A Change of Heart and Mind

Any current or former cop will immediately get that I'm full of shit. The profession seemed to lend itself to Holly's superpower, so I poked around the internet until I found this that sounded perfect for her and the story:

The Technical Investigation Division (TID) is responsible for the collection, comparison and interpretation of specific types of evidence found at crime scenes or collected from suspects and victims. It is comprised of the Polygraph, Latent Print, Photography, and Electronics units.

I wrote this quite a while ago, there are enough clues for some to realize just how long ago it was.

Barely any sex in it, and the little that exists at the end is not at all graphically depicted.

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I knew it was a mistake letting my hair down and wearing a jacket that hid my holster from view the second I walked into the bar about an hour ago, but it was Patsy's birthday and I promised to have drinks with her and Julie when the girls got off work. Sitting at the bar sharing laughs over old times, we had already been interrupted four times by creeps trying to buy me or my friends a drink. The three of us sat more or less in the corner of the L-shaped bar but I was the only one of us that had an open seat next to me and it made me think I should have left my LAPD badge on it to discourage anyone from trying to sit there. At least I brushed the creeps off without making my usual scene, honoring the birthday request from Patsy that I not embarrass her on her special night.

Julie was going over the finer points of a story about the time Patsy's boobs popped out of her dress on the dance floor at prom, turning Patsy all shades of red from the funny memory, when a man half stood and half sat at the stool next to me. "Um, excuse me," he said, almost a whisper really.

I sighed loudly, and turned to him. He was a pretty tall guy, handsome face, with disheveled wavy brown hair and dressed in "office casual", but he had a look of almost sheer terror on his face. Professionally, I'm used to that look, but not from a stranger in a bar. His apprehensive expression gave me enough pause that I was able to remember my promise to Patsy in order to keep calm enough to give him a gentle brush off.

"Look," I said, "the seat is still warm from the last guy that tried to pick me up, and... "

"Ooooh, no. I'm not trying to pick you up," he cut me off nervously, "Um, well actually I am trying to look like I'm picking you up, but I'm definitely NOT trying to pick you up." He looked around while he said that, like he was sizing up the room and looking for the nearest exit.

"What kind of pickup line is that?"

He smiled a little at that, then went back to panic mode. "Please. I just need a favor. If you just let me sit here for a few minutes, then I'll go back to my table and you'll never see me again. I'll buy you and your friends all a drink for your trouble."

"Just for sitting there? Now why would you do that?"

"I have a few beers here every Thursday night with a couple of my friends to shoot the shit and watch some sports. Lately they've been trying to get me to buy some girl a drink and talk to them, which I always decline to do, but tonight is worse than usual. They've been impossible to deal with tonight, I think because of something that happened on Sunday. Anyhow, if I just sit here for a couple of minutes with you, I'll go back and tell them that you have a boyfriend and that I tried. Then I think they'll leave me alone for tonight. That's my plan anyhow." I looked at his face and from years of experience plus my special gift, I knew he was telling the truth.

"But I don't have a boyfriend." I don't know why I was prolonging this, maybe I thought it would be fun to fuck with this guy's head a little. "You wouldn't lie to your friends would you?"

His jaw dropped a little and he just looked at me, not knowing what to say at first. Finally he said, "Maybe just a little lie. If it would get them off my back."

"Why are they pressuring you to buy a girl a drink?"

"They're just worried about me. Actually, it's their wives that are worried about me."

"Now I'm worried about you too. Why are we all worried?"

I could tell that this wasn't going the way he had hoped. He said, "Oh, they're happily married and think I should be too."

"And you aren't married?" I made my point by glancing at the ring on his finger and then looked back at his face with exaggerated raised eyebrows in disapproval.

He lifted his hand, looking at it and said, "Um, no, it' just, um actually... yes, I am married. Very married." He suddenly sounded confident. He sat up straight and smiled. It was a nice smile.

Only now he really was lying to me. I didn't have to be a detective, though that is what I am, to understand the truth behind the way he said that. Sympathetically, I asked, "How long since she passed away?"

Up until then he had mostly been making solid eye contact, but now he looked down at the bar. "Four years ago. Is it that obvious?"

"To me it is."

The bartender appeared in front of us and belted out, "Hullo, Charlie. How the 'ell are ye?"

This guy on the barstool 'not hitting on me Charlie', replied back, "Hullo, Paul. Doing fine, thank you. How 'bout you?"

"Oh, I'm just fine. Hey, is this lady here bothering you?" Charlie shook his head at that and laughed, the bartender stole a wink at me.

"No, Paul. In fact I was just about to buy a round for her and her friends."

"Excuse me, Charlie," I interrupted, "You seem to be having a rougher day than I am. Paul, get him what he's having and another round for my friends all on my tab. I've kept it open."

He replied, "The usual, Charlie?" but didn't wait for a response. As quickly as Paul had shown up, he had turned and reappeared at the opposite end of the bar to prepare the drinks.

Charlie looked at me, clearly confused, "Hey, that wasn't the deal."

From the side of me opposite Charlie, I heard Patsy say, "You aren't going to win that one, fella."

I looked and saw Patsy and Julie with huge shit eating grins on their faces, they had obviously been listening to the whole exchange between me and Charlie.

Julie, on the far side of us, said, "Holly, why don't you introduce us to your new friend?"

I turned back to Charlie and made the introductions, "Girls, this is Charlie... "

He interjected, "Just Charlie."

I started over, "Girls, this is Just Charlie. Charlie, next to me here is Patsy, and it is her birthday today. On the far end is Julie. And now you know my name, I'm Holly. Pleased to meet you, Charlie."

He said his hellos and the bartender brought us all our drinks. Charlie was served the house IPA beer, the same thing I was drinking.

I resumed tormenting the guy, "You said earlier that your friends were giving you a harder time than usual to introduce yourself to a woman in here, and it was because of something that happened on Sunday. Pray tell." I gave him my million dollar smile and leaned my elbow onto the bar with my chin on my fist.

I think he forgot that he told me that, but he answered, "Ah, yes. Bill, one of my friends over there, had me over for a barbecue on Sunday at his house. His wife arranged a woman there for me to meet, another one of their attempted setups that they're always springing on me, and, well, I don't want to be set up so I kind of slipped away and went home. My other friend over there, Frank, well, I think his wife was in on it too and none too happy either. I suspect that their wives are on their case about me so they think that by getting me back in circulation, well, I don't know what to think."

"Hmmm. Yeah, OK. I think I understand. So why don't you want to be back in 'circulation', Charlie?"

He looked deeply into my eyes without hesitation and said, "Holly, you have to understand, my wife was something special. She was funny. Smart. She was the reason the sun came up in the morning. Her only flaw was that she was in love with an idiot. Me. I never took that for granted though, I kissed the ground she walked on. And then she was taken from me. Well. A love like we had only comes around once in a lifetime."

He took a deep pull on his beer and asked, "Holly, there were several guys who hit on you before I came up. What did you tell them to brush them off?"

What he had said about his wife and his love for her was so raw, so truthful and full of meaning, that when he changed gears and asked that question, it took me a second for it to sink in and respond, "Oh, uh, I told them that I wasn't interested."

He gave me a kind of sad smile and said, "Perfect. That's what I'll tell the guys you said to me too." He leaned over the bar to make eye contact with my friends and said, "Goodnight ladies. It was nice meeting you. Happy birthday, Patsy." Looking back at me he added, "Goodnight, Holly. Thank you for the beer."

And with that, he rejoined his friends. I just watched him walk away. It was kind of surreal until Patsy and Julie laughed at me and poked me in the ribs.

"What?" I kind of whined in their direction.

Patsy asked what the hell had just happened. "You didn't make that guy piss his pants in under 10 seconds when he asked to buy you a drink. Just who the fuck are you and what did you do with Holly?"

Julie got in on the action too, "He must have made an impression on you, I've never seen you do that before. YOU bought A GUY a drink? What the fuck, Holly? Going to marry him, are you?"

The girls were still teasing me, things like asking why I let a cute guy like that out of my grip and wondering if one of them could have shot if my impending marriage didn't work out with him. While they teased me, another guy sat down next to me at the bar and asked if he could buy me a drink.

I gave him my death stare and said, "Get lost, asshole. And I mean NOW." To make sure he really got the point I went beyond my normal bitch-mode and pulled my jacket open enough that he could see my holster and gun. They guy went pale and practically evaporated.

Patsy said to Julie, "Looks like Holly is back."

We finished our drinks, the girls got tired of teasing me, so it was time to get going and I asked Paul for the tab so I could settle up. He told me that Charlie had paid for the whole thing on the sly, and left him a damn fine tip in the process. I looked around to see if Charlie was still in the place so I could thank him and give him shit for breaking the deal, but it looked like he and his friends had left already. Shit.

I thanked Paul and as I was leaving, I asked him if he was on a first name basis with all of his customers. He laughed out loud and said, "Not really, but who could ever forget a name like Charlie Brown?"

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I replayed the encounter with Charlie in my head the rest of the night. Though it really was a brief encounter, it was still the longest conversation I had ever had with a strange guy in a bar. Ever. By my choice and resolve, I've never been picked up in a bar and I planned on never being picked up in a bar.

My opinion about men in general had probably never been lower in my entire adult life, so I wasn't planning on being picked up anytime by anyone and anywhere. Ever.

I hadn't always been like this. Now at 32 years old though, I had enough disastrous relationships and enough lousy dates that it just didn't seem worth it. What's the final product? Marriage? Kids? In-Laws? Little League practice? A minivan? A lying, cheating husband? Fat hips and saggy boobs? Nope, that wasn't for me.

Being a detective in the police department only complicated things with guys. The men I got into a relationship with just thought that my job was a temporary gig, that once married I would change careers and do something 'that a girl would do', get a 'girl job'. Like what, maybe work the register at Wal-Mart? Again, not me. I liked my job. I am good at my job.

One of the reasons I was good at being a detective is that I was born with something like a super power, an uncanny gift at detecting a lie. One time I had a partner on the force who put me up against a lie detector machine on a bet with a couple other cops. I blew the machine away. I don't really know how I do it, I just can. Needless to say I'm the Captain's MVP in the interrogation room.

My gift is also kind of a curse. In all the dates and relationships I had ever experienced, I had yet to be with a truly honest man. Sometimes it just blows my mind that a guy, maybe even one who supposedly loved me, would lie when the truth would do just as good. Of course every time I got real deep in a relationship, once the guy learned that they would never be able to put anything over on me, ever, they couldn't handle it. Break up time, and they walked away. Sometimes they ran.

So I came to the conclusion that I could be perfectly happy going through life single. And I would wear a T-shirt that stated that if I thought it would help. Yet thanks to my mother, I inherited an efficient metabolism, pretty face, tits and ass, that advertises something else. I've been hit on constantly since I was 16. Men either wanted me to be a trophy wife, or like most of the guys tonight in the bar, a conquest they could brag about.

When I decided that I was through and categorized myself as unattainable, it seemed like it got only worse. When I'm at work, I put my hair in a tight bun, I dress frumpy almost anywhere I go, my go-to color is gray in order to avoid attention, I don't even wear makeup. Nothing seems to work. The only thing I can count on is that I can go from frumpy-girl to super bitch in a nanosecond and reduce a normal, confident man into a blithering idiot just as fast. Before I got to the bar tonight, my hair tie had broken and I had to let my hair down, so it was no surprise that I was even more of a target all evening.

Which brings me back to Charlie. I would think that if his friends want to see him married off that they would have tried to steer him towards an encounter with the higher probability of success over a woman who sent four guys before him instantly away. The goal of buying a woman a drink in the bar other than a one-night stand would be to get her number, or scoring a date, ultimately leading into bed. There's no way they could have missed seeing me shoot down 4 guys in a row before Charlie approached me. So why didn't his friends steer him towards someone else? The only answer was that Charlie chose me himself, guaranteeing himself a rejection.

Then there's Charlie as an anti-typical guy. He was respectful the whole time we talked, looking me in the eyes and not staring at my tits throughout our encounter. Was I losing it? Why didn't Charlie revert to a Neanderthal once he got close to me, and why didn't I get Charlie's blood boiling? Instead, he couldn't wait until our encounter was over.

Next was that he seemed genuine. Except for his intention to lie to his friends about our encounter that would get him off the hook, he was honest with me. His only knock on being truthful with me might be at the point he tried to convince me that he was married, and that's a fine line really, his wife died. It wasn't like he was married and divorced or separated, and he didn't have a little woman at home that he was trying to cheat on with in the bar. I thought it was actually sweet that he still wears his wedding ring four years after she passed away.

What was really eating at me though was what he had said about his wife, to a total stranger. With my decision to live the rest of my life single and go through the future totally on my own, it means that I won't allow anyone to feel that way about me. No one would ever talk about me in the sweetest, most genuine terms, with absolute love and from the heart. Is that what I really want? I was suddenly confused. For the first time since I was a teen, I cried myself to sleep.

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The thing about being a detective on the force is that I have resources at my disposal to investigate and learn things that most people don't even know about themselves. I'm not supposed to abuse it, but Charlie Brown got under my skin last night and I needed to know more about this guy. It wouldn't hurt anybody if I did a shallow dive on this guy's background, even just to satisfy my curiosity.

I didn't know much but I had enough smoke that I was confident I could generate a tell-all fire, data speaking. The most important thing was I had his name. Charlie Brown, most likely Charles Brown. He was wearing a polo shirt in the bar that was embroidered with "AMM Engineering." Also, his wife died four years ago, last name most likely Brown.

In less than two hours, I had so much information on this guy I could have practically written his biography. He was a mechanical engineer, graduated from UC Davis with honors, worked as a consulting engineer designing high performance automotive suspension systems, and had 5 invention patents. His office was literally across the street from the bar I met him in last night. He was married to his long-time friend and high school sweetheart a year after he graduated college and they honeymooned in Hawaii. He lived in Santa Monica, a cute little house that was now worth a fortune thanks to him buying it immediately after the housing bubble burst and then waiting it out. His parents retired to Palm Springs.

Nothing spectacular, really. It was his wife's obituary that had me locking myself in a bathroom stall for 30 minutes. Charlie Brown's wife, Marisa (Burnham) Brown, died after a long and what looked like a horrendous battle with cancer. She was survived by her husband and a daughter. He's a single dad now. Of an 8-year old. That meant she was 4 when her mom died. The same age I was when my mom died.

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It wasn't until the following week that I decided that I needed to talk to Charlie. I don't really know why, I just did. I had nothing to lose. I acknowledged that I had nothing to gain either, but that part just seemed muddy in my brain and I shoved that to the side for now.

That morning I wore a dress to work. Nothing fancy, but a simple pattern in light green that went to my knees and elbows without revealing too much cleavage. Something that an accountant might wear to the office on a weekday. I wore a jacket on top that would mostly conceal my holster, gun, and belt.

A little after eleven, I locked my gun up in my desk, unclipped my badge from my belt and placed it in my purse, and then hung my belt and jacket onto the back of my desk chair. I stood up and let my hair down before I turned to leave the precinct when I heard my captain's voice call me into his office.

He closed his office door and looked at me. "What the fuck, detective." It wasn't really a question.

"What? I have a lunch date," I replied.

"Really? You?" Then he sat down at his desk and dismissed me, but added, "Hell hath frozen over. I hope this poor guy is heavily insured."

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I didn't tell my captain that I actually didn't have an appointment for a date. For all I knew, Charlie was already at lunch, or had other plans, or was on a business trip, or just flat out wouldn't see me. Determined though, I crashed his office anyway. Half an hour earlier than the traditional noon lunch hour in order to give myself a better shot of not missing him.

The lobby of AMM Engineering was a simple room adorned with photographs of rockets, race cars, and farm machinery. There was a glass case that held all kinds of little do-dads, prototypes of one thing or another that I didn't understand their function of. There was no receptionist, just an open window to another office with a bell on the sill. I could see several women within the adjacent office through the window working at desks that were crowded within. I was pleased to see that a couple of the women were dressed like I was.