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"I know that this is... stressful, to say the least, Lassiter. I'd rather not have to ask this of you myself, but Internal Affairs will want their crack at you as soon as possible and I think it's best if you set the story straight with O'Hara and I first. I'm... sorry. But I'm sure you understand. So what exactly happened?"
***
"You are one sick twist, Drimmer," Carlton spat, his rising anger as the one thing to keep him steady.
As though to confirm it, the man smirked and cocked his head. "I know."
Then he shifted the aim of his gun from Carlton to Shawn, at which Carlton immediately found himself far more afraid, pure panic jolting through him before Shawn himself seemed to react—
"Oh—wo-wo-woah, wait, wait, just WAIT, I'm getting something, I'm sensing something!" he stammered desperately, sitting up on the couch and putting his fingers to his temple. For once Carlton didn't feel an ounce of annoyance at the motion. "Something wild, uh—something in the way you look tonight, deep blue... something-"
Shawn looked at him, face red and eyes intense, and Carlton understood at once: Something. DO something, anything—
"Don't you ever stop talking?" Drimmer yelled, and Carlton took his distraction as a chance to run for his hidden gun in the breadbox.
And before that sick son of a bitch could do more than turn his head, there was a pistol in Carlton's hand, and Shawn was able to wrench Drimmer's arm up. Within the second there was one bullet in the ceiling and another in the guy's shoulder.
Shawn easily grabbed the other gun, now, and hopped over the coffee table to hand it to him.
"Looks like they missed one," he told Carlton with a matching smirk in their shared relief—reminiscent of an action film, he couldn't help but think. Shawn looked like he had hearts in his eyes.
Back-up arrived too soon for either of them to say much else, but Carlton vaguely considered manning up and asking him out after all this...
Except that's far too idealistic for Carlton to even wish that it was what happened.
The breadbox gun wasn't there, obviously—of course the police would have found it when they searched his apartment. But as much as he knew he often underestimated them, they almost definitely didn't find the one hidden in a bowl of cashews.
Taken off guard by Carlton's confidence, probably, Drimmer merely tried to order him to stop while he advanced.
Shawn wrenched his arm up a moment before Carlton reached into the bowl and grabbed the gun—and that sick son of a bitch had a bullet in his shoulder likely before he could even comprehend what was going on.
Shawn then took a second to work the gun fully from Drimmer's hand, stumbled across the coffee table to hand it to him, and patted him on the back.
"Looks like they missed one," Shawn told him with a painful grunt.
"At least one—there are eight. And I seriously doubt they found the one in my shower or hidden in my hi-fi," Carlton said without thinking—and then glanced over. Shawn didn't look too impressed, but there was no room to regret saying it when Juliet, Henry, and Gus crashed through the door hardly a second later.
That sequence of events flows together easily in his memory, almost as though it really happened. It should offer a moment of deluded relief, shouldn't it?
Shouldn't he at least prefer that to the way the truth—the fact that all that was a possibility—crushes him instead?
***
"...I received a text that I believed was from Spencer, saying he had a break in the case," Carlton starts stiffly. Vick nods. She knows this part. "But Drimmer had knocked him out and tricked me—to get us both into my apartment so he could stage a murder-suicide."
He repeats what both Shawn and Drimmer explained about the plan, all of which feels far too fresh in his mind. He doesn't want to remember it like this—he shouldn't be able to repeat this verbatim.
"You two being former lovers and all, you were overwhelmed with guilt."
It's funny—out of all the things he could be nauseatingly ashamed to say, that's the one part Carlton wishes he could leave out. But they have the fake suicide note anyway, so it would be pointless.
"Drimmer aimed the gun at Spencer, and—he didn't seem entirely ready to shoot. Spencer made an attempt to distract him so I could do something—"
"Something wild, uh—something in the way you look tonight, deep blue... something—"
Carlton relives it in a single moment of closing his eyes; there's only one thing from the scene burned harder into his mind.
"Do you EVER stop talking?"
"But I was slow in reacting, and Drimmer shot him." Juliet lets out a small gasp just then, but Carlton keeps going without pause: "I believe he expected me to rush to Spencer's side directly after, so then... he could shoot me while I was on my knees, making it a more realistic position for me to kill myself."
His breath finally hitches and the evenness in his voice is gone—perhaps the shock is wearing off. Or perhaps he was never truly in shock and his facade of complete rationality is simply breaking, because he can't stop himself from remembering.
He knows that he wanted to. God, he fucking wanted to, he wanted to dart across the room and, for a moment, he couldn't even bring himself to care that he would only fulfill Drimmer's plan because there is a hole in Shawn's head and he is dying if not already dead on my couch and I need to help him this is my fault I need to help him but—
"I suppose he also underestimated how many hidden guns I kept in my apartment, because I managed to grab the one from my cashew bowl before he could aim at me," he finally continues.
But pure rage won.
"And I shot him, point-blank in the head. O'Hara and Henry and Guster all busted in no more than... thirty seconds after I got to Shawn's side. That's it. You should remember how it looked when you came in."
Their collective memory of the scene seems to hold in the air for the next several seconds, as both the Chief and Juliet give indiscernible looks to him and then each other. Carlton averts his eyes, vaguely wishing that the guilt will overtake him.
"Carlton... you—"
"Lassiter," Vick stops her, leaning forward over her end of the table. Her voice sounds careful, like someone stepping around broken glass. "You're telling me... you aimed at Drimmer's forehead?"
"That's what point-blank means," he says smoothly.
"So you aimed to kill, when he wasn't aiming at you at all—"
"Chief, come on," Juliet practically sobs—he spots no tears, but her voice cracks and her chest heaves. "Drimmer clearly intended to kill him one way or another! It was self-defense—right, Carlt—?"
"No."
Somehow, he feels no shame in admitting it. Meanwhile Juliet needs another few seconds just to comprehend his answer.
"But... what?"
Carlton clears his throat. "I know that I could have just incapacitated him. I knew it then, in that moment. I knew keeping him alive would allow him to give us needed information. And I chose not to—I... I killed Drimmer in an act of revenge. That's what it was. I wanted that piece of shit dead for killing Spencer, and I didn't want him having any chance of a lesser sentence for giving up names. I killed him for the same reason that everyone believed I killed Chavez... It was murder."
When he's done he folds his hands over the table, like he's noticed many criminals do when they end up giving a full confession. He supposes that's what he is now. A criminal.
A moment later Juliet stands up and slams her hands on the table, looking to be truly on the verge of tears now.
"NO, it was not—why are you saying all of this, Carlton? You're not a murderer, and regardless Drimmer killed—"
"I'm stating the facts, O'Hara." For the first time since reaching the station, Carlton raises his voice. If only to match hers halfway. "That's my job."
"Those are not the facts and you know it, you just want to punish yourself because you feel some misplaced guilt—"
"I am a detective, O'Hara! I'm the head-fucking-detective, and I should have been able to stop him, god dammit—" Standing himself, now, Carlton clenches his jaw until his whole head pulses with pain. "And I—I didn't. It's not that I couldn't, the circumstances weren't stopping me... I didn't react quickly enough. I didn't do my job, and I let Shawn get killed. It might as well have been me who pulled the trigger."
His head pulses again, and the physical pain is possibly the one thing that keeps him steady.
Juliet stares at him in some kind of intense sadness—he can't tell whether she feels entirely sorry for him, or if she's beginning to understand how this really is his fault and subsequently feeling horrified. He also finds that he doesn't care which it is, and he stares intently right back.
They remain like that, eyes burning in silence, for only a few seconds before Vick coughs from her seat, where she's been quiet all this time.
"Can you two sit down, please."
Juliet hesitates. Carlton obeys much less reluctantly—he's mentally ready for a life of no more autonomy, it seems.
"Lassiter...," Vick starts slowly, looking back and forth between Carlton and her folded hands. Then she unfolds them and straightens her back. "Considering all you just said, it's clear that guilt over Shawn's death is influencing your perception of what happened. Now... I don't think it will help anyone if you have to leave the force all because of a bit of grief-induced exaggeration—let alone get a prison sentence that I know Internal Affairs are probably already trying to arrange just from the look of the crime scene—"
"Exactly, Chief," he practically laughs. "Even if I lied and said that I did all I could, and that killing Drimmer was an act of self-defense... probably half the station will still believe I was the one who killed Shawn, anyway."
With a glance at Juliet he can tell that she's begun to cry for real, lips clinging tightly together and eyes glistening, threatening to spill over. The sight of it makes Carlton unable to keep his own lip from trembling.
"And they'll be wrong," she tells him. "Karen and I know you didn't. Henry knows you didn't—even Gus believes that you didn't, and I know that for a fact. You are not responsible for his death, Carlton, and he wouldn't want—"
"How the hell do you know what he would want?" he snaps, but before Juliet can respond—
"Lassiter." The sternness in Vick's tone pulls him back. "I want to give you this chance—to redo your statement. To keep your personal feelings off the record. Just give me the base facts, and tell that same thing to Internal Affairs, and wallow in grief all you want when you get home. I promise you, all of us are going to do the same goddamn thing."
Carlton is torn, for a moment, between whether he wants to yell at her—at the both of them, really—or simply leave.
He settles somewhere in the middle, and tightens his jaw again.
"You weren't there, Chief. I told the truth the first time. Now, I believe that I have no obligation to be here once I finish giving my statement."
As he stands up, Carlton bites back one last thought and keeps it in his head:
And absolutely none of you are going to do the same goddamn thing.
*
Even if he didn't deserve it, he'd have nowhere else to go but a motel that he won't be able to sleep in anyway. He certainly can't go back home, not while it's a crime scene and more importantly while it's the place where Shawn died, where pieces of Shawn's skull and brain are probably embedded in the couch and carpet—
The mere thought of it nearly sends Carlton toppling from nausea, and subsequently putting all his energy into not reliving it all. Avoiding the mental picture is easy enough, but the feelings... they come back over and over in waves. The only assurance that he's not back in his apartment is the freezing cold of the cement walls around him.
"You trying to get locked up, Lassiter?" they'd straight laughed at him when he gave his confession to Internal Affairs.
"I'm trying to relay the events of tonight as honestly as I can," he'd told them. "So if you see it fit to arrest me, I'll accept those consequences."
IA has been itching for a reason to knock Carlton down for years now—they certainly wouldn't pass up the chance when a confession of essentially police negligence and voluntary manslaughter is on the table, even if it seems like he's completely lost his mind. Especially if he's completely lost his mind.
He knows that Vick tried to talk them out of it, to simply have him remain suspended and under close watch but not treat him like a criminal.
He knows that Juliet tried to offer to keep an eye on him herself, to promise that whatever punishment he's trying to get for himself is just the grief talking and to insist that everyone here is grieving, but he actually had to be there, please.
He knows that after some time, Vick changed her mind and decided that for now a private cell might be the best—that even being near potential weapons could make him a danger to himself.
And he knows all this because he heard it, quietly but clearly, through a locked conference room door. It's much better than Carlton is normally able to hear—come to think of it, everything is louder and brighter and clearer, which is very odd for someone who just went through what he did.
He wonders if Shawn somehow managed to rub off on him posthumously.
That's probably something stupid that Shawn himself would think of—dying, and passing on his "psychic" abilities to the one person who knows what they really are, like some kind of tragic irony... Ha.
Carlton leans back against the corner of the cell, finding an odd sort of comfort in... well, the utter lack of it. At least there's dignity here, and he has no reason to toss and turn because anything on the inside that might torment him is overwhelmed by the outside.
He's chilled to the bone, and hyper-aware of every joint in his body and how it can't rest comfortably. He keeps knocking his head against concrete without meaning to, and the springs from the bed he's sitting on are practically digging into him. He couldn't possibly sleep here on a regular day, and he can't imagine how low a person has to get that they're used to it.
But he might come to be that low soon enough—if Internal Affairs gets their way.
Whether it's exactly what he wants or deserves, however, Carlton can't be sure yet. Being on this side of the bars for the first time might be what balances out his grief for now, but what if he can't handle that kind of drop? Just these past few days have felt like hell, losing his gun and badge and title, and as pathetic as it was, he hadn't lost all freedoms yet—
And Shawn hadn't been killed in front of him due to his own negligence yet.
Shawn wasn't gone yet, which is one hell of a change in circumstances. In all the time that Carlton's known him—every damn second including now—he could never hope to imagine a world without him in it. Three years ago he rocked the boat and it hasn't been steady since.
He feels like it's sunk, now. Shawn dropped like an anchor and brought the whole ship down with everyone still inside.
And while he knows that he can't guess what others are going through, Carlton can't help but imagine himself as the one willfully remaining inside instead of even trying to break out and get to the surface. It's his responsibility to stay here.
Maybe it's his brain forcing him to cope, or maybe it's simply the cold of the cell, but at some point he begins to go numb. Physical and emotional pain alike fade out in favor of nothingness—and for what feels like the longest time, the only thing on his mind is an oddly shaped mark on the opposite wall.
When he eventually snaps out of it, it's with the simple movement of looking down at himself, and getting a nudging realization—
He's still wearing the shirt he borrowed from the Psych office yesterday.
He's still fucking wearing Shawn's shirt.
Carlton can't recall the last time he genuinely cried himself to sleep—or really, if he ever has. He supposes there's a first time for everything.
***
No, no no no no —
Carlton has seen people die before, but this is entirely different, and not only because this is someone he cares about.
It's surreal. Shawn's arm is still bent around, his hand stuck between his head and the couch. He's stuck in that stupid fake-psychic position, and his mouth is open like he's still somehow ready to interject with some obscure reference or nonsensical monologue, and his eyes still have too much light for a dead person and—
He isn't dead yet.
Carlton's hands scramble to stop the blood flow as he mentally beats himself for not realizing sooner—but after a mere few seconds it occurs to him that brain damage like this could put Shawn in a coma, and at the least he'd come out of it impaired in practically everything that makes him him... Would he even want to live like that?
But can Carlton even decide that for him, either? He can't just let him die, he can't not try to save him—
He sees the light go out.
It must be quite the scene for Gus, Juliet, and Henry when they bust in to see Drimmer dead on the ground, Shawn dead on the couch, and Carlton holding him with blood all over his arms.
For them, he figures it's too much of a shock to really sink in right away. He can't imagine that they can readily grasp the concept of someone like Shawn being dead, either.
For him, the past two minutes or so have felt like hours. And yet the looks of horror on all their faces manage to bring him a brand new stab of pain.
"I'm sorry," is the first thing that comes out of his mouth, after Henry calls an ambulance and Gus begins sobbing against the door. His own voice feels strange to him. "I couldn't save him. I'm sorry."
*
"Lassie."
This is a dream—it must be. Though he usually doesn't feel this tired during dreams, or as though he's just been woken up...
"Lassie," Shawn says again, sitting on the bed with him. Even in mere half-consciousness, Carlton notices that it adds weight and makes no noise. "...You don't belong here."
He actually seems frustrated, not unlike Juliet from earlier. Instead of arguing, however, all Carlton can think to say to him is,
"Ghosts aren't real."
Now Shawn laughs, just slightly. "Well, that's not technically what I am right now, so you might be right about that."
"So you're a hallucination." That makes sense. Hell, he's been expecting it. Except—
"Wrong again, Lassie. I'm actually a hologram, from the year 2121. Phil of the Future was right about everything." If there's any proof this is the real Shawn, it's that, and the straight face he holds for a solid two seconds before breaking and smiling. "To be honest, though, I'm really not sure what to call this..."
As he trails off, Shawn's hand shifts over to find Carlton's, and both of them seem startled to find that he feels it, that it doesn't just phase through him. It isn't even smooth pressure that his brain could fool him into feeling, either, but actually rough, and warm.
The very next thing that it occurs to Carlton to do is reach up and feel the side of Shawn's head, expecting (and fearing) a hole—and feeling nothing but the soft hair there.
And keeping his hand there without dropping it, and staring at him in silence, waiting for him to say something.
When he doesn't, Carlton wakes up just slightly more and finds the breath:
"You're not here to... try to talk me out of this? You're not gonna try to convince me that I'm being too harsh on myself or that I'm not a criminal, or tell me that this isn't what you'd want—?"
"Surprisingly, no." Shawn punctuates that with a tiny shake of his head, and then takes the hand that Carlton still has reached out in his. "I just needed to tell you... not to waste too much time missing me. Alright?"
What? Carlton feels his breath escape him, and then once again the moment it returns because—nevermind the fact that he's basically a ghost—Shawn is leaning over him.
"You—what the hell kind of message is that, Spencer?" Carlton says with a mirthless sharp exhale of a laugh when he gets close. "You can't possibly expect me to promise..."
"I know," he mutters. For the first time since he's arrived, oddly enough, he looks sad. "But I swear, Lassie... it's gonna be okay."
When Shawn closes the gap between them, Carlton immediately feels certain again that he must be dreaming. But there's warmth on his lips and a nose pressing into his and fingertips grazing his cheek and a living gentleness to all of it—enough to nearly put him right back to sleep, and to make him need to pull away and ask, to make sure—
"Are you real?"
He doesn't know whether he expected a solid answer, but he does know that he can't be surprised when Shawn merely shrugs and says,
"Does it matter?"
***
"Listen, in my past three years of working with Lassiter, I have not once seen him shed a tear. Not a single goddamn one—honestly, I used to think he might have had his tear ducts removed... So I guaran-fucking-tee you he didn't fake it, and that footage is proof that this has affected him more than any other cop. You can't just act like the death of a co-worker isn't a special circumstance."
"Alright—whatever you say, Detective. Not like I have a say anymore."
Carlton pretends that he didn't hear any of that when he's escorted into the Chief's office—partially because he's still a bit too numb to care much. It's not as though it's an infringement on his privacy, anyway. He opted to be treated like a criminal last night.
"Lassiter," Vick greets him, eyes lighting up for a moment, waving away the cop who brought him in.
Juliet's eyes do the same, and he can tell by the stiffness in both of them and the dark circles under their eyes that they barely got any sleep. Probably never even left the station.
Judging by the way they look at him, Carlton doesn't look much better if not worse.
"Why am I here?" he asks to get it over with, glancing around to see two other men: Childers—one of the Internal Affairs agents who interrogated him last night, and Drimmer's partner from the gang unit. Carlton never can remember his name.
"Because I have ruled over Internal Affairs—or rather, struck a deal," Vick tells him, nodding in the men's direction, "and decided that you will not be charged with a crime. Instead you'll be suspended for an indeterminate amount of time and have a mandatory—and paid—stay at a psychiatric facility. Starting off with just three weeks, and then we'd see how you're doing."
Carlton's chest and throat go cold and he feels like last night is about to happen all over again—but before he can open his mouth, Juliet steps forward.
"I know you probably don't like the idea, but that's exactly it, Carlton. You wanna punish yourself? Go to this place. And maybe find a better way to cope or grieve while you're there. I really think it'll help much better than a jail cell—"
"I don't want help," he says, feeling a sudden wave of exhaustion, his eyes now twice as heavy. She opens her mouth again, but—"And this isn't just me wanting to punish myself, it's... It's not—I'm not... in need of help, or meds. I'm not crazy, I'm not mentally unstable, and I'm not suicidal."
There's a change of air in the room with that last one—almost as though everyone else can tell that it's not entirely true. But none of them can possibly know, none of them are in his mind, none of them have ever heard him say that he fantasizes about all the ways he could go out and no matter what happened last night, none of them could know how afraid he's been made by the thought of his own gun. How he can't imagine holding it again unless it's against his own head.
They could guess, though. And who on earth tells the truth of that to a room full of people?
After the moment that everyone takes to adjust, Carlton sighs and finishes: "...I'm just done."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Juliet says quietly, panic evident in her eyes.
"It means—" Carlton steps to the side so he can face Vick, instead. "It means you don't need to suspend me again, because I quit."
Both Juliet and Vick start to speak at the same time, and all that he can make out is:
"You can't mean that—"
"Okay, this is a hasty decision—"
And then they stop, and look at each other, and Vick gives Juliet the nod to go ahead. So she steps in front of him again.
"You've been a detective for so long, and you're just giving that up? What happened to the Carlton Lassiter who told me he wanted to be a cop since he was eight? What happened to the detective who was so dedicated his work, who—"
"You know what happened to him, O'Hara." She tightens her lips and doesn't attempt to argue with that, so he figures that she really does know. "My job is keeping people safe, and I didn't do that when I should have been able to. I'm not good at my job anymore. This is the least I can do."
While his partner and chief are likely trying to process this, and the other men pretend not to be excited about this, Carlton simply remembers what he saw last night. Whether Shawn was a hallucination or a dream—or if it truly was a spirit, somehow... even without telling him directly, he thinks it convinced him that he won't do well in prison.
So this is more accurately the best thing he can do.
"...If that's what you want, Carlton," Vick finally says, sinking a bit into her seat and looking the least professional he's ever seen her, "I suppose I can't stop you."
Juliet, meanwhile, doesn't seem to have any words.
But... the Internal Affairs agent does:
"In this case, the deal is off, Chief."
"Excuse me?"
"Lassiter may no longer be a member of the force, but we can still investigate the role he had when he was—just a minute ago. And I think I want to keep him here the full 24 hours for more interrogation. I believe I also have the authority to order one of your cops, such as Mr. Gaither here, to book him."
While Carlton knows he has nothing to fear from further interrogation, he feels his deep-seated hatred for Internal Affairs rise back up in his chest. He can also tell that the same is happening in the other two, particularly due to Vick's icy tone:
"Do either of you really think that's wise or worthy of your time, now that I've ordered a full-scale investigation of the Gang Unit? I'd have thought Lassiter quitting would be good enough for you."
"With all due respect, Chief," Childers says without an ounce of evident respect, "we don't have nearly as much faith in Detective Lassiter as you and his partner do."
The man then looks to him, as though hoping he'll get angry or become disagreeable enough for a real arrest. Carlton has no intention to give him the satisfaction-or even really much against another ten hours in this building—so he pointedly shrugs.
"I'll come quietly."
*
Juliet demands to speak with him alone hardly a moment after he's out of the Chief's office, and Drimmer's ex-partner seems reluctant to let her but ultimately doesn't have the guts to argue.
She practically drags him into an empty conference room, looking like she wants to hit him.
"You can't do this to me, Carlton," she starts, chest heaving. "I know you blame yourself and you think you deserve this, but do you think I deserve this? Shawn gets killed and now you're leaving me too? You're my best friend—you're my partner, what the hell am I supposed to do—?"
"You'll be fine," he says quickly, the words practically flying out of his mouth and both hands flying out to reach her shoulders. "You'll be head detective with me gone, and you'll get a new partner, and you'll get used to it and you'll handle yourself fine because you always do. You don't need me."
This is too much and he knows it. This is too much change and she truly doesn't deserve it, but what is he supposed to do? He can't trust his ability to do his job anymore. Even if he could stand to be in that position, one day he might be in the position where he has to save her, and... he can't.
He can't do that.
"I don't want to be head detective," she says, quietly and slowly, like she's saying it more for herself. "I want things to be like how they were. Obviously things can never be the same again, but..."
"I'm sorry. For everything. But Spencer was—" Carlton's lungs don't seem to want him to finish that. He pauses to close his eyes and breathe, and when he opens them Juliet seems to have some idea of what he's about to say. "...He really had my back this whole time, O'Hara. He didn't need facts or evidence—he never does, but he was determined to prove my innocence from the get-go, and... Spencer believed in me. And look at what happened to him because of me."
The next thing he knows Juliet's arms are around his shoulders, squeezing him tightly, and he feels compelled to put his arms around her in return. He thinks he's forgotten how comforting a simple hug often is.
"If nothing else," she mutters after a few moments, "...I'm just surprised you're willing to let Internal Affairs grill you for hours."
"I'm just as surprised as you are," he admits. "But so much has changed for me that it hardly makes a difference. That, and it's better than going home—or figuring out where else I'm going to stay..."
God, he really has no plan, does he?
Without even pulling away from the hug, though, Juliet easily suggests: "Why not stay at my place?"
*
Even with her caseload and lack of a partner to help her with them, Juliet promises that she'll find the time to get someone to take care of Carlton's apartment. He gives her a list of things he'd prefer to have with him when he moves in, things to give to the SBPD, things to leave until they can be put in storage, and things that can just be thrown altogether.
She also has McNab go out and get lunch for him, as he hasn't eaten in too many hours and, in spite of his audibly empty stomach, won't ask himself. It's not just because he doesn't have the authority anymore, either.
Things are looking up quite a bit from where he was last night, which is surreal for him and apparently suspicious to Internal Affairs who, unlike before, are now asking the questions instead of simply letting him confess.
"You seemed eager to be locked up for murdering Drimmer just twelve or so hours ago, Lassiter—but not anymore. What changed?"
It's so typical that Carlton wants to laugh in their faces, but instead he just shrugs.
"What do you think? I got some sleep. O'Hara and Chief Vick were right—grief affected how I perceived the situation, and it still is. Which is why I'm quitting."
"So you're... retracting your statement that you killed Detective Drimmer in revenge for killing Shawn Spencer?"
They're expecting him to flinch, so he refuses to. "Not at all."
"Mm—so this suicide note, which you claim Drimmer wrote in your handwriting and was going to use to frame you—"
"Don't you think if I'd written it myself, I'd be dead?"
One of the agents actually chuckles. "We'd think, yes."
The one who's been doing the talking continues: "Is 'Drimmer's' claim about you and Spencer being former lovers true?"
He pauses. He doesn't know why he pauses. The man across from seems to have already made up his mind about what to believe.
"No."
"Were you and Shawn Spencer current lovers—that is, before the events of—?"
"No," Carlton says perhaps a little too quickly.
It's not even a lie, and these guys couldn't possibly know what happened to him last night after being behind bars. They can't have observed any kind of budding romance between him and Shawn, or any of his feelings, or private thoughts... but he knows what they're doing.
Worse, he's afraid it might work.
They don't break him—of course they don't. There are no secrets to spill, and even if all they wanted was to emotionally wreck him into surrendering himself to prison by continuously bringing up his relationship (and lack thereof) with Shawn, they've failed.
All Internal Affairs has succeeded in doing is making him desperate to leave and vaguely wary of their agency's motives.
Do they really believe Drimmer could be innocent in all this? Why would they even want to? They had to have seen the tampered files, and the fingerprints on the gun he used to shoot Shawn, and every other goddamn piece of proof that Drimmer's the dirtiest cop there is.
As odd as Carlton finds all this and as much as his wariness grows with every hour, however, the interrogation drains him too much to think very deeply into it.
Spencer could probably figure it out, is what he does himself thinking. Just unearth an entire conspiracy without moving from this chair in a matter of hours. He could be on zero sleep for 48 hours and he'd still do it.
Carlton has no clue how, except that it was never anything "psychic," but he would.
Except if he was alive, I wouldn't be sitting here.
Unless I was the one who died and he was in my place.
Would he have gone to this trouble in my place, though? Would he have killed Drimmer in revenge and then admitted to it and felt responsible for my death despite not even being a cop? Would anyone have even doubted that his version of events was true?
Would anyone have believed for a second that he could kill me?
As it gets into the evening hours, Carlton seems to be doing more thinking than talking—or even focusing on the questions any longer. He can't be punished for being too exhausted to respond, can he?
At some point after a question makes it to him that he just barely registers as a repetition of something said earlier, Carlton's immediate response is,
"Bathroom break."
Childers-who's the only agent left in the room-merely raises his eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
"I need a bathroom break. You gonna let me take it, or you gonna make me stink up the room?"
Instead of making any fuss like Carlton thought he might, the man simply stands up and gestures.
"I'll escort you."
"...Good."
Childers remains behind him, walking him out of the interrogation room. A little too close, but not any worse than he's treated some criminals.
Then, when they start on the staircase, Carlton can hear him inhale and immediately knows he's about to speak.
"You know, Lassiter, the past few days have been crazy hectic. Never would've seen any of it coming. I'd have figured a guy like Drimmer would come up with a plan that wouldn't get him killed so easily, y'know?"
"I wouldn't," Carlton says dryly, keeping his face forward.
"Maybe he just shouldn't have messed with you, huh?"
Unsure of what the hell he's trying to imply or trick him into admitting to, Carlton pointedly keeps his mouth shut. Then Childers goes on:
"I don't have anything I can possibly charge you on for real, we both know that by now... But that's the funniest part of this whole case, Lassiter—even without any security footage to prove it, thanks to everything you've said, absolutely no one will be surprised to hear that you got a hold of my concealed pistol, and then shot yourself."
There's a ring of cold metal at Carlton's temple before he fully registers the words—before he even stops walking.
Before instinct can even make his spine freeze up.
The first thing he wants to do is laugh.