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

Still the same Monday afternoon – Lieutenant Karen Rowan went to the records room at 3:15pm, doing the good part of her life's routines.

Despite the fact that Lt. Rowan had been the right hand to Commissioner Orton Thomas in his long campaign of corruption, she had in common with him good policing in a particular unit: Special Victims. He had rescued her as a young teenager from his position as captain in that unit; she had joined that unit when she had completed her years in the Academy and on the beat.

This was also a reason Lt. Rowan stayed with the police force; in addition to a sudden departure being too suspicious to those still intent on cleaning up after Commissioner Thomas's corruption, she enjoyed her legitimate work because it meant a lot to her to help women and children that had been in the position she had been in.

She also felt that she was connected with maintaining the “good sides” of Orton Thomas's legacy that way … he had been a good officer in his years with that unit, and no one could criticize him on that.

Special Victims was tracking a potential serial rapist and needed to compare records, and Lt. Rowan worked at headquarters on all such matters, so she went to the record room at 3:15 to get some things together.

She nearly died at 3:30 on turning around and discovering that Captain H.F. Lee, the force's own “Angel of Death,” had been waiting behind her all that time.

Captain Lee had killed Commissioner Thomas when the commissioner had resisted arrest by shooting at officers come to arrest him. There was no one Lt. Rowan hated and feared more in all the world – she jumped from the shock of knowing he had gotten that close to her and been there who knows how long.

Captain Lee was not that close, actually – at least ten feet away, standing at parade rest, just quietly waiting to get into the file cabinet Lt. Rowan was searching.

“I apologize, Lt. Rowan,” he said in his soft voice. “If I had known my presence would startle you that much, I would have announced myself.”

Oh, he had said a lot there … he knew a lot more about her connection with Commissioner Thomas than he had been letting on, but he had just let her know he knew why she was afraid.

Still, it was just a statement of fact, and perhaps he didn't mean anything by it. Lt. Rowan came to this conclusion because she knew there was nothing of the abuser, of the bully, in Henry Fitzhugh Lee. He did not need to prop himself up by putting others down, by toying with them before he pounced. The subtle difference between the hunter for sport and the hunter for necessity was in him.

Lt. Rowan was different. She had loved it when abusive men gave her opportunity to run them down, and to hurt them like she had been hurt. She was herself a living testimony of how abused people became abusers and kept the cycle going, and was glad to be in a department that let her legally pass the anger forward – and then Commissioner Thomas had put her skills to more refined use and let her run the corruption, train the assassins – she had enjoyed all of that.

And that was the other thing. Captain Lee was rarely angry, but instead grave, humble, and often sad. He did not enjoy doing the types of things to people that Lt. Rowan in her chronic anger and resentment enjoyed – he did them, on a higher and deadlier level than Lt. Rowan had except in her fantasies, but he got no joy from them. It actually bothered him that he had the kind of reputation Lt. Rowan would loved to have: universally feared, never to be messed with.

It upset Captain Lee that he had startled Lt. Rowan. That was how different they were.

To be continued...