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"And this is the interview room." Stated Flack as he ended the ten-cent precinct tour. Maya peered into the closed room through the blinds with curiosity as he kept walking down the hallway toward his desk.
"So is that where all the bad guys are grilled?" She asked as she scrambled after him.
"Uh-huh." Flack answered carelessly, distracted by the fact that he had a ton of paperwork waiting for him, barely balanced on the desk right in front of his eyes.
"So, are you the good cop or the bad cop?"
The absurd question drew him out of his funk momentarily. "What do you think?" He asked, flashing his lopsided smile as he opened his desk drawer and threw his keys in.
Maya saw something golden flash inside. "Hey! What's that?" She reached in and grabbed the item before he had a chance to close the drawer. "Wow! Are these brass knuckles?"
Flack held the drawer open expectantly. "Put it back, Maya."
Maya regarded him wondrously. "What are you doing with brass knuckles? I bet THEY'RE not standard police issue." Her ebony eyes grew wide as she wrapped her fingers around the holes almost reverently.
Flack, seeing that she wasn't about to return them, closed the drawer, and raised his eyebrows. "Sometimes I have to confiscate them from dangerous desperados." He joked.
Unimpressed, Maya tried to make a fist with the brass knuckles on. "Ow!" They clearly did not fit. "Do you have them in a smaller size?"
"They don't generally make them for women..."
Maya made a clawing gesture with the knuckles still around her fingers, "Well, I suppose I could just scratch them to death..."
Flack laughed whole-heartedly in spite of himself. “Not their intended use.” She could always find the humour in anything, even brass knuckles. "AND all the more reason you shouldn't play around with them, Maya. They're not toys."
“Can I keep them?” She asked, hopefully, “A girl needs protection nowadays...”
“They’re illegal.” He stated, matter-of-factly.
Disappointed, Maya reluctantly handed the shiny object over to him and tried to look into his desk as he put them away. "You got anything else in there?"
"No." Was the answer as he sat down at his desk with a sigh and gingerly pulled the bottom file out from under the tower of paperwork. It teetered dangerously like a flattened game of Jenga.
Seeing he wasn't about to budge and eluding boredom, she pouted, "I have to go to the bathroom."
Grasping his pen with his left hand, he pointed down the hallway with his right. "It's down there. I just have to file this and then we can get going, OK?"
"K." She answered absent-mindedly as she headed down the corridor. Stopping in front of the interview room, she looked about discreetly before trying the door.
It was unlocked. Like a thief in the night, she tiptoed inside, giving one more quick look in Flack's direction to make sure he wasn't watching.
The door closed behind her with a snap.
Undaunted, she flicked on the light, made her way to the mirror and stood in front of it. Because she was so short, she could only see her head in its' reflection. She blinked, and turned her head left and right, to see if there was some kind of shadow, or slight double image looking back.
Lindsay came down the hallway with Jo, discussing the cases in the file folders they were holding in their hands. She barely heard Jo reading aloud to her. "There were numerous epithelial samples on the victim's sweater..." Lindsay's attention was drawn to the glass in the darkened observation room.
She nudged Jo's arm, "Hey... look over there."
Maya was hopping up and down, trying to see the rest of her body in the mirror facing them. Quietly they entered the observation room, knowing she couldn't see them as they paused their business chatter. "What do you think she's doing?" Jo couldn't help but whisper.
"I'm not sure..." Lindsay whispered back. As if Maya had heard her, she suddenly stopped jumping, and with her hands cupped against the mirror, tried to peer into the observation room. "So were there any hits in CODIS?" She asked Jo, trying to resume their conversation.
"Not yet, but there's not much to go on..." Jo replied, acutely aware that behind her Maya, with her eyes still cupped on the glass, was slowly working her way along the bottom of the mirror like an octopus trying to escape its' aquarium in her peripheral vision.
Lindsay, clearly unable to concentrate because she was giggling too much, stopped her. "Wait a sec..." she went to the door, and looked down the hall.
"Flack!" She called out.
Flack, who just finished his report, had begun to look for Maya, and was more than happy when Lindsay beckoned to him. "Hey, Linds, have you seen..." he stopped at the door, horrified as he spied Maya still trying to peer into the observation room through the two-way mirror. "Oh, no." He remarked to himself.
Maya, having given up trying to look through the glass, backed up a few inches and began to make faces in the mirror, causing Lindsay to doubt that she knew what she knew she knew. "Does... does she know we're in here?" She managed to inquire as her giggles began to bubble into full on laughter.
"Probably not," Don sighed as he watched his friend flicking her tongue at him through the mirror like a lizard, "if she knew, it would be much worse." He turned back to them. "See what I had to grow up with?"
"Oh, you poor dear." Jo acknowledged, mockingly.
They all turned to the window as Maya stopped, and abruptly straightened up. Clearly trying to be nonchalant, she quickly scuttled over to the door, and tried the handle. Much to her surprise, it was locked. She tried again, this time more vehemently. No luck. Looking a little perturbed, she knocked on the window, and began to dance about on the spot.
"Uh, oh." Flack said.
"Is she doing what I think she's doing?" Jo asked, barely able to contain herself.
"Yup." Flack headed back out, "I'd better open the door before she pees herself."
"I'M going to pee myself," Lindsay burst into laughter alongside Jo.
They watched with amusement as Flack opened the door for a very relieved Maya and then pointed toward the right, when she anxiously scurried in the wrong direction to the bathroom.