hatred thought of assaulting him, and then could see when she thought better of it and stood down. On one hand, one had to admire her courage that she would even size him up. On the other hand, one had to have compassion on the kind of mind so twisted up that she would even consider trying what she did to men who knew nothing about real combat on him. On the other hand – and Captain Lee smiled internally, knowing his mind had more than two hands – one also had to be glad that Lt. Rowan had common sense enough to govern her hatred. She was a very intelligent person, and she had proved it.

“I hate being being surprised and walked up on too,” he said gently, “and with the kind of cases I deal with, thoughts go through my mind too when it happens.”

This shocked Lt. Rowan.

“Really?” she said, and Captain Lee heard the “girl's voice,” the real Karen Rowan whose development had been arrested and damaged by her experiences, and who she tried so hard to hide.

“Despite my ethereal reputation,” he said, “I am still fully mortal, and so am subject to what everyone else is.”

Oh, he had jokes – on himself. Lt. Rowan didn't want to chuckle, but she did.

“You have a lot of the town fooled, sir.”

“Yet the most important thing is to stop fooling one's self.”

He did not dwell on this, but the point was that she heard it – it startled her, but he passed on quickly to leave her to contemplate it later.

“The way the file cabinets are arranged, the natural way to go through the files is to have one's back to the door. I never do that. I look from the side where you are standing, meaning I can see out of my peripheral vision who comes through the door and can scan the room periodically with my full vision. The only thing I can't see is directly behind me, but no one can get behind me without my seeing them get there … and then all I do is change sides of the drawer and look at them from the side I'm standing on.”

Lt. Rowan considered that and a lot of other things for a long moment. Of course Captain Lee was brilliant – had to be, to do away with Orton Thomas and 94 percent of his whole scheme in just five months. But this was so simple and so obvious and yet so subtle … no one would even pay attention to that little change, and yet in any room under any circumstance, applying the thought would mean no one could sneak up on you and they wouldn't even know they couldn't. The whole world did not become a safer place, but one could defend one's self better in it.

This also represented the first time in Karen Rowan's life that a powerful man who had gotten close to her had not either abused her or made himself her protector, but had given her powerful tools to protect herself – had given her means to grow up, not made her a dependent.

This also represented the first time since Orton Thomas's death that she had felt safe and cared for by any man that physically close to her – and of all men in the entire universe, it had to be the man who had killed Orton Thomas that was producing that feeling.

Lt. Rowan was deeply confused by it all, but rallied – “Thank you, Captain Lee – in our line of work, such techniques surely do come in handy.”

“They surely do, Lieutenant.”

Lt. Rowan went to the copy machine with the records she wanted, and Captain Lee waited until she had returned those records to the drawer and then shut it before opening the drawer he wanted and starting his search. It was a strange feeling for Lt. Rowan, as she walked away, knowing that he was watching her every second with his peripheral as she left the room … the whole encounter had been strange and confusing.

Captain Lee, while watching Lt. Rowan gather herself and depart, knew that she was confused. He had purposely set up cognitive dissonance for her, though gently … those who were accustomed to considering evil as good generally were confused when actual good pressed in on them with kindness and grace. Yet the mere fact that she could be confused indicated there was some sensitivity left in her conscience … she still knew the difference.

On a day not that many months before, his forbearance had caused his grandmother, that wicked woman Selene Slocum-Lofton, the same kind of cognitive dissonance.

Captain Lee could only hope that Lt. Rowan could travel the path to that good end … her crimes were such that there could be no happy ending temporally, but like every bully and abuser that ever was, they had to be put down but they still had a soul God could redeem and save in Christ.

Like his most famous relative, Captain Lee could fight you tooth and claw if put to it, but still keep in mind that even an enemy was someone in the world for whom Christ died.

That was the bright line that kept him from being yet another man who could swallow up or simply destroy a Karen Rowan, with all her attempts to project a strength that was not nearly enough, because she was not healed.

Lord, You are the healer, and I know you can do it because You healed and are yet healing me. Karen Rowan is a bad one, but still, Lord, I could have been worse – as You turned my heart, I pray that You turn hers!