usattorney | devil you know, part 11 (Reply)

devil you know, part 11;
They're running out of time. Both Luke and Michael know that as they look at each other across the desks in the FBI financial crimes bullpen. Tomorrow morning Michael will go head to head with Melissa Wallace and he only gets one shot to prove she had her ex-husband killed. That's why they'll stay here all night reviewing the evidence if they have to.

Luke doesn't even know what to say to Michael, but he doesn't have to. "Usually this is the kind of obsessive behavior I see from you and Janet," Anthony Brennan interrupts as he appears seemingly out of nowhere. Michael snorts. "I didn't plan on this and he's not as good-looking," he retorts and Luke can only chuckle at what's meant to be an insult but is also actually true. "How much do you have?" Brennan asks. "We're sure Melissa was plotting Mark's murder and got Thomas Marshall involved in it," Michael replies. "We can put her at the scene but not that she did anything. We need his records to put him there—but Luke got a DNA sample we can test against the body."

This gets Brennan to turn and give Luke a skeptical glance and the U.S. Attorney shrugs. "He needs to quit smoking," he says by way of explanation before something else occurs to Michael and he slams his hand down on the desk. "We need a second test," he declares. "We have her DNA from when she was booked in nine years ago. We can get results on that right now."

"Call the crime lab." Luke's eyes widen at the clue he hadn't even thought about. Brennan's already picking up the cigarette butt—long since properly transferred to an evidence bag—off the desk and reaching for his keys. "I'll take it down there," he says. "I can get them to rush the tests." No one has any idea how and they know better than to ask. Brennan has a way of getting what he wants. "Just don't do anything else potentially illegal while I'm gone," he adds as he leaves, because he always has to have the last word.

Michael exhales as soon as his boss has left the bullpen. It's all starting to come together in his mind and he feels that adrenaline rush along with another wave of frustration at how the victims in his case became no better than the person who victimized them. Luke can see that look on his face and gestures toward him. "Say it," he says, knowing it needs to come out now while they can still do something about it.

"Mark goes to Melissa trying to restart his career. She finds out he's double-crossing her again and kills his loan chances. He threatens her with blackmail so she decides to put him down. When Marshall calls, that's the perfect opportunity for her to enlist a patsy. She plays on his anger to get him to commit the murder - and thinks she can sell him out to us. After all, even if he tries to implicate her, there's nothing to suggest her involvement except for the phone call. But her DNA under his fingernails is a massive mistake."

"Smart criminals just make smarter mistakes." Luke replies. "He thought he had it all figured out and you got him, too."

"I know." Michael nods, taking a deep breath. "It also means she's not any better than he is."

Luke knows better than to answer that. The retort on his tongue is that Melissa Wallace was married to Mark for over a decade, so Michael was naive to think she didn't know what she was getting into. She simply wasn't as flawed as her ex. But he understands why Michael would feel that way or want to feel that way—he wants to believe there's some good in people. Luke's moral standards are much less forgiving. He drops his eyes to the paperwork in front of him and starts thinking about what they'll need for trial. "What about the address?" he asks again.

"We never cross-checked it with Marshall." Michael relaxes and settles back into his chair. He turns to the nearest computer and starts searching their databases. After a few minutes of coming up empty, he mentally reviews their conversation with the suspect and something else comes to mind. A glance at the middle school's website and he finds what they've been debating for days. "The guy who owns that home is listed as an assistant football coach at Moriarty Middle School. Marshall chose the location for the murder."

"Which means he can't argue that he wasn't a co-conspirator." Luke nods. "We have to establish the chain of communication. Because you noticed she never texted any of this—so nothing we could recover. Establish a timeline and prove there's no way that there wasn't something going on."

Right after the words leave his mouth, he's getting up to do exactly that. There's a reason there's a white board in the bullpen. Now his expertise is coming in handy; this is going to be a circumstantial evidence case, probably always was if he was honest with himself. He needs to build something logically strong enough so that any DNA is just the cherry on top and that a jury overlooks the ongoing question of the murder weapon. He's writing for several long minutes, knowing Michael's watching him but locked into his own mind. He doesn't stop until he has the entire board full with everything they know or think happened in the last month.

"Fuck," Michael says when Luke steps back. Because the totality of evidence amounts to exactly what he's been saying but hoping wasn't true all along. Nothing ever changed. Mark Wallace never learned his lesson and his wife turned out to be just as ruthless. He feels like the conviction he earned nine years ago didn't mean anything at all.

Luke glances at him because he can guess that feeling. He doesn't want Michael to feel that way. Especially now that he has a better idea of what Michael and Janet went through back then, he knows how much they put into that win. But saying that out loud requires emotions that Luke isn't great at tapping into, and he doesn't want them to come out wrong. "You should get out of here," he demurs. "You can't be working all night when you have to interrogate her in the morning. You've got to be at your best."

Michael knows he has a point, but: "Someone has to be here to wait for the DNA results and pull all this together."

"I'll do it," Luke says with a confidence he's surprised he feels.

The look they exchange is loaded with questions in both directions. Luke has been leaning on Michael to tell him what to do and not to do as an investigator and now he has to trust he can get it right without that security blanket. Michael has to trust Luke with the preparation of a case that he can use to make an arrest. By the time he comes to work in the morning, he'll have only a few hours to go over the details before he meets with Melissa and her lawyer. Their only way through is to completely trust each other.

"Go on, get out of here," Luke repeats. "I'll call you if anything major comes up. And you call me if you need me. But your responsibility is tomorrow. This is on me tonight."

Michael nods and gathers his belongings, silently tossing Luke his keys to the office before he walks out. Luke settles back into his chair to stare at the white board and then turns his attention to the paperwork splayed in front of him to start a new page of notes. That's where Brennan finds him two hours later and leaves him an hour after that. Luke is going to stay in that office as long as it takes to make right what should have never been put wrong in the first place.