Chapter Text
Before the elevator doors opened onto the Ninety-Ninth Precinct, Enid had already reminded Wednesday three times that today was only about checking in.
The first time had been as they left the apartment. The second had been in the cab, after Wednesday watched a man ride the wrong way through an intersection, tracked him for a full ten seconds, and concluded that the bicycle's front wheel was probably stolen. The third was now, in the elevator, after Wednesday had finished reading the Ninety-Ninth's personnel roster and several publicly available case summaries and asked whether her NYPD credentials would give her access to old cases from other precincts the moment the transfer went through.
"Today is just orientation," Enid said again.
Wednesday did not look up. Her thumb moved once across her phone screen. "Orientation is an administrative procedure. It does not require goal status."
"Fine. Then today's goal is keeping Captain Holt from regretting taking you on before noon."
That finally got Wednesday to look away from her phone. She was dressed in enough black to attend a funeral without changing first, her two dark braids neat over her shoulders, and her expression gave no indication whether she considered the transfer a setback, an insult, or merely a change in geography. "If his judgment is fragile enough to collapse within four hours, identifying the defect early benefits both parties."
Enid looked at her for a few seconds and adjusted the strap of her bag instead of answering. That sentence alone made a strong case for why Wednesday should not have transferred by herself, but they had already had that argument more than once. If Enid started it again, Wednesday would sort every point by argumentative merit and begin with the one most deserving of rebuttal. Half an hour later, they would somehow have moved from "You cannot keep deciding procedure is too slow and going around it" to "Whether institutions possess moral legitimacy independent of individual judgment," and Enid simply did not have the stamina for that before coffee.
The transfer notice had been written with suspicious elegance, the kind that suggested somebody had spent an entire afternoon avoiding the word difficult. "In response to staffing needs and the optimal deployment of specialized investigative capabilities," it had said. Enid had nearly laughed the first time she read it. Translated into ordinary human language: Wednesday Addams cleared too many cases to fire, but her old precinct was done wondering which window she might use to enter a suspect's residence next.
The problem had never been that Wednesday did not know the rules. Quite the opposite. She usually knew exactly what they said, where the exceptions were, which procedures protected evidence and civil rights, and which ones existed because something had happened fifteen years ago and nobody had bothered to revisit the policy since. What exhausted her supervisors was Wednesday's refusal to accept "because that's the rule" as the end of an argument. If she decided a procedure was obstructing the truth without meaningfully protecting anyone, she began looking for a lawful way around it. When she failed to find one, she was occasionally willing to consider alternatives of a less lawful character.
The unlocked window three months ago had been the final straw.
Enid could still remember standing outside the house while they waited for a warrant, Wednesday watching a brief flicker of fire behind an upstairs curtain. She had not raised her voice or shown any visible urgency. She had only said, "He's burning something."
Then she had gone up.
It turned out the suspect had, in fact, been destroying account books, and Wednesday had, in fact, preserved crucial evidence before the rest of the team got inside. That made everything worse. Every time one of her unorthodox decisions proved correct, her faith in procedure dropped another fraction, while her supervisors acquired another report explaining why a correct outcome did not retroactively make the method acceptable.
Enid had volunteered to transfer with her because she knew exactly where that cycle led.
Wednesday's position was that she did not need a babysitter. Enid's was that she had no intention of becoming one. She simply wanted someone beside Wednesday the next time a window started looking faster than a warrant, preferably someone willing to say, "Wait. We have another option."
Whether Wednesday would actually wait was a separate matter.
"You're nervous," Wednesday said.
"I'm not."
Wednesday's eyes dropped to the strap on Enid's shoulder.
Enid followed her gaze and discovered that she had apparently adjusted the same perfectly functional strap again without noticing. "Okay. A little. New precinct, new coworkers, new captain, and I have to pray you make it through your first week without generating paperwork."
"You placed several independent events in the same sentence and created an unnecessary implication of causality."
"Wednesday."
"I was correcting the statement."
The elevator stopped at exactly the right moment. As the doors opened, Enid exhaled and decided that she would not argue with her for at least the first five minutes.
The decision lasted about thirty seconds.
The Ninety-Ninth was louder than Enid had expected, though not in a way that felt out of control. It was the particular background noise of people who had worked together long enough to stop moderating themselves for one another: somebody calling across two rows of desks, somebody arguing about lunch, somebody walking and talking on the phone at the same time, and somebody else standing at a whiteboard drawing what might have been an airplane if one were feeling charitable. Enid started reading the room on instinct. The tall, broad-shouldered sergeant near the center of the bullpen was probably the person currently keeping everything moving; almost nobody seemed alarmed when he raised his voice, which suggested that whatever this place looked like from the outside, the people in it knew one another very well.
Wednesday stood beside her and took in the room without saying a word.
Enid knew what she was looking at without asking: entrances, sight lines, desk placement, who glanced at whom, who was obviously working, and who had opened a file solely to create the visual impression of work. Wednesday did not need time to "settle in" to a new environment. She needed enough information to understand its structure; once she did, she could start deciding which parts deserved respect and which could be safely ignored.
Enid was about to tell her, quietly, not to classify every new coworker within the first minute when someone called out from ahead of them.
"Wait."
The man who stood up from behind a desk looked younger than Enid suspected he actually was. His tie was acceptable in the technical sense and clearly not something he had devoted thought to, and he still had a pen in one hand as though he had been pretending to do paperwork just before they arrived. He looked at Wednesday, then Enid, then back at Wednesday, his curiosity not remotely concealed.
"You're Addams?"
Wednesday said nothing. She only looked at him.
He apparently took that as confirmation. "Jake Peralta. Heard we were getting two new detectives today."
"Enid Sinclair." Enid held out a hand, mostly to break what had every chance of becoming an indefinitely sustained stare.
Jake shook it once and turned right back to Wednesday. "Did you really clear forty-seven cases last year?"
Enid blinked.
Wednesday's expression shifted by a fraction. She did not look offended; she looked as though she were revising her estimate of how this stranger had obtained the information. "You read my record."
"Part of it."
"Without authorization?"
"That really depends on how we're defining authorization."
"Peralta," someone called from across the room.
"I did not hack anything!" Jake called back. "Terry happened to have a transfer summary on his desk, and I happen to have eyes."
The large sergeant closed his eyes for a moment, apparently too tired to address the several separate problems contained in that defense. Enid had just concluded that this must be Terry when Jake's attention snapped back to Wednesday.
"Forty-seven cases, and three cold cases?" he said. "You know that's super annoying, right?"
"Data has no social intent," Wednesday said calmly.
Jake stared at her for half a beat, then grinned.
Enid had expected Wednesday's perfectly serious, almost aggressively literal answer to throw him off. Instead, Jake looked more interested than before, as if the new detective had just become more compelling than the obnoxiously impressive statistics in her personnel summary.
"Okay," he said. "You're fun."
Wednesday frowned slightly. "I am not attempting to entertain you."
"Even better."
Enid looked toward the nearest empty desk and briefly calculated whether it was too late to pretend she did not know Wednesday and salvage a normal first-day experience.
"I like her," Jake told Enid.
"You've known her for less than a minute."
"Some friendships are instant."
Wednesday finally turned fully toward him. "We are not going to be friends."
Jake brightened as if she had issued a challenge instead of a refusal.
Enid knew that look. Jake had just decided Wednesday was interesting, and he clearly intended to keep poking until something happened.
"Oh, wow," Jake said. "We're already in the denial phase."
"Your understanding of relational progression is concerning."
"She's analyzing our relationship now."
"There is no 'our.'"
"And she's correcting the terminology."
Jake turned toward a brown-haired detective who had somehow wandered close enough to overhear. "Amy, I made a new friend."
The woman looked at him once. "She explicitly said you didn't."
"You're just jealous."
"I really am not."
Enid had not yet decided whether to side with Amy when a low, even voice carried from the glass-walled office. It never rose, and still the room quieted by degrees.
"Detective Addams. Detective Sinclair."
Enid turned.
Raymond Holt stood in the doorway of his office.
She had read the basics before coming in: longtime captain of the Ninety-Ninth, an immaculate record, not a man whose resume suggested a high tolerance for chaos. In person, though, there was a kind of pressure that did not translate into photographs. He was not threatening, and he was not performing authority. He was simply very still, every posture, word, and pause stripped of anything unnecessary.
Wednesday looked at him too, and Enid felt her attention narrow beside her. Not visibly—Wednesday had not been making noise in the first place—but in the way she went still when something became worth studying.
Holt's eyes moved over both of them and settled on Wednesday. "My office."
Jake leaned toward Enid and stage-whispered, "Principal's office on day one. Strong start."
Enid had not even had time to answer before Wednesday looked at him.
Jake took half a step back, delighted. "Great face."
"I am not making a face."
"Huge face."
Holt remained in the doorway without repeating himself. For some reason, that was more effective than being told twice.
As Enid followed Wednesday into Holt's office, an absurd thought occurred to her: she had requested this transfer partly to make sure Wednesday did not arrive somewhere new and become the hardest person in the room to manage. The longer Enid looked at the bullpen behind them, the less certain she was that Wednesday would even qualify.
.·.··.·.··.··.·.·.·.
The orderliness of Holt's office was reassuring; at least somebody here believed in straight lines.
Enid sat beside Wednesday while Holt opened a folder on his desk. One glance at its thickness told her it was not the complete file. If Wednesday's full personnel record included every formal reprimand, procedural warning, and supervisor's note, it would not have looked nearly so elegant in one hand.
"I've reviewed both of your records," Holt said.
Wednesday asked, "Case record or disciplinary record?"
Holt looked up. "Yes."
Enid nearly lost control of her mouth. Worse, Wednesday paused too.
Most people would not have noticed. Enid did. Wednesday's sense of humor had always run toward excessive precision, category mistakes, and answers to ordinary questions that sounded as though they had been vetted by legal counsel. She rarely laughed and was even less likely to admit when something amused her, but she had definitely looked at Holt again.
They had been in the building for less than ten minutes, and Wednesday already respected her new captain. Enid had learned that Wednesday's respect usually meant there would be arguments later.
Holt dealt with Enid first. He summarized her transfer record, noted strong evaluations in witness interviews, interdepartmental coordination, and scene communication, then asked why she had volunteered to move. Enid kept her answer simple: she and Wednesday had worked together for years, their investigative methods complemented each other, and she wanted to keep the partnership intact. Holt nodded once. He did not pry into the personal relationship between them, and he did not frame Enid's choice as an offer to clean up after Wednesday. Enid liked him better for both.
Then he turned to Wednesday.
"Your ability is not in question," Holt said. "If it were, you would not be sitting here."
"Reasonable."
"Your previous command believes your attitude toward procedure has become a liability."
Wednesday did not respond the way she had during the last few meetings with her former supervisors, when merely hearing the familiar premise had been enough to make her withdraw into colder and colder precision. She looked at Holt with the same unreadable calm she had worn since they entered the building. "They assign sufficient value to procedure as an end in itself. I disagree with part of that premise."
Enid was already prepared to kick her under the desk if necessary.
Holt did not say, "Rules are rules."
Instead, he set both hands on the desk. "You believe procedure derives its value from outcome."
"From what it protects," Wednesday corrected. "If a procedure protects evidence integrity, civil rights, investigative legitimacy, or the viability of prosecution, I have no reason to violate it. If its only function is to give someone actively destroying evidence another forty minutes, waiting has no moral value of its own."
Enid sighed inwardly. Of course the window incident had made it into the room.
She expected Holt to answer as a supervisor. Instead, he considered Wednesday for a moment and said, "You are conflating institutional failure with an individual detective's right to suspend institutional safeguards."
Wednesday's attention sharpened.
Enid let her foot settle back under her chair; Wednesday was listening now, not merely waiting for an opening to answer.
"Procedure can be slow," Holt continued. "It can also be badly designed. Its purpose is not to establish that every detective is untrustworthy. Its purpose is to account for the fact that even an excellent detective can be wrong. If every officer may decide a rule no longer applies whenever they are sufficiently convinced of their own judgment, then the protections provided by that rule become a matter of luck."
Wednesday did not answer at once. She leaned back slightly, eyes still on Holt. The movement was small enough to mean nothing to almost anyone else, but Enid knew it well. Wednesday had not conceded anything; she had simply decided Holt was worth arguing with, which was usually how she expressed respect.
"And if the procedure itself is causing irreversible loss of evidence?" Wednesday asked.
"Then seek emergency authorization, establish an exception, or make the decision you believe is necessary and accept full review afterward," Holt said. "I am not asking you to pretend every rule is correct. I am asking you to acknowledge that you are not the only person qualified to decide when it is not."
Wednesday was quiet for a moment. "Reasonable."
Enid turned to look at her.
Wednesday ignored her.
Holt, to his credit, did not react to the concession as though he had won anything. He simply closed the folder. "In this precinct, you may disagree with me. You may even prove me wrong. But if you knowingly violate procedure, do not later pretend it was a misunderstanding."
Wednesday's brow moved by the smallest degree. "I have never done that."
Holt paused. "That is unexpectedly helpful."
Enid looked down and pretended to fix the cuff of her jacket.
Enid had the uneasy sense that Holt and Wednesday were going to get along extremely well, which would probably be terrible for everyone else.
As they stood to leave, Holt stopped Wednesday.
"One more thing."
"What?"
"Peralta will attempt to provoke you."
Wednesday glanced back. "I noticed."
"Do not kill him."
Enid's head snapped up.
Wednesday considered the instruction for one second. "That would generate an excessive amount of paperwork."
Holt nodded. "Good. We understand each other."
Enid managed to wait until the office door closed behind them before lowering her voice. "You like him."
Wednesday looked at her. "That verb is imprecise."
"So yes."
"No."
"You went two whole minutes without interrupting him."
"He presented an internally consistent argument."
Enid smiled. "I knew it."
Wednesday stopped and turned toward her. "You should be more concerned that he publicly implied this precinct has previously required explicit instructions not to kill Peralta."
Enid's smile faded.
She looked across the bullpen. Jake was perched on the corner of a woman's desk, talking about something while the woman continued sorting paperwork and repeatedly shoved him sideways without success. On the other side of the room, a bespectacled man was holding a lunch container and explaining some kind of meat to a visibly unwilling audience with tremendous enthusiasm. Terry passed without stopping and called, "Charles, no," in a tone suggesting precedent.
Enid watched for another second. "... Fair point."
.·.··.·.··.··.·.·.·.
Amy Santiago was, so far, the most reassuring person Enid had met at the Ninety-Ninth.
By the time she properly introduced herself, she had already prepared copies of the current reporting formats, inter-precinct contact sheets, and the latest procedure manual for both new detectives. Everything was tabbed and ordered, and there was even a page she had made herself titled COMMON FIRST-WEEK MISTAKES. After Jake, Enid warmed to her almost at once.
Amy appeared equally pleased by Wednesday.
"I've read some of your case reports," she said as she walked them toward their new desks. "Especially the Westchester cold case. You separated every statement by timeline, source, and reliability, and you cross-indexed the contradictions."
Wednesday accepted the documents Amy handed her. "It reduces redundant reading."
Amy's eyes lit up.
Enid's relief lasted roughly five more seconds.
"Exactly," Amy said. "One of my biggest problems with case summaries is when people mix raw information and analysis. And the indexing system in your appendix, I was actually thinking—"
"Eighth-edition procedure manual?" Wednesday asked, glancing at the binder in her hand.
Amy stopped. "You've read it?"
"Last night."
"The whole thing?"
"And the seventh edition. The eighth corrected three ambiguities in evidence-transfer procedure, but the revised appendix order reduced retrieval efficiency."
Amy stopped walking entirely.
Enid knew that expression. It was the look people got when they found someone willing to follow a topic all the way down instead of politely waiting for an opening to change the subject—someone who cared about the same tiny details and got more interested, not less, the deeper the conversation went.
"I thought the exact same thing," Amy said.
Across the bullpen, Jake looked up.
"Oh no."
Amy turned. "What?"
Jake did not answer. He just rose slowly from his chair and stared at the three of them as if observing the early stages of a hazardous natural event.
Enid almost felt bad for Amy, because she knew exactly what Wednesday was going to say next.
Amy hugged the documents to her chest and smiled at Wednesday. "This is great. If you know procedure this well, we're going to work together beautifully."
Wednesday looked at her. "Not necessarily."
Amy's smile stopped.
"What does that mean?"
"Understanding a rule and agreeing with it are separate matters."
Enid closed her eyes.
From nearby came Jake's deeply satisfied, "There it is."
"Wait." Amy's brow furrowed. "Are you saying you know procedure and sometimes choose not to follow it?"
"If the procedure serves a rational purpose, I follow it."
"And if you think it doesn't?"
"I first determine whether a more efficient lawful alternative exists."
Amy relaxed by a fraction.
Wednesday continued, "If there isn't, I assess the consequences."
The fraction vanished. "The consequences of what?"
"Violating it."
Enid put a hand on Amy's arm.
Amy turned slowly toward her.
Enid gave her the most sincere look of sympathy she could manage. "I know."
"How are you this calm about it?"
"I got over being shocked a long time ago."
Jake had somehow migrated over without Enid noticing. He lowered his voice. "Is she always like this?"
Enid looked at him. "Do you mean violating procedure, or discussing violations like a cost-benefit analysis?"
"The second one."
"Always."
That grin appeared on Jake's face again.
Enid recognized it at once. Jake had already figured out that if he poked Wednesday in exactly the right place, she would look up, and whatever came out of her mouth next was usually worth the trouble. In the hands of somebody competitive enough to treat provoking reactions as a hobby, that was dangerous knowledge.
Enid could already see how this would go: pointless challenges, increasingly elaborate contests, a friendship score that existed only in Jake's head, and Wednesday telling him to stop with greater and greater precision while he treated every objection as encouragement.
Enid glanced at Wednesday.
Wednesday hated people like that.
They were also notoriously difficult to get rid of.
.·.··.·.··.··.·.·.·.
Before lunch, Terry assigned Jake and Charles Boyle a newly reported electronics-store burglary, then dropped a second file on Wednesday and Enid's desks. The second burglary had happened two days later, several blocks away, with a similar entry point and a similar list of stolen merchandise.
Enid did not think much of the assignment at first. She started reading. Wednesday was already on the scene photographs. Across the bullpen, Jake made a soft, deliberate "Hmm."
Neither of them looked up.
A few seconds later, it came again.
"Hmmm."
Enid turned another page.
The third time, she finally looked over.
Jake was leaning back in his chair with his own case file in hand, staring at Wednesday with absolutely no attempt at subtlety.
"Do you need something?" Enid asked.
"Nope."
"Great."
"Just noticing there are two similar cases."
"I can see that."
"Two detective teams."
Enid knew exactly where this was going.
Jake lifted his eyebrows. "I have one very reasonable, extremely mature question."
Wednesday did not look up from the photographs. "Then someone else should ask it."
Jake grinned. "Who solves theirs first?"
Enid set the file down. Of course.
"No contest," she said.
Jake pointed at Wednesday. "Wasn't asking you."
"We're partners."
"So you're worried she'll lose?"
Wednesday finally looked up.
Jake brightened so visibly Enid could almost hear it. He had finally gotten her attention.
"A provocation works only if the target values the provocateur's opinion," Wednesday said.
Jake nodded as if she had handed him excellent lab results. "Good to know."
"That wasn't the reaction you were going for," Enid said.
"No, this is better."
Terry, standing near the whiteboard, gave him a look. "You're just working cases."
Jake held up the file. "This is working cases. With points."
"There are no points."
"Not yet."
Enid glanced automatically toward Holt's office, hoping the captain would step in and kill an idea that could only make everybody's work harder. Instead, Holt emerged at exactly the wrong moment and stopped near them.
Jake pounced. "Captain, I propose a friendly solve-off."
"No," Amy said from nearby.
Jake turned to her. "You're just jealous I'm racing Addams now."
Amy frowned. "I am not jealous."
"You are. That's your jealous face."
"I don't have a jealous face."
"Of course you do. I've seen it for years."
"I just know that the second you start keeping score, you turn a normal work assignment into something unbelievably childish."
Jake paused, apparently hearing not a criticism but an important logistical reminder. "Right. We don't have a wager yet."
Amy closed her eyes. "That is the exact opposite of what I meant."
Wednesday finally looked up from the file. "A wager is unnecessary."
"Of course it's necessary. Without a prize, this is just two teams of detectives doing their jobs. That's depressing."
Enid gave him a look. "You have a very strange relationship with the concept of work."
Jake was already committed. "Okay, if I win, Addams has to say, at morning briefing, in front of everyone: 'Jake Peralta is a better detective than I am.' Full sentence. No qualifiers, no footnotes, and no following it up with a speech about sample size."
Wednesday regarded him with something very close to pity. "Your ego requires an unusually elaborate external life-support system."
"Trash-talk all you want. When you lose, you still have to say it."
"I have not agreed to participate."
Jake nodded. "Okay. Fair."
Enid looked at him.
That had been far too easy.
Jake tucked the file under one arm and added, much too casually, "I mean, it's your first day. If you don't want to risk losing to me right away, I totally get it."
Wednesday rolled her eyes. Not a microscopic Wednesday eye movement that only Enid would notice. A full, unmistakable eye roll.
Enid also noticed that the page Wednesday had been about to turn stopped beneath her fingertips for two complete seconds.
"That is an exceptionally crude attempt at provocation," Wednesday said.
"So it didn't work?"
Wednesday looked at him.
Jake arranged his face into innocence.
Enid began counting silently.
Three.
Two.
"What do I get if I win?" Wednesday asked.
Amy groaned.
Jake lit up. "Yes!"
"I am asking for the terms."
"Sure. That's what everybody says right before they negotiate the bet upward."
Wednesday ignored him. "What do you own that you genuinely value and would experience prolonged distress upon losing?"
Jake's grin faltered. "That question just got deeply sinister."
"The stakes should carry comparable value for both parties."
Enid leaned in. "She means an object. Probably."
Wednesday did not confirm this.
Jake considered the matter with growing solemnity, then pointed toward his desk. "My limited-edition Die Hard Nakatomi Plaza model."
Amy's head snapped around. "Jake, no. You looked for that for three years."
"I know."
"The last time you moved, you held it in the passenger seat yourself!"
"The seat belt doesn't fit it right. Weird proportions."
Wednesday followed his gesture to the miniature Nakatomi Plaza on his desk and studied it for a moment. "I have no interest in it."
Jake visibly relaxed.
Wednesday added, "You clearly do."
His face froze.
Enid had to look away.
"Then it is acceptable," Wednesday said.
Jake pointed at her slowly. "That was evil."
"You proposed the wager."
"I respect you now."
"That emotion is unnecessary."
"Too late."
Holt let his gaze move between them. "Provided this competition does not interfere with evidence handling, case assignments, or any normal procedure, I have no objection."
Amy turned on him. "Captain!"
Holt looked at her. "Santiago, you have previously participated in comparable competitions with Peralta."
Amy opened her mouth.
Jake pointed at her. "Thank you."
"That was completely different."
"Because you were the one competing with me."
"That is not why!"
Jake looked at Wednesday with a grin so smug that Enid briefly understood the urge to throw things. "She's so jealous."
Wednesday lowered her eyes to the case file again. "At least she's quieter than you."
Jake gasped.
Wednesday returned to the scene photographs with the same cool expression she wore for nearly everything, as if the pointless wager had already left her mind. Only Enid noticed that she began turning the pages a little faster than before.
She did not mention it.
Enid looked at Holt instead.
Holt had watched all of it: Amy objecting on principle, Terry sighing like a man with years of supporting evidence, Jake barely containing himself. And he had still approved the race.
Enid had assumed Holt's job here would involve dragging everyone back into line. Apparently he was more selective than that. He seemed to know exactly how far each person was likely to veer, and he chose when to pull them back and when to let them run until the idea exhausted itself.
She turned to Wednesday. "You don't have to humor him."
"I'm not."
"Good."
Wednesday placed the final photograph back in the file. "His premise is incorrect, however."
Enid knew that tone. "Which one?"
"That there are two separate races."
She set the photographs from the first and second burglaries side by side, one finger resting near the damage to each rear-door lock. Enid leaned closer. It took her a moment to see it: the force marks ran in nearly opposite directions. One lock had plainly been broken from outside. The other looked as though someone had staged the damage from within.
"You think they're the same case?"
"At minimum, we are not looking at two unrelated opportunistic burglars."
Jake had already reached the elevator. He turned and called, "Addams! Clock starts now!"
Wednesday looked over.
Jake stood there holding the door, waiting for a reaction.
"He's loud," Wednesday said.
Enid grabbed her coat. "You've known him three hours and you've already decided he's loud."
"That does not constitute a relationship."
"I didn't say it did."
Wednesday gave her a cold look.
Enid smiled and followed her toward the elevator.
Just as the doors began to close, Jake stuck his head back out.
"Come on, best friend!"
Wednesday stopped for a fraction of a second.
Enid saw it and put a hand between her shoulder blades.
"Move."
Wednesday let Enid push her into the elevator and took up position beside Jake with the expression of someone enduring a minor administrative inconvenience.
Jake looked delighted enough to have just closed a major case.
Enid stepped in last. As the doors slid shut, she remembered the goal she had set in the elevator that morning: keep Wednesday from becoming too much for her new precinct on day one.
Now Wednesday stood on her left. On her right was a detective who had known her for less than three hours, decided all by himself that they were friends, and already turned a case assignment into a competition with a collectible office building at stake. Outside the elevator was Amy, whose devotion to procedure approached religious intensity, and a captain who had just authorized the entire thing.
Enid leaned back against the wall and seriously reconsidered the scope of her new job.
Maybe keeping Wednesday in check was only going to be part of the job.
Jake glanced at her. "Was your old precinct this fun?"
Enid looked at him. "No."
"Awesome."
The elevator began to descend.
Wednesday reopened the case file and made no effort to join the conversation. Enid caught the almost imperceptible easing at one corner of her mouth, the kind of change no one would notice without years of practice, and wisely kept it to herself. She had come to the Ninety-Ninth prepared to keep Wednesday from becoming too much for the precinct. By the time the elevator passed the next floor, Enid was beginning to suspect the more immediate problem was that Wednesday might actually like it here.