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SSN 3 Ep 1 – Consequences
Lucy and Jackson both receive calls from Sargent Grey well after midnight and neither of them can quite digest the little information they’ve been given. There’s no way John Nolan is a dirty cop on anyone’s payroll. It goes against everything the man has ever stood for. It has to be a set-up; it has to be a lie.
They get to the station and Grey fills them in with some more information about what exactly is going on. Jackson is sent with Smitty to the hospital to take Armstrong’s statement and report back to IA while Lucy and Tim are sent to collect Harper once she is named too.
“I don’t like this,” Lucy says as she gets in the shop and buckles up her seatbelt.
“You’re not supposed to like it, but it’s the job,” Tim states.
“I know but John Nolan? A dirty cop? It doesn’t make any sense. And I know you don’t like or trust Harper but I still don’t think she’d even get involved with something that would put her career at risk, not after everything she’s been through,” Lucy argues.
“Well, it doesn’t matter what you think Officer Chen, the truth will come out eventually,” Tim says as he puts the shop in drive and starts heading towards Harpers home address.
Lucy is equally as annoyed about having to search Nolan’s house and that Tim is trying to tell her not to play favourites. She knows as a cop they are supposed to be impartial but she also knows Nolan. So she sets her mind to proving Tim wrong by using her cop eyes and everything else she’s learned in the last year to prove the Nolan is innocent.
In the end she’s a little impressed with her efforts and is pretty sure Tim is too. They find the bag of evidence exactly where Nolan said it would be which gives them brief reprieve. That is until they are given their next assignment.
Back in the shop Lucy does her best to stay calm and collected. She told Tim she could go to the prison and talk to Rosalind so she has to prove that to him too. She can’t and she won’t let her past beat her. She rubs at her side trying to ignore the phantom pain of the tattoo gun that she’s feeling and keeps her eyes forward, focused on the road in front of them.
Tim tries not to focus too much attention on Chen as they drive up to the prison but part of him can’t help but think this is a bad idea. Maybe he won’t let her come inside or at least he can tell her to wait in the holding area before they get to Rosalind. He has to come up with some way to protect her.
Once again Chen proves herself to be incredibly stubborn by insisting on seeing Rosalind face to face.
When Chen said he has a personal connection to Rosalind he couldn’t come up with any kind of response. It was a statement he wasn’t anticipating and now he doesn’t know where to put. It’s not like he and Chen have had many deep conversations about that day. He’s mostly left the topic of conversation up to her and they really haven’t discussed it since she metaphorically let him off the hook and very clearly let him know that he she never blamed him for the events that transpired between her and Caleb.
So reluctantly he lets her come and see Rosalind with him – a decision that leads him to learning something that feels incredibly intimate.
He again not sure how to react to the knowledge that Chen sung to herself in that barrel to stay calm and to not show Caleb and apparently Rosalind the fear they so desperately wanted from her. He almost wishes he never found that out; it’s a visual he doesn’t want to have creep into his own restless nights.
They get back in the shop so they can re-join the efforts back at Mid-Wilshire but Tim knows Chen well enough that he needs to verbally check in with her.
“You solid?” he asks looking at her from his driver seat.
“I’m solid,” she confirms with just enough conviction that he knows she’s telling the truth.
Tim goes to Grey’s office to let him know what Rosalind told them.
“Hey,” Tim says as he enters his boss’s office.
“How’d it go with Rosalind?” Grey asks.
“Well enough. She told us that Armstrong has been planning for this for a long time so he has a go-bag somewhere. I already called Lopez to let her know,” Tim tells him.
“Good, hopefully she’ll find something,” Grey says, “How did Officer Chen do?”
“She did good, but Rosalind did reveal something to Chen that we didn’t know before,” Tim says unsure if sharing the new information will make any kind of difference.
“Okay, and what is that?” Grey asks curious as to what Rosalind could have possibly given up.
“She had access to a live feed of the video Caleb rigged up to watch Chen in the barrel,” he says trying to hide his emotions behind it, “she told Chen that she was watching.”
“Okay,” Grey says wrapping his head around the new information, “that means she has a cellphone somewhere and that she was more in control of Caleb than we may have thought. I’ll pass that information along to the DA and let Chen know she might have to corroborate that,” he says.
“Will do Sir,” Tim says then exits the office to finally get changed out for the day.
Lucy changes out quickly knowing she wants to catch Tim before he leaves the station. He’s always gone before her at the end of the day; advantage of being a man she assumes; but she needs to make something very clear to him: She needs to remind him again, that nothing that happened with Caleb was his fault in any way and that she knew him well enough then and even better now, to know that he was going to find her no matter what. She doesn’t care if it was because he felt responsible for her on the job or was beginning to actually recognize potential in her as a cop; that doesn’t matter, what matters is she knew he’s the kind of person who doesn’t do things half way, he doesn’t give up or let things go easily, she needs to remind him that he’s good.